Category Archives: livesinprint

Front Page, livesinprint, Sport

In 1980, Boxer Walker was voted the best scrum half in the world
Mike Gardner

9781911175582 Boxer Walker was voted the best scrum half in the world in 1980. The incredible story of his life is in part, a social history of a half-forgotten era, when coal mines were the economic bed rock of close-knit communities across the north. He shines a light into what life was like in a claustrophobic Cumbrian pit deep below the Irish Sea and you will join him in the Workington Town dressing room when they beat mighty Wigan to win the Lancashire Cup for the only time in the club’s history. You will also find out about the great players and coaches who helped to burnish his rugged skills and why he was always a prized target for violent forwards, years before the slick presentation of the Super League by Sky TV with its HD quality pictures and video replays.
Published: May 2017
Paperback: 356 pages
Price: £15.00
ISBN: 9-781911-175582

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Boxer’s story is full of highs and lows, including the day he was felled so heavily at the Recreation Ground, that a rumour spread around the terraces that the tackle had killed him. Always exciting, uplifting, poignant, revealing and ultimately triumphant, Boxer: The Life of a Cumbria Great is a towering story of one of Cumbria’s finest-ever home-grown players and of a sporting character almost without compare.
Reader Reviews...

Rugby League Express

In a warts and all account, Gardner doesn't shy away from the fact that Boxer Walker could mix it with the best, almost a prerequisite of a scrum half's armoury in an era when every number seven was a target for enforcers. The award-winning author has written a superb account of a glorious career and this book is a must-read for every rugby league fan.

Adrian Durham, Talksport presenter, journalist and author

Mike Gardner paints a clear and poignant picture of Boxer as he is today, wonderfully written. Overall I enjoyed the description of old school rugby league, as well as the spirit and strength of the game in Cumbria. The photographs are a joy - plenty of them, and capturing an era and an area. The picture of the steps early in the book is awesome! Congratulations, loved it! The author should feel very proud

Rugby League Journal

It is all part of Mike Gardner's skills as a writer in taking us behind the scenes to the 'dark and mysterious' areas of rugby league that the fan doesn't see but only those who played the game can reveal. His descriptive talents and way with words at times present the story in an novel-esque style

livesinprint

Memoirs of a diplomat and teacher
Selby Martin

9781911175315
Selby Martin was born into a middle-class family in Broadstairs. His father, owner of a successful building company, married a widow who had asked him to build a house for her and they went on to have three children, Selby being the youngest. At the outbreak of war, the family moved to a shooting lodge at Rannoch in Scotland and Selby went to Wellesley House, a Broadstairs preparatory school which had been evacuated there. A chance incident led him to study German and, on gaining a scholarship to Marlborough, he specialised in modem languages. After National Service in the RAF he went to Cambridge University where he became interested in Scandinavia, in particular Finland.
Published:1st April 2017
Paperback:324 pages
Price:£10
ISBN:9-781911-175315
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Selby joined the Foreign Office after unsuccessfully applying to join MI6. His postings included Moscow as Private Secretary to the Ambassador and La Paz as Commercial Secretary. After marriage on home-posting in London, he was sent to Rawalpindi but left early on transfer to Sofia. He and his wife Rachel then decided to leave the Diplomatic Service and after a PGCE course at Leeds University he was appointed to Shrewsbury School where he taught for twenty-four years, as well as campaigning on environmental issues.
Reader Reviews...

Sir Derek Thomas (Foreign Office)

Reading this book has convinced me that few chose a route as challenging, as fulfilling or as rewarding for others as Selby Martin, and we owe him a considerable debt for being willing to share the whole story with us.

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Playing The Grey Man – A memoir of police corruption, bullying, incompetence and nepotism
Robert Moon

RM-PTG-407 CS Cov 2c.indd When the rest of us run away, it’s the police officers up and down the country who run into danger and into some of the messiest and most tragic events imaginable. But there’s a price to pay. Robert Moon’s vivid description of how he left the SAS for a life in the Scottish police gives a shocking insight into the toll that police life can take on even the toughest individuals. At times funny, at other times almost unbearably sad, and often both at the same time, this heart-rending account will leave you with awed respect for the ordinary police men and women, the cops on the front line – and not a little concern about some of those higher up the ranks. When Robert Moon joined the police he was enthusiastic and idealistic; when he resigned and refused his long service medal, he was disillusioned and broken by a job that betrayed the public and had been betrayed by the managers who seemed to have forgotten how to look after the people who really keep us safe.

