Osobnosti, memoáry, biografie

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

In 2009 Malala Yousafzai began writing a blog on BBC Urdu about life in the Swat Valley as the Taliban gained control, at times banning girls from attending school. When her identity was discovered, Malala began to appear in both Pakistani and international media, advocating the freedom to pursue education for all. In October 2011, gunmen boarded Malala's school bus and shot her in the face, a bullet passing through her head and into her shoulder. Remarkably, Malala survived the shooting. At a very young age, Malala Yousafzai has become a worldwide symbol of courage and hope. Her shooting has sparked a wave of solidarity across Pakistan, not to mention globally, for the right to education, freedom from terror and female emancipation.

On 26 May, 2010 Apple Inc. passed Microsoft in valuation as the world's largest technology company. Its consumer electronic products - ranging from computers to mobile phones to portable media devices, not to mention its iTunes, iBook and App Store - have influenced nearly every facet of our lives, and it shows no sign of slowing down. But how did Apple - a company set up in the back room of a house by two friends, and one that always marketed itself as the underdog - become the marketplace leader (and the world's second largest company overall), and is it a good thing to have one company hold so much power? In The Apple Revolution Luke Dormehl shares the inside story of how Apple Inc. came to be; from the formation of the company's philosophies and user-friendly ethos, to the "iPod mo

In March 2004, Hank Haney received a call from Tiger Woods in which the golf champion asked Haney to be his coach. It was a call that would change both men's lives. Tiger - only 28 at the time - was by then already an icon, judged by the sporting press as not only one of the best golfers ever, but possibly the best athlete ever. But Tiger was always looking to improve, and he wanted Hank's help. Over the next six years of working together, the supremely gifted Woods collected six major championships and rewrote golf history. Hank was one of the very few people allowed behind the curtain. Always haunting Tiger was his fear of 'the big miss' - the wildly inaccurate golf shot that can ruin an otherwise solid round - and it was because that type of blunder was sometimes part of Tiger's gam

Well hello to you dear browser. Now I have your attention it would be rude if I didn't tell you a little about my literary feast. So, here is the thing: is it just me or does anyone else find that adulthood offers no refuge from the unexpected horrors, peculiar lack of physical coordination and sometimes unexplained nudity, that accompanied childhood and adolescence? Does everybody struggle with the hazards that accompany, say, sitting elegantly on a bar stool; using chopsticks; pretending to understand the bank crisis; pedicures - surely it's plain wrong for a stranger to fondle your feet? Or is it just me? I am proud to say I have a wealth of awkward experiences - from school days to life as an office temp - and here I offer my 18-year-old self (and I hope you too dear reader) some m

'You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed...' Julian Barnes' new book is about ballooning, photography, love and grief; about putting two things, and two people, together, and about tearing them apart. One of the judges who awarded him the 2011 Man Booker Prize described him as 'an unparalleled magus of the heart'. This book confirms that opinion

By turns harrowing and inspiring, "Prague Winter" is Madeleine Albright's account of her early life from 1937 to 1948, a dozen years that witnessed the Nazi invasion of her native Prague, World War II, the Holocaust, the defeat of fascism, the rise of communism, and the onset of the Cold War. Her experiences, and those of her family, provide a unique lens through which to view this tumultuous period in modern history. Moving from the thousand-year-old Prague Castle to the bomb shelters of London, from the desolate prison ghetto of Terezin to the war councils of Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt and Hitler, Albright reflects on her discovery of her family's Jewish heritage decades after the war, her Czech homeland's tangled history, and the stark moral choices faced by her parents, ordinary

The story of Lance Armstrong - the cyclist who recovered from testicular cancer and went on to win the Tour de France a record seven tmes, the man who wrote a bestselling and inspirational account of his life, the charitable benefactor - seemed almost too good to be true. And it was. As early as Armstrong's first victory on the Tour in 1999, Sunday Times journalist David Walsh had reason to think that the incredible performances we were seeing from Armstrong were literally too good to be true. Based on insider information and dogged research, he began to unmask the truth. Cycling's biggest star used every weapon in his armoury to protect his name. But he could not keep everyone silent. In the autumn of 2012, the USADA published a damning report on Armstrong that resulted in the America