George Lucas (born 1944) is a producer screenwriter & director who played a major role in the anti-establishment New Hollywood movement of the 1970s & helped define the blockbuster era of the 1980s. He is best known as the creator of the Star Wars space opera & the producer of the iconic Indiana Jones adventure film series. Lucas had directed THX 1138 (1971) & American Graffiti (1973) before launching in 1977 the first film in the Star Wars franchise. Rapidly a worldwide pop culture phenomenon this was followed by two sequels: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) & Return of the Jedi (1983). Sixteen years later a new trilogy The Phantom Menace (1999) Attack of the Clones (2002) & Revenge of the Sith (2005) was released. The Star Wars series has spawned a range of other media including TV series video games & comic books. With this simple yet powerful saga Lucas has created a brand a business empire & a technological revolution. ...

George Mackay Brown was one of Scotlands greatest twentieth-century writers but in person a bundle of paradoxes. He had a wide international reputation but hardly left his native Orkney. A prolific poet admired by such fellow poets as Seamus Heaney Ted Hughes & Charles Causley & hailed by the composer Peter Maxwell Davies as the most positive & benign influence ever on my own efforts at creation he was also an accomplished novelist (shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize for Beside the Ocean of Time) & a master of the short story. When he died in 1996 he left behind an autobiography as deft as it is ultimately uninformative. The lives of artists are as boring & also as uniquely fascinating as any or every other life he claimed. Never a recluse he appeared open to his friends but probably revealed more of himself in his voluminous correspondence with strangers. He never married
- indeed he once wrote I have never been in love in my life. But some of his most poignant letters & poems were written to Stella Cartwright the Muse of Rose Street the gifted but tragic figure to whom he was once engaged & with whom he kept in touch until the end of her short life. Maggie Fergusson interviewed George Mackay Brown several times & is the only biographer to whom he a reluctant subject gave his blessing. Through his letters & through conversations with his wide acquaintance she discovers that this particular artists life was not only fascinating but vivid courageous & surprising.
...

George Michael is an enigma. While he is one of the most open & vocal pop superstars on the planet he also fiercely protective of his privacy. From the formation of Wham! In 1981 he immediately found fame & fortune beyond his wildest dreams. His music formed the soundtrack to the 1980s & he achieved all of this despite growing up in a dysfunctional family where his father openly proclaimed that George had no talent. Wham! Split in 1986 but Michael went on to greater things as a solo artist. Along the way he has been embroiled in several controversies but in a refreshing change to other superstars he has been happy to address his issues head-on in the media. A court case with Sony; an arrest in a Los Angeles public toilet; minor run-ins over class-C drugs; & traffic offences in London. Rob Jovanovic's new biography of George Michael tackles the issues that formed the superstar today & his place as a cultural icon. It also for the first time analyses Michael's musical output & groundbreaking videos right up to his triumphant 2006 tour the first in 15 years as Michael returned from the music wilderness. ...

Personal as well as political Orwells letters offer a fascinating window into the mind of a phenomenal man. We are privy to snatched glimpses of his family life: his son Richards developing teeth the death of his wife Eileen & his own illness. Candid portraits of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War his opinions on bayonets & on the chaining of German prisoners display his magnificent talent as a political writer & letters to friends & his publisher provide a unique insight into the development & publication of some of the most important novels in the English language. A Life in Letters" features previously unpublished material including letters which shed new light on a love that would haunt him for his whole life as well as revealing the inspiration for some of his most famous characters. Presented for the first time in a dedicated volume this selection of Orwells letters is an indispensable companion to his diaries." ...

