Aerosmith

Aeschylus

Aesop lived in the early sixth century BC on the island of Samos, which lies off the coast of modern Turkey. He originally came from Thrace which was a separate country in those days, though it now forms part of Greece and Bulgaria. Very little is known about his life except that he worked as a slave on Samos for a master called Iadmon, and that he became a very famous storyteller. He was so famous that almost any fable which could have been told by him became attributed to him.

Aesop

Afsaneh Knight

Afsaneh Moqadam

Afua Hirsch is a writer, filmmaker, and journalist. She is the author of Brit(ish), the Sunday Times bestseller that explores Britishness, identity and belonging, for which she was awarded the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Prize for Non-Fiction. She co-presented Enslaved, a 6-part series about the transatlantic slave trade with Samuel L Jackson. She is the presenter of the Audible podcast series We Need To Talk About the British Empire, and Africa Rising, an ongoing flagship series about art and culture for the BBC, through her production company Born in Me Productions. She is a longtime columnist for the Guardian and is a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California.

Afua Hirsch

AGAPI STASSINOPOULOS is an author, blogger and international speaker who inspires audiences around the world. She has spoken at many corporations and conferences, such as Nike Women, Starbucks,Time Inc., Virgin, Johnson &amp; Johnson and the American Heart Foundation. She was born in Athens and trained in London at RADA before gaining a Master’s in psychology at the University of Santa Monica. She has collaborated with her sister, Arianna Huffington, to develop talks and seminars, and has worked with the Oprah Winfrey network. She is currently hosting a new podcast series in collaboration with The Huffington Post, entitled ‘Sundays with Agapi’, which includes guided meditations and interviews with prominent guests. She lives in Los Angeles.

Agapi Stassinopoulos

Agatha Christie

Aggie MacKenzie

Aghnia Mardiyah is a London-based Illustrator and Character Designer with a passion for children's books and animation. She is drawn to fun, bright and vibrant colours. When she isn't disappearing under piles of work, she loves to travel! Exploring foreign places, exciting new sights and sensations is what inspires her the most!

Aghnia Mardiyah

Agnes Callard is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. Her primary areas of specialization are ancient philosophy and ethics. She has written for The New York Times, New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper’s, Boston Review, and penned a monthly column for the Point. From 2019 to 2020, she held a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for the research that contributes to this book.

Agnes Callard

Agnes Jekyll

Agnes Bertha Marshall (24 August 1855-29 July 1905) was an English culinary entrepreneur who became a leading cookery writer, dubbed the 'Queen of Ices'. Her 1888 cookery book included a recipe for 'cornets with cream', possibly the earliest publication of the edible ice cream cone. Marshall was born in Walthamstow. She wrote four books: Ices Plain and Fancy: The Book of Ices (1885), Mrs A B Marshall's Book of Cookery (1888), Mrs A B Marshall's Larger Cookery Book of Extra Recipes (1891) and Fancy Ices (1894).

Agnes Marshall

Agnes Prus

Agri Ismaïl is a Kurdish author based in Sweden who has worked as a corporate lawyer in London, Dubai, and Iraqi Kurdistan. His work has been published in The White Review, The Rumpus, Litro, 3:AM Magazine, and Asymptote amongst other places. His piece 'Haunted Home' won the 2016 Stack award for best non-fiction for The Outpost, runner-up in the Lifted Brow &amp; RMIT non/fictionLab Prize for Experimental Non-Fiction, and he was longlisted for the 2017/2018 Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize. Hyper is his first novel.

Agri Ismaïl

Aharon Appelfeld authored more than 45 acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction and received many international awards including the MLA Commonwealth Award, the Independent Foreign Fiction prize, the prix Médicis étranger, the Israel prize, and the Nelly Sachs prize. Born in Czernowitz, Bukovina (now part of Ukraine) in 1932, he survived the Holocaust and passed away in Israel in 2018.

Aharon Appelfeld

Ahmadou Kourouma

Ahmed Alnaouq is a Palestinian journalist and human rights activist based in London. He is the co-founder and director of We Are Not Numbers and a journalist with Palestine Deep Dive. Ahmed holds a degree in English Literature from Al-Azhar university in Gaza, and an MA in International Journalism from Leeds University, where he was a Chevening Scholar. 
 
Pam Bailey is a social-justice activist and journalist based in Washington DC. She lived and worked in the Gaza Strip following the 2008/9 Israeli assault, and co-founded We Are Not Numbers. Today, in addition to her ongoing dedication to the Palestinian cause, she dedicates herself to two nonprofits that advocate for people detained in American prisons -- including one she co-founded in 2020, called More Than Our Crimes.

