There was a time when running the mile in four minutes was believed to be beyond the limits of human foot speed, and in all of sport it was the elusive holy grail. In 1952, after suffering defeat at the Helsinki Olympics, three world-class runners each set out to break this barrier. Roger Bannister was a young English medical student who epitomized the ideal of the amateur — still driven not just by winning but by the nobility of the pursuit. John Landy was the privileged son of a genteel Australian family, who as a boy preferred butterfly collecting to running but who trained relentlessly in an almost spiritual attempt to shape his body to this singular task. Then there was Wes Santee, the swaggering American, a Kansas farm boy and natural athlete who believed he was just plain better than everybody else. Spanning three continents and defying the odds, their collective quest captivated the world and stole headlines from the Korean War, the atomic race, and such legendary figures as Edmund Hillary, Willie Mays, Native Dancer, and Ben Hogan. In the tradition of Seabiscuit and Chariots of Fire, Neal Bascomb delivers a breathtaking story of unlikely heroes and leaves us with a lasting portrait of the twilight years of the golden age of sport.

An entertaining social and cultural history of cycling in post-war Europe seen through the eyes of a veteran racing cyclist. Written with great literary and historical relish, One More Kilometre examines the spread of cycling's popularity, how it developed into a sport and how the bicycle has changed people's lives -- all viewed through the eyes of a seasoned 56-year-old racing cyclist/art critic who keeps eleven racing cycles in his garden shed and who never cycles less than 10,000 miles a year. The book starts with the 1950s, regarded as the golden age of cycling, and when the author, 'an unhappy communist child', first discovered cycling and its emancipating powers. Progressing through four decades of cycling social history, the author will examine cycling as a Continental phenomenon, the rise and fall of the Tour de France; the lives of the great 'trackmen'; cycling in its domestic form, cycling for fun, the ever-popular British cycling clubs -- some of which are over one hundred years old and are home to many fellow eccentrics, fanatics and old-timers, like the author's friend, 'the Yorkshire junior road race champion of 1954, now living in a caravan, crippled and penniless with his much younger companion a taxidermist -- beautiful and cruel'. One More Kilometre is a lovely blend of personal anecdote, serious history and informed obsession, combining gentle humour, personal reminiscence and good history into a beguiling whole.

It’s 1983 and best friends Vicky and Lucy swear that they will always be there for each other, that they’ll never let anyone come between them. But fast forward 4 years and life on the Canterbury Estate has gotten very messy. Lucy has fallen for local policeman’s son, Jimmy. And Vicky is madly in love with Paddy, the charming but ruthless local bad boy. The boys are bitter enemies and determined to keep the two girls apart. But then Vicky is accused of murder, and even her drug-dealer boyfriend wants her mouth shut, permanently. Maybe Lucy is the only one who can save her… Love, murder, revenge. Who can you really trust when there’s blood on your hands?

Part history, part travel journal and part autobiography, ‘Hotel Tiberias’ is a journey of many layers and resonances, as Sebastian Hope follows the tumultuous story of his family’s hotel in Palestine.

he 40-year-old Scot has been Britain's most successful Grand Prix racer since the legendary Barry Sheene. At his final race in Knockhill in August 2001, more than 20,000 fans turned up to watch Mackenzie and to bid farewell to their local hero. Niall has come a long way from Denny where he would regularly get into trouble for racing round the streets, as well as in and out of the local chip shops, to impress the girls. As an amateur it was recognized he had an abundance of talent, especially after winning his first race at Knockhill, but he also had a wild side and looks back on a time when chasing girls and getting drunk were as important as winning races. After moving up through the amateur ranks and securing his first factory 500cc rides on a Suzuki, Niall notched up a host of 500cc GP podium finishes before moving to Superbikes. He proved unbeatable between 1996 and 1998 when he claimed a hat-trick of British Superbike titles. On each occasion he beat big-name team-mates such as Jamie Whitham, Chris Walker and Steve Hislop. This fascinating look into the British GP and Superbike scene through the eyes of one of its legends, has now been fully updated with Mackenzie’s latest adventures in his career off the track in 2003.

