Penguin Random House India – The Bell Bookshop

Stories of Surrender

Emma — Tue, 20 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

When I started to write this book I was hoping to draw in detail what I’d previously only sketched in songs. The people, places, and possibilities in my life. Surrender is a word freighted with meaning for me. Growing up in Ireland in the seventies with my fists up (musically speaking), it was not a natural concept. A word I only circled until I gathered my thoughts for the book. I am still grappling with this most humbling of commands. In the band, in my marriage, in my faith, in my life as an activist. Surrender is the story of one pilgrim’s lack of progress … With a fair amount of fun along the way.’ – Bono /As one of the music world’s most iconic artists and the cofounder of organizations ONE and (RED), Bono’s career has been written about extensively. But in Surrender, it’s Bono who picks up the pen, writing for the first time about his remarkable life and those he has shared it with. In his unique voice, Bono takes us from his early days growing up in Dublin, including the sudden loss of his mother when he was 14, to U2’s unlikely journey to become one of the world’s most influential rock bands, to his more than 20 years of activism dedicated to the fight against AIDS and extreme poverty.

The siege

Emma — Thu, 08 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

‘Unforgettable’ Independent

‘Fresh and gripping’ Telegraph

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

On April 30, 1980, six heavily armed gunmen burst into the Iranian embassy on Princes Gate, overlooking Hyde Park in London. There they took 26 hostages, including embassy staff, visitors, and three British citizens.

A tense six-day siege ensued as millions gathered around screens across the country to witness the longest news flash in British television history, in which police negotiators and psychiatrists sought a bloodless end to the standoff, while the SAS – hitherto an organisation shrouded in secrecy – laid plans for a daring rescue mission: Operation Nimrod.

Drawing on unpublished source material, exclusive interviews with the SAS, and testimony from witnesses including hostages, negotiators, intelligence officers and the on-site psychiatrist, bestselling historian Ben Macintyre takes readers on a gripping journey from the years and weeks of build-up on both sides, to the minute-by-minute account of the siege and rescue.

Recreating the dramatic conversations between negotiators and hostages, the cutting-edge intelligence work happening behind-the-scenes, and the media frenzy around this moment of international significance, The Siege is the remarkable story of what really happened on those fateful six days, and the first full account of a moment that forever changed the way the nation thought about the SAS – and itself.

‘The pre-eminent historian of the secret world . . . His books have set the gold standard for accurate historical reporting, but read like heart-pounding thrillers’ Mick Herron

‘Macintyre does true-life espionage better than anyone else’ John Preston

On leadership

Emma — Thu, 08 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Written in short, pithy chapters, packed with examples drawn from all forms of political systems from around the world, the book answers the key questions: How should a leader organise the centre of government and their office? How should they prioritise and develop the right plan and hire the right personnel, cope with unforeseen events and crises, and balance short-term wins with longterm structural change? What’s the best way to deal with an obstructive or inert bureaucracy, to attract investment, to reform healthcare or education, and to ensure security for the citizen? And how should governments harness the massive opportunities of the 21st-century technological revolution?Now he has written the manual on political leadership that he would have wanted when he first took office in 1997, sharing the insights he has gained from his personal experience and from observing other world leaders at first hand, both while he was prime minister and since, through his Institute’s work with political leaders and governments globally.