Tulisa


Book Description

Tulisa Contostavlos is the most remarkable new star in the country today. She was an eleven-year-old schoolgirl when her Uncle Byron offered her £20 to be the singer in a new band with son Dappy and his friend Fazer. She held out for £50 and started on a rollercoaster ride to fame that led to her becoming an 'overnight' sensation on The X Factor. Tulisa is the first biography of a girl determined to leave behind a life in which underage sex, smoking weed, drinking cider and bullying were the norm. Her love of music and an unswerving desire to make money, buy a house of her own and drive a sports car provided her with the incentive to escape. The UK's leading celebrity biographer, Sean Smith, has discovered that behind the tough exterior and dazzling smile is a funny, loyal and sensitive young woman. He has travelled to the leafy streets of fashionable Belsize Park in North West London to uncover the truth about her upbringing, her relationship with her musician father, who left home when she was nine, and the mother who abandoned a singing career because of ongoing mental health problems, and whom Tulisa says she loves 'with all my heart.' He tells the story of N-Dubz and their mentor 'Uncle B', who tragically died on the threshold of their success. They rose to become one of the most popular bands in the UK without ever capturing a mainstream audience, but their American adventure ended in disappointment. Tulisa describes her failed love affairs, her mercurial relationship with controversial cousin Dappy, her bond with sometime boyfriend Fazer and a cast of characters including Chipmunk, Tinchy Stryder and Mr Hudson, who make up the urban music scene she embraced. The book relives her X Factor triumph as mentor to the winners Little Mix, her feud with fellow judge Kelly Rowland, her fashion triumphs and disasters and her brave response to the online release of a sex tape. Tulisa is the gripping and inspirational story of how a lonely and bullied young girl transformed herself into 'The Female Boss' - a role model for a generation.




Tulisa


Book Description

Sean Smith tells the story of popular X-Factor judge and N-Dubz member Tulisa Contostavlos.




Revival: Roman Life and Manners Under the Early Empire (1913)


Book Description

Every attempted delineation of the manners and customs of Imperial Rome must necessarily include a survey, as exhaustive as may be, of the spectacles, as the best measure of her grandeur, and as indicative in many ways of her moral and intellectual condition. Originally, for the most part, religious celebrations, they became, even in the later Republic, the best means of purchasing popular favour, and, under the Empire, of keeping the populace contented. Augustus, the tale runs, once reproached Pylades the Pantomime for his jealousy of a rival, and Pylades replied: 'It is to your advantage, Caesar, that the people concerns itself about us'. But these spectacles effected more even than the diversion of popular interest; their magnificence was a gauge of the popularity of the sovereign. The emperors, like Louis XIV, knew how admiration aids absolute autocracy; like Napoleon, that the imagination of the people must be excited: splendid festivals were one of their most indispensable and most constant devices. Even Caligula, according to Josephus, was honoured and beloved by the folly of the populace; the women and the youth did not desire his death; distributions of meat, the games and the gladiatorial combats had won their hearts, for such were the delights of the mob: the lavishing of these gifts was nominally due to consideration for the populace, though the gladiatorial combats were only intended to sate the monarch's lust of blood.







Rhos Meadow


Book Description

The quiet sleepy village of Rhos Meadow has been earmarked for a much-disputed wind farm and hydraulic fracturing drilling operation. Soon after work begins, inexplicable and unnatural deaths befall the residents, with those who survive infected by a malignant disease. A girl goes missing when she is drawn to Rhos Meadow by a young spirit's harrowing prophecy that the entire nation is in danger should those infected flee their sanctuary and spread the deadly virus to the outside world. Can anyone find the courage they need to thwart the prowling infected and escape from the once idyllic but now eerie village?




The Nineteenth Century


Book Description




Essence


Book Description

Mackenzie Taylor is an ordinary, typical girl with normal everyday problems such as school, bullies, teachers, and friends. But all that changes when a stalker becomes known, and changes everything. Moonlight Hollow Village desperately needs her help and powers to defeat a tyrant king who is set on becoming more powerful and having everyone at his mercy. However, that isnt the only priority Mackenzie needs to think about; she also has to be aware of the dangers around her, choices to make, betrayal, and keeping those close to her safe. Can she vanquish King Carlo before it is too late? Or is Carlo going to obtain the power and destroy everything that Mackenzie holds dear? Can Mackenzie become the sophisticated warrior prophesied by the Goddess and prove she is the Chosen One? You decide.







I Could Be So Good For You


Book Description

I Could Be So Good For You is a unique portrait of north London's working class from the 1950s to the 21st century, and how it lived, struggled, survived and sometimes thrived. I Could Be So Good For You tackles head-on the pernicious and implicitly racist fiction that London, most especially north London, has no "real" working class in comparison to a more "authentic" working class in a place called "the North". In doing so it offers a history and a portrait of north London's working class from the 1950s to the 21st century, based on a wide and original range of sources including personal memoirs, autobiographies, collected oral histories and new interviews conducted by the author. The result is an important social history and a rich panorama of working-class life — its struggles, work, celebrations, events, triumphs, tragedies and the occasional nice little earner. For good or ill, from the start of post-war affluence in the 1950s to the economic crash of 2008, north London's working class had a life experience like almost no other part of the British working class, one not just of poverty, racism and exploitation, but also of bold new housing schemes in the heart of the city, of great opportunity and diversity and enjoyment. Its about time to tell that story.




Appendices. Notes


Book Description