Christopher Sandford

August 1914 brought an end to the 'Golden Age' of English cricket. At least 210 professional cricketers (out of a total of 278 registered) signed up to fight, of whom thirty-four were killed. However, that period and those men were far more than merely statistics: here we follow in intimate detail not only the cricketers of that fateful last summer before the war, but also the simple pleasures and daily struggles of their family lives and the whole...

The biography of the original Mr. Cool, Steve McQueen. The actor who perhaps, first epitomised the Action Hero, a complex man, prone to casual affairs and violence, yet capable of helping those more unfortunate than him.

Renowned mystery author Arthur Conan Doyle and famous illusionist Harry Houdini first met in 1920, during the magician's tour of England. At the time, Conan Doyle had given up his lucrative writing career, killing off Sherlock Holmes in the process, in order to concentrate on his increasingly manic interest in Spiritualism. Houdini, who regularly conducted séances in an attempt to reach his late mother, was also infatuated with the idea of what he...

Step back in time to 1964, a year of cultural upheaval and political transformation. From the rise of the Civil Rights movement in the United States to the global phenomenon of Beatlemania, this was the year that gave us bold fashion, unforgettable music and social change that continues to shape society across the world today. While Britain's new Labour government promised the 'white heat of technology', on the world stage 1964 saw the escalation...

Based on interviews with family members, colleagues, lovers, and the previously silent William Burroughs, this unsparing yet evenhanded biography guides the reader through the many personas, crises, and musical metamorphoses of David Bowie?also known as Davy Jones, the Laughing Gnome, Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke, a drug-addled grandfather of punk, actor, art aficionado, political activist, one of rock's most resonant...

An Austro-Hungarian with a dark streak, Victor Lustig was a man of athletic good looks, with a taste for larceny and foreign intrigue. He spoke eight languages and went under nearly as many aliases in the course of a continent-hopping life that also saw him act as a double, or possibly triple, agent. Along the way, he found time to dupe an impressive variety of banks and casinos on both sides of the Atlantic; to escape from no fewer than five supposedly...