Ahmed Alnaouq

Ahmed Errachidi

Ahmed Rashid

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar

Ahron Bregman is the author of four books about Israel and the Arabs: The Fifty Years War (with Jihan el Tahri), Israel's Wars, A History of Israel and Elusive Peace. He teaches at the Department of War Studies, King's College London.

Ahron Bregman

Ai Qing is regarded as one of the finest modern Chinese poets, whose free verse was influential in the development of new poetry in China.

Ai Qing

Ai Weiwei

Aidan Chambers was born in County Durham in 1934. After national service in the Royal Navy he became a teacher and then, for seven years, a monk. His young adult novels have been widely acclaimed, with POSTCARDS FROM NO-MAN'S LAND winning the prestigious Carnegie Medal and the US Michael L Printz Award. With his wife Nancy he ran Signal magazine and he has served as the president of the School Library Association. His devoted services to children's literature were recognised by his receipt of the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2002.

Aidan Chambers

Aidan Higgins was born in 1927. Langrishe Go Down, his first novel, won the James Tait Black memorial Prize and the Irish Academy of Letters Award, and was later filmed for television with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. His second novel, Balcony of Europe, was shortlisted for the 1972 Booker Prize. The novel Lions of the Grunewald appeared in 1993 and a collection of shorter fiction, Flotsam and jetsam, in 1996. Donkey's Years and Dog Days were the first two volumes of the Higgins Bestiary which concludes with this volume.

Aidan Higgins

Aidan Mathews

Aidan Potts

Aidan Smith

Aidan Storey

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Tommy Cooper

Dive into the wonderful world of Tommy Cooper! 
 
The perfect gift for anyone who loves to laugh, packed with side-splitting humour and classic one-liners from the legendary comedian, including:<ul><li>"My wife is a magician, yesterday she turned our car into a tree."</li><li>"A big white horse walks into a pub. The barman says, 'we have a drink named after you.' The horse says, 'what? Eric?'"</li><li>"I said, 'waiter, what's that in my soup?' he said, 'I'd better call the boss, I can't tell one insect from another.'"</li><li>"I'm reading a book called 'Sex Before 20'. Personally I don't like audiences."</li><li>"I said, 'it's serious, doctor, I've broken my arm in 20 places'. He said, 'well stop going to those places.'"</li><li>"I call my car flattery. It gets me nowhere."</li></ul> 
Bringing together his timeless wit and charm, the All in One Joke Book reveals why Tommy Cooper remains one of our greatest and most beloved comedians of all time.

Tommy Cooper All In One Joke Book

Book Joke, Joke Book

Ross Kemp

Ross Kemp's fascinating guide of the worst places in the world. 
 
Want to know where to discover the perfect sunset in Fiji? How about a tropical paradise in St Lucia, or one of the world’s beautiful natural wonders in the Alps? 
 
Well this is NOT the book for you. 
 
But if you want to know about meeting transvestite prostitutes in a South African prison, or being attacked for a can of tuna in the Congo, buying crack cocaine in a Venezuelan prison or being chased by dogs in a haunted house in Belize, then look no further. Ross Kemp has visited the worst places in the world, and here they are in all their horror – in a handy A to Z format. 
 
This is not one hell of a travel guide. This is a travel guide to hell.

A-Z of Hell: Ross Kemp’s How Not to Travel the World

Stephen Whitehead

Are you a Neanderthal (unreconstructed male)?  Or perhaps you're married to a Manchild (think midlife crisis)?  Is your brother a Cool Poser (he thinks he is)?  Or do you work with a Corporate Man? We all know that men come in many shapes and sizes - but do you know how to recognise the difference between an Achilles and an Adonis?  This highly entertaining guide shows you how to identify the man in your life - or recognise your own personality.  Written in a tongue-in-cheek, accessible style, this book contains serious insights into the nature of men and masculinity by a respected expert on gender studies.  Starting with a guide to modern men and their behaviours, it then goes on to reveal the 27 different faces of men in detail.  For every woman who wants to find out more about the man in her life (or how to recognise the ones she needs to stay away from in future), or for every man who wants to find out why he behaves the way he does, this book is a must.

The Many Faces Of Men

Alexander Lee

Featuring the beauties of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, combined with the dark and hidden side of the Renaissance, by an acclaimed historian and expert in the period. 
 
Renowned as an age of artistic rebirth, the Renaissance is cloaked with an aura of beauty and brilliance. But behind the Mona Lisa’s smile lurked a seamy, vicious world of power politics, perversity and corruption that has more in common with the present day than anyone dares to admit. Enter a world of corrupt bankers, greedy politicians, sex-crazed priests, rampant disease, and lives of extravagance and excess. Enter the world of the ugly Renaissance. 
 
