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A poignant and introspective memoir from Irish journalist and broadcaster Charlie Bird. In 2021, Charlie Bird was diagnosed with motor neurone disease – a man whose voice was so synonymous with his career faced losing it completely. Yet knowing he had just a short time left with family and friends, what emerged was a great sense of resilience and motivation to take advantage of every moment.
Here, Charlie reflects on his life and phenomenal broadcast career through the lens of his diagnosis, as he ponders the big questions and takes stock of the small moments that we so often overlook. Written over the course of 2022 as his health deteriorated, with the help of long-time friend and fellow journalist Ray Burke, this is a candid and unforgettable story about the triumph of the human spirit and, ultimately, what it means to be alive.
‘Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name.
My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.’
So begins the riveting story of acclaimed actor Matthew Perry, taking us along on his journey from childhood ambition to fame to addiction and recovery in the aftermath of a life-threatening health scare. Before the frequent hospital visits and stints in rehab, there was five-year-old Matthew, who travelled from Montreal to Los Angeles, shuffling between his separated parents; fourteen-year-old Matthew, who was a nationally ranked tennis star in Canada; twenty-four-year-old Matthew, who nabbed a coveted role as a lead cast member on the talked-about pilot then called Friends Like Us.
. . and so much more.
In an extraordinary story that only he could tell – and in the heartfelt, hilarious, and warmly familiar way only he could tell it – Matthew Perry lays bare the fractured family that raised him (and also left him to his own devices), the desire for recognition that drove him to fame, and the void inside him that could not be filled even by his greatest dreams coming true.
But he also details the peace he’s found in sobriety and how he feels about the ubiquity of Friends, sharing stories about his castmates and other stars he met along the way. Frank, self-aware, and with his trademark humour, Perry vividly depicts his lifelong battle with addiction and what fuelled it despite seemingly having it all.
Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing is an unforgettable memoir that is both intimate and eye-opening – as well as a hand extended to anyone struggling with sobriety. Unflinchingly honest, moving, and uproariously funny, this is the book fans have been waiting for.
Cities and countries engulfed by panic and death, desperate for vaccines but fearful of what inoculation may bring. This is what the world has just gone through with Covid-19. But as Simon Schama shows in his epic history of vulnerable humanity caught between the terror of contagion and the ingenuity of science, it has happened before.
Characteristically, with Schama the message is delivered through gripping, page-turning stories set in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: smallpox strikes London; cholera hits Paris; plague comes to India. Threading through the scenes of terror, suffering and hope – in hospitals and prisons, palaces and slums – are an unforgettable cast of characters: a philosopher-playwright burning up with smallpox in a country chateau; a vaccinating doctor paying house calls in Halifax; a woman doctor in south India driving her inoculator-carriage through the stricken streets as dead monkeys drop from the trees. But we are also in the labs when great, life-saving breakthroughs happen, in Paris, Hong Kong and Mumbai.
At the heart of it all, an unsung hero: Waldemar Haffkine. A gun-toting Jewish student in Odesa turned microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute, hailed in England as ‘the saviour of mankind’ for vaccinating millions against cholera and bubonic plague in British India while being cold-shouldered by the medical establishment of the Raj. Creator of the world’s first mass production line of vaccines in Mumbai, he is tragically brought down in an act of shocking injustice.
Foreign Bodies crosses borders between east and west, Asia and Europe, the worlds of rich and poor, politics and science. Its thrilling story carries with it the credo of its author on the interconnectedness of humanity and nature; of the powerful and the people. Ultimately, Schama says, as we face the challenges of our times together, ‘there are no foreigners, only familiars’.
A man awakes in a clearing in what appears to be medieval England with no memory of who he is, where he came from, or why he is there. Chased by a group from his own time, his sole hope for survival lies in regaining his missing memories, making allies among the locals, and perhaps even trusting in their superstitious boasts. His only help from the “real world” should have been a guidebook entitled The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England, except his copy exploded during transit.
The few fragments he managed to save provide clues to his situation, but can he figure them out in time to survive?
From the master storyteller and internationally bestselling author – the story of humanity from prehistory to the present day, told through the one thing all humans have in common: family. We begin with the footsteps of a family walking along a beach 950,000 years ago. From here, Montefiore takes us on an exhilarating epic journey through the families that have shaped our world: the Caesars, Medicis and Incas, Ottomans and Mughals, Bonapartes, Habsburgs and Zulus, Rothschilds, Rockefellers and Krupps, Churchills, Kennedys, Castros, Nehrus, Pahlavis and Kenyattas, Saudis, Kims and Assads.
