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Muriel Lennox

The story of Northern Dancer is the stuff of legend. He was a little horse, dismissed time and again because of his size, and to many he appeared to be the antithesis of streamlined, thoroughbred elegance. Today, however, his descendants dominate racing the world over, and Northern Dancer is recognised as the greatest thoroughbred sire in modern history.When Northern Dancer won the Kentucky Derby in the spring of 1964, Canadians poured into the streets to celebrate. Northern Dancer had not only waltzed off with North America's most cherished racing trophy, he had also run the Derby faster than any horse in history. The mayor of Toronto awarded him the key to the city, the country's sportswriters voted him Athlete of the Year, and he was deluged with fan mail. Yet the excitement generated by this remarkable animal had only just begun. To discover what made Northern Dancer so extraordinary, award-winning journalist Muriel Lennox takes us on a memorable ride into the sport of kings and queens. Lennox's deep empathy with horses results in dramatic portrayals of the animals themselves: Northern Dancer, his ancestors and descendants - from the eccentric Hyperion to the brilliant Nijinsky - fairly gallop off these pages. Lennox introduces us to the people who work with and speak the language of horses. She also offers an insight into the character of Canada's famed entrepreneur and international racing legend E.P. Taylor, who brought us Northern Dancer. Compellingly written, Northern Dancer is a celebration of the magnificent thoroughbred spirit and an invaluable contribution to our understanding of horses and the world of horseracing.

Northern Dancer

The Legend and His Legacy

William Stone

William Stone died on 10 January 2009 aged 108. He received a hero's funeral. Born in rural Devon, he joined the navy during the First World War, travelled the globe just before the British Empire's light began to fade and saw action in some of the most significant sea battles of the Second World War. Afterwards, he returned to Devon to run a barber's shop, an altogether more peaceable existence. 
 
 As time passed, he became one of a dwindling number of men still alive who had served in the Great War. This meant that for some of the most momentous anniversaries clocked up recently - including the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War - William was a guest of honour. 
 
 This autobiography bridges two wars and encompasses the remarkable episodes and adventures. It was an ordinary life lived in extraordinary times. He died at a time when the navy is attempting to embrace new ships that bear scant resemblance to those that William knew and face the challenges of a world that shrinks with every bold technological advance. His was a different kind of boldness. This is his astonishing story.

Hero of the Fleet

Two World Wars, One Extraordinary Life - The Memoirs of Centenarian William Stone

Stewart McKinney

Roars from the Back of the Bus is an absorbing, amusing and at times moving collection of tales that give a rare insight into the camaraderie that exists between players at the top of their game, showing that relationships forged through experiences on a Lions tour last a lifetime. 
 
From the first Tour in 1888, it showcases characters with immense personality who fought together in wars or on rugby pitches in foreign lands, and who shared a bond developed through touring as representatives of the home nations. Despite the changes to the game after the advent of professionalism, the experiences of Jamie Heaslip, Brian O’Driscoll and Joe Worsley are still similar in some ways to those of earlier intrepid tourists like Blair Mayne, Lewis Jones, Sir Carl Aarvold or David Rollo. 
 
Containing defining memories and private insights from across the tours and the decades, Roars from the Back of the Bus shows that the Lions ethos remains strong at the heart of every team.

Roars from the Back of the Bus

Rugby Tales of Life with the Lions

Josephine Duthie

Say Nothing is the moving true story of four neglected siblings who were taken into care following the breakdown of their parents' marriage. Sent to a small croft in the north-east of Scotland, they endured an onslaught of physical and mental abuse at the hands of an elderly, inexperienced foster mother. 
 
 For ten years the children's cries for help were ignored and misunderstood in the naive social-work climate of the late 1950s, and this heartbreaking personal account of cruelty and neglect reveals the effect this maltreatment had on their ability to adjust to a normal adult life. 
 
 Say Nothing was written as a voice of support for all abused children who are afraid or were never given the chance to tell their story.

Say Nothing

The Harrowing Truth About Auntie's Children

Martha Long

After a failed suicide attempt and recovery in the mad house, Martha is heading for France to be reunited with the one true love of her life. 
 
Father Ralph Fitzgerald rescued her from the streets when she was sixteen and was the first person to show Martha true love and affection. But their relationship threatened his vocation and he eventually fled to Africa to take up missionary work. 
 
