'Full of fun facts and trivia nuggets, perfect for lovers of all things quintessentially British' My Weekly A compendium of extremely interesting and slightly strange true stories Did you know that Hitler wanted to change the rules of cricket? Or that a 61-year-old retiree once stole a million-pound portrait from the National Gallery in protest at his TV licence? Have you heard about the baron framed for a bank robbery by the South African secret police who was spared jail because of a truanting schoolboy? Or that the world's first cash machine had a small man hidden inside on its launch day in case of a breakdown? All this, and much, much more in this entertaining must-have collection of amazing facts and strange-but-true stories that will fascinate the whole family. Based on true stories featured on The One Show.

This is a true story of exodus, the inevitable journey of the last of the First People, as they leave the Great Sand Face and head for the modern world and cultural oblivion. Paul John Myburgh spent seven years with the 'People of the Great Sand Face', a group of /Gwikwe Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert. They were years of physical and spiritual immersion into a way of life of which only an echo remains in living memory. But all does not end there. In The Bushman Winter Has Come, the author imagines a continuing journey towards a place where we may, once again, know who we are in the context of our life on this earth ... towards a time when we may answer the /Gwikwe's morning greeting, Tsamkwa/tge? (Are your eyes nicely open?) with a confident Yes.

This is a true story about two non-identical twin brothers who were adopted soon as they were born due to unfortunate circumstances. They were taken up by two different families who happened to be in the vicinity of about ten miles from each other - none of the two families knew each other. Everything was running smoothly until circumstances led one of the boys to search for his biological parents and his other brother. How successful was he? Was it like looking for a pin in a haystack in the wide world? It was many years, according to the foster parents, since he had been adopted - there had been a lot of tear jerking moments.

The book contains eleven dramatic and often horrifying stories, each describing the life of a different prisoner in the camps and prisons of communist Albania. The prisoners adapt, endure, and generally survive, all in different ways. They may conform, rebel, construct alternative realities of the imagination, cultivate hope, cling to memories of lost love, or devise increasingly strange and surreal strategies of resistance. The characters in different stories are linked to one another, and in their human relationships create a total picture of a secret and terrifying world. In the prisoners' back stories, the anecdotes they tell, and their political discussions, the book also reaches out beyond the walls and barbed wire to give the reader a panoramic picture of life in totalitarian Albania.

In this jaw-dropping classic of prison escape literature (originally poublished in 1987 and now a major movie starring Daniel Radcliffe), Tim Jenkin tells of how he, Stephen Lee and Alexander Moumbaris, using a series of hand-made wooden keys, got through nine locked doors inside Pretoria Central, taking them to Mozambique and finally to London.

This fast-paced thriller begins with Jenkin’s Cape Town childhood and the growth of his political awareness, his university days and his friendship with Stephen Lee. Both men left South Africa after university for London to join the African National Congress. Jenkin and Lee, after training in London, became expert pamphlet bombers in Cape Town and Johannesburg, and it was after several successful years of raising awareness about apartheid and the ANC that they were caught and eventually sentenced to 12 years in jail. It is after Lee’s father visits his son in prison, bringing him a copy of another escape classic, Papillon, that Jenkin begins to seriously form an escape plan. Months and months of planning, testing, failing, testing again and lucky breaks meant that, finally, the escape was on.

The recently late Denis Goldberg was a friend and supporter of the men, and kept a warder busy as they began their escape. Apart from locking the doors behind them, they never looked back…

"This startling, vital book deserves our attention." -San Francisco Chronicle For fans of War Dogs and Bad Blood, an explosive look inside the rush to profit from the COVID-19 pandemic, from the award-winning ProPublica reporter who saw it firsthand. The United States federal government spent over $10 billion on medical protective wear and emergency supplies, yet as COVID-19 swept the nation, life-saving equipment such as masks, gloves, and ventilators was nearly impossible to find. In this brilliant nonfiction thriller, called "revelatory" by The Washington Post, award-winning investigative reporter J. David McSwane takes us behind the scenes to reveal how traders, contractors, and healthcare companies used one of the darkest moments in American history to fill their pockets. Determined to uncover how this was possible, he spent over a year on private jets and in secret warehouses, traveling from California to Chicago to Washington, DC, to interview both the most treacherous of profiteers and the victims of their crimes. Pandemic, Inc. is the story of the fraudster who signed a multi-million-dollar contract with the government to provide lifesaving PPE, and yet never came up with a single mask. The Navy admiral at the helm of the national hunt for additional medical resources. The Department of Health whistleblower who championed masks early on and was silenced by the government and conservative media. And the politician who callously slashed federal emergency funding and gutted the federal PPE stockpile. Winner of the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, McSwane connects the dots between backdoor deals and the spoils systems to provide the definitive account of how this pandemic was so catastrophically mishandled. Shocking and monumental, Pandemic, Inc. exposes a system that is both deeply rigged, and singularly American.

