|
Showing 1 - 8 of
8 matches in All Departments
'Brilliantly gripping' Sunday Times; 'Compelling' Daily Mail;
'Heart-rending' Sunday Telegraph; 'Excellent' The Times;
'Engrossing' Independent The UK's only war crimes trial took place
in 1999 and had its origins in the horrors of the Holocaust, but
only now in The Ticket Collector from Belarus can the full story be
told. The Ticket Collector from Belarus tells the remarkable story
of two interwoven journeys. Ben-Zion Blustein and Andrei Sawoniuk
were childhood friends in 1930s Domachevo, a holiday and health
resort in what is now Belarus. During the events that followed the
Nazi invasion in 1941, they became the bitterest of enemies. After
the war, Ben-Zion made his way to Israel, and 'Andrusha the
bastard' to England, where he found work as a British Rail ticket
collector in London. They next confronted each other in the Old
Bailey, over half a century later, where one was the principal
prosecution witness, and the other charged with a fraction of the
number of murders he was alleged to have committed. There was no
physical evidence, just one man's word against another, leaving the
jury with a series of agonising dilemmas: Could any witness
statement be trusted so long after the event? Was Andrusha a brutal
killer, a hapless pawn or a scapegoat? And were his furious
protests a sign of guilt or the justified anger of an innocent old
man? Mike Anderson was gripped by the story, and so began his quest
to find the truth about this astonishing case and the people at its
heart. As he discovered, it was even more remarkable than he could
ever have imagined.
Whether in wartime or peace, tales of love, laughter and hardship
from the girls in the Rowntrees factory in Yorkshire "On a warm
Monday morning in 1932, just two days after leaving school,
fourteen-year-old Madge was about to join her nine brothers and
sisters at Rowntree's. The smell of chocolate was in the air but as
she walked up the road, her footsteps slowed at the daunting
thought of what lay ahead..." From the 1930s through to the 1980s,
as Britain endured war, depression, hardship and strikes, the women
at the Rowntree's factory in York kept the chocolates coming. This
is the true story of The Sweethearts, the women who roasted the
cocoa beans, piped the icing and packed the boxes that became gifts
for lovers, snacks for workers and treats for children across the
country. More often than not, their working days provided welcome
relief from bad husbands and bad housing, a community where they
could find new confidence, friendship and when the supervisor
wasn't looking, the occasional chocolate.
The delightful tale of a young couple who in the late 1970s, on
impulse, became the new landlords of the most remote, bleak and
lonely pub - The Tan Hill Inn - located in the desolate landscape
of the Yorkshire Dales. Having seen an article in the newspaper
about the pub's search for a new manager, they arrived just three
weeks later as the new landlords of the The Tan Hill Inn. It is a
wild, wind-swept place, set alone in a sea of peat bog and heather
moorland that stretches unbroken as far as the eye can see. With
only sheep and grouse for company, their closest neighbour was four
miles away and the nearest town twelve. They had no experience of
licensed trade or running a pub, no knowledge of farming and a
complete inability to understand the dialect of the sheep farmers
who were their local customers. Eager, well-meaning, but in over
their heads, our two heroes embarked on a disaster-strewn career
that somehow also turned into a lifelong love affair with the
Dales. The Inn at the Top is an entertaining ramble around the Inn,
the breath-taking Dales countryside and a remarkable array of local
characters, giving an insight into life in a very different
different time and place.
Touching true stories from the heyday of the Butlin's holiday
camps. 'When I got to the camp I felt as if I'd suddenly walked
into Utopia - it was so colourful, so warm, so friendly. There were
lights across the roads, there were banners fluttering in the
breeze... There seemed to be laughter coming from every building.'
With grey post-WWII skies hanging low over Britain, factories
lining the streets and smoke stacks dotting the horizon, there was
one way that ordinary families could escape: the ever-cheerful
holiday camps of Butlin's. When Billy Butlin founded his holiday
camps in 1936, they were bastions of community spirit and havens of
luxury. Here, for one week, wives and mothers were freed from the
toil and drudgery of housework, children ran free through the
grounds, fathers and husbands hung up their work clothes.
Ever-helpful redcoats were on hand all hours of the day, dinner
halls ready with plentiful food for old and young alike, bars
stocked to quench any level of thirst, ballrooms waiting to be
flooded with shiny shoes, rustling dresses and peals of laughter.
And, as the sun went down on another exhausting, happy day, a
chorus line was ready to sing holidaymakers back to their beds.
Rich in period detail and highly evocative, Wish You Were Here!
tells the story of seven women who worked as redcoats in Butlin's
Golden Age. It's all here: Knobbly Knees and Glamourous Grannies,
the laughter and tears, hardships and heartbreaks, loves and losses
of their lives in and out of the holiday camps, and above all the
lifelong friendships they formed with each other and those who also
worked or holidayed there. Funny, moving and heartwarming, these
are the timeless tales of a community spirit that burned brightly
in a much-loved British institution.
The tragic story of the disastrous London fire is told here from
both a human and architectural point of view, as the fire destroyed
lives along with buildings such as the original St. Paul's
cathedral.
'Brilliantly gripping' Sunday Times; 'Compelling' Daily Mail;
'Heart-rending' Sunday Telegraph; 'Excellent' The Times;
'Engrossing' Independent The UK's only war crimes trial took place
in 1999 and had its origins in the horrors of the Holocaust, but
only now in The Ticket Collector from Belarus can the full story be
told. The Ticket Collector from Belarus tells the remarkable story
of two interwoven journeys. Ben-Zion Blustein and Andrei Sawoniuk
were childhood friends in 1930s Domachevo, a holiday and health
resort in what is now Belarus. During the events that followed the
Nazi invasion in 1941, they became the bitterest of enemies. After
the war, Ben-Zion made his way to Israel, and 'Andrusha the
bastard' to England, where he found work as a British Rail ticket
collector in London. They next confronted each other in the Old
Bailey, over half a century later, where one was the principal
prosecution witness, and the other charged with a fraction of the
number of murders he was alleged to have committed. There was no
physical evidence, just one man's word against another, leaving the
jury with a series of agonising dilemmas: Could any witness
statement be trusted so long after the event? Was Andrusha a brutal
killer, a hapless pawn or a scapegoat? And were his furious
protests a sign of guilt or the justified anger of an innocent old
man? Mike Anderson was gripped by the story, and so began his quest
to find the truth about this astonishing case and the people at its
heart. As he discovered, it was even more remarkable than he could
ever have imagined.
After a meteoric ascent on Broadway that began with Ziegfeld's 1910
Follies, Lillian Lorraine went on to become one of the most famous
entertainers in America. Her passionately lived life made her a
prime target for the tabloid gossip doyens of the day. This
biography recounts the early West Coast life of this superstar as
well as her coronation on Broadway, her work in silent film, and
her sexual liaisons that helped her gain her notoriety. It also
covers her eventual disappearance from public life, her alcoholism
and her death, which went largely unnoticed. She was buried in 1955
in a pauper's grave. The book includes first-hand personal
anecdotes and observations from recently discovered tapes, which
were recorded by a confidante of Lorraine's.
|
You may like...
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
Morbius
Jared Leto, Matt Smith, …
DVD
R179
Discovery Miles 1 790
|