Marianne Foyster, Harry Price and the most haunted house in England - the perfect read for Halloween.   ‘Borley Rectory is perhaps the definition of an old haunt, still exerting an extraordinary grip on the popular imagination… Balanced, surprising and strangely moving’  Mark Gatiss   In 1928, Eric and Mabel Smith took over a lonely parish on the northern border of Essex. When they moved into Borley Rectory, Mrs Smith made a gruesome discovery in a cupboard: a human skull. Soon the house was electric with ghosts. Within the year, the Smiths had abandoned it and the Rectory became notorious as the ‘most haunted house in England’. When Reverend Lionel Foyster moved in he experienced a further explosion of poltergeist activity with an increasing violence directed at his attractive young wife. Marianne was a passionate and sensuous woman isolated in a village haunted by ancient superstition and deep-rooted prejudice. She would be accused not only of faking the ghosts but of adultery, bigamy – and even murder. The haunting, sensationally reported in the tabloid press, gripped the nation. It was investigated by Harry Price, a self-made ‘psychic detective’. This was the case that would make Price’s name as the most celebrated ghost-hunter of the age. He recorded the evidence of 200 witnesses to over 2,000 supernatural incidents. This surely confirmed that not only did ghosts exist but, finally, here was proof of life after death.   With the tension of a thriller and the uncanny chills of a classic English ghost story, Sean O’Connor brings the story of Borley Rectory to vivid life as an allegory for an age fraught with anxiety, haunted by the shadow of the Great War and terrified of the apocalypse to come.

The Secrets of Life series is written for everyone who, frankly, needs a spot of cheering up, and will provide conversation starters for years after reading! O'Connor's easy-going, conversational style brings an outsider's questioning eye to the great forces behind life. The second book in the four-part series debates the steps that led to us being so completely different to anything that had ever appeared before. If we really were just another kind of animal off the production line of life, then what were the revolutions that turbo-charged our abilities? How is it possible that we only arrived a fluttering of an eyelash ago compared to evolutionary time, yet we are now so completely dominant over everything else in life? Book Two also sets out to answer the questions around what we did that meant we could alter ourselves in an instant, and so avoid being stuck in an evolutionary niche like every other organism. Why, for example, was it such a huge step forward when we began to run? Why was the taming of fire arguably the most important thing we ever did? How did we manage to create the intelligence and insights that allowed us to make our own life decisions? Why was gossiping so critical? With the same writing approach that typified Book One, in How Did We Get To Be So Different? O'Connor sets out to answer these and other questions by summarising the views of the great biologists, anthropologists, and revolutionary theorists - and then adding some opinions of his own.. Example questions posed (and answered) in Book Two - How Did We Get To Be So Different? If we have a degree of control over our lives, then why were our rulers always so horrible- and why did we put up with them? Why do we copy each other so much, and yet we'd accept that others could be so unbelievably violent? How did fire make us so different? Where did the free will come from that let us override the drives of our animal pasts - something that no other organism had ever managed before in the long history of evolution? How did we develop language? Why was gossip so critical? How did printing and reading completely change our world?

The Secrets of Life series is written for everyone who, frankly, needs a spot of cheering up, and will provide conversation starters for years after reading! O'Connor's easy-going, conversational style brings an outsider's questioning eye to the great forces behind life. The third in the four-part series explains how game theory developed, and why it came to show us not only how humans arrive at their decisions, but why so much of the apparently bizarre behaviour of the natural world has the same mathematical logic to it. Instead of the confusion and chaos one might expect in life, O'Connor shows that there are profound reasons behind the choices organisms make when they interact, and how we humans refined this process through the addition of our intelligence and language skills. Starting with the mind-blowing new ways of thinking that Adam Smith opened the world's eyes to, the book progresses to the 20th century-and shows how there's a coherent rationale behind our thought processes-and how this was gradually revealed by scientists at a time when the very future of the world was at stake. As O'Connor unfolds the story in Why Do We All Behave In The Way We Do?, it becomes ever clearer how cooperation has evolved to be the critical force at every level of life. It was what built our world, and it would settle so deeply into the hardwiring of living things that it would eventually become instinctive and innate in us. Perhaps most pleasingly, game theory explains how the benefits of collaboration are bound to ratchet upwards-and how this will inevitably lead to ever-increasing levels of moral behaviour in our societies. It is so often an accepted fact that bad people will win. And yet, as Book Three so clearly explains, collaborative societies are bound to grow, that it's rational to forgive to overcome vendettas and feuds, and that nice folks will always win in life by coming second. Example questions posed (and answered) in Book Three - Why Do All We Behave In The Way We Do? What's Game Theory - and why is it so critical to understanding how to make the right decisions? Why, if humans are so convinced that most of us are bad, are we concerned about being fair in our lives? Why do we value trust so highly? What are the reasons for our surprising wish to care for each other? Why do we share things, even though we might not have to? How did a failed robbery explain human nature? Why can it be rational to be irrational? And why is life like a poker game?