50 extraordinary new stories from The Moth.

Before television and radio, people would gather on porches, on the steps outside their homes, and tell stories. Their bewitched listeners would sit and listen long into the night as moths flitted around overhead. Storytelling phenomenon The Moth recaptures this lost each week in cities across America, Britain, Australia and beyond, playing to packed crowds at sold-out live events.

Occasional Magic is a selection of 50 of the finest Moth stories from recent shows, from storytellers who found the courage to face their deepest fears. The stories feature voices familiar and new. Alongside Neil Gaiman, Adam Gopnik, Andrew Solomon, Rosanne Cash, and Cristina Lamb, there are stories from around the world describing moments of strength, passion, courage and humour - and when a little magic happened.

In finest Moth tradition, Occasional Magic encourages us all to be more open, vulnerable and alive.

Now a major motion picture - starring Rosamund Pike, Stanley Tucci and Jamie Dornan. The book that inspired the film A Private War, based on acclaimed journalist Marie Brenner's centrepiece profile of Sunday Times Foreign Affairs correspondent Marie Colvin from this extraordinary collection. In February 2012, Marie Colvin illegally crossed into Syria on the back of a motorcycle. A veteran war correspondent known for her fearlessness, outspokenness and signature eye patch, she was defying a government decree preventing journalists from entering the country. Accompanied by French photographer Remi Ochlik, she was determined to report on the Syrian Civil War, adding to a long list of conflicts she had covered including Egypt, Chechnya, Kosovo and Libya. She had witnessed grenade attacks, saved more than one thousand women and children in an East Timor war zone when she refused to stop reporting until they were evacuated, and even interviewed Muammar Gaddafi. But she had no idea that the story she was looking for in Syria would be her last, culminating in the explosion of an improvised device that sent shockwaves across the world. In A Private War, veteran journalist Marie Brenner brilliantly re-creates the last days and hours of Colvin's life, moment-by-moment, to share the story of a remarkable life lived on the front lines. This collection also includes Brenner's classic accounts of encounters with Donald Trump, Roy Cohn, Malala Yousafzai and Richard Jewell.

Covering the period from 1920 to the 1970s, this work includes true-life stories of men and women who made their living in the Bradford mills.

The harrowing true story of a travelling Irish family bonded by love, broken apart by life, and then betrayed by their carers in a cruel convent in Ireland. "For those who we lost along the way, I tell this story. For all the children who suffered in this terrible place. For all those I consider my brothers and sisters; the ones who died, the ones who lost their minds, the ones who drown their memories everyday in a bottle of whisky, I tell this for you. Because in the end we are all brothers and sisters - and if we don't feel that bond of love between each other, just as human beings, then we are nothing. We are no better than the monsters that ran the convents." Based in Ireland in the 1960s and 70s, Kathleen's story is a story of extreme hardship, suffering and abuse. It is the story of 11 siblings, abandoned by their mother and torn from their father, incarcerated in convents and then driven apart in the cruellest ways imaginable; it is the story of their ruined childhoods and their fight for recompense. But more than that, it is a story of courage, survival and the incredible strength of sibling bonds against overwhelming adversities. Out of terrible darkness comes a remarkable story. In the tradition of Irish storytelling, Kathleen offers a mesmerising account of her family's experience.

The funny, touching and entertaining story of how Jo Hardy, the star of BBC2's Young Vets, gets to grips with animals big and small, friendly and not-at-all-happy, on the road to becoming a fully qualified vet. 'Stand well clear. Keep your eyes on them. Oh, and make sure you have insurance.' Not the most comforting words of wisdom, but probably the most useful for a trainee vet, Jo would say. From well-equipped surgeries to windswept hills and ramshackle barns, Jo has to be able to diagnose and treat any animal, at any time of the day or night. It's not quite as easy as James Herriot made it seem. Jo's final year of training saw her race from rectal examinations of cows to spine surgery on a Great Dane, and from treating an eventing horse with a heart problem to inserting a contraceptive implant into a monkey. And then there were the owners - the tough guy who sobbed when his cat was diagnosed with cancer, the woman who was convinced her dog was embarrassed by its stomach upset, and the farmer who loved his cows as much as anyone loves their pets. Gruelling days of animal treatments and visits combined with long nights of study and revision made Jo's final year of training the most demanding and rewarding year of her life. Her book tells of the highs and lows, the pets that stole her heart, and the lifelong friends that she made - with two legs and four.

Shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize 2021 'To compare any book to a Sacks is unfair, but this one lives up to it . . . I finished it feeling thrillingly unsettled, and wishing there was more.' James McConnachie, Sunday Times 'A study of diseases that we sometimes say are 'all in the mind', and an explanation of how unfair that characterisation is.' Tom Whipple, The Times Books of the Year In Sweden, refugee children fall asleep for months and years at a time. In upstate New York, high school students develop contagious seizures. In the US Embassy in Cuba, employees complain of headaches and memory loss after hearing strange noises in the night. These disparate cases are some of the most remarkable diagnostic mysteries of the twenty-first century, as both doctors and scientists have struggled to explain them within the boundaries of medical science and - more crucially - to treat them. What unites them is that they are all examples of a particular type of psychosomatic illness: medical disorders that are influenced as much by the idiosyncratic aspects of individual cultures as they are by human biology. Inspired by a poignant encounter with the sleeping refugee children of Sweden, Wellcome Prize-winning neurologist Suzanne O'Sullivan travels the world to visit other communities who have also been subject to outbreaks of so-called 'mystery' illnesses. From a derelict post-Soviet mining town in Kazakhstan, to the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua via an oil town in Texas, to the heart of the Maria Mountains in Colombia, O'Sullivan hears remarkable stories from a fascinating array of people, and attempts to unravel their complex meaning while asking the question: who gets to define what is and what isn't an illness? Reminiscent of the work of Oliver Sacks, Stephen Grosz and Henry Marsh, The Sleeping Beauties is a moving and unforgettable scientific investigation with a very human face.

People love their pets--cats more so than any other (or so the "cats" would like to think). And if there is anything cat-lovers enjoy almost as much as stroking their beloved feline friends, it's reading about cats. In the tradition and style of her previous smash hits, Callie Smith Grant brings readers a brand-new collection of uplifting stories about the amazing creatures that warm our hearts--and our laps With stories from Melody Carlson, Jill Eileen Smith, Robert Benson, Kathi Lipp, and many others, "The Cat in the Window "offers the perfect excuse to curl up on the couch with a furry friend.

The true-crime cult classic that inspired the Netflix docuseries The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness and a companion podcast, The Ultimate Evil follows journalist Maury Terry s decades-long investigation into the terrifying truth behind the Son of Sam murders. On August 10, 1977, the NYPD arrested David Berkowitz for the Son of Sam murders that had terrorized New York City for over a year. Berkowitz confessed to shooting sixteen people and killing six with a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver, and the case was officially closed. Journalist Maury Terry was suspicious of Berkowitz s confession. Spurred by conflicting witness descriptions of the killer and clues overlooked in the investigation, Terry was convinced Berkowitz didn t act alone. Meticulously gathering evidence for a decade, he released his findings in the first edition of The Ultimate Evil. Based upon the evidence he had uncovered, Terry theorized that the Son of Sam attacks were masterminded by a Yonkers-based cult that was responsible for other ritual murders across the country. After Terry s death in 2015, documentary filmmaker Josh Zeman (Cropsey, The Killing Season, Murder Mountain) was given access to Terry s files, which form the basis of his docuseries with Netflix and a companion podcast. Taken together with The Ultimate Evil, which includes a new introduction by Zeman, these works reveal the stunning intersections of power, wealth, privilege, and evil in America from the Summer of Sam until today.

Conspiracy theories are legion. Conspiracies are rare. And of the few that do exist, fewer are ever discovered, let alone explained. This story is the exception.

In 2016, media giant Gawker was forced to declare bankruptcy after a $140 million dollar judgment in court over an illegally recorded sex tape of Hulk Hogan. The case was no accident: it was the result of a nearly decade-long plot masterminded by Facebook and Paypal billionaire Peter Thiel.

With exclusive access to all the key players, Ryan Holiday takes us behind the scenes of this extraordinary and at times surreal story, and transforms the events into both a dissection of that controversial methodology - conspiracy - and an eye-opening cautionary tale on the use, abuse and consequences of power and secrecy in the modern age.

As Sherlock Holmes once conceded to Dr. Watson, 'If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the planning, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chain of events, working through generations and leading to the most outreresults, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.' And with such a spirit for investigation and discovery does David Grann set out in The Devil and Sherlock Holmes to unravel the truth of twelve great, real-life mysteries. Although Holmes is the subject of just one of the mesmerizing true stories in this collection, all twelve contain elements of intrigue. Many of the protagonists are sleuths: a Polish detective trying to determine whether an author planted clues to a real murder in his post-modern novel; an arson investigator racing to prove whether a man about to be executed is innocent; a legendary French con man questioning whether he is the one who is suddenly being conned; and scientists stalking a sea monster. Unlike the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, these tales are all true. The protagonists are mortal and pieces of the puzzle often elude them. Some of the characters are driven to deception and murder. Others go mad. But ultimately the stories contained in The Devil and Sherlock Holmesshed light on the human condition, and why some people on this earth devote themselves to good and others to evil. As Holmes put it, 'Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent'.

