The histories of Sir George Simpson and the Hudson's Bay Company are inextricably intertwined, for Simpson's business acumen and go-ahead personality would take a failing fur trading business to a position of great wealth and political power. Controlling a vast trading territory that stretched over 1/12 the world's surface, The HBC became the most significant business in 18th and 19th century Canada and shaped the nation. As its head, Sir George Simpson epitomized the self-made man of Victorian times. Raffan has captured the many contradictions of this larger-than-life figure: his shame at his illegitimate birth, yet his fathering of at least 13 children out of wedlock; his love of grandiosity, yet his ability to rough it with the voyageurs. As he ranged fearlessly across his "empire of furs," spurring his employees to even greater profits, Simpson set speed and endurance records for overland travel that have yet to be beaten. Under his ruthless, inventive and far-seeing management, the HBC became one of the greatest business empires ever and contributed to the concept of a Canadian nation stretching from sea to sea. In many respects, Simpson was a "father of Confederation" ahead of his time.

Emperor of the North

Biographies & Memoirs

Raffan, James

Historical

HarperCollins, Publishers

'As good as being in the gallery. Enthralling.' Peter Ackroyd, The Times
The original transcript of the famous Wilde vs Queensberry trial, containing previously unseen details and exchanges. With extensive footnotes and a new introduction, this definitive account is a dramatic read that will delight Wilde enthusiasts and the general reader.
One of the most famous love affairs in literary history is that of Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas. When it became public, it cost Wilde everything. Merlin Holland has discovered the original courtroom transcript of the trial which led to his grandfather’s tragedy. Here at last is the true record, without the distortions of previous accounts.
On 18 February 1895 Bosie’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, delivered a note to the Albemarle Club addressed to ‘Oscar Wilde posing as somdomite [sic]’. With Bosie’s encouragement, Wilde decided to sue the Marquess for libel. As soon as the trial opened London’s literary darling was at the centre of the greatest scandal of his time.
Wilde’s fall from grace was swift: his case lost, prosecution by the Crown soon followed, ending in the imprisonment that destroyed his health – even as his art, as Wilde put it, improved through ‘suffering’.
In this remarkable book we witness Wilde’s confidence ebbing under the relentless questioning and see him lose track of the witty lines for which he was famous. Ultimately, it was his wit that betrayed him.

Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess: The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde

Arts & Literature

Fourth Estate

Transformative lessons in life learnt through a remarkable three-year-old girl's battle with cancer. From Hannah's story emerge five profound lessons – of truth, joy, faith, compassion and wonder – that have the power to change our lives.
Every once in a while a book comes along that can change your life – a book so special, it is destined not just to be read but to be cherished, to be passed from one reader to another as a precious gift. Filled with wisdom and grace, tears and laughter, Hannah's Gift is one such book. Maria Housden shares the transformative lessons in living she received from her three-year-old daughter Hannah, who brought courage, honesty and joy to her struggle with cancer.
During the last year of her short life, Hannah was fearless in the way she faced death – and irrepressibly joyful in the way she approached living. The little girl who wore her favourite red shoes into the operating theatre changed the life of everyone who came in contact with her. Now, in a book that preserves Hannah's indomitable spirit, Maria Housden offers the gift of her daughter's last year to all of us. In a lyrically told narrative, both moving and unforgettable, Housden recounts Hannah's battle with cancer in simple, straightforward language that transcends grief and fear to become a celebration.
Hannah's Gift nourishes the soul with an ageless wisdom all the more invaluable for having come from someone so young. A remarkable story, remarkably told, it will bring comfort to anyone touched by loss and renewed faith in the power of love.

