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A Times Biography of the Year 'I learned a lot reading this ... the
strength of Fracture is that it is very much like a cracking radio
script: entertaining and easy to digest' Spectator Ada Lovelace.
Frederick Douglass. Vladimir Lenin. Marie Curie. Frieda Kahlo. Carl
Jung. Tupac Shakur. All geniuses who changed the world in ways that
still influence our lives today. And all men and women who
experienced, in childhood, trauma so severe that it should have
broken them completely. While presenting Great Lives on Radio 4,
Matthew Parris noticed a trend in the lives of the exceptional
people the programme covered: many of them had been marked by
extreme trauma and deprivation. They seemed to have succeeded not
only in spite of their backgrounds, but perhaps even because of
them. As Matthew Parris brings each individual's story to life in
this original and compelling study, it becomes clear that we must
rethink the origins of success, as well as the legacy of trauma.
Did you ever have the uneasy feeling that the experts are not ...
well, experts? 'We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on
the way out.' Decca Recording Company executive, turning down the
Beatles, 1962 I Wish I Hadn't Said That sets straight thousands of
examples of expert misunderstanding, miscalculation, egregious
prognostication, boo-boos, and just plain lies. The experts have
been wrong about everything under, including and beyond the sun:
time, space, the sexes, the races, the environment, economics,
politics, crime, education, the media, history and science. In I
Wish I Hadn't Said That we see just how much the experts don't
know. 'No woman in my lifetime will be Prime Minister' Margaret
Thatcher
'He's 100% political herpes. Back in six months whatever you do. Or
three days, like last time.' Camilla Long on Nigel Farage 'You're
as ugly as a salad.' Bulgarian insult 'I'm going to beat him so bad
he'll need a shoehorn to put his hat on.' Muhammed Ali There's no
pleasure like a perfectly turned put-down (when it's directed at
somebody else, of course) but Matthew Parris's Scorn is sharply
different from the standard collections. Here are the funniest,
sharpest, rudest and most devastating insults in history, from
ancient Roman graffiti to the battlefields of Twitter. Drawing on
bile from such masters as Dorothy Parker, Elizabeth I, Donald
Trump, Groucho Marx, Princess Anne, Winston Churchill, Nigel
Farage, Mae West and Alastair Campbell - which form an exchange
between voices down the ages - Scorn shows that abuse can be an art
form. This collection includes extended literary invective as well
as short verbal shin-kicks. Encompassing literature, art, politics,
showbiz, marriage, gender, nationality and religion, Matthew
Parris's sublime collection is the perfect companion for the
festive season, whether you're searching for the perfect elegant
riposte, the rudest polite letter ever written, or a brutal verbal
sledgehammer.
Matthew Parris's Parting Shots is a treasure trove of wit, venom
and serious analysis. Up till 2006 a British Ambassador leaving his
post was encouraged to write what was known as a valedictory
despatch, to be circulated to a small number of influential people
in government. This was the parting shot, an opportunity to offer a
personal and frank view of the host country, the manners and morals
of its people, their institutions, the state of their cooking and
their drains. But it was also a chance to let rip at the Foreign
Office itself and to look back on a career spent in the service of
a sometimes ungrateful nation. Combining gems from the archives
with more recent despatches obtained through the Freedom of
Information Act, Parting Shots sheds light on Britain's place in
the world, revealing the curious cocktail of privilege and
privation that makes up the life of an ambassador. 'Wonderful ... a
glimpse of that lost world of private eloquence and erudite
candour' Matthew d'Ancona, Evening Standard 'Unbuttoned, indiscreet
and very funny' Yorkshire Post Matthew Parris had a short career in
the Foreign Office where one of his tasks was to distribute
incoming valedictory despatches. He was a Conservative MP from 1979
to 1986, since when he has worked as a journalist. He is the author
of A Castle in Spain, Parting Shots, and A Spanish Ambassador's
Suitcase. He divides his time between Derbyshire (where his old
constituency was situated) and east London.
A modern classic of travel and adventure. INCA KOLA is the funny,
absorbing account of Matthew Parris's fourth trip to Peru, on a
bizarre holiday which takes him among bandits, prostitutes,
peasants and riots. He and his three companions seem to head into
trouble, not away from it, and he describes the troubles,
curiosities and wonders they meet with the spell-binding
fascination of a traveller relating adventures over the campfire.