The heart-warming true story of a little boy and the cat that changed his life. Nine-year-old George was severely autistic; quiet and withdrawn, he appeared lost in his own world most of the time. His mother Julia despaired as she couldn't bring George out of his shell. But when a black-and-white stray cat appeared in their garden, everything changed. George's new four-legged friend, Ben, had a wonderful and unexpected side-affect. George and Ben bonded and George began to open up, making up stories about their adventures together to recount to Julia. Finally, Julia could communicate with her son - and Ben had made it possible. But then disaster struck - Ben went missing. The cat who had coaxed George out of a world of silence had disappeared, and George began to retreat. Determined to reunite George with his furry friend, Julia knew she had to do everything in her power to bring Ben home again ... A Friend Like Ben is the remarkable true story about the extraordinary empathy between a boy and his cat, and a mother's determined journey to make her son whole again.

On 7 July 2005, Julie Nicholson's life was changed forever. Her daughter, Jenny, was killed on her way to work in the London bombings, shaking Julie's beliefs. With heartbreaking honesty and integrity, Julie tells her story of love, tragedy and heartache for the first time. Jenny Nicolson was travelling to work when a bomb exploded at Edgware Road Tube station. Her mother, Reverend Julie Nicholson, struggled to comprehend the tragedy, her sorrow and longing for her daughter turning to rage and anger. Finding herself unable to articulate the three parts of the Eucharist: peace, reconciliation and forgiveness, because she 'felt so far from those herself', Julie made the difficult decision to resign her role as priest-in-charge of St Aidan with St George Church, Bristol, unable to reconcile her feelings with her position. She continued working with the church, in a youth arts project.

These are the stories that defy conventional logic. The proverbial vanished without a trace incidences, which happen a lot more (and a lot closer to your backyard) than almost anyone thinks. These are the missing whose situations are the hardest on loved ones left behind. The cases that are an embarrassment for park superintendents, rangers and law enforcement charged with Search & Rescue. The ones that baffle the volunteers who comb the mountains, woods and badlands. The stories that should give you pause every time you venture outdoors. Through Jacob Gray's disappearance in Olympic National Park, and his father Randy Gray who left his life to search for him, we will learn about what happens when someone goes missing. Braided around the core will be the stories of the characters who fill the vacuum created by a vanished human being. We'll meet eccentric bloodhound-handler Duff and R.C., his flagship purebred, who began trailing with the family dog after his brother vanished in the San Gabriel Mountains. And there's Michael Neiger North America's foremost backcountry Search & Rescue expert and self-described "bushman" obsessed with missing persons. And top researcher of persons missing on public wildlands Ex-San Jose, California detective David Paulides who is also one of the world's foremost Bigfoot researchers. It's a tricky thing to write about missing persons because the story is the absence of someone. A void. The person at the heart of the story is thinner than a smoke ring, invisible as someone else's memory. The bones you dig up are most often metaphorical. While much of the book will embrace memory and faulty memory--history--The Cold Vanish is at its core a story of now and tomorrow. Someone will vanish in the wild tomorrow. These are the people who will go looking.

The true story of a young police officer's imprisonment for a crime he did not commit It was Michael Bunting's life ambition to follow in his father's footsteps and become a police officer. But six years after his family watch him pass out and begin his life's dream, he is serving a sentence for a crime he didn't commit. This is his story. Beaten almost senseless as he tried to arrest a violent criminal, the 23-year-old PC was left with head injuries and blurred vision that took him months to recover from. Back at work he was astounded to learn that his attacker had filed a complaint against him and that the Police Discipline and Complaints Department were following up the allegation. Two years later he was found guilty of common assault against his assailant and received a prison sentence that left him living his devastated life amongst the criminals he had previously sought to keep off the streets. Hard-hitting and at times heart-breaking the book is a graphic account of life behind bars for a policeman in one of England's hardest prisons. An extract from A Fair Cop: "The prisoner arrived once more with the trolley and placed the plate of food on to my hatch. 'Bunting,' he shouted pleasantly. I wasn't fooled. 'Thanks,' I said, as I walked across the cell to collect it. As I put my hand out to reach for the plate he snatched it away. He held it up to the hatch and peered through at me. 'PC Bunting, isn't it?' he asked, and then took a deep breath to muster as much saliva from the back of his throat as he could. With one swift movement he spat a big glob in to the middle of the food. The white phlegm floated around in brown gravy. 'Hey lads, I'm feeding the pig,' he said. With this, two other prisoners came to my cell hatch. They looked at me, sniggering. They then spat in my food too. The first prisoner put the plate on the hatch and gestured for me to come closer. 'You're in our territory now, you f***ing filth, and we're gonna f***ing carve you up.'