Marianne Foyster, Harry Price and the most haunted house in England - the perfect read for Halloween. 'Borley Rectory is perhaps the definition of an old haunt, still exerting an extraordinary grip on the popular imagination... Balanced, surprising and strangely moving' Mark Gatiss In 1928, Eric and Mabel Smith took over a lonely parish on the northern border of Essex. When they moved into Borley Rectory, Mrs Smith made a gruesome discovery in a cupboard: a human skull. Soon the house was electric with ghosts. Within the year, the Smiths had abandoned it and the Rectory became notorious as the 'most haunted house in England'. When Reverend Lionel Foyster moved in he experienced a further explosion of poltergeist activity with an increasing violence directed at his attractive young wife. Marianne was a passionate and sensuous woman isolated in a village haunted by ancient superstition and deep-rooted prejudice. She would be accused not only of faking the ghosts but of adultery, bigamy - and even murder. The haunting, sensationally reported in the tabloid press, gripped the nation. It was investigated by Harry Price, a self-made 'psychic detective'. This was the case that would make Price's name as the most celebrated ghost-hunter of the age. He recorded the evidence of 200 witnesses to over 2,000 supernatural incidents. This surely confirmed that not only did ghosts exist but, finally, here was proof of life after death. With the tension of a thriller and the uncanny chills of a classic English ghost story, Sean O'Connor brings the story of Borley Rectory to vivid life as an allegory for an age fraught with anxiety, haunted by the shadow of the Great War and terrified of the apocalypse to come.

The Secrets of Life series is written for everyone who, frankly, needs a spot of cheering up, and will provide conversation starters for years after reading! O'Connor's easy- going, conversational style brings an outsider's questioning eye to the great forces behind life. The first book in the four-part series contends that if we set received wisdom to one side and really dig into the facts, there are actually very few 'secrets' in life. Instead, suggesting it's possible to see that from the split second of Big Bang, right up to our present attempts to make the world a better place, everything that's alive has been trying to find strategies to survive the iron Laws of Thermodynamics, to work together to make more from less, and to overcome the constant threat of destructive, entropic forces. How Did Life End Up With Us? delves into explanations as to the reasons behind why cooperation is the strongest force in life, and why altruism is the proof for the 'gene-based theory of evolution'. O'Connor reveals that from the point that life first sparked off some 3.8 billion years ago, every living thing has descended from the original cell by taking blind mutational and genetic 'decisions'. Through The Secrets of Life series, aimed at general readers like himself, O'Connor recognises that life may appear as an endless and violent conflict, yet under the obvious requirement to take one another's energy, there's always been a deeper current that's driving living things to higher and higher levels of cooperation. In other words, the future isn't quite as bleak as you may believe! Example questions posed (and answered) in Book One - How Did Life End Up With Us? Why are mutations like a gambling scam? And why, if DNA is just a bunch of chemical elements, does it behave like a sophisticated hedge fund manager? If DNA is so brilliant at replicating things, then why does the reproduction process make so many mistakes? Why does everything have to die? How were the Beatles witnesses to one of the great scientific breakthroughs? Is natural selection enough to explain evolution?

The Secrets of Life series is written for everyone who, frankly, needs a spot of cheering up, and will provide conversation starters for years after reading! O'Connor's easy-going, conversational style brings an outsider's questioning eye to the great forces behind life. The final in the four-part series shows what the theories, research and science all add up to. It examines the evidence that illustrates how wrong most people in thinking the world is descending into darkness and chaos, and shows instead that it's actually improving at an astonishing rate. This explains, the author says, why in spite of the constant challenges our world faces, the human race is actually improving by the day, rather than becoming worse. Book Four points out that many people say that humans are the ultimate triumph for the selfish gene, yet we've now developed to the point where we can choose to overrule so many of its instructions. As the facts about the world's population, its life expectancies, birth rates, poverty, food security, violence, natural disasters, energy, climate and all the other major indicators are laid out in So What Does It All Mean?, it becomes ever clearer that the resultsofourevolutionshouldgiveusreasonsforoptimism,notdespair. The Secrets of Life series concludes by showing us why we are often wrong in ourviewofeachother,whywe'rebecomingeverhappierandmoremoral,andwhy we're so frequently mistaken in our views about the future. Yes, it concludes, life does have a meaning, it does have an arc of evolution, non- zero cooperation is what makes things win... and that includes us humans. Example questions posed (and answered) in Book 4 - So What Does It All Mean? What are the problems that arise from our free will? Why are we capable of so much selfishness and cynicism - and yet also such sympathy, empathy, compassion, and sacrifice? How have we come to realise that self-interest is quite different from selfishness? Why have we become so driven by the need for fairness and trust in our societies - and how can less control over a society lead to people behaving better? What's the problem that life is solving? Are we becoming happier? Is violence reducing or increasing?

