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'Entertaining, shocking, uproarious, hilarious . . . like eavesdropping on a wake, as the mourners get gradually more drunk and tell ever more outrageous stories' Sunday Times This is the definitive history of London's most notorious drinking den, the Colony Room Club in Soho. It’s a hair-raising romp through the underbelly of the post-war scene: during its sixty-year history, more romances, more deaths, more horrors and more sex scandals took place in the Colony than anywhere else. Tales from the Colony Room is an oral biography, consisting of previously unpublished and long-lost interviews with the characters who were central to the scene, giving the reader a flavour of what it was like ...
Patrick: The Irish Immigrant is the story of a determined Irish lad who dreamed of a better life of opportunities in America. By the age of seventeen, Patrick J. O'Shea had saved enough money to buy passage to the United States. Upon his arrival in New York City, Patrick used his ambition and determination, mixed with a dash of Irish malarkey, to set himself up with a job and a new life. This recipe served him well throughout his adventures that led him from New York City to the Territory of Hawaii and throughout the world. Along the way, Patrick married the love of his life, Arabell. Together they raised their family against the backdrop of World War II and other life-changing historical events. Patrick's life story is the universal story of many immigrants to the United States of America. He came, he prospered, and he proudly became a U.S. citizen. Patrick wanted his story told to encourage others to persevere despite obstacles and setbacks, to do one's best at any task, and to always conduct oneself with honor and dignity.
An unforgettable coming-of-age novel that becomes a profound mediation on life, death, and lifelong friendship. Everyone has a Tully Dawson: the friend who defines your life. In the summer of 1986, in a small Scottish town, James and Tully ignite a brilliant friendship based on music, films and the rebel spirit. With school over and the locked world of their fathers before them, they rush towards the climax of their youth: a magical weekend in Manchester, the epicentre of everything that inspires them in working-class Britain. There, against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded, a vow is made: to go at life differently. Thirty years on, half a life away, the phone rings. Tully has news--news that forces the life-long friends to confront their own mortality head-on. What follows is an incredibly moving examination of the responsibilities and obligations we have to those we love. Mayflies is at once a finely-tuned drama about the delicacy and impermanence of human connection and an urgent inquiry into some of the most important questions of all: Who are we? What do we owe to our friends? And what does it mean to love another person amidst tragedy?
Pierre Boulez's first piano pieces date from his youth, prior to his studies in Paris with Messiaen, and his subsequent meteoric rise to international acclaim as the leader of the musical avant-garde during the 1950s. His most recent published work is a solo piano piece, Une page d’éphéméride, written some sixty years after his first attempts at composition. The piano has remained central to Boulez's creative work throughout his career, and although his renown as a conductor has to some extent overshadowed his other achievements, it was as a performer of his own piano music that his practical gifts first found expression. Peter O'Hagan has given performances of various unpublished piano...
"The uneasy friendship between an English priest and a pair of teenagers kindles the smoldering hatreds of a working-class Scottish town and forces a reckoning with the gathered tensions of past and present." From the bookjacket.
The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller 'Breathtaking' The Times '[The book that] made headlines around the world.' Independent The former Prince of Wales has lived his whole life in the public eye, yet he remains an enigma. He was born to be king, but he aims much higher. A landmark publication, Charles: The Heart of a King reveals Charles in all his complexity: the passionate views that mean he will never be as remote and impartial as his mother; the compulsion to make a difference and the many and startling ways in which the Prince and now King of the United Kingdom and fifteen other realms has already made his mark. The book offers fresh and fascinating insights into the first marriage that ...
'Sarah doesn't just sit at the table - she stands on it. She's full of inspiring advice about how to bounce back from failures, speak your truth, embrace your quirks, and have a lot more fun along the way.' Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO and Founder of Leanin.org As a child, Sarah Robb O'Hagan felt destined to become a champion, but her early efforts at sport, music and theatre failed to reveal a natural superstar. Unwilling to settle for average, she learned through a series of dramatic successes and epic failures to follow her own path to success. Sarah climbed the corporate ladder at Virgin Atlantic, Nike, Gatorade and Equinox - also becoming a wife, mother and endurance athlete - and thou...
How much do we keep from the people we love? Why is the truth so often buried in secrets? Can we learn from the past or must we forget it? Standing one evening at the window of her house by the sea, Anne Quirk sees a rabbit disappearing in the snow. Nobody remembers her now, but this elderly woman was in her youth a pioneer of British documentary photography. Her beloved grandson, Luke, now a captain with the Royal Western Fusiliers, is on a tour of duty in Afghanistan, part of a convoy taking equipment to the electricity plant at Kajaki. Only when Luke returns home to Scotland does Anne's secret story begin to emerge, along with his, and they set out for an old guest house in Blackpool where she once kept a room.
Reflections on topics from war and crime to pop culture, in “a stunning collection . . . from the best essayist of his generation” (The New York Times). For more than two decades, Andrew O’Hagan has been publishing celebrated essays on both sides of the Atlantic. The Atlantic Ocean highlights the best of his clear-eyed, brilliant work, including his first published essay, a reminiscence of his working-class Scottish upbringing; an extraordinary piece about the lives of two soldiers, one English, one American, both of whom died in Iraq on May 2, 2005; and a piercing examination of the life of William Styron. O’Hagan’s subjects range from the rise of the tabloids to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, from the trajectory of the Beatles to the impossibility of not fancying Marilyn Monroe—in essays that are “stupendously unflinching, bursting with possibility” (Booklist, starred review). “A brilliant essayist, [O’Hagan] constructs sentences that pierce like pinpricks.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
Given as a Christmas present to Marilyn Monroe, Maf the dog provides keen insight into the world of the Hollywood starlet during the last two years of her life.