Uncovering the hidden realities beneath the surface of the period’s best-known artworks, historian Alexander Lee takes the reader on a breathtaking and unexpected journey through the Italian past and shows that, far from being the product of high-minded ideals, the sublime monuments of the Renaissance were created by flawed and tormented artists who lived in an ever-expanding world of bigotry and hatred. The only question is: will you ever see the Renaissance in quite the same way again?

The Ugly Renaissance

Ellie Laks

The incredible true story of a place where animals heal and children learn to hope 
 
‘When I started The Gentle Barn, some viewed it as a hobby or an obsession, some as an act of selfless devotion. To all of those people, I want to say, You don’t understand. I’m not saving the animals; they’re saving me.' 
 
Ellie Laks was just seven years old when she was abused by her childminder. Through the troubled years that followed, animals were her salvation. 
 
Through near bankruptcy and a devastating fire, Ellie's dedication has not diminished. But it wasn't until she opened up the Barn to at-risk children and children with special needs that she realised how her animals could teach lessons in forgiveness and healing to others. 
 
This is a truly inspirational memoir, full of heartbreaking stories of hope and healing.

My Gentle Barn

The incredible true story of a place where animals heal and children learn to hope

Simon Fanshawe

This is a book for those who unashamedly want manners in the world. They are the essence of living together. And we are struggling to find rules that we can agree on in a new world where change and uncertainty are a way of life and personal responsibility is at a disastrous low. 
 
No-one wants to bow and scrape to the rhythms of outdated etiquette any more.We need to seek out the original social purpose of manners and apply the principles to life today. We need rules of respect for each other and an agreement to stick to them. Combining an appeal to history, anthropology and common sense with a witty disdain for the sillier snobberies of the traditionalists, Simon Fanshawe has borrowed the format of Erasmus's great work on behaviour, De Civilitate Morum Puerilum, and created a modern basis for good manners. 
 
So it doesn't matter if you pass the port to the right or the left as long as it goes in one direction and that way everyone gets a drink. Hold your knife any way you want except as a weapon so strangers will never feel threatened at your table. Date, eat, work, speak, dress, talk on your mobile, tip, text, take your children to eat out in any way you like as long as you do it in a way that respects other people. This is a campaign. Join now and march.

The Done Thing

Barry Turner

Tony Rennell

Compelling and moving real-life accounts of the impact on family life of the return of the troops at the end of the Second World War. 
 
Summer 1945. Britain was in jubilant mood. At last, the war was over. Soon the men would be coming home. Then everything would be fine: life would get back to normal. 
 
Or would it? Six long years of war had profoundly changed family life. For years, Dad had been a khaki figure in a photograph on the wall, a crumpled letter from overseas, an occasional visitor on weekend leave. Now he was here to stay, a stranger in a group that had learned to live without him - and was not always prepared to have him back. 
 
Most homecomings were joyful, never-to-be-forgotten moments of humour and hope. Others were hard. And there was no one to deal with the tears and the trauma. 
 
It would take hope and courage for families to live and love together again.

When Daddy Came Home

How War Changed Family Life Forever

Nigel McCrery

A crime scene. A murder. A mystery. 
 
The most important person on the scene? The forensic scientist. And yet the intricate details of their work remains a mystery to most of us. 
 
Silent Witnesses looks at the history of forensic science over the last two centuries, during which time a combination of remarkable intuition, painstaking observation and leaps in scientific knowledge have developed this fascinating branch of detection. Throwing open the casebook, it introduces us to such luminaries as 'The Wizard of Berkeley' Edward Heinrich, who is credited with having solved over 2000 crimes, and Alphonse Bertillon, the French scientist whose guiding principle 'no two individuals share the same characteristics' became the core of identification. Along the way, it takes us to India and Australia, Columbia and China, Russia, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. And it proves that, in order to solve ever more complicated cases, science must always stay one step ahead of the killer.

Silent Witnesses

Katie Price

Katie Price: model, businesswoman, author and Celebrity Big Brother 2015 winner, tells all in this explosive autobiography 
 
The last three years of Katie Price's life have been as dramatic as ever. From the highly publicised divorce from Alex Reid to the romance and split from Leandro Penna, and a whirlwind marriage and surprise pregnancy with Kieran Hayler, Katie has been through a lot of changes. And that’s just her love life. 
 
Katie has also dealt with increasingly bitter disputes with first husband Peter Andre and her former manager, as well as her public spats with comedian Frankie Boyle, who made offensive comments about her son Harvey, and Kelly Brook, over her dalliance with Danny Cipriani. 
 
Despite her personal life being played out in the public arena, Katie remains true to her heart by always speaking her mind and living life to the full. This fifth instalment of Katie's roller-coaster life provides intimate access to her side of all the stories with her own special brand of humour, compassion and total honesty.

