Never work with children or animals tells of John’s early career as a child actor, when he appeared in various stage productions as well as playing parts in several dramas on BBC Television. It goes on to tell of adventures working with a host of entertainment stars of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, including Jimmy Edwards, Marti Caine, Billy Fury, Bob Monkhouse, Peter Goodwright, The Beatles, Dusty Springfield, Danny La Rue, Patricia Hayes, June Brown, Sacha Distel, Chris de Burgh, Lesley Garrett and Mark Knopfler. The later chapters tell how, with the help of a legion of household names from the entertainment industry, John and Annie set up the Michael Elliott Trust as a charity dedicated to rescuing abused donkeys and providing a sanctuary for them. The book features a foreword by June Brown and a personal message from Dame Judi Dench.

Never work with children or animals: A story of life in the entertainment business

Biographies & Memoirs

Stirling, John

Dench, Judi

Leaders & Notable People

Memoirs Books

The stunning village of Bibury in Gloucestershire has always been a real jewel in the Cotswold crown and ‘Bibury Seasons’ with 88 pages of beautiful landscape images spanning all 4 seasons takes you on an intimate photographic journey throughout the year to help show you why. Produced in English and Japanese it makes an ideal gift for anyone who wants to relive memories of a past visit or looking forward to a visit in the future or who is simply interested in the charm of the English Cotswolds.

Bibury Seasons: The beautiful Cotswold village photographed through the seasons

Arts & Photography

Lipscombe, Ray

Individual Artists

From Smuggling to Cotton Kings is the story of the Greg Family, who helped to shape the economic fortunes of Britain for more than two centuries. It tells of their rise to power and prominence in the fields of textiles, shipping, banking and marine insurance, their role in the industrial revolution and how their fortunes declined in the 20th century. In 1715 John Greg, a descendant of the McGregor clan, sailed from the family home in Ayrshire to seek his fortune in Ulster. He soon built a successful business as a merchant, his own sons becoming successful businessmen. Half a century later two of his grandsons, Thomas and Samuel, sailed back to Britain and founded businesses of their own at opposite ends of England, Thomas in banking and finance, Samuel in textiles. Helped by the patronage and finance of Robert Hyde, Samuel became a prominent figure in the development of the cloth industry. He helped to take the industry forward by investing heavily in the adoption of water power, and founded Quarry Bank Mill in north Cheshire, which today is open to visitors as a National Trust property. Meanwhile brother Thomas made a prudent entry into the marine insurance business, at a time when Britain’s overseas trade was expanding at a prodigious rate. By the end of the 18th Century they had built up large fortunes. After a serious setback caused by the economic slump in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th Century, business recovered and by the time brothers died in the 1830s they were both, in today’s terms, multi-millionaires. Their descendants kept the family businesses running successfully for several decades and diversified into agriculture, literature and politics, but the 1860s recession saw the end of the great wealth the Gregs and their associates had built up.

From Smuggling to Cotton Kings: The Greg family story

Janes, Michael

Historical

At the age of 95, Bill Malins still remembers growing up on an Oxfordshire farm in the 1920s, where he would help with the haymaking, steer a horse-drawn harrow, milk a cow and ride sheep for entertainment. Amid the happiness there were moments of tragedy. There was the loss of his baby sister to peritonitis when Bill was seven years old. A couple of years later he had to stand by as the farm was burned to the ground, taking it with his favourite horse and dog. Bill would cycle each day to the local RAF base to deliver milk, often stopping to gaze at the aircraft overhead. By the time he was 22 years old he had become an RAF pilot himself. He went on to serve his country nobly during the Second World War as a reconnaissance flyer, seeing action in France, Germany and Holland, risking his life for his country, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross and rising to the rank of Wing Commander. Bill Malins was one of the first officers to set foot on Sicilian soil when the Allies invaded the island in 1943, and the same year he narrowly survived the deadly doodlebug which struck the Strand, killing more than 80 people. Bill was there when the Allies crossed the Rhine in 1945 in the closing stages of the war, and his squadron was one of the first inside the gates of Belsen when the notorious concentration camp was liberated. After completing a post-war world tour with the RAF Directorate of Accident Prevention, Bill gave up the airborne life in 1952 to return to the farm, where he has lived and worked ever since.

