Love Stories
4 total works
The Second World War played havoc with millions of lives, and all over the world lovers were pulled apart, often just as their stories together were beginning. World War II Love Stories tells the tales of 14 very different couples. Some celebrate the everyday encounter like that of US Private Hudson Turner, who spotted a pretty girl looking out of an upstairs window while he was on shore leave in New Zealand, and called to her to come down and talk to him. Others are more dramatic, like the story of Violette and Etienne Szabo after he was killed at El Alamein, she became a spy in Occupied France, ultimately dying for the cause. Whatever their final outcome, every story is both atmospheric and profoundly moving, celebrating the human spirit at times of its greatest trial.
For the soldiers who fought in it, from Europe to Gallipoli, the First World War was truly the war to end all wars. But the febrile atmosphere it generated, as couples were torn apart, or fell in love across previously impassable boundaries of distance or class, caused many lovers to declare themselves long before convention would have allowed earlier. These moving, engaging accounts range widely, from the tale of Captain Robert Digby, on the run in Occupied France, who fell in love with Claire Dessenne, a beauty whose father was ultimately to betray his trust, to the daring stories of the Lafayette Escadrille, the legendary American arm of the French air force, who conquered hearts wherever they went, and the sad account of the girl Ernest Hemingway fell in love with as he recuperated in a Milan hospital, and who was to inspire his great novel, A Farewell to Arms.
From the earliest days of Hollywood, the pressures of fame led to a febrile atmosphere among its stars. The magic of the movies made audiences pulses quicken, but what was really happening in the lives of the actors up on the silver screen? Hollywood Love Stories looks at 14 real-life love affairs across the golden age of the movies, from the 1920s to the 1970s. From the swashbuckling romance between Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, and the poignant lifelong affair between Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn, to the scandalous liaison between Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini, each account offers insights and surprises, accompanied by wonderful images and ephemera that bring every love affair vividly alive.
The music world has seen some of the most iconic partnerships of all time the reader feels almost on a first-name acquaintance with many of them: Sonny and Cher, Mick and Marianne, Elvis and Priscilla, Ike and Tina...Rock n Roll Love Stories looks at 14 of the best, taking us from the 1950s all the way up to the early 2000s. Along the way we see behind the public face of a whole range of relationships, from the straightforwardly romantic to the messily divided, and from the famous (and infamous) to the relatively unknown. All are engaging, full of contemporary detail, and come imbued with the energy and the spirit of the music world over the last half century.