A lifelong Tory but a man of few fixed convictions the author of the most dramatic austerity programme this country has seen since the war the most aristocratic member of an unusually privileged government & a ferociously ambitious moderniser with aspirations for the premiership George Osborne is perhaps the most modern & metropolitan figure in British public life. This is the story of Osborne & the era he helped to shape. The Age of Osborne charts the mixture of rare brilliance deadly opportunism & extraordinary good fortune that propelled his vertiginous ascent through British politics from journalist fresh out of university to the youngest Chancellor in over a century. In doing so it paints a portrait of that rare thing in the coalition government: a compelling character. New Labour teemed with big complicated personalities such as Tony Blair Gordon Brown & Peter Mandelson. By contrast the coalition's dramatis personae contain a surfeit of blandly well-rounded types including David Cameron & Nick Clegg. Osborne is an exception & yet the public only have the faintest sense of the man. His story is the story of the past two decades of British politics from the revival of the Tories to the reformation of the state. ...

George Smith is one of the greatest players Australian rugby has ever produced & certainly one of the all-time best open-side flankers in the world arena. After becoming the fourth Wallaby & the 10th in the history of the game worldwide to reach a century of Tests Smith went on to earn 110 Test caps for Australia. Throughout his career he bedazzled crowds
- & more importantly the opposition
- with the tactical brilliance technique & physicality in his game. A relentless & supremely skilful terrier he was spectacularly targeted by opponents as the player they had to close down but through all such storms Smith responded heroically. His glorious career included numerous best & fairest player awards in both Test & Super rugby where he played his entire career with the Canberra-based Brumbies. He also played in two World Cups
- in 2003 & 2007
- & starred in numerous Test wins in the Bledisloe Cup & Tri Nations series as well as in the Wallabies stunning series victory over the British & Irish Lions when they toured to Australia in 2001. He became the 75th Wallabies captain leading Australia for the first time in the 2007 World Cup against Canada in Bordeaux & on a number of occasions afterwards. But for Smith an errant youth whod been seduced by a bad crowd on Sydneys northern beaches life could have turned out disastrously barely before it started. He was raised in a Tongan family as one of nine siblings & after his expulsion from Balgowlah Boys High School it was this Tongan heritage in the end which proved to be his salvation. The dramatic road hes followed since throughout a stellar amateur & professional rugby career has been littered with pot holes. Some he fell into. Others he avoided. But as in rugby in life its how one responds that really counts.



...

Laura is amazed when her baby brother George starts talking to her when hes only four weeks old particularly as he sounds like a grown-up! Its a big secret to keep from their parents & the rest of the family & leads to all sorts of comic confusion until Georges first birthday
- when he makes a speech to his startled family.
...

I am a warrior. These were the uncompromising words that George Washington chose to describe himself in May 1779 at the height of the Revolutionary War against Britain. Its an image very different to the one that hes been assigned by posterity
- the patriotic plantation owner who would become the dignified political leader of his country. Stephen Brumwells new book focuses on a side of Washington that is often overlooked: the feisty young frontier officer & the tough forty-something commander of the revolutionaries Continental Army. It examines Washingtons long & chequered military career tracing his evolution as a soldier & his changing attitude to the waging of war. Brumwell shows how ironically Washingtons reliance upon English models of gentlemanly behaviour & on British military organisation was crucial in establishing his leadership of the fledgling Continental Army & in forging it into the weapon that won American independence. George Washington is a vivid recounting of the formative years & military career of The Father of his Country following his journey from brutal border skirmishes with the French & their Indian allies to his remarkable victory over the British Empire an achievement that underpinned his selection as the first president of the United States of America. Drawing on a wide range of sources including original archival research Stephen Brumwell paints a compelling & challenging portrait of an extraordinary individual whose fusion of gentleman & warrior left an indelible imprint upon history.
...

' We are going' said Annie 'on a great cosmic journey. So listen up Savers of Planet Earth & prepare to meet the Universe'. George's best friend Annie needs help. Her scientist father Eric is working on a space project
- & it's all going wrong. A robot has landed on Mars but is behaving very oddly. & now Annie has discovered something weird on her dad's super-computer. Is it a message from an alien? Could there be life out there? How do you find a planet in outer space? & if you could talk to aliens what would you say?
...

George has a new pet
- but Sparky is no ordinary lizard! Soon he is growing bigger & bigger & he can't stop accidentally setting
...