During the catastrophic tsunami of 2004, a family of hippos was swept out to sea from their home on Sabaki River, in Eastern Kenya. The sole survivor of the disastor was a baby hippo who was rescued and given the name Owen. Motherless and alone, Owen is befriended by Mzee, a giant male tortoise at a local nature reserve.
This moving and charming tale is the story of their friendship.
From singing to the postman when she was two years old to her annual sell-out tours in the 2000s, Barbara Dickson has been captivating her fans for the best part of sixty years. In her autobiography she describes the joys of growing up in Fife with her talented brother and loving parents, of moving to Edinburgh to find her place in the world and the stresses and strains of trying to make a living on the Scottish folk scene. Not content to have just a successful singing career, she turned to another: acting.
Aleksandr Orlov has in the last year become one of the most loved figures in British culture and his catchphrase - Simples! - can be heard from the playground to the office. Written in his inimitable voice (as dictated to his sidekick Sergei), his autobiography will offer the same humour as his TV ads, giving us the full story of his ancestor's Journey of Courageousness from the Kalahari to Russia, the low-down on his life as entrepreneur and founder of comparethemeerkat.com and his love of grubs and cravats.
On 10 June 1991, eleven-year-old Jaycee Dugard was abducted from a school bus stop within sight of her home in Tahoe, California. It was the last her family and friends saw of her for over eighteen years. On 26 August 2009, Dugard, her daughters, and Phillip Craig Garrido appeared in the office of her kidnapper's parole officer in California.
Ellen Terry was a natural actress who filled the theatre with a magical radiance. "The Times" called her the 'uncrowned queen of England' but behind her public success lay a darker story. The child-bride of G.F. Watts, she eloped with a friend of Oscar Wilde at 21 and gave birth to 2 illegitimate children. But her greatest partnership was on-stage, with legendary actor-manager and tragedian Henry Irving.
This is a book about men and war. Not real conflict but war as it has filtered down to generations of boys and men through toys, comics, games and movies. Harry Pearson belongs to the great battalion of British men who grew up playing with toy soldiers - refighting World War II - and then stopped growing up.
'You have to be on your guard when you go back to special places. You may be able to locate them easily enough on the map, but maps tell only one story. Times change and places and people with them.
The memory plays curious tricks, and things aren't always as you remember or expect'. Twenty years ago, Tom Fort drove his little red car onto the ferry at Felixstowe, bound for all points east. Eastern Europe was still a faraway place, just emerging from its half-century of waking nightmare, blinking, injured, full of fears but importantly full of hope too.
In 2006, Dee Caffari became the first woman to sail solo round the world against the prevailing winds and currents. Her story is an adventure in the true sense of the word.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
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