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.