Showing results by publisher "Orion" in Biographies & Memoirs

Danny Baker's first volume of autobiography, Going to Sea in a Sieve, was a Sunday Times best seller, acclaimed for its nonstop humour and anecdotal flourish. It told the exploits of Danny's extraordinary childhood and the wild living of his teenage years. Now he is 25, and it is 1982, and he embarks on an accidental and anxiety-induced career in television - going off alarming.

When 16-year-old Jess arrives on foster carer Maggie Hartley's doorstep with her newborn son, Jimmy, she has nowhere else to go. Arriving straight from the hospital, having just given birth, Jess is like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Scared, alone, and practically a child herself, she is overwhelmed with the responsibility of caring for a newborn without the support of a loving family or her beloved boyfriend. With social services threatening to take baby Jimmy into care, Jess knows that Maggie is her only chance.

A week after my 50th birthday, and just as our family was about to move home, something happened that changed the way I looked at life. I spoke to others about how they rebuilt their shattered worlds after very different personal traumas, emerging stronger than before. I hope our experiences, together with the latest science on resilience, will help guide all those going through tough times. This book says that it's possible not just to survive them but to thrive. To rise.

Danny Baker is a national treasure with a well-documented and colourful life. For over a quarter of a century, he has amused and entertained audiences on both radio and television. Beginning his career at the age of 15 in a small record shop in London's West End, Danny went on to become an acclaimed music journalist and started his radio career on BBC GLR in 1989. With a unique take on life and a lot to say, Danny's latest book is full of his trademark warmth, wit and insight.

Evie and Elliot are scrawny, filthy and scared when they turn up on foster carer Maggie Hartley's doorstep. Aged just two and three years old, this brother and sister have hardly set foot outside their own home. They have been prisoners, locked in a world of abuse, violence and neglect. Maggie soon realises that Evie and Elliot are lacking the basic life skills we all take for granted, and the outside world terrifies them. Gradually unlocking the truth of their heartbreaking upbringing, Maggie tells their shocking true story.

Ruth was a ghost of a girl when she arrived into foster mother Maggie Hartley's care. Pale, frail and withdrawn, it was clear to Maggie that Ruth had seen and experienced things that no 11-year-old should have to, that she had been conditioned to 'see no evil, speak no evil'. Ruth is in desperate need of help, but can Maggie get through to her and unlock the harrowing secret she carries? Through love, reassurance and patience, Maggie starts to unravel Ruth's painful past.

Renowned as a BBC journalist, Victoria Derbyshire has spent 20 years finding the human story behind the headlines. In 2015 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. With honesty and openness, she decided to live out her treatment and recovery in the spotlight in a series of video diaries. Victoria has kept a diary since she was nine years old, and in Dear Cancer, Love Victoria she shares her day-to-day experiences of life following diagnosis and coming to terms with a future that wasn't planned.

At just 10 years old, Kirsty has suffered a lifetime of heartache. Neglected by her teenage mother and taken into care, Kirsty thought she had found her forever family when she was fostered by Pat and Mike. But when Pat has a heart attack and collapses in front of her, Kirsty's foster family say it's her fault. Kirsty is still reeling from this rejection when she comes to live with foster carer Maggie Hartley. She acts out, smashing up Maggie's home, and even threatens to hurt the baby boy Maggie has fostered since birth.

Richard Coles narrates this witty account of life as a parish priest and Radio 4 broadcaster. After a life of sex and drugs and the Communards - brilliantly recounted in the highly acclaimed first volume of his memoirs Fathomless Riches - the Reverend Richard Coles went on to devote his life to God and Christianity. He is also a much-loved broadcaster, presenting Saturday Live on Radio 4 and giving us regular reason to Pause for Thought on Radio 2.

With a show-jumping career spanning over 40 years, Nick Skelton is a legend in the equestrian world. No other rider has won so many major competitions on so many different horses, and he is as popular at Olympia and Hickstead as he is at Aachen, Geneva, Paris and Spruce Meadows. In 2000 Skelton was forced into retirement after he broke his neck. But following an amazing recovery, he came out of retirement in 2002. Now he tells the full story of his eventful life and matchless achievements.

