Tales of Real Survival

Any book that keeps me, my 14-year-old son and my 75-year-old dad intrigued and entertained has got to be a winner. Sixty-five pages jam-packed with fascinating stories of survival in the most desperate circumstances that leave you wondering how you would cope and thankful for a quiet life. Some of the tales are well known - Apollo 13, the three survivors of the sinking of HMS Hood, the Hindenburg disaster - whilst others were new to me. One of my favourites was the tale of the Yugoslav air stewardess who was the sole survivor of a terrorist bomb in 1972 when the tail section of the plane in which she found herself fell 10,000 feet and landed in a pond. With a couple of pages on survival skills, a couple on what happened to some of the people 'After the Ordeal' and plenty of photos, diagrams, maps and well-drawn colour illustrations, this is worth a fiver of anyone's money. I can't wait to get my hands on the companion volume - Tales of Real Escape.