Other books by the same author...
The Grey Lodge
Published:Nov 2016
Paperback:290 pages
Price:£10.99
ISBN:9-781911-175407


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Robert Joined 23 SAS, became “Sabre”, and a squadron member for four years before accidentally joining the police.
He then walked, drove and ate ice cream in one of the toughest areas in Scotland for eight years before being exiled to the middle of nowhere. As the police changed from serving the public to serving statistics, he started to see a dark side to police-service and finally left the job, fed up of the corruption, nepotism and bullying, and after refusing his long-service medal. He now travels the world and complains a lot.
Reader Reviews...

Douglas Walker - The Sun Newspaper

Robert Moon has lived a full life. As part of the SAS he put his life at risk serving around the world.
After packing it in, he moved to the 'teuchter' branch of the Scots police expecting a simple life. Instead he was met by bent coppers and corruption dripping through the ranks from the highest echelons of the force.
Written with gallows humour, Moon is left deeply traumatised by what he experienced.
His description of front-line policing is too shocking to believe.
Just as well Playing the Grey Man is purely fictional ...

livesinprint, Sport, travel

Skiing With Demons
Chris Tomlinson

9781909644663 This flagrantly honest book documents the ascent/descent of an ageing ski-bum from city-living executive to garage-dwelling chalet-host. It describes how the ski-bum’s escape from the rat race is affected by means of a rented chalet in the French alpine town of Morzine, where his ‘Chalet Project’ teaches him new and strange domestic skills and he learns a lot about Land Rover maintenance - it also causes him to lose his home and his wife and to stare down into an alcoholic crevasse. On arrival in chalet land he is frequently abducted by the ‘Après Aliens’ and hears voices in his head - his ‘Ski Demons’. Enter the world of ‘girlfriend skiing’ and of the ‘Ski Nazis’ and other such weird creatures and find out what ski-bums do in the summer. Feel for the author as he attempts to qualify as ski instructor and Ski Club of Great Britain Leader – only to discover that he’s not actually very good at skiing!
Published:1st Oct 2015
Paperback:267 pages
Price:£13.99
ISBN:9-781909-644663

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This book is also a useful manual for skiers. It examines skiing philosophies and looks at common skiing phobias. Finally, rejoice as our ski-bum exorcises his demons and also his fear of avalanches and an infamous run called the Swiss Wall.
Amazon No1 Best Seller tag in Winter Sports - UK and France

Reader Reviews...

An excellent read!

A great book. I read it all in one go, so eager was I to follow the story. It is funny - I had a few laugh out loud moments which are unusual for me - and poignant too. The author is disarmingly honest about his exploits, the end of his marriage and his struggle to get back on his feet. I passed it onto my 17 year old son who also read it in one go and loved it and to my 80 year old mother-in-law who is reading it now. So, a book for everyone and a great little stocking filler!

Witty page turner of how one man started living the dream of many avid holiday skiers.

A great book. I read it all in one go, so eager was I to follow the story. It is funny - I had a few laugh out loud moments which are unusual for me - and poignant too. The author is disarmingly honest about his exploits, the end of his marriage and his struggle to get back on his feet. I passed it onto my 17 year old son who also read it in one go and loved it and to my 80 year old mother-in-law who is reading it now. So, a book for everyone and a great little stocking filler!

livesinprint

The meteoric rise and sudden fall of a 1960s eight-piece band from Bournemouth.
Tim Large

9781909644939 In the summer of 1965, Dave Anthony’s Moods, an eight-piece band from the musical cauldron of Bournemouth, were confidently poised to take over the world of jazzy, brassy, bluesy, popular music and rule supreme.
No such luck. Four years later, they were a backing group for a second-rate Italian pop singer and the band fell painfully apart. Nobody but a few dedicated fans remembers them today. This is the story of how that fiery ambition arose and how it developed and mutated - and how it descended in fits and starts into final failure.
Dave Athony's Moods is Tim Large's account of an amazing journey of peaks and troughs, hilarity and boredom, triumph and occasional tragedy, all seen through his inspired, time-distorted prism. He saw it all, from before the beginning until after the very end. This is his version and he's sticking to it.
Published:1st Dec 2015
Paperback:158 pages
Price:£12.99
ISBN:9-781909-644939

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Reader Reviews...

Front Page, history, livesinprint

Biography of a bankrupt Englishman who became a Founding Father of the USA.
Colin Gwinnett Sharp

9781911175001 Button Gwinnett was a signatory to the Declaration of Independence. His short-lived but meteroic political career has invited much conjecture but the lack of any obvious legacy has since condemned him to semi-oblivion - apart from his signature which is now the most sought after in the United States. This book fills a gap in our knowledge. It tells the story of Gwinnett's life in gripping detail: from 1762 and his arrival in America as a bankrupt Englishman, to Founding Father in 1776, and finally to his death in a duel the following year. It examines how he rose by dubious means to become one of the largest landowners in the State of Georgia and leader of the Popular Party, and it lays out the complex steps by means of which, in 1776, he placed his signature on the Declaration of Independence and became successively Speaker, Commander-in-Chief and President of Georgia - before an untimely death in an unnecessary duel.
Published:1st Dec 2015
Paperback:162 pages
Price:£8.50
ISBN:9-781911-175001

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Colin Gwinnett Sharp is a former Royal Navy Commander and an indirect descendant of Button Gwinnett who first came to know of his forbear's life whilst serving in the British Embassy in Washington DC.
Reader Reviews...

livesinprint

A Psychiatrist’s Life
Dr. Yousufzai F.R.C. Psych.

Front Cover Dr. Yousufzai's autobiography describes in compelling detail his journey from a moderately poor but proud family of Pathans in the small town of Najibabad, India, in 1936, through the horrors of Partition and his struggle for survival and education in early Pakistan, to success in the UK and work as a Clinical Tutor, member and chairperson of a number of educational and administrative boards and committees, medical director of an NHS Trust and adviser to his local Marriage Guidance Council for a number of years.
This is the story of a long, hard struggle, cleverly analysed and described in vivid terms. Dr. Yousufsai is brutally frank and honest about his own weaknesses and he describes, in brief, a number of interesting cases he had the privilege to help, in the hope that this will give insight to the general public about the nature and variety of human problems that psychiatrists deal with - and in the hope that it will also help to reduce the stigma of mental disorders and shed light on the interaction of body and mind.
Published:10th July 2015
Paperback:290 pages
Price:£11.99
ISBN:9-781909-644601
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Dr. N. M. Yousufzai is a retired consultant psychiatrist and Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists

Reviews...

history, livesinprint

Was it Yesterday
A. M. Bown

Was it Yesterday When he volunteered in 1914, A.M.Bown was a twenty-year-old scholar at Oxford studying science. He became an artillery subaltern and remained one throughout the First World War, being wounded twice and gaining the Military Cross for bravery. This book, although fictionalised, grew out of his personal experiences and is a vivid and authentic, if fictionalised, account. He tells of ordinary day-to-day incidents, some amusing, some frightening, and gives a sense of real lives - and real deaths. He keeps throughout a respect for his fellow soldiers, saying: “So this little team in khaki stood waiting for the starting gun … in the greatest game of all, and whatever share the fields of Eton may have had in any winning of it, that same share must be credited to the back alleys and the cinder patches, the parks and the recreation grounds which had been the nurseries of most of those who stood together in that forward line, picked to play for England”.
Published:3rd August 2015
Paperback:218 pages
Price:£11.99
ISBN:9-781909-644595
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Profits from this edition will be divided between the Royal British Legion and Trinity College, Oxford, a scholarship to which gave the author his start in life.
Reviews...

Times Literary Supplement
“No synopsis of the movements and adventures of that battery could give an adequate impression of the scope of the book and quotation will do it less than justice. In style it is simple, light yet adequate; the humour is never forced and the ever present sense of tragedy is never unduly emphasized”.