Love, Lipstick and Lies

Sophia Kingshill

The Estate of Jennifer Westwood

Pirates and smugglers, ghost ships and sea-serpents, fishermen’s prayers and sailors’ rituals – the coastline of the British Isles plays host to an astonishingly rich variety of local legends, customs, and superstitions. 
 
In The Fabled Coast, renowned folklorists Sophia Kingshill and Jennifer Westwood gather together the most enthralling tales and traditions, tracing their origins and examining the facts behind the legends. Was there ever such a beast as the monstrous Kraken? Did a Welsh prince discover America, centuries before Columbus? What happened to the missing crew of the Mary Celeste? Along the way, they recount the stories that are an integral part of our coastal heritage, such as the tale of Drake’s Drum, said to be heard when England was in peril, and the mythical island of Hy Brazil, which for centuries appeared on sea charts and maps to the west of Ireland. The result is an endlessly fascinating, often surprising journey through our island history.

The Fabled Coast

Legends & traditions from around the shores of Britain & Ireland

Daniel Metcalfe

‘A rich and fascinating book about an overlooked African powerhouse by a travel writer of rare talent.’ TIM BUTCHER, author of Blood River and Chasing the Devil 
 
Since the end of its crippling 27-year civil war over a decade ago, Angola has changed almost beyond recognition. An oil-fuelled bonanza has brought about massive foreign investment and a fabulously wealthy new elite, making its capital, Luanda, the second most expensive city in the world. Today, fortunes are being made and lost overnight, and rich Angolans are eagerly buying up the assets of its former coloniser, Portugal. 
 
Fascinated by this complex nation perched at the forefront of a resurgent Africa, writer Daniel Metcalfe travelled to Angola to explore the country for himself. Ebullient and proud, and often unwilling to dwell on its past, Angola has a large army, a hunger for wealth and a need to prove itself on the continent. But as Metcalfe also discovers, it has some of the most grinding poverty in Africa as few Angolans have reaped the rewards of the peace. 
 
Nonetheless, amid Angola's brash reality, Metcalfe finds there is a place for a traveller who isn't there to make a quick buck. Crossing the country as ordinary Angolans do, talking to tribal elders, oil workers, mine clearers and street children, he encounters a place of extremes, where cynicism and excess go hand-in-hand with great hospitality and ingenuity. Metcalfe also reveals a colourful history of pirates and slave traders, capuchin monks, syncretic Christian cults and elaborate spirit masks. 
 
This is an Angola that symbolises nothing less than a broader turning point between the continents, the repositioning of the rich developed world versus Africa. It is a land that, until now, few outsiders have managed to unlock.

Blue Dahlia, Black Gold

A Journey Into Angola

Michael Calvin

Winner of The Times British Sports Book Award 2014. 
 
A fascinating insight into the enclosed world of football scouts in the UK 
 
A teenaged boy plays football in a suburban park. His name is Raheem Sterling. The call is made: “Get down here quick. This is something special”. 
 
Another boy is 8, going on 28. His name is Jack Wilshere. The referee, an Arsenal scout, spirits him away from Luton Town. 
 
A young goalkeeper struggles on loan at Cheltenham Town in League Two. His name is Jack Butland. Within months he will be playing for England. 
 
Welcome to football’s hidden tribe. Scouts are everywhere yet nowhere, faceless and nameless, despite making the informed decisions worth millions. Award-winning sportswriter Michael Calvin opens up their hidden world, examining their disconnected lifestyles, petty betrayals and unconsidered professionalism of men who spend long, lonely hours on the road.

The Nowhere Men

David Jason

Winner of the National Book Awards Autobiography of the Year 
 
The long-awaited autobiography of one of Britain's best-loved actors 
 
*As seen in David and Jay’s Touring Toolshed on BBC Two* 
 
Born the son of a Billingsgate market porter at the height of the Second World War, David Jason spent his early life dodging bombs and bullies, both with impish good timing. Giving up on an unloved career as an electrician, he turned his attention to acting and soon, through a natural talent for making people laugh, found himself working with the leading lights of British comedy in the 1960s and '70s: Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Bob Monkhouse and Ronnie Barker. Barker would become a mentor to David, leading to hugely successful stints in Porridge and Open All Hours. 
 
It wasn't until 1981, kitted out with a sheepskin jacket, a flat cap, and a clapped-out Reliant Regal, that David found the part that would capture the nation's hearts: the beloved Derek 'Del Boy' Trotter in Only Fools and Horses. Never a one-trick pony, he had an award-winning spell as TV's favourite detective Jack Frost, took a country jaunt as Pop Larkin in the Darling Buds of May, and even voiced a crime-fighting cartoon rodent in the much-loved children's show Danger Mouse. 
 
But life hasn't all been so easy: from missing out on a key role in Dad's Army to nearly drowning in a freak diving accident, David has had his fair share of ups and downs, and has lost some of his nearest and dearest along the way. 
 
