Книги, похожие на «Ben Pimlott, The Queen»

The Puppet Master is back with the inside story.Written by one half of the Fluck and Law partnership, which produced Spitting Image for many years, this book will catch up with creative spirit Roger Law to investigate life at sixty through the eyes of the puppet master.Roger Law, the evil genius behind the mocking, caricature puppets of Spitting Image – which lampooned Margaret Thatcher, ridiculed the Royal Family and gave birth to 'The Chicken Song' – unburdens his tormented soul and tells the awful truth of how it all came about.The award-winning series ran for eight years, with Law masterminding the corruption and undermining of an entire generation's respect for authority and institutions, and giving voice to such comedic reprobates as Harry Enfield, Pamela Stephenson and Rory Bremner. He subjected the British public to political outrages – to a reception of delight and indignation in equal measure – every Sunday evening from 1984 to 1992.When the satire bubble finally burst, Law found himself too young for retirement, too old to be retrained and without any discernable talent for domesticity or addressing a golf ball. In short, very thoroughly rinsed up.Confronted with 'one day off after another as far as the eye can see,' Law did what some people thought was the only decent thing he could do, possibly had ever done – he transported himself to Australia.STILL SPITTING AT SIXTY is Roger Law's account of his life in retirement down-under, filled with all the lunacy and flare that one would expect from the co-producer and creator of Spitting Image.

The dramatic story of Lady Hester Stanhope – a wilful beauty turned bohemian adventurer – who left England as a young woman, unashamedly enjoyed a string of lovers and established her own exotic fiefdom in the Lebanese mountains where she died in 1839.Ambitious, daring and uncompromising, Lady Hester Stanhope was never cut out for a conventional life. Born into an illustrious political dynasty, she played society hostess for her uncle, William Pitt the Younger. After his death, she struck out for unchartered territory, setting sail with her lover for the Mediterranean and Constantinople – turning her back on England, as events would transpire, forever.It was in the Middle East, however, that she found her destiny. As the greatest female traveller of her age, she was the first western woman to cross the Syrian desert, where she was hailed by the Bedouin as their ‘Star of the Morning’. From her labyrinthine fortress in the mountains of Lebanon, where she established what amounted to her own fiefdom, she exerted a canny influence over the region's devious politics.Hers was a life of adventure and intrigue – yet in the years following her death her remarkable story has been largely dismissed, reworked by the Victorians into a cautionary tale for young women with wayward tendencies. This captivating biography, drawing on fresh research from three continents, resurrects Hester as the complex, courageous and fearless woman she was, bringing to life her hidden loves, friendships and ambitions. More than a mere traveller, here was a woman whose aspirations led her straight to the heart of the shadowy race for influence between the great powers of the nineteenth century – a world of shifting alliances, double agents, romance, intrigue and murder. Above all, Lady Hester Stanhope was a woman driven by her desire to make a mark on the world, whose search for love and spiritual meaning in a war-torn Middle East provide an illuminating and moving parallel for our time.