Download or read book Thatcher Stole My Trousers written by Alexei Sayle and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-03-10 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Enlightening ... Funny, smart, original and provocative ... It is hard to imagine the stalwarts of Mock the Week recognising the Druze militia leader Walid Jumblatt in a London cinema' NEW STATESMAN 'Few standups have come close to capturing a fraction of this creative energy in a book ... Alexei Sayle is an exception' GUARDIAN "What I brought to comedy was an authentic working-class voice plus a threat of genuine violence - nobody in Monty Python looked like a hard case who'd kick your head in." In 1971, comedians on the working men's club circuit imagined that they would be free to continue telling their tired, racist, misogynistic gags forever. But their nemesis, a nineteen-year-old Marxist art student, was slowly coming to meet them... Thatcher Stole My Trousers chronicles a time when comedy and politics united in electrifying ways. Recounting the founding of the Comedy Store, the Comic Strip and the Young Ones, and Alexei's friendships with the comedians who – like him – would soon become household names, this is a unique and beguiling blend of social history and memoir. Fascinating, funny, angry and entertaining, it is a story of class and comedy, politics and love, fast cars and why it's difficult to foul a dwarf in a game of football.
Download or read book Stalin Ate My Homework written by Alexei Sayle and published by Sceptre. This book was released on 2010-09-02 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Fascinating and hugely entertaining' Daily Telegraph 'It's not like other comedians' memoirs. It's funny' Guardian THE SAYLES MIGHT NOT HAVE BEEN THE ONLY JEWISH ATHEIST COMMUNIST FAMILY IN LIVERPOOL, BUT ALEXEI KNEW FROM AN EARLY AGE THAT THEY WERE ONE OF THE MORE ECCENTRIC. Born on the day egg rationing came to an end, Alexei was the only child of Joe, an affable trade unionist who led the family on railway expeditions across eastern Europe, and Molly, a hot-tempered red-head who terrified teachers and insisted Alexei see the Red Army Choir instead of the Beatles. Perceptive and hilarious, this is a portrait of a family, a city, a country and a continent going through enormous changes. 'Sayle's book has charm and substance, both as memoir and history' Times Literary Supplement
Download or read book Alexei Sayle s Imaginary Sandwich Bar written by Alexei Sayle and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Godfather of Alternative Comedy reveals his true vocation: proprietor of an imaginary sandwich shop. Blending politics, comedy, philosophy and memoir, this is the inimitable Alexei Sayle at his most anarchic and irresistibly entertaining Alexei Sayle has been telling people he runs a sandwich bar on Gray's Inn Road that doesn't exist since the mid-1970s. From behind this imaginary counter Alexei dispenses wisdom and focaccia to his famous customers as he explores his love of pretending, reveals why he disappeared from our TV screens in the 1990's, lobbies for eleven-hour long episodes of Newsnight and discusses rampant nepotism in coveted careers. And from drawing striking comparisons between capitalism and all-you-can-eat buffets to discussing the hidden depths of Taylor Swift, this flight of fancy packs a surprising punch and will leave you hungry for more."--Publisher.
Download or read book Black Swan Green written by David Mitchell and published by Random House. This book was released on 2006-04-11 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Selected by Time as One of the Ten Best Books of the Year | A New York Times Notable Book | Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post Book World, The Christian Science Monitor, Rocky Mountain News, and Kirkus Reviews | A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist | Winner of the ALA Alex Award | Finalist for the Costa Novel Award From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new. Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping” through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons. Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell’s subtlest and most effective achievement to date. Praise for Black Swan Green “[David Mitchell has created] one of the most endearing, smart, and funny young narrators ever to rise up from the pages of a novel. . . . The always fresh and brilliant writing will carry readers back to their own childhoods. . . . This enchanting novel makes us remember exactly what it was like.”—The Boston Globe “[David Mitchell is a] prodigiously daring and imaginative young writer. . . . As in the works of Thomas Pynchon and Herman Melville, one feels the roof of the narrative lifted off and oneself in thrall.”—Time
Download or read book The Trials and Triumphs of Les Dawson written by Louis Barfe and published by Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2012-02-22 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: STRONGThe first ever narrative biography of a towering figure in British comedy Les Dawson, more than any other comedian, spoke for the phlegmatic, pessimistic British way of life. A Northern lad who climbed out of the slums thanks to an uncommonly brilliant mind, he was always the underdog, but his bark was funnier and more incisive than many comics who claimed to bite. Married twice in real life, he had a third wife in his comic world—a fictional ogre built from spare parts left by fleeing Nazis at the end of World War II—and an equally frightening mother-in-law. He was down to earth, yet given to eloquent, absurd flights of fancy. He was endlessly generous with his time, but slow to buy a round of drinks. He was a mass of contradictions. In short, he was human, he was genuine, and that's why audiences loved him. This is his story.