David's is a touching, funny and warm-hearted story, which charts the course of his incredible five decades at the top of the entertainment business. He's been a shopkeeper and a detective inspector, a crime-fighter and a market trader, and he ain't finished yet. As Del Boy would say, it's all cushty.

David Jason: My Life

Kate Williams

This is the incredible rise and unbelievable fall of a woman whose energy and ambition is often overshadowed by Napoleon’s military might. In this triumphant biography, Kate Williams tells Josephine’s searing story, of sexual obsession, politics and surviving as a woman in a man’s world. 
 
Abandoned in Paris by her aristocratic husband, Josephine's future did not look promising. But while her friends and contemporaries were sent to the guillotine during the Terror that followed the Revolution, she survived prison and emerged as the doyenne of a wildly debauched party scene, surprising everybody when she encouraged the advances of a short, marginalised Corsican soldier, six years her junior. 
 
Josephine, the fabulous hostess and skilled diplomat, was the perfect consort to the ambitious but obnoxious Napoleon. With her by his side, he became the greatest man in Europe, the Supreme Emperor; and she amassed a jewellery box with more diamonds than Marie Antoinette’s. But as his fame grew, Napoleon became increasingly obsessed with his need for an heir and irritated with Josephine’s extravagant spending. The woman who had enchanted France became desperate and jealous. Until, a divorcee aged forty-seven, she was forced to watch from the sidelines as Napoleon and his young bride produced a child.

Josephine

Desire, Ambition, Napoleon

Ben Mezrich

Straight Flush is the true story of a group of University of Montana frat brothers who turned a weekly poker game in the basement of a local bar into one of the largest online poker companies in the world. 
 
At its height, the group's online empire was bringing in revenues of over a million dollars a day. The industry they launched grew so huge so fast, and in such a grey area of US and international law, at first it was never really clear whether their actions were legal or criminal. 
 
From setting up their operations in Costa Rica, to their efforts at building a veil of legitimacy in Vancouver; from embracing a hedonistic lifestyle of girls, drugs and money to becoming some of the richest people in the world; from engaging in operations against their competitors that sometimes escalated into near all-out wars to the legal battles that finally resulted in one of them heading to prison and another living life on the run – Straight Flush is an exclusive look behind the headlines of one of the biggest stories of the past decade.

Straight Flush

Charlie Richardson

Charlie Richardson, one of Britain's most notorious gangland bosses, sheds light on his extraordinary life story completed just weeks before his death in September 2012. 
 
Notorious Charlie Richardson was the most feared gangster in 1960s London. Boss of the Richardson Gang and rival of the Krays, to cross him would result in brutal repercussions. Famously arrested on the day England won the World Cup in 1966, his trial heard he allegedly used iron bars, bolt cutters and electric shocks on his enemies. 
 
The Last Gangster is Richardson’s frank account of his largely untold life story, finished just before his death in September 2012. He shares the truth behind the rumours and tells of his feuds with the Krays for supremacy, undercover missions involving politicians, many lost years banged up in prison and reveals shocking secrets about royalty, phone hacking, bent coppers and the infamous black box. 
 
Straight up, shocking and downright gripping, this is the ultimate exposé on this legendary gangster and his extraordinary life.

The Last Gangster

My Final Confession

Al Murray

Al Murray's (AKA The Pub Landlord) musing on his childhood where his fascination with history and all things war began. 
 
Have you ever watched a film with someone who, at the most dramatic scene, argues that the plane on screen hasn't been invented yet? Or that the tank rumbling towards the hero at the end of the film is the wrong tank altogether? 
 
Al Murray is that someone. Try as he might, he can’t help himself. 
 
Growing up in the 1970s, Al, with the help of his dad, became fascinated with the history of World War Two. They didn’t go to football; they went to battlefields. Because like so many of his generation whose childhood was all about Airfix, Action Man and Where Eagles Dare, he grew up in the cultural wake of the Second World War. 
 
Part memoir, part life obsession, this is Al Murray musing on what he knows best. And he’s sure to tell you things about history that you were never taught at school.

Watching War Films With My Dad

William Cook

One Leg Too Few will feature an extensive range of fresh interviews, previously unpublished archive material and a wealth of information about the most creative (and explosive) double act that British comedy has ever produced. 
 
One Leg Too Few is a book about an extraordinary relationship: a friendship, a partnership - almost, at times, a marriage. Like a lot of marriages it ended badly, but for nearly 20 years, between the first date and the inevitable divorce, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore were the funniest thing on three continents. 
 
One Leg Too Few is the story of that relationship, and the comedy that came from it.

One Leg Too Few

Allan Williams

The story of the photographic intelligence work undertaken from a country house at Medmenham, Buckinghamshire, is one of the great lost stories of the Second World War . 
 
