This is Ray Connolly's first novel, about a show business columnist into whose life a young nurse appears, creating "a tension which douses the dazzle of club-life, film stars, fashion models and glittering parties" that the columnist had been enjoying.
Jim Maclaine is a product of the Fifties. When boys were spotty and girls were out of reach - and nobody could play rock music like the Americans. On the day that he's supposed to begin his A Levels, Jim opts out of the academic rat-race and lives out his fantasies working for a holiday camp and at a fair. But the humdrum realities of life don't seem to have much to do with James Dean, Marlon Brando or Chuck Berry.... That'll Be the Day is Ray Connolly's novelisation of his screenplay for the hit 1973 film starring David Essex and Ringo Starr.
In a small university town in the early 1980s, two old friends meet for the first time in decades - Father Michael, the priest with the leather jacket and the rock and roll guitar... and Jimmy, the cynical visiting academic. Twenty years ago, they'd played their music together and dreamed of making the big time. Now, together again by chance, the old cycle moves round once more. Mary, attractive, available and in need of a man, draws them both to her - just as another girl had drawn them both, so many years ago. Forever Young is the novelisation of Ray Connolly's Channel 4 film of the same name.
For Charlie Fairweather, song-writer and occasional performer, holidays mean quick affairs, quickly forgotten. But the woman he meets in Sicily is different. Kate Sullivan is beautiful, sophisticated and deliciously sensuous. Why is she so alone? Why is she so afraid of his friendship? Why does she disappear? Obsessed by his search for Kate, Charlie finds himself drawn into an unknown and dangerous world where anything can be bought and death is the easiest answer.
A “sympathetic and exceptionally well-written account” (USA Today), Ray Connolly’s biography of the King soars with “spontaneity and electricity” (Preston Lauterbach). Elvis Presley is a giant figure in American popular culture, a man whose talent and fame were matched only by his later excesses and tragic end. A godlike entity in the history of rock and roll, this twentieth-century icon with a dazzling voice blended gospel and traditionally black rhythm and blues with country to create a completely new kind of music and new way of expressing male sexuality, which simply blew the doors off a staid and repressed 1950s America. In Being Elvis veteran rock journalist Ray Connolly takes a fresh look at the career of the world’s most loved singer, placing him, forty years after his death, not exhaustively in the garish neon lights of Las Vegas but back in his mid-twentieth-century, distinctly southern world. For new and seasoned fans alike, Connolly, who interviewed Elvis in 1969, re-creates a man who sprang from poverty in Tupelo, Mississippi, to unprecedented overnight fame, eclipsing Frank Sinatra and then inspiring the Beatles along the way. Juxtaposing the music, the songs, and the incendiary live concerts with a personal life that would later careen wildly out of control, Connolly demonstrates that Elvis’s amphetamine use began as early as his touring days of hysteria in the late 1950s, and that the financial needs that drove him in the beginning would return to plague him at the very end. With a narrative informed by interviews over many years with John Lennon, Bob Dylan, B. B. King, Sam Phillips, and Roy Orbison, among many others, Connolly creates one of the most nuanced and mature portraits of this cultural phenomenon to date. What distinguishes Being Elvis beyond the narrative itself is Connolly’s more subtle examinations of white poverty, class aspirations, and the prison that is extreme fame. As we reach the end of this poignant account, Elvis’s death at forty-two takes on the hue of a profoundly American tragedy. The creator of an American sound that resonates today, Elvis remains frozen in time, an enduring American icon who could “seamlessly soar into a falsetto of pleading and yearning” and capture an inner emotion, perhaps of eternal yearning, to which all of us can still relate. Intimate and unsparing, Being Elvis explores the extravagance and irrationality inherent in the Elvis mythology, ultimately offering a thoughtful celebration of an immortal life.
An intimate yet unsparing biography of one of the greatest and most mythologized musicians of the twentieth century. What was it like to be John Lennon? What was it like to be the castoff child, the clown at school, and the middle-class suburban boy who pretended to be a working-class hero? How did it feel to have one of the most recognizable singing voices in the world, but to dislike it so much he always wanted to disguise it? Being John Lennon is not about the whitewashed Prince of Peace of Imagine legend—because that was only a small part of him. The John Lennon depicted in these pages is a much more kaleidoscopic figure, sometimes almost a collision of different characters. He was, of course, funny, often very funny. But above everything, he had attitude—his impudent style somehow personifying the aspirations of his generation to question authority. He could, and would, say the unsayable. Though there were more glamorous rock stars in rock history, even within the Beatles, it was John Lennon’s attitude which caught, and then defined, his era in the most memorable way.