Handsome Brute explores the facts of a once-renowned, now little-remembered British murder case, the killings of the charming, but deadly ex-RAF playboy Neville Heath. Since the 1940s, Heath has generally been dismissed as a sadistic sex-killer - the preserve of sensational Murder Anthologies - and little else. But the story behind the tabloid headlines reveals itself to be complex and ambiguous, provoking unsettling questions that echo across the decades to the present day. For the first time, with access to previously restricted files from the Home Office and Metropolitan Police, this book explores the complex motivations behind the murders through the prism of the immediate post-war period. Against the backdrop of a society in flux, a culture at a moment of change, how much is Heath's case symptomatic, or indeed, emblematic of the age he lived in? Handsome Brute is both an examination of the age of austerity, and a real-life thriller as shocking and provocative as American Psycho or The KillerInside Me, exploring the perspectives of the women in Heath's life - his wife, his mother, his lovers - and his victims. This collage of experiences from the women who knew him intimately probes the schism at the heart of his fascinating, chilling personality.

'A case study in human frailty, jealousy and desire ... fascinating.' The Times, Best Books of 2019 'Meticulously researched...superbly evocative and gripping...a narrative that builds with the intensity of an approaching thunderstorm.' The Spectator 'Sean O'Connor can't resist striking a theatrical note in this "biography of murder".' Sunday Times Adultery, alcoholism, drugs and murder on the suburban streets of Bournemouth. The Rattenbury case of 1935 was one of the great tabloid sensations of the interwar period. The glamorous femme fatale at the heart of the story dominated the front pages for months, somewhere between the rise of Hitler and the launch of the Queen Mary. With painstaking research and access to brand new evidence, Sean O'Connor vividly brings this epic story to life, from its beginnings in the south London slums of the 1880s and the open vistas of the British Columbian coast to its bloody climax in a respectable English seaside resort. The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury is a gripping murder tale and a heartbreaking romance, as well as the biography of a vital, modern woman trapped between the freedoms of two world wars and suffocated by the conformity of peacetime. A startlingly prescient parable for our times, it is the story of a protagonist who dared to challenge the status quo only to be crucified by public opinion, pilloried by the press and punished by the relentless machinery of the British legal system. With a wealth of fascinating period detail, from its breathtaking opening to its shocking conclusion, The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury is a true story as enthralling, provocative and moving as any work of fiction.

The Middle East is one of the fastest growing and significant markets in world sport, as well as a powerful source of investment in sport. Bids for the Olympics in 2020 and the soccer World Cup in 2022, as well as remarkable investments in Formula One motor racing, horse racing and English Premier League soccer clubs, demonstrate the strength of interest, the depth of resource and the technical expertise maintained by sport business interests in the region. Sport Management in the Middle East is the first book to offer a serious and in-depth analysis of the business and management of sport in the region. Written by a team of world leading researchers in Middle Eastern sport, and illustrated in full colour throughout, the book examines the importance of sport in the Middle East and introduces its particular management processes, structures and cultures. As well as providing an overview of the region's sporting strategy and key stakeholders, the book also offers a number of detailed case-studies of sport in individual Middle Eastern countries. A unique guide to sport management in a region of fundamental importance in world sport, this book is essential reading for any serious student or scholar of sport management, sport business, Middle East studies, or sport and society.

The Middle East is one of the fastest growing and significant markets in world sport, as well as a powerful source of investment in sport. Bids for the Olympics in 2020 and the soccer World Cup in 2022, as well as remarkable investments in Formula One motor racing, horse racing and English Premier League soccer clubs, demonstrate the strength of interest, the depth of resource and the technical expertise maintained by sport business interests in the region.

Sport Management in the Middle East is the first book to offer a serious and in-depth analysis of the business and management of sport in the region. Written by a team of world leading researchers in Middle Eastern sport, and illustrated in full colour throughout, the book examines the importance of sport in the Middle East and introduces its particular management processes, structures and cultures. As well as providing an overview of the region s sporting strategy and key stakeholders, the book also offers a number of detailed case-studies of sport in individual Middle Eastern countries. A unique guide to sport management in a region of fundamental importance in world sport, this book is essential reading for any serious student or scholar of sport management, sport business, Middle East studies, or sport and society."