At its peak in 1944, almost 2,000 British and American men and women worked at the top-secret Danesfield House, interpreting photographs - the majority stereoscopic so they could be viewed in 3D - to unlock secrets of German military activity and weapons development. Millions of aerial photographs were taken by Allied pilots, flying unarmed modified Spitfires and Mosquitos on missions over Nazi Europe. it was said that an aircraft could land, the photographs be developed and initial interpretation completed within two hours - marking the culmination of years of experiments in aerial intelligence techniques. 
 
Their finest hour began in 1943, during the planning stages of the Allied invasion of Europe, when Douglas Kendall, who masterminded the interpretation work at Medmenham, led the hunt for Hitler's secret weapons. Operation Crossbow would grow from a handful of photographic interpreters to the creation of a hand-picked team, and came to involve interpreters from across the Medmenham spectrum, including the team of aircraft specialists led by the redoubtable Constance Babington Smith. In November that year, whilst analysing photographs of Peenemunde in northern Germany, they spotted a small stunted aircraft on a ramp. This intelligence breakthrough linked the Nazi research station with a growing network of sites in northern France, where ramps were being constructed aligned not only with London, but targets throughout southern Britain. 
 
Through the combined skill and dedication of the Crossbow team and the heroism of the Allied pilots, throughout late 1943 and 1944 V-weapon launch sites were located and through countermeasures destroyed, saving hundreds of thousands of lives, and changing the course of the war. 
 
Operation Crossbow is a wonderful story of human endeavour and derring-do, told for the first time.

Operation Crossbow

The Untold Story of the Search for Hitler’s Secret Weapons

Tony Benn

In this final volume of diaries, Tony Benn reflects on the compensations and the disadvantages of old age. 
 
With the support of a small circle of friends and his extended family, he continues his activities on behalf of social justice, peace and accountability in public life, to a background of political change and the international economic crisis. 
 
Following an illness in 2009 the diaries, kept for over sixty years, cease. Published here alongside these last diaries are Tony Benn’s highly personal insights into the challenges of old age and failing health, of widowhood,and of moving out of the family home after sixty years. 
 
Finally, we share in Tony Benn's hopes for the future based on his years of experience and his natural optimism.

A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine

The Last Diaries

Tracy Bloom

A very funny romantic novel (... and no. 1 ebook bestseller) 
 
Childhood sweethearts Matthew and Katy agree they must never see each other again following a school reunion. 
 
So all is forgotten ... until eight months later when a shock meeting at an antenatal class forces them to confront the fact that Matthew could be the father of Katy's baby. 
 
Love and life are messy, but Katy and Matthew take things to a whole new level as deep emotions begin to resurface and hormones run riot. 
 
Never has a one-night-stand led to such chaos!

No-one Ever Has Sex on a Tuesday

Paul Tough

Why character, confidence, and curiosity are more important to your child’s success than academic results. The New York Times bestseller. For all fans of Oliver James or Steve Biddulph’s Raising Boys, Raising Girls, and The Complete Secrets of Happy Children. 
 
 
In a world where academic success can seem all-important in deciding our children’s success in adult life, Paul Tough sees things very differently. 
 
Instead of fixating on grades and exams, he argues that we, as parents, should be paying more attention to our children’s characters. 
 
Inner resilience, a sense of curiosity, the hidden power of confidence - these are the most important things we can teach our children, because it is these qualities that will enable them to live happy, fulfilled and successful lives. 
 
In this personal, thought-provoking and timely book, Paul Tough offers a clarion call to parents who are seeking to unlock their child’s true potential – and ensure they really succeed.

How Children Succeed

Ron Burgundy

_______________________ 
The autobiography everyone has been waiting for: a shockingly candid and raw confessional from an international treasure. 
 
The world’s most trusted and beloved television News Anchor, Ron Burgundy, pulls no punches in Let Me Off at the Top! Burgundy tells the tale of his humble beginnings in a desolate Iowa coal-mining town to his years at Our Lady Queen of Chewbacca High School to his odds-defying climb to the dizzying heights of Anchordom. 
 
In his very own words Burgundy reveals his most private thoughts, his triumphs – and his disappointments. His life reads like an adventure story complete with knock-down fights, beautiful women and double-fisted excitement on every page. He has hunted jackalopes with Bobby Kennedy and Peter Lawford, had more than his share of amorous exploits and formed the greatest on-air team in the history of televised news. Along the way, he’s hobnobbed with people you wish you knew and some you honestly wish you didn’t— celebrities, presidents, presidents’ wives, celebrities’ wives, dogs and, of course, Veronica Corningstone, the love of his life. Who didn’t Mr. Burgundy, or ‘Ron’, as he is known to his friends, rub elbows with in the course of his colourful and often criminal life? 
 
