The explosive new book from Britain’s leading investigative biographer, Tom Bower.
As one of the most famous and influential couples in the world, David and Victoria Beckham have attained iconic status. The ultimate power couple have together built a multi-billion-dollar global brand. For decades, adoring fans have been captivated by the glamorous world they have created, while their unrivalled fusion of showbiz, fashion, football and celebrity has been cultivated alongside the image of a strong marriage.
When the much-trailed Netflix documentary Beckham aired in 2023, viewers were offered an even more intimate insight into their private lives. Produced by the Beckhams themselves, the series raised many questions, not only about their success and personal relationship, but also about the ruthlessly successful management of their image in the media. Are their lives really as perfect as the Beckhams would like the world to believe? Through extensive research, expert sourcing and interviews with insiders, Britain’s most celebrated investigative biographer, Tom Bower, has unearthed a succession of revelations that give surprising insight into the reality of ‘Brand Beckham’.
Exploring the couple’s relationship, and the truth about their football and fashion careers, their finances and their new life in Miami, The House of Beckham unravels the extraordinary reality of the business-savvy cultural icons to tell an engrossing, often astonishing story of money, sex and power.
Never give up hope before the dogs have crossed the finishing-line.
Harryboy Boas is a lowlife gambler. When he’s not at the track, he lives in a Hackney boarding house, reading Zola, eating salt beef, pressing trousers and repressing wartime memories. But when a new family moves into the apartment downstairs, his life starts to unravel and Harryboy soon finds himself sinking into a murky East End underworld where violence, guilt and gangsters are the inevitable result for those who cannot pay their dues.
A celebrated cult classic, The Lowlife brilliantly evokes post-war East London – dog tracks, sandwich shops, tenements, sex workers, newly arrived West Indians and Jews leaving for Finchley – all seen through the tragicomic eyes of Harryboy, our picaresque rogue hero suffering from ‘existential burn-out in the shadow of the Holocaust’ (Iain Sinclair) and driven to bet, brag and beg to survive.