Kevin Jackson's versions (rather than literal translations) of the sonnet sequence written in exile between 1824 and 1829 by Poland's greatest poet, Adam Mickiewicz, are both urgent and memorable. The originals are poems of intense patriotism and nostalgia; Jackson's versions capture this and much more, including what he terms in his new companion essay, 'Mickiewicz's aching sense of loneliness and loss'. Jackson wrote in his introduction to Anthony Burgess's 'Revolutionary Sonnets' that 'pleasures both demotic and recondite abound in the pages': the same might be applied to this striking sequence. In the spirit of Robert Lowell's 'Imitations' he deliberately plays fast and loose with the literal sense of the poems, memorably revivifying diction and tone. In so doing, he shows himself to be an unassuming and masterful guide and host to Mickiewicz's original works.

On Easter, 2014, Britain's best-loved vicar, the Rev. Richard Coles, led a pilgrimage to all the major historic sites of the Holy Land: from Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee in the North, via Jericho and the Jordan River, to Bethlehem and, finally, Jerusalem. All of the pilgrims in his care were practising Christians, except one: the writer Kevin Jackson, a diffident and sympathetic atheist intrigued by the chance to take part in this modern-day version of an ancient act of piety, and to learn some more about his old friend, the media clergyman. Coles to Jerusalem is Kevin Jackson's light-hearted diary of that pilgrimage, and a close-up portrait of Richard Coles both as priest and as man. As the journey proceeds, Coles reminisces at length about his past life as a rock star and radical gay agitator, his new life as a spiritual leader and a popular broadcaster on BBC radio and television, and the strange, unpredictable path that led him from self-destructive debauchery to faith and vocation. With a lively supporting cast of fellow pilgrims, Coles to Jerusalem ranges among the magnificence of ancient monuments and the banalities of the guided tour, the grim political background of contemporary Israel and the comedy of a group of idiosyncratic English folk abroad, the intensity of worship and the lightness of banter. It will be irresistible to all admirers of Richard Coles, who has contributed a foreword; and a revelation to those who have never encountered his wisdom and warmth.

Withnail and I sank almost without a trace when it was first released in 1987. Financed by HandMade Films, the late George Harrison's production company, and drawing heavily on first-time writer-director Bruce Robinson's experiences, this virtually plot-free story follows two out-of-work actors (Withnail, played by Richard E. Grant, and 'I', played by Paul McGann), eking out a living in a run-down London of the late 1960s, and embarking on a booze-fuelled weekend in the country which takes various unexpected turns. Although it initially failed to find an audience, it did not take long for the film to attract a dedicated cult following which still persists today. Lines from the film such as 'we've gone on holiday by mistake!' and 'Bring me the finest wines known to humanity!' have become popular favourites and the subject of countless internet memes. Kevin Jackson's in-depth study gives a full account of the film's origins and production history. But his main focus is the mood and magic of the film, its aesthetics and sensibility, seeking to show, without ever detracting from the film's comic brilliance, just how much more there is to Withnail and I than drunkenness and swearing. 'It is an outstandingly touching yet witheringly unsentimental drama of male friendship,' Jackson writes, 'a bleak up-ending of the English pastoral dream, a piece of ferocious verbal inventiveness' - and, without question, one of the greatest of all British films. In his new foreword to this edition, writer Bharat Tandon pays tribute to to both Withnail's peculiar genius and enduring appeal, and to his close friend Kevin Jackson.

"Lawrence of Arabia" is widely considered one of the ten greatest films ever made--though more often by film goers and filmmakers than by critics. This study argues that the film is a unique blend of visionary image-making, narrative power, mythopoetic charm and psychological acuteness; far from being a "Boy's Own Tale, "it is one of popular cinema's greatest tragedies. This volume brings together a critical analysis of the film and an account of its tangled production history--combining these elements with the story of attempts by Alexander Korda and others to bring Lawrence's story to the screen.

Schrader on Schrader is an essential set of dialogues with one of the most genuinely fascinating and uncompromising writer-directors in American film. Raised as a Calvinist and hence forbidden to partake of 'worldly pleasures' such as movies, Paul Schrader nevertheless defied his upbringing to become first a leading film critic, then a star pupil among the US 'movie brat' generation of the 1970s: writing the coruscating screenplays for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and directing such provocative pictures as Blue Collar, Hardcore and American Gigolo. Maturity has never sated his appetite for attacking 'difficult' material, from adapting Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation for Scorsese, to filming the singular lives of Mishima and Patty Hearst. Schrader on Schrader is a tour through this formidable body of work, including some of Schrader's finest critical essays.

