A compelling collection of tales from Australia's dark heart - of catastrophe and misfortune, intrigue and passion, betrayal and tragedy.AUSTRALIAN TRAGIC ranges across our past and our present: the heartbreaking story of the fire at Luna Park; the unstoppable opportunist who snatched innocent men and women from Palm Island to be part of P. T. Barnum's 'Greatest Show on Earth'; a world-class boxer who lost his battle with alcohol and ended up in an unmarked America...

A celebration of chest puffing goodness and kindness from around the country written in inimitable Peter FitzSimon's style.You gotta love this country when an AFL legend takes his mum instead of his girlfriend to the Brownlow, when an Australian cricket captain joins a bunch of fourteen year olds for a bit of street cricket, when a bloke wins the Australian Marbles Championship after being reunited with the tom-bowlers his brother threw away forty years ago, and wh...

The Sunday Times BestsellerAll Michael Parkinson really wanted to do was play cricket for Yorkshire and England. However, he soon realised that to be paid to watch films, football and cricket would be the best way to spend life, and he became a journalist.Television beckoned and for three decades Parkinson interviewed the movers and shakers of the late twentieth century, making his television programme the must-see event of the week. In singing wit...

Feel that War and Peace went on a bit? Wish there were more laughs in Catcher in the Rye? Very cross that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had no references to three-time world hotdog-eating champion, Joey Chestnut? Then ***Smithereens***is for you. At only 300 pages you can knock it off during one of the ad breaks on Shaun's hit show, Talkin' 'bout Your Generation.And laughs? What about them? Well, does it have any? Of course it ...

The third volume of Michael Palin's celebrated diaries.TRAVELLING TO WORK is a roller-coaster ride driven by the Palin hallmarks of curiosity and sense of adventure. Michael was not the BBC's first choice for the travel series AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, but after its success, the public naturally wanted more.Palin, however, had other plans. There was his film AMERICAN FRIENDS, a role in Alan Bleasdale's award-winning drama GBH, the staging of his West End...

The Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question went Down Under, and this is what he hilariously found.On what he calls “the adventure of his life,” Howard Jacobson travels around Australia, never entirely sure where he is heading next or whether he has the courage to tackle the wild life of the bush, the wild men of the outback, or the even wilder women of the seaboard cities.In pursuit of the best of Australian good times, he joins re...

'Retiring in 1975, Fred Daly liked to tell the story of the new Member who sat next to him in the House. Turning to Fred, he said, 'I like to sit here and look across at the enemy.''Son,' said Fred, 'you are looking at the Opposition. The enemy is behind you.' 'Phillip Adams has been close to governments of various persuasions for over fifty years. Having been a confidant – or a fierce opponent – of many of Australia's most influential figure...

Peopled by many of the legends of the Australian outback, this is the extraordinary true story of how one ordinary woman grew up to champion Australia's outback heritage.Jane Grieve was born and raised on a farm on the Darling Downs in Queensland. She grew up with the wind in her hair and the rich black Darling Downs soil between her barefoot toes, her vivid imagination captivated by the tales of her Colonial forebears and the romantic notion of Australia's outback...

Last year Stephen Pile attempted to deliver a daring blow to the success ethic that so pervades Western culture. To his dismay, The Ultimate Book of Heroic Failures sold many copies and even became the Sunday Times 'Humour Book of the Year.'Nothing daunted, Stephen returns with a new selection which brings together the very best of his original classic titles - The Book of Heroic Failures and The Return of Heroic Failures.The heartwarmin...

Amazing bastard (colloquial), n: a bloke who does stuff that other bastards wouldn't try in a month of SundaysWe've all met them, or at least read about them - men who drive faster, climb higher, build and invent and triumph over impossible odds.Journalist Lawrence Money has assembled a collection of Amazing Aussie Bastards who truly stand out from the crowd. Immune to critics and disbelievers, undaunted by illness or financial setback, they have done what writer S...

Rikki Fulton was one of the biggest stars Scotland has produced. From classic comedy performances in Francie and Josie and Scotch & Wry - including the legendary Rev I M Jolly - and appearances in Hollywood movies like Gorky Park, Rikki had an extraordinary life and career. Now, to celebrate his life and work ten years after his passing, this new edition of Is It That Time Already? tells the full story - from Rikki's childhood in Glasgow in the 1930s to his experiences in the Royal Navy du...

Drawn Out is a hilarious, heartbreaking, heart-warming account of Tom Scott's tragicomic childhood, his manic student-newspaper days, his turbulent years stumbling through the corridors of power, his fallings out with prime ministers, his collaborations with comic legends John Clarke, A.K. Grant and Murray Ball, his travels to the ends of the earth with his close friend Ed Hillary, and more...'A first-class memoir of a highly memorable life. Here is an important (often hil...