No-one ever said life was meant to be easy – and you won’t find John Rogers disputing that. On his own admission, he has known “trouble” – as both perpetrator and victim - almost from the day he was born.
He never knew his dad and, sadly, he saw precious little of his mum. Shunted from home to home and institution to institution, coming under the scrutiny of countless “experts” in the process, it was no surprise that his journey through childhood and teens was turbulent.
A life of crime beckoned. John became an expert safe-blower, and he also did his time behind bars. He worked for the notorious Kray twins – and later, through one of his many charity fund-raising efforts, met legendary Great Train Robber Ron Biggs in Brazil.
Crime was largely kept at bay, though, while he joined first the Army and then the Merchant Navy, but even here he was never too far removed from “trouble” – and frolics.
'Hard eyes stare out of massive beards, their faces marked by the scars of battle. With these guys their webbing looks like it belongs to them, rather than it's been hung on a pair of reluctant shoulders. There's not a word been said to us, but the ante has clearly been upped. There's a dark and sinister feeling in the air.
It doesn't take a genius to figure it's about to kick off.'
Former SAS soldier Big Phil Campion tells it like is in this brutally honest account of his insanely dangerous life as a private military operator. From playing chicken with a suicide bomber in backstreet Kabul, to taking on pirates with his bare hands, this is true-life action-packed drama at its best.
An inspiring and gritty real life adventure, similar to 'Soldier Spy' and 'A Captain's Duty' by Captain Phillips. Jordan Wylie, a young man from a tough area of Blackpool where kids like him often went off the rails, chose a life in the army. He saw service in Iraq and learned to cope with the horrors he'd witnessed, then suffered an injury that blocked any chance of climbing up the military ladder.
But an old army colleague suggested he join a security team on a tanker in Yemen. Ex-servicemen were offered dazzling salaries and `James Bond' lifestyles between jobs protecting the super-tankers carrying consumer goods to Europe and the US. However, for the men tempted to go, the price they paid was the claustrophobia and isolation of life on board and the ever-present possibility of death skimming towards them across the vast, lonely blue sea. Jordan was one of these men.
In Citadel, he writes the first account of these dangerous years from someone `at the front'. A young soldier from the backstreets of Blackpool, he was determined to make the most of his life, but unsure of the way forward. To his surprise, he found his answers in the perilous waters of `Pirate Alley'.
For the past twenty years, some of the most dangerous places on earth. And for Major Chris Hunter, just some of the places where he has defused bombs in his ceaseless battle against terrorism and the bombmakers.
This is the story of a teenager with no hopes who joined the army at sixteen and went on to become one of the most successful counter-terrorism operators in the world.
This is the story of survival when all the odds are stacked against you, when every second feels like a lifetime, when the sound of your heart beating is as deafening as a ticking bomb. This is what it's like, day in day out, to take your life and the lives of others in your own hands, and make a difference.
And this is what it costs to live that life...
Robin Horsfall shot and killed one of the leading terrorists inside the Iranian Embassy when the SAS stormed the building. He served with the SAS during the Falklands War and on subsequent counter-terrorist operations. He tells his personal odyssey from boy-soldier to paratrooper with insight and wisdom.
His enemies were not just terrorists: he fought the institutionalized brutality of the Parachute Regiment -- and his own inner demons. He learned the difference between physical and moral courage; between officers who expect you to be ready to die for them, and those who actually want you to get killed so they can win a medal. It's an action-packed narrative, but much more than another RAMBO-style romp.
Robin reveals some painful truths, not least the ordinary SAS men's view of General de la Billiere and his orders for a kamikaze mission to Argentina. This is the best, no-holds barred, personal account of an SAS trooper ever published.
Lyn Rigby's story charts the unfathomably difficult time she has endured since May 2013 when her son, 25-year-old Fusilier Lee Rigby, was butchered on a London high street by two British-born young men compelled to avenge the killing of Muslims by the British armed forces. The savage brutality of the killing shocked the nation, and the ramifications spread to the highest levels of government, questioning the security of social networking sites that allowed the fanatics who murdered her son to discuss their intentions online and unchecked.
Lyn Rigby has questions for government and the military, but overall it is her story of sorrow, her campaign for a memorial dedicated to Lee's memory, her admiration for the 'angels of Woolwich' and, hopefully, belief that her son did not die in vain. She is writing this book as a tribute to Lee - to give him a voice and to tell his story not just as a soldier, but as a vibrant, happy young man with a son and a future that has been so cruelly and viciously been taken from him.
In today’s war-torn Libya, veteran Commando Finn Douglas is forced to commit an appalling act in order to save the lives of his men. Haunted by his actions, he suffers a further blow when he learns that his family has been killed in a terrorist attack in London. Numb with grief and traumatised by guilt, Finn turns his back on the world of conflict and killing and flees to an island wilderness to escape his demons.
With the country crippled by cyber-attacks and terrorist bombings in the cities, a team of Military Police are tasked with bringing Finn to justice. For one of the policemen, the manhunt is a more personal issue; a chance to redress a wrong at the hands of marines some years before.
When Finn intervenes in a life and death situation, his sanctuary is shattered and the net tightens. The manhunt becomes a race against time between the forces of law and order and a psychotic criminal determined to exact his revenge on Finn for thwarting his plans. For Finn, the world of killing and conflict returns with a vengeance on the blizzard-swept mountains of the island. Only this time there is nowhere left to run.
Salesman with an AK-47 is the thrilling adventure of an Irish man who served with the elite of the British Army, guarded the Queen and found himself on active service in Northern Ireland during the early eighties. Years later, circumstances brought him to Afghanistan where old training served him well. The story takes us from Tyrone to Jalalabad, swinging scenically through Papua New Guinea and into post Saddam Iraq.
Alan's is a fast paced story of a life of triumph and tragedy, told by someone who has lived on the edge through a forgotten war, then suffered for 22 years with undiagnosed PTSD. Read Alan's first hand experiences of daily life in Afghanistan and enjoy meeting the ex-Mujahidin fighter, the kidnapped English man, the poker playing banker: an unforgettable cast of rogues and heroes from all corners of the globe. This is the story of an ordinary man living a life less ordinary life.
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