Martha never got over losing him and now, after nearly twenty years, he has made contact again. She sets off on a mission to find him and uncover his motives for getting in touch. Does he still love her? Has he left the priesthood? Is he now free to marry her? She needs to know what the future is going to hold.

Ma, I've Reached for the Moon an I'm Hittin the Stars

Gary Edwards

In his dedication to Leeds United, Gary Edwards has no rivals. He has seen every Leeds game since 17 January 1968, home and away. League, Cup and Europe. And pre-season friendlies.* Hell, he even watches the reserves in his spare time. Following Leeds, he's been there, done that and designed the T-shirt. Although a painter and decorator-cum-signwriter-cum-cartoonist, he's never taken a break from his life as a full-time football fan. He's made a name for himself covering over red paint with white for free. He's visited every country in Europe and flown all over the rest of the world to watch Leeds play. If Leeds organised a five-a-side on the moon, he'd be on the first shuttle flight there. Travelling the world to watch hundreds of players run around acres of grass, he's also found time to drink gallons of ale, see oceans of flesh and protect hundreds of animals. He's saved lobsters in Barcelona, clay pigeons in Worksop, frogs in Kuala Lumpur and worms - yes, worms - in Yorkshire. He's been shot at in Greece, run over in Denmark, frightened the king in Sweden and had a beer with an elephant in Bangkok. All this and still found the time to never miss a match or another chance to rid the world of the evil that is red in all its forms. Behind him are almost four decades of Leeds, lunacy, laughter and white paint.

Paint it White

Following Leeds Everywhere

Lew Yates

Bernard O'Mahoney

Everybody in the unlicensed fight game knows that only one man has the honour of being titled 'Guv'nor' - and that man is Lew 'Wild Thing' Yates. Yates began boxing at the age of six, and as an adult he was ruthless in pursuit of his dream of becoming world heavyweight champion. But when his licence was revoked following an assault on a referee, he turned to unlicensed boxing. 
 
 By day, Yates pounded punchbags and the streets in an effort to reach the peak of physical fitness as he prepared for his epic battle with Roy 'Pretty Boy' Shaw. At night, he pounded gangsters and drug dealers foolish enough to take him on in the nightclubs where he worked. 
 
 Wild Thing documents how Yates rose to the top of his bloody profession. When it comes to his fighting ability, he doesn't need to boast, brag or exaggerate. With Lew Yates, what you see is what you hope you're never going to get. This is his remarkable story.

Wild Thing

The True Story of Britain's Rightful Guv'nor

Maureen Coppinger

The shocking but ultimately uplifting life story of an Irish woman who endured 13 years of cruelty and injustice in an orphanage 
 
Maureen Coppinger's earliest memory is of watching the woman she believed to be her mother walk away and abandon her to the care of the nuns at one of Ireland's notorious industrial schools. She was just three years old. 
 
She remained in the orphanage until the age of 16, subjected to cruelty and neglect, and starved of love and affection. It was an environment from which no one emerged unscathed. 
 
Throughout these tormented years, Maureen dreamed only of escape, and when she was contacted again by her mammy she believed all her dreams were about to come true. Life in the outside world brought its own challenges, however, and Maureen was thrown into turmoil when she discovered that the truth about her past was more murky than she had ever realised. 
 
Annie's Girl stands apart as a poignant testimony to the resilience of the human heart. This touching and evocative memoir is the incredible story of an illegitimate industrial-school survivor's profound struggle to overcome a shame-filled past and solve the mystery of her origins. 
 
Maureen Coppinger emigrated to Canada in 1955, where she married and raised three sons. She worked as a school secretary for 25 years before retiring in 1994 and now spends her leisure time as a volunteer for the Galway Association.

Annie's Girl

How an Abandoned Orphan Finally Discovered the Truth About Her Mother

Mary J. MacLeod

Life on the remote island of Papavray in the 1970s was a world away from Mary J. MacLeod’s urban existence in the south of England. And this peaceful environment was just what she was looking for. 
 
While indoor toilets were still something of a luxury, and ‘teleeffissions’ could produce terror in some of the older residents, the glory of the mountains and the sea combined with the warmth of the island people meant she had found a haven for her family. 
 
