Killing My Own Snakes: A Memoir

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Read more about the condition Very Good: A book that has been read and does not look new, but is in excellent condition. In David Randall's book The Great Reporters (celebrating the 13 greatest British and American journalists of all time), the author profiled Ann Leslie as 'the most versatile reporter ever. She was born in Rawalpindi – then in India – in 1941 to an oilman father, and spent her early childhood skipping through Basra and the Raj. They were guilty, of course, but there were also plenty of Serbian victims of Bosnian and Croatian atrocities, and she dared to tell their stories.

I have these two kids who constantly talk to each other, but when I try to separate them, they insist on sitting together. No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins. In my experience, novice teachers stuck with unusually unruly students will improve their management skills if given the opportunity to remove the disruptors. Any mentions of imperialism or capitalism are snortingly dismissed as nonsensical concepts conceived by "fuzzy-wuzzies" with a chip on their shoulder (Ann's casual use of racist language throughout may be catchy) She's been to lots of places, seen lots of things but evidently learnt very little. In this book she describes her life from childhood in India, early work on a provincial newspaper and then to her travels around the world's often dangerous places, meeting many of the people, nice and not so nice, who helped shape the late 20th century.

Ann Leslie is quite simply one of the most fearless, talented and witty journalists in Britain today. I vehemently disagree with many of Leslie's political views, but she is more liberal than her stereotype suggests. She had a varied career and no doubting her skills and the funny stories were vague my amusing but I got a bit bored halfway through when she got more into the politics. Killing My Own Snakes is a witty, incident-filled account of an extraordinary life, a fascinating self-portrait of one the most influential journalists of our time.

Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). The early chapters about Ann's days in 60's Manchester, a posh young lady in the inky, grubby, sexist world of the Daily Express building on Great Ancoats street are a great read. In the recent Reuters/Press Gazette launch of the Newspaper Hall of Fame she was listed as one of the forty most influential journalists in the last forty years. In the course of a long and glorious career, Dame Ann has interviewed film stars, presidents, princes and celebrities of every shade.Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages. But beneath this impossible construct, there is a darker, more dazzling figure: a daughter of the Raj, all-but-abandoned by her mother, who fought through a tide of misogyny to the top of Fleet Street. I am an independent online bookseller, based near Southampton, Hampshire in the South of England, with approximately 8,000 books - new, second hand, scarce, hard to find and out-of-print books – and have been in business for more than 19 years. This is the sort of memoir you really want to read as she has a multitude of tales to tell about plenty of fascinating people, as well as telling her own story of building a successful career in Fleet Street at a time when a young, educated, female was not considered the ‘right sort’ for cutting edge journalism. Why did she tramp through the guerrilla camps of Rhodesia, holding her machine gun over her pregnancy bump?