The Life and Music of Harry Styles is written in an enthusiastic tone and fan-focused style, richly illustrated with photographs of the heartthrob and charts the evolution of Styles's career – from his discovery on the X Factor to his rise to a global super star and the next step: conquering the world as a solo artist and actor in 2017's Dunkirk, 2021's Eternals and landing the starring role in 2022's Don't Worry Darling. Having been a leading member of One Direction – possibly the most success...
This is the first biography of Denis Johnston, barrister, theatre director, film-maker, pioneering television producer, war correspondent, essayist and celebrated playwright. Johnston was of Ulster Presbyterian stock, born into Edwardian Dublin, where he was briefly held hostage in his family home at Lansdowne Road during the 1916 Rising. Son of a Supreme Court judge, he was schooled at St Andrew's in Dublin, in Edinburgh and Christ's College, Cambridge, and at Harvard University. He made the na...
The music of Queen and powerhouse lead singer Freddie Mercury are best experienced with the volume turned all the way up. Alfonso Casas’s Freddie Mercury delivers a sonorous homage to the formidable singer and the turning points that produced a game-changing body of music that continues to inspire fans around the globe. First published in Spain and now available worldwide, this luminous work covers Freddie's three “births”: his birth as Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar; his adoption of the last name...
This is the life story of the 20-something north London girl who has taken the music world by storm. Topping the charts for weeks on end and winning consistent international critical acclaim, she already has two Grammys and a clutch of other awards. Although she acknowledges influences as diverse as The Spice Girls and Etta James, Adele's unique brand of "heartbroken soul" is very much her own, reflecting her own emotions and roller-coaster love life. In the image-obsessed world of pop music, A...
In this book of World War II reminiscences, edited by "flying ace" Laddie Lucas, airmen from both sides of all nationalities recall memorable characters they met in the air forces. There are intimate, first-hand portraits of the famous and the not-so-famous, from heroes like Leonard Cheshire, Douglas Bader and Johnnie Johnson to the legendary Commanders-in-Chief like Sir Arthur ("Bomber") Harris, their pilots, air and ground crews and operational personnel. Here, remembered for their courage, co...
The only internationally successful, million-selling group to emerge from the late seventies London punk scene, the Clash set out to change the world with a potent mix of politics, iconic imagery, and blazing rock'n' roll. It was an agenda mirrored in the Clash's music, which swiftly evolved from ferocious punk rock to incorporate reggae, ska, funk, jazz, soul, and hip-hop. Passion Is a Fashion draws on over 70 interviews with the key participants in the story,roadies, producers, friends, and...
Like Fela Kuti and Bob Marley, singer, composer, and bandleader Thomas Mapfumo and his music came to represent his native country's anticolonial struggle and cultural identity. Mapfumo was born in 1945 in what was then the British colony of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The trajectory of his career-from early performances of rock 'n' roll tunes to later creating a new genre based on traditional Zimbabwean music, including the sacred mbira, and African and Western pop-is a metaphor for Zimbabwe's evol...
The second instalment of Michael Sheard's autobiography which give unique insights into the world of show business, television and film. His experiences as an actor in the "Star Wars Trilogy" takes the reader behind the scenes with the leading stars of our time.
'Today and every day for me, up until May 2016, is all about the first episode of the brand new Top Gear. The show I've been hired to save from becoming mere ashes blowing across the hinterland of the golden age of television. A show as infamous as it's revered the world over. A show that somehow exploded from a monthly regional BBC Midlands half-hour magazine programme in the late Seventies into the global anarchic phenomenon it is today. 'What follows is the story of the television equivalent...
Ludwig van Beethoven (German: 17 December 1770 - 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. His best-known compositions include 9 symphonies, 5 piano concertos, 1 violin concerto, 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets, his great Mass the Missa solemnis and an opera, Fidelio. Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of C...
The Films of Freddie Francis (The Scarecrow Filmmakers)
by Wheeler Winston Dixon
One of Hollywood's first scandals was nearly its last. 1936 looked like it would be a great year for the movie industry. With the economy picking up after the Great Depression, Americans everywhere were sitting in the dark watching the stars-and few stars shined as brightly as one of America's most enduring screen favorites, Mary Astor. But Astor's story wasn't a happy one. She was born poor, and at the first sign that she could earn money, her parents grabbed the reins and the checks. Wid...
Hazel O'Connor has loved and been loved, but her generosity and spirit of adventure have often come back to bite her. She would not have it any other way. This is a story not just of the music business, its intense joys and spectacular lows: it is the story of a beautiful teenage runaway, a soldier's daughter who fought her own battles and those of people she cared for. Born inaA A Coventry to English-Irish parents, Hazel's early years were a mixture of adventure and tragedy, which included pe...
