Lions legend Bobby Windsor has enjoyed triumphs beyond the dreams of most international players, but has also suffered personal tragedy. His rugby career as the best hooker in the British Isles during the second golden era of Welsh rugby in the 1970s is a turbulent tale of blood & thunder on the pitch. There are riotous incidents off the pitch, including unscheduled fights with professional boxers, revelations about illegal payments during the so-called amateur era & what he did to upset the Establishment & become blackballed by one of the most famous clubs in the world.

Windsor

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Lions legend Bobby Windsor has enjoyed triumphs beyond the dreams of most international players but has also suffered personal tragedy. His rugby career as the best hooker in the British Isles during the second golden era of Welsh rugby in the 1970s is a turbulent tale of blood & thunder on the pitch. There are riotous incidents off the pitch, including unscheduled fights with professional boxers, revelations about illegal payments during the so-called amateur era & what Windsor did to upset the Establishment & become blackballed by one of the most famous clubs in the world.

Windsor

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AD 71: Germania Libera: dark dripping forests, inhabited by bloodthirsty barbarians & legendary wild beasts, a furious prophetess who terrorises Rome, & the ghostly spirits of slaughtered Roman legionaries.

Enter Marcus Didius Falco, an Impreisal agent on a special mission: to find the absconding commander of a legion whose loyalty is suspect. Easier said than done, thinks Marcus, as he makes his uneasy way down the Rhenus, trying to forget that back in sunny Rome his girlfriend Helena Justina is being hotly pursued by Titus Caesar. His mood is not enhanced when he discovers his only allies are a woefully inadequate bunch of recruits, their embittered centurion, a rogue dog, & its innocent young master; just the right kind of support for an agent unwillingly trying to tame the Celtic hordes.

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AD 71: Germania Libera: dark dripping forests, inhabited by bloodthirsty barbarians & legendary wild beasts, a furious prophetess who terrorises Rome, & the ghostly spirits of slaughtered Roman legionaries.

Enter Marcus Didius Falco, an Impreisal agent on a special mission: to find the absconding commander of a legion whose loyalty is suspect. Easier said than done, thinks Marcus, as he makes his uneasy way down the Rhenus, trying to forget that back in sunny Rome his girlfriend Helena Justina is being hotly pursued by Titus Caesar. His mood is not enhanced when he discovers his only allies are a woefully inadequate bunch of recruits, their embittered centurion, a rogue dog, & its innocent young master; just the right kind of support for an agent unwillingly trying to tame the Celtic hordes.

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Freak.

That's what they call seventeen-year-old Donna Underwood at Ironbridge High School. A horrific fey attack

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When James Wood's first collection of essays, The Broken Estate, was published in 1999, the reviewers hailed a master critic. John Banville described Wood as a 'a close reader of genius-illuminating & exciting & compelling', & Malcolm Bradbury described him as 'a true critic: an urgent, impassioned reader of literature, a tireless interpreter, a live & learned intelligence'; Adam Begley, in the Financial Times, said that ' Wood is not just a keen critic, our best, but a superb writer'; in the Independent, Natasha Walter described The Broken Estate as 'a book that makes you feel, having closed it, as if your mind has been oxygenated'. The common thread in Wood's latest collection of essays is what makes us laugh
- & the book is an attempt to distinguish between the perhaps rather limited English comedy (as seen in Waugh, for example) & a 'continental' tragic-comedy, which he sees as real, universal & quixotic. A particularly acerbic, & very funny, essay
- which has been widely celebrated
- deals with Zadie Smith, Rushdie, Pynchon & De Lillo; its title, ' Hysterical Realism', has already entered the phrasebook of literary language. With its brilliant studies of Shakespeare, Dickens & Dostoevsky, Naipaul, Pritchett & Bellow, The Irresponsible Self offers more exhilarating despatches from one of our finest living critics.


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It was situated on a perfect natural harbour at the mouth of a great river leading into a huge new l&. Manhattan Island was to grow into the most powerful city in the most powerful country in the world.

The Island at the Centre of the World returns to the origins of New York

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It was situated on a perfect natural harbour at the mouth of a great river leading into a huge new l&. Manhattan Island was to grow into the most powerful city in the most powerful country in the world.

The Island at the Centre of the World returns to the origins of New York

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Fleeing the gathering storm-clouds of war in 1939, a party of British débutantes are shipwrecked on an uncharted tropical ...

The Women of Maldona are an ancient order devoted to physical perfection, Sapphic love & strict discipline. Unfulfilled by her mundane London existence, their leader, Jana, selects the most nubile & obedient of her slaves & sets out on a quest for adventure.

In an ancient castle on a deserted Aegean isl&, Jana & her dedicated followers set about recreating their passionate rituals of punishment & reward. But her reign as Supreme Mistress comes under threat from a flagellant girl goddess who calls herself Aphrodite. In the scorching Mediterranean heat, it is only a matter of time before their rivalry comes to a head in the most sensual & physical of battles.

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