Download or read book Barry Desmond is a Wanker written by Martin Knight and published by eBook Partnership. This book was released on 2012-08-17 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barry Desmond is a wanker. Masturbation has formed the unwelcome backdrop to his life; from his early teens when he was tortured by the belief he was the only one of his peer group doing this thing to himself to the current day when he thinks he must be the only man over 50 still doing it. Barry was the only child born to parents whose own marriage was borne of desperation. Smothered by his parents' over protective eccentricity his schooldays were difficult and coupled with the guilt over his burgeoning self-abuse, Barry fails to form relationships outside of the family home. He follows his father into a clerical career with the Empire Bank and finds his feet to an extent. He ends up under-achieving by running the Archives Department but eventually doubles it size by employing Danny Holloway as his assistant. For the next twenty-five years the two men manage to keep their heads below the corporate parapet and at home Barry watches as old age engulfs his parents.Then seismic events upturn Barry's life. His parents die in quick succession and the Empire Bank is seen as a relic of old Britain and is taken over by the Americans. Barry's job disappears along with his family. Stricken by acute loneliness but blessed with relative inherited and accumulated wealth he resolves to change his life. To go out into the world and form relationships and to live a life. He knows he has to interact with people other than himself and forces himself to do so. Barry's shares the ethos of his parents' generation and believes that people are fundamentally decent. But is this really the case in the 21st century? Despite being ill-equipped for an entry into 2000s British society Barry Desmond emerges as the only hero in this final episode of his life.
Download or read book Lower Middle Class Nation written by Nicola Bishop and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lower-Middle-Class Nation provides an unparalleled interdisciplinary cultural history of the lower-middle-class worker in British life since 1850. Considering highbrow, lowbrow, and middle-brow forms across literature, film, television and more, Nicola Bishop traces the development of the lower-middle-class from the mid-19th century to the present day, tackling a number of pressing, consistent concerns such as automation, commuting, and the search for a life/work balance. Above all, this book brings together ideas about class, nationhood, and gender, demonstrating that a particularly British lower-middle-class identity is constructed through the spaces and practices of the everyday. Aimed at undergraduate, postgraduates and scholars working in media and social history, literature, popular culture, cultural studies and sociology, Lower-Middle-Class Nation represents a new direction in cultural histories of work, labour, and leisure.
Download or read book Wide Boys Never Work written by Robert Westerby and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1937, Wide Boys Never Work brings the streets of pre-war London alive in the tradition of other great low-life novelists such as Gerald Kersh and James Curtis, and is a forgotten gem rich in both its snappy dialogue and vibrant prose style. This new edition from London Books comes with an introduction by the respected chronicler of the capital, Iain Sinclair, who cites Wide Boys Never Work as one of his favourite London novels.
Download or read book Cushty written by JOE. KNIGHT SMITH (MARTIN.) and published by . This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published to critical acclaim as Gypsy Joe, with The Observer selecting it as Sports Book Of The Year, Cushty is a revised and expanded edition. Encouraged as a child to reject the gypsy tradition of fighting and take up golf, Joe rose through the ranks of the professional sport. However, after having to leave his club due to false accusations, he fell into bare-knuckle fighting and crime. Only when prison loomed did he reflect on his life's course and left the underworld. A redemptive, uplifting account of a young man's determination to realise his dream regardless of prejudice.
Download or read book GYPSY JOE written by Joe Smith and published by eBook Partnership. This book was released on 2012-10-21 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gypsy Joe is not only a story of redemption, but an uplifting account of a young gypsy determined to realize his dream. Joe Smith tells of his formative years travelling the country in a caravan and how he encountered crushing prejudice when his extraordinary talents as a golf boy prodigy became apparent.Disillusioned, he recounts a downward spiral and a life of criminality before pulling back from the brink and making the most of his life.The Observer selected the book as their Sports Book of the Year 2009 saying: "e;One of the best golf books written this year; although the cheque books come out for the scandal, this true story of thwarted ambition, criminality, violence and redemption has substance. A courageous story shot through with intelligence and humanity."e;"e;What comes across in this book is family loyalty, raw courage and violence but there is also intelligence and humanity."e;Chris Blackhurst -- Evening Standard, 23 June 2009
Download or read book The Seal Club written by Alan Warner and published by . This book was released on 2020-11-12 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Seal Club is a three-novella collection by the authors Alan Warner, Irvine Welsh and John King, three stories that capture their ongoing interests and concerns, stories that reflect bodies of work that started with Morvern Callar, Trainspotting and The Football Factory - all best-sellers, all turned into high-profile films.
Download or read book Prelude to a Certain Midnight written by Gerald Kersh and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2019-11-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prelude to a Certain Midnight, first published in 1947, is a novel of the rise and fall of a group of patrons of a neighborhood bar on a side street of London’s East End. In the midst of the looming World War II, a 10-year-old Jewish girl is murdered. The police have no clues and little interest in solving the crime, so Asta Thundersley, a wealthy woman, turns crusader and takes up the challenge, sifting through clues and gathering suspects for a dinner party where, unfortunately, nothing helpful is learned. A police detective is also involved but similarly, makes little headway. The book is notable for its varied array of colorful characters and evocative narration. Gerald Kersh (1911-1968) was the author of a number of novels and short stories.
Download or read book Doctor of the Lost written by Simon Blumenfeld and published by . This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Thomas Barnardo arrived in East London in 1866, his plan was to train at the London Hospital before sailing to China to work as a missionary. The conditions he found in the East End stopped him in his tracks. The unemployment, poverty, overcrowding, drinking and disease were bad enough, but seeing thousands of half-starved children living on the streets broke his heart. By the time of his death he had helped 100,000 children and his work continues to this day. Doctor of the Lost is the fictionalised story of Dr Barnardo's early years in East London.