Mary’s post as district nurse gave her a unique insight into island life, and her stories of the troubles, joys, drama and comedies endured by her patients make this a charming and humorous account of community life on a small island in a bygone era.

The Island Nurse

Lorne Rubenstein

In 1977, Lorne Rubenstein, an avid golfer, travelled to Dornoch in the Scottish Highlands. Young and adrift in life, he was profoundly affected by the experience. As he writes, 'My week in Dornoch introduced me to a place with which I felt a connection. A week wasn't living there, but it was enough for Dornoch to imprint itself on my mind.' 
 
 Twenty-three years later, in 2000, now an established golf writer, Rubenstein returned to Dornoch to spend an entire summer. He rented a flat close to the Royal Dornoch Golf Club and set out to explore the area on many levels. 
 
 Rubenstein writes about the melancholy history of the Highland Clearances, which have left the beautiful landscape sparsely populated to this day. He writes about the friendly and sometimes eccentric people who love their town, their golf and their single malt whisky, and who delight in sharing them with visitors. But most of all he writes about a summer lived in a community where golf is king and the golf course is part of the common lands where townspeople stroll of an evening. Rubenstein is able to return to thinking of golf as play, as opposed to a game of analysis and effort. 
 
 A Season in Dornoch is an affectionate portrait of a place and the people who live there, a fascinating look at golf and the spirit and skills it calls forth, and a perceptive and ultimately moving memoir of one man's quest to experience again the pure love of sport that he knew in his youth.

A Season in Dornoch

Golf and Life in the Scottish Highlands

Mark Oxbrow

Tens of millions of people worldwide learned of Scotland's Rossyln Chapel in Dan Brown's blockbuster novel The Da Vinci Code. Now, after 500 years shrouded in mystery and legend, the secrets of the chapel, the castle, King Arthur and the quest for the Holy Grail are about to be revealed. 
 
 The astonishing story of Rosslyn brings together a host of famous figures from history and legend, including Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, Alexander the Great, William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, Mary Queen of Scots, Joan of Arc, Sir Gawain and Merlin the Wizard. 
 
 No one has come close to unravelling the truth about Rosslyn. Until now. 
 
 * Does the fabled Holy Grail lie buried beneath Rosslyn Chapel? 
 * Did the Knights Templar hide their treasure in Rosslyn's secret crypt? 
 * Can the thousands of carvings within Rosslyn Chapel be decoded? 
 
 After more than a decade of research, two Scottish historians have finally uncovered the real story of Rosslyn and the Grail.

Rosslyn and the Grail

Max Arthur

On 6 February 1958, a plane took off from a snowy Munich airport carrying probably the finest club side the world has ever known. Moments later, the aircraft crashed, killing some of the most legendary names in British football. This book is dedicated to those players - Roger Byrne, Tommy Taylor, the mighty Duncan Edwards and the others whose lives were cut off in their prime - and their indomitable manager, Sir Matt Busby. 
 
 Max Arthur has sought out all the players who survived the crash and spoken to the relatives and friends of those who died. From these interviews, sometimes serious but often humorous, he has captured their remarkable spirit and created a unique portrait of all the Busby Babes.

The Busby Babes

Men of Magic

In this latest instalment of Martha Long's real-life account of abuse, deprivation and cruelty at the hands of her mother's partner and the establishment, Martha is now 16 and her time at the convent school is up. In Ma, It's a Cold Aul Night an I'm Lookin for a Bed, she leads us through her first months of freedom. 
 
 With no home to go to, Martha leaves the convent carrying her suitcase and a burning ambition to shake off her impoverished past. Hungry to become a person who will blend in with the middle classes, Martha yearns to be accepted as someone who can be loved, respected, and one day have a home of her own where she will be safe. But this is 1960s Dublin, where poverty is rife and the Church works together with the Irish government to keep the poor and the ignorant in their place. 
 
 Martha first finds work as a home help with a loving, lively family, which leads her to a job in a shop, an Italian fish and chip café, then as a skivvy in a miserable household where she is reminded of the terror Jackser brought into her life. Chance meetings with brothers and old friends from the convent lift Martha's spirits, but soon she is back on the streets searching for work and a warm bed to call her own. 
 
