Creator: Robin Askwith
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 1994-09-06
Dewey code: 796
RRP: £10.99
Price: £3.99
Review Botham: My Autobiography: Don't Tell Kath... / HarperCollins Audio:
Creator: Jeremy Hardy
Publication date: 2001-07-05
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.49
Review French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France: Cycling the Tour De France / Random House Audiobooks:Comic writer Tim Moore trades his ailing Rolls Royce for a bicycle, a map and a water bottle in French Revolutions. This is a quest to pedal the route of the Tour de France, no mean feat for the fit, let alone a self-described suburban slouch. The resulting 2,256-haphazard-mile journey transforms Moore into an incredibly fit and passionately proud cyclist. Initially, Moore takes the "I will do it and it probably will kill me" approach. His normal perspective, as a stooge to life's misfortunes, plays well as he prepares to ride the route of the 2000 Tour de France. Moore is the everyman who pedalled in youth and now wouldn't ride a bike to the corner store. But unlike a traveller by car, train or plane, Moore has to navigate France under his own steam. Somewhere around the Ventoux, the world's windiest place, Moore starts to change. He becomes enraptured by the feat itself as mile by mile he realises he is no longer an accidental cyclist but a lean, mean cycling machine. Gradually, the narrative turns from travel to a personal quest. [+]Along the route, Moore's details of the heroes of the Tour make an excellent primer on this gruelling race and helps the uninitiated understand the frenzy that grips France each July as the races meanders through incidental villages, over mountains and, finally, into Paris. It is worth reading for that alone. Having survived mountains of pain, a disgusting diet and motels of dubious value, a new, muscular Moore concludes that "I might never leave my mark on the Tour, but that didn't matter. It has left its mark on me". To follow Moore's path of perspiration is certainly not a vacation. Yet, this curmudgeonly clever and inspirational book makes one want to do just that. "Old Father Time was catching up with Old Father Tim. If I didn't do it this year, I wouldn't because maybe next year I couldn't," he says before starting out. And that, as Tim Moore so surely points out, is what pushes any true traveller out the door. -Kathleen Buckley.
Creator: Simon Callow
Publication date: 2000-10-05
Dewey code: 900
RRP: £9.99
Price: £1.94
Review London: Fire And Pestilence / Random House Audiobooks:
Creator: Christopher Timothy
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1994-04
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £43.42
Price: £40.00
Review If Only They Could Talk: Complete & Unabridged (Vet Series , Vol 1) / Chivers Audio Books:
Creator: Sheila Mitchell
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1998-12
RRP: £55.95
Price: £55.95
Review Testament of Youth: Complete & Unabridged: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900-1925: Complete & Unabridged / ISIS Gold Audio Books:In 1914 Vera Brittain was 21 years old, and an undergraduate student at Somerville College, Oxford. When war broke out in August of that year, Brittain "temporarily" disrupted her studies to enrol as a volunteer nurse, nursing casualties both in England and on the Western Front. The next four years were to cause a deep rupture in Brittain's life, as she witnessed not only the horrors of war first hand, but also experienced the quadruple loss of her fiancé, her brother, and two close friends. Testament of Youth is a powerfully written, unsentimental memoir which has continued to move and enthral readers since its first publication in 1933. Brittain, a pacifist since her First World War experiences, prefaces the book with a fairy tale, in which Catherine, the heroine, encounters a fairy godmother and is given the choice of having either a happy youth or a happy old age. She selects the latter and so her fate is determined: "Now this woman," warns the tale, "was the destiny of poor Catherine. " And we find as we delve deeper into the book that she was the destiny of poor Vera too.
