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  Ten Years Hard Labour

  Chris Williamson

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  For 42 years, Chris Williamson was a Labour Party member. In 2010, he was elected to Parliament to represent his home town. However, in 2019, he was unceremoniously suspended from the party after being subjected to a smear campaign, and he later resigned in protest at the betrayal.
  In this forensic memoir – free of his Labourist clutches – Williamson provides a unique ringside view. As well as lifting the lid on the amateurish politics-by-focus-groups under Ed Miliband, Williamson exposes some of the major events that created and deepened Labour's 'antisemitism crisis' under Jeremy Corbyn.
  In his mission to set the record straight on numerous misreported events, Williamson names and shames the individuals – on the left and the right – whom he holds responsible for delivering his former party back into the hands of New Labourism under Sir Keir Starmer. To understand the existential crisis facing socialists in Britain today, Williamson's account of recent Labour history is indispensable.

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  Winter - The Story of a Season

  Val McDermid

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  In this radiant work of creative nonfiction, internationally beloved novelist Val McDermid delivers a dazzling ode to a lost world, ruminating on a single winter in her life as she journeys into the heart of the season's ever-evolving community-based traditions 
  Val McDermid has always had a soft spot for winter: the bitter clarity of a crisp cold day, the crunch of frost on fallen leaves, and the chance to be enveloped in big jumpers and thick socks. 
  In Winter, McDermid takes us on an adventure through the season, from the frosty streets of Edinburgh to the windblown Scottish coast, from Bonfire Night and Christmas to Burns Night and Up Helly Aa. Recalling in parallel memories from her own childhood--of skating over frozen lakes and carving a "neep" (rutabaga) for Halloween to being taken to see her first real Christmas tree in the town square--McDermid offers a wise and enchanting meditation on winter and its ever-changing, sometimes ephemeral, traditions. 
  A hygge-filled journey through winter nights, McDermid reminds us that it is a time of rest, retreat and creativity, for scribbling in notebooks and settling in beside the fire. A treat for the hunkering-down, post-holiday reading season, Winter is a charming and cozy celebration of the year's idle months from one of Scotland's best-loved writers.

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  My Secret Life Vol 9 Chapter 2

  Dominic Crawford Collins

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  My Secret Life is an anonymously penned memoir written during a period from the 1840s to the 1880s by a wealthy and sex obsessed English gentleman who refers to himself simply as ‘Walter’. Part confessional, part investigative erotic journalism, it meticulously documents every detail of the author’s prolific sexual encounters, offering us in the process an eye and thigh opening account of life behind closed doors in the Victorian age.
  
  Women, in both mind and body, were the all consuming object of Walter’s interest. From early youth through to old age his quest for erotic discovery and adventure with them was never diminished.
  
  Unlike contemporary 19th century erotic texts, such as The Pearl, whose sole object was to titillate, Walter’s interest in his subjects did not end with the extinguishing of the carnal flame. His hunger to understand the circumstances and minds of the women he encountered is never upstaged by the sex. Their potted life histories, their most intimate desires and acts were shared with him and in turn meticulously recorded by him, written down verbatim while still fresh in his mind.
  
  The resulting poignant record of a lost era and the intimate moments of the women who inhabited it offer us a remarkable insight into the 19th century that cannot be gleaned from any other source.
  
  The complete unabridged text is being released as a fully scored audiofilm (an audio book with accompanying music soundtrack) by film composer Dominic Crawford Collins.
  
  VOLUME 9 CHAPTER 2
  Jessie C**t*s. • A male friend at the Argyle. • Big breasts. • Friendly intimacy established. • Her first lodger. • Julia R**l***s. • A chubby beauty. • "How many times has he done you?" • At the staircase window. • Two bums felt. • Three on the bed. • Julia pierced. • Jessie's complaisance. • The man in the bed room below. • "Where are you Julia?" • Jessie goes home. • A fuck during dinner. • Full dressed at the bed side. • In the cab after. • Between breasts. • In armpit. • Jessie marries and departs. • Julia R**l***s visited. • At home to no one. • Exercises on sofa and table. • The baudy album.

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  The Green Mister Rogers -...

  Sara Lindey, Jason King, Junlei Li

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  Fred Rogers was an international celebrity. He was a pioneer in children's television, an advocate for families, and a multimedia artist and performer. He wrote the television scripts and music, performed puppetry, sang, hosted, and directed Mister Rogers' Neighborhood for more than thirty years. Rogers' direct, slow, gentle, and empathic approach is supported by his superior emotional strength, his intellectual and creative courage, and his joyful spiritual confidence. 
   
