British Memoirs

Phil Spector, born in the Bronx in 1940, grew up an outsider despised by his peers. But he formed a band, and had a number-one hit with "To Know Him Is to Love Him". He quickly became the top producer of early rock and roll and the originator of such girl groups as the Ronettes. Hit followed hit, and for all of them he used a new recording style called the "wall of sound". But the reign of the boy-man who owned pop music was doomed, and Spector spiraled into paranoid isolation and peculiar behavior.

In 1888, five gruesome murders shocked the civilized public. A bloodthirsty killer was on the loose in the slums of London. The world was on the lookout for Jack the Ripper. Scotland Yard never found their man - or so they said publicly. The police knew the killer's identity but concealed it to save the ruling class from embarrassment. The Escape of Jack the Ripper reveals how British elites manipulated the public to protect one of their own. Through meticulous research, Jonathan Hainsworth and Christine Ward-Agius have uncovered the killer's identity.

Now a major motion picture starring Liev Schreiber and Josh Hutcherson! A poignant post-WWII tale of a revitalizing love found too late that follows the fleeting connection between an Italian countess and an injured, aging American colonel in Italy—a love story that inspires light and hope...

The men who worked British Columbia's mines have passed into history. Coal Dust in My Blood is a moving account of one coal miner's life, in plain, evocative language. But this book is much more than a personal memoir. Bill Johnstone's mining career spanned several decades and he worked in a wide variety of positions. His broad insights reveal important aspects of the history of coal mining in BC.

Sir Winston Churchill was a British statesman, orator, and author who, as prime minister, rallied the British people during World War II and led Britain to an allied victory. Churchill's "bulldog" spirit seemed to summarise the mood of the British people even during the bad times, such as Dunkirk, and the inspirational victories, such as the Battle of Britain. His was a brilliant mind, full of wit and intelligence; his oratory brilliance and his admirable style led him to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953.

In the style of Crying in H Mart and Minor Feelings, filmmaker Jill Damatac blends memoir, food writing, and colonial history as she cooks her way through recipes from her native-born Philippines and shares stories of her undocumented family in America. Jill Damatac left the United States in...

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 dazzling new look into the short but intense, tragic life and remarkable work of John Keats, one of the greatest lyric poets of the English language, seen in a whole new light, not as the mythologized Victorian guileless nature-lover, but as the subversive, bawdy complex cynic whose life and...

Writer Hadley Freeman investigates her family’s secret history in this “exceptional” (The Washington Post) “masterpiece” (The Daily Telegraph) uncovering a story that spans a century, two World Wars, and three generations. Hadley Freeman knew her grandmother Sara lived in France just...

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.

A “constantly captivating…well-researched and often moving” (The Wall Street Journal) history of Checkpoint Charlie, the famous military gate on the border of East and West Berlin where the United States confronted the USSR during the Cold War. In the early 1960s, East Germany committed a...

The remarkably honest and brilliantly entertaining memoir of one of our finest acting Dames whose long and celebrated career includes her much-loved performance as Livia in I, Claudius and who was married for 20 years to the hell-raising Hollywood star Peter O'Toole. Siân Phillips has a long...

With Muse of Fire, Michael Korda, the bestselling author of Alone and Hero, takes a novel approach to World War I by telling its history through the lives of the soldier-poets whose verses memorialize the war's unimaginable horrors. He begins with Rupert Brooke and the halcyon days before violence engulfed his generation—destroying the self-contented world of Edwardian England—and ends with the tragic death of Wilfred Owen, killed only days before the armistice brought an end to a war that took over 25,000,000 lives.

Doyenne of royal writers, Helen Cathcart takes the listener on a unique journey from infancy up to the third decade of Her Majesty's reign, highlighting the Queen's influence upon her friends and Household, and their reciprocal influence upon the Sovereign. Along the way we meet the royal relatives, intimate acquaintances, and trusted officials who have supported and guided Her Majesty from early childhood through to heiress presumptive to the throne and ultimately as reigning monarch.

From a veteran air-refueling expert who flew missions for over two decades during the Cold War, Gulf War, and Iraq War comes a thrilling eyewitness account of modern warfare, with inspirational stories and crucial lessons for people on the battlefield, in boardrooms, and in their everyday lives...

The magnificent follow-up to Wild Swans, the multimillion copy, internationally bestselling sensation that traces the history of modern China through the true stories of three generations of courageous women in one family. “AT THE AGE OF FIFTEEN MY GRANDMOTHER became the concubine of a warlord...

This audiobook includes a foreword read by Ben's brother and fellow international rugby player, Tom Youngs, as well as a bonus audio-exclusive conversation between the two brothers. In his unique, touching and honest memoir, rugby union legend Ben Youngs bares it all for the first time. Ben...

A rich boy turned refugee tells the story of coming full circle to succeed in ways beyond his imagination. Born to a family that had recently fled British India during the partition of India and Pakistan, Ram's early life in Mombasa seemed charmed with wealth and success. However, losing all of this overnight through a second deportation, this time from Kenya to the UK, he saw the course of his life change beyond recognition.

A sensational, eye-opening account of Emma Jung’s complex marriage to Carl Gustav Jung and the hitherto unknown role she played in the early years of the psychoanalytic movement. Clever and ambitious, Emma Jung yearned to study the natural sciences at the University of Zurich. But the strict...

The loss of America was a stunning and unexpected defeat for the powerful British Empire. Common wisdom has held that incompetent military commanders and political leaders in Britain must have been to blame, but were they? This intriguing audiobook makes a different argument. Weaving together the personal stories of ten prominent men historian Andrew O'Shaughnessy dispels the incompetence myth and uncovers the real reasons that rebellious colonials were able to achieve victory.