Please contact lydia@d4films.com for information on where to buy.
Imagine living in a country during a terrible war and then peace is declared. You think the killing is over, but when you take your kids to the beach you can’t walk on it because the beach blows up if you do. This is the legacy of the landmine. It is not brave to leave mines behind when war is over and I want to see the world rid of these terrible weapons.
Sir Paul McCartney, for The Devil’s Gardens
Lydia Monin and Andrew Gallimore provide an accessible digest of the use of these machines and the efforts to remove them, care for their victims, and ban them.
Times Literary Supplement
Princess Diana’s crusade, the Ottawa Treaty, and the Nobel Peace Prize have all raised general awareness and resolve to combat this problem. This book continues the crusade. It is important for all who will travel and work in developing nations … This book is important also for doctors everywhere who wish to be counted with those who condemn the practice of innocent slaughter of civilians, long after a conflict is over.
BMJ
Based on a television series of the same name produced and directed by the authors, this book provides a clear account of the invention and proliferation of landmines, "a global humanitarian crisis".
Publishers Weekly
Biographies of worthy champions of yore as densely packed with detail as this one are as rare as unified titles are today… It’s a highly recommended book about a forgotten great.
The Ring
F. Scott Fitzgerald was "proud to have boxed three rounds with Freddie," and Gallimore makes a strong, detailed case for Welsh having been the model for The Great Gatsby … there's plenty to interest non-boxing people. The book gives a fascinating picture of the times.
Boxing News
Lydia Monin has done a superb job. Not only has she got the cruel and sleazy world of boxing right, she captures the spirit of a crazy time in American social history. She must have read every book, newspaper article and magazine story ever written about Heeney. And she writes beautifully. This is, without a doubt, the sports book of the year.
North & South Magazine
For a time, Tom Heeney was one of the most famous people on the planet and arguably New Zealand's first international celebrity. Unfortunately, he has become one of New Zealand's forgotten heroes and the book has been released at an appropriate time to restore his place in the history.
Gisborne Herald
Indeed, this book is filled with suspense and intrigue more akin to a novel than one man's real life story - and one does not have to be a fan of boxing to enjoy it.
Heritage Matters
… a well-written and well-researched account of one of the more interesting yet neglected stars of world boxing …
Boxing Monthly
The first thing I do when I sign or work with fighters in my role as a promoter is hand him a copy of the book 'Babyface Goes to Hollywood: fighters, mobsters and film stars.’
Barry McGuigan
Monin has assembled comments and perceptions about New Zealand from a catalogue of literary travellers, including Kipling, Conan Doyle, Mark Twain and Noel Coward. The result is an absorbing, diverse view of ourselves as others have seen us.
The Press
Journalists are no longer so keen to hear celebrities' opinions of New Zealand, and tend to smile at the whole idea: we no longer do the colonial cringe. But Monin's book suggests the cringe was complex, and sometimes mixed with defiance.
Sunday Star Times
A lovely volume to keep handy for entertaining family and friends.
Otago Daily Times
You would hardly expect a book about a boxing event to read like a thriller. Depends, I suppose, on whether you know the outcome. Those who don't are in for an enthralling read.
Sunday Tribune
It was one of the strangest sporting events in Irish history. In the midst of a war zone where bombs and bullets had claimed countless lives, an Irish no-hoper took on the might of the world.
Daily Mail
All this is told with great verve in A Bloody Canvas: The Mike McTigue Story, Andrew Gallimore’s second first-rate biography of a long-ago boxing champion … "Fifty years from now,’ wrote [Paul] Gallico in 1927 about McTigue’s amazing turnabout, “the mild Irishman who turned knockout king will be one of the great stories of the ring.” In Gallimore’s skilled hands, it still is.
The Ring