Discover one of the world's most fascinating and historic cities through 30 dramatic true stories spanning the rich history of London. Author Kevin Jackson takes readers through more than 2,000 years of British history with exciting essays on topics such as London's origins, Richard the Lion-Hearted, Geoffrey Chaucer, Henry V, Shakespeare, Queen Victoria, Jack the Ripper, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, The Beatles and more. In addition, guided walking tours of London's historic neighborhoods, illustrated with color photographs and period maps, take readers to the places where history really happened.

Withnail & I sank almost without a trace when it was first released in 1987. This virtually plot-free story of two out-of-work actors (played by Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann) whose booze-fuelled weekend in the country takes various unexpected turns failed to find an audience. But it did not take long for the film to attract a dedicated cult following which was reinforced by reverential coverage in the 'lad mag' Loaded and a theatrical re-release in 1996. Financed by HandMade Films, the late George Harrison's production company, Withnail & I was Bruce Robinson's first outing as writer-director. The script draws heavily on Robinson's own experiences in the 1960s. of the film's production. But chiefly he analyses the mood and magic of the film, its aesthetics and sensibility, seeking to show, without ever detracting from the film's comic brilliance, just how much more there is to Withnail & I than drunkenness and swearing. 'It is an outstandingly touching yet witheringly unsentimental drama of male friendship, ' Jackson writes, 'a bleak up-ending of the English pastoral dream, a piece of ferocious verbal inventiveness' - and, without question, one of the greatest of all British films

Arm yourself with garlic, stake and crucifix, for the vampires are back in force - at the top of the best-seller lists, on your TV, on the web and lurking in darkened cinemas. But where did they come from?Why have they come back now? And how can you tell if you are one? Beginning with the first sightings of bats and blood-sucking in the Romantic period, Bite follows the undead's progress through the ages, right up to the present. Alongside mini-essays, anecdotes, facts and figures, each section will be punctuated with lists, such as the best places around the world for vamp tourism; rock songs with vampire allusions; box-office revenue for vamp movies; the Top 10 Vampire clubs, video-games, vampire brides, as well as reliable and unreliable methods of killing a vampire ...

Ruskin is one of the most influential and exhilarating writers in English. Art critic, architectural visionary, social reformer, climate warner and incomparable teacher; Ruskin's words not only transformed Victorian England but speak to us with increasing urgency today. This, the first general introduction to Ruskin for many years, places him in the social, economic and aesthetic world of Victorian Britain that he transformed - and shows how this transformation has much to teach us today. The extensive illustrations range from private notes and lecture diagrams to presentation drawings, including some of the most beautiful images of the 19th century and many never before published. Published in association with the Ruskin Foundation.

This title is an ingenious translation of classic verse into knockabout farce. It is also an effortlessly readable introduction to the poem for those too busy or too intimidated to tackle it without a guide.

F. W. Murnau's "Nosferatu" (1922), the first screen adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Dracula," remains a potent and disturbing horror film. One of the outstanding documents of Weimar culture's dark side, the film's prevailing themes of human destructiveness, insanity, and moral and physical pollution had a stinging topicality for contemporary audiences.
Kevin Jackson's illuminating study traces Nosferatu's production and reception history, including attempts by Stoker's widow to suppress the film's circulation. Exploring the evolution of the vampire myth, both in the film and in wider culture, Jackson exposes how and why this film of horror and death remains enduringly beautiful and chilling today.
This special edition features original cover artwork by Julia Soboleva.