This may well be the most thrilling book ever written, by a man of great physical, moral and spiritual strength and, not surprisingly, a great literary talent as well. We owe it to him, and to ourselves, to read it. 
 
With never-before-seen photographs. Some in colour!

Let Me Off at the Top!

My Classy Life and Other Musings

Michael Williams

In the seven decades since the darkest moments of the Second World War it seems every tenebrous corner of the conflict has been laid bare, prodded and examined from every perspective of military and social history. 
 
But there is a story that has hitherto been largely overlooked. It is a tale of quiet heroism, a story of ordinary people who fought, with enormous self-sacrifice, not with tanks and guns, but with elbow grease and determination. It is the story of the British railways and, above all, the extraordinary men and women who kept them running from 1939 to 1945. 
 
Churchill himself certainly did not underestimate their importance to the wartime story when, in 1943, he praised ‘the unwavering courage and constant resourcefulness of railwaymen of all ranks in contributing so largely towards the final victory.’ 
 
And what a story it is. 
 
The railway system during the Second World War was the lifeline of the nation, replacing vulnerable road transport and merchant shipping. The railways mobilised troops, transported munitions, evacuated children from cities and kept vital food supplies moving where other forms of transport failed. Railwaymen and women performed outstanding acts of heroism. Nearly 400 workers were killed at their posts and another 2,400 injured in the line of duty. Another 3,500 railwaymen and women died in action. The trains themselves played just as vital a role. The famous Flying Scotsman train delivered its passengers to safety after being pounded by German bombers and strafed with gunfire from the air. There were astonishing feats of engineering restoring tracks within hours and bridges and viaducts within days. Trains transported millions to and from work each day and sheltered them on underground platforms at night, a refuge from the bombs above. Without the railways, there would have been no Dunkirk evacuation and no D-Day. 
 
Michael Williams, author of the celebrated book On the Slow Train, has written an important and timely book using original research and over a hundred new personal interviews. 
 
This is their story.

Steaming to Victory

How Britain's Railways Won the War

Jim Perrin

Using unpublished diaries, Jim Perrin, the acclaimed author of The Villain and Menlove, tells the story of the greatest exploring partnership in British history. In the 1930s Tilman and the younger Shipton pioneered many routes in Africa and the Himalayas and found the key to unlocking Everest. They crossed Africa by bicycle, explored China with Spender and Auden, journeyed down the Oxus River to its source and, with no support, opened up much of the Nepalese Himalaya. In the words of Jim Perrin, 'The journeys of discovery undertaken through two decades by this pair of venturesome ragamuffins are unparallelled in the annals of mountain exploration.' 
 
Jim Perrin writes of his source-material: 'These unpublished diaries, journals, and extensive correspondence have not previously been used to present a portrait of the most productive friendship in the history of mountain exploration. What they reveal is, in Shipton's phrase, "a random harvest of delight" gathered by two uniquely bold and engaging characters from the great mountain ranges of the world during the golden era of their first western exploration. Between geographical excitement, the nature of arduous travel in difficult and uncharted terrain throughout a lost epoch, and the quirkiest and most stimulating of friendships, the theme is a gift, and one that has long been waiting for adequate treatment'.

Shipton and Tilman

Simon Sebag Montefiore

‘An epic adventure story set against the most awful war in history. Ridiculously good’ Dan Snow 
 
If your children were forced to testify against you, what terrible secrets would they reveal? 
 
Moscow 1945. As Stalin and his courtiers celebrate victory over Hitler, shots ring out. On a nearby bridge, a teenage boy and girl lie dead. 
 
But this is no ordinary tragedy and these are no ordinary teenagers, but the children of Russia’s most important leaders who attend the most exclusive school in Moscow. 
 
Is it murder? A suicide pact? Or a conspiracy against the state? 
 
Directed by Stalin himself, an investigation begins as children are arrested and forced to testify against their friends - and their parents. This terrifying witch-hunt soon unveils illicit love affairs and family secrets in a hidden world where the smallest mistakes will be punished with death.

One Night in Winter

Alexander Kent

Let the master storyteller of the sea, multi-million copy seller Alexander Kent, transport you to the heart of the action in this no-holds-barred naval adventure. You'll feel like you're on the deck with Bolitho! 
 
'One of our foremost writers of naval fiction' -- Sunday Times 
'Shipwreck, survival ... a spirited battle ... a splendid yarn'' -- The Times 
'A great read from beginning to the end' -- ***** Reader review 
'Keeps you hooked - I was not able to stop reading until the dramatic finale!!!' -- ***** Reader review 
'Edge of your seat reading, most enjoyable' -- ***** Reader review 
'Difficult to put down. Superb' -- ***** Reader review 
'Another masterpiece from Alexander Kent' -- ***** Reader review 
************************************************************************************************** 
1808: As Napoleon holds Portugal and threatens his old ally Spain, Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho is dispatched once more to the Cape of Good Hope to establish a permanent naval force there. 
 
