Bill Edgar – författare

'Bill Edgar is simply the best. His quizzes draw upon one of the greatest minds in football. This is a book nobody with a love of the game can afford to miss'MATTHEW SYED'It must be good if it's Bill's book!!'JAMIE CARRAGHER'The stuff he comes up with is absolutely fantastic. There are stats, and stats, and his stats are excellent'JOHN MURRAY, BBC Radio Football CorrespondentA MUST-BUY FOR ANY FOOTBALL FAN, THIS BUMPER QUIZ BOOK IS PACKED WITH 1,000 QUESTIONS ABOUT FOOTBALL, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM EYE-OPENING OR AMUSING.Bill Edgar has been a football writer for The Times for the past 23 years, specialising in statistics, curiosities and quizzes. He has been compiling quizzes regularly since 2008. With this quiz book he sets out to intrigue and entertain, rather than simply pose questions. Every question includes a stat or piece of trivia that is fascinating and entertaining, which readers will enjoy whether or not they succeed in answering the question correctly or not.

Imagine you are dying with a secret. Something you’ve never had the courage to tell your friends and family. Or a last wish – a task you need carried out before you can rest in peace. Now imagine there’s a man who can take care of all that, who has no respect for the living, who will do anything for the dead.Bill Edgar is the Coffin Confessor – a one-of-a-kind professional, a man on a mission to make good on these last requests on behalf of his soon-to-be-deceased clients. And this is the extraordinary story of how he became that man. Bill has been many things in this life: son of one of Australia’s most notorious gangsters, homeless street-kid, maximum-security prisoner, hard man, family man, car thief, professional punching bag, philosopher, inventor, private investigator, victim of horrific childhood sexual abuse and an activist fighting to bring down the institutions that let it happen. A survivor. As a little boy, he learned the hard way that society is full of people who fall through the cracks – who die without their stories being told. Now his life’s work is to make sure his clients’ voices are heard, and their last wishes delivered: the small-town grandfather who needs his tastefully decorated sex dungeon destroyed before the kids find it. The woman who endured an abusive marriage for decades before finding freedom. The outlaw biker who is afraid of nothing . . . except telling the world he is in love with another man. The dad who desperately needs to track down his estranged daughter so he can find a way to say he''s sorry, with one final gift. Confronting and confounding, heartwarming and heartbreaking, The Coffin Confessor is a compelling story of survival and redemption, of a life lived on the fringes of society, on both sides of the law – and what that can teach you about living your best life . . . and death.

A private investigator with a haunting past, Bill Edgar’s life was never destined to be ordinary. Rising to international fame as the ‘Coffin Confessor’ – the man who crashes funerals on behalf of the deceased, giving voice to their last wishes – Bill dismantled many of the assumptions we hold about truth, dignity and the business of dying.Swindlers, cheaters, vultures, liars and con-artists – there isn’t a musty corner of the human soul Bill hasn’t confronted. Loved and loathed in equal measure, his only concern is being the caretaker of the secrets and desires his clients have entrusted to him. Shame and outrage, healing and comfort are left up to those left behind.But it’s a request from one woman to hand-deliver a bottle of wine to her husband on the anniversary of her death that raises deeper questions: What do we make out of the handful of days we’re given? If hate and injustice are so hard to bury, why does love have a knack for triumphing? Are the most profound acts in life sometimes the most quiet ones?The Afterlife Confessional follows Bill’s journey for answers as he looks through the dizzying kaleidoscope of his clients’ lives – the widower who escaped an aged-care trap to take her husband’s ashes on the road trip of a lifetime; the man who spent his life paying it forward to try to make up for one shameful act; the closet dominatrix who quietly confronts her husband’s infidelity by comforting those truly in need; the devoted couple who insist on going hand-in-hand into the afterlife.Heartbreaking and hilarious, outrageous and wise, The Afterlife Confessional is Bill Edgar’s fascinating account of the things he’s witnessed and learned as the Coffin Confessor – the bizarre and beautiful ways we live and love, the finality of death and the power of legacy, and how letting go can sometimes be the first step to living on.

The significant feature of homelessness in Europe over the past 25 years has been its persistence. Traditional policies have increasingly been found wanting in the light of the changed economic and demographic circumstances of the last quarter of the 20th century. A reappraisal of the nature of European homelessness by academics and practitioners demonstrates the need for the development of innovatory policies and practice that take account of these changed circumstances and explicitly address the current needs of Europe's homeless people.This highly topical report provides a synthesis of reported developments in innovative service provision for homeless people in the member countries of the European Union. Setting their arguments within a context of changing welfare provision and welfare/housing regimes, the authors reappraise the nature of homelessness and its causes, chart the main dimensions of the composition of homeless populations and of policy instruments and examine in detail the nature and diversity of emerging innovative practices in the provision of services to the homeless of Europe. Select examples of innovative services for homeless people are provided in the comprehensive Appendix to the report.The report draws on the 1998 national reports of the 15 correspondents of the European Observatory on Homelessness who conduct research on behalf of FEANTSA (the European Federation of National Organisations working with the Homeless). It provides a genuinely comprehensive coverage of EU member states and should stimulate debate regarding housing policy issues across Europe and encourage transnational cooperation between non-governmental organisations as well as act as a stimulus for further research.In bringing together a wealth of material on policy and practice throughout Europe the report adds considerably to our knowledge of the dynamics of European homelessness and housing policy. Services for homeless people is therefore important reading for academics across Europe, practitioners in non-governmental organisations dealing with the homeless, housing agencies and government departments, and students of comparative housing studies.The research of the European Observatory on Homelessness is supported financially by DG V of the European Commission.

Drawing on the national reports of the correspondents of the European Observatory on Homelessness, the book provides a comparative analysis, identifying the commonalities and differences across fifteen member states of the EU. Specifically, the book assesses the impact of recent changes in European housing markets, especially their commodification and privatisation; examines how immigrants' vulnerability to homelessness is reflected in their legal status and explores the effect that growing numbers of migrants and their changing demographics have had on providers of homelessness services in Europe. Immigration and homelessness in Europe is essential reading for policy makers, service providers, social workers, researchers and students of housing and housing policy.