   
   
  The Green Mister Rogers: Environmentalism in "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" centers on the show's environmentalism, primarily expressed through his themed week "Caring for the Environment," produced in 1990 in coordination with the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day. Unfolding against a trash catastrophe in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, Rogers advances an environmentalism for children that secures children in their family homes while extending their perspective to faraway places, from the local recycling center to Florida’s coral reef. Ultimately, Rogers cultivates a practical wisdom that provides a way for children to confront the environmental crisis through action and hope and, in doing so, develop into adults who possess greater care for the environment and a capacious imagination for solving the ecological problems we face.

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  A Capitalist - From their pens...

  George Gissing

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  George Robert Gissing was born on November 22nd, 1857 in Wakefield, Yorkshire.  
  He was educated at Back Lane School in Wakefield. Gissing loved school. He was enthusiastic with a thirst for learning and always diligent.  By the age of ten he was reading Dickens, a lifelong hero. 
  In 1872 Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College. Whilst there Gissing worked hard but remained solitary. Unfortunately, he had run short of funds and stole from his fellow students. He was arrested, prosecuted, found guilty, expelled and sentenced to a month's hard labour in 1876. 
  On release he decided to start over.  In September 1876 he travelled to the United States. Here he wrote short stories for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers. On his return home he was ready for novels. 
  Gissing self-published his first novel but it failed to sell.  His second was acquired but never published. His writing career was static.  Something had to change.  And it did. 
  By 1884 The Unclassed was published.  Now everything he wrote was published. Both Isabel Clarendon and Demos appeared in 1886. He mined the lives of the working class as diligently as any capitalist. 
  In 1889 Gissing used the proceeds from the sale of The Nether World to go to Italy. This trip formed the basis for his 1890 work The Emancipated. 
  Gissing's works began to command higher payments. New Grub Street (1891) brought a fee of £250.  
  Short stories followed and in 1895, three novellas were published; Eve's Ransom, The Paying Guest and Sleeping Fires. Gissing was careful to keep up with the changing attitudes of his audience.  
  Unfortunately, he was also diagnosed as suffering from emphysema. The last years of his life were spent as a semi-invalid in France but he continued to write. 1899; The Crown of Life. Our Friend the Charlatan appeared in 1901, followed two years later by The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. 
  George Robert Gissing died aged 46 on December 28th, 1903 after catching a chill on a winter walk.

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  English Journey: ‘The finest...

  J. B. Priestley

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  ‘The finest book ever written about England and the English’ Stuart Maconie 
  ‘J. B. Priestley is one of our literary icons of the 20th Century and it is time that we all became re-acquainted with his genius.’ Dame Judi Dench 
  Three years before George Orwell made his expedition to the far and frozen North in The Road to Wigan Pier, celebrated writer and broadcaster JB Priestley cast his net wider, in a book subtitled ‘a Rambling but Truthful Account of What One Man Saw and Heard and Felt and Thought During a Journey Through England During the Autumn of the Year 1933.’ Appearing first in 1934, it was a huge and immediate success. Today, it still stands as a timeless classic: warm-hearted, intensely patriotic and profound. 
  An account of his journey through England – from Southampton to the Black Country, to the North East and Newcastle, to Norwich and home – English Journey is funny and tender. But it is also a forensic reading of a changing England and a call to arms as passionate as anything in Orwell’s bleak masterpiece. Moreover, it both captured and catalysed the public mood of its time. In capturing and describing an English landscape and people hitherto unseen, writing scathingly about vested interests and underlining the dignity of working people, Priestley influenced the thinking and attitudes of an entire generation and helped formulate a public consensus for change that led to the birth of the welfare state. 
  Prophetic and as relevant today as it was nearly ninety years ago, English Journey is an elegant and readable love letter to a country Priestley finds unfathomable. 
  Priestley's English Journey is a special exploration of Britain, a top choice for those who appreciate travelogues and social history. His essays are a testament to his deep affection for his homeland, marking this book as one of the best in non-fiction. 
  For fans of Rory Stewart (The Marches), Maggie O'Farrell (I Am, I Am, I Am), and Marion Turner (The Wife of Bath). 
  HarperCollins 2023

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