The far north coast of Scotland. Spring 1745. It begins with a murder. But is it a murder when someone is forced to kill his brother, so that he might save his own life? The guilty man is a nobody, a poor fisherman. The person who arrogantly and unthinkingly makes him commit this terrible act, simply to see how he behaved, is the richest man in Scotland, one of Europe's leading astronomers, a great aristocrat and clan chief - the Earl of Dunbeath. How this opening scene unfolds leads Dunbeath to invent his 'game of life' - the Prisoner's Dilemma. He invites his old friend, David Hume, to Caithness to play the new game with him to '...prove to you mathematically and empirically the interaction of good and ill, of co-operation and selfishness.' But into their planned discussions blow two survivors from a shipwreck who will turn their thoughts and their lives upside down - the beautiful and brilliant Sophie Kant and the calm, charismatic captain, Alexis Zweig. What follows, as the greatest political, scientific and philosophical questions of the age sluice wildly through their tiny speck on the map, is a claustrophobic and fast moving game of cat and mouse as the characters drive relentlessly towards their destinies in life and death, love and betrayal and the passion they each have to achieve their different ambitions. As the pace of the narrative quickens the scene is set for the final astonishing and unexpected outcome. Under the game playing, the deceits and feints, the science and the philosophy, is a simple tale of three utterly determined and ruthless men struggling to the death to succeed in the race for an extraordinary woman. Which of them will win? How? And why? Cover photograph by Stephen Cochrane. 'Come and play my game of life with me! I call it The Prisoner's Dilemma.'

The Caithness coast. Winter 1745. Rebellion year. A half-mad earl witnesses a murder. But seeing the appalling decision the killer had taken leads him to invent his 'game of life' - The Prisoner's Dilemma - and he writes to his old friend, David Hume, inviting him to his ancient stronghold to explore its meaning. Hume is only too pleased to go. He has just met Adam Smith and the two of them have disagreed about man's instinct for survival - and how compassion can exist in a world driven by self-interest. But before Hume's discussions with the earl can begin, two strangers arrive from Prussia who will turn their lives upside down - and attract the attentions of the English army. As the pace of the story quickens to a claustrophobic climax, the greatest questions of the age sluice wildly about the action and people find themselves driven relentlessly towards their destinies in love and betrayal, ambition and failure and, eventually, in life and death. But as the secrets of game theory unfold the characters' motivations, and their deceits and feints are laid bare, a simpler story is exposed- it is the compelling tale of three utterly ruthless men, each of whom is determined to win for himself the love of an extraordinary woman. Who will win? And why?

Sean O'Connor's lovers, other stories, and words is one of the most important philosophical works of the 21st century, the first phase of a philosophy he is ever creating, developing, and cultivating; a process "surpassing absolutism to a point of an ever expanding universe of unlimited possibility and complete interconnectivity." Via solely connecting words, "the way people throughout history have connected stars and drawn constellations," he constructs a way of thinking that creates and describes values, making a resource and a blessing of everything he perceives and considers. Written and published before the philosopher was 24, O'Connor has planted the seeds for a lifetime worth of thought to create and share. Accompanied by a fascinating, amusing, and at times, quite erotic collection of short stories, this book shines in the midst of the cynicism, economic struggle, and materialism which desensitized the postmodern era in which it was written.

Sean O'Connor's lovers, other stories, and words is one of the most important philosophical works of the 21st century, the first phase of a philosophy he is ever creating, developing, and cultivating; a process "surpassing absolutism to a point of an ever expanding universe of unlimited possibility and complete interconnectivity." Via solely connecting words, "the way people throughout history have connected stars and drawn constellations," he constructs a way of thinking that creates and describes values, making a resource and a blessing of everything he perceives and considers. Written and published before the philosopher was 24, O'Connor has planted the seeds for a lifetime worth of thought to create and share. Accompanied by a fascinating, amusing, and at times, quite erotic collection of short stories, this book shines in the midst of the cynicism, economic struggle, and materialism which desensitized the postmodern era in which it was written.

Between the trials of Oscar Wilde in the 1890s and the beginnings of legal reforms in the 1960s, the West End stage was dominated by the work of gay playwrights. Many of their plays, such as Private Lives, Blithe Spirit and The Deep Blue Sea are established classics and continue to inform our culture. In this fascinating book, covering both familiar and lesser-known works, Sean O'Connor examines the legacy of Wilde as a playwright and as a gay man, and explores in the works of Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan the resonance of Wilde's agenda for tolerance and his creed of individuality. O'Connor contextualises these plays against the enormous social and historical changes of the twentieth century. He also examines the legal restrictions which regulated the personal lives of these writers and required them to evolve sophisticated strategies in order to express on stage, albeit obliquely, their dilemmas as gay men. From the delicate homoerotic frissons of Rattigan's early comedies to Coward's defiantly pro-sex stance, Straight Acting is a provocative and witty insight into the subtly subversive tactics of gay writers working in that apparently most conservative of forms, the 'well-made play'.