The year is 1963 and Jim Maclaine, star of That'll Be the Day, has grown his hair, grown up and become a singer with a rock and roll band called the Stray Cats. Performing to bored audiences in seedy clubs, they live on dreams of making it big. A combination of luck, ruthlessness and a lot of hard hustling on the part of Mike, Jim's old fairground friend, makes the Stray Cats rock and roll superstars. But at what cost does success and fame come? Stardust is Ray Connolly's novelisation of his Writers' Guild of Great Britain award-winning screenplay for the 1974 film starring David Essex, Adam Faith and Larry Hagman.
The campaign of terror in London begins with a televised death-threat and climaxes in a spectacular, on-the-air takeover of Capital Radio. One man has been following the terrorists from the beginning. John Huckleston, one of their first victims, is also a top reporter after a hot story - and a lonely man, more than half in love with their seductive, ruthless woman leader. He will be with them at the death...
Elixir. The world's most luxurious fun spot. Island of coral sands, clear green seas, and wild abandon. Where love and play begin before the sun goes down. Where nights of revelry stretch into eternities of sensuous indulgence. Where the gaudy colours of paradise are splashed with the blood-red terror of a sadistic killer.
The extraordinary decade of the Sixties was always slightly out of sync. It began late - with a remarkable flourish in 1963 with The Beatles, That Was the Week That Was, the Profumo affair and the Great Train Robbery all competing in an atmosphere of giggling frivolity for newspaper headlines - and ended in the early Seventies in disillusionment, growing unemployment and accelerating inflation. During that period Ray Connolly was at the centre of the whirlpool of popular arts and rock music, and his weekly journalistic profile of the famous and infamous became an acknowledged notice-board for the style-makers of the Sixties. This book collects fifty of his most celebrated character studies and for the most part the subjects are men and women from the author's own age-group - Mick Jagger, Jean Shrimpton, Peter Fonda, David Bailey and Germaine Greer - young people who saw the opportunity to make waves during that era of extravagance, and whose images we saw reflected everywhere. In compiling this book, Ray Connolly has been able to recall the superstars of that time and also to discover what has happened to them since those days of heady optimism.
Perched between bleak moors and a cold, grey winter sea, the North Devon Riviera Hotel is an unlikely destination for February. But, for the handful of guests gathered under its roof it's just about perfect. Amy Miller has fallen in love with a married man. A famous married man. And they've been caught. With the tabloid press in pursuit, Amy's gone into hiding, holing up where she's sure no-one will ever find her. Waiting for her lover to call, Amy begins to question their affair, wondering if it's really what she wanted, wondering even if there is a point to love... But as the hotel prepares for its Valentine's ball and the tabloids circle ever closer, Amy and the North Devon Riviera's other guests are going to discover that love - whether it's young love, old love, shared love or unrequited love, a night's love or a lifetime's love - does indeed make the world go round.
The Beatles wrote 176 of the greatest songs ever to appear in popular music. This songbook includes every single one of them. Each piece is arranged for Piano and Voice, with full lyrics and chord symbols. These simplified arrangements are accompanied by original photographs and some of the strangest, full-colour illustrations to ever grace a book. The wonderfully surreal presentation, along with an absorbing article by Ray Connolly, makes this a commemorative collectible as much as a book of music.
The Beatles wrote 176 of the greatest songs ever to appear in popular music. This songbook includes every single one of them. Each piece is arranged for easy Guitar, with melody lines, chord diagrams and full lyrics. These simplified arrangements are accompanied by original photographs and some of the strangest, full-colour illustrations to ever grace a book. The wonderfully surreal presentation, along with an absorbing article by Ray Connolly, makes this a commemorative collectible as much as a book of music.
The massacre of the Donnellys by their fellow church members has fascinated the public in the English-speaking world for well over a hundred years. Contained in this book are intriguing new photographs never before published and significant new information, which will pique the interest even of those who have been familiar for years with this bit of North American folk history with Irish roots.
