Osobnosti, memoáry, biografie

Candid and brilliantly funny, this is the story of how a tall, shy youth from Weston-super-Mare went on to become a self-confessed legend. En route, John Cleese describes his nerve-racking first public appearance, at St Peter's Preparatory School at the age of eight and five-sixths; his endlessly peripatetic home life with parents who seemed incapable of staying in any house for longer than six months; his first experiences in the world of work as a teacher who knew next to nothing about the subjects he was expected to teach; his hamster-owning days at Cambridge; and his first encounter with the man who would be his writing partner for over two decades, Graham Chapman. And so on to his dizzying ascent via scriptwriting for Peter Sellers, David Frost, Marty Feldman and others to the hei

Tim Burton is one of the great modern-day visionaries of cinema, a director who has fabricated his own deliciously nightmarish universe in movies as extraordinary as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Mars Attacks! and The Nightmare before Christmas - not to mention his twisted takes on the tales of Batman, Sleepy Hollow and Planet of the Apes. Following the release of his re-imagining of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with long-time comrade Johnny Depp (who also provides a new Foreword here), as well as Burton's return to feature-length animation with Corpse Bride, this updated and fully illustrated new edition of the definitive Burton interview book casts light on Burton's Burbank childhood, his early work at Disney, the recurrent themes and stunning designs of his mov

Drawn from his published diaries, this is Michael Palin's account of the making of the Monty Python TV and stage shows, films, books and albums. Monty Python at Work opens on 8th July 1969 with Michael Palin's diary entry for the first day of filming on the very first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. The diary entries that follow - up until the opening of their final feature film, The Meaning of Life, in 1983 - chart the tumultuous story of how the now famous shows and films were conceived and brought to fruition. Palin records the evolution of Monty Python's comic style, the moments of creative inspiration as well as discord, the persistent self-doubt, and the happy accidents that shaped what are now classic comedy moments. He captures too the group's many anarchic exploits (J

Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity: the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity and faith. Describing in simple terms the tragic murder of a people from a survivor's perspective, "Night" is among the most personal, intimate and poignant of all accounts of the Holocaust. A compelling consideration of the darkest side of human nature and the enduring power of hope, it remains one of the most important works of the twentieth century.

This is the story of the most famous writer of his generation and the four extraordinary women who married him. In the dazzling summer of 1926, Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley travel from their home in Paris to a villa in the south of France. They swim, play bridge and drink gin. But wherever they go they are accompanied by the glamorous and irrepressible Fife. Fife is Hadley's best friend. She is also Ernest's lover. Hadley is the first Mrs. Hemingway, but neither she nor Fife will be the last. Over the ensuing decades, Ernest's literary career will blaze a trail, but his marriages will be ignited by passion and deceit. Four extraordinary women will learn what it means to love the most famous writer of his generation, and each will be forced to ask herself how far she will go to

In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor-in-chief of French Elle, the father of two young childen, a 44-year-old man known and loved for his wit, his style, and his impassioned approach to life. By the end of the year he was also the victim of a rare kind of stroke to the brainstem. After 20 days in a coma, Bauby awoke into a body which had all but stopped working: only his left eye functioned, allowing him to see and, by blinking it, to make clear that his mind was unimpaired. Almost miraculously, he was soon able to express himself in the richest detail: dictating a word at a time, blinking to select each letter as the alphabet was recited to him slowly, over and over again. In the same way, he was able eventually to compose this extraordinary book. By turns wistful, mischievous,

First they led us to the baths, where they took from us everything we still had. Quite literally there wasn't even a hair left. I didn't even recognize my own mother till I heard her voice...In 1941, aged 12, Helga Weiss, her mother and father were forced to say goodbye to their home, their relatives and all that they knew, and were interned in the Nazi concentration camp of Terezin. For the next three years, Helga documented her experiences there, and those of her friends and family, in a diary. Then they were sent to Auschwitz, and the diary was left behind, hidden in a wall. Helga was one of a tiny number of Jewish children from Prague to survive the holocaust. After she returned home, she eventually managed to retrieve her diary and completed the journal of her experiences. The res

In this follow up to CALL THE MIDWIFE, Jennifer Worth, a midwife working in the docklands area of East London in the 1950s tells more stories about the people she encountered. There's Jane, who cleaned and generally helped out at Nonnatus House - she was taken to the workhouse as a baby and was allegedly the illegitimate daughter of an aristocrat. Peggy and Frank's parents both died within 6 months of each other and the children were left destitute. At the time, there was no other option for them but the workhouse. The Reverend Thornton-Appleby-Thorton, a missionary in Africa, visits the Nonnatus nuns and Sister Julienne acts as matchmaker. And Sister Monica Joan, the eccentric ninety-year-old nun, is accused of shoplifting some small items from the local market. She is let off with a

Jennifer Worth came from a sheltered background when she became a midwife in the Docklands in the 1950s. The conditions in which many women gave birth just half a century ago were horrifying, not only because of their grimly impoverished surroundings, but also because of what they were expected to endure. But while Jennifer witnessed brutality and tragedy, she also met with amazing kindness and understanding, tempered by a great deal of Cockney humour. She also earned the confidences of some whose lives were truly stranger, more poignant and more terrifying than could ever be recounted in fiction. Attached to an order of nuns who had been working in the slums since the 1870s, Jennifer tells the story not only of the women she treated, but also of the community of nuns (including one wh

This collection of Vonnegut's letters is the autobiography he never wrote - from the letter he posted home upon being freed from a German POW camp, to notes of advice to his children: 'Don't let anybody tell you that smoking and boozing are bad for you. Here I am fifty-five years old, and I never felt better in my life'. Peppered with insights, one-liners and missives to the likes of Norman Mailer, Gunter Grass and Bernard Malamud, Vonnegut is funny, wise and modest. As he himself said: 'I am an American fad-of a slightly higher order than the hula hoop.' Like Vonnegut's books, his letters make you think, they make you outraged and they make you laugh. Written over a sixty-year period, and never published before, these letters are alive with the unique point of view that made Vonnegut

'I loved Jon's book. It's even better than the real thing because you can't hear his voice.' Michael McIntyre A control freak looks for love (women who leave wet teaspoons in sugar bowls need not apply). 'I haven't woken up with a cup of tea by the bed for seven years. It seems such a small thing but it's one of a thousand things I miss about having someone around to take care of me. I have spent my entire adult life getting things the way I want them and all I want now is someone to give it all up for.' Is your filing faultless? Your CDs, apostrophes, cutlery all in the right places? Can you eat a biscuit in the correct way? Then Jon Richardson (single for seven years and counting) could be your ideal man...Living alone in a one bedroom flat in Swindon, Jon has had far too much time o

Read what happened next in the follow-up to the bestselling The Wolf of Wall Street, now a major motion picture directed by MARTIN SCORSESE, starring LEONARDO DICAPRIO, MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY, JONAH HILL, JEAN DUJARDIN, KYLE CHANDLER and JOANNA LUMLEY. In the 1990s Jordan Belfort became one of the most infamous names in American finance: a brilliant, conniving stock-chopper. He was THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, whose life of greed, power and excess was so outrageous it could only be true; no one could make this up! But the day Jordan was arrested and taken away in handcuffs was not the end of the madness. Catching the Wolf of Wall Street tells of what happened next. After getting out of jail on million bail he had to choose whether to plead guilty and act as a government witness or fight the c