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From the hugely respected journalist Miranda Sawyer, a very modern look at the midlife crisis – delving into the truth, and lies, of the experience and how to survive it, with thoughtfulness, insight and humour.
When Miranda Sawyer interviewed Noel Gallagher in 1995, his gag wishing Damon Albarn would die of AIDS became front-page news. This fascinating pop history, exploring the mid-90s moment when British music suddenly meant everything, explains why. Picking out twenty key songs, delving into the surprising stories behind them and their unlikely creators, Uncommon People takes us back to when Jarvis Cocker became a national hero, Trainspotting was a global hit, fire-starting seemed like a good night out - and it felt as though the revolution was happening. Initially a music press nickname, Britpop became an unexpected musical movement centred around outsiders and misfits, drop-outs and weirdos wh...
From the mountains of Algeria to the squats of South London via sectarian Northern Ireland, Ten Thousand Apologies is the sordid and thrilling story of the country's most notorious cult band, Fat White Family. Loved and loathed in equal measure since their formation in 2011, the relentlessly provocative, stunningly dysfunctional "drug band with a rock problem" have dedicated themselves to constant chaos and total creative freedom at all costs. Like a tragicomic penny dreadful dreamed up by a mutant hybrid of Jean Genet, the Dadaists and Mark E. Smith, the Fat Whites' story is a frequently jaw-dropping epic of creative insurrection, narcotic excess, mental illness, wanderlust, self-sabotage, fractured masculinity, and the ruthless pursuit of absolute art. Co-written with lucidity and humour by singer Lias Saoudi and acclaimed author Adelle Stripe, Ten Thousand Apologies is that rare thing: a music book that barely features any music, a biography as literary as any novel, and a confessional that does not seek forgiveness. This is the definitive account of Fat White Family's disgraceful and radiant jihad - a depraved, romantic and furious gesture of refusal to a sanitised era.
The instant Sunday Times bestseller from the UK's number one true crime podcast, RedHanded! What is it about killers, cults, and cannibals that capture our imaginations even as they terrify and disturb us? How do we carefully consume these cases and what can they teach us about what makes victims and their murderers our collective responsibility? RedHanded rejects the outdated narrative of killers as monsters and that a victim 'was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.' Instead, it dissects the stories of killers in a way that challenges perceptions and asks the hard questions about society, gender, poverty, culture, and even our politics. With Bala and Maguire's trademark humour, research on real-life cases, and unflinching analysis of what makes a criminal, the authors take you through the societal, behavioural, and cultural drivers of the most extreme of human behaviour to find out once and for all: what makes a killer tick?
THE TIMES & UNCUT MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEARCritically-acclaimed and bestselling author Paul Morley's long-awaited biography of Factory Records co-founder and Manchester icon Tony Wilson.A BOOK OF THE YEARSUNDAY TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, MOJO, LOUDER THAN WAR'Compelling . . . befitting its extraordinary subject.'BRIAN ENO'Bracing and often surprisingly tender . . . the perfect monument.'SUNDAY TIMES'Via Morley's magical prose Tony Wilson comes back to life . . . inspiring.'RICHARD RUSSELLTony Wilson was a man who became synonymous with his beloved city. As the co-founder of the legendary Factory Records and the Haçienda, he appointed himself a custodian of Manchester's legacy of innovation and chan...
Over Britain’s first century of mass democracy, politics has lurched from crisis to crisis. How does this history of political agony illuminate our current age of upheaval? To find out, journalist Phil Tinline takes us back to two past eras when the ruling consensus broke down, and the future filled with ominous possibilities – until, finally, a new settlement was born. How did the Great Depression’s spectres of fascism, bombing and mass unemployment force politicians to think the unthinkable, and pave the way to post-war Britain? How was Thatcher’s road to victory made possible by a decade of nightmares: of hyperinflation, military coups and communist dictatorship? And why, since the Crash in 2008, have new political threats and divisions forced us to change course once again? Tinline brings to life those times, past and present, when the great compromise holding democracy together has come apart; when the political class has been forced to make a choice of nightmares. This lively, original account of panic and chaos reveals how apparent catastrophes can clear the path to a new era. The Death of Consensus will make you see British democracy differently.
Miranda Sawyer drives from Croydon to Swindon, via Stevenage, Harrogate and Cadbury World in Birmingham, on a nice day out around suburban Britain. This is the Britain of motorways and heritage centres, of campaigning housewives and executive housing estates, of boy racers and Essex girls, of Cheshire wives and Scottish golfers. Put on your co-ordinating smart/casual wear (no trainers please) and join her for an evening at a prestigious hotel nightclub, a day in Britain's most average town, a trip round Romford's bourgeois drug addicts, a date with The Lighthouse Family, a few hours with Staffordshire's jet-set. Plus: a hen night, a car cruise, a swingers'special evening, and a lovely Sunday drive to see the new B&Q on the bypass. Forget the Britain that is green and pleasant, urban and dangerous, historic and scenic: this is the rest of it, the vast swathes of inbetweeny land, the multiplexed, motorwayed, mind your manners Great British Experience. And it may well be where you live.
'A writer of fierce and vivid imagination. The Tangle, like Holdstock's classic Mythago Wood and Catlin's The Voorh, taps the deep resonances of the wild wood in the English soul, revering even the stones as living minds, possessed of souls and ancient memories. Visceral stuff from this promising new star of dark fantasy' Michael Moorcock Justin Robertson's debut novel is a trans- dimensional trip into the mysterious knot of nature; a journey into the 'brilliant darkness' where the timeless divine spirit of the 'Tangle' weaves its spell and all mankind's hubris is rendered insignificant by the radically non-human force of phantom ecology. Salvation, revelation and a terrible reckoning dwell in the ancient roots ... A time travelling account of what occurs when unknowable frontiers are breached and humanity finds itself, once again, lost in the woods, THE TANGLE invites us into a grotesque world of eco-horror, echoing with the spirit of writers such as Saki, Ballard, M R James, Ursula Le Guin, Brian Catling and Thomas Ligotti.
Peter Saville is arguably the most influential graphic designer of his generation. Best known for his seminal record covers for Joy Division and New Order and as the co-founder of legendary independent music label Factory Records, Saville has created designs for fashion, advertising, and art. The intensity and timelessness of his work has ensured his cult status for twenty-five years. His far-reaching designs and character prefigure popular culture: fresh and seemingly familiar, he continues to transform the commonplace into the desirable. "Saville's method, then as now, lies in fixing on a style or look slightly ahead of popular taste. He achieves the sort of ambiguity and complexity of res...