Other books that might interest you

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  Mutiny - A womans quest for...

  Dorothy Edwards

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  Dorothy Edwards, an only child, was born on the 18th August 1902 at Ogmore Vale in Glamorgan. 
   
  Her father was a headmaster and an early activist in the Independent Labour Party.  At age 9 Dorothy, dressed in red, welcomed Keir Hardy on to the stage at Tonypandy during the national coal strike of 1912. She was taught that revolution was at hand, that class barriers would be a thing of the past. 
    
  Dorothy won a scholarship and boarded at Howell's School for Girls in Llandaff before moving to University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire where she read Greek and philosophy. 
   
  Her early hopes to be an opera singer were set to one side after graduating and the death of her father. Instead she took on part-time work to supplement her mother’s pension with whom she now lived. 
   
  Dorothy managed to write a number of short stories which appeared in the literary journals of the day.  She spent several months with her mother in Vienna, all the time revising or writing before embarking on ‘Winter Sonata’, a short novel published in 1928. 
   
  Introductions to several members of the Bloomsbury Group meant a move to London and a division of her time between child-care for the family of Bloomsbury author David Garnett and the promise of an advance payment for her work on a new volume of stories. 
   
  However, Dorothy’s life was starting to spiral out of control; she was attracted to the Welsh nationalist movement but felt that her Welsh provincialism made her, in London at least, feel socially inferior. Leaving her mother dependent on a hired companion consumed her with guilt as did the end of an affair with a married musician. 
   
  On the 5th January 1934, having spent the morning burning her papers, Dorothy Edwards threw herself in front of a train near Caerphilly railway station.  
   
  Her suicide note read: "I am killing myself because I have never sincerely loved any human being all my life. I have accepted kindness and friendship and even love without gratitude, and given nothing in return."

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  John Keats - Poetry Life &...

  Suzie Grogan

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  “This is a celebratory meld of memoir, biography and travelogue, intensely personal and all the better for it.” —Eleanor Fitzsimons, author of Wilde’s Women 
   
  John Keats is one of Britain’s best-known and most-loved poets. Despite dying in Rome in 1821, at the age of just twenty-five, his poems continue to inspire generations who reinterpret and reinvent the ways in which we consume his work. 
   
  Apart from his long association with Hampstead, North London, he has not previously been known as a poet of ‘place’ in the way we associate Wordsworth with the Lake District, for example, and for many years readers considered Keats’s work remote from political and social context. Yet Keats was acutely aware of and influenced by his surroundings: Hampstead; Guy’s Hospital in London where he trained as a doctor; Teignmouth where he nursed his brother Tom; a walking tour of the Lake District and Scotland; the Isle of Wight; the area around Chichester and in Winchester, where his last great ode, “To Autumn,” was composed. 
   
  Suzie Grogan takes the reader on a journey through Keats’s life and landscapes, introducing us to his best and most influential work. Utilizing primary sources such as Keats’s letters to friends and family and the very latest biographical and academic work, it offers an accessible way to see Keats through the lens of the places he visited and aims to spark a lasting interest in the real Keats—the poet and the man. 
   
  “Warm and worthwhile observations on how places as varied as the Lake District and the Isle of Wight shaped Keats’s verse.” —Camden New Journal

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  The Right Sort of Girl - The...

  Anita Rani

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  Anita's debut novel Baby Does a Runner is available to pre-order now - coming July 2023!Fizzing with her trademark energy, hilarity and charm, Countryfile's Anita Rani reads her incredible first memoir, The Right Sort of Girl. 'I'm a girl and northern and brown, didn't you know? A triple threat!'Trying to navigate her Indian world at home and the British world outside her front door, Anita Rani was a girl who didn't ­fit in anywhere. She was always destined to stand out: from playing Mary in her otherwise all white nursery nativity to growing up in eighties Yorkshire with her Punjabi family, spending evenings in the factory her parents owned whilst trying to ­figure out how best to get rid of hair that seemed to be growing EVERYWHERE.Anita shares the lessons she wishes her younger self could have known: 'Freedom is Complicated', 'You Will Fall in Love and Be Loved' and, most importantly, 'Your Anger is Legitimate'. How did she manage to become the powerhouse she is, whilst battling against being too white inside her home and too brown outside of it?This story of a second-generation British Indian woman up north is also a tale of tenacity and a life lived with positivity and humour. If you have ever felt alone, different, or just not the right sort of girl, this is the book for you.'Warm, honest and funny, filled with hope and inspiration' Nikesh Shukla'Funny, touching, occasionally veering into beautifully controlled, quiet rage... a must-read' Viv Groskop'Like a bloody good natter with your down-to-earth friend' Shappi Khorsandi'A joy from start to finish' Emma Kennedy'Empowering... I will be recommending to everyone I know' Nikita Gill

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  It Takes a Worried Man - A Memoir

  Brendan Halpin

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  Hilarious and heartbreaking, profane and profound, It Takes a Worried Man is the true story of a young husband and father whose life is changed forever by his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis. Following Brendan Halpin’s cranky, irreverent and lustful thoughts through the diagnosis and treatment of his wife, Kirsten, It Takes a Worried Man is an unflinching and raw look at how cancer transforms a family. It’s also the funniest book about cancer you’ll ever read.

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  Thomas Kent - 16Lives

  Meda Ryan

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  Born in 1865 into a farming family of Fenian tradition near Fermoy in Co. Cork, Thomas Kent became involved in the Land League in the 1880s and lived for a time in Boston, where he was active in Irish cultural organisations. In 1889, back in Ireland he joined the fight against injustices and evictions and was imprisoned several times for his part in orchestrating a boycotting campaign.
  Dedicated to freeing Ireland, Thomas and his brothers mobilised in Co. Cork at Easter 1916 and waited in vain for direct orders from Dublin headquarters. During a gunfight at their home – the only fighting to take place in Co. Cork – a policeman and Thomas's brother Richard were killed.
  Thomas was charged with 'taking part in an armed rebellion' and sentenced to death. He was executed by firing squad in Cork Barracks on 9 May 1916.
  Meda Ryan's biography shines light on a man who was 'Ireland's forgotten patriot' until a state funeral over ninety-nine years after his death, in September 2015.

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  Red - My Uncensored Life in Rock

  Sammy Hagar, Joel Selvin

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  The former Van Halen front man recounts his life, from his childhood to his wild days in rock ‘n’ roll, in this one-of-a-kind memoir. 
   
  For almost forty years, Sammy Hagar has been a fixture in rock music. From breaking into the industry with the band Montrose to his multiplatinum solo career to his ride as the front man of Van Halen, Sammy’s powerful and unforgettable voice has set the tone for some of the greatest rock anthems ever written—songs like “I Can’t Drive 55,” “Right Now,” and “Why Can’t This Be Love.” 
   
  In Red, Sammy tells the outrageous story of his tear through rock ‘n’ roll. From the decadence of being one of the world’s biggest rock stars to the unfiltered story of being forced out of Van Halen, Sammy’s account spares no one, least of all himself. His is a tale of a true rock ‘n’ roller—someone who’s spent decades bringing the party with wherever he goes but always headin’ back to Cabo for más tequila. 
   
  Praise for Red 
   
  “There are tell-all books, and then there are tell-all books written by Sammy Hagar. The ex-Van Halen front man holds back nothing—and I mean absolutely nothing. . . . Red is jam-packed with great anecdotes . . . and other tidbits that take fans of music and pop culture to places they normally wouldn’t get to go.” —Associated Press

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