This is the first biography of the fateful relationship between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. It was the defining relationship of their lives and marked the intersection of the great Tudor and Stuart dynasties. At its core were their rival claims to the throne of England. Distinguished biographer Jane Dunn reveals an extraordinary story of two queens ruling in one isle, both embodying opposing qualities of character, ideals of womaliness and divinely ordained kingship. Theirs is a drama of sex and power, recklessness, ambition and political intrigue, with a rivalry that could only be resolved by death. As regnant queens in an overwhelmingly masculine world they were deplored for their femaleness, compared unfavourably with each other, and courted by the same men. By placing this dynamic and ever-changing relationship at the centre of the book, Dunn throws new light and meaning on the complexity of their natures. She reveals an Elizabeth revolutionary in her insistence on ruling alone and inspired in her use of celibacy as a political tool, yet deeply feeling and more sympathetic than the usual picture of the virgin queen. Mary, too, is not the romantic victim of history but a courageous adventurer with a reckless heart, and a magnetic influence over men and women alike. Vengeful against her enemies and the more ruthless of the two, she was untroubled by plotting Elizabeth’s murder. Elizabeth, however, was in anguish at having to sanction Mary’s death warrant for treason. Jane Dunn brings her skills as a biographer to bear on history’s two most charismatic queens. Working almost exclusively from contemporary letters and writings, she lets them speak to us across more than 400 years, their voices and responses surprisingly familiar to our own, their characters vivid, by turns touching and terrible. The death in 1603 of Elizabeth, our greatest English queen, was to mark the end of the Tudors and the posthumous triumph of Mary, whose son, James I united the English and Scottish thrones under a Stuart king.

From the author of Sunday Times bestsellers One Child and Ghost Girl comes a heartbreaking story of a boy trapped in silence and the teacher who rescued him. When special education teacher Torey Hayden first met fifteen-year-old Kevin, he was barricaded under a table. Desperately afraid of the world around him, he hadn’t spoken a word in eight years. He was considered hopeless, incurable. But Hayden refused to believe it, though she realised it might well take a miracle to break through the walls he had built around himself. With unwavering devotion and gentle, patient love, she set out to free him – and slowly uncovered a shocking violent history and a terrible secret that an unfeeling bureaucracy had simply filed away and forgotten. Torey refused to give up on this tragic “lost case.” For a trapped and frightened boy desperately needed her help – and she knew in her heart she could not rest easy until she had rescued him from the darkness.

Everyone thinks they know the real Gordon Ramsay: rude, loud, driven, stubborn. But this is his real story… In this fast-paced, bite-sized edition of his bestselling autobiography Ramsay tells the real story of how he became the world’s most famous and infamous chef: his difficult childhood, his brother’s heroin addiction, his failed first career as a footballer, his fanatical pursuit of gastronomic perfection and his TV persona - all the things that have made him the celebrated culinary talent and media powerhouse that he is today. Gordon talks frankly about: ? his tough childhood: his father’s alcoholism and violence and the effects on his relationships with his mother and siblings ? his first career as a footballer: how the whole family moved to Scotland when he was signed by Glasgow Rangers at the age of fifteen, and how he coped when his career was over due to injury just three years later ? his brother’s heroin addiction. ? Gordon’s early career: learning his trade in Paris and London; how his career developed from there: his time in Paris under Albert Roux and his seven Michelin-starred restaurants. ? kitchen life: Gordon spills the beans about life behind the kitchen door, and how a restaurant kitchen is run in Anthony Bourdain-style. ? and how he copes with the impact of fame on himself and his family: his television career, the rapacious tabloids, and his own drive for success.

Christopher Hibbert’s acclaimed biography of Queen Victoria is as impressive and authoritative as the great woman herself. In 1837 an eighteen-year-old girl, raised by a German mother, inherited the throne of the United Kingdom. She was to reign as queen – and later Empress of India – for almost sixty-four years, presiding over twenty prime ministers and a period of unprecedented social and political change. Her era became synonymous with moral rigidity and colonial expansion, and this absorbing biography of Queen Victoria, the unlikely figurehead of a vast and powerful empire, explores how the young monarch transformed herself into a formidable matriarch and the epitome of an age. Embracing her life and family, her politics and personality, her love for Prince Albert and her relationship with John Brown, Hibbert’s touching biography is a persuasive portrait of a remarkable woman.

