Al Rodin is a writer and illustrator from London. He studied children's book illustration at Cambridge School of Art and received the 2019 Sebastian Walker Prize. Al enjoys working with a wide variety of materials including acrylic, watercolour and collage. His paintings have been exhibited in galleries around Europe and Asia, and he was selected for lllustrators' Exhibition at the Bologna Children's Book Fair in 2019. Little Echo is his first book.

Al Rodin

Al Smith

Alain Gheerbrant

Alain de Botton is the bestselling author of fifteen books, including The School of Life: An Emotional Education, How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Consolations of Philosophy, The Art of Travel and The Course of Love. He is the founder of The School of Life (theschooloflife.com).

Alain de Botton

Alaina Urquhart is the science-loving co-host of the chart-topping show Morbid: A True Crime Podcast. As an autopsy technician by trade, she offers a unique perspective from deep inside the morgue. Alaina hails from Boston, where she lives with her wonderful husband, John, their three amazing daughters, and a ghost Puggle named Bailey. She is about 75 percent coffee, and truly believes she and Agent Clarice Starling could be friends. 
 
Before writing her first psychological horror novel, she received degrees in criminal justice, psychology, and biology. When she isn't hosting Morbid, she hosts the Parcast original show Crime Countdown, and a horror movie podcast called Scream!. Her days are usually spent either recording or eviscerating. The way she sees it, when she hangs up her microphone for the day, it's time to let the dead speak.

Alaina Urquhart

Alaine Hood

Alan Alda

Alan Ayckbourn

Born in London in 1939, Alan Ayckbourn is one of  the world's most popular and prolific playwrights. He has written 74  full length plays and more than 20 other revues and plays for children.  He is also an acclaimed director. Alan Ayckbourn was awarded a CBE in  1987. Ten years later to the day, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II  'for services to the theatre.'

Alan Baker

Alan Barker

Alan Beattie

Alan Bennett is one of Britain's best-loved and most highly acclaimed writers. He has written widely for radio, television and theatre. His latest play, The History Boys, won several awards, including Evening Standard and Critics' Circle