Most autobiographies won't be of any apparent interest unless the author is famous, so, why read this one given Simon Mark Smith is not a public figure? The brief answer is this book will take you on journeys that will resonate with your deepest feelings about love, hate, and knowledge.Written in a format that jumps between time zones and subject matter, you will be challenged from the moment the book begins right up till its final lines. Volume One was written over a period of 18 ...

Covering over 40 years of poetry and song writing this final volume of Smith's work includes over 65 poems,120 song lyrics and over 60 illustrations. From the thoughts of a fighter pilot to the disdain of pretentious poetry readings, through quiet evening light, Simon Mark Smith's poems and lyrics are both thought-provoking and emotionally resonant. Take a look inside and see for yourself. Simon Mark Smith is an author, singer-songwriter, painter, and digital artist. He has been involved i...

More laughter, tears, and psychological and philosophical insights from the author of Simon's Diary Volume One - Love Hate and Knowledge. This volume continues Simon's story as he prepares to leave school and home. Simon of the 2010s and 20s also makes an appearance with significant issues. As in Volume One, we also discover the fate of his relatives during World War Two, revealing the roles of both war criminals and, post-war, Mossad.As for ideologies and beliefs, the themes are ma...

Simon Mark Smith, author of the Simon's Diaries series of books, will take you on journeys filled with humour, emotion, and thought-provoking observations. Starting with New York just days after the attacks on the Twin Towers, to Israel in 2002 and 2004, a trip across the USA in a car with his friend, Larry, and two cats, Vienna, Latvia and closer to home, Northumberland, as well as a tour around England and Scotland with several other artists. If you fancy getting away, take a trip to the...

The story behind Notebook starts with a minor crime: the theft of Tom Cox's rucksack from a Bristol pub in 2018. In that rucksack was a journal containing ten months' worth of notes, one of the many Tom has used to record his thoughts and observations over the past twelve years. It wasn't the best he had ever kept – his handwriting was messier than in his previous notebook, his entries more sporadic – but he still grieved for every one of the hundred or so lost pages. This inciden...

The hilarious new collection of stories and observations from Jeremy Clarkson - setting our off-kilter world to rights with thigh-slapping wit once again.Who is that tractor-driving Gentleman Farmer?Has Jeremy turned into a horny-handed son of the soil?These and other perplexing questions may or may not be answered in the latest volume of Clarkson's utterly unbiased musings on life, the universe and...

NATIONAL BESTSELLERFrom the author of the international bestseller Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, a heartfelt invitation to reflect on your relationship with reading and celebrate the joys of books.Why do we read? What is it that we hope to take away from the intimate, personal experience of reading for pleasure?How often do we ask these profound, expansive questions of ourselves and of our relationship to the joy of ...

Clarkson is back with a brand new book of hilarious stories and observations about our gone-wrong world.___________In November 2016 we woke up to the news that the forthright presenter of a popular television programme had become the most powerful man on the planet. His name, sadly, was not Jeremy Clarkson, but we might not have been any more surprised if it had been.Because the world seems to have taken a decidedly odd turn since Je...

The everyday world bedevils us. To make sense of it, we tell ourselves stories. Here, in short, vivid, dramatic tales, psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz draws from his twenty-year practice to track the collaborative journey of therapist and patient as they uncover the hidden feelings behind ordinary behavior. A woman finds herself daydreaming as she returns home from a business trip; a young man loses his wallet. We learn, too, from more extreme examples: the patient who points an unloaded gun a...

A no-holds-barred account of what it was really like to cover some of the most dangerous and extraordinary moments in recent history'If being a war correspondent can be addictive, this book might just leave you hooked. From brushes with landmines to Ukrainian hotdogs, Lisette's celebrated storytelling vividly brings to life the powerful stories behind her reports.' - Mike McRoberts'I woke up every day expecting to fall asleep in a different country. A b...

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • Lessons for all of us in how to approach life—from someone in the process of dying. • "Simon Boas was a gifted storyteller with a rare ability to find humor and humanity in life’s most profound moments. A Beginner’s Guide to Dying showcases his wit, warmth, and wisdom, offering a deeply moving and unexpectedly funny meditation on mortality." —Hospice Nurse Julie McFadden, author of Nothing to FearIn his mid-40s, aid work...

When you no longer believe in eternity, every moment counts -- A memoir of breaking free and reinventionFrom the outside, Tom Tilley's childhood seemed ordinary. The first son of a pastor, he grew up in a beautiful country town where life revolved around football, his loving family and their Pentecostal faith. But behind church doors, a strictly enforced set of rules included a looming ultimatum: if Tom didn't speak in tongues, he'd go to hell and be outcast from h...