The landscape of the British Isles is filled with history much of which we miss as it flashes past the car window. Do we even realise that we're following the same path as the Tolpuddle Martyrs or that we're driving past the exact spot where King Harold was killed shot through the eye with an arrow? As a lover of both history & the British countryside Charlie Connelly decided to rectify this & set out on a series of walks that recreate famous historical journeys. En route he retells the story of the original trip while discovering who & what now inhabit these iconic routes. Walking in England Scotland Ireland & Wales Charlie journeys alongside Boudicca's ghost in Norfolk relives Bonnie Prince Charlie's flight to Skye disguised as Flora Mac Donald's maid & takes the same 32-mile round trip as the starving Louisburgh famine walkers. He suffers broken toes becomes trapped in the Scottish Parliament & encounters dead poets & a surprisingly high number of mad old women in woolly hats. Told with Charlie's customary charm & wit & Did Those Feet will reveal the historical secrets hidden in the much-loved coastal country & urban landscapes of Britain. ...

From the moment Judi Dench appeared as a teenager in the York Mystery Plays it was clear that acting would be her career. Trained at Londons Central School of Speech & Drama it was her performance in her twenties as Juliet in Franco Zeffirellis memorable Old Vic production that turned her into a star. In the theatre since she has played every classic role from Titania to Cleopatra. She first became a household name via television thanks initially to a sitcom A FINE ROMANCE in which she played alongside the actor Michael Williams whom she married in 1971. She has since made nine series of another sitcom AS TIME GOES BY (with Geoffrey Palmer) as well as plays & classic serials such as CRANFORD. In the cinema her films have ranged from LADIES IN LAVENDER (opposite Maggie Smith) through NOTES ON A SCANDAL with Cate Blanchett to SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE in which she played Queen Elizabeth a role which gained her a Hollywood Oscar. But it is her role as M in seven James Bond films that has gained her worldwide recognition. This book is however much more than a career record. Her marriage to Michael Williams their daughter & her impish sense of humour contribute vividly to her account of more than half a century as Britains best-loved actress. ...

From the Inside Flap A sweeping saga spanning 1898 to 1984 stretching from the mining fields of South Wales to the film sets of Hollywood & from the playhouses of Cardiff to the grand theatres of Broadway
- this new & far reaching biography rakes over the coals of the life of Britains greatest ever actor Richard Burton. & how one extraordinary man had three fathers three mothers seven brothers six sisters & four wives & how he loved them all. & how that man earned US$75 million from the start of his career in 1951 to when he died in 1984; the equivalent of US$1.5 billion in todays money making him the highest-paid actor in Hollywood history. From the Back Cover & God Created Burton is the first complete biography of the greatest Welshman ever to have lived. The man conquered Hollywood like no other British actor before or since. His achievements were considered all the greater as they were accomplished in the era of such great British actors as Laurence Olivier & John Gielgud as well as great American stars such as Humphrey Bogart Clark Gable & Cary Grant. Burtons achievement was even more pronounced as his prowess uniquely spanned theatre film & television unlike any other actor before him. In the end he became a genuine legend in his own lifetime & in the mid-sixties for one year he stood at the very pinnacle of Hollywood as the worlds most bankable actor. He also loved & lost some the most beautiful & talented actresses of the era including Elizabeth Taylor Claire Bloom & Susan Strasberg. But he could have achieved even more if it had not been for his addiction to alcohol a fate inherited from his father & which stayed with him right to the end of his days eventually killing him & tarnishing an otherwise extraordinary career.
...

Cricket defines Englishness like no other national pastime. From its earliest origins in the sixteenth century (or an early version played by shepherds called creag in the 1300s) through the formation of the MCC & the opening of Lords cricket ground in 1787 to the spread of county cricket in the next century when the Wisden Cricketers Almanack" was first published & the Ashes series was born this simple sport of bat & ball has captured the imagination of the masses. Throughout its 500-year history cricket has been a mirror for society as a whole reflecting the changes that have brought us from the quintessential village green to Freddie Flintoffs pedalo from W G Grace to Monty Panesar via a fair number of eccentrics heroes & downright villains. William Hill Award-winning writer Simon Hughes no mean player himself has lived & breathed cricket his whole life & now takes his analytical skills & typically irreverent eye to charting the history of English cricket. But this is no dry dusty tome. It is the story of the mad characters who inhabit the game the extraordinary lengths people will go to watch & play it the tale of a national obsession. It debunks the myth of cricket sportsmanship showing the origins of sledging & match-fixing in centuries of subterfuge corruption & violence. & it takes us beyond sport to the heart of what it really means to be English." ...