A rich cast of complex characters form the beating heart of the story. Some are well-known leaders, from Alexander the Great, Attila, Ivan the Terrible and Genghis Khan to Hitler, Thatcher, Obama, Putin and Zelensky. Some are creative, from Socrates, Michelangelo and Shakespeare to Newton, Mozart, Balzac, Freud, Bowie and Tim Berners-Lee.
Others are lesser-known: Hongwu, who began life as a beggar and founded the Ming dynasty; Kamehameha, conqueror of Hawaii; Zenobia, Arab empress who defied Rome; King Henry of Haiti; Lady Murasaki, first female novelist; Sayyida al-Hurra, Moroccan pirate-queen. Here are not just conquerors and queens but prophets, charlatans, actors, gangsters, artists, scientists, doctors, tycoons, lovers, wives, husbands and children. This is world history on the most grand and intimate scale – spanning centuries, continents and cultures, and linking grand themes of war, migration, plague, religion, medicine and technology to the people at the centre of the human drama.
As spellbinding as fiction, The World captures the story of humankind in all its joy, sorrow, romance, ingenuity and cruelty in a ground-breaking, single narrative that will forever shift the boundaries of what history can achieve.
Our brains have distinct mechanisms for talking about thoughts, about memories, about feelings and about the future. In Praise of Talking will be about the neuroscience of how we talk about ourselves, how we disclose information, and how that activity is central to the bonds we make with each other. It draws on a wealth of the latest neurological research, some of which the author has conducted himself, on talking about ourselves to other people – how we do it and why we do it, and what our brains are up to while we do it.
We talk about ourselves so consistently and pervasively we are unaware how much talking about ourselves to others supports our intense social lives.
It is the currency underlying social transactions and social life, allowing us to build trust and rapport with others. In turn, building trust and rapport with others is at the core of our mental and social well-being. Conversation depends critically on having a richly-stocked autobiographical memory that we use not just in the service of remembering, but also in negotiating our position and status with others.
We talk about ourselves to change what other people think of us, feel about us, will do for us.
This novel way of thinking about talking turns our view of identity inside-out because our sense of identity arises out of what we think others think about us. We tell our stories to others, drawing on our fragile and fallible autobiographical memories, which are in turn shaped by the questions we are asked and the stories we want to tell about ourselves, and by what others tell us. And we do so to affect what others think about us – not simply to disclose ourselves to others.
And this is all in the service of social belonging: to the family, to tribes, to institutions, to cultures and subcultures, to nations, to those who profess the same ideals and stories that we do.
In Praise of Talking blends expertise and a scientific journey of discovery, leavened by Shane O’Mara’s warm tone and evangelical gift for transmitting the wonder of the brain to a wide readership.
Three very different men battle to control their destinies as they hurtle through the hall of mirrors of the global shadow economy.
Jack Kelly, a veteran US Drug Enforcement Administration agent, tasked with following a trail of dirty money across continents from a top-secret investigative unit based in Virginia.
Salvatore Pititto is an ambitious Mafia capo working on a vast cocaine shipment who becomes unexpectedly pulled into an arms-smuggling conspiracy.
Mustafa Badreddine is a ghost-like master terrorist wanted by governments across the world who has been secretly dispatched to Syria for his final mission.
Each man, born in radically different circumstances in the 1960s, is in his own way grappling with the powerful and unstoppable forces that shape the world around us; forces which topple governments, send refugees fleeing across borders, and put guns in the hands of mercenaries and militias. Each has devoted his whole life to an institution – the DEA, the Mafia and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah – and each will eventually be destroyed or betrayed by the thing they believe in the most.
Set during 2015 and 2016, as the global order began to implode under the pressures of the Syrian civil war and the European refugee crisis, CHASING SHADOWS looks back over the historical conflicts, events and personal histories that have shaped the lives of these three men. It’s a book that shows the betrayals, the disillusionment and the violence as Jack Kelly hunts down his targets.
Join us on another unforgettable adventure through the extraordinary life and strong opinions of Miriam Margolyes.
‘My new book is called OH MIRIAM! – something that has been said to me a lot over the years, often in tones of strong disapproval. It contains lots more revelations and stories and discoveries and I can’t wait to share it with you all!’
From being escorted off the Today programme (for saying what we were all thinking) to declaring her love to Vanessa Redgrave; from Tales of the Unexpected to Graham Norton’s sofa, she is the UK’s most loved and most outspoken national treasure. Oh Miriam! takes you inside both her head and her heart.
Buckle up for the most irrepressible, hilarious and moving read of 2023
Uncover the secrets of our island in this engrossing look at magical landmarks across the country.
Travelling province by province through Ireland, Manchan outlines the stories most closely associated with each site, focussing on a specific beast or creature from legend and highlighting a magical word or phrase in Irish alongside.