Hannah’s Gift: Lessons from a Life Fully Lived

Housden, Maria

Religion & Spirituality

Element

John Peel first brought Judy's moving childhood story to light on ‘Home Truths’. Abducted by her psychotic spiritualist father and kept like a dog in the backyard, she went on to suffer at the brutal hands of nuns in a Manchester orphanage, before living wild on the streets. An incredible, heart-wrenching story of a child who refused to give up.
After a childhood lived in terror, in 1994 Judy was presented with an Unsung Heroes Award for her charity work with street children in South Africa. Her moving story came to light after Judy was interviewed by John Peel on BBC’s ‘Home Truths’. ‘Street Kid’ is the inspirational and heartwrenching story of her early years.
At age two, in postwar Manchester, Judy was snatched from her mother and sisters by her psychotic father – a spiritualist preacher. He kept her in his backyard, leaving her to scavenge from bins to beat off starvation. At four, she was sent to an inhumanely strict catholic orphanage, before being put back in her father’s cruel care. For the next three years she was treated as a virtual slave.
After being taken by her father to South Africa, Judy ran away to join the circus where she found her first taste of freedom and friendship – before her father tracked her down. Weeks later Judy was alone again and living on the streets, too terrified to turn to her circus friends. For 9 months 12-year-old Judy made her home in a shed behind a bottle store before collapsing in a shop doorway from near-starvation.
Finally, aged 17, Judy managed to pay her way back to England to find her mother and sisters. But her return to Manchester cruelly shattered any dreams of a happy reunion.
Determined that her childhood experiences should in some way give meaning to her life, Judy has worked tirelessly to help children in need back in South Africa in the very place she had been treated to such abuse herself. She has opened 7 centres to date.

Street Kid: One Child's Desperate Fight for Survival

Westwater, Judy

Health, Fitness & Dieting

HarperElement

This heart-wrenching memoir from Toni Maguire tells the deeply moving story of an idyllic childhood that masked a terrible truth. Underneath her mother's gentility and her father's roguish charm lay horrifying secrets, which eventually led to their only child's near destruction.
The first time her father made an improper advance on Toni, she was six years old. Her father warned her not to tell her mother, or anyone else, because they would blame her and wouldn't love her any more. It had to remain ‘our secret.’
When she finally built up the courage to tell her mother what had happened, she was told never to speak of the matter again. With no one to turn to, isolated and alone in rural Ireland, the abuse continued unhindered.
At fourteen Toni fell pregnant by her father, and when her state was discovered she was made to have a late abortion which almost killed her. The truth of her childhood could no longer be kept hidden but, just as her father predicted, Toni found herself judged and rejected by her family, teachers and friends. The blame and anger she was treated with only worsened when her father was sent to prison as a result of his actions. This is the compelling story of her struggle to put the ghost of her childhood to rest, and emerge ultimately triumphant.

Don’t Tell Mummy: A True Story of the Ultimate Betrayal

Maguire, Toni

Community & Culture

Hidden: Betrayed, Exploited and Forgotten. How One Boy Overcame the Odds.

From the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author comes the poignant and shocking memoir of Cathy’s recent relationship with Tayo, a young boy she fosters whose good behaviour and polite manners hide a terrible past.
Tayo arrives at Cathy’s with only the clothes he stands up in. He has been brought to her by the police, but he is calm, polite, and very well spoken, and not at all like the children she normally fosters. The social worker gives Cathy the forms which should contain Tayo’s history, but apart from his name and age, it is blank. Tayo has no past.
Tayo is an 'invisible' child, kidnapped from his loving father in Nigeria and brought illegally to the UK by his drink and drugs dependent prostitute mother, where he is put to work in a sweat shop in Central London. When he sustains an injury and is no longer earning, he is cast out.
When Cathy takes Tayo to school he points out a dozen different addresses where he has stayed in the last six months, often being left alone. Tayo lies, and manipulates situations to his own advantage and Cathy has to be continually on guard. Tayo’s social worker searches all computer databases but there is no record of Tayo – he has only attended school for 3 terms and has never seen a doctor. He and his mother have been evading the authorities by living ‘underground’.
With his mother recently released from prison, Tayo is desperate to live with his father in Nigeria, but no one can track him down or even prove that he exists.

