Richard Beard – författare

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZEA charismatic cult leader is dead. One by one his followers are being assassinated. Enter Gallio.Gallio does counter-insurgency. But the theft of a body he’s supposed to be guarding ruins his career. Years later, the file is reopened when a second body appears. Gallio is called back by headquarters and ordered to track down everyone involved the first time round. The only problem is they keep dying, in ever more grotesque and violent ways. How can Gallio stay ahead of the game when the game keeps changing?

A recent Harris Poll revealed some disturbing aspects of the current state of health care provision for women and children. The poll dealt with issues as diverse as clincial examinations and communication between women and their doctors. Such issues, long ignored or under-appreciated by medical researchers, clinicians, and public policy makers, are increasingly receiving attention, not only from public health experts, but also from politicians, pressure groups, and the media. Reproductive Health Care for Women and Babies addresses all the medical and societal aspects of health care that go to form public health policy for women. The editors have assembled an international team of contributors who provide the reader with a truly global picture of the issues involved. These features combine to provide a much better understanding of the health care needs of women. Doctors will be able to take a broader view of their role, beyond the traditional one of diagnosis and treatment, and allow to communicate more effectively their individual and collective views. Such a reorientation is essential if physicians are to assume their proper role at the centre of the formation of public health policy. For anybody involved in providing health care for women and children this book is essential reading.

By day Daniel Travers draws cartoon chickens and by night he is confused by Daphne. Her instinct for rebellion leads them to Yurayama theme-park to sabotage the character-acts. All that stands in their way is public opinion, Michael Miller, the melancholic park-supervisor, and a bang on the head.

What would you do, given the second chance of a lifetime?Like most men in their thirties, Lazarus has plans that don't involve dying. He's busy. Life is good. But he can't cheat destiny. Lazarus dies. Jesus weeps. Lazarus returns to life. This part we all know.But as Lazarus is about to find out, returning from the dead isn't easy. He thinks he wants a second chance at life, but what will he do when he gets it?

‘A brave and intelligent book’ Daily TelegraphAn unforgettable memoir about gender, journeys and enduring friendshipFor years Richard Beard would take spontaneous holidays with his motor-cycling friend Drew. They would spend a few days walking, camping, cycling, canoeing - outdoor, manly fun - before returning to everyday life: wives, children, jobs. Richard was writing novels. Drew was working in the engine-room of cross-channel passenger ferries. Then one year Drew phoned to announce a complication: he was planning to transition and begin living as a woman.This is the story of how Drew became Dru, of what happened to their friendship, and their adventures in wildest Wales the first time they went camping as man and woman. It is warm, sad, funny; an intimate tale of shared humanity.

There is Rugby Union: the fast, compelling, TV-friendly combat sport in which sponsored gladiators are sold on their ability to crash into each other at top speed, and sometimes even to avoid each other and score. And then there's rugger. Rugger was once the serious version of rugby, more than a mere game, a fierce contact-sport developed in Victorian public schools to forge manly and unshakeable character. For a hundred years boys played rugger and made themselves into men. They also drank too much beer and took their trousers down in public. Richard Beard sets out to examine this contradiction by revisiting his seven former rugby clubs in four different countries. He meets Booker prize-winning authors and former England hookers, explores rugby's rivalry with soccer, its surprising attraction for nonconformists, and its unlikely role in organised crime. All while trying to get himself a game.This is Beard's quest into his rugby-playing past, where he's lived the sport in many of its varied forms. By the end of his wayward journey, he almost qualifies to judge whether rugger has achieved what the Victorians always intended, and made him a better man.

'Feeling the way I do now, it's not a feeling I ever want to have again.' Andrew Flintoff speaks for a nation.The Ashes, 2006/07: Australia 5 England 0. The nightmare returns.For twenty years, Australia has produced competitors so gritty they order sandwiches with sand in, and not just at cricket. Fourth in the medals table at the Athens Olympics, Tour de France contenders, Davis Cup champions, and the Socceroos 3--1 winners over England. For Richard Beard, the football was the last straw.So, on the well-established principle that if you want something doing ..., he travelled down to Australia for seven rounds of hand-to-hand sporting combat, to find out just what makes the Australians so good, and how to beat them.

A love story, in which all the events, people and places are taken from the contents of the "The Times" of 1st November, 1993.'It's the last day of the holidays and Spencer Kelly (12) wants to hold Hazel Burns (12) by the hand. This is the meaning of life. He wants to sit beside her on a sand dune and hold her hand and then kiss her. Just kissing, in a nice way, on her cheek perhaps and then a little bit at the top of her arms- If he can kiss her this once then he'll always have kissed her, and everything which follows will be different. It's to be the one moment which instantly changes everything.'

