John Blake – förlag

James Herbert is one of the most enduringly popular authors writing today. His books sell in the hundreds of thousands across the world, are often made into films, and have turned him into arguably the most successful writer of the horror genre. Yet despite his worldwide fan base, surprisingly little is known about the man himself. In this work, Craig Cabell has written an in-depth biography of the man with his full cooperation. Herbert has granted the author a number of rare interviews, and the result is a frank and revealing portrait of one of the giants of contemporary popular fiction. In addition to this, Herbert has granted the author full access to his photographic archives and provided unreleased material to publish in this book.

An incredible true tale of one man''s courage and defiance of the German nation in the name of love

Horace "Jim" Greasley was 20 years old in the spring of 1939 when Adolf Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland. There had been whispers and murmurs of discontent from certain quarters and the British government began to prepare for the inevitable war. After seven weeks training with the 2nd/5th Battalion Leicester, he found himself facing the might of the German army in a muddy field in Northern France, with just 30 rounds of ammunition in his weapon pouch. Horace''s war didn''t last long. He was taken prisoner on May 25th, 1940 and forced to endure a 10 week march across France and Belgium en route to Holland. Horace survived, barely, but many of his comrades were not so fortunate. Falling by the side of the road through exhaustion and malnourishment meant a bullet through the back of the head and the corpse left to rot. After a three day train journey without food and water, Horace found himself incarcerated in a prison camp in Poland. It was there he embarked on an incredible love affair with a German girl interpreting for his captors. He experienced the sweet taste of freedom each time he escaped to see her, yet incredibly he made his way back into the camp each time—sometimes two or three times a week. He broke out of the camp more than 200 times, often bringing food back to his fellow prisoners to supplement their meager rations, and toward the end of the war even managed to bring radio parts back in, allowing the BBC news to be delivered daily to more than 3,000 prisoners.

A fascinating memoir of life as a lady''s maid in a big house in the 1930s, covering the beauty of the house, the housing of royals escaping the Nazis, the hard work of staff, and the experience of joining the army to serve a Countess

Hilda Newman was a maid to Lady Coventry at the Worcestershire stately home of Croome Court in the 1930s. In her fascinating memoir of life below the stairs (as well as glimpses from inside the big house), she reveals what it was like living and working in the 18th Century Neo-Palladian mansion surrounded by parkland landscaped by Lancelot "Capability" Brown. During World War II Croome Court housed the exiled Dutch Royal Family, who escaped the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. It was also the top-secret RAF base Defford, where radar was developed and repairs were carried out on aircraft fighting in the Battle of Britain. Hilda remembers life both upstairs and down, from the grand long gallery designed by Robert Adam and the tapestry room (since removed and transferred to the Metropolitan Museum in New York), to the hard labor demanded of serving staff and what it was like in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), the women''s branch of the British Army, which she joined to serve the Countess in 1940.

This is the full story of the unstoppable rise of Clarkson, Hammond, May, and The Stig—and how they created one of the most famous and best loved TV programs of the 21st century

From humble beginnings as a 1970s motoring show, Top Gear has achieved world domination. Reaching a peak in the 1990s thanks to presenter Jeremy Clarkson, the original series faced the axe in 2001—but Clarkson and producer Andy Wilman successfully pitched a new format to BBC bosses, and Top Gear returned to become the irreverent, funny, and often controversial show we now know and love. The addition of Richard Hammond and James May completed the Top Gear dream team, and ratings soared as viewers tuned in to see the latest Star in a Reasonably Priced Car, arguments about the Cool Wall, and Power Laps by the mysterious Stig. Recent series have been defined by their madcap challenges—with predictably hilarious results. Hour-long specials such as the 1000-mile journey across Africa in cars bought for only $2,400, and a race to the magnetic North Pole in which Clarkson and May became the first people to drive a motor vehicle to the Pole, have cemented Top Gear''s reputation as much more than just a motoring show.