 Martha is not often deterred when fate deals her a blow. 'Life is a bowl of cherries!' she reasons. But heartache awaits as people turn her away and predators lurk in the shadows.

Ma, It's a Cold Aul Night an I'm Lookin for a Bed

Graham Johnson

Drug dealers beware. The Devil is coming to get you. 
 
 Gangster Stephen French invented the perfect crime: robbing drug barons of their huge fortunes. In SAS-style swoops, French raided their fortified mansions and tortured them with horrifying violence until they paid up. Through 'taxing' the richest and most powerful crimelords in the UK, he netted over £20 million. 
 
 French was no ordinary criminal. He was a world-champion fighter, he studied psychology at university to master mind-control techniques, and he used the teachings of Machiavelli and samurai warriors to outwit his enemies. The Devil also reveals French's complex relationship with Curtis Warren, the wealthiest criminal in British history. The two were childhood pals, then partners and finally bitter enemies. 
 
 Now a legitimate businessman, French built up a multimillion-pound empire. Having eventually turned his back on his former life, he is now seeking to set the record straight.

The Devil

Britain's Most Feared Underworld Taxman

John Burrowes

Few cities in the world abound with so many extraordinary stories as Glasgow. The city has been the silent witness to some of the most significant events of the past century, from major triumphs to cataclysmic calamities, and the best of these anecdotes are compiled here to form this unique collection. 
 
 Amongst the notable events revisited are the launching of the Queen Mary, which captivated the city's inhabitants in 1934, the victorious 16-month work-in campaign by the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders in the early 1970s, the Ibrox disaster of 1971 and the plague that gripped the Gorbals in 1900. 
 
 Some of Glasgow's most successful people are also covered, including Clydeside revolutionary John Maclean, founder of the Barras Maggie McIver and the inimitable Billy Connolly, whose humour and colourful personality are synonymous with the city. 
 
 From the Battle of George Square to the bravery of the Glasgow people during the Blitz, Great Glasgow Stories provides an all-encompassing view of the city throughout the eras.

Great Glasgow Stories

Tommy Macpherson

Richard Bath

With three Military Crosses, three Croix de guerre, a Légion d'honneur and a papal knighthood for his heroics during the Second World War, Sir Tommy Macpherson is the most decorated living soldier of the British Army. 
 
 Yet for 65 years the Highlander's story has remained untold. Few know how, aged 21, he persuaded 23,000 SS soldiers of the feared Das Reich tank column to surrender, or how Tommy almost single-handedly stopped Tito's Yugoslavia annexing the whole of north-east Italy. Twice captured, he escaped both times, marching through hundreds of miles of German-held territory to get home. 
 
 Still a schoolboy when war broke out, Tommy quickly matured into a legendary commando, and his remarkable story features a dizzyingly diverse cast of characters, including Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Montgomery and Charles de Gaulle.

Behind Enemy Lines

The Autobiography of Britain's Most Decorated Living War Hero

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton

Rudolf Hess's flight to Britain in May 1941 stands out as one of the most intriguing and bizarre episodes of World War II. In this text, Lord James Douglas-Hamilton explodes many of the myths which still surround the affair. He traces the developments which persuaded Hess to undertake his flight without Hitler's knowledge and shows why he chose to approach the Duke of Hamilton. In the process he throws light on the importance of Albrecht Haushofer, one-time envoy to Hitler and Ribbentrop and personal advisor to Hess, who was eventually executed by the S.S. for his involvement in the German Resistance Movement. Drawing on released British War Cabinet papers and the author's access to the Hamilton archives and the Haushofer letters, this book takes the reader to the heart of the Third Reich, combining adventure and intrigue with a scholarly historical approach.

The Truth About Rudolf Hess

Paul Mason

Paul Mason’s father was a policeman. He was also a member of a sadistic paedophile ring. He would keep Paul locked up and naked in a tiny cupboard under the stairs of their home before sexually abusing him. This cycle of abuse continued for several years and also affected his brother. The cupboard became a horrific prison where fear and terror filled his every moment. 
 
The Cupboard Under the Stairs is a story of abuse at the mercy of adults whom Paul should have been able to trust. There followed a life almost destroyed by their actions. It is the harrowing story of one man’s fight for justice and an end to the horrific memories that still haunt him daily.