Glass, Cathy

The sequel to Daddy’s Little Earner tells Maria’s story as she tries to rebuild her life.
Determined to escape from her past and be the best wife and mother she could possibly be, Maria throws herself into her marriage. But it is never that easy to escape from such a traumatic start in life.
Maria tells the story of her marriage into the gypsy community and the emotional demons that rise up from her childhood to haunt her as she becomes the victim of violence once more. She leads the reader through her own personal and inspiring journey out of a nervous breakdown, through two marriages and on to becoming a personal development teacher, helping many others to overcome their pasts, and a strong, empowered single mother of two boys.

Escaping Daddy

Landon,Maria

Mental Health

Paperback. Pub Date :2008-12-01 Pages: 304 Language: English Publisher: HarperCollins UK When Isobel and Alex came home from school to find their abusive father had brutally murdered their mother. their world was thrown into chaos Plunged into a care. system that neglected them. Isobel and Alex were expected to come to nothing. and had only each other to rely on.Isobel and Alexs mother used to do everything with them. A full-time teacher. she dedicated herself to her children. partly in order to give them every possible opportunity in life. and partly to keep them out of the way of their increasingly eccentric. erratic and unpleasant father.Their father. a violent and frightening man. spent most of his time locked in his bedroom. a room the rest of the family never ventured into. He became increasingly bitter and angry at the outside world in general. and at his wife and chi...

No One Listened: Two children caught in a tragedy with no one else to trust except for each other

Literature & Fiction

Kerr, Alex

Kerr, Isobel

Contemporary

Harper/Element

Joe knew his mother was cruel and violent, but he trusted his beloved father to protect him from her. When a freak accident saw his father burn to death in front of him, Joe was left at the mercy of his mother. Without the love of his friend and brother, he wouldn't have survived. With them, he went on to spend his life fighting child abuse.
Joe was just five years old and the horrific scene literally struck him dumb. He didn't speak for four and a half years, which meant he was unable to ask anyone for help as his life turned into a living hell.
His schizophrenic mother and two of his older brothers spent the following years beating him, raping him and locking him in the cellar at the family home. Fed on scraps that he was forced to lick from the floor, he was sometimes left naked in the dark for three days without human contact.
Unable to read or write, all Joe could do to communicate his suffering was draw pictures.
The violence and sexual abuse grew in severity as more people, including his stepfather, were invited to use him in any way they chose.
The only thing that saved Joe was the kindness of his elder brother and his only school friend, both of whom showed him that love was possible even in the darkest of situations.
At fourteen he finally found the courage to run away, hiding in a hut by a railway line, fed on scraps by some local children who found him.
Joe's is the ultimate insider's story, casting light into the darkest of hidden worlds, and a truly inspirational account of how one small boy found the strength to overcome almost impossible odds and become a remarkable man. Now that he has found his voice again, Joe speaks out against child abuse and helps support and protect other children whose lives have been blighted by it.

Cry Silent Tears: The heartbreaking survival story of a small mute boy who overcame unbearable suffering and found his voice again

Peters, Joe

Professionals & Academics

The next book from the number one bestselling author of Cry Silent Tears.
Joe was only five years old when he lost his voice. Only five years old when he was first beaten by his mother and raped by her boyfriend. And only nine years old when his mother sold him to a paedophile ring.
At sixteen, Joe finally found the courage to escape and headed for Charing Cross station with no money in his pocket, no friends and nowhere to turn to. But the nightmare was far from over.
Haunted by his harrowing past, Joe's life spiralled out of control. Living on the lonely streets of London, Joe turned down a dark path of crime and self-destruction and it seemed that he was bound for prison. Until the love of a good woman set him free…
This is the ultimate story of triumph over evil, of survival and redemption. Heartbreaking, but unbelievably inspiring, it is a testament to the unbreakable resilience of a little boy who grew up into a remarkable man. Now that he has found his voice again, Joe speaks out against child abuse and helps support and protect other children whose lives have been blighted by it.

Cry Myself to Sleep: He had to escape. They would never hurt him again.

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