The definitive account of golf’s founding father and son, Old and Young Tom Morris. For the first time, the two will be portrayed as men of flesh and blood – heroic but also ambitious, loving but sometimes confused and angry. Two men from one household, with ambitions that made them devoted partners as well as ardent foes. Tommy's Honour is a compelling story of the two Tom Morrises, father and son, both supremely talented golfers but utterly different, constituting a record-breaking golfing dynasty that has never been known before or since. Father, Old Tom Morris, grew up a stone's throw away from golf's ancestral home at St Andrews, a whisky-fuelled caddie, a wonderful 19th century character who became an Open Champion three times before running the Royal & Ancient, then sole governing body of the game. His son, Young Tom, arguably an even more prodigious talent than his father, was a golfing genius, the Tiger Woods of his era, who at 17 became the youngest player, to this day, to win the Open Championship. He then went on to win it four times in a row, an unprecedented achievement. On one occasion, father and son fought it out at the last hole of the Championship before the son finally triumphed. But then came the pivotal day that would change their lives forever, the death of Young Tom’s wife and unborn child. The cataclysmic events of that day eventually lead to Young Tom’s tragic death, aged 24, with his father living on for another 20 years in deep remorse. So on the one hand, you have the story of one of the most influential figures in the history of golf, a pioneer in the birth of the modern game and of Scottish and Open Championship golf. And on the other hand – and this is the real appeal of this book – you have an extraordinary father-and-son story. It’s for every son who ever competed with his father, and every father who has guided his son towards manhood, then found it hard to let go.

According to Wikipedia: "Thomas Telford (1757–1834) was a Scottish civil engineer, architect and stonemason, and a noted road, bridge and canal builder. After establishing himself as an engineer of road and canal projects in Shropshire, he designed numerous infrastructure projects in his native Scotland, as well as harbours and tunnels. Such was his reputation as a prolific designer of highways and related bridges, he was dubbed The Colossus of Roads, and, reflecting his command of all types of civil engineering in the early 19th century, he was elected as the first President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a post he retained for 14 years until his death.... Samuel Smiles (23 December 1812 – 16 April 1904), was a Scottish author and reformer. ... Smiles is best known today as the writer of books extolling virtues of self help, and biographies lauding the achievements of "heroic" engineers."

This edition retains the original idiosyncratic spelling and punctuation. " "These Journals are from May 14, 1804, the day the expedition left the Mississippi River, to September 26, 1806, a day or two after they arrived back in St. Louis. It includes all possible Journal entries of Lewis and Clark. Most of the "courses and distances" and "celestial observations" have been omitted. The notes and most of the corrections of past editors have been removed." According to Wikipedia: "The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1803–1806), headed by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, was the first American overland expedition to the Pacific coast and back."

According to Wikipedia: "Victor-Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France. In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry but also rests upon his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem, and Hugo is sometimes identified as the greatest French poet. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris (known in English also as The Hunchback of Notre Dame). Though a committed conservative royalist when he was young, Hugo grew more liberal as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. He is buried in the Panthéon."

According to Wikipedia: "James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871 – June 26, 1938) was an American author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist. Johnson is remembered best for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and collections of folklore. He was also one of the first African-American professors at New York University. Later in life he was a professor of creative literature and writing at Fisk University."

According to Wikipedia: "Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935) was a founder of the U.S. Settlement House movement, and one of the first American women to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."

According to Wikipedia: "John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 8 May 1873), English philosopher, political theorist, political economist, civil servant and Member of Parliament, was an influential British Classical liberal thinker of the 19th century whose works on liberty justified freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham, although his conception of it was very different from Bentham's. Hoping to remedy the problems found in an inductive approach to science, such as confirmation bias, he clearly set forth the premises of falsification as the key component in the scientific method."

