The Shattered Jewel

Stan Fynes-Clinton is of 1820 settler stock on his mother's side, and was born in Salisbury (now Harare), Southern Rhodesia, in 1936. He was educated at the Bulawayo Convent, Rhodes Estate Preparatory Primary School (REPS) and Plumtree Secondary School. On leaving school in 1955, he joined the Native Affairs Department, later to become the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and rose to the position of District Commissioner in 1967. During his twenty-five years' service in the ministry he was posted to fifteen districts throughout Southern Rhodesia/Rhodesia and made a close study of African customs. After independence in 1980, interference by politicians made his position untenable, resulting in his resignation from the ministry in January 1981. The recent serious economic decline in Zimbabwe has forced him to continue working at a time when his expectation had been to enjoy the security and peace of retirement.

Fynes-Clinton, Stan

Biographies & Memoirs

Troubador Publishing Ltd

Amanda Stockdale is an ecologist studying elephants in a remote part of Africa. Cleopatra is her favourite and the matriarch of her study group whose life she holds in her hand.

Cleopatra's Journey

Literature & Fiction

MACDONALD, Ian

Contemporary

How do you behave in a poker game with a genocidal murderer? General Mohammed Siad Barre of Somalia had a revolver lying beside his over-flowing ashtray on the baize card table. Dictators bully and cheat, not only at cards. Field Marshal General Idi Amin Dada of Uganda, - fleeing his overthrow, abandoned his mansion on Kololo Hill. Amin's mansion showed us his madness, his vanity, his love of the cartoon characters Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Popeye and Olive Oil, and his hypochondria - the bathroom contained more medicine than a chemist's shop. On their trips to African summitry, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, worldly yet fanatical, were an enigma. Yasser Arafat and King Hassan of Morocco were diminutive men, but charming in meetings face-to-face. Arafat was full of bonhomie as he tapped the pistol on his belt. Angus Shaw, an award-winning international journalist, was born in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. In this brutally honest memoir, he tells of friendship, joy and pain, of lies, of moral decay, and of sex, drink and drugs, as he journeys through seven blood-steeped African wars, culminating in that pinnacle of madness and depravity, the genocide in Rwanda. His story is peopled by cruel dictators and warlords, fighters whose dreams of freedom went unconsummated, great statesmen like the icon of peace Nelson Mandela, the jet-setting Pope John Paul II making pilgrimages to Africa, and idols of movies and music who visited his beleaguered Paradise of Fools."

Mutoko Madness

Shaw, Angus

Leaders & Notable People

The Lords of the Manor included members of important local families -- the Giffards, Norwoods and Tryes -- and this book relates some of their more interesting achievements. During the First World War the Court housed a Red Cross hospital, and in the Second World War a camp was set up in the grounds, occupied in turn by British and US troops and then by German POWs. Today the Court is best known as a Sue Ryder Hospice, noted for its atmosphere of love, compassion, unhurried care and understanding of patients' needs. This book is sold entirely in aid of its running costs.

Leckhampton Court: Manor House to Hospice

History

Miller,Eric

Europe

Chelsea Here Chelsea There

Mark Worrall

David Johnstone

Kelvin Barker

Sino and Gideon are sitting pretty. A generation ago, they would have been condemned to a life of menial labour in their native China and South Africa. Today, both are embedded in a global conglomerate, on the fast-track to management greatness. The problem is, the more they think about what's on offer, the more they want to go home, even if life in their own emerging cultures can still be nasty, brutish and short and the state the biggest criminal of all. For their American boss, Sam, this attitude is a problem. He needs a steady stream of ambitious, malleable graduates to staff his operations around the world, otherwise he won't be able to keep the profits coming in. Sam's other problems are mounting, too. Chinese competitors are squeezing his businesses and regulators are breathing down his neck. Even his old European stepmother, who used to turn a blind eye as long as the profits kept rolling in, is starting to lose faith in his ability to hold things together. The Glass Tower is a wry and ruthless portrait of a weakened western elite struggling to remain relevant as the emerging world powers forward into the future.

The Glass Tower

Hughes, J. B.