Coming into Land: The story of an Oxfordshire man’s twin passions (RAF & Military Aviation: War Stories, True Stories of Flight, and Survival)

Malins DFC, Bill

Tales of Mr Winkle is about an old garden gnome who watches the comings and goings of his many animal friends and neighbours from his seat beside the pond. When the winter nights start drawing in Mr Winkle is sad to watch the squirrels, frogs, hedgehogs and songbirds disappear until next spring, but he has many other visitors to keep him company, particularly his friend Rudi the Robin. He is soon joined by some unexpected friends to cheer him up.

Mr Winkle - the garden gnome

Children's Books

Organ, Mrs Beryl

Fairy Tales, Folk Tales & Myths

William McDowell’s life makes the kind of colourful story that simply doesn’t happen in the modern world. Packed with adventure, excitement, thrills, spills, and incongruous humour, it tells of his life in India, the country of his birth, from the motor industry to the Diplomatic Service by way of police and army service. McDowell’s brushes with death began early in life. The son of a soldier, while still in his teens he was kidnapped by a group of tribesmen and kept prisoner for several days in a case of mistaken identity. Twice he was nearly killed when his vehicle plunged over an embankment, once because he had passed out with the heat, the second time when his lorry’s brakes failed. On a canoe voyage down a swollen river he was flung from his canoe and dragged out of the water more dead than alive. He also narrowly survived a plane crash. The sectarian turmoil McDowell witnessed during the partition of India involved many harrowing experiences. He saw a close friend decapitated by an angry mob of Muslim fanatics and had to deal with the aftermath of slaughters by extremist Muslims which left scores of innocent people dead or horribly mutilated. He also witnessed the death of a beater on a shoot from a cobra bite and found the body of a man who had been hanged from his own ceiling in retribution for a debt. On a less tragic note, there was the time McDowell unwittingly threw the president of the Punjabi National Congress out of a train after a dispute about the occupancy of a compartment, an event which nearly cost him his career. He was also once offered the freedom of the harem by his friend the Maharaja of Patiala. Life did start to calm down a little after McDowell managed to shoot his own foot off on a pigeon-shooting trip, but the adventures were not over. When he was sent to the high passes of the Himalayas to find out where Russian refugees from the revolution were getting through, he was snowed in for three months. He survived only by killing and eating a hibernating black bear which was sharing his cave. Somehow, McDowell found time in between all this to serve more peacefully in Ceylon and Cyprus and raise a family.

From the diplomatic bag: An autobiography by William McDowell

McDowell, Mr. William

We are in the Last Days. As such, God wants us to be in constant awareness of the affairs of the spirit realm, through our dreams and visions, so that we can effectively navigate this dark and obscure world and achieve a brighter tomorrow. Each and every day, God speaks to us through our dreams and visions to warn us, to guide us, to explain the past, and to decode the future. How many lives and destinies could have been saved, or how many marriages and relationships rescued, or businesses and careers secured, or ministries and callings preserved, if only our dreams and visions were understood and taken seriously? Pastor Uzor, builds on his earlier and popular title, Dreams and Visions, by including in this latest edition a comprehensive and detailed list of commonly seen symbols in dreams and visions, as well as their interpretations. In summary, in this book, you will find: DISCOVER the Biblical basis for dreams, visions, and other types of revelations from God. GAIN some tips on how to navigate and interpret your dreams and visions. UNDERSTAND how to pray good dreams and visions into manifestation. UNDERSTAND how to reject and cancel negative dreams and nightmares. LEARN how to pray proactively with the included deliverance prayer points and take charge of your own destiny!

