LoveReading has teamed up with Audiobooks.com to give you the chance to get 2 free audiobooks when you sign up. Try it for 30 days for free with no strings attached. You can cancel anytime, although we're sure you'll love it. Click the button to find out more:
Find out moreBrian Thompson has written for the stage, radio, television, and is the author of four novels. He divides his time between Oxford, England, and the South of France.
In 1973, Brian Thompson kissed the impossibly glamorous Elizabeth North for the first time, in a busy supermarket car park along the Leeds ring road. This is the story of the unexpectedly joyous consequences - ones to baffle many, not least themselves - until her death, aged 78. Both were writers, though very different in ambition and achievement. They came from opposite ends of the social register - she an Admiral's daughter, he the descendant of unruly Cockney eccentrics. She was by nature a solitary (though one with four children). He was loud, incurably facetious - and needy. 'It's you and me, girl. It's only ever about you and me,' he once told her much too fervently. 'Yes,' she replied with her biting honesty. 'Yes - with the usual reservations.' From a tiny Harrogate terrace, to the deeply un-picturesque French farmhouse where they spent their summers, Brian and Liz battled their way to a heartrending goodbye in an Oxford hospital ward. In many ways, their partnership was 'an exercise in asymmetry' - yet, despite the conflicts, they emerge in this deeply-felt memoir as a couple who were lucky enough to find their corner of paradise in one another.
Winner of the Costa Biography Award 2006. Judges' comment: "From a loveless wartime childhood comes a generous and loveable memoir written from a child's-eye view. Utterly lacking in self-pity, it's laugh-out-loud funny."
In 1973, Brian Thompson kissed the impossibly glamorous Elizabeth North for the first time, in a busy supermarket car park along the Leeds ring road. This is the story of the unexpectedly joyous consequences - ones to baffle many, not least themselves - until her death, aged 78. Both were writers, though very different in ambition and achievement. They came from opposite ends of the social register - she an Admiral's daughter, he the descendant of unruly Cockney eccentrics. She was by nature a solitary (though one with four children). He was loud, incurably facetious - and needy. 'It's you and me, girl. It's only ever about you and me,' he once told her much too fervently. 'Yes,' she replied with her biting honesty. 'Yes - with the usual reservations.' From a tiny Harrogate terrace, to the deeply un-picturesque French farmhouse where they spent their summers, Brian and Liz battled their way to a heartrending goodbye in an Oxford hospital ward. In many ways, their partnership was 'an exercise in asymmetry' - yet, despite the conflicts, they emerge in this deeply-felt memoir as a couple who were lucky enough to find their corner of paradise in one another.
Climate changes will affect food production in a number of ways. Crop yields, aquatic populations and forest productivity will decline, invasive insect and plant species will proliferate and desertification, soil salinization and water stress will increase. Each of these impacts will decrease food and nutrition security, primarily by reducing access to and availability of food, and also by increasing the risk of infectious disease. Although increased biofuel demand has the potential to increase incomes among producers, it can also negatively affect food and nutrition security. Land used for cultivating food crops may be diverted to biofuel production, creating food shortages and raising prices. Accelerations in unregulated or poorly regulated foreign direct investment, deforestation and unsustainable use of chemical fertilizers may also result. Biofuel production may reduce women's control of resources, which may in turn reduce the quality of household diets. Each of these effects increases risk of poor food and nutrition security, either through decreased physical availability of food, decreased purchasing power, or increased risk of disease. The Impact of Climate Change and Bioenergy on Nutrition articulates the links between current environmental issues and food and nutrition security. It provides a unique collection of nutrition statistics, climate change projections, biofuel scenarios and food security information under one cover which will be of interest to policymakers, academia, agronomists, food and nutrition security planners, programme implementers, health workers and all those concerned about the current challenges of climate change, energy production, hunger and malnutrition.
Bella Wallis - respectable society widow with a secret identity as a writer of sensationalist novels - is now happily engaged to the love of her life, Philip Westland. But Westland's shadowy job, working for the British government, continually takes him abroad and away from the charismatic, impatient Bella. And then there is the matter of Westland's sister's incarceration in a French nunnery, a mystery about which he refuses to say a word. Bella is convinced that their future together can only be resolved by getting to the bottom of his secret. The resulting quest will take her from the Oval, and a vicious curse laid on champion batsman W.G Grace, to the desolate moors of Yorkshire, on the trail of some decidedly dangerous women and a surprisingly chatty hermit...
London, 1875. At Lady Cornford's famous soiree (sugared almonds and tittle-tattle) everyone is gossiping about Henry Ellis Margam's latest hit, The Widow's Secret. Only a few people know that one of Lady C's guests, the enigmatic Bella Wallis, is in fact the bestselling novelist. Bella punishes evil-doers by exposing them as thinly-disguised characters in the books she writes under her male pseudonym. Armed with her pen, the handsome Miss Wallis surrounds herself with useful men: the dashing Philip Westland, possibly a government spy; Captain Quigley, Bella's fixer, and his shady assistant, Murch, who can always crack a bone or two when someone needs persuading.Westland comes to Bella with a problem: his best friend Kennett is smitten by the heiress Miss Mary Skillane. But Mary's father, Sir William is 'an old fraud with a beautiful daughter' and she has been promised to Robert Judd, a vulgar treasure seeker. Mary is due to inherit the Skillane pearls, currently residing in a red lacquer box in a Cornish bank vault. But the pearls it seems were ill-gotten, and as Bella and her band uncover more of the strange business, a new Henry Ellis Margam novel looks set to be written, if Bella can first side-step her own affairs of the heart, and evade a brutal threat to her life...