Setting aside his bitter memories and the anguish of a friendship betrayed, Bolitho takes passage in the ill-fated Golden Plover. With him sail others commanded by duty and lured by danger - and those who wish only to escape. 
 
But when shipwreck and disaster overtake the Golden Plover off the desolate coast of Africa, neither the innocent nor the damned are spared. Beyond the tortured hell of the reef, Bolitho's battle begins - to summon the survivors' last reserves of courage and of hope.

Beyond the Reef

(The Richard Bolitho adventures: 21): an unputdownable naval page-turner from the master storyteller of the sea

Alastair Campbell

She likes a drink. Everyone has a problem. 
 
Hannah is seventeen. A drink makes her feel better. For a bit. But then she feels worse and the pain inside comes back. 
 
This is the story of Hannah’s addiction as seen by the people around her – her mum, her little sister, her best friend, her best friend’s mother, her mum’s boyfriend… 
 
Powerful and passionate, their voices shed a sometimes shocking, sometimes tender light on a life veering terrifyingly off course. 
 
‘Campbell has taken the vilified, sprawling, drunken youths caricatured in tabloid headlines and, in one young girl, showed us the damaged human beings beneath.’ The Times 
 
‘This superb book is sad, terrifying and uplifting in equal measure. Every parent, every young man or woman and anyone who “likes a drink” should read it.’ Anne Robinson

My Name Is...

Mimi Alford

The sensational story of Mimi Alford and the secret she kept for 40 years - her teenage affair with President John F Kennedy during her time as a White House Intern. 
 
During the 18 months that Mimi Alford was President John F Kennedy’s lover, he never kissed her on the lips. 
 
For the naive All American girl, the JFK White House was a place for which she was not remotely prepared. Dominated by the charismatic and sexually magnetic figure of the president, it was as a 19-year-old intern in the White House press office that Mimi Alford became the object of Kennedy’s affections, and within days they had started a relationship. 
 
She lost her virginity to him on her fourth day at work. 
 
In Once Upon a Secret, for the first time, Alford has revealed every detail of her experiences as Kennedy’s mistress – an affair that was ended only by his assassination. 
 
Mimi has decided, after 40 years of silence and deep reflection, to tell her story.

Once upon a Secret

My hidden affair with JFK

Alex Kershaw

_______________________ 
The true story behind the hit NETFLIX drama 
 
From the invasion of Italy to the gates of Dachau, no World War II infantry unit in Europe saw more action or endured worse than the one commanded by Felix Sparks. 
 
The US Army 157th regiment, known as the Thunderbirds, drew many of its men from more than fifty different Native American tribes, mixed in with Mexican-Americans and men more used to herding cattle in the American southwest. Felix Sparks, tasked with leading the diverse regiment regarded by generals as one of the US's finest fighting forces, was a maverick officer, and the only man to survive his company's wartime odyssey from bitter beginning to victorious end. 
 
Here, his remarkable true story is told for the first time, along with those of the men who bravely fought alongside him. 
_______________________ 
'Exceptional....The Liberator balances evocative prose with attention to detail and is a worthy addition to vibrant classics of small-unit history like Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers' Wall Street Journal 
 
'A revealing portrait of a man who led by example and suffered a deep emotional wound with the loss of each soldier under his command ... The Liberator is a worthwhile and fast-paced examination of a dedicated officer navigating - and somehow surviving - World War II.' Washington Post 
 
'A history of the American war experience in miniature, from the hard-charging enthusiasm of the initial landings to the clear-eyed horror of the liberation of the concentration camps.' The Daily Beast 
 
'Kershaw has ensured that individuals and entire battles that might have been lost to history, or overshadowed by more 'important' people and events, have their own place in the vast, protean tale of World War II ... Where Kershaw succeeds, and where The Liberator is at its most riveting and satisfying, is in its delineation of Felix Sparks as a good man that other men would follow into Hell - and in its unblinking, matter-of-fact description, in battle after battle, of just how gruesome, terrifying and dehumanizing that Hell could be.' Time

The Liberator

One World War II Soldier's 500-Day Odyssey From the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau

Prepare to be gripped by this prequel series to R.D. Wingfield's A Touch of Frost. 
 
Back in Denton, Detective Sergeant Jack Frost returns to investigating murders, finding missing children, and discovering dead bodies in woodland areas. With Detective Inspector Williams missing, and a new policeman, DS Waters, to mentor, DS Jack Frost has to put the stresses and straings of his personal life on hold in order to keep Denton safe.

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