Download or read book Oil written by Upton Sinclair and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First edition of Sinclair's savage satire, loosely based on the life and career of Edward L. Doheny, and the Teapot Dome scandal of the Harding administration. Although Sinclair's famous novel The Jungle deals with Chicago's meatpacking industry, he moved west to Pasadena in 1916 and began writing novels set in California, the best of which was Oil!, the story of the education of Bunny Ross, son of wildcat oil man Joe Ross after oil is discovered outside Los Angeles. The novel was the basis for Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film There Will Be Blood. In California Classics, Lawrence Clark Powell called Oil! "Sinclair's most sustained and best writing."
Download or read book Party Animals written by David Aaronovitch and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'An affectionate and insightful account of 20th-century history that also amounts to a manifesto for the power of words - and belonging.' Helen Davies, a Sunday Times Book of the Year In July 1961, just before David Aaronovitch's seventh birthday, Yuri Gagarin came to London. The Russian cosmonaut was everything the Aaronovitch family wished for - a popular and handsome embodiment of modern communism. But who were they, these ever hopeful, defiant and (had they but known it) historically doomed people? Like a non-magical version of the wizards of J. K. Rowling's world, they lived secretly with and parallel to the non-communist majority, sometimes persecuted, sometimes ignored, but carrying on their own ways and traditions. Where others went to church they went to Socialist Sunday School, society's up was their down and its heroes were their villains. Who wanted American TV when you could have Russian movies? A memoir of early life among communists, Party Animals first took David Aaronovitch back through his own memories of belief and action. But there was much more to it. He found himself studying the old secret service files, uncovering the unspoken shame and fears that provided the unconscious background to his own existence as a party animal. Only then did he begin to understand what had come before - both the obstinate heroism and the monstrous cowardice. And the elements that shape our fondest beliefs.
Download or read book The Ravenmaster written by Christopher Skaife and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries, the Tower of London has been home to a group of famous avian residents: the ravens. Each year they are seen by millions of visitors, and they have become as integral a part of the Tower as its ancient stones. But their role is even more important than that—legend has it that if the ravens should ever leave, the Tower will crumble into dust and great harm will befall the kingdom. The responsibility for ensuring that such a disaster never comes to pass falls to one man: the Ravenmaster. The current holder of the position is Yeoman Warder Christopher Skaife, and in this fascinating, entertaining and touching book he memorably describes the ravens’ formidable intelligence, their idiosyncrasies and their occasionally wicked sense of humour. The Ravenmaster is a compelling, inspiring and irreverent story that will delight and surprise anyone with an interest in British history or animal behaviour.
Download or read book The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3 4 written by Sue Townsend and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2003-08-14 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adrian Mole's first love, Pandora, has left him; a neighbor, Mr. Lucas, appears to be seducing his mother (and what does that mean for his father?); the BBC refuses to publish his poetry; and his dog swallowed the tree off the Christmas cake. "Why" indeed.
Download or read book A Thousand Splendid Suns written by Khaled Hosseini and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2008-09-18 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting and powerful story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship and an indestructible love
Download or read book Jane of Lantern Hill written by Lucy Maud Montgomery and published by . This book was released on 2020-03-16 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jane of Lantern HillLucy Maud Montgomery Jane of Lantern Hill is a novel by Canadian author L. M. Montgomery. The book was adapted into a 1990 telefilm, Lantern Hill, by Sullivan Films, the producer of the highly popular Anne of Green Gables television miniseries and the television series Road to Avonlea.Montgomery began formulating an idea on May 11, 1936, began writing on August 21, and wrote the last chapter on February 3, 1937. She finished typing up the manuscript on February 25, as she could not hire a typist to do it for her. This novel was dedicated to "JL", her companion cat.The novel was written at Montgomery's house, "Journey's End"; the environment influenced Montgomery's writing to create a
Download or read book How I Escaped My Certain Fate written by Stewart Lee and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2010-08-19 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experience how it feels to be the subject of a blasphemy prosecution! Find out why 'wool' is a funny word! See how jokes work, their inner mechanisms revealed, before your astonished face! In 2001, after over a decade in the business, Stewart Lee quit stand-up, disillusioned and drained, and went off to direct a loss-making musical, Jerry Springer: The Opera. Nine years later, How I Escaped My Certain Fate details his return to live performance, and the journey that took him from an early retirement to his position as the most critically acclaimed stand-up in Britain, the winner of BAFTAs and British Comedy Awards, and the affirmation of being rated the 41st best stand up ever. Here is Stewart Lee's own account of his remarkable comeback, told through transcripts of the three legendary full-length shows that sealed his reputation. Astonishingly frank and detailed in-depth notes reveal the inspiration and inner workings of his act. With unprecedented access to a leading comedian's creative process, this book tells us just what it was like to write these shows, develop the performance and take them on tour. How I Escaped My Certain Fate is everything we have come to expect from Stewart Lee: fiercely intelligent, unsparingly honest and very, very funny.
Download or read book dith Piaf written by David Looseley and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world-famous French singer Édith Piaf (1915-63) was never just a singer. This book suggests new ways of understanding her, her myth and her meanings over time at home and abroad, by proposing the notion of an 'imagined Piaf.
