Fantastic book!

I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. It's a very well-researched guide to the full range of anti-ageing treatments on the market as the author travels the globe in her quest to bring the reader the best information in the fight against ageing. I found myself laughing out loud whilst reading this as it is highly amusing as well as being an uplifting read. The author's trademark warmth and humour run throughout this book and, like her earlier books, it is not to be missed.

BAMBI AND ME

ANOTHER GREAT BOOK FROM JOHNNY KINGDOM. A MOVING STORY THIS ONE AND IT'S A BOOK YOU'LL WANT TO READ AGAIN AND AGAIN. I GIVE IT TOP MARKS!

what a wonderful book

Without a doubt this has got to be one of the most wonderful, thought provoking, emotional yet rewarding books I've ever read. There wasn't a single part of this book I didn't like, I wanted to savour every bit of it. Nella Last is someone who I came to greatly admire. She was resourceful, kind, helpful and very sensitive and thoughtful. <br />She always strived to do the best by her family and look after others - and despite her own nerves, depression and anxiety she did a sterling job. I felt such empathy with her when she described her anxieties, her tears and her down days - even though our experiences are poles and decades apart - nothing really changes in the human psyche. <br />I loved her vivid descriptions of the food she cooked, how she scrimped and saved and put by and still managed to create all these nourishing meals so that her husband and her sons didn't go hungry. How she found time to do all she did is a mystery, but she did it and it was people like her that kept our country going. <br />I'm really sorry to have finished the book and not have any more of it to read such was the quality of the writing. I felt as though I knew all the family, and was party to so many secrets. <br />I can't really find enough superlatives to describe it - a required read for anyone interested in history or anything to do with the Wars. Nella's beautifully honed prose is a delight to read, and something that Victoria Wood also captured beautifully in her reworking of the diary for TV.

Grown Up?

A wonderfully witty read as one would expect from the funny and often dangerous Keith Allen.<br /><br />Honest and warts and all, Keith describes his life with panache, refusing to ignore his bad boy antics (of which there are many...many many many) and offering no real excuse only the basic self knowledge that deep down he believes himself to be good.<br /><br />I can understand however, that by not explaining or apologising too much, Keith's candid tale may alienate some, but as the man himself kind of says, you either like him or you dont, so the opinion isnt likely to be changed. With Keith Allen, you get the feeling the important thing is to let people be. All in all not a bad philosophy.<br /><br />The great thing about this book is you get a real feeling that it is his words, its as if he is having a one to one with you the reader and that is a special trick with good writing. To me, he certainly has a possible secondary career as a writer from this, well apart from actor, enfant terrible and Lily's dad.<br /><br />The one complaint is that some things just arent touched upon. For example, Keith has carved a very good reputation for straight acting in recent years, yet there is no mention of serials such as 'Jack Of Hearts', 'Bodies' or 'Robin Hood' Nor is there mention of his newfound love and his new child; or his daughter's success. You get the feeling this book was written a while back and has finally been snapped up to cash in.<br /><br />Still, a great laugh out loud read....Grown Up? You decide<br /><br />

Raw and honest sexuality

Suzanne's book is refreshingly raw and honest. Although many might find her raw and open sexuality disconcerting, her frank honesty makes the book highly believable and enjoyable, providing a unique insight to how far women have come in society in the last few decades. Welcome to the freedom of women in the 21st century!

Blown Away

What an inspirational read. This man is a legend. Ex SAS he treks across both poles, removes the ends of his own frostbitten fingers in his garden shed, has a heart attack and within 16 weeks runs 7 marathons in seven days on seven continents. Then he gets to within 300 meters of the summit of Everest, considers this a failure and so learns to climb and tackles one of the most dangerous peaks in the world; the North Face of the Eiger; passing the corpses of several legendary but dead climbers on the way, declaring at the end of the climb that his attention to climbing rather than running has resulted in a loss of fitness!!!! so he goes about running 2.5 hours a day to"get fit" whilst being a mid sixties post heart attack sufferer. <br />Five stars from me.

