British Memoirs

In Too Much, with his trademark wit and insight, Tom Allen takes a funny and moving look at how he's been thrown into adulthood, as he finally leaves the family home and starts a relationship with a new boyfriend. He shares his unwillingness to move on from the arrested development of millennial life. But ultimately, he has to grow up fast in the wake of the unexpected death of his father in late 2021.The audiobook becomes an emotional ode to his beloved dad and how you learn to navigate grief.

In July 1964, the Sunday Mirror ran a front-page story headlined: Peer and a Gangster: Yard Enquiry. While withholding the names of the principal subjects, the newspaper reported that the Metropolitan Police had ordered an investigation into an alleged homosexual relationship between ‘a household name’ from the House of Lords and a leading London underworld figure. Bob Boothby was the Conservative lord in question and Ronnie Kray the gangster.

The Royal Waterloo Hospital, London in the 1960s. Six young women lie asleep on low beds. Day and night no longer exist, extinguished by a potent cocktail of antipsychotic, sedative and anti-depressant drugs. The women are taken from their beds by the nurses and given electroconvulsive therapy before being put to sleep again. All under the watchful eye of Dr William Sargant.

In HOW WE SEE YOU, teacher and translator Álvaro Ramírez has collected ten biographical accounts of the lives of British people in Spain, from the late fifties until the present day, written by himself and others, with significant input from the subjects themselves. In this diverse collection we see the trials and adventures of individuals and couples through mostly sympathetic Spanish eyes, from Walter’s enigmatic sojourn in mid-century Castile to Alan’s reflective tale of a long life in voluntary exile. Here we see Brits at work and play, prospering or enduring, from a point of view...

Alex is the most up-to-date biography of Sir Alex Ferguson, the most decorated manager in British football history. Find out how he recovered from his brain surgery in 2018, why he appointed David Moyes as his successor, how livid he was when Moyes was sacked 10 months later, what he thought of Louis van Gaal’s tenure as Manchester United manager, what he thought of Jose Mourinho’s reign, and just how big a role he played in the appointment of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. This book also takes a deep dive into Alex’s relationship with the Glazer family.

When he turned 65, the playwright Simon Gray began to keep a diary: not a careful honing of the days' events with a view to posterity but an account of his thoughts as he had them, honestly, turbulently, digressively expressed. One of Britain's most amusing and original writers reflects on a life filled with cigarettes (continuing), alcohol (stopped), several triumphs and many more disasters - a record of shame, adultery, friendship and love. Few diarists have ever been so frank about themselves and even fewer so entertaining.

This is the vivid, personal accounts of four women who lived and traveled as settlers in early British Columbia. The women in this book were trailblazers. The frontiers they lived on were not only geographical but personal. As they left the drawing rooms of England and Eastern Canada for new lives in the far West, social patterns were disrupted and the status quo dissolved. On the wagon roads and river boats of 19th-century British Columbia, they found risks, opportunities, and freedoms far beyond those familiar to their more-settled contemporaries.

'A Boy Named Henry – British Boxing Legend Sir Henry Cooper's Story 'by Stu Armstrong is a captivating journey through the life of one of Britain’s most cherished sporting heroes. From humble beginnings in Bermondsey, South London, to his iconic battles in the ring, this compelling biography shines a light on the extraordinary man behind the gloves.

"To boldly go where no man has gone before" was a phrase made popular by Gene Rodenberry in a science fiction setting, but it was certainly the creed of countless explorers during the Age of Discovery and afterwards. In fact, as recently as the mid-18th century, a young sailor named James Cook determined to go "farther than any man has been before me, but as far as I think it is possible for a man to go." And unlike so many others who tried, he did just that.

In June 1798, President John Adams signed the now infamous Alien & Sedition Acts to suppress political dissent. Facing imminent personal risks, a gutsy Kentucky newspaper editor ran the first editorial denouncing the law's attempt to stifle the freedom of the press. Almost immediately, government lawyers recommended his arrest and prosecution.

This book is a testament to how low human nature can get and offers a comprehensive breakdown of the cases’ key dates before looking into the gritty details. In the chapters, you will learn about the origin of the word “serial killer”, dispel common myths about murderers, and get one step closer to understanding why people kill.

In 1942 the young soldier Arthur Dodd was taken prisoner by the German Army and transported to Oswiecim in Polish Upper Silesia. The Germans gave it another name, now synonymous with mankind’s darkest hours. They called it Auschwitz. Forced to do hard labour, starved and savagely beaten, Arthur thought his life would end in Auschwitz. Determined to go down fighting, he sabotaged Nazi industrial work, risked his life to alleviate the suffering of the Jewish prisoners and aided a partisan group planning a mass breakout.

A great many writers use their own lives as the raw material for their work but few have done it with the wit and courage of Simon Gray. Like his previous best-seller, The Smoking Diaries, The Year of the Jouncer has the rare ability to make you laugh aloud one moment and ponder the sad mysteries of mortality the next, and sometimes to do both at the same time.

Lifting the Fire Hydrant Lid follows idealistic young recruit Kate Fullen as she negotiates training school and settles into life on the watch. With incidents and routine tasks woven into the fabric of the story, it describes the consuming pressure, emotional turmoil and unpredictable nature of the job. Utilising the rare perspective of a northern, queer, working-class female firefighter, Lifting the Fire Hydrant Lid examines the more intricate difficulties experienced by minority groups and gives a voice to a profession that is seldom heard and rarely seen.

Simon Gray is determined to give up smoking. Really. At last. Can he kick the habit of 60 years? Will he, sometime soon, be able to leave his house without nervously feeling for his two packets of 20 and his two lighters, and add no more singes to his cardigan? As this wonderful, wayward record of Gray's life progresses, these questions are overtaken by much larger ones. What is that lady on the plane to Athens doing with her nose? What was sex like before 1963? Will his name be in lights on Broadway? Why did he leave the bedside of his dying mother?

Few fathers and sons can ever have been so close as Winston Churchill and his only son, Randolph. Both showed flamboyant impatience, reckless bravery and generosity of spirit. The glorious and handsome Randolph was a giver and devourer of pleasure, a man who exploded into rooms, trailing whisky tumblers and reciting verbatim whole passages of classic literature. But while Randolph inherited many of his fathers' talents, he also inherited all of his flaws.

Affectionately dubbed "the Jewel in the Crown of the Tetbury Advertiser" by its ever-patient editor, Debbie Young has been a regular columnist for this award-winning community magazine since 2010. In its ten issues per year, she shares her homespun philosophy and wry English humour with its loyal readers. This collection brings together her columns from 2010-2015, charting history in the making as it affects local residents, and giving her whimsical perspective on the wider world from the heart of the Cotswolds.

A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history’s most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' British Legends series, listeners can get caught up to speed on the lives of Great Britain’s most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.

The official inside story of the life, death and remarkable discovery of history's most controversial monarch. On 22 August 1485 Richard III was killed at Bosworth Field, the last king of England to die in battle. His victorious opponent, Henry Tudor (the future Henry VII), went on to found one of our most famous ruling dynasties. Richard's body was displayed in undignified fashion for two days in nearby Leicester and then hurriedly buried in the church of the Greyfriars.

Filled with roller coaster emotions and explosive revelations of covert operations, Charlie One provides a unique, detailed and unbiased account of the secret war fought in Northern Ireland. Seán Hartnett grew up in Cork in the 1970s where he observed the worst of the northern Troubles. Despite his family’s republican ties and his own attempt to join the IRA, Hartnett shocked family and friends when he joined the British Armed Forces.