Wayne Barker Born To Fight

From Salford to St Louis, former professional boxer Wayne Barker fought every man who ever challenged him. In this brutally honest account of his eventful life, Wayne recounts how his parents left him in the care of the travelling community, where he learned to fight and journeyed throughout Britain and Ireland to take on opponents for cash. After being charged with attempting to murder a child killer, Wayne fled to America, where he found work in the gymnasiums of New York sparring with the likes of world champion Wilfred Benítez. His ability in the ring was noticed by promoter Bobby Gleason, whose gym had been graced by legendary boxers such as Jake LaMotta. Gleason set up a fight in Caracas between Wayne and former super middleweight world champion Fulgencio Obelmejias ('Fully Obel'). Wayne’s past eventually caught up with him and he was deported to Britain, where he served time in prison. He returned to the streets to earn a living from bare-knuckle fighting, before becoming a trainer and running a gym. Cancer claimed his life in 2012.

An overview of the 2009-2010 theatre season includes photos, a complete cast listing, producers, directors, authors, composers, opening and closing dates, song titles and plot synopses for more than 1,000 Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway and regional shows, as well as the past year's obituaries, a listing of all award nominees and winners and an index.

Although the United States did not enter the First World War until April 1917, Canada enlisted the moment Great Britain engaged in the conflict in August 1914. The Canadian contribution was great, as more than 600,000 men and women served in the war effort—400,000 of them overseas—out of a population of 8 million. More than 150,000 were wounded and nearly 67,000 gave their lives. The war was a pivotal turning point in the history of the modern world, and its mindless slaughter shattered a generation and destroyed seemingly secure values. The literature that the First World War generated, and continues to generate so many years later, is enormous and addresses a multitude of cultural and social matters in the history of Canada and the war itself. Although many scholars have brilliantly analyzed the literature of the war, little has been done to catalog the writings of ordinary participants: men and women who served in the war and wrote about it but are not included among well-known poets, novelists, and memoirists. Indeed, we don’t even know how many titles these people published, nor do we know how many more titles were added later by relatives who considered the recollections or collected letters worthy of publication. Brian Douglas Tennyson’s The Canadian Experience of the Great War: A Guide to Memoirs is the first attempt to identify all of the published accounts of First World War experiences by Canadian veterans.

When William Barker died in an air crash in March 1930, his state funeral was the largest in the history of Toronto. The cortege was two miles long, with 2000 uniformed men as escort and 50,000 spectators looking on. He was, after all, a magnificent airman, a great war hero and holder of the Victoria Cross, the DSO and Bar, the MC and two Italian Silver Medals for Valour and three Mentions-in-Despatches. Moreover, he had 50 Great War victories in the air to his credit. But his life and achievements have, to all intents and purposes, been forgotten or at best overlooked when compared to that other great Canadian war hero, Billy Bishop. Why? Wayne Ralph made it his mission to find out. In what was to become for him "a five-year emotional journey," Ralph has solved many mysteries and laid to rest many half-truths about the man. His book is detailed, meticulously researched and excellently crafted. It holds the interest from beginning to end and deserves to be viewed as the definitive biography of Lieutenant Colonel William Barker; warts and all, and a fitting testimony to the life and time of a legend.

For more than fifty years, two ruthless gangs have dominated the Tyneside underworld. Initially, the Conroy and the Sayers families lived side by side in relative harmony in the West End of Newcastle, but the birth of the drug-fuelled rave culture in the late 1980s changed everything. Drunk on power and with an intense desire to take complete control of the north-east, the families went to war with one another and with anyone else who stood in their way. What followed was an orgy of mindless violence. In Fog on the Tyne, bestselling true-crime author Bernard O'Mahoney explores the origins of this gangland war and reveals for the first time how and why it spiralled out of control, leaving many injured and others dead.

Frank Barker Jr: A Fighter Pilot, A Pastor, A Founder of Briarwood Presbyterian Church, A Servant of Christ. -Publisher's description.

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called Keep to-morrow dark, and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) Cheat the Prophet. The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun. For human beings, being children, have the childish wilfulness and the childish secrecy. And they never have from the beginning of the world done what the wise men have seen to be inevitable. They stoned the false prophets, it is said; but they could have stoned true prophets with a greater and juster enjoyment. Individually, men may present a more or less rational appearance, eating, sleeping, and scheming. But humanity as a whole is changeful, mystical, fickle, delightful. Men are men, but Man is a woman.