Good information

This could be any business. I am at the moment going through all sorts of emotions in buisness. One day things are up, one day things are down. It is good to read something which you can relate to.<br />Gordon writes about restaurants but it could be any type of business.<br />Before i got the book i didn't like Gordon Ramsey, don't know why? Just didn't.<br />After the book i admire Gordon, Good luck to you Gordon! I wish you all the best.

A good read

I am a big fan of Paul O' Grady and his wonderful creation Lily Savage so when I saw this book, I just had to give it a go.<br />It's brilliantly written, some rare photographs included and contains a lot of great stories however Paul's own autobiography when it's finally published will be far more the superier read so be sure to pick up for copy of it as well as this entertaining biography.<br />I can recommened this book to all Paul fans even though a lot more probably has happend in Paul's life than what is covered here but this really should satisfy those fans who just can wait to for Paul's autobiography.<br />I hope you found this review helpful.

Incredible Lesson on Life

If you like hurting people for fun, striking fear into their hearts and generally intimidating them off the planet, then this is a must read. It's so incredible that someone will have to make a film of this. Laugh out loud stuff, it certainly is and Martin Kihn's transformation is incredible, I can really see myself in his Mr. Nice guy persona. All I need to do now is to take a deep breath and put his teachings into practice. I really do love these books on how to succeed in life, especially with a humorous bent like this. A must for all of life's climbers and movers, highly recommended. Also check out Alan Bates' `The Post Box at the Crossroads', he's another hilarious nice guy trying to make good.

We are all more alike than different

This is a superb chronicle of self-discovery, and I can understand why Barack Obama now seems both comfortable with himself, and with others, however"different" they may be. I'm not used to politicians (he wasn't one when he wrote this) being so honest, and illustrating how we all make mistakes and can learn from them. Inspiring from beginning to end.

just read it

This book is the only book I have read in less than 36 hours. Not for its simplicity as its wonderfully crafted. It is so compelling, I could do nothing else until I finished it!<br /><br />The story of Joe's brush with death and Simon's fear of leaving him is a miraculous tale of human endeavor, courage, compassion, skill and bravery. It points out that being brave isn't about not getting scared, but doing it anyway.

Warm and Witty

Like much (well, alright pretty much all) of Bryson's output, this book is soft-centered. In amongst the wit and the occasional sarcasm there is a very real sense of affection and love for the things he writes about. In this case, the topic is his own childhood and the background in which it happened: post-war America. He speaks with real warmth and pride about his parents, though oddly rather less about his older siblings, perhaps because of that age gap.<br /><br />It's a book in a sort of similar vein to Andrew Collins' 'Where Did It All Go Right?' in that, unusually in these times, it's not a memoir of childhood misery; how could it be with the tales of the fragrant Lumpy Kowalski, the Butters kids, paper rounds disrupted by psychopathic labradors and all the rest.<br /><br />The last chapter of all is really rather touching and echoes the feelings many of us have returning to the places we grew up: it's all different now. The naive hopefulness and optimism of Bryson's childhood seems to be gone forever and he almost seems to have written this book as an elegy for them. Don't let that rather downbeat note dissuade you though, this book is a wonderful treat from start to finish, full of real belly laughs and intelligent, sharp writing.

Poor history by a poor 'historian'

