Download or read book Martin Clunes The Biography written by Stafford Hildred and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-02 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Martin Clunes has been a familiar face on British television for almost two decades. During that period he has starred in some of the best-loved shows of modern times, including Doc Martin, William and Mary, and of course he phenomenally successful Men Behaving Badly. He was introduced to acting at a young age. His father, a successful actor and theatre manager who gave Peter Ustinov his first break, tragically died of cancer in 1970, leaving his wife Daphne, their daughter Amanda, and 8-year-old Martin. Years later, it was Daphne's cousin, Jeremy Brett - the actor famous for playing Sherlock Holmes - who encouraged Martin to take up acting professionally. Martin worked regularly through the 1980s, but when he was spotted by comedian Harry Enfield and subsequently made regular appearances in his popular sketch shows, he was catapulted into the big time. After landing the role of Gary in Men Behabving Badly, he has gone from strengh to strength. Never one to be pigeonholed, Martin has played a broad range of roles, including a serial killer in A is for Acid anb Burbage n the Oscar winning film Shakespeare in Love. More recently, he has also presented two of the most popular documentaries on television: Islands of Britain and Martin Clunes: A Man and His Dogs.

Download or read book A Dog s Life written by Martin Clunes and published by Hodder & Stoughton. This book was released on 2008-09-18 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a fact generally acknowledged, dear reader, that a man is not a man without a dog . . . ‘I have always been a pushover when it comes to dogs – something my own dogs worked out a long time ago. Who else can be relied on to be that excited about seeing you first thing, day in day out?’ Mary, Tina and Arthur are the four-footed members of the Clunes family – scrapping, sleeping, leaping, wagging and licking. But there’s too much of the scrapping, and the hierarchy is a complicated structure that has been bent and broken. Martin Clunes set off on a worldwide adventure to film ITV’s A Man and His Dogs and sought to discover where dogs come from and how they evolved into our companions and the working dogs of today. Along the way he also learned about the social structure of a wolf pack, survival skills of dingoes in Australia and wild dogs in Africa, among other things. In the wild, social rules are obeyed or fur flies, but nature has been pretty vicious in Martin’s own back yard as well. The battle to stop the fighting between Tina and Mary has included ventures into therapy, training classes, dog psychiatry, diet and tough love. Through the adventures of this delightful, closely-knit family, with their horses and chickens and dogs, we learn about the soft-hearted actor who is Martin Clunes. Fond, funny and endearing, this book will enchant and fascinate in equal measure.

Download or read book Manhunt The Night Stalker written by Colin Sutton and published by John Blake. This book was released on 2021-09-16 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Now a major ITV drama starring Martin Clunes* What does it take to catch a predator who has terrorised southeast England for over fifteen years? Delroy Grant - dubbed the Night Stalker - was one of the nation's most wanted men, a shocking sex predator. During his seventeen-year reign of fear, he established a clear MO. Visit a target at night. Remove a window pane and slide in. Unscrew the lightbulbs. Cut the power. Rip out the telephone wires. Tiptoe to the bedroom. Wake the victim by shining a torch in their eyes. What followed was often unspeakable. When SIO Colin Sutton was drafted into the case, Grant had been at large for over a decade. Stepping up where others had failed, he began the determined, relentless police work that had marked the end for infamous serial killer Levi Bellfield. Case by case, clue by clue. Night Stalker is the chilling true story of one of the most testing manhunts the Metropolitan Police have ever undertaken. It is a glimpse into the heart of darkness - and into the mind and work of the brilliant detective who brought one of London's most feared monsters to justice.