The Cupboard Under the Stairs

A Boy Trapped in Hell...

Andy Goram

Iain King

This is the story of a genius with flaws. Lots of them. On the field, Andy Goram was a defiant figure between the sticks who, in many ways, defined the history-making nine-in-a-row team that brought so much success to Ibrox; off it, he careered through three divorces and a welter of lurid tabloid headlines sensationalising his hellraising antics. 
 
 In this no-holds-barred account, Goram lifts the lid on his tempestuous life in football, from the Gers' glory days to a fairy-tale chapter with his boyhood heroes: Manchester United. His life in the Old Firm is examined in depth, from the saves that broke former Celtic manager Tommy Burns's heart to a story that was buried until now: Celtic's astonishing bid to sign him. 
 
 Goram's Scotland career ended in bitterness when he walked out on the squad before France 98, and here he smashes the myths that have always surrounded his relationships with Craig Brown and Jim Leighton. 
 
 This is the inside story of the man the fans voted Rangers' greatest-ever goalkeeper. He remains a genius with flaws: a legend simply known as The Goalie.

The Goalie

My Story

Mickey Vann

Richard Coomber

Micky Vann is one of the world's top boxing referees. He has been involved in more than 350 championship fights, over 100 of which were world title fights. Outspoken and brutally honest, his hard-hitting views have often found him at the centre of controversy. The biggest night of his career - the 'Battle of Britain' world heavyweight clash between Frank Bruno and Lennox Lewis - saw him on the mat for a four-letter outburst broadcast across the world. 
 
Vann is the son of showman Hal Denver and the grandson of The Silver King, who included the Elephant Man in his sideshows. In Give Me A Ring, he pulls no punches as he reveals the truth about his unusual childhood, spent between a Dickensian foster home and the circus; the bribe he was accused of taking from Don King; and the sleazy side of the fight game. 
 
Give Me A Ring covers Vann's professional career in all it's glory, from his time as a journeyman pro fighter to the fame he has found as a star-grade referee. in this frank and often hilarious autobiography, Vann candidly comments on personalities such as Lennox Lewis, Prince Naseem Hamed, Nigel Benn, Don King, Barry McGuigan and Frank Bruno. He gives his views on the game's rackets and its future. Give Me A Ring is a compelling read, sure to be a revelation to the boxing world and its followers

Give Me A Ring

The Autobiography of Star Referee Mickey Vann

Louise Monaghan

In the middle of one of the worst civil wars in Syria's history, Louise Monaghan crossed a heavily guarded border to save her six-year-old daughter from the father who had callously snatched her from her home in Cyprus. Not knowing what lay ahead, the Irish mother tricked her ex-husband into believing she still loved him and wanted them to live together as a family, purely so that she could see her kidnapped child again. 
 
Once in his homeland, Louise too was held captive, locked inside a run-down house day and night with little food and no hope of being released. Sick from polluted water, severely beaten by her ex-husband and abandoned by the Turkish men paid to rescue her, she took her little girl and made a daring escape. 
 
The journey they made through bomb attacks and sniper fire, and across a heavily patrolled mountain range in the dead of night, was a harrowing ordeal. Yet miraculously they both survived, and Stolen is Louise's breathtaking account of events.

Stolen

Escape from Syria

Billy Cribb

Bare-knuckle fighting without the bull! I haven't been to prison for robbery, I didn't know the Krays and I make no claims to be invincible . . . But my life fighting was the closest to hell I will ever get.'Learn what fuels hatred and makes a once-gentle boy into violent man. Read stories of horrific fighting experiences on the Mafia-controlled extreme fight circuit of New York. Prepare yourself for harrowing descriptions of drug addiction, mindless violence and organised crime. Tarmac Warrior has it all. Billy Cribb was born into a Romani/Jew family and spent most of his childhood travelling. His early years were marred by the racism and bigotry his family endured at the hands of small-minded locals in the villages where they worked. These random attacks planted seeds of anger and hatred in Billy which later manifested in his fighting - for Billy Cribb became one of the greatest bare-knuckle fighters of his generation. Revealing an underground fight scene rarely glimpsed by those on the outside, Tarmac Warrior traces Billy's career from his first fights on the motorways and A roads around Britain onto the cross channel ferries which provided an arena for many of his early fights. It then follows Billy's move to Majorca, giving a frightening insight into what really goes on in this seemingly idyllic Mediterranean island: the timeshare racketeering, extortion and organised crime which lie under the surface of the popular holiday destination.

