Based on 20 years of research, Gianluca Barneschi has uncovered the true story of a real-life James Bond. The debonair Special Operations Executive agent Richard 'Dick' Mallaby was the first Briton to be sent to Italy as an SOE operative, parachuted unceremoniously into Lake Como in August 1943. Arrested and initially tortured by the Italian authorities, he managed to sweet-talk his way out of trouble, and helped Marshal Pietro Badoglio and King Victor Emmanuel III escape to the Allied lines. He also helped negotiate the armistice with Italy, for which he was awarded the Military Cross. He was back in action in 1945, when he crossed into Fascist-controlled northern Italy from Switzerland but was swiftly captured and interrogated by the SS. Narrowly avoiding a firing squad once again, he helped to secure the surrender of 800,000 German forces in Italy in May 1945.

This major study ranges over British director Reed's entire career, combining observation of general trends and patterns with detailed analysis of twenty films, both acknowledged masterpieces and lesser-known works. Films examined include Bank Holiday, A Girl Must Live, Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol, The Third Man, Night Train to Munich, The Way Ahead, Outcast of the Islands, Trapeze and Oliver!.

At Wembley in 1966, Englandâ (TM)s football captain Bobby Moore received the World Cup from Queen Elizabeth and FIFA president Stanley Rous. This book takes the life of Rous (1895-1986) as a lens through which to understand the escalating profile of football both nationally and globally. It illuminates how it was possible for Rous to emerge from a Suffolk village and ascend to the top of FIFAâ (TM)s hierarchy and the company of elites. Educational opportunities, service in the Great War and an international refereeâ (TM)s profile prepared Rous for the position of Secretary at The Football Association, alongside charity work in World War II and organisational responsibilities for the London 1948 Olympics. His FIFA role combined diplomacy with development, in post-colonial times of volatile international relations. The book informs scholars and fans alike, showing too that Rousâ (TM)s crowning achievement as FIFA President at the 1966 World Cup marked a peak for Englandâ (TM)s power and influence in world football.

Anthony Whitelands, an English art historian, is invited to Madrid to value an aristocrat's collection. At a welcome lunch he encounters Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder and leader of the Falange, a nationalist party whose antics are bringing the country ever closer to civil war. The paintings turn out to be worthless, but before Whitelands can leave for London the duque's daughter Paquita reveals a secret and genuine treasure, held for years in the cellars of her ancestral home. Afraid that the duque will cash in his wealth to finance the Falange, the Spanish authorities resolve to keep a close eye on the Englishman, who is also being watched by his own embassy. As Whitelands--ever the fool for a pretty face--vies with Primo de Rivera for Paquita's affections, he learns of a final interested party: Madrid is crawling with Soviet spies, and Moscow will stop at nothing to secure the hidden prize.

Subtitle: The Spiritual Journey of Charles Sydney Gibbes Charles Sydney Gibbes travels abroad in a crisis of faith, and his world is changed forever when he becomes a tutor to the children of the Russian royal family. Gibbes eventually returns to Great Britain, there dedicating his life as an Orthodox priest to the memory of the Imperial Family and the faith he discovered in their distant homeland.

The hero of One Fat Englishman, a literary publisher and lapsed Catholic escaped from the pages of Graham Greene to the campus of Budweiser College in provincial Pennsylvania, is philandering, drunken, bigoted, and very very fat, not to mention in a state of continuous spluttering rage against everything, not least his own overgrown self. In America, Roger Micheldene must deal with not so obliging suburban housewives, aspiring Jewish novelists who as good as clean his clock, stray deer, bad cigars, children who beat him at Scrabble (“It was no wonder that people were horrible when they started life as children”), and America itself, while making ever-more desperate and humiliating overtures to Helen, a Scandinavian ice queen. If only Roger would dare to show some real feeling of his own. This comic masterpiece—about the 1950s crashing drunkenly into the consumerist 1960s and a final scion of a disintegrating Old World empire encountering its upstart New World offspring—is one of Kingsley Amis’s greatest and most caustic performances.

Though forever in the spotlight, the latest act of David Beckham's career played out on foreign fields has outshone all previous drama: full of intrigue, subplots and emotional highs and lows. His falling out with Ferguson and leaving Old Trafford; the bitter power struggle for his signature between Barca and Real; the hype of his inauguration and the tour of the Far East; the media circus decamping to Madrid, monitoring his every move; the behind the scenes politics of marketing and spin and the accusations that he had been bought to sell shirts; silencing his critics with performances that made him the fulcrum of the team; then finally falling from grace with the rest of the Galacticos as their pursuit of footballing perfection began to crumble. This is the story of that season told through Spanish eyes - tthe players, backroom staff, pundits and ordinary fans - by a man who was there as it happened.

Journeying up the Missouri River in 1830, the wealthy Berrybenders encounter the challenges of the untamed American West before Tasmin Berrybender falls in love with frontiersman and part-time preacher Jim Snow.