Dreams, Visions and their Interpretations

Religion & Spirituality

Ndekwu, Uzor

Christian Books & Bibles

Beryl E. Organ, born in Bristol in 1928, has been devoted to animals and flowers all her life. For many years she ran a modelling agency. In later life she took up writing and over the years she has produced a series of children’s books, all focusing on the natural world – some in prose, some in verse. An accomplished artist, she paints pictures of animals, birds and flowers, from pet dogs and cats to wild birds and butterflies, and accompanies them with short poems and stories. Our Woodland Friends is Mrs Organ’s fourth children’s book. It introduces children aged 6-10 to the animals and birds which might be spotted on a walk in the forest, each illustrated by a charming portrait of the animal and accompanied by descriptive verse. Older children will enjoy reading them, while younger ones will delight in hearing them read and looking at the pictures. Mrs Organ is working on two further books for children entitled Animal Antics and ABC of Flowers. With her son Colin, a professional photographer, she has also compiled Reflections, a collection of verses accompanying delightful photographs of rural and garden scenes. All her books are dedicated to her great grandchildren.

Our woodland friends

Organ, Mrs Beryl E

The Butterfly’s Cage, is the heart wrenching, inspiring true story of a young Pakistani woman’s flight to freedom. Suffering familial abuse, tyranny and disownment as a result of refusing to submit to the abuse received by not one but two violent husbands, Shahnaz* opens the doors to a hidden world, illustrating how cultural values can allow human rights violations to prosper and the cost of reputation is integrity, respect and love. Born into a wealthy family with homes in both Britain and Pakistan, she was forced to give up school at the age of 12 in order to care for her younger brothers. There followed two arranged marriages, to a violent, drug addicted, petty criminal and then to a vicious, controlling sadist. Her family ignored her pleas to escape her marital hell, instead casting her as the wicked, immoral daughter whose selfish desires threatened to damage the family’s reputation. After years of abuse and intimidation in both England and Pakistan, Shahnaz fled the family homes to try to start a new life in London with her young daughter only to be lured back to Pakistan under false pretences. Stripped of her possessions and kept under house arrest, Shahnaz was in constant fear of her life for a further 18 months, enduring brutal beatings and diabolical threats to her life. Through her intelligence, courage and unwavering fortitude alone, Shahnaz overcame adversity, won her freedom, her family’s acceptance and now lives in England with her daughter and third husband, embarking on a career in social care. Six years on, wishing to reveal the pain and suffering that can be caused by misguided cultural attitudes and social values, Shahnaz has written her story. *Shahnaz is not her real name – she does not want herself or her family to be identified

The butterfly’s cage: One woman’s fight against family tyranny and marital abuse

Parenting & Relationships

Newton, Mr Chris

Khari, Ms Shahnaz

Family Relationships

The evil thugs of Idi Amin's Uganda and the fanatical bombers and machine-gun-toting terrorists of Mumbai make The Crocodile's Teeth a gripping tale of one man's survival and resourcefulness set against a background of tyranny, terror and hardship on two continents. Sam Thaker was born to Indian immigrant parents in Uganda in the days when it was one of the most beautiful, fertile and contented countries in the world. Then Idi Amin swept to power, and under his tyranny Sam's paradise became a hell on Earth. Having been forced by Amin's thugs to give up their home, Sam's thriving airline cargo business and most of their money and possessions, he and his family began a new life in England as near-penniless refugees. But Sam was a survivor. Ignoring his bank manager's patronising advice to open a corner shop, he decided instead to build on his experience in the cargo business to start up a London-based air freight company. Realising the immense potential of the Indian import market, he returned to the land of his fathers to build an international company which eventually opened offices in eight Indian cities. Along the way he and his wife were caught up in the wave of terrorism which struck Bombay in 1993 and again in 2008, and narrowly escaped the floods which struck the city in 2005 and drowned more than 5000 people. The Crocodile's Teeth is a fascinating portrait of survival and resourcefulness against a background of tyranny and terror on two continents.

The Crocodile's Teeth: Trading,Tyranny & Terrorism on Two Continents

Lipscombe, Mr Ray

Thaker, Mr Sam

Professionals & Academics

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