Download or read book Arthur George written by Julian Barnes and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brilliantly imagined and irresistibly readable, Arthur & George is a major new novel from Julian Barnes, a wonderful combination of playfulness, pathos and wisdom. Searching for clues, no one would ever guess that the lives of Arthur and George might intersect. Growing up in shabby-genteel nineteenth-century Edinburgh, Arthur is saddled with a dad who is a disgrace and a mum he wishes to protect, and is propelled into a life of action. To his astonishment, his career as a self-made man of letters brings him riches and fame and, in the world at large, he becomes the perfect picture of the honourable English gentlemen. George is irredeemably an outsider, and has no hope of becoming such a picture. Though he’s dogged and logical, a vicar’s son from rural Staffordshire, he is set apart, and he and his family are targeted in his boyhood by a poison-pen campaign. George finds safe harbour in the reliability of rules, and grows up to become a solicitor, putting his faith in the insulating value of British justice. Then crisis upsets the uneasy equilibrium of both men’s lives. Arthur is knocked for a loop by guilt and other dishonourable emotions. George is put to the sorest test, accused of a horrible crime. And from that point on their lives weave together in the most profound and surprising way, as each man becomes the other’s salvation. Arthur & George is a masterful novel about low crime and high spirituality, guilt and innocence, identity, nationality and race. Most of all, it’s a profound and witty meditation on the fateful differences between what we believe, what we know and what we can prove. George and his father pray together, kneeling side by side on the scrubbed boards. Then George climbs into bed while his father locks the door and turns out the light. As he falls asleep, George sometimes thinks of the floor, and how his soul must be scrubbed just as the boards are scrubbed. Father is not an easy sleeper, and has a tendency to groan and wheeze. Sometimes, in the early morning, when dawn is beginning to show at the edges of the curtains, Father will catechize him. "George, where do you live?" "The Vicarage, Great Wyrley." "And where is that?" "Staffordshire, Father." "And where is that?" "The centre of England." "And what is England, George?" "England is the beating heart of the Empire, Father." "Good. And what is the blood that flows through the arteries and veins of the Empire to reach even its farthest shore?" "The Church of England." "Good, George." And after a while Father will begin to groan and wheeze again. George watches the outline of the curtain harden. He lies there thinking of arteries and veins making red lines on the map of the world, linking Britain to all the places coloured pink: Australia and India and Canada and islands dotted everywhere. He thinks of blood bubbling though these tubes and emerging in Sydney, Bombay, the St. Lawrence Waterway. Bloodlines, that is a word he has heard somewhere. With the pulse of blood in his ears, he begins to fall asleep again. —excerpt from Arthur & George

Download or read book Casper the Commuting Cat written by Susan Finden and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-08-05 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Casper became a national celebrity when newspapers ran the story of the amazing cat that regularly took the No. 3 bus on 11-mile journeys around his home town, Plymouth, in Devon. While his devoted owner, Susan Finden, had wondered where her elusive pet was disappearing to each day, Casper was brightening the lives of countless commuters as they went about their business. Bus drivers, too, were getting well-acquainted with Casper, and notices went up in their depot alerting staff that a very special passenger might board their vehicle. In fact, he became a mascot for the bus company, and pictures of him and Susan adorned No. 3 buses. When Casper was sadly killed by a car in early 2010 messages of sympathy flooded in from places as far a field as Australia and Argentina. It quickly became clear that Casper and his remarkable story had touched the lives of so many people around the world. Movingly told by the owner who loved him dearly, Casper the Commuting Catis the touching story of a very special black-and-white cat who rode the bus and stole our hearts.

Download or read book Doc Martin Practice Makes Perfect written by Sam North and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-08-29 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relive the magic of ITV’s best loved drama series starring Martin Clunes Doc Martin arrives in the picture postcard fishing village of Portwenn, Cornwall. Once a high-flying London surgeon, his suddenly developed blood phobia means he has to take a job in a local practice. But while the Doc’s medical skills are second to none, his bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired. He immediately starts infuriating the locals, none more so than school teacher Louisa Glasson...

Download or read book John George Haigh the Acid Bath Murderer written by Jonathan Oates and published by Wharncliffe. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What motivated John George Haigh to murder at least six people, then dissolve their corpses in concentrated sulphuric acid? How did this intelligent, well-educated man from a loving, strongly religious family of Plymouth Brethren become a fraudster, a thief, then a serial killer? In the latest of his best-selling studies of criminal history, Jonathan Oates reinvestigates this sensational case of the late 1940s. He delves into Haigh's Yorkshire background, his reputation as a loner, a bully and a forger during his years at Wakefield Grammar School, and his growing appetite for the good life which his modest employment in insurance and advertising could not sustain. Then came his move to London and a rapid, apparently remorseless descent into the depths of crime, from deceit and theft to cold-blooded killing. As he follows the course of Haigh's crimes in graphic, forensic detail, Jonathan Oates gives a fascinating inside view of Haigh's attempt to carry through a series of perfect murders. For Haigh intended not only cut off his victims' lives but, by destroying their bodies with acid, literally to remove all traces that they had ever existed.