Money. Rhino. The long green. It is "the most important thing in the world" (George Bernard Shaw). It is "power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings" (Carl Sandburg). It is "the alienated essence of man's work and existence" (Karl Marx). It is a medium of exchange, a measure of value, a standard of deferred payment. It is "better than poverty, if only for financial reasons" (Woody Allen). It is "the final enemy that will never be subdued" (Samuel Butler).
Few things occupy as central a place in our lives as money, and few provoke such intense and varied response. Now in an entertaining and also thought-provoking book, Kevin Jackson brings together reflections on money by some of the most brilliant minds who ever lived, drawing on such writers as Dante and Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton, Dostoevsky and Dickens, Mark Twain and Jane Austen, Edith Wharton and Henry James, and such thinkers as Max Weber, Thorstein Veblen, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes. Here is an all-encompassing look at the bottom line of human life--wealth and poverty, lending and borrowing, money heavens and money hells. There are colorful scenes from fiction--Silas Marner alone at night bathing his hands in gold and silver, Captain Ahab nailing a doubloon to the Pequot's mast, three hooligans in Chaucer's "The Pardoner's Tale" finding death in a sack of coins. We find Polonius's advice "neither a borrower nor a lender be" side by side with Panurge's comic paeon to debt ("a thing most precious and dainty, of great use and antiquity") and Charles Lamb's memorable portrait of the debtor ("What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower What rosy gills What a beautiful reliance on Providence doth he manifest"). There are telling portraits of the money binge of the 1980s, in excerpts from Michael Lewis's Liar's Poker and Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, and harrowing descriptions of the Great Crash of 1929 and the German hyperinflation of the early 1920s, where at one point a dollar was worth a trillion marks. And perhaps most important, there are many thoughtful observations on money, such as Adam Smith's comment that "with the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches." Or Roger Scruton's point that without money transactions are limited to barter and gifts, but with it "exchange multiplies quietly and peacefully to infinity." Or Alexander Pope's caustic remark that "we may see the small value God has for riches, by the people he gives them to."
By looking at money from so many different perspectives, through the eyes of writers and poets, philosophers and economists, financiers and politicians, The Oxford Book of Money offers us a deeper appreciation of what money is, what it can do, what it is really worth. By turns insightful, amusing, and intriguing, it will help readers to reexamine what money means to them and rethink its value in their lives.

Cult experimental novel from the late William Hayward first published by Heinemann in 1964.Follows the progress of Bran Lynch, Irish ex-poet, and a group of refugees from employment. Shows influences of the Beats and modernists such as James Joyce: 'a raucous combustion of jazz, sex and cider.'

In the aftermath of scandals such as those at Enron and WorldCom, there is a growing suspicion of the corporate world. For this reason it is more important than ever for firms to maintain a good reputation. In Building Reputational Capital, Kevin T. Jackson offers a practical guide to taking the high road--the only path that leads to lasting success.
Based on extensive research and real-world experience, Building Reputational Capital reveals basic principles of integrity and fairness with which firms can build an enduring reputation. More than image, a firm's reputation is a form of capital often neglected in the boardroom and overlooked in conventional analyses of financial statements. Speaking directly to the work experience of real people in practical business settings, Jackson couples each principle with straightforward actions that drive management systems, and he provides tested strategies--from downsizing techniques to e-commerce tips--that cultivate the hidden power of a good reputation. He outlines the advantages of a superior reputation (simply put, people want to work for, invest in, and do business with a company or person with integrity), describes the vital role the firm's leader must play, offers ways to build and protect your reputation on the Internet (from defusing Internet rumors to creating an online community), and shows how to rescue your reputation once disaster hits. Perhaps most important, he shows how to strike the right balance of virtues like authenticity, honesty, responsibility, and stewardship of the environment, employees, and the economy.
Highlighted with real-life success stories--from giants like Hewlett-Packard to small firms like Thanksgiving Coffee Company (which invests part of its revenues in the Central American villages in which its beans are grown), Building Reputational Capital offers a simple but effective guide for executives, managers, entrepreneurs, legal professionals, and corporate consultants.

