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'Powder Wars' is the true story of the supergrass who brought down Britain's biggest drug dealers. Gangster Paul Grimes was a one-man crimewave with a breathtaking capacity to steal, but when his son died of a heroin overdose, the old-school mobster turned undercover informant.
Graham Johnson was a fresh-faced journalist with an ambition to break the big news stories and make his name as a star reporter when an offer came in to work at a leading tabloid… he couldn't say no. Instantly, he found himself drawn into a world of sleaze, spin and corruption - where bending the law was justifiable in the hunt for the big-selling story and bending the truth was the norm. Against his better judgement, Graham found his niche in this new world and, what's more, he found that he was good at it. In his time at first the News of the Worldthen the Sunday Mirror, he made a name for himself as a man who could deliver the story, no matter what - a kind of tabloid terrorist who rifled through celebrity's rubbish bins, staked out politicians' hotel rooms, and paid-up page three girls to seduce Premiership footballers, all in the name of scoring a front-page story. Hackis a compelling and intoxicating story of one man's time in the tabloid jungle - a world that in its heady mix of sex, drugs and casual immorality is reminiscent of the City - and how he ultimately saved himself.
When ruthless drug baron John Haase was sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment for heroin-trafficking in 1995, it was a major victory for Customs and the police. But in a shock move, after Haase and his partner Paul Bennett had served only 11 months, then Home Secretary Michael Howard signed a Royal Pardon for their release. Howard defended his decision by revealing that Haase and Bennett had become invaluable informants. But Haase had in fact duped the authorities, and far from being forced into hiding as a supergrass, he gained new kudos among the criminal underworld for beating the system so audaciously. Graham Johnson interviewed Haase at Whitemoor prison and has obtained a copy of his sworn affidavit revealing the truth behind the Royal Pardon scandal. Allegations of huge bribes, mass fabrication of evidence and dark powers at the heart of the justice system make this an explosive exposé of Britain's number-one drug kingpin.
A French Song Companion is an indispensable guide to the modern repertoire and the most comprehensive book of French melodie in any language. Noted accompanist Graham Johnson provides repertoire guides to the work of over 150 composers--the majority of them from France but including British, American, German, Spanish, and Italian musicians who have written French vocal music. The book contains major articles on Faure, Duparc, Debussy, Ravel, and Poulenc, as well as essays on Bizet, Chabrier, Gounod, Chausson, Hahn, and Satie, and important reassessments of such composers as Massenet, Koechlin, and Leguerney. The book combines these articles with the complete texts in English of over 700 songs, all translated by Richard Stokes, making it also a treasury of French poetry from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries. The translations alone will prove invaluable to music lovers and performers; combined with the biographical articles, they become the ideal map for exploring this exciting and diverse repertoire.
A global workforce. Billions in sales. But, unlike Tesco or BP, few have heard of it. The Cartel is Britain’s biggest drugs organisation, a shadowy network stretching from the freezing, fog-banks of the Mersey to the glittering marinas of Marbella, from the coffee shops of Amsterdam to the trading floors of Canary Wharf. Run by godfathers as rich as Branson but kept in line by a new generation of teenage killers. Here is the inside story.
Better than a cold shower-and a lot funnier. Choke the chicken, spank the monkey, charm the snake-however you refer to it, none of the images in this book will encourage you to pleasure yourself. This deceptively simple and strangely addictive book presents a laugh-out-loud collection of random pictures virtually guaranteed to dampen the urge of even the strongest libido.
The career of Gabriel Fauré as a composer of songs for voice and piano traverses six decades (1862-1921); almost the whole history of French mélodie is contained within these parameters. In this book, the distinguished accompanist and song scholar Graham Johnson places the vocal music within twin contexts: Fauré's own life story, and the parallel lives of his many poets. Each of Fauré's 109 songs receives a separate commentary. Additional chapters for the student singer and serious music-lover discuss interpretation and performance in both aesthetical and practical terms and Richard Stokes provides parallel English translations of the original French texts.
It was a brutal murder, and the trial of the decade. On 1 November 2007, 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher was slaughtered in cold blood in the apartment in Perugia, Italy, that she shared with three other girls. Two bright young people, Amanda Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, stood accused of the killing in a trial that lasted through 2009. They were found guilty and sentenced to twenty-six and twenty-five years respectively on 4 December. A second man, Ivory Coast-born Rudy Guede, 22, had already been found guilty of the sexual assault and murder of Meredith in a separate trial in 2008 and sentenced to thirty years, but the prosecution always stated that he...
'The young bloods did not care whether they killed criminals or civilians . . .’ The Cartel is Britain’s biggest drugs gang, a global corporation employing thousands of criminals and flooding Britain with cocaine and heroin. Yet the established order is under threat: street gangs are overwhelming the old-school Cartel godfathers with a campaign of violence, intimidation and mayhem, heralding a series of events that has had devastating consequences for the whole of society. In Young Blood, the explosive follow-up to The Cartel, bestselling true-crime author Graham Johnson reveals how the brutal assassination of drug baron Colin ‘King Cocaine’ Smith in 2007 by a group of young bucks triggered the rise of the foot soldier, and exposes the bitter struggle that has spread throughout Europe as various factions battle to seize control of the most lucrative crime syndicate in British history.
'If those pricks want a war, lad, we'll show what some proper soljas can do.' Dylan, Nogger and their crew 'tax' rival drug dealers using a red-hot steam iron and celebrate by making videos of themselves raping wannabe WAG s. In their world, guns and knives are as common as mobile phones. But when an innocent three-year-old girl is killed in the crossfire, extreme measures are brought in to combat gang warfare. From burgeoning organised crime to warped celebrity culture, Gang War is an apocalyptic vision of a world in freefall. The gripping debut novel by the bestselling author of Powder Wars is a mind-blowing tale that is all the more shocking because it is inspired by real-life events.