England Memoir

On 30 November 1872, England took on Scotland at Hamilton Crescent in Glasgow, a match that is regarded as the first international fixture. More than 5,000 fans watched the two sides play out a 0-0 draw. It was the first of more than a thousand games played by the side, and the beginning of a national love affair that unites the country in a way that few other events can match. In Hayward's brilliant new biography of the team, based on interviews with dozens of past and present players and coaches, we get a vivid portrait of all aspects of the team's story.

Often recruited before they've worn long trousers, today's footballers become superstars who earn huge amounts without ever learning much about the world beyond the training ground. But what do these Peter Pans, whose careers end just as most people's are getting going, do with the rest of their lives? Crouch speaks from his own experience and discusses with fellow former professionals too—just how do you safely release a near seven-foot striker back into the wild?

Fanatical about cricket since he was a boy, Miles Jupp would do anything to see his heroes play. But perhaps deciding to bluff his way into the press corps during England's Test series in India wasn't his best idea. By claiming to be the cricket correspondent for BBC Scotland and getting a job with the (Welsh) Western Mail, Miles lands the press pass that will surely be the ticket to his dreams. Soon, he finds himself in cricket heaven - drinking with David Gower and Beefy, and sharing bar room banter with Nasser Hussain.

The eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles has been heir to the British throne since he was three years old. In this lively and illuminating account, royal biographer Helen Cathcart charts the first thirty years of Prince Charles's life, from his birth at Buckingham Palace in 1948 and rugby-playing schooldays at Gordonstoun, through his undergraduate years cycling to lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge, and subsequent military career in the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy.

The broadcast that George VI made to the British nation on the outbreak of war in September 1939 - which formed the climax of the multi-Oscar-winning film The King’s Speech - was the product of years of hard work with Lionel Logue, his iconoclastic, Australian-born speech therapist. Yet the relationship between the two men did not end there. Far from it: In the years that followed, Logue was to play an even more important role at the monarch’s side.

Richard the Lionheart remains one of England's most famous kings. His statue stands proudly outside the Houses of Parliament, yet who was Richard? Was there more to him than we see depicted in modern media - the great, missing king from the Robin Hood films who was always having his throne threated by his younger brother John! Or was Richard not worthy of the legend that seems to have been built up around his name?

This biography of Abraham Lincoln was written by Lincoln's White House secretary. Nicolay was involved in Lincoln's most intimate personal affairs during the Civil War and became one of the president's most trusted aides. On a day-to-day basis, he and the president's assistant secretary, John M. Hay, were responsible for receiving and screening visitors, writing and editing letters, and delivering and receiving messages, among other duties.

In the waning days of World War I, William K. Dean was brutally murdered, his body hog-tied and dumped in a rainwater cistern on his farm in the quiet town of Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Suspicion quickly fell on Dean's wife, an invalid in the early stages of dementia. Her friends, outraged at the accusations, pointed instead to a former tenant of Dean's, whom many suspected of being a German spy. Others believed that Dean's best friend, a politically powerful banker and judge, was involved.

In London during the interwar years, five women's lives intertwined around one address. Mecklenburgh Square, on the radical fringes of Bloomsbury, was home to activists, experimenters and revolutionaries; among them were the modernist poet H. D., detective novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, classicist Jane Harrison, economic historian Eileen Power, and author and publisher Virginia Woolf.

Plague and pestilence have both fascinated and terrified humanity from the very beginning. Societies and individuals have struggled to make sense of them, and more importantly, they’ve often struggled to avoid them. Before the scientific age, people had no knowledge of the microbiological agents - unseen bacteria and viruses - which afflicted them, and thus, the maladies were often ascribed to wrathful supernatural forces.

Eddie Jones is one of the most successful sports coaches of all time. From coaching three different nations to Rugby World Cup Finals and with a winning record with England of nearly 80 per cent, Eddie Jones knows what it takes to lead and manage high-performance teams. For the first time, Eddie Jones shows just what it takes to be a leader in a high performance and high pressure environment and how these lessons can be applied to every walk of life, from coaching the U9 rugby team to leading a multinational organisation to simply doing your job better.

When Isaac Newton died in 1727 without a will, he left behind a wealth of papers that, when examined, gave his followers and his family a deep sense of unease. Some of what they contained was wildly heretical and alchemically obsessed, hinting at a Newton altogether stranger and less palatable than the one enshrined in Westminster Abbey as the paragon of English rationality. These manuscripts had the potential to undermine not merely Newton's reputation, but that of the scientific method he embodied.

Vividly evoking the confusion, horror and comradeship of war - from the killing fields of Normandy bocage, through house-to-house fighting in shattered Flemish towns, to the final Rhine crossing - Lion Rampant is a powerful, authentic and moving story, telling with extraordinary clarity how the author, his fellow officers and the men of his company lived through one of the most bitter campaigns in history.

In this breathtaking adventure, featuring colorful characters from showbusiness alongside royalty, the IRA and even Pablo Escobar, Clifford Thurlow reveals Keith Cheeseman's incredible true story for the first time.

From his earliest years, Prince William has been a photographer's dream come true in the same way his mother had been. While he is not necessarily known for his mother's media savvy, he is well liked by the media, and he is able, consciously or incidentally, to capitalize on this advantage. At the same time, from polo to charities, William is thoroughly his father Charles' son as a Windsor prince.

History celebrates George Washington as the leader of the American Revolution and the father of his country. But what has gone previously unexamined is Washington's life as a 22-year-old lieutenant colonel who led 400 American militiamen against a bigger, more experienced French army and paid a high price. Not only did Washington lose over a third of his men but the Battle of Great Meadows was also the spark that ignited the French and Indian War.

This is an engaging and original account of 1921, a pivotal year for Winston Churchill that had a lasting impact on his political and personal legacy. After the tragic consequences of his involvement in the catastrophic Dardanelles Campaign of World War I, Churchill’s political career seemed over. He was widely regarded as little more than a bombastic and unpredictable buccaneer until, in 1921, an unexpected inheritance heralded a series of events that laid the foundations for his future success.

Charles II of England remains one of the most easily identifiable and best known of England’s monarchs. Deprived of his throne following the execution of his father, he contended with hardship and exile before achieving a peaceful restoration and the beginning of what would be remembered as a colorful period of English history. His reign also led to the creation of the two-party system that would shape English and later British politics for centuries to come.

"To boldly go where no man has gone before" was a phrase made popular by Gene Rodenberry in a science fiction setting, but it was certainly the creed of countless explorers during the Age of Discovery and afterwards. In fact, as recently as the mid-18th century, a young sailor named James Cook determined to go "farther than any man has been before me, but as far as I think it is possible for a man to go." And unlike so many others who tried, he did just that.

In 1898, a group of schoolboys in Bridgeport, Connecticut, discovered gruesome packages under a bridge holding the dismembered remains of a young woman. Finding that the dead woman had just undergone an abortion, prosecutors raced to establish her identity and fix blame for her death. Suspicion fell on Nancy Guilford, half of a married pair of “doctors” well known to police throughout New England. A fascinated public followed the suspect’s flight from justice, as many rooted for the fugitive.