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Biography and Memoir July 2020
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Parisian lives : Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir and me: a memoir
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Deidre Bair
In 1971 Deirdre Bair was a journalist and recently minted PhD who managed to secure access to Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett. He agreed that she could write his biography despite never having written - or even read - a biography herself. The next seven years of intimate conversations, intercontinental research, and peculiar cat-and-mouse games resulted in "Samuel Beckett: A Biography", which went on to win the National Book Award and propel Deirdre to her next subject: Simone de Beauvoir. The catch? De Beauvoir and Beckett despised each other - and lived essentially on the same street. Drawing on Bair's extensive notes from the period, including never-before-told anecdotes and details that were considered impossible to publish at the time, "Parisian Lives" is full of personality and warmth and gives us an entirely new window on the all-too-human side of these legendary thinkers.
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House of Nutter : the rebel tailor of Savile Row
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Lance Richardson
"House of Nutter" aims to capture and explore the Nutter sensibility. It will chart the dramatic life of Tommy Nutter, an underappreciated visionary whose career spanned barely 23 years, ending in 1992 with his untimely death. It is a history of London during an era of economic and cultural upheaval, a celebration of the methods and traditions of Savile Row; and an elegy for what was lost during the worst days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The impact of Nutter's fashionable tailoring should not be underestimated. It can still be seen today with Tom Ford and Stella McCartney, Timothy Everest and Oswald Boateng--all of whom who cite Nutter as a major influence on their work.With archival access to photos, letters and interviews from Tommy Nutter's sole living relative, his brother, David, Lance Richardson takes us behind the '70s glamour to explore the public face and dramatic private life of one of Britain's most respected yet rule-breaking bespoke clothiers and the celebrities he dressed.
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Back on track : how one man and his dogs are changing the lives of rural kids
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Bernie Shakeshaft
As a kid, Bernie Shakeshaft's reckless behaviour led him to became known as a wild one. It isn't surprising that his path led him to the Northern Territory, a place where people often go to either lose themselves or find themselves. Bernie, a searcher for his purpose in life, found himself and started a youth program called BackTrack, with three aims: to keep these youths alive, out of jail and chasing their hopes and dreams. For most, this was their last chance. Combining life skills, education, job preparedness with rural work, Bernie threw in one other factor: dogs! And it works. With the help of these working dogs, the lost boys (and girls) find their way back on track. These days, Backtrack youth tour the country competing in dog-jumping trials. Bernie and the BackTrack team are now supporting other communities in Lake Cargelligo, Broken Hill, Dubbo and Grafton and have forged a new beginning for over 1000 young people. This one man is making a huge difference.
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Castaway : the extraordinary survival story of Narcisse Pelletier, a young French cabin boy shipwrecked on Cape York in 1858
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Robert Macklin
The astonishing and unknown story of Narcisse Pelletier - a French cabin boy cast away in 1858 on the coast of Far North Queensland. In 1858, fourteen-year-old French cabin boy Narcisse Pelletier was aboard the trader Saint-Paul when it was wrecked off the eastern tip of New Guinea. Scrambling into a longboat, Narcisse and the other survivors crossed almost 1000 kilometres of the Coral Sea before reaching the shores of Far North Queensland. If not for the local Aboriginal people, Narcisse would have perished. For seventeen years he lived with them, growing to manhood and participating fully in their Uutaalnganu world. Then, in 1875, his life was again turned upside down. Drawing from first-hand interviews with Narcisse after his return to France and other contemporary accounts of exploration and survival, and documenting the spread of European settlement in Queensland and the brutal frontier wars that followed, Robert Macklin weaves an unforgettable tale of a young man caught between two cultures in a time of transformation and upheaval.
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A cure for heartache : life's simple pleasures, one moment at a time
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Mary Jane Grant
Shattered when her 25-year marriage comes to an abrupt and painful end, writer Mary Jane Grant runs away to London to immerse herself in any reality but her own. Reeling from the shock and loss of her marriage and the life she's known, she begins to discover that if she can just focus on the moment, take notice of the people, the sights and smells around her, that her pain and grief start to recede. From the bustling cafes of Camden and the pastel-coloured streets of Primrose Hill, to the sun soaked vineyards of the south of France, her journey leads her to rich new experiences that she could never have imagined in her old life. Real connections are made, she lets go of the things she no longer needs, and takes pleasure in the good, generous and beautiful parts of life that she encounters every day. Beautifully and succinctly told, this is a story about what happens when you embrace life, whatever it may bring, with surprising - and joyful - results.
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Florence Foster Jenkins : the true story of the world's worst singer
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Darryl W. Bullock
Madame Jenkins couldn't carry a tune in a bucket: despite that, in 1944 at the age of 76, she played Carnegie Hall to a capacity audience and had celebrity fans by the score. Her infamous 1940s recordings are still highly-prized today. In his well-researched and thoroughly entertaining biography, Darryl W. Bullock tells of Florence Foster Jenkins meteoric rise to success and the man who stood beside her, through every sharp note. Florence was ridiculed for her poor control of timing, pitch, and tone, and terrible pronunciation of foreign lyrics, but the sheer entertainment value of her caterwauling packed out theatres around the United States, with the 'singer' firmly convinced of her own talent, partly thanks to the devoted attention for her husband and manager St Clair Bayfield. Her story is one of triumph in the face of adversity, courage, conviction and of the belief that with dedication and commitment a true artist can achieve anything.
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Guinea pig in white wine sauce : take one chef, a stone cottage, a dash of eccentricity, and Voila! a recipe for disaster
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Alan Rochford
Alan Rochford was living the dream when he started Stone Cottage, an idyllic French restaurant nestled in the Adelaide Hills. He had everything going for him apart from experience, money, and the first idea about what he was doing. After two years and one divorce, he began to see the funny side, fed on an endless diet of characters and occurrences so crazy that you couldn't make them up. Australia's answer to Basil Fawlty, Alan serves up a degustation of lip-smacking anecdotes, from his side-line in snail trading across the French countryside, to the time two customers got a touch too 'intimate' in the middle of his dining room. "Guinea Pig in White Wine Sauce" is the tale of one man trying to keep his head in the certifiably insane world of fine dining.
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