Showing results by author "Peter-FitzSimons" in All Categories

The epic story of the Boer War and Harry 'Breaker' Morant: drover, horseman, bush poet - murderer or hero? Most Australians have heard of the Boer War and of Harry 'Breaker' Morant, a figure who rivals Ned Kelly as an archetypal Australian folk hero. But Morant was a complicated man. Born in...

Love him or loathe him, Ned Kelly has been at the heart of Australian culture and identity since he and his gang were tracked down in bushland by the Victorian police and came out fighting, dressed in bulletproof iron armour made from farmers' ploughs. Historians still disagree over virtually every aspect of the eldest Kelly boy's brushes with the law. Did he or did he not shoot Constable Fitzpatrick at their family home?

In the early 1930s, Nancy Wake was a young woman enjoying a bohemian life in Paris. By the end of the Second World War, she was the Gestapo's most wanted person. As a naive, young journalist, Nancy Wake witnessed a horrific scene of Nazi violence in a Viennese street. From that moment, she declared that she would do everything in her power to rid Europe of the Nazis. What began as a courier job here and there became a highly successful escape network for Allied soldiers.

The story of one man who had the guts to lose his gut. This is an audiobook that will finally help an ordinary bloke lose weight. Ever struggled with your weight? Or did you stop struggling years ago and let the pies win? Peter FitzSimons has been there and eaten that. In The Great Aussie Bloke Slim-Down, he will lead you through the fads that failed him, the diets that died fast and left him furious, and the ways his waistline kept the belt industry in business.

The story begins in 1629, when the pride of the Dutch East India Company, the Batavia, is on its maiden voyage en route from Amsterdam to the Dutch East Indies, laden down with the greatest treasure to leave Holland. The magnificent ship is already boiling over with a mutinous plot that is just about to break into the open when, just off the coast of Western Australia, it strikes an unseen reef in the middle of the night.

Sport was never meant to be complicated. No gibberish, no statistics, no talk of green-zones, black-zones, channels and percentage plays, no cheating, no grubbiness and certainly no ball-tampering. Peter FitzSimons celebrates the good, the generous and the kind in Australian sport, the genuine characters, the national treasures and the special moments when the losers were the true champions and the game, whichever game, was done proud.

Great stories from around Australia to lift your heart, make you laugh and puff out your chest. In his very popular Saturday column, the 'Fitzy Files', Peter FitzSimons usually writes about famous sports men and women. But from time to time, he throws in stories taken from grassroots sport and daily life.

All those great and not so great sporting moments that have made us chuckle, roll and roar with laughter, told in Peter FitzSimons' inimitable style. Putting his unique spin on our sporting life, Peter FitzSimons celebrates the tall tales and true, the outrageous yarns and the knockabout humour from the footy fields, cricket grounds, dressing rooms, bars and commentary boxes of Australia.