Bu kitapta Türkiye Cumhuriyeti'nin Atatürk'ten sonra gelen en ba?ar?l? lideri Recep Tayyip Erdo?an'?n siyasi hayat? ve ?zellikle icraat?n ba??nda oldu?u Ba?bakanl?k d?nemi yer almaktad?r. Ba?bakanl?k d?neminde ya?anan siyasi ve gündemi olu?turan olaylar kronolojik olarak s?ralanm??t?r. Bu eserde "Ba?ar?l? bir siyaset?i nas?l olunur?" sorusunun cevab?, 13 y?ll?k Ba?bakanl?k yapt??? g?revinde nas?l ba?ar?l? oldu?unun yan?t?, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an'?n hayat?ndan kesitler ve Recep Tayyip Erdo?an'?n farkl? konulardaki de?erlendirmeleri ve g?rü?leri vard?r. Ayr?ca Recep Tayyip Erdo?an'?n karakteri, ald??? ?düller ve yabanc?lar?n g?zünden Recep Tayyip Erdo?an hakk?nda yorumlar yer almaktad?r. "Yeni Türkiye" olarak tan?mlad??? Recep Tayyip Erdo?an'?n Türkiye'sinden bizim almam?z gereken dersler de elbette vard?r...Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, 26 ?ubat 1954'te ?stanbul'un Kas?mpa?a semtinde ailesinin ü?üncü ?ocu?u olarak do?du. Ahmet Erdo?an'?n Tenzile Erdo?an'la olan ikinci evlili?inden bir erkek ?ocu?u, Recep Tayyip dünyaya geldi. Babas?n?n, bir ?nceki evlili?inden iki ?ocu?u daha vard?. Recep Tayyip Erdo?an'?n biri k?z d?rt karde?i vard?. Deniz Hatlar?'nda k?y? kaptan? olarak ?al??an "Reis Kaptan" lakapl? baba Ahmet Erdo?an, o?luna babas?n?n ad? olan Tayyip ad?n? koydu. Eski takvime g?re Recep ay?nda do?an bebe?e Recep ad? da verildi. Recep Tayyip Erdo?an'?n ailesi, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an 13 ya??ndayken Rize'nin eski ad?yla Potamya yeni ad?yla Güneysu il?esinden, yokluk ve i?sizlik nedeniyle ?stanbul'un Kas?mpa?a semtine g?? etti. Recep Tayyip Erdo?an'?n babas? Sahil Güvenlik Te?kilat?nda g?revli oldu?u i?in ?ocuklu?u Rize'de ge?ti. Babas?, o d?nemin “?irket-i Hayriye”si günümüzün Denizyollar?'nda kaptanl?k yapt? ve ve k?y? kaptanl???ndan emekli oldu. Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, o günleri anlat?rken babas?n?n ?stanbul'un varo?lar?nda ko?turdu?unu belirterek, gelecekte nas?l bir ya?am olmas? gerekti?ini ?u s?zlerle ifade ediyordu:“O ?ilelerin i?erisinden geldik. Onlar da oralarda b?yle merdiven altlar?nda odalarda ya?ad?lar. Bunlar? bana a?layarak anlat?rd? rahmetli babam. Biz oralardan geldik. Ama oralarda kalamay?z. Gelecek ku?aklar?m?za da biz oralar? ?rnek olarak veririz ama ‘Orada kal.’ diyemeyiz. Bunlar? ya?ad???m?za g?re gelecek ku?aklara biz ?ok daha farkl? bir Türkiye b?rakmak zorunday?z. O yavrular?m?z ?ok daha farkl? yeti?mek durumunda. E?er ben o?lumu, torunumu bilimde, sanatta her alanda ?ok daha ileri g?türebiliyorsam kendimi ?ok daha ba?ar?l? bir baba ve dede olarak g?rebilirim. E?er g?türemiyorsam o zaman ba?ar?s?z?m, olaya b?yle bakaca??z. Onun i?in bizim bir günümüz di?erine e?it olmamal?. Dün bugünden geri kalmal?. Yar?n bugünden ?ok daha ileri olmal?. Mevlana diyor ya ’Dün dünde kald? canca??z?m yeni bir ?eyler yapmak, s?ylemek laz?m.’ … ??te biz bunu ba?armak durumunday?z.”

RUM, BUM and BACCY

The Silver Fountain

Visitors

No End to Snowdrops: A Biography Of Kathleen Raine