Creator: John Kani
Publication date: 1995-10
RRP: £13.00
Price: £19.99
Review A Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela / Watershed Audio:
Publication date: 1990-12-31
RRP: £6.09
Price: £8.49
Review Life's Rich Pageant / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Christopher Timothy
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1993-12
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £43.42
Price: £58.01
Review It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet: Complete & Unabridged (Vet Series , Vol 2) / Chivers Audio Books:
Creator: Martin Jarvis
Publication date: 1996-11-22
RRP: £7.99
Price: £6.95
Review Ralph Richardson: The Authorized Biography / Macmillan Audio Books:
Creator: Robert Powell
Publication date: 1994-11
RRP: £4.98
Price: £9.99
Review Diana: Her New Life / Spoken For Audio:Diana: Her True Story was originally published in 1992 under the guise of a quasi-authorised biography with mostly unnamed courtiers and royalty as the accredited sources. It instantly became a sizzling, international bestseller that lanced the boil of Windsor family dysfunction, triggering a chain of events that led to Charles and Diana's divorce. After her tragic death in 1997, Andrew Morton revealed that Diana herself had not only been the main source for the book, but had also edited his original drafts for accuracy. In return for this gold mine of information, Diana wanted complete anonymity for fear of retaliation from the queen. Her True Story in Her Own Words is enhanced by more than 75 full-colour photographs of the princess, from her childhood in Althorp to her marriage to Charles at Westminster Abbey to her humanitarian efforts and finally to her unforgettable funeral service. However, the most poignant portrayal of the princess emerges from the unedited transcriptions of Diana's interviews with Morton: "I think I'm going to cut a very different path from everyone else. I'm going to break away from this set-up and go and help the man on the street. " -Amazon. com.
Creator: Andrew Sachs
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 2004-09-20
Dewey code: 798
RRP: £10.99
Price: £40.00
Review Frankie: The Autobiography of Frankie Dettori / HarperCollins Audio:High-profile sports stars choose to walk a fine line between nurturing the bloom of their celebrity, and exercising the talent that made them famous in the first place. Horseracing's most recognisable face, Frankie Dettori - TV quiz show star, pizza endorser, restaurateur and pal of Vinnie Jones - publicly remarked recently that he realised he had crossed that line when someone seriously asked him how long ago he retired from being a jockey. In some ways then, Frankie, is a timely reminder that not only is Dettori a hugely talented horseman who is most definitely still riding, he's arguably at his peak. At the time of writing the Italian has all-but landed his first jockeys' championship in ten years - after a frantic summer compared to his almost part-time campaigns of recent years - and is once again the best known AND the best. Thankfully while this `autobiography', written with journalist Jonathan Powell, is not shy of trumpeting Dettori's unique achievements, it embraces the darker side of the affable imp persona too. Forget the married-with-kids, polished performer who appears on TV now - young Frankie, by his own admission, was a tearaway, a night-club wolf, a drugs-dabbler who was perilously close to seeing his career go permanently off the rails. Even when he had established himself as champion jockey he recalls among other failings, behaving like 'a real bastard' to challenger, and one-time pal, Jason Weaver, when he feared his crown was under threat. It's far from the only time when we see behind the cheeky chappie mask. Whether by accident or design, Dettori is refreshingly candid when it comes to revealing faults. His somewhat traditional views on women, in particular, will rankle with some. [+]As will the underlying tone - Frankie's very much the star of the show, on the racecourse and off, and it's not an altogether likeable trait. But that's exactly what makes this book so entertaining - did you really think winners were nice guys? -Alex Hankin.
Creator: David Rintoul
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 1994-12-05
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £10.99
Price: £9.34
Review The Life of Samuel Johnson / HarperCollins Audio:
Publication date: 1982-12
RRP: £12.93
Price: £12.92
Review Lenin / Sussex Publications:
Publication date: 1994-10-03
Dewey code: 920
Price: £10.99
Review The Lady in the Van/My Uncle Clarence (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:Life imitates art in The Lady in the Van, the story of the itinerant Miss Shepherd, who lived in a van in Alan Bennett's driveway from the early1970s until her death in 1989. It is doubtful that Bennett could have made up the eccentric Miss Shepherd if he tried, but his poignant, funny but unsentimental account of their strange relationship is akin to his best fictional screen writing. Bennett concedes that "One seldom was able to do her a good turn without some thoughts of strangulation", but as the plastic bags build up, the years pass by and Miss Shepherd moves into Bennett's driveway, a relationship is established which defines a certain moment in late 20th-century London life which has probably gone forever. The dissenting, liberal, middle-class world of Bennett and his peers comes into hilarious but also telling collision with the world of Miss Shepherd: "there was a gap between our social position and our social obligations. It was in this gap that Miss Shepherd (in her van) was able to live". Bennett recounts Miss Shepherd's bizarre escapades in his inimitable style, from her letter to the Argentinean Embassy at the height of the Falklands War, to her attempts to stand for Parliament and wangle an electric wheelchair out of the Social Services. Beautifully observed, The Lady in the Van is as notable for Bennett's attempts to uncover the enigmatic history of Miss Shepherd, as it is for its amusing account of her eccentric escapades. -Jerry Brotton.
