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Books > Biography > Historical, political & military
Katharine Campbell's father Sholto Douglas was the hero of her childhood, an unconventional senior commander in the Royal Air Force, described as 'a gloriously contentious character'. Following childhood abandonment and poverty, Sholto rose through the ranks of the fledgling RAF in the First World War before taking on a crucial role in the Second as head of Fighter Command and going on to serve as military governor in Germany in the war's devastating aftermath. But when Katharine was five years old, he began to be stolen away by strange night-time wanderings and daytime distress - including vivid flashbacks to his time signing death warrants in post-war Germany. The doctors called it dementia, but decades later, Katharine started researching her father's story and realised that she had observed the undiagnosed consequences of post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is a hot topic today. We're aware of the front-line soldier suffering from 'shell-shock' - but what about the senior officer giving the orders, who may be carrying hidden wounds accumulated over many years? We don't expect our military leaders to have PTSD, nor is it something they often recognise or acknowledge in themselves, yet this secret burden likely affects a surprising number of those making important tactical decisions. A thought-provoking insight into the damage done by military conflict, Behold the Dark Gray Man is the story of a daughter's search to understand the impact of war upon one of its most charismatic senior commanders.
THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE STORY OF Adventurers the world over have been inspired by the achievements of Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man ever to set foot on the summit of Mount Everest. In this candid, wry, and vastly entertaining autobiography, Hillary looks back on that 1953 landmark expedition, as well as his remarkable explorations in other exotic locales, from the South Pole to the Ganges. View From The Summit is the compelling life story of a New Zealand country boy who daydreamed of wild adventures; the pioneering climber who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth after scaling the world's tallest peak; and the elder statesman and unlikely diplomat whose groundbreaking program of aid to Nepal continues to this day, paying his debt of worldwide fame to the Himalayan region. More than four decades after Hillary looked down from Everest's 29,000 feet, his impact is still felt -- in our fascination with the perils and triumphs of mountain climbing, and in today's phenomenon of extreme sports. The call to adventure is alive and real on every page of this gripping memoir.
Frederick William Dwelly died over 50 years ago, but his vision for the place of worship that both made and broke him still pervades. His influence is there in the philosophy of inclusion that typifies the Cathedral's religious and educational activities; in the liveliness and relevance of services; and even in the rust and unbleached cotton of the cassocks and surplices, and the cream, black and red of special service papers. In the estimation of many eminent figures in the Church of England Dwelly was nothing short of a liturgical genius, but one whose life history could so very easily be lost. It was this realisation that spurred former Cathedral Education Officer Peter Kennerley to embark upon research into the great man's life and legacy. Using letters, sermons, newspapers and the testimony of those still alive who knew him, the author paints a fascinating, though inevitably incomplete, portrait of a truly inspirational man who was full of contradictions. He was ground-breakingly liberal in his views about interdenominational cooperation, but he could also be dictatorial. He knew how to make everyone who was involved with the Cathedral feel valued, but though widely loved he was greatly held in awe. It was certainly impossible to say 'no' to the first Dean of Liverpool Cathedral! Such a mixture of character traits is, however, what made Dwelly such an attractive, charismatic and effective dean. His foibles were at once his weakness and his strength; yes, he was less than perfect, but in the end his human faults merely served to make people warm to him. This is the book that might never have been written. For Peter Kennerley, the sifting of the archives has been a huge challenge which at times he has doubted his ability to overcome. The material available to him has been both copious and tantalisingly vague, and he has had to distil from it the essence of a man who in many ways is impossible to portray with total clarity. What is certain is that everyone who knew the Dean, everyone who knows the Cathedral, as well as all students of religious and liturgical history, will be grateful to the author for committing to posterity the life and work of such an intriguing, controversial and pivotal figure, and for doing it so well.
It is largely as a result of the career of William Richard Morris, Viscount Nuffield, that the university city of oxford became one of Britain's foremost industrial cities. William Morris left school at fourteen and because he had shown an aptitude for taking things to pieces and reassembling them he was apprenticed to a bicycle repairer. Within nine months he set up his own cycle business and from then on his rise to become one of Britain's leading industrialists. Though not a great engineer, he was an astute business man and expert mechanic; he saw the need for a small economical car that was of high quality yet could be produced in large numbers. His special talent enabled him to obtain the right parts and to assemble them, and so the first Morris Oxford car appeared in 1913. Production boomed in the 1920s and morris became a millionaire and was made a peer, but he was generous with money and gave away over GBP30,000,000 in his lifetime, much of it to hospitals and other medical causes, in which he had a deep interest. He also financed the establishment of Nuffield College, Oxford, which bears his title. His name ceased to appear on motorcars after 1983 when Morris Motors was part of British Leyland, but the MG (Morris Garages) badge has survived.
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