'A backpacker's classic: atmospheric, touching, instructive and
compulsively readable' THE TIMES
In tragic November gunshots rang out in Dallas and reverberated
around the world, marking the loss of America's beloved president,
John F. Kennedy. The public has forever remained skeptical of who
really fired those fateful shots and where they originated. JFK and
the Green Beret does not attempt to prove who pulled the trigger,
instead this historical novel examines leading conspiracy theories
and intriguing circumstances surrounding the assassination by
creating a page-turning thriller set in the rugged last frontier of
Alaska. Special Forces Captain Roy Aston survives an ambush in
Southeast Asia after the White House recalls the rescue mission,
violating the hallowed credo 'Never leave a man behind.' The Green
Beret, intent on avenging the death of his men, returns to
Washington and retraces the cease-and-desist order to the national
security advisor, Charles Albert. The president's advisor, fearing
for his own life, claims Kennedy issued the order to be with
Aston's wife, modernizing the story of King David and Uriah.
Outraged, the Green Beret responds by doing what he's trained to
do: kill. He murders the young president in Dealey Plaza and flees
to the vacuous frigid North. The authorities fail to pursue him,
believing to have found the assassin: Lee Harvey Oswald, a patsy
set up by the cowardly national security advisor to conceal the lie
that triggered Kennedy's calamitous demise. JFK and the Green Beret
begins in the Alaskan wilderness where Roy Aston has been hiding
for more than forty years. Aston, plagued with vivid nightmares and
racked with encumbering guilt, goes to the FBI to recount his
unwonted story, determined to clear his conscience before he dies.
Lance Chambers, the Assistant Special Agent in Charge, listens to
the old man's story and subsequently investigates the most famous
unsolved mystery in American history.
The Spanish Ambassador's Suitcase is a hilarious new collection of
diplomatic tales by Matthew Parris and Andrew Bryson Heard the one
about the Spanish Ambassador who arrived in the scorching Saharan
desert fully suited and with a mysteriously enormous suitcase? Or
the horse they gave Prime Minister John Major in Turkmenistan -
which hapless embassy officials had to rescue from the clutches of
the Moscow railway? These and other 'funnies', as they are known in
Whitehall, are included in Matthew Parris and and Andrew Bryson's
glorious new volume of not so diplomatic writing, which accompanies
a new BBC Radio 4 series is a follow up to their acclaimed
collection of ambassadors' final despatches, Parting Shots. Drawn
from Freedom of Information requests and previously overlooked
Valedictories these startling despatches throw a revealing light on
how the British have viewed the world - and, unwittingly perhaps,
on how the world has viewed the British. Praise for Parting Shots:
'Parting Shots is unbuttoned, indiscreet and very funny' Yorkshire
Post 'Fascinating, if sometimes uncomfortable, reading' Financial
Times 'Very funny' Guardian After working in the Foreign Office
then serving as a Conservative MP, Matthew Parris joined The Times
in 1988. He writes two weekly columns for The Times and one for the
Spectator, and in 2011 won the Best Columnist Award at the British
Press awards. His acclaimed autobiography Chance Witness was
published by Penguin in 2003. He is a frequent broadcaster. Andrew
Bryson is a radio journalist working in the BBC's Business and
Economic Unit. He frequently works as a producer on Radio 4's Today
programme and on Radio 5 Live.
A Times Biography of the Year Ada Lovelace. Frederick Douglass.
Vladimir Lenin. Marie Curie. Frieda Kahlo. Carl Jung. Tupac Shakur.
All geniuses who changed the world in ways that still influence our
lives today. And all men and women who experienced, in childhood,
trauma so severe that it should have broken them completely. While
presenting Great Lives on Radio 4, Matthew Parris noticed a trend
in the lives of the exceptional people the programme covered: many
of them had been marked by extreme trauma and deprivation. They
seemed to have succeeded not only in spite of their backgrounds,
but perhaps even because of them. As Matthew Parris brings each
individual's story to life in this original and compelling study,
it becomes clear that we must rethink the origins of success, as
well as the legacy of trauma.
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