William Hague's recent biography of Wilberforce unsurprisingly paints a very pretty picture of the Tory MP from Yorkshire. But what is the historical context of Wilberforce's policies?<br /><br />During the 18th century, Britain became the `honourable slave carriers' to the sugar planters of her rivals France and Spain, as the abolitionist the Reverend James Ramsay complained. He lamented that the slave trade"has contributed more to the aggrandisement of our rivals than of our national wealth." <br /><br />Between 1782 and 1792, British slave traders doubled the slave population of France's colony St Domingue (present-day Haiti). St Domingue was more fertile than the British West Indies, whose soil was becoming exhausted. St Domingue's sugar cost a fifth less and its exports and profit rates were twice Jamaica's. By 1789, St Domingue's sugar production was a third more than that of all Britain's West Indies colonies. The sugar colonies were far more important to France than to Britain.<br /><br />Prime Minister William Pitt raged that the slave trade,"instead of being very advantageous to Great Britain, is the most destructive that can well be imagined to her interests." Abolishing the slave trade would ruin St Domingue. So he urged his friend William Wilberforce to campaign against the slave trade: the abolitionist movement was created to serve the British state's interests.<br /><br />The British ruling class's frenzied reaction to the French revolution of 1789 intensified the antagonism with France, as she became not just a rival but a political alternative. Pitt expected to win before Christmas, and he didn't mean Christmas 1815. Wilberforce shared, indeed often led, the British ruling class's hostility to the French revolution, and he supported the long wars against revolutionary France, sometimes voting for peace but always voting for supplies for the war.<br /><br />In 1791, St Domingue's slave-owners offered to leave French rule and put themselves under British rule. In 1793, Pitt accepted their offer and agreed that they could keep their slaves. As Wilberforce noted in his diary,"Pitt threw out against slave motion on St. Domingo account." Suddenly, the slave trade was in `British interests' again. So Pitt blocked abolition for the next 14 years, and British slave ships clearing for Africa doubled. <br /><br />When St Domingue's slaves rebelled against Pitt's betrayal, he sent hundreds of thousands of troops to try to crush them, in a disastrous and futile war. 50,000 British soldiers died, 50,000 were permanently invalided. When St Domingue's revolutionary government ended slavery, the British ruling class did not need the slave trade any more and so could abolish it in 1807.<br /><br />In Britain, Wilberforce was the foremost apologist and champion of every act of tyranny, from the employment of Oliver the Spy and the illegal detention of poor prisoners in Coldbaths Fields jail to the Peterloo massacre. Wilberforce supported the 1794 Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, which let the government imprison people against whom it had no evidence at all. Habeas Corpus was suspended until 1802. Across Britain, trade union members, journalists and publishers were arrested and detained. <br /><br />He backed the 1795 Act against Seditious Meetings and Assemblies, the 1795 Act against Treasonable and Seditious Practices, the 1797 Seduction from Duty and Allegiance Act, the 1797 Act against Administering Unlawful Oaths, the 1799 Newspaper Publications Act, and the 1799 Act for the More Effective Suppression of Societies Established for Seditious and Treasonable Purposes. Consequently, the state prevented meetings of the Literary Society of Manchester, the Academical Society of Oxford, and even of a mineralogical society, on the grounds that the study of mineralogy could lead to atheism. Wilberforce backed the Tory government's Six Acts of 1819, including the Blasphemous and Seditious Libel Act, known as the Gagging Act.<br /><br />In 1794 Pitt's government prosecuted twelve members of the London Corresponding Society for high treason - their crime? Advocating universal suffrage. Wilberforce backed the prosecution, and when a jury acquitted the defendants, he backed the government's decision to arrest 65 leading members of the Society and imprison them without trial for two years. No wonder that it was said of Wilberforce,"he never favoured the liberty of any white man in all his life." <br /><br />Wilberforce wrote that Christianity"renders the inequalities of the social scale less galling to the lower orders, whom also she instructs in their turn to be diligent, humble, patient: reminding them that their more lowly path has been allotted to them by the hand of God; that it is their part faithfully to discharge its duties, and contentedly to bear its inconveniences." William Cobbett called him the prince of hypocrites, who praised the benefits of poverty, from a comfortable distance.<br /><br />The bishops and baronets of the Proclamation Society (as Wilberforce's Society for the Suppression of Vice was earlier called) prosecuted the impoverished publisher of Tom Paine's The Age of Reason. Sydney Smith called it"the Society for the Suppression of Vice among those with less than five hundred pounds a year." In 1801 and 1802, it launched 623 successful prosecutions for breaking the Sabbath laws. Pitt's government declared The Rights of Man seditious and prosecuted those who published and sold copies of Paine's book.<br /><br />The government, with Wilberforce's support, imposed censorship, launching 42 prosecutions of publishers, editors and writers between 1809 and 1812. It became a criminal offence to write that the Prince of Wales was fat (he was), or to report that Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh had ordered the flogging of Irish peasants (he had). <br /><br />Wilberforce also backed persecution of the whole working class. He proposed a general Combination Act, calling combinations - trade unions - `a general disease in our society'. The Pitt government's Acts of 1799 and 1800 were the severest of their kind ever enacted in Britain. They made all unions illegal as such, whether conspiracy, restraint of trade or the like could be proved against them or not. In theory, the Acts applied to employers as well as to workers, but workers were prosecuted by the thousand, never a single employer. In 1834, a year after the emancipation of the slaves, the penalty for trade union activity was still transportation for life. <br /><br />But Pitt looked after the slave-owners; he introduced non-domicile tax status in 1799, so that those who had made their fortunes from slavery abroad paid no tax on their profits.<br /><br />The abolitionist movement flourished when it backed the current interest of the British state - it made no gains when the British state opposed it. It was never able, or willing, to overrule the state. It did not challenge slavery itself: Wilberforce consistently opposed those who worked for the abolition of not just the slave trade but slavery as well. Wilberforce was about as independent as Sir Bob Geldorf.<br /><br />In sum, as his biographer the last Lord Birkenhead wrote approvingly, Wilberforce"was a Tory through and through; he never shed the political ideas he had inherited from Pitt and his religion intensified his conservatism."<br />

