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The Tastemaker: My Life with the Legends and Geniuses of Rock Music

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Children are our future, and this book is about their future. As a scientist who has studied the climate from pole-to-pole, and as a parent with two young daughters, I believe there is no more important issue to inform and educate young people about."

Clearly, someone with that life must have some stories to tell. Which begs the question: what stories is King telling in his new book? Dr Tony Juniper CBE is an environmentalist and writer. He is Chair of the official Nature recovery agency Natural England, a fellow of the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and Chair of Cool Earth. He was formerly Director of Friends of the Earth, Executive Director at WWF, President of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts and Special Advisor to the Prince of Wales’s International Sustainability Unit. Writing in Air Mail, Victoria Segal shared some impressions of King’s memoir. Segal writes that King “knows how to balance irreverent entertainment with respectful discretion” and “has little interest in dishing real dirt.” And it sounds like a compelling read, from its firsthand accounts of some of music’s biggest names to what Segal describes as a harrowing look at the rise of AIDS. When the first edition of the Ladybird Expert book on Climate Change was published in 2017, CO2 levels in the atmosphere were 405 parts per million (ppm), now they are 420 ppm. As a consequence, the impacts of climate change are becoming worse and we saw temperatures reach an incredible 40C in the UK last summer. Despite admitting the murder in interview, King pleaded not guilty in two preliminary hearings, before changing his plea to guilty in May 2023.

Including tales of John Lennon and Elton John

A Ladybird Book: Climate Change" includes an Afterword in which The Prince Charles, the former Prince of Wales sets out a personal message to readers. (The Afterword was written last year, when His Majesty The King was still The Prince of Wales.) In an unpublished TikTok video the following day, after the murder took place, he recorded himself saying: “I have just taken a life today.” The court heard that Cooper, who ran a magic shop until 2017, was selling her property and was excited to start a new chapter in life, but was discovered dead by her daughter at her home in Eastbourne on 18 December 2022. Cooper’s family initially believed she had fallen down the stairs and reopened wounds from a recent operation as she recovered from cancer. But police investigations revealed she had suffered five stab wounds to her abdomen and chest. There has been no more effective or committed champion of this cause than the former Prince of Wales and I am sure this book and his words will help to keep things moving in the right direction.”

Cooper’s family and friends, including her daughter, Natasha Cooper, and her brother, John Cooper, were in court. The pair spoke of the “devastating” impact the murder had had on their family. The Tastemaker charts the singular life of a man who has been at the beating heart of music's most iconic moments for over sixty years and features stories of his time working with everyone from the Beatles to the Ronettes and Elton John to the Rolling Stones.CCTV showed King going into Cooper’s flat, and leaving around an hour later at 9.14am carrying an orange plastic bag. John Cooper learned of his sister’s murder during a phone call to their mother, Zena, in which he heard Natasha Cooper calling her on the landline screaming: “She’s dead, there’s blood everywhere.” This leads us to the Pikes of 2018; a place where you were just as likely to find Tony partying on the dance floor late at night (“I’m the oldest one there but I have my moments,” he said in recent years) or quietly having a moment with one of his two beloved cats, Pikey and Blossom in the garden. A place where Tony continued to hold court with guests by the pool or over his favourite breakfast. “Like everyone else who makes the mistake of getting older, I begin each day with coffee and obituaries,” he was cheekily quoted as saying on social media recently. He loved the staff of the hotel dearly, all of whom treated Tony like a family member and said he believed the hotel was in the perfect hands, knowing Dawn and Andy would respect his wish to preserve the heritage of Pikes. As if my imagination had been waiting for the question to be asked, I saw a vast deserted city—deserted but alive. I saw the empty streets, the haunted buildings, a gargoyle head lying overturned in the street. I saw smashed statues (of what I didn’t know, but I eventually found out). I saw a huge, sprawling palace with glass towers so high their tips pierced the clouds. Those images released the story I wanted to tell.”

As an octogenarian, doctors had called Tony a walking miracle. In recent years, years, Tony had been quietly battling cancer and was hospitalised with pneumonia just a little over a week ago. He cited the medical treatment he received throughout his life as amazing, and while doctors and nurses would continually tell him to slow down, Tony would insist on living his life to the fullest – even in his 80s, he was known to jump off the roof of Room 39 into the pool. “I’m an old man, but I don’t feel it,” he said of his behaviour. When recalling Freddie Mercury’s death, Tony once said: “Freddie was a very brave man. He partied to the end and he entertained to the end.” He could have easily been describing about himself. The roll call of Pikes hotel guests reads like a magazine gossip column at times: Mike Oldfield (who stole Tony’s girlfriend at the time), Joan Baez, Frank Zappa, Boy George, Kylie Minogue, Spandau Ballet, Brigitte Nielsen, Robert Plant, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Kenny Everett, the English football team, Bon Jovi and even Tony Curtis (who Tony Pike refused to lend his car to!). There were the iconic songstresses he famously romanced, Sade and Grace Jones, (this gentleman did indeed kiss and tell in his memoir) and the many superstar DJs of the world who passed through the island as Ibiza cemented its reputation as the clubbing capital of the world. In between romancing his glamorous guests over the years, Tony also committed to two more marriages, which in turn produced two more children.King’s storytelling in Fairy Talesoars. This is a magnificent and terrifying tale about another world than ours, in which good is pitted against overwhelming evil, and a heroic boy – and his dog – must lead the battle. UK: Rishi Sunak hosts talks with Kamala Harris, vice-president of the US, at No 10, followed by a private dinner; Harris also delivers a policy speech on the future of AI at the US embassy in London; Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, speaks at the annual conference of the King’s Fund, a health think tank; start of Movember, the moustache-growing charity event held during November each year to raise funds and awareness for men’s health.

Obituary based on stories and anecdotes from Tony Pikes: The story behind the Ibiza legend – to get the true grit and Tony’s firsthand account of his life’s story, buy the book! Libby Walden, Commissioning Editor for Ladybird said the Ladybird title has a long history of making non-fiction accessible for children.

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July 4, 1980 was the ‘official’ opening date of Pikes. Over the years, Tony would continue its transformation in the off-seasons, adding more and more rooms, turning old stables into the reception area, adding the swimming pool that would go on to become emblematic of the hotel and the freedom it stood for. Finally, he put in a tennis court that was rarely used – except by Pike and his favourite tennis partner, Freddie Mercury. He’s been credited as creating the original blueprint for the ‘boutique hotel’ trend, prior to Ian Schrager staking claim to the title. But knowing Tony, he wouldn’t have cared less for a title. “I didn’t see myself as an interior designer but somehow I ended up being both,” he once said.

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