Burt Lancaster is perhaps most widely remembered as the tough iron-jawed star of films such as Gunfight at the OK Corral & Airport. But as this superbly readable & insightful biography demonstrates he was an actor with much broader ambitions
- brilliantly realised in Viscontis The Leopard
- as well as the founder of the first actor-led production company in Hollywood. Lancasters liberal political views led not only to frequent clashes with the House Un-American Activities Committee & a voluminous FBI file but also a private life that was colourful even by Hollywood standards. Although a devoted father & husband (to three wives) the actor took numerous lovers
- of both sexes. In his sexual tastes as in his choice of roles he defied classification. Kate Bufords definitive biography offers a full frank sensitive & compelling portrait of the star of Atlantic City From Here to Eternity & Elmer Gantry (for which he won a Best Actor Oscar). Lancaster emerges as a man of restless energy relentless curiosity & continual development as an actor: a star every bit as interesting offscreen as on. As one American reviewer put it: Not many film stars receive first-class biographies; Burt Lancaster not only deserved one he got one. Acclaimed biographer Kate Buford has been a regular commentator on National Public Radio in the United States since 1994.


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It is 1861 & Albertian Britain is in the grip of conflicting forces. Engineers transform the landscape with bigger faster noisier & dirtier technological wonders; Eugenicists develop specialist animals to provide unpaid labour; Libertines oppose restrictive & unjust laws & flood the country with propaganda demanding a society based on beauty & creativity; while The Rakes push the boundaries of human behaviour to the limits with magic sexuality drugs & anarchy. Returning from his failed expedition to find the source of the Nile explorer linguist scholar & swordsman Sir Richard Francis Burton finds himself sucked into the perilous depths of this moral & ethical vacuum when the Prime Minister Lord Palmerston employs him as ' King's Spy'. His first mission: to investigate the sexual assaults committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack; to find out why chimney sweeps are being kidnapped by half-man half-dog creatures; & to discover the whereabouts of his badly injured former friend John Hanning Speke. Accompanied by the diminutive & pain-loving poet Algernon Swinburne Burton's investigations lead him back to one of the defining events of the age: the brutal assassination of Queen Victoria in 1840; & the terrifying possibility that the world he inhabits shouldn't exist at all. ...

The American West 1860-1890: years of broken promises disillusionment war & massacre. Beginning with the Long Walk of the Navajos & ending with the massacre of Sioux at Wounded Knee this extraordinary book tells how the American Indians lost their land lives & liberty to white settlers pushing westward. Woven into a an engrossing saga of cruelty treachery & violence are the fascinating stories of such legendary figures as Sitting Bull Cochise Crazy Horse & Geronimo. First published in 1970 Dee Brown's brutal & compelling narrative changed the way people thought about the original inhabitants of America & focused attention on a national disgrace. ...

Perfect for day trips & short breaks the OS Landranger Map series covers Great Britain with 204 detailed maps. Each map provides all the information you need to get to know your local area &

Includes:: places of interest tourist information picnic areas & camp sites plus Rights of Way information for England & Wales.

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OS Explorer Map is the Ordnance Surveys most detailed map & is recommended for anyone enjoying outdoor activities like walking horse riding & off-road cycling. Providing complete GB coverage the series details essential information such as youth hostels pubs & visitor information as well as rights of way permissive paths & bridleways. ...

As Quebec City shivers in the grip of winter its ancient stone walls cracking in the cold Chief Inspector Armand Gamache plunges into the strangest case of his celebrated career. A man has been brutally murdered in one of the citys oldest buildings
- a library where the English citizens of Quebec safeguard their history. & the death opens a door into the past exposing a mystery that has lain dormant for centuries.. .a mystery Gamache must solve if hes to catch a present-day killer. Steeped in luscious atmosphere brimming with the suspense & wit that have earned Louise Penny a massive global following Bury Your Dead is the most ingenious suspense novel of the year.
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Pearl Buck was raised in China by her American parents Presbyterian missionaries from Virginia. Blonde & blue-eyed she looked startlingly foreign but felt as at home as her Chinese companions. She ran free on the grave-littered grasslands behind her house often stumbling across the tiny bones of baby girls who had been suffocated at birth. Bucks father was a terrifying figure with a maniacal zeal for religious conversion
- a passion rarely shared by the local communities he targeted. He drained the familys budget for his Chinese translation of the New Testament while his aggrieved long-suffering wife did her utmost to create a homely environment for her children several of whom died tragically young. Pearl Buck would eventually rise to eminence in America as a bestselling author (her most renowned work The Good Earth" re-entered the bestseller charts in 2004 when it was selected for Oprahs Book Club) but in this startlingly original biography Spurling recounts with elegance & great insight her unspeakable upbringing in a China that was virtually unknown to the West."
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Detective Chief Superintendent Fran Harmans professional & private lives collide when a skeleton is unearthed in her garden" Fran is preparing for her forthcoming wedding to Assistant Chief Constable Mark Turner but renovations at the rectory they plan to move into are disrupted by the discovery of a skeleton buried in the vegetable patch. As investigations into its identity progress its also clear that Marks two grown-up children are less than ecstatic at the prospect of their fathers forthcoming nuptials. In fact at least one of them seems to be behaving very strangely indeed... " ...

One quiet day when her mother was away from home Carmen Bugans father put on his best suit & drove into Bucharest to stage a one-man protest against Ceausescu. He had been typing pamphlets on an illegal typewriter & burying it in the garden each morning under his daughters bedroom window. This is the story of what happened to Carmen & her family isolated & under surveillance in their beloved village home. It is an intimate piece of our recent history the testimony of an extraordinary childhood left abruptly behind. Above all it is a luminous compassionate & unflinchingly honest book about the price of courage the pain of exile & the power of memory. ...

At 2 a.m. on 10 March 1983 Carmen Bugan's father left the family home alone. That afternoon Carmen returned from school to find secret police in her living room. Her father's protest against the regime had changed her life for ever. This is her story. ...