The Fourth Edition of the industry-acclaimed OpenStack Cloud Computing Cookbook, from four recognized experts, updated to the latest OpenStack build including Cinder, Nova, and Neutron. Key Features Over 100 recipes created by a team of OpenStack experts Updated to work with the latest OpenStack builds, with recipes covering the installation and use of OpenStack with Ansible It covers topics such as Keystone, Glance, Neutron, Nova, Cinder, and more, plus recipes for OpenStack storage, networking, and orchestrating workloads Test drive OpenStack using the accompanying Vagrant environment Book DescriptionThis is the fourth edition of the industry-acclaimed OpenStack Cloud Computing Cookbook, created by four recognized OpenStack experts. It has now been updated to work with the latest OpenStack builds, using tools and processes based on their collective and vast OpenStack experience. OpenStack Open Source Cloud software is one of the most used cloud infrastructures to support a wide variety of use cases, from software development to big data analysis. It is developed by a thriving community of individual developers from around the globe and backed by most of the leading players in the cloud space today. We make it simple to implement, massively scalable, and able to store a large pool of data and networking resources. OpenStack has a strong ecosystem that helps you provision your cloud storage needs. Add OpenStack's enterprise features to reduce the cost of your business. This book will begin by showing you the steps to build up an OpenStack private cloud environment using Ansible. You'll then discover the uses of cloud services such as the identity service, image service, and compute service. You'll dive into Neutron, the OpenStack Networking service, and get your hands dirty with configuring networks, routers, load balancers, and more. You'll then gather more expert knowledge on OpenStack cloud computing by managing your cloud's security and migration. After that, we delve into OpenStack Object storage and you'll see how to manage servers and work with objects, cluster, and storage functionalities. Finally, you will learn about OpenStack dashboard, Ansible, Keystone, and other interesting topics. What you will learn Understand, install, configure, and manage a complete OpenStack Cloud platform using OpenStack-Ansible Configure networks, routers, load balancers, and more with Neutron Use Keystone to setup domains, roles, groups and user access Learn how to use Swift and setup container access control lists Gain hands-on experience and familiarity with Horizon, the OpenStack Dashboard user interface Automate complete solutions with our recipes on Heat, the OpenStack Orchestration service as well as using Ansible to orchestrate application workloads Follow practical advice and examples to run OpenStack in production Who this book is forThis book is written for cloud system engineers, system administrators, and technical architects who are moving from a virtualized environment to cloud environments. This book assumes that you are familiar with cloud computing platforms, and have knowledge of virtualization, networking, and managing Linux environments.

Learn how you can put the features of OpenStack to work in the real world in this comprehensive path About This Book * Harness the abilities of experienced OpenStack administrators and architects, and run your own private cloud successfully * Learn how to install, configure, and manage all of the OpenStack core projects including topics on Object Storage, Block Storage, and Neutron Networking services such as LBaaS and FWaaS * Get better equipped to troubleshoot and solve common problems in performance, availability, and automation that confront production-ready OpenStack environments Who This Book Is For This course is for those who are new to OpenStack who want to learn the cloud networking fundamentals and get started with OpenStack networking. Basic understanding of Linux Operating System, Virtualization, and Networking, and Storage principles will come in handy. What You Will Learn * Get an introduction to OpenStack and its components * Store and retrieve data and images using storage components, such as Cinder, Swift, and Glance * Install and configure Swift, the OpenStack Object Storage service, including configuring Container Replication between datacenters * Gain hands on experience and familiarity with Horizon, the OpenStack Dashboard user interface * Learn how to automate OpenStack installations using Ansible and Foreman * Follow practical advice and examples for running OpenStack in production * Fix common issues with images served through Glance and master the art of troubleshooting Neutron networking In Detail OpenStack is a collection of software projects that work together to provide a cloud fabric. Learning OpenStack Cloud Computing course is an exquisite guide that you will need to build cloud environments proficiently. This course will help you gain a clearer understanding of OpenStack's components and their interaction with each other to build a cloud environment. The first module, Learning OpenStack, starts with a brief look into the need for authentication and authorization, the different aspects of dashboards, cloud computing fabric controllers, along with 'Networking as a Service' and 'Software defined Networking'. Then, you will focus on installing, configuring, and troubleshooting different architectures such as Keystone, Horizon, Nova, Neutron, Cinder, Swift, and Glance. After getting familiar with the fundamentals and application of OpenStack, let's move deeper into the realm of OpenStack. In the second module, OpenStack Cloud Computing Cookbook, preview how to build and operate OpenStack cloud computing, storage, networking, and automation. Dive into Neutron, the OpenStack Networking service, and get your hands dirty with configuring ML2, networks, routers, and distributed virtual routers. Further, you'll learn practical examples of Block Storage, LBaaS, and FBaaS. The final module, Troubleshooting OpenStack, will help you quickly diagnose, troubleshoot, and correct problems in your OpenStack. We will diagnose and remediate issues in Keystone, Glance, Neutron networking, Nova, Cinder block storage, Swift object storage, and issues caused by Heat orchestration. This Learning Path combines some of the best that Packt has to offer in one complete, curated package. It includes content from the following Packt products: * Learning OpenStack by Alok Shrivastwa, Sunil Sarat * OpenStack Cloud Computing Cookbook - Third Edition by Kevin Jackson , Cody Bunch, Egle Sigler * Troubleshooting OpenStack by Tony Campbell Style and approach This course aims to create a smooth learning path that will teach you how to get started with setting up private and public clouds using a free and open source cloud computing platform-OpenStack. Through this comprehensive course, you'll learn OpenStack Cloud computing from scratch to finish and more!"