Download or read book Battersea Girl written by Martin Knight and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-11-18 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A couple of years ago, Martin Knight began a quest to delve into his family history. He had a head start on many amateur genealogists, as 30 years earlier he had produced a school project on the very subject. The project was based on the papers and oral history of his then elderly grandmother, Ellen Tregent. Martin dusted this off and began to assemble the chain of events that shaped his grandmother's life. He even made contact with several living relatives who had known Ellen or some of the people and events she described. Ellen Tregent was born in 1888 and died in 1988 - her lifetime encompassing an unprecedented century of social change and world upheaval. She was born into a poor working-class family in Battersea, London. Her grandfather had arrived from Ireland 40 years earlier to escape almost certain death as potato famine ravaged his country. In Battersea Girl, Martin Knight charts Ellen's long and eventful life and the lives of her siblings. They encounter abject poverty, disease, suicide, murder, war and inevitably death, but, equally, the spirit of stoical people who were determined to make the most of their lives shines through in this enchanting book.
Download or read book Beautiful Losers written by Leonard Cohen and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-01-26 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the best-known experimental novels of the 1960s, Beautiful Losers is Leonard Cohen’ s most defiant and uninhibited work. As imagined by Cohen, hell is an apartment in Montreal, where a bereaved and lust-tormented narrator reconstructs his relations with the dead. In that hell two men and a woman twine impossibly and betray one another again and again. Memory blurs into blasphemous sexual fantasy--and redemption takes the form of an Iroquois saint and virgin who has been dead for 300 years but still has the power to save even the most degraded of her suitors. First published in 1966, Beautiful Losers demonstrates that its author is not only a superb songwriter but also a novelist of visionary power. Funny, harrowing, and fiercely moving, it is a classic erotic tragedy, incandescent in its prose and exhilarating for its risky union of sexuality and faith.
Download or read book Malayan Swing written by Pete Haynes and published by London. This book was released on 2009 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aidan is an outsider - small, awkward and often silent. But on the inside he is thoughtful, intelligent and full of insight, speaking to the reader with an almost childlike honesty. As Aidan's physical and mental state begins to deteriorate, readers will be moved by his decency, even in the face of extreme adversity. Malayan Swing is a brave and important book - a moving novel dedicated to those living on the margins of society.
Download or read book They Drive by Night written by James Curtis and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1938, this is the second James Curtis title to be reprinted by London Books (The Gilt Kid appeared in 2007) and sees the author take his favourite themes of justice and equality on a rollercoaster ride through the streets of the capital and onto the great roads heading north. This new edition comes with an introduction by the well-known writer, broadcaster and Curtis fan, Jonathan Meades.
Download or read book It Always Rains on Sunday written by Arthur J. La Bern and published by . This book was released on 2015-05 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful, atmospheric novel that captures the everyday flavours of London's East End in the 1930's. Dreams meet reality as the rain keeps falling, family arguments rage, a youngDreams meet woman looks for love, gangsters lurk, a fugitive makes his mark and murder and suicide hangs heavily in the air. Described as a predecessor to Alan Sillitoe's classic Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, this fine work is now available again after many years out of print, ready to take up its rightful place in the realist literary canon.
Download or read book The Working Man s Ballet written by Alan Hudson and published by Robson Books Limited. This book was released on 1999-03-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: King of Chelsea Soccer Club's supreme team of the roaring 70's, and arguably the finest footballer London ever produced, Alan Hudson was the genius at the heart of this dream team. In a meteoric rise, he went to a European final in just months and his England debut against West Germany was without doubt the most spectacular ever. Called the finest player of his generation, he was the quintessential cockney rebel, and his career was marked by clashes with authority and the establishment. Here he tells his own remarkable story, as unorthodox and inspired as his own unique style of football. This isn't just a book about soccer or a nostalgia trip... its a story of a gifted young man growing up in one of the most exciting eras in the most glamorous world sport of them all.
Download or read book The Angel and the Cuckoo written by Gerald Kersh and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul Auster, Ian McEwan and Don DeLillo all know that the city is a place of absurdity, and each of them have played with the form of their novels to accentuate and clarify the absurdities that city-dwellers face on a daily basis. Yet before any of them had their first novel published Gerald Kersh had written his last masterpiece The Angel And The Cuckoo. This is a novel of London that cuts back and forth in time through the Depression years between the two World Wars, following artists, criminals, lovers, singers and con-men as they each follow their singular obsessions.
Download or read book Slaughterhouse Prayer written by John King and published by . This book was released on 2018-11-08 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a boy realises the grown-ups are killing animals and that he has been eating their bodies, he gives up meat. But should he share the truth and break another child's heart? As a youth he wants to believe in the ability of words and peaceful protest to end the slaughter, while struggling to resist a desire for revenge. Now a disillusioned man trying to rebuild his life, he must choose one of two paths. Acceptance means security, but those meat-industry adverts keep taunting him and some familiar insults - smelly pig, dirty cow, chick-chick-chicken - fill his head.
Download or read book The Global Football League written by P. Millward and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-10-12 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tackles issues of globalization in the English Premier League and unpicks what this means to fan groups around the world, drawing upon a range of sociological theories to tell the story of the local and global repertoires of action emanating from the popular protests at Liverpool and Manchester United football clubs.
