Other books that might interest you

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  Calling WPC Crockford - The...

  Ruth D'Alessandro

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  In the early 1950s, the Berkshire Constabulary finally opened its ranks to more women. And WPC Crockford was one of those early pioneers...When 21-year-old Gwendoline Crockford signed up to join the Berkshire Constabulary in 1951, she had little idea of what she was getting herself into. Whether carrying a human skeleton out of the woods, finding a missing child, investigating thefts, or chasing an escaped zebra, every day brought fresh adventures.In this nostalgic, tender and honest account of post-war British society, we follow a bright, determined woman navigating a man's world, serving as many people as she can. From performing traffic duties to unravelling a dark secret at the heart of an impoverished family, WPC Crockford's career was full of joy, thrills – and heartbreak.Written by her daughter Ruth, this is the story of a real-life woman police constable as she embarks on her police career.

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  Wild Country - The man who made...

  Mark Vallance

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  Shortlisted: 2016 Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature
  '[Wild Country] chronicles not just the mountains [Mark] has climbed, but the part he played in bringing to market a little piece of sporting equipment that revolutionised mountaineering and saved countless lives.' – Sarah Freeman, Yorkshire Post
  In early 1978, an extraordinary new invention for rock climbers was featured on the BBC television science show Tomorrow's World. It was called the 'Friend', and it not only made the sport safer, it helped push the limits of the possible. The company that made them was called Wild Country, the brainchild of Mark Vallance. Within six months, Vallance was selling Friends in sixteen countries. Wild Country would go on to develop much of the gear that transformed climbing in the 1980s.
  Mark Vallance's influence on the outdoor world extends far beyond the company he founded. He owned and opened the influential retailer Outside in the Peak District and was part of the team that built The Foundry, Sheffield's premier climbing wall – the first modern climbing gym in Britain. He worked for the Peak District National Park and served on its board. He even found time to climb 8,000-metre peaks and the Nose on El Capitan. Diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in his mid fifties and robbed of his plans for retirement, Vallance found a new sense of purpose as a reforming president of the British Mountaineering Council.
  In Wild Country, Vallance traces his story, from childhood influences like Robin Hodgkin and Sir Jack Longland, to two years in Antarctica, where he was base commander of the UK's largest and most southerly scientific station at Halley Bay, before his fateful meeting with Ray Jardine, the man who invented Friends, in Yosemite.
  Trenchant, provocative and challenging, Wild Country is a remarkable personal story and a fresh perspective on the role of the outdoors in British life and the development of climbing in its most revolutionary phase.

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  Dylan Thomas - A New Life

  Andrew Lycett

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  The renowned literary biographer offers a “thoroughly well-written” chronicle of the legendary Welsh poet’s life that is “rich in anecdote” (The New Yorker).   Dylan Thomas is as legendary for his raucous life as for his literary genius. The author of the immortal poems Death Shall Have No Dominion, Before I Knocked, and Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, as well as the short story A Christmas in Wales, and the “play for voices” Under Milk Wood, published his first book, 18 Poems, in 1934, when he was only twenty years old.   When he died in New York in 1953, at age thirty-nine, the myths took hold: he became the Keats and the Byron of his generation—the romantic poet who died too young, his potential unfulfilled.   Making masterful use of original material from archives and personal papers, Andrew Lycett describes the development of the young poet, brings valuable new insights to Thomas’s poetry, and unearths fascinating details about the poet’s many affairs and his tempestuous marriage to his passionate Irish wife, Caitlin. The result is a poignant yet stirring portrait of the chaos of Thomas’s personal life and a welcome re-evaluation of the lyricism and experimentalism of his literary legacy.  “This is the best biography of the poet I have ever read.” —Robert Nye, The Scotsman

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  Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars...

  Kate Greene

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  This program is read by the authorWhen it comes to Mars, the focus is often on how to get there: the rockets, the engines, the fuel. But upon arrival, what will it actually be like?In 2013, Kate Greene moved to Mars. That is, along with five fellow crew members, she embarked on NASA's first HI-SEAS mission, a simulated Martian environment located on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawai'i. For four months she lived, worked, and slept in an isolated geodesic dome, conducting a sleep study on her crew mates and gaining incredible insight into human behavior in tight quarters, as well as the nature of boredom, dreams, and isolation that arise amidst the promise of scientific progress and glory.In Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars, Greene draws on her experience to contemplate humanity's broader impulse to explore. The result is a twined story of space and life, of the standard, able-bodied astronaut and Greene's brother's disability, of the lag time of interplanetary correspondences and the challenges of a long-distance marriage, of freeze-dried egg powder and fresh pineapple, of departure and return.By asking what kind of wisdom humanity might take to Mars and elsewhere in the Universe, Greene has written a remarkable, wide-ranging examination of our time in space right now, as a pre-Mars species, poised on the edge, readying for launch.A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press

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  Mouthy - Unfiltered Uncensored &...

  Megan McKenna

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  THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERA sassy, frank, funny and inspirational autobiography, MOUTHY is the unfiltered, uncensored and unbelievable story of the girl you think you know from shows like TOWIE, There's Something About Megan, Celebrity Big Brother, Ex on the Beach and Britain's Got Talent. This is the story of what really goes on when the cameras stop rolling and the paparazzi have gone home, uncovering the truth behind the headlines - straight from the famous Megan McKenna mouth.

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  The People of the Abyss

  Jack London

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  The People of the Abyss (1903) is a book by Jack London about life in the East End of London in 1902. He wrote this first-hand account after living in the East End (including the Whitechapel District) for several months, sometimes staying in workhouses or sleeping on the streets. The conditions he experienced and wrote about, were the same as those endured by an estimated 500,000 of the contemporary London poor.

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