Was the author of Pride and Prejudice really a poor, uneducated woman with no experience of sex or marriage? A woman who spent most of her life in rural seclusion, never meeting any other authors or literary figures, and whose only formal education was two years at a basic primary school? This is what biographers of Jane Austen expect us to believe, and what Nicholas Ennos refutes in this exposé, Jane Austen: A New Revelation. How could Jane Austen have written these novels, he asks, that have been considered by discriminating critics as some of the finest in the English language? Nicholas Ennos shows how the novels reveal the real author to have been a woman who moved in the highest circles of London society, was educated in Latin and Greek and who spoke fluent French. It reveals the author to be not a retiring spinster, but Jane Austen's cousin and sister-in-law, Eliza de Feuillide, a married lady of the highest intellect whose ten-year course of education was supervised by her famous father, a man at the very centre of the intellectual life of London. The book traces Eliza's exciting life, from her birth in Calcutta, India, to the court of Marie Antoinette, the execution of her first husband in the French Revolution and her connections to the leading literary figures of England and Germany. Jane Austen: A New Revelation reveals many new facts and the close connection between the supposed novels of Jane Austen and those of the novelist with the greatest influence on her, Fanny Burney. Nicholas Ennos's knowledge of languages enables him to cast a fresh eye on these novels, revealing their true author to be a master linguist herself, who took her writing style from both French and Latin. Jane Austen: A New Revelation is the first book published to reveal the true author of these works. It will appeal both to fans of Jane Austen, and literary conspiracists.

Jane Austen: A New Revelation

Ennos, Nicholas

Arts & Literature

Seeing That Frees

In this ground-breaking and seminal work, esteemed Buddhist teacher Rob Burbea lays out an original and comprehensive approach to deepening insight. Starting from simple and easily accessible understandings of emptiness, Burbea presents a unique conception of the path along which he escorts the practitioner gradually, through the careful structure of the work, into ever more mystical levels of insight. Through its precise instructions, illuminating exercises and discussions that address the subtleties of both practice and understanding, Seeing That Frees opens up for the committed meditator all the profundity of the Buddha's radical teachings on emptiness. This is a book that will take time to digest and will serve as a lifelong companion on the path, leading the reader, as it does, progressively deeper into the territory of liberation. From the Foreword by Joseph Goldstein: "Rob Burbea, in this remarkable book, proves to be a wonderfully skilled guide in exploring the understanding of emptiness as the key insight in transforming our lives... It is rare to find a book that explores so deeply the philosophical underpinnings of awakening at the same time as offering the practical means to realize it."

Religion & Spirituality

Burbea, Robert

Buddhism

 Colin Campbell investigates the nature of the story that can be extracted from the intriguing words and powerful images contained in this famous Beatles’ song.  Eleanor Rigby is one of the most well-loved of all Beatles’ songs, both because of its haunting melody, and also – memorably - for lyrics that have fascinated and intrigued Beatles’ fans all round the world since it was first released in 1966.  This scholarly work assesses the plausibility of the many different stories that commentators and fans have spun from the enigmatic words and phrases of this lyric and, while dismissing the more fanciful, tries to arrive at a version that is both consistent and tenable. At the same time Professor Campbell explores both the reasons for the enduring appeal of this much-loved lyric and its significance for the Beatles’ development from jobbing song-writers to sophisticated artists.

The Continuing Story of Eleanor Rigby

Arts & Photography

Campbell, Colin

Music

"It's my 40th birthday today and I'm trying to smile, but as I look in the mirror all I can see is an empty shell, someone waiting to die... You could never tell that anything was wrong with me by just looking at me, as I dress clean and I keep myself tidy, and I have a smile on my face that hides my emotions and over the years I've become an expert at hiding behind it" This is the shocking true story of an innocent girl abused by the very people who said they would take good care of her. Lilly's family began the path to her destruction - they used and abused her - but they never ever wanted or loved her. The little girl was sexually physically and emotionally abused by many people around her who were able to hide behind the security of Ireland's Catholic Church-run institutions. She also suffered at the hands of other people around them who they called their friends. You only get one chance to live your life as a child, but Lilly was never given that chance - her childhood was taken from her before it ever begun. From the age of four, when she was first sexually abused, her life changed forever; when she walked through the institution's doors in Ireland, her life continued along the same path that has destroyed her soul. Her emotional pain is as strong today as it was the day it began and will never leave her alone. "When I go to sleep it's in my head and when I wake up I can see it in the mirror and I am only waiting to die." A child abuse story that will stay with you forever and one that you will talk about for many years to come, The Girl Nobody Wants is a harrowing true story that will appeal to fans of biographies.

The Girl Nobody Wants - A Shocking True Story of Child Abuse in Ireland

Parenting & Relationships

O'Brien, Lilly

Family Relationships

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