Travels With My Grief: A personal journey of love, loss and recovery

Travel

Bloch, Susan

Travel Writing

Mensch Publishing

Time To Go

In 2017 Susie Kennaway asked her son Guy to kill her. 88 years old, with an older and infirm husband, Susie wanted to avoid sliding into infantilised catatonia. The son immediately started taking notes and Time to Go is the result. In turns a manual for those considering the benefits of assisted dying, a portrait of a mother son relationship, and a sympathetic description of old age, this book is a route map through the moral, legal, emotional, intellectual and practical maze that is the biggest issue facing the senior generations today: leaving life on their own terms. During their conversations about when and how to make Susie’s final exit, some of the difficulties of their fractious relationship mellowed and some even melted, as the reality of what they were planning brought them together. Many elderly people, like Susie, have clearly stated that they wish to die in a manner and time of their choosing. But the church, the law, the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry stand in the way, wagging their fingers. A change is coming for the rights of the elderly, the way it has come for the rights of women and gay people. Time to Go is a rallying call in this fight. Life is too precious not to be lived properly. As with a job, a relationship or a party, you have to know when it's time to go.

Time to Go

Humor & Entertainment

Kennaway, Guy

Humor

You know you're old when your adult children talk to each other in front of you and spell out certain words. Reaching the milestone of 80, Lee Janogly was continually irritated at the notion that older people are slower, frailer and generally out of touch with modern living. Even if we do sometimes put the remote control in the fridge, we know how to work it... An experienced diet and exercise counsellor, Lee knows that older people really do want to know how to be healthy and well for as long as possible - without being lectured or patronised. After all, as the 81-year old Vogue magazine cover star, actress Jane Fonda says, 'Older women are the fastest growing demographic in the world. It's time to recognise our value'. Lee's new book charts amusingly what happens to bodily and mental functions as we age. She looks at diet and fitness options - and her friends have their say too... She's tracked down expert advice for us all on the best way to improve your memory and general health and appearance. By the end of this book you will be standing straighter, eating more healthily and people will be telling you how great you look (they better not add 'for your age!'). At times outrageously funny, and sometimes exquisitely sad, this new book entertains and informs in equal measure. Join us - you will feel right at home. As Lee says, we just need love and laughter

Getting Old: Deal with it

Janogly, Lee

Parenting & Relationships

Churchill’s Few: The Battle of Britain

Biographies & Memoirs

Willis, John

Historical

Little Women: The contemporary dramatisation of the classic coming-of-age story

Literature & Fiction

Dramas & Plays

Olivia Fane deconstructs our cultural obsession with sex, love, and gender. Is Sex Natural? Is Sex Dirty? Is Sex Loving? Is Sex about Beauty? Is Sex Political? Why Sex Doesn't Matter is a necessary and controversial book in these confused, self-obsessed, sex-obsessed and gender fluid times. Western society has packaged sex as one of the most important pillars of our modern lives. It's become ubiquitous, stigmatized and destigmatized in equal measure, used to sell products, choose partners, and define ourselves. But sex is just the quick-fix that will never satisfying our underlying craving for romantic love and real connection, and so as a culture we should value it less and make it less central to our long term goals, our Western sense of moral righteousness, and representations of our lives. InWhy Sex Doesn't Matter, author Olivia Fane argues that gender is a social construct and we should stop focusing on it: "If our 'minds' are a mish-mash of both stereotypically 'male' and 'female' qualities, then our bodies would have to become half-male and half-female to conjure up some perfect fit. It's just not going to catch on."

Why Sex Doesn’t Matter

Fane, Olivia

Religion & Spirituality

As the UK's national narrative falters and trust in key political institutions is wavering what does the future hold? Is the UK set to become 'Singapore on Thames?' as some suggest? What might a future relationship with the EU look like? What would it take to rekindle a real enthusiasm for the European project, as opposed to the semi-detached relationship Britain has had with the EU? How do we rebuild trust in our institutions and create a new, 21st century national narrative for Britain? William Waldegrave says ' Whatever happens about Brexit, Britain is going to change forever. We will have to decide what kind of country we want to be. We will need a new national narrative. I want to start people thinking about all our futures.'

Three Circles into One: Brexit Britain: how did we get here and what happens next?

History

Waldegrave, William

Europe

In 2017 Susie Kennaway asked her son Guy to kill her.88 years old, with an older and infirm husband, Susie wanted to avoid sliding into infantilised catatonia. The son immediately started taking notes and Time to Go is the result.In turns a manual for those considering the benefits of assisted dying, a portrait of a mother son relationship, and a sympathetic description of old age, this book is a route map through the moral, legal, emotional, intellectual and practical maze that is the biggest issue facing the senior generations today: leaving life on their own terms.During their conversations about when and how to make Susie's final exit, some of the difficulties of their fractious relationship mellowed and some even melted, as the reality of what they were planning brought them together. Many elderly people, like Susie, have clearly stated that they wish to die in a manner and time of their choosing. But the church, the law, the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry stand in the way, wagging their fingers. A change is coming for the rights of the elderly, the way it has come for the rights of women and gay people. Time to Go is a rallying call in this fight.Life is too precious not to be lived properly. As with a job, a relationship or a party, you have to know when it's time to go.

Taking the reader on a journey from the dying embers of Edwardian England, through the trauma of two world wars, the hedonism of London in the 1980s and 'Cool Britannia' in the 1990s right up to the present day, One Hundred Summers is a portrait of a century as it was experienced by one extraordinary family. Along the way, Vanessa Branson recalls the rough and tumble of her chaotic but happy post-war childhood; growing up alongside her older brother Richard, who was entrepreneurial even as a teenager, she would have a front-row seat at the birth of Virgin, one of the most remarkable success stories in British business. She goes on to share her many adventures in a fascinating life, from opening an art gallery on London's Portobello Road and founding an arts festival in Morocco, to turning an ancient palace into a world-famous hotel and finding a real-life Neverland in the Scottish island of Eilean Shona, where J. M. Barrie once wrote a screenplay for Peter Pan. Touching, humane and at times heartbreakingly honest, Branson's family memoir is a vivid and charming tapestry of English eccentricity, fortune, fate and passion.

One Hundred Summers

Branson, Vanessa

Community & Culture

Secret Letters: A Battle of Britain Love Story

Using for the first time the full unpublished letters of Pilot Officer Geoffrey Myers, this book offers a fresh and distinctive insight into World War II and tells the moving story of a couple whose love was caught in the crossfire of war. While Geoffrey Myers was a caught up in the major turning points of the early years of that war--the Battle for France, Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain--his French wife and two half-Jewish children were trapped in Nazi-occupied France, desperate to escape the enemy and be reunited. While Geoffrey wrote his account of the war for his children to read if he survived, his family were in mortal danger. As a Jew, he understood only too well what would happen if the Nazis discovered his childrenhiding in Occupied France. For months, Geoffrey had no idea if his family were dead or alive, free or imprisoned. These secret letters were never posted and never read by Geoffrey's family until later in the war. Contemporary personal accounts of the Battle of Britain of such frankness are extremely rare, and Geoffrey Myers' letters offer a unique perspective of the war. More than that, his letters reflect his deep love for his family and an acute anxiety for their safety, as they tried to escape the tightening net of the Nazis. Geoffrey Myers writes with eloquence and insight, and the letters are an unvarnished, sometimes brutal, portrayal of war as his Battle of Britain Squadron suffered terrible losses. This moving story of a couple whose love was caught in the crossfire of war is a powerful and rare portrait of, not only the turbulent events of those times, but also how a family survives with so much death and danger swirling around them both.

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