Creator: Tim Machin
Publication date: 2001-09-06
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.49
Review The Lost Boy (Tape): A Foster Child's Search for the Love of a Family / Orion:
Creator: Anton Lesser
Publication date: 2002-03-04
Dewey code: 809
RRP: £11.00
Price: £25.27
Review Dickens - Public Life and Private Passion / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:In this remarkable new biography, Peter Ackroyd offers a different view of Dickens to that presented in his earlier study of the author. In that book, Ackroyd's attempts to mimic the voice of the great writer were highly controversial, though some saw the book as a radical re-invention of the biography form. There is no arguing with the brilliant achievement of the more straightforward Charles Dickens: Public Life and Private Passion, however; the picture of Dickens and his complicated private life that emerges is fastidiously detailed and powerfully evocative, while Ackroyd's customary skill at creating a panoply of the city of London is as dazzling as ever (London, is, in fact, the subject of another biography by the author, who is unquestionably the keenest chronicler of the city's colourful history). Here, Ackroyd attempts to peel away the mask of a man whose life was outwardly a picture of Victorian rectitude, but whose love life was as complicated (and unconventional) as any modern writer. Dickens had everything-fame, success and riches-but he died harbouring a deep sadness he had experienced all his life. He was a man of mercurial character, had enormous vitality and humour, but he also had a sense of loss and longing that would constantly appear in his work. Like many eminent Victorians, he led a double life: although he insisted that nothing in the newspapers he edited should upset his middle-class readers, he regularly indulged in dubious night-time escapades with fellow author Wilkie Collins, and, for the last 13 years of his life, kept a secret mistress. While presenting a warm but astringent portrait of the man who (along with George Eliot) can be classed as the greatest writer of his age, Ackroyd also masterfully recreates the relationship with the actress Ellen Ternan, a strong and intelligent woman (herself the subject of a biography by Claire Tomalin, The Inviisble Woman who, like her lover, outwardly observed the proprieties while living her real life behind closed doors. Ackroyd also vividly conjures the reality of Victorian life, the issues that sparked Dickens' fervent call for social reform, and the great landmarks of the time, which profoundly affected his life and work. -Barry Forshaw.
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 1999-09-06
RRP: £10.99
Price: £1.99
Review Acting Strangely: A Funny Kind of Life (Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Christopher Timothy
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1993-12
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £43.42
Price: £58.01
Review It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet: Complete & Unabridged (Vet Series , Vol 2) / Chivers Audio Books:
Creator: Teresa Gallagher
Publication date: 2000-07
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £8.99
Price: £2.90
Review The Biography of Jane Austen (Non Fiction) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Publication date: 2002-06-25
Dewey code: 809
RRP: £32.00
Price: £36.00
Review Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything: Or Old Bob Exposes His Ignorance / Sounds True Inc.,U.S.:
| Models & Brands:
Botham: My Autobiography: Don't Tell Kath..., French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France: Cycling the Tour De France, London: Fire And Pestilence, If Only They Could Talk: Complete & Unabridged (Vet Series , Vol 1), Testament of Youth: Complete & Unabridged: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900-1925: Complete & Unabridged, A Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, Life's Rich Pageant, It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet: Complete & Unabridged (Vet Series , Vol 2), Ralph Richardson: The Authorized Biography, Diana: Her New Life, Frankie: The Autobiography of Frankie Dettori, The Life of Samuel Johnson, Lenin, The Lady in the Van/My Uncle Clarence (BBC Radio Collection), The Lost Boy (Tape): A Foster Child's Search for the Love of a Family, Dickens - Public Life and Private Passion, Acting Strangely: A Funny Kind of Life (Radio Collection), It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet: Complete & Unabridged (Vet Series , Vol 2), The Biography of Jane Austen (Non Fiction), Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything: Or Old Bob Exposes His Ignorance |