Discover the dobharchu or water hound of Achill Island; the enchanted sow Cailcheir of Sligo’s Keash Caves; the Burren’s ollpheist or great serpent; the Caoranach or hairy worm of Lough Derg; the one-eyed salmon of Ballyshannon; and the man wolves of Ossory, County Kilkenny, amongst many others.
This stunning gift book is a feast for the eyes for Manchan fans of all ages.
It is 1986 and Syvert Loyning has returned from military service to his mother’s home in southern Norway. One night, he dreams of his late father, and the next morning can’t shake him from his mind. Searching through his father’s belongings for clues and connections, Syvert finds a cache of letters that leads to the Soviet Union, and to a half-sister, Alevtina, he didn’t know he had.
Several decades later, in present-day Russia, he will meet her – just as a mysterious new star appears in the sky…
From internationally bestselling author Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Wolves of Eternity is the new book in a visionary series that begins with The Morning Star.
Expansive, searching and deeply human, it questions the responsibilities we have toward one another and ourselves – and the limits of what we can understand about life itself.
Life is all about relationships and the quality of those connections, whether that’s with family, partners, friends, colleagues or most importantly yourself. If you can get those relationships on a functional and even keel, then the other tricky stuff that life throws your way becomes easier to manage.
In this warm, practical and witty book, No.1 Sunday Times bestselling psychotherapist Philippa Perry shows you how to approach life’s big problems.
How do you find and keep love? What can you do to manage conflict better? How can you get unstuck and cope with change and loss? What does it mean to you to be content? Are other people just annoying or are you the problem?
With a healthy dose of sanity, Philippa Perry’s compassionate advice could help you become a happier, wiser person.
The sea has always been a part of Nuala Moore’s life: her earliest memory is of jumping off her father’s fishing boat in Dingle Harbour and swimming back to shore. Since then, she’s swum in some of the coldest, most remote and dangerous waters in the world, from the Bering Strait to the Drake Passage. After years of marathon swimming, Nuala struggled to balance sacrifice and achievement.
Her work-life balance, coupled with caring for her father, forced a change in her pathway. She turned to ice swimming. For Nuala, these extreme situations offered freedom and a chance to find her true north.
Nuala believes that everyone is capable of greatness, whatever shape that might take. Limitless is her breathtaking memoir, detailing what goes through her mind when she’s in the water and how, when she returns home, she processes the fallout of pushing herself to the brink.
In Big Beacon, Norwich’s favourite son and best broadcaster, Alan Partridge, triumphs against the odds.
TWICE.
Using an innovative ‘dual narrative’ structure you sometimes see in films, Big Beacon tells the story of how Partridge heroically rebuilt his TV career, rising like a phoenix from the desolate wasteland of local radio to climb to the summit of Mount Primetime and regain the nationwide prominence his talent merits.
But then something quite unexpected and moving, because Big Beacon also tells the story of a selfless man, driven to restore an old lighthouse to its former glory, motivated by nothing more than respect for a quietly heroic old building that many take for granted, which some people think is a metaphor for Alan himself even though it’s not really for them to say.*
Leaving his old life behind and relocating to a small coastal village in Kent, Alan battles through adversity, wins the hearts and minds of a suspicious community, and ultimately shows himself to be a quite wonderful man.
* The two strands will run in tandem, their narrative arcs mirroring each other to make the parallels between the two stories abundantly clear to the less able reader.
New, updated edition. Gaelic football is Ireland’s native sport. Fast, physical, athletic and driven by local and national rivalries, it is a unique part of our heritage.
Ray McManus and his team at Sportsfile are as passionate as all true sports fans, and have been taking photographs for over forty years. They have been at All Ireland finals, of course, but also at club matches throughout the land. With reminiscences from photographers and players alike, this book is a look back over the decades at the legendary players, matches and moments that have contributed to the narrative of one of the world’s most exciting sports.
A must for Gaelic Football fans wherever they are. First published in 2016, this edition includes the return to crowds at matches after the pandemic, Mayo ending Dublin’s historic run, and Tyrone’s ascent to the top step of the podium.
“Being a footballer was my destiny.” After being expelled from school for playing football for his country, fifteen-year-old Liam Brady travelled to London to join Arsenal, and soon became an indispensable part of their glorious 1970s team. Rightly considered one of the Republic of Ireland’s best-ever footballers, he went on to enjoy successes with Juventus, Sampdoria and West Ham, as well as managing Celtic and Brighton and Hove, and becoming assistant manager of his national team. Today he is best known for his much-respected TV punditry and searingly intelligent insights into the game he adores.
Full of honest insights, amusing anecdotes and recollections of extraordinary times, with Born to be a Footballer Brady delivers a compelling story of a fifty-year career that is unparalleled in Irish sport.