Download or read book Overtaken written by Alexei Sayle and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kelvin is a 33-year-old property developer living in a small Lancashire town. He has five close friends, all in well-paid jobs. Having bought their lovely houses cheaply in the early 1990s, they are free to spend money on their own pleasures - particularly clothes, meals and cars. Most of all, their life revolves around going to see things - art exhibitions, comedians, live music, plays... When we first meet the six friends they are on their way to see a new kind of circus. Once there Kelvin does something unforgivable to a clown, has a strange snack and meets the most beautiful girl he has ever seen. It's the beginning of the end of the good life.
Download or read book The Man Who Went into the West written by Byron Rogers and published by Quarto Publishing Group USA. This book was released on 2007-07-20 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning life story of Wales national poet and vicar R.S. Thomas is “a biography touched by genius.” (Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday) R.S. Thomas is widely considered as one of the twentieth-century’s greatest English language poets. His bitter yet beautiful collections on Wales, its landscape, people and identity, reflect a life of political and spiritual asceticism. Indeed, Thomas is a man who banned vacuum cleaners from his house on grounds of noise, whose first act on moving into an ancient cottage was to rip out the central heating, and whose attempts to seek out more authentically Welsh parishes only brought him more into contact with loud English holidaymakers. To Thomas’s many admirers this will be a surprising, sometimes shocking, but at last humanising portrait of someone who wrote truly metaphysical poetry. “A masterpiece.” —Daily Express “A striking, vivid and tender reading of the man . . . Excellent.” —Observer “Riotiously funny.” —Rowan Williams, Sunday Times “It is precisely Byron Rogers’ darkly comic sense of the ridiculous that melts the frost from the head of R.S. Thomas and humanizes a remote and bleakly beautiful writer.” —The Times “A chatty, disorderly but extremely good [biography] . . . A wonderfully comprehensive picture of the man.” —Daily Telegraph “As revealing an account of a severely private person that anyone could hope to achieve.” —Alan Brownjohn, Times Literary Supplement “Engagingly high-spirited and daring.” —Andrew Motion, Guardian Book of the Week “Charming and deftly written. . . . A very funny book.” —Literary Review “As readable and rounded a life of the man as could be written.” —Tablet Winner of the James Tait Black prize for biography
Download or read book Putin s Kleptocracy written by Karen Dawisha and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The raging question in the world today is who is the real Vladimir Putin and what are his intentions. Karen Dawisha’s brilliant Putin’s Kleptocracy provides an answer, describing how Putin got to power, the cabal he brought with him, the billions they have looted, and his plan to restore the Greater Russia. Russian scholar Dawisha describes and exposes the origins of Putin’s kleptocratic regime. She presents extensive new evidence about the Putin circle’s use of public positions for personal gain even before Putin became president in 2000. She documents the establishment of Bank Rossiya, now sanctioned by the US; the rise of the Ozero cooperative, founded by Putin and others who are now subject to visa bans and asset freezes; the links between Putin, Petromed, and “Putin’s Palace” near Sochi; and the role of security officials from Putin’s KGB days in Leningrad and Dresden, many of whom have maintained their contacts with Russian organized crime. Putin’s Kleptocracy is the result of years of research into the KGB and the various Russian crime syndicates. Dawisha’s sources include Stasi archives; Russian insiders; investigative journalists in the US, Britain, Germany, Finland, France, and Italy; and Western officials who served in Moscow. Russian journalists wrote part of this story when the Russian media was still free. “Many of them died for this story, and their work has largely been scrubbed from the Internet, and even from Russian libraries,” Dawisha says. “But some of that work remains.”
Download or read book When Abortion Was a Crime written by Leslie J. Reagan and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive history of abortion in the United States, with a new preface that equips readers for what’s to come. When Abortion Was a Crime is the must-read book on abortion history. Originally published ahead of the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, this award-winning study was the first to examine the entire period during which abortion was illegal in the United States, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and ending with that monumental case in 1973. When Abortion Was a Crime is filled with intimate stories and nuanced analysis, demonstrating how abortion was criminalized and policed—and how millions of women sought abortions regardless of the law. With this edition, Leslie J. Reagan provides a new preface that addresses the dangerous and ongoing threats to abortion access across the country, and the precarity of our current moment. While abortions have typically been portrayed as grim "back alley" operations, this deeply researched history confirms that many abortion providers—including physicians—practiced openly and safely, despite prohibitions by the state and the American Medical Association. Women could find cooperative and reliable practitioners; but prosecution, public humiliation, loss of privacy, and inferior medical care were a constant threat. Reagan's analysis of previously untapped sources, including inquest records and trial transcripts, shows the fragility of patient rights and raises provocative questions about the relationship between medicine and law. With the right to abortion increasingly under attack, this book remains the definitive history of abortion in the United States, offering vital lessons for every American concerned with health care, civil liberties, and personal and sexual freedom.