London is alive with gossip about the thrilling new book by sensationalist author Henry Ellis Margam, but only a select group of people know that the real author is beautiful widow, and member of high society, Bella Wallis. One of her confidantes is the dashing Philip Westland, who comes to Bella now with a problem: his best friend Kennet is smitten with the heiress Mary Skillane but Mary's father, Sir William, has promised her to Robert Judd, a vulgar treasure-seeker. Mary is due to inherit the Skillane pearls, which are currently residing in a Cornsih bank vault, but it seems that the pearls were ill-gotten. Can Bella and her friends reunite the young lovers and escape the attention of the villainous Judd?
Bella Wallis is a respectable society woman with a secret identity: in an office buried deep within the seedy backstreets of London, she writes sensationalist novels exposing the scoundrels that litter high society under the pen name Henry Ellis Margam. So when a crested cigar case is found near the body of a murdered prostitute, Bella and her friends are determined to trace the murderer and write a mystery that will avenge the poor girl's untimely death. But the owner of the cigar case is a dangerous - and rich - man who has already destroyed the lives of others who have crossed him. Will Bella see justice done, or will she meet the same fate as so many of her characters...? The Widow's Secret is the first in the Bella Wallis series of mysteries and takes us from London to Paris, from the highest of society to the lowest of the low. It is an entertaining, effervescent romp and a wonderful introduction to this most charismatic of heroines.
London, 1875. At Lady Cornford's famous soiree (sugared almonds and tittle-tattle) everyone is gossiping about Henry Ellis Margam's latest hit, The Widow's Secret. Only a few people know that one of Lady C's guests, the enigmatic Bella Wallis, is in fact the bestselling novelist. Bella punishes evil-doers by exposing them as thinly-disguised characters in the books she writes under her male pseudonym. Armed with her pen, the handsome Miss Wallis surrounds herself with useful men: the dashing Philip Westland, possibly a government spy; Captain Quigley, Bella's fixer, and his shady assistant, Murch, who can always crack a bone or two when someone needs persuading. Westland comes to Bella with a problem: his best friend Kennett is smitten by the heiress Miss Mary Skillane. But Mary's father, Sir William is 'an old fraud with a beautiful daughter' and she has been promised to Robert Judd, a vulgar treasure seeker. Mary is due to inherit the Skillane pearls, currently residing in a red lacquer box in a Cornish bank vault. But the pearls it seems were ill-gotten, and as Bella and her band uncover more of the strange business, a new Henry Ellis Margam novel looks set to be written, if Bella can first side-step her own affairs of the heart, and evade a brutal threat to her life...
Using the author's one off mid-engined sports car as the featured build, this book is written to encourage and inspire you with your own automotive dreams. It describes the unique inexpensive ideas and techniques that were combined to achieve impressive results and lift the project car from average to outstanding. All the ideas can be adapted to solve your own problems and meet your own particular requirements. The book focuses mainly on fibreglass moulding and modification, including the manufacture of a stylish rear wing spoiler from a basic wooden mould to the construction of a pair of gull wing doors using the same method. It does not neglect other aspects of car building, with other sections covering such things as the vacuum forming of a pair of headlight fairings, how to ensure systems such as twin fuel tanks and mid-engined gear linkages work as intended and how the exhaust system was made. The final chapter lifts the lid on how to make a professional-looking leather trimmed interior. Two hundred and fifty detailed photographs, sectional views and exploded diagrams ensure maximum clarity.
Bella Wallis discovers her plots in the alleyways, drawing rooms and dirty laundry of Victorian London. Under the pen name Henry Ellis Margam she takes revenge upon the scoundrels that litter London Society by destroying them - in print. So when Bella discovers a crested cigar case at the scene of a murdered prostitute she and her friends are determined to solve the mystery and to avenge the wretched girl's death. But the owner of the coat of arms is a dangerous and powerful man, and the world he inhabits far murkier than Bella could ever have imagined. With cruelty and violence threatening to engulf her, she plots one last attempt to expose and denounce the murderer. Will Bella survive the gruesome reality of the world her characters inhabit? In body, certainly, but her conscience may never be the same again...
Longlisted for The Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2007 Brian Thompson never had to look very hard for trouble. His unorthodox childhood and his eccentric parents guaranteed that. But when, aged eighteen, Brian left home he was determined to enjoy a life of unstinting ordinariness, taking advantage of a Britain that would 'never have it so good'. National Service led to foreign travel to Kenya, skirmishes with the Mau Mau and a request to fix the results of his platoon sergeant's English exam, one Idi Amin. Even when Brian was safe on English soil he was still confounded in his ambition to lead a quiet life. His limp attempt at University entrance - a single letter on some stolen NAAFI headed paper - led to admittance to Trinity College Cambridge and the niceties of middle class student life. And then there was rock and roll. And girls. Suitably confused, Brian did what was considered to be the right thing. He married the Clever Girl.
Winner of the Costa Biography Award 2006. Judges' comment: "From a loveless wartime childhood comes a generous and loveable memoir written from a child's-eye view. Utterly lacking in self-pity, it's laugh-out-loud funny."
A friend of both the Marxes and the Gladstones, a lovable but preposterous figure, with a quiverful of children and advice to anyone who would listen, Martin Tupper was in many ways the quintessential Victorian. In 1842 he wrote the first of a series entitled Proverbial Philosophy , a moral self-improvement manual, full of hearty evangelism - somewhere between The Road Less Travelled and The Little Book of Calm - which became a multi-million bestseller. Few people today have heard of Tupper but in his own time his name was a household word. Know Tupper, know something interesting, richly comic and telling about Victorian taste and sensibility.
If this is your author page then you can share your Twitter updates with your readers right here on LoveReading
Find out moreIf this is your author page then you can share your Facebook updates with your readers right here on LoveReading
Find out more