The Fortunate Life Of A Vindicatrix Boy

The story of a Liverpool cabin boy who jumped ship in Australia to become a stage hypnotist's stooge, journalist, film producer, airline executive and car wash hand, meeting characters as colourful as himself along the way. A true-life tale, told with humour and honesty.

It's 1958, and fifteen-year-old Richie runs away from his Liverpool home and heads for London. He discovers a world of rent boys preyed on by criminal gangs yet giving each other comfort and support; the excitement of Soho in the rock'n'roll years; and love for an upper-class boy his own age. When his parents banish their son to Singapore, Richie joins the merchant navy and sets off in quest of his friend. Enchanted Youth is the follow-up to Richie McMullen's highly popular Enchanted Boy. If his first volume of memoirs was, in his word, "a journey through abuse to prostitution", the second leads him through a still more perilous time, from prostitution to love.

The book introduces basic entomology, emphasising perspectives on insect diversity important in conservation assessment and setting priorities for management, as a foundation for managers and others without entomological training or background. It bridges the gap between photographic essays on insect identification and more technical texts, to illustrate and discuss many aspects of taxonomic, ecological and evolutionary diversity in the Australian insect fauna, and its impacts in human life, through outlines of many aspects of insect natural history.

An ideal book for those interested in things and people Australian, as well as travellers to Australia.

Alone on the endless red-sand desert in the Australian outback, tracking Varanus giganteus, the perentie lizard that grows to be more than six feet long. . . for desert rat Eric Pianka, such adventures have led to a satisfying, if unusual, way of life, as well as a distinguished career as a field biologist. In The Lizard Man Speaks, Pianka recounts more than thirty years of adventures in reptile studies, beginning with a boyhood passion for collecting snakes and lizards. He tells of "lizarding" in the North American deserts, the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa, and the Great Victoria Desert in Western Australia. His vivid imagery draws the reader into a world where lions lurk in the darkness beyond a gecko hunter's lights, where being stranded by car trouble miles from the last outpost is a constant danger, and where the wilderness still deserves to be called wild. Along the way, Pianka provides much general information about lizard ecology, the fire succession cycle, and the interaction of humans with the landscape. And he reveals the springs of his own determined spirit and love of solitude, describing a near-fatal boyhood accident and its shaping and character-building effect on the life that followed.

When waves higher than the vessels that sail upon them smash against the half-submerged rocks at the extremities our coastline, the whole ocean becomes a raging foam which continues to claim the lives of unwary navigators. Man's struggle to build a permanent and durable structure such as a lighthouse on these sites is a story that cannot fail to stir the emotions of anyone who enjoys tales of endeavour, ingenuity and dogged determination. In this second edition of his book, Christopher Nicholson vividly describes the construction and history to the present day of some of the world's most famous lighthouses. Book jacket.

WINNER OF THE PENDERYN MUSIC PRIZEA GUARDIAN MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEAR, 2015Award-winning, Sunday Times bestselling author Jon Savage's monument to the year that shaped the future of global pop cultural history. In America, in London, in Amsterdam, in Paris, revolutionary ideas fomenting since the late 1950s reached boiling point, culminating in a year in which the transient pop moment burst forth. Exploring the canonical figures, from The Beatles and Boty to Warhol and Reagan, 1966 delves deep into the social and cultural heart of the decade through masterfully compiled archival primary sources.'A marvel of hisotrical reconstruction and pop insight.' OBSERVER'Absorbing . . . this is not only fine pop writing, but social history of a high order.'GUARDIAN'Savage is rightly regarded as one of the finest cultural critics of the past 40 years . . . an enthralling, exhiliarting read.'IRISH TIMES'Exceptional.'MOJO