A “sympathetic and exceptionally well-written account” (USA Today), Ray Connolly’s biography of the King soars with “spontaneity and electricity” (Preston Lauterbach). Elvis Presley is a giant figure in American popular culture, a man whose talent and fame were matched only by his later excesses and tragic end. A godlike entity in the history of rock and roll, this twentieth-century icon with a dazzling voice blended gospel and traditionally black rhythm and blues with country to create a completely new kind of music and new way of expressing male sexuality, which simply blew the doors off a staid and repressed 1950s America. In Being Elvis veteran rock journalist Ray Connolly takes a fresh look at the career of the world’s most loved singer, placing him, forty years after his death, not exhaustively in the garish neon lights of Las Vegas but back in his mid-twentieth-century, distinctly southern world. For new and seasoned fans alike, Connolly, who interviewed Elvis in 1969, re-creates a man who sprang from poverty in Tupelo, Mississippi, to unprecedented overnight fame, eclipsing Frank Sinatra and then inspiring the Beatles along the way. Juxtaposing the music, the songs, and the incendiary live concerts with a personal life that would later careen wildly out of control, Connolly demonstrates that Elvis’s amphetamine use began as early as his touring days of hysteria in the late 1950s, and that the financial needs that drove him in the beginning would return to plague him at the very end. With a narrative informed by interviews over many years with John Lennon, Bob Dylan, B. B. King, Sam Phillips, and Roy Orbison, among many others, Connolly creates one of the most nuanced and mature portraits of this cultural phenomenon to date. What distinguishes Being Elvis beyond the narrative itself is Connolly’s more subtle examinations of white poverty, class aspirations, and the prison that is extreme fame. As we reach the end of this poignant account, Elvis’s death at forty-two takes on the hue of a profoundly American tragedy. The creator of an American sound that resonates today, Elvis remains frozen in time, an enduring American icon who could “seamlessly soar into a falsetto of pleading and yearning” and capture an inner emotion, perhaps of eternal yearning, to which all of us can still relate. Intimate and unsparing, Being Elvis explores the extravagance and irrationality inherent in the Elvis mythology, ultimately offering a thoughtful celebration of an immortal life.
Robert B. Ray examines the ideology of the most enduringly popular cinema in the world--the Hollywood movie. Aided by 364 frame enlargements, he describes the development of that historically overdetermined form, giving close readings of five typical instances: Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Godfather, and Taxi Driver. Like the heroes of these movies, American filmmaking has avoided commitment, in both plot and technique. Instead of choosing left or right, avant-garde or tradition, American cinema tries to have it both ways. Although Hollywood's commercial success has led the world audience to equate the American cinema with film itself, Hollywood filmmaking is a particular strategy designed to respond to specific historical situations. As an art restricted in theoretical scope but rich in individual variations, the American cinema poses the most interesting question of popular culture: Do dissident forms have any chance of remaining free of a mass medium seeking to co-opt them?
Nellie McClung / William Lyon Mackenzie King / John Diefenbaker/ René Lévesque / Maurice Duplessis / James Douglas / John A. Macdonald / Joey Smallwood / Wilfrid Laurier
Nellie McClung / William Lyon Mackenzie King / John Diefenbaker/ René Lévesque / Maurice Duplessis / James Douglas / John A. Macdonald / Joey Smallwood / Wilfrid Laurier
Presenting nine titles in the Quest Biography series that profiles prominent figures in Canada’s history. In these books we explore Canada’s rich political history through the fascinating lives of some of its most influential lives. Profiled are: prime ministers John Diefenbaker, John A. Macdonald, William Lyon Mackenzie King, and Wilfrid Laurier; suffragette Nellie McClung; and provincial leaders Joey Smallwood, Maurice Duplessis, René Lévesque, and James Douglas. Includes James Douglas Joey Smallwood John A. Macdonald John Diefenbaker Maurice Duplessis Nellie McClung Réne Lévesque Wilfrid Laurier William Lyon Mackenzie King
Unintended Consequences reveals how America’s door closed on legal Irish immigration in the 1960s, and how America’s Irish mounted a counterattack when nation-changing political forces were sweeping the country during the era of civil rights, political assassinations, and the Vietnam War. This book looks at the full historical background to Irish migration across the Atlantic, how it helped shape the young republic, and how the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 brought a near total halt to this westward flow. Nevertheless, the Irish would not be denied and continued to make the journey, no longer into the light of a full and legal American life, but rather into the shadows of an undocumented existence. Successive organisations championed the undocumented Irish, and the fight continues to this day, but this is a new America, where, in recent years, there has been growing hostility to immigrants of every nationality. Ray O’Hanlon has spent over three decades reporting on battles over comprehensive U.S. immigration reform, and Unintended Consequences is the story of the Irish past, its present, and most uncertain future in the ‘land of the free,’ now in the presidency of Joe Biden, a man who fully embraces his Irish immigrant family story. Through Biden, the great Irish of America story continues, and with renewed hope.
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