The Blue Touch Paper: A Memoir

The Blue Touch Paper: A Memoir
Author: David Hare
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2015-11-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0393249190

“Extraordinary. . . . This is no butterfly-watching stroll through a life.” —Dwight Garner, New York Times David Hare has long been one of Britain’s best-known screenwriters and dramatists. He’s the author of more than thirty acclaimed plays that have appeared on Broadway, in the West End, and at the National Theatre. He wrote the screenplays for the hugely successful films The Hours, Plenty, and The Reader. Most recently, his play Skylight won the 2015 Tony Award for Best Revival on Broadway. Now, in his debut work of autobiography, “Britain’s leading contemporary playwright” (Sunday Times) offers a vibrant and affecting account of becoming a writer amid the enormous flux of postwar England. In his customarily dazzling prose and with great warmth and humor, he takes us from his university days at Cambridge to the swinging 1960s, when he cofounded the influential Portable Theatre in London and took a memorable road trip across America, to his breakthrough successes as a playwright amid the political ferment of the ’70s and the moment when Margaret Thatcher came to power at the end of the decade. Through it all, Hare sets the progress of his own life against the dramatic changes in postwar England, in which faith in hierarchy, religion, empire, and the public good all withered away. Filled with indelible glimpses of such figures as Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, Tennessee Williams, Helen Mirren, and Joseph Papp, The Blue Touch Paper is a powerful evocation of a society in transition and a writer in the making.

The Blue Touch Paper

The Blue Touch Paper
Author: David Hare
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2015-08-28
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0571294359

When, in 2000, the National Theatre published its poll of the hundred best plays of the 20th century, David Hare had written five of them. Yet he was born in 1947 into an anonymous suburban street in Hastings. It is a world he believes to be as completely vanished as Victorian England. Now in his first panoramic work of memoir, ending as Margaret Thatcher comes to power in 1979, David Hare describes his childhood, his Anglo-Catholic education and his painful apprenticeship to the trade of dramatist. He sets the progress of his own life against the history of a time in which faith in hierarchy, deference, religion, the empire and finally politics all withered away. Only belief in private virtue remains. In his customarily dazzling prose and with great warmth and humour, David Hare explores how so radical a shift could have occurred, and how it is reflected in his own lifelong engagement with two disparate art forms - film and theatre. In The Blue Touch Paper David Hare describes a life of trial and error: both how he became a writer and the high price he and those around him paid for that decision.

An Asperger Dictionary of Everyday Expressions

An Asperger Dictionary of Everyday Expressions
Author: Ian Stuart-Hamilton
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2004
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1843101521

Addressing an important aspect of social communication for people with Asperger Syndrome, who use direct, precise language and 'take things literally', this dictionary of idiomatic expressions aims to dispel any confusion that arises from the misinterpretation of language. This book provides explanations of over 5,000 idiomatic expressions plus a guide to their politeness level. Each expression is accompanied by a clear explanation of its meaning and when and how it might be used. The expressions are taken from British and American English, with some Australian expressions included as well. Although the book is primarily intended for people with Asperger Syndrome, it will be useful for anyone who finds problems understanding idiomatic and colloquial English. An essential resource and an informative read, this dictionary will assist in a wide range of situations.

Inflamed Invisible

Inflamed Invisible
Author: David Toop
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2019-12-17
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1912685248

A rich collection of essays tracing the relationship between art and sound. In the 1970s David Toop became preoccupied with the possibility that music was no longer bounded by formalities of audience: the clapping, the booing, the short attention span, the demand for instant gratification. Considering sound and listening as foundational practices in themselves leads music into a thrilling new territory: stretched time, wilderness, video monitors, singing sculptures, weather, meditations, vibration and the interior resonance of objects, interspecies communications, instructional texts, silent actions, and performance art. Toop sought to document the originality and unfamiliarity of this work from his perspective as a practitioner and writer. The challenge was to do so without being drawn back into the domain of music while still acknowledging the vitality and hybridity of twentieth-century musics as they moved toward art galleries, museums, and site-specificity. Toop focused on practitioners, whose stories are as compelling as the theoretical and abstract implications of their works. Inflamed Invisible collects more than four decades of David Toop's essays, reviews, interviews, and experimental texts, drawing us into the company of artists and their concerns, not forgetting the quieter, unsung voices. The volume is an offering, an exploration of strata of sound that are the crossing points of sensory, intellectual, and philosophical preoccupations, layers through which objects, thoughts and air itself come alive as the inflamed invisible.

A Miracle at Prairie Avenue

A Miracle at Prairie Avenue
Author: Pastor Stephen Kyeyune
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2011-01-28
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1456700871

This book is designed for all groups of people for personal devotion, and group bible study. If you are in the ministry, this book will help you through your struggle.