Double acts dont come any closer than the The Two Ronnies. Messrs Barker & Corbett kept a nation laughing for two decades & yet despite the rigorous work that went into writing rehearsing & broadcasting almost a hundred episodes to millions of viewers each week the pair never shared a cross word. For the first time Ronnie Corbett tells the story of the their rise from theatre through The Frost Report & into their own legendary show as well as how some of their greatest sketches including Mastermind & Fork Handles came into being. This is the story of one of the great British institutions of the last thirty years & a hilarious & moving look inside the working lives of two of our most-beloved comedians. ...

From Americas most celebrated true-crime writer comes the heartbreaking real-life drama of a doomed young woman hopelessly trapped in a web of sexual intrigue political manipulation & emotional deception by her charming & successful
- but ultimately deadly
- lover. In the most complex & shocking book of her long career Ann Rule delves into the motivation that drove a seemingly successful man to kill & she explores hitherto unknown aspects of a fatal affair between a beautiful young woman who moved confidently in the heady world of the upper echelons of government & a widely admired millionaire attorney who was an immensely popular political figure. Ann Rule brilliantly traces the lives of both Ann Marie Fahey & Tommy Capano as she discloses the intimate details of their ill-fated bonding. A vulnerable trusting woman becomes spellbound by a charming duplicitous married man & what begins as a seemingly unremarkable affair is slowly transformed into an obsessive convoluted & deadly relationship.

...

Who is Radio 4's 'fourteen-stone budgie'? How did Phyllis Willis & Mavis Davis make announcer Charlotte Green lose her cool? What does ' Ruth' really think about The Archers? When did Today stop having a keep-fit spot? & who was the Spam Fritter Man & what became of him? This wonderful history-cum-guide answers these & many other questions about the irreplaceable world of Radio 4. It is an essential reading for every devotee. ...

Peter Jefferson presented the Shipping Forecast for over 40 years & his familiar voice continues to be heard reading"ations on Radio 4s"e/ Unquote". This book is both an affectionate memoir & an account of the science behind the forecast: Peter explains how it came about who collects all the information & what its like to read this bulletin. Even though the information in the forecast is now readily available in many formats the Shipping Forecast is something of a must listen A" for fans gathered over the decades. For reasons not quite understood it has become a much-loved part of the British cultural landscape with an avid following of listeners who find its poetry is the perfect cure for insomnia." ...

Thousands of visitors go to the Italian Chapel in Orkney every year witnesses to a series of remarkable acts of transformation. Among these are the Churchill Barriers nearby straddling the ocean to link a number of Orkneys southernmost islands to its mainl&. Constructed to protect Britains naval fleet in Scapa Flow during World War Two its builders included a group of Italian soldiers imprisoned in this bleak & windswept part of Scotl&. In the course of this they not only played a part in changing Orkneys way-of-life forever but also transformed a simple Nissen Hut constructing through their labours a place-of-worship that still stands till this day a remarkable symbol of their identity & faith. & On This Rock tells the story of the strength & tenacity laughter & tears of the men who built the Italian Chapel showing how spirits defeated & despondent during years of exile were lifted by its creation. It does this with its own artistry & grace using folk-tale & myth to provide a fitting counterpart to the wonder & beauty of the building that inspired it. ...

Those who read or listen to our stories see everything as though through a lens. This lens is the secret of narration & it is ground anew in every story ground between the temporal & the timeless.. . In our brief mortal lives we are grinders of these lenses. When John Berger wrote this apparently unclassifiable book it was to become a sensation translated into nine languages & indelible from the minds of those who read it. This stunning work is a shoebox filled with delicate love letters containing poetry & thoughts on mortality art love & absence capturing moments in time that hover above Bergers surprising landscapes. From his lyrical description of the works of Caravaggio & profound explorations of death & immigration to the sight of some lilac at dusk in the mountains this is a beautiful & most intimate response to the world around us. ...