Tarmac Warrior

The Violent World Of Extreme Fighting

Maggie Craig

'Deftly told' The Herald 
 
They were modern men, the soldiers of the '45: doctors and lawyers, students and teachers, gardeners and weavers. These are the men often written out of history, or else depicted as gallant but misguided fools. 
 
 But in reality they were children of the Age of Reason, they wrote poetry, discussed the latest ideas in philosophy and science - and rose in armed rebellion against the might of the British crown and government. 
 
 Many faced agonising personal dilemmas before committing themselves to Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite Cause. Few had any illusions about the consequences of failure. Many met their date with destiny on Culloden Moor, players in a global conflict that shaped the world we live in today. 
 
 Combining meticulous research with entertaining and stylish delivery, Maggie Craig tells the dramatic and moving stories of the men who were willing to risk everything for their vision of a better future for themselves, their families and Scotland. 
 
 'A superbly structured work, written with passion and conviction' Scots Magazine

Bare-Arsed Banditti

The Men of the '45

Allan Grice

Working as a fireman in London’s East End during the early 1970s was no easy ride. In the years before workplace health-and-safety legislation had started to exert its grip, Allan Grice had to cut his fire-and-rescue teeth without the advantages of a breathing apparatus for each member of his crew. Back then, the time-tested strategy was to ‘get in’ – to crawl below the intense heat and ‘eat’ the thick smoke – in order to locate a missing child or to halt a rapidly spreading inferno. 
 
 In Call the Fire Brigade!, Grice recounts his most memorable experiences as a front-line member of the London Fire Brigade working the city’s East End, with its myriad commercial premises, brooding Thames-side warehouses, seedy tenements and colourful cosmopolitan community, ranging from prosperous manufacturers to down-and-out winos with their body-warming bonfires in derelict houses. 
 
 Fires in factories, tenements and warehouses, and non-fire emergencies such as the Moorgate Tube disaster of 1975, are graphically described, while the elation of rescue, the sadness of being too late to save lives and the warm camaraderie of fire crews during some of the capital’s busiest peacetime years are vividly depicted.

Call the Fire Brigade!

Fighting London's Fires in the '70s

Paul Chandler

Rachel Chandler

Sarah Edworthy

On 23 October 2009, British couple Paul and Rachel Chandler were kidnapped from their sailing boat in the archipelago of the Seychelles. 
 
Their yacht, Lynn Rival, was recovered six days later by naval forces, abandoned off the central Somali coast. 
 
After the attack, Paul and Rachel were taken first onto a previously hijacked merchant ship and then to Somalia, where they were held for over a year, enduring threats and intimidation while their captors tried to extort millions of dollars from their family. 
 
In this remarkable book, the Chandlers recount their terrifying ordeal, revealing the inspiring and poignant story behind the dramatic headlines. At the heart of their survival was their unshakeable belief in each other and their determination to survive, making Hostage an unlikely love story; for Paul and Rachel, death, at times, seemed preferable to being separated.

Hostage

A Year at Gunpoint with Somali Gangsters

Steven Preece

Steven Preece was a Royal Marine Commando from 1983 to 1990, serving first at entry-level and then as a lance-corporal. Amongst the Marines is Steven's first-hand account of his years as an elite soldier, focusing directly on the excessive and often shocking lifestyle of the Marines during this time, and impact this had on his own personality and behaviour. 
 
Preece fulfilled his childhood ambition by earning the coveted Green Beret when he was 18. He was unaware, however, of the brutal rite of passage that awaited him and all the other 'pieces of skin' [new recruits]. Violence in the Marines, as Steven discovered, was not limited to the battlefield but a continual part of a pervasive culture of bullying and aggression. 
 
It did not take long for Preece to be accepted into this culture and to adopt it as his own. On duty he was fit, committed and loyal, while off duty he displayed a mammoth capacity for drinking, fighting and womanising. On home leave, Steven found it increasingly hard to adapt to civilian life. His drinking sessions in local pubs frequently ended in fights with the locals and even in violence against members of his own family. Preece earned a reputation amongst his fellow Marines for pranks and dangerous behaviour; and this eventually led him to be court-maritialled. To his relief and surprise, however, Preece was fully acquitted by the court. 
 