Habakkuk - A Prophecy for Our Time

Habakkuk - A Prophecy for Our Time
Author: Victor Robert Farrell
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2014-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0953886433

As the church in the West is found to be mostly dead and covered with Laodicean lukewarm vomit, as The Lord, slips the dead things silently over the side of the storm tossed ship into the dark oblivion of the waves of secular humanism and rising Islam, what remains will need to be fortified with steel to live in a quickly changing anti-Christian world of persecution. There is no better prophecy more equipped to speak to such a remnant who shall be so very besieged. Welcome to Habakkuk, 35 of 66, a prophecy for our time. For more information see www.66Bible.com/Habakkuk - Pastor, Rev. Victor Robert Farrell is long time author of 'Night Whispers' and President of The 66 Books Ministry, a 21st Century global city mission, grass-roots, back to the Bible movement, preaching the Gospel in the 66 most influential cities of the 250 nations of the world; that's 16,500 cities, each being preached in, on an annual and an on-going basis! For more info see - www.The66BooksMinistry.com

Out of the Blue

Out of the Blue
Author: Gary Thacker
Publisher: eBook Partnership
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2022-04-11
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1801502455

By the early months of 2012, it was clear that the appointment of Andre Villas-Boas as head coach at Chelsea wasn't delivering the required success. Instead, the club was spiralling towards its worst season of the Roman Abramovich era. On 4 March, Villas-Boas was dismissed, with his former assistant Roberto Di Matteo made interim head coach until the end of the season. Struggling in the league and with their place in the Champions League in peril, it was an appointment designed to make the best of things until a permanent replacement could be sought in the summer. Instead, under Di Matteo's guidance, Chelsea embarked on a run of performances that not only led to an FA Cup triumph, but resurrected their European hopes with improbable victories over Napoli, Benfica and Guardiola's all-conquering Barcelona before, against all odds, winning the Champions League by defeating Bayern Munich in their own stadium. This is the story of a triumph that came out of the blue.

Operation Snow Queen

Operation Snow Queen
Author: Colin Campbell
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2024-02-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

“You could well be the worst typist in the Corps. Which is a shame because you could have been one of the best soldiers I ever trained.” Sgt Hopkins looked at Pte Grant. “Being good at weapons drills and unarmed combat isn’t everything. But what you’ve done today. That’s a different matter.” “What have I done today?” “The number one rule of any soldier, combat, clerk or engineer. What every soldier learns. Is that you don’t fight for your government, your queen or your country. You fight for the man beside you. You help dig his trench. You watch his back. And you throw yourself on the grenade to save him.” “I didn’t throw myself on a grenade.” “You ruined your career and your future for the man beside you at Waterloo Station. I hope he appreciates what you’ve done.” 3BAPD, Bracht, Germany Before Snake Pass saw Jim Grant sent to America, and before Jamaica Plain saw Grant recruited by Boston PD, and even before the Black Hawk Down incident when he was in the British Army. Before all of that there was Operation Snow Queen. With only two years’ service, Grant is posted to Germany after a runaway suitcase at Waterloo Station breaks a civilian passenger’s leg. He replaces a Company Clerk who lost his head in an accident, and a smuggling ring that doesn’t want him. Following an explosion at the Ammunition Depot, and a court martial in Dusseldorf, Grant is assigned to a training exercise in Bavaria. A place where landslides and falling off a mountain are the least of his worries. Critical Acclaim for Colin Campbell: “Very real. And very good.” —Lee Child “No one writes better action sequences than Campbell.” —Dana King “There’s nothing soft about Campbell’s writing. If you enjoy your crime fiction hard-boiled, the Jim Grant series is a must read.” —Bruce Robert Coffin, author of the Detective Byron series “A cop with a sharp eye, keen mind, and a lion’s heart.” —Reed Farrel Coleman “Campbell writes smart, rollercoaster tales with unstoppable forward momentum and thrilling authenticity.” —Nick Petrie “Grim and gritty and packed with action.” —Kirkus Review “The pages fly like the bullets, fistfights and one-liners that make this one of my favorite books of the year. Top stuff!” —Matt Hilton “An excellent story well told. A mixture of The Choirboys meets Harry Bosch.” —Michael Jecks “Sets up immediately and maintains a breakneck pace throughout. Its smart structure and unrelenting suspense will please Lee Child fans.” —Library Journal Review “This is police procedural close-up and personal. A strong debut with enough gritty real-ism to make your eyes water, and a few savage laughs along the way.” —Reginald Hill

Knapworth at War

Knapworth at War
Author: Timothy Finn
Publisher: eBook Partnership
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2011-12-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1908886129

The Leicestershire village of Knapworth numbering just sixty souls faced World War II with the same phlegmatic gaze that had seen off most other national crises in its thousand years of history. These affectionate memoirs evoke a timeless world seen through the eyes of a small boy.

Left to Right

Left to Right
Author: David Crow
Publisher: AVA Publishing
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2006-11
Genre: Art
ISBN: 2940373361

Left to Right: The cultural shift from words to pictures is an in-depth study of the influence digital technology has had on the way we communicate, and the increasingly visual nature of our culture.