Showing results by publisher "Orion Publishing Group" in Biographies & Memoirs

In Alan Partridge: Nomad, Alan dons his boots, windcheater and scarf and embarks on an odyssey through a place he once knew - it's called Britain - intent on completing a journey of immense personal significance. Diarising his ramble in the form of a 'journey journal', Alan details the people and places he encounters, ruminates on matters large and small and, on a final leg fraught with danger, becomes not a man (because he was one to start off with) but a better, more inspiring example of a man.

Narrated by Stephen Hogan and introduced by Roy Keane. In an 18-year playing career for Cobh Ramblers, Nottingham Forest, and Manchester United (under Sir Alex Ferguson) and Celtic, Roy Keane dominated every midfield he led to glory. Aggressive and highly competitive, his attitude helped him to excel as captain of Manchester United from 1997 until his departure in 2005.

Travelling to Work is the third volume of Michael Palin's widely acclaimed diaries. After the Python years and a decade of filming, writing and acting, Palin's career takes an unexpected direction into travel, which will shape his working life for the next 25 years. Yet, as the diaries reveal, he remained ferociously busy on a host of other projects throughout this whirlwind period.

In April 1915 Dorothea Crewdson, a newly trained Red Cross nurse, and her best friend, Christie, received instructions to leave for Le Treport in Northern France. Filled with excitement at the prospect of her first paid job, Dorothea began writing a diary. 'Who knows how long we shall really be out here? Seems a good chance from all reports of the campaigns being ended before winter, but all is uncertain.'

The epic struggle for control of Los Angeles and the history of the 30s, 40s, and 50s in America's dream city. Now the Fox UK TV series Mob City. Mid-century Los Angeles. A city sold to the world as 'the white spot of America', a land of sunshine and orange groves, wholesome Midwestern values and Hollywood stars, protected by the world's most famous police force, the Dragnet-era LAPD. Behind this public image lies a hidden world of 'pleasure girls' and crooked cops, ruthless newspaper tycoons, corrupt politicians, and East Coast gangsters on the make.

This is the true story of a Londoner who gives up his job as an estate agent in the city, moves to the wilds of Exmoor, starts a smallholding and becomes self-sufficient, with a few bumps along the way. Simon's journey from urbanite to self-sufficient smallholder is brimming with incidents - some funny and some tragic - leading him to question Mother Nature, himself, the food he eats and his role in it all.

Jennifer Worth came from a sheltered background when she became a midwife in the Docklands in the 1950s. The conditions in which many women gave birth just half a century ago were horrifying, not only because of their grimly impoverished surroundings but also because of what they were expected to endure. But while Jennifer witnessed brutality and tragedy, she also met with amazing kindness and understanding, tempered by a great deal of Cockney humour.

A parish priest in Northamptonshire; a former rock-star whose number-one hit with The Communards was the biggest-selling single of 1986; the regular host of BBC Radio 4's SATURDAY LIVE - these three people are not usually embodied in one person. The Reverend Richard Coles' memoir offers his rich and personal insights into one of the most diverse of lives, encompassed with the wit and humour he brings to his popular radio show. Richard Coles gives the phrase 'time management' a new emphasis.

The Romanovs were the most successful dynasty of modern times, ruling a sixth of the world's surface. How did one family turn a war-ruined principality into the world's greatest empire? And how did they lose it all? This is the intimate story of 20 tsars and tsarinas, some touched by genius, some by madness, but all inspired by holy autocracy and imperial ambition.

Sometimes things are more ordinary than you think. And sometimes they're a whole lot odder than you can possibly imagine.

Rebecca Front has always drawn on experiences from her life in her award-winning acting and comic writing. In her debut book, she reveals herself as a master storyteller: sharp, witty, honest, and highly attuned to the absurdities of life and the oddities of human nature. By turns poignant, comic, and uplifting, Curious is a book of stories, all of them true, though sometimes perhaps a little bent out of shape in the telling.

No one does glamour, severity, girlish charm or tight-lipped witticism better than Dame Maggie Smith, one of Britain's best-loved actors. This new biography shines the stage lights on the life and career of a truly remarkable performer, one whose stage and screen career spans six decades. From her days as a West End star of comedy and revue, Dame Maggie's path would cross with those of the greatest actors, playwrights and directors of the era.

When the Call the Midwife series became best sellers Jennifer Worth received mountains of letters - not only praising her books, but also from people who remembered the world her books described; life in the East End of London during the late 1940s and early '50s. Often her books touched her audience and they felt moved to write, or they wanted to share their own memories.A prolific letter writer herself, Jennifer always corresponded and this book includes some fascinating letters she received.

During his run into turning 50, Chris Evans is on a mission. To take stock of where he is and where he's at in order to figure out how best to get the most out of what he believes are the best years yet to come. His typically positive and upbeat journey involves 100 days of contemplation, research, focus, frustration and decision making while secretly: training for the London Marathon and bringing back his cult '90s TV show, TFI Friday.

Isy woke up one day in her late 20s to discover that the invisible deal she'd done with her best mates - that they'd prolong growing up for as long as possible - had all been in her head. Everyone around her is suddenly into mortgages, farmers' markets and nappies rather than the idea of running naked into the sea or getting hammered in Plymouth with 80-year-old men.

Si King and Dave Myers, aka The Hairy Bikers, have lived life to the fullest. They had fantastically rich northern childhoods laced with food and fun, but of course with some tragedy too. But we also get to know the early Bikers - we find out how their friendship developed and all of the mad capers and round-the-world trips they went on. Perfect for their fans, heavily seasoned with warmth, food, love, bikes and bro-mance, the Hairies never fail to entertain.

Summer 2006, Afghanistan: an apparently deserted village, and a rapidly ticking clock... The relentless Taliban ambush which followed saw several British soldiers dead, two armoured vehicles destroyed - and Corporal of Horse Michael Flynn awarded an MC to go alongside his Conspicuous Gallantry Cross. Mick Flynn has never backed away from a challenge.

In this unauthorised biography of Dame Edna Everage, acquired for an unprecedented advance and in spectacular secrecy, her long-time manager and the man who was there from the very beginning, Barry Humphries, takes a behind-the-scenes, no-holds-barred look at an icon of our times.

When human rights lawyer Philippe Sands received an invitation to deliver a lecture in the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv, he began to uncover a series of extraordinary historical coincidences. It set him on a quest that would take him halfway around the world in an exploration of the origins of international law and the pursuit of his own secret family history, beginning and ending with the last day of the Nuremberg Trials.

People don't just listen to Johnny Cash: they believe in him. But no one has told the Man in Black's full story, until now. In Johnny Cash: The Life, Robert Hilburn conveys the unvarnished truth about a musical icon, whose colourful career stretched from his days at Sun Records with Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis to his remarkable, brave and deeply moving 'Hurt' video, aged sixty-nine.

The hit BBC TV series Call the Midwife is based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth, chronicling her life as a midwife in London in the 1950s. Farewell to the East End is the third book in the trilogy. Following on from the best-selling Call the Midwife and Shadows of the Workhouse, Jennifer brings her story to a conclusion. Postwar life could be a struggle - the devastating effects of TB, dangerous backstreet abortions, people driven to extremes by poverty....