Amongst the Marines is an unflinching exposé of the culture of the Marines, from foul practical jokes and rough justice to the off-duty orgies of drink, sex and violence. It is a no-holds-barred account of the many shocking incidents Preece witnessed and participated in, from his first day as a new recruit to his exit from the Marines with his reputation intact and his scores settled once and for all.

Amongst the Marines

The Untold Story

Tom Campbell

David Potter

'I am proud to say that I knew Jock Stein as a football manager, as a colleague and as a friend . . . he was the greatest manager in British football . . . men like Jock will live forever in the memory' - Sir Alex Ferguson 
 
 During his long reign at Celtic, Jock Stein was a legendary figure in the world of football. He led a youthful Celtic side to a memorable European Cup triumph in Lisbon in 1967 and was in charge of the home-grown Celtic teams which won nine Scottish league championships in a row as well as numerous domestic trophies. 
 
 Tom Campbell and David Potter have produced an affectionate and in-depth portrait of Stein but are not afraid to delve below the surface of the legend to examine the manager's mistakes and failings as well as his triumphs and strengths. Calling upon such expert witnesses as Bobby Murdoch, Ronnie Simpson and Charlie Gallagher, and on a host of other important figures in the game, this book presents a detailed and fully rounded picture of a man who, at the height of his powers at Celtic Park, revolutionised the game of football in Scotland.

Jock Stein

The Celtic Years

On hearing that Jackser, her childhood abuser, is seriously ill, Martha is elated, thinking that finally she will be able to watch him suffer. But in the hospital she sees a frightened, lonely old man and realises with a shock that he seems to regret his earlier actions. 
 
During her vigil, she is joined by Charlie, her beloved little brother, then the ma and some of her other siblings. All of them have suffered greatly and it is clear that no one connected to Jackser has escaped unscathed. 
 
But as she sits with him during his dying days, other memories of Jackser come back to Martha – fleeting moments of concern and kindness, and a sense of closeness as he recalled his own tormented past in one of Ireland’s industrial schools. It is a vicious cycle of cruelty and loss that has played out, from which only her own tenacity and wit has provided an escape. 
 
Poignant, ribald, poetic and defiant, with its resolution of many unanswered questions about her life this is Martha at her best.

Ma, Jackser's Dyin Alone

Leckie Kckeown

Des McKeown started at the top in football and worked his way down. He signed for Celtic in a year when they won the League and the Scottish Cup double. They liked him. He loved them. But from the first day he kicked a ball for money, he was never going to make millions out of the game. Faced with a choice between struggling to break into the Parkhead first team and turning part-time and buliding a career as a salesman, he chose real life. Hundreds of footballers whose ambitions outstripped their abilities have made the same choice as Des McKeown. Hundreds more will one day have it forced upon them. Don't give up the day job is their story. As the priviledged few drain the game of more money, McKeown warns of the consequences for the journeymen who cling to full-time contracts hoping against hope for a slice of the pie. Don't give up the day job is a no-holes-barred account of one season in the lofe of part-time players seen through the eyes of a husband, father, salesman and left-back. (in that order) Can a man who only trains twice a week get as much out of footballing as someone who plays it for a living? Is a hobby that pays 10 per cent of household bills worth putting 90 per cent of our life into?

Don't Give Up The Day Job

A Year in the Life of a Part-Time Footballer

W Fellows

Think about the most wretched day of your life. Maybe it was when someone you loved died, or when you were badly hurt in an accident, or a day when you were so terrified you could scarcely bear it. No imagine 4,000 of those days in one big chunk. 
 
 In 1978, Warren Fellows was convicted in Thailand of heroin trafficking and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Damage Done is his story of an unthinkable nightmare in a place where sewer rats and cockroaches are the only nutritious food, and where the worst punishment is the khun deo - solitary confinement, Thai style. 
 
 Fellows was certainly guilty of his crime, but he endured and survived human-rights abuses beyond imagination. This is not his plea for forgiveness, nor his denial of guilt; it is the story of an ordeal that no one would wish on their worst enemy. It is an essential read: heartbreaking, fascinating and impossible to put down.

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