Jay Mason is experiencing a crisis of faith. Disillusioned with his calling as a Deacon in the Anglican Church of Geneva, and estranged from his pregnant girlfriend, he's about to fall into the murky world of celebrity grave-robbing. His church has been bought by the shadowy antiquities dealer Joseph Moholy, who arrives to claim its most interesting asset: the toe bone of Thomas Becket. Moholy has a large collection of dubiously acquired relics and is keen to add to his collection. Jay, he decides, is the man to assist him. Jay finds that grave-robbing can be both lucrative and thrilling, however morally troubling for a man of God, and in Switzerland's cemeteries he finds a rich cast to work on: James Joyce, Richard Burton, John Calvin and Charlie Chaplin all receive his midnight attentions. But Moholy is a ruthless man whose ambitions are perilously high, and as Jay assists him in his search for the holy grail of relics, he puts himself and his loved ones in serious danger.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZEA charismatic cult leader is dead. One by one his followers are being assassinated. Enter Gallio.Gallio does counter-insurgency. But the theft of a body he’s supposed to be guarding ruins his career. Years later, the file is reopened when a second body appears. Gallio is called back by headquarters and ordered to track down everyone involved the first time round. The only problem is they keep dying, in ever more grotesque and violent ways. How can Gallio stay ahead of the game when the game keeps changing?

*WINNER OF THE PEN ACKERLEY PRIZE 2018*My younger brother’s name is Nicholas Beard. He was nine years old, and I was with him in the water when he drowned.Life changes in an instant.On a family holiday in Cornwall in 1978, Richard and Nicholas are in the sea, jumping the waves. Suddenly and inexplicably Nicholas is out of his depth and then, shockingly, so is Richard. Only one of the brothers returns to the shore.Richard does not attend Nicholas’s funeral and afterwards the family return to Cornwall to continue the holiday. Soon they stop speaking of that day at the beach altogether. Years later, haunted by grief, Richard sets out to piece together the story. Who was Nicholas? What really happened that day? And why did the family never speak of it again?SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2018SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE 2018‘This captivating book, both heart-rending and jaw-dropping, unfolds like a detective story’ Daily Mail‘A memoir of real truth and heartbreaking emotional heft’ Sunday Times

'Beard is as good on the sensuality of smoking as on the philosophy. This is an unusually intelligent, funny and readable first book' Sunday TimesShe offered me the cigarette like an apple. It was love and desire. It was knowledge and everything.'Gregory Simpson is, after years of being paid to smoke a packet a day for research purposes, trying to give up. He decides to write to keep his hands busy and the resulting journal - combining memories of seduction, little-known facts about the tobacco industry and the comfortable camaraderie of the suicide club - is an elegant, witty and confident disquisition on smoking as desire and as a metaphor for desire' Observer'Populated by a cast of well-drawn eccentrics-loaded with encyclopaedic detail on the history and iconography of smoking, this comic novel nevertheless aims at deep seriousness-Beard's writing can be breathtaking' Daily Telegraph 'Richard Beard's prose is dry, nonchalant and fluent-An accomplished first novel' Times Literary Supplement

'Read this book' Alastair Campbell'A really wonderful book' Nigella Lawson via TwitterIn 1975 Richard Beard was sent away to boarding school. So were Boris Johnson and David Cameron.He didn't enjoy it. But the first and most important lesson was not to let that show.A public school education has long been accepted in Britain as a preparation for leadership, but being separated from your parents at a young age is traumatic. What sort of adult does it mould? Tackling debates about privilege head-on, Sad Little Men reveals what happens when you put a succession of men from boarding schools into positions of influence, including at 10 Downing Street, and asks the question: is this really who we want in charge?'The most important book I've read this year' Adam Rutherford

'Read this book' Alastair Campbell'A really wonderful book' Nigella Lawson via TwitterIn 1975 Richard Beard was sent away to boarding school. So were Boris Johnson and David Cameron.He didn't enjoy it. But the first and most important lesson was not to let that show.A public school education has long been accepted in Britain as a preparation for leadership, but being separated from your parents at a young age is traumatic. What sort of adult does it mould? Tackling debates about privilege head-on, Sad Little Men reveals what happens when you put a succession of men from boarding schools into positions of influence, including at 10 Downing Street, and asks the question: is this really who we want in charge?'The most important book I've read this year' Adam Rutherford