It's only Rock and Roll but I like it.

Ronnie Woods, a member of one of the worlds greatest bands, reveals his life story so far. From his gypsy start, to the bands he's played in and his time as an artist. This autobiography is great. I could not put it down once I started reading it. The book is a wonderful read and you can't help but to tell the nearest person some of the stories Ronnie is telling you as you read it. There are many laughs throughout this book, as well as shocks, and by the end of it you'll be wanting to buy yourself a guitar so you can start your own band. Fantastic book.

Honest, personal and moving

Peter Godwin has a fantastic personal story to tell, in a very entertaining and personable style. He grew up in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and this account covers his return to Zimbabwe when his father dies. The picture of life in modern Zimbabwe, and its massive failure politically and economically, is illustrated by personal observation, anecdotes and artfully interwoven historical detail. The book covers an unexpectedly wider field than Zimbabwe, however, including a background of the second world war and the Holocaust, and uncovering a tantalising family secret. Highly recommended.

Rock On Tommy...

Picture the scene... Steven Gerrard leads Liverpool to their first ever League and European double and is rewarded by having his captaincy stripped from him because Fernando Torres says he's going to leave unless he gets the job. Guess you'd be pretty peeved too.<br /><br />There was never any secret about Tommy and Emlyn's dislike of each other and it was a big part of the 'behind-the-scenes' stuff at Anfield in the mid '70's. Unlike the modern game when every whisper is snatched upon by the press and is followed worldwide via the internet, very little escaped from the dressing room and for many fans these books are a rare insight into what actually went on back in the heyday. It would have been wrong for Tommy to write his story without highlighting the bad, as well as the good times.<br /><br />And this is Tommy's story, not Emlyn's. It is a no-holds barred story of his life, his career, his likes and his dislikes. To omit reference to Emlyn Hughes simply because it would upset some readers would be wrong. It's Tommy's life, his influences, his thoughts and his opinions. Agree with them or disagree with them, this is who he is. Maybe he'll lose a few fans as a result, but ignoring his relationship with Emlyn simply to pacify those who want to retain a rosy image of him isn't the Smith way.<br /><br />Other than that, this is the first real book Tommy has done and I would strongly urge any football fan to buy a copy and relive the golden era, not just of Liverpool Football Club, but probably football as a whole.<br />

The world is what it is.

This is a terrific autobiography of Sir V S Naipaul. Patrick French's style of writing is very economic, real page turner- and it helps that he has chosen such a writer. I am not going to comment on the controversial politics of V S Naipaul, but there are lines in this book that make you laugh out loud. For days afterwards! Here's what Naipaul said on hearing about the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, ''It's an extreme form of literary criticism.''<br /><br />I wished there had been a chapter devoted to the craft of writing and his writing influences for all aspiring writers. His favourite author 'Balzac...I suppose.' Just makes you laugh.<br /><br />Sir V S Naipaul has also opened himself to real public scrutiny, brutaly honest. When everything is taken into account this honesty has to be admired. There will be many in depth reviews to follow I'm sure - but I highly recommend this book.