He is one of the most controversial sportsmen in history and a legend of Open Era tennis. But after reaching the top of his game - what came next? A decade after his international number-one best seller Serious, John McEnroe is back and ready to talk. Now the undisputed elder statesman of tennis, McEnroe has won over his critics as a matchless commentator and analyst at Wimbledon and other Grand Slam tournaments - with outspoken views on the modern game and its top players.

A. A. Gill's memoir begins in the dark of a dormitory with six strangers. He is an alcoholic, dying in the last-chance saloon - driven to dry out, not out of a desire to change but mainly through weariness. He tells the truth - as far as he can remember it - about drinking and about what it is like to be drunk. Pour Me is about the blackouts, the collapse, the despair. Lacerating, unflinching, uplifting, it is a classic about drunken abandon. Read by Dougray Scott.

A short, inspirational audiobook from Henry Fraser, a young quadriplegic motivational speaker and artist. Henry Fraser was a 17-year-old sports enthusiast and senior prefect when he broke his spinal cord and was left paralysed from the shoulders down. Life as he knew it was over, and yet, through extraordinary determination and a positive attitude, he has forged a successful career as an inspirational speaker and an artist.

Chris Difford is a rare breed. As a member of one of London's best-loved bands, the Squeeze cofounder has made a lasting contribution to English music with hits such as 'Cool for Cats', 'Up the Junction', 'Labelled with Love', 'Hourglass' and 'Tempted'. Some Fantastic Place is his evocative memoir of an upbringing in South London in the '60s and his rise to fame in one of the definitive bands of the late '70s and early '80s. Read by Chris Difford.

As a practising mortician, Caitlin Doughty has long been fascinated by our pervasive terror of dead bodies. In From Here to Eternity, she sets out in search of cultures unburdened by such fears. In rural Indonesia, she observes a man clean and dress his grandfather's mummified body. She meets Bolivian ñatitas (cigarette-smoking, wish-granting human skulls) and introduces us to the Japanese ritual of kotsuage, in which relatives use chopsticks to pluck their loved ones' bones from cremation ashes.

In early 2013, whilst working as the Borough Commander for Southwark in South London, John suffered a major breakdown and a consequent battle with crippling depression. After a career spent policing the streets and racing to be first at the scenes of crimes and catastrophes, he found himself in pieces, unable to put one foot in front of the other. Blue is a memoir of crime and calamity, of adventure and achievement, of friendship and failure, of laughter and loss, of the best and the worst of humanity, of serious illness and slow recovery.

The last Plantagenet king remains one of England's most famous and controversial monarchs. There are few parallels in English history that can match the drama of Richard III's reign, witnessed in its full bloody intensity. A dedicated brother and loyal stalwart to the Yorkist dynasty for most of his early life, Richard's personality was forged in the tribulation of exile and the brutality of combat.

The Vanity Fair Diaries is the story of an Englishwoman barely out of her 20s who arrives in New York City with a dream. Summoned from London in hopes that she can save Condé Nast's troubled new flagship Vanity Fair, Tina Brown is immediately plunged into the maelstrom of the competitive New York media world and the backstabbing rivalries at the court of the planet's slickest, most glamour-focused magazine company.

1657. The youngest daughter of Oliver Cromwell, 18-year-old Frances is finding her place at England's new centre of power. Following the turmoil of Civil War, a fragile sense of stability has returned to the country. Her father has risen to the unprecedented position of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, and Frances has found herself transported from her humble childhood home to the sumptuous palaces of Hampton Court and Whitehall, where she dreams of romance.

Victor Sebestyen's intimate biography is the first major work in English for nearly two decades on one of the most significant figures of the 20th century. In Russia, to this day, Lenin inspires adulation. Everywhere he continues to fascinate as a man who made history and who created a new kind of state that would later be imitated by nearly half the countries in the world.