Download or read book Manhunt written by Colin Sutton and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NOW A MAJOR TV DRAMA STARRING MARTIN CLUNES What does it take to catch one of Britain's most feared killers? Levi Bellfield is one of the most notorious British serial killers of the last fifty years - his name alone evokes horror and revulsion, after his string of brutal murders in the early 2000s. At 3:07pm on 21st March, 2002, Milly Dowler left her school in Surrey for the last time. Less than an hour later, she was to be abducted and murdered in the cruellest fashion, sparking a missing person investigation that would span months before her body was found. In the two years that followed, two more young women - Marsha McDonnell and then Amélie Delagrange - were murdered in unspeakably brutal attacks. Yet with three murdered women on their hands, and few leads open to them, investigating officers were running out of ideas and options, until SIO Colin Sutton was drafted into the investigation for the murder of Delagrange. Seeing a connection between the three women, and thriving under the pressure of a serial killer hunt, Sutton was finally able to bring their murderer to justice after the case had begun to seem hopeless. Manhunt tells the story of how he led the charge to find a mystery killer, against the clock and against the odds - day by day and lead by lead. At once a gripping police procedural, and an insight into the life of an evil man, this is the story behind what it takes to track down a shockingly violent murderer before he strikes again.

Download or read book More than an Actor written by W. Grey Champion and published by Page Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2020-11-08 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Well-bred, educated at Eton and the Central School for Speech and Drama in London, the youngest of four boys in an upper-class family, Peter H. was in many ways the embodiment of Englishness, from the way he took his tea to his love of Shakespeare. Encouraged by his wonderful mother, he chose a career in acting and, under the tutelage of Sir Laurence Olivier at the British National Theatre Company, became a stellar performer - a classical actor in the postwar era of gritty realism. “/p>

Download or read book Kings of Comedy The Unauthorised Biography of Matt Lucas and David Walliams written by Neil Simpson and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2007-03-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They are Britain's best-loved comedians. This unauthorised biography gives the low-down on the men behind the laughter.When Little Britain appeared on our screens, a series of characters was born that would make a nation laugh like no other British comedy in recent years. With its hilarious mocking of British clichés and stereotypes, it was not long before its catchphrases were being quoted in every home, playground and office across the land. And it was all down to the comedy genius of the inspired duo that is Matt Lucas and David Walliams.All of a sudden, two relatively little-known comedians became the nation's entertainment heroes, shooting straight to the A-list of Britain's most wanted TV celebrities. Although such success was new to them, Matt and David's creativity led them to write two more astonishingly successful series, earning them countless industry accolades, numerous British comedy awards and two Baftas.But behind the sketches lie two fascinating individuals whose work in comedy goes way back - Matt and David met in 1990, drawn together by a mutual love for Reeves and Mortimer - and whose life stories provide a fascinating and hilarious insight into what has inspired them to produce some of the finest laughs in the history of British comedy. In this insightful and brilliantly researched biography, Neil Simpson traces their development from boys to men, revealing much about their off-screen lives along the way, and setting the record straight on the various rumours (many of them true!) that have grown around the pair.Kings of Comedy is a fascinating portrait of two men without whose comic creations Britain would be a lot less funny place to live. Show Less

Download or read book Jonathan Ross The Unauthorised Biography written by Neil Simpson and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2007-07-31 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jonathan Ross has a larger than life personality that has captivated radio and TV audiences both young and old. With a cheeky sense of humour and a witty repertoire Jonathan is definitely the nation's treasure.Beginning his media career as a Channel 4 researcher it was not long before Jonathan had paired up with Alan Marke, forming their own production company which launched The Last Resort project and later in 1987 Channel X. Without a host for the new venture Jonathan stepped into the breach and ignited a television presenting career that was to explode across the networks.Jonathan's Radio career was launched in a similarly chance way - filling in for Janice Long of Radio 1 for two weeks led to a slot on Richard Branson's flagship show (a forerunner for Virgin). Jonathan then went over to Radio 4 before returning to host his own show for an established Virgin radio. Picking up two Sony awards along the way, plus best entertainer and special achievement awards, it is unsurprising then that last year he collected, for the second time, the Best Radio Personality of the Year and was voted the most powerful man in broadcasting.Now an OBE, Jonathan's career is bursting at the seams with accolades to his talent and popularity. This is the wonderful biography of an eccentric and fantastically comic presenter, his life and family.

Download or read book My Family and Other Animals written by Gerald Durrell and published by Penguin Books Limited. This book was released on 2011-04-07 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'What we all need,' said Larry, 'is sunshine . . . a country where we can grow.' 'Yes, dear, that would be nice,' agreed Mother, not really listening. 'I had a letter from George this morning - he says Corfu's wonderful. Why don't we pack up and go to Greece?' 'Very well, dear, if you like,' said Mother unguardedly. Escaping the ills of the British climate, the Durrell family - acne-ridden Margo, gun-toting Leslie, bookworm Lawrence and budding naturalist Gerry, along with their long-suffering mother and Roger the dog - take off for the island of Corfu. But the Durrells find that, reluctantly, they must share their various villas with a menagerie of local fauna - among them scorpions, geckos, toads, bats and butterflies. Recounted with immense humour and charm My Family and Other Animals is a wonderful account of a rare, magical childhood. 'Durrell has an uncanny knack of discovering human as well as animal eccentricities' Sunday Telegraph

Download or read book Marilyn Monroe written by Donald Spoto and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2001 with total page 753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relying on over 150 interviews as well as Marilyn's letters and diaries, this work by best-selling biographer Spoto casts new light on every aspect of the actress's tempestuous life.

Download or read book The Pioneering Life of Mary Wortley Montagu Scientist and Feminist written by Jo Willett and published by . This book was released on 2023-05-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 300 years ago, in April 1721, a smallpox epidemic was raging in England. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu knew that she could save her 3-year-old daughter using the process of inoculation. She had witnessed this at first hand in Turkey, while she was living there as the wife of the British ambassador. She also knew that by inoculating - making her daughter the first person protected in the West - she would face opposition from doctors, politicians and clerics. Her courageous action eventually led to the eradication of smallpox and the prevention of millions of deaths.But Mary was more than a scientific campaigner. She mixed with the greatest politicians, writers, artists and thinkers of her day. She was also an important early feminist, writing powerfully and provocatively about the position of women.She was best friends with the poet Alexander Pope. They collaborated on a series of poems, which made her into a household name, an 'It Girl'. But their friendship turned sour and he used his pen to vilify her publicly.Aristocratic by birth, Mary chose to elope with Edward Wortley Montagu, whom she knew she did not love, so as to avoid being forced into marrying someone else. In middle age, her marriage stale, she fell for someone young enough to be her son - and, unknown to her, bisexual. She set off on a new life with him abroad. When this relationship failed, she stayed on in Europe, narrowly escaping the coercive control of an Italian conman.After twenty-two years abroad, she returned home to London to die. The son-in-law she had dismissed as a young man had meanwhile become Prime Minister.

Download or read book Manhunt Night Stalker written by Colin Sutton and published by . This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second real-life case from detective and Sunday Times bestselling author, Colin Sutton.

Download or read book Tour de Force written by Mark Cavendish and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From illness and mental health challenges to becoming the most successful British cyclist at the age of 22, Mark Cavendish shares his inspiring account of his record-breaking rise to the top of the world's biggest cycling stage at the 2021 Tour de France. Deep down, Mark Cavendish thought he was finished. After illness, setbacks and clinical depression, the once fastest man in the world had been written off by most. And at the age of 36, even he believed his explosive cycling career would fade out with a whimper. The Manxman hadn't won a single Grand Tour stage in Italy, Spain, or France since 2016. But then came his incredible resurrection at the 2021 Tour de France. Included on the Deceuninck Quick-Step team at the very last minute, only after Sam Bennett suffered an injury, Mark set about rewriting history. He claimed back the green jersey he first wore in 2011, and his four stage victories finally saw him matching Belgian legend Eddy Merckx's all-time record of 34 Tour de France stage wins. Cycling greats are never content, and Cavendish's dogged determination and inner strength had earned him the record that few believed he could ever achieve. This is his own intimate account of that race, right from the saddle of the miracle tour. Praise for Tour de Force: "The greatest comeback in sports history." —GQ magazine "A miracle." —Eddy Merckx

Download or read book Locked Out Lily written by Nick Lake and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A startlingly original, delightfully eerie tale for 9+ readers, with stunning illustrations by a renowned and multi-award-winning artist Lily just wants things to go back to the way they were: before she got sick, before her parents decided to have another baby. So when she’s sent away to stay with her grandmother while her mum has the baby, Lily is determined to go home. But she doesn’t expect to find people in her house – people who look like her parents, but definitely aren’t… Together with some unlikely animal companions, Lily must face her fears and summon the courage to break into her own house, and defeat ‘The Replacements’ before the night is out." Allegorical and atmospheric, this is a modern classic to treasure, perfect for fans of Coraline and A Monster Calls. 'A book of such wit and flair and delight: the kind of book you finish and immediately begin again, so that you can live again alongside the characters.’ - Katherine Rundell, bestselling author of Rooftoppers