Piers Dudgeon - Böcker

A fascinating insight into the life of one of the country's bestselling and best-loved authors, marrying her work with her extraordinary life, and looking at her rise to fame and fortune against all the odds.‘Everything I have touched in my life figures in my books. Every single book I write has something that has happened to me or my family or to my friends.’Josephine Cox was born in Blackburn during its decline as the cotton-weaving capital of the world. Life was hard but characterful, the joys and tragedies of her youth later inspiring her multi-million selling novels.One of ten children, Josephine knew poverty, hunger and charity. Between births, her mother worked in the cotton mills, her father on the roads. Sleeping up to six in a bed, her family lived in the tightly packed, working-class terraces of Blackburn. But Josephine never felt victimised or shamed.Transforming their closed-in community into one that inspired ‘another kind of love, a deep sense of belonging’ were the characters Josephine writes about in her novels with such fondness and feeling.But alas reality was not always so easy. Hand in hand with poverty came deprivation and domestic difficulties. At the end of her tether, Jo’s mother gathered her children around her in the bus station one day and announced they were leaving Blackburn. Josephine was fourteen years old. Not only did she lose her friends, she also lost her brothers too who were left behind. ‘Belonging to a street, to a place, to a family, is the most important thing.’ Out of this tremendous loss, Josephine’s novels were born.

This oral history of London's East End spans the period after the First World War to the upsurge of prosperity at the beginning of the 60s - a time which saw fresh waves of immigrants in the area, the Fascist marches of the 30s and its spirited recovery after virtual obliteration during the Blitz. Piers Dudgeon has listened to dozens of people who remember this fiercely proud quarter to record their real-life experiences of what it was like before it was fashionable to buy a home in the Docklands. They talk of childhood and education, of work and entertainment, of family, community values, health, politics, religion and music. Their stories will make you laugh and cry. It is people's own memories that make history real and this engrossing book captures them vividly.

This oral history of Glasgow spans most of the last century - a time of economic downturn and eventual renewal, in which the many communities making up the city experienced upheavals that tore some apart and brought others closer together. It tells of the beating heart of no mean city in the words of the people who made it what it is. Piers Dudgeon has listened to dozens of people who remember the city as it was, and who have lived through its many changes. They talk of childhood and education, of work and entertainment, of family, community values, health, politics, religion and music. Their stories will make you laugh and cry. It is people's own memories that make history real and this engrossing book captures them vividly.

OUR LIVERPOOL is an oral history about the real Liverpool - about the city before its slick transformation to European City of Culture and about the spirit that remains at its heart. Here, at last, is Liverpool's grievous and glorious past. And here, through the people's voices, we find old Liverpool, without the gift-wrap. Its stories pulsate with the rhythms of an alternately funny, flippant, belligerent, stubborn and warm heart, and they broadcast the values of a community, which are the city's true legacy to the modern world. Piers Dudgeon has listened to dozens of people who remember the city as it was, and who have lived through its many changes. They talk of childhood and education, of work and entertainment, of family, community values, health, politics, religion and music. Their stories will make you laugh and cry. It is people's own memories that make history real and this engrossing book captures them vividly.

In Don Camillo's Little World, where eternal forces grapple with the absurd drama of everyday life, hilarious and unearthly things can happen. If you keep this in mind you will have no difficulty in getting to know the village priest and his adversary, Peppone, the communist mayor. Nor will you be surprised when a third person watches the goings-on from a big cross in the village church and not infrequently intervenes...These enchanting, wise and strangely moving tales of life in Italy's Emilia-Romagna continue to enthral millions of readers of all ages around the world. In this newly translated volume, many are available in English for the very first time.

Set against the post-war backdrop of a village in the Emilia-Romagna, this is the second of the newly translated Don Camillo series with sales of more than 23 million copies worldwide.As ever, the townsfolk, divided by their respective allegiances to the hot-headed Catholic priest and his equally pugnacious adversary Peppone, the communist mayor, are relieved of their prejudices by the gentle humour and insights emanating form the crucifix high above the altar of the village church...

The third in the Don Camillo series brings more timeless, bittersweet stories of life in Italy's Lower Plain, many of them in English for the first time. It begins as the second in the series ended, with Don Camillo in exile in the mountains. But it isn't long before this lightning conductor for human frailty draws Peppone and all human nature to his door.

In No. 4 of the newly translated Don Camillo series, Peppone loses out on a matter of conscience and must accept the presence of Don Camillo among a group of communist activists on a trip he is organising to Mother Russia. Travelling incognito, the battling priest becomes the life and soul of the Party and picks off his totalitarian comrades one-by-one in a hilarious riot of shrewd manipulation.

This, the fifth volume in the Don Camillo series, is the first wholly new anthology to be translated into English for over forty years. Against the background of the rise and fall of fascism and post-war communism in rural Italy, Giovanni Guareschi looks down with hawk's-eye vision into the lives of ordinary people and delivers his message, as relevant today as ever, to allay prejudice and political correctness and follow one's conscience, which is of course the voice which speaks to Don Camillo with humour and penetrating insight from the cross above the altar in the village church.

In the sixth book in the Don Camillo series all is peaceful in the village we know so well. The people are cheerful and friendly and exercise their famous sense of humour, but then the elections are upon us, a storm breaks, and the village priest discovers that the last straw can break even a Camillo's back…

Paul Worsley QC, for 10 years a judge at the Old Bailey, revisits one of the most remarkable murder cases to be found in the annals of the Criminal Courts of England. This is a vintage whodunit, first in the Judge's Tales series and set at a crossroads in time when for the first time the Media were co-opted to run a killer to ground.The tale is told verbatim by witnesses as the author gets inside the mind of the outspoken but irresolute judge in the case, Mr Justice Grantham. The result is as compelling today as it is definitive of the era in which the murder was committed.

As everyone knows, taking a serpent by the tail is not a good idea. But in the Little World of Don Camillo, where the Devil crops up in many a guise to break the quiet rhythm of everyday life (and even the village priest falls foul of him), hilarious and unearthly things can happen to draw the poison from his bite...No. 7 in the Don Camillo Series, this bumper volume of classic Tales from the Lower Plain includes many never before translated into English. Beloved of 23 million readers worldwide, their appeal is universal, to readers aged from 10 to 100.'Inimitable, delicious, full of pure fun.' The Observer'Giovanni Guareschi's tales of Don Camillo, the Italian priest with a hefty left hook, are absolutely delightful in their satirical swipes at human weakness.' Paul Merton

A gang of Hells Angels rips through the village bringing mayhem and a generational shift to traditional enmities between Don Camillo and Peppone. The year is 1966, a time ripe for rebellion, for overturning conventions - a time, above all, to be young. Meanwhile, beset by the third young progressive leftwing priest with a mandate to steer him into the modern world, Don Camillo digs in and finds a surprise ally in Peppone as he fights to save the three-metre high figure of il Cristo through which he conducts his famous conversations with God.;'Guareschi's was one of the most prescient and perceptive voices of the twentieth century.' Tobias Jones, author of The Dark Heart of Italy.;'Guareschi's tales are absolutely delightful in their satirical swipes at human weakness.' Paul Merton

In Merry Christmas Don Camillo the author's Christmas stories appear alongside his war-time experiences in the prison camps of Germany and Poland, out of which he formed the polemic that would underwrite his work. Included are many tales new to English-speaking readers and some of the best that Guareschi ever wrote.

Vintage Don Camillo stories, all but one in English for the first time.La Bassa is the home of Don Camillo and Peppone, the lowland plain on the banks of Italy’s Po River where their hilarious goings-on are set. Their creator was born there and returned to live in 1952. The following years were among the happiest in his life: it was a time when he was wholly in tune with the spirit of the place and when most of the present stories were written.Many of these stories were published in Italy under the equivocal title, 'People Like Us'. There is a strong affinity between the fictional characters and the real people of la Bassa. And we like them not least because their stories espouse the instinctive humanity and fundamental compassion which it is their creator’s purpose to reveal.‘So shrewd a glimpse into the minds of the people…’ London Evening News'Absolutely delightful in their satirical swipes at human weakness.' - Paul Merton

No. 11 in the Don Camillo seriesMore shrewd and colourful observations of life in Italy’s widest and most fertile plain, stories so authentic and telling that time and again they reverberate with insights relevant not only locally but also internationally, and even to our lives today. Guareschi mines his satire with an eye for paradox. War creates unity (Peppone battles side-by-side with Don Camillo in the Italian Resistance). Then peace spells conflict as the communist mayor and village priest find themselves the local bigwigs in all-out war between East and West. Meanwhile, Christ above the altar in the village church is, with wisdom and gentle humour, still striving to keep the peace between the two titans, their minds clouded with ideology and the need to win.