Brian Honour was born in the former pit village of Horden, County Durham, and his passion from a young age was always to become a professional footballer. Despite the odds and many setbacks, that's exactly what he achieved, giving his all to the game and earning respect from fans, fellow players and the media alike. Many believed his skills would clinch him a place with a Premiership side and, although this was never to be, he is rightly considered a legend and The Life of Brian is a fitting tribute to the man who was affectionately dubbed ‘Mr Hartlepool United'. Brian first became involved in football at the age of four, when Sir Stanley Matthews visited his home. He subsequently signed Schoolboy forms for Aston Villa, where he stayed for three years before being rejected as being too small. He then went for a trial at Darlington and signed as an apprentice, and in 1982, at the age of 18, he obtained a full professional contract. However, his dreams were soon shattered for a second time, when again he was told he was too small by the former Tottenham Hotspur and England fullback Cyril Knowles, then the Darlington manager. Brian moved into non-League football with Peterlee Newtown, before being plucked from the mist at Tow Law by Billy Horner, the Hartlepool United manager. He would stay at the Victoria Ground for almost 11 years as a player before persistent injury forced him to retire. He was voted the supporters’ Player of the Season three times and was a member of the promotion-winning side of 1991. He has proved to be an excellent and inspiring youth coach, and spells in non-League football with Durham City, Horden Colliery Welfare and Bishop Auckland (twice) have run in tandem with his business ‘The Brian Honour Football School’.

Andrew-Henry Bowie is a passionate Heart of Midlothian Football Club supporter. He doggedly survived a tough childhood and found solace – sort of – in his overwhelming love of football. The author engages the reader with an energetic and animated account of his years as a Hearts fan and his early years growing up as an Edinburgh 'schemie'. Written with verve and a dry sense of humour Bowie entertains with recollections of a series of calamitous episodes; ironically these seemed to reflect the Hearts' ups and downs! The book is scattered with familiar references to the 80s and 90s; for anyone growing up during this period, this book will stir poignant memories.

Are you a fan of frank Sinatra? Have you seen every film he made? Do you know all there is to know about the man and his music? Then why not put your knowledge to the test with this tribute to the legendary entertainer? Frank Sinatra first appeared on the music scene in the 1940s and quickly went on to become one of the world's best loved stars, producing a string of popular hits and appearing in a number of unforgettable films. In a career that spanned six decades, the veteran crooner delighted and entertained audiences across the globe. The Frank Sinatra Quiz Book is full of facts about Ol' Blue Eyes from his early success through to international stardom, including many personal details, and the 200 questions are sure to set you on a trip down memory lane. This book is dedicated to the memory of a man who enjoyed 60 years in the spotlight and whose music and legacy still lives on today. If you like Frank Sinatra, you will love this book.

“An eloquent argument for speaking even the most difficult truths.” —New York Times Book Review Paul Moore’s vocation as an Episcopal priest took him— with his wife, Jenny, and their family of nine children—from robber-baron wealth to work among the urban poor, leadership in the civil rights and peace movements, and two decades as the bishop of New York. The Bishop’s Daughter is his daughter’s story of that complex, visionary man: a chronicle of her turbulent relationship with a father who struggled privately with his sexuality while she openly explored hers and a searching account of the consequences of sexual secrets.

In the tradition of Margaret MacMillan’s Paris 1919 comes a new consideration of Canada’s most famous war and the Treaty of Ghent that unsatisfactorily concluded it, from one of this country’s premier military historians. In the Canadian imagination, the War of 1812 looms large. It was a war in which British and Indian troops prevailed in almost all of the battles, in which the Americans were unable to hold any of the land they fought for, in which a young woman named Laura Secord raced over the Niagara peninsula to warn of American plans for attack (though how she knew has never been discovered), and in which Canadian troops burned down the White House. Competing American claims insist to this day that, in fact, it was they who were triumphant. But where does the truth lie? Somewhere in the middle, as is revealed in this major new reconsideration from one of Canada’s master historians. Drawing on never-before-seen archival material, Zuehlke paints a vibrant picture of the war’s major battles, vividly re-creating life in the trenches, the horrifying day-to-day manoeuvring on land and sea, and the dramatic negotiations in the Flemish city of Ghent that brought the war to an unsatisfactory end for both sides. By focusing on the fraught dispute in which British and American diplomats quarrelled as much amongst themselves as with their adversaries, Zuehlke conjures the compromises and backroom deals that yielded conventions resonating in relations between the United States and Canada to this very day.

In this history of the development of ideas of honor in Western philosophy, Peter Olsthoorn examines what honor is, how its meaning has changed, and whether it can still be of use. Political and moral philosophers from Cicero to John Stuart Mill thought that a sense of honor and concern for our reputation could help us to determine the proper thing to do, and just as important, provide us with the much-needed motive to do it. Today, outside of the military and some other pockets of resistance, the notion of honor has become seriously out of date, while the term itself has almost disappeared from our moral language. Most of us think that people ought to do what is right based on a love for jus-tice rather than from a concern with how we are perceived by others. Wide-ranging and accessible, the book explores the role of honor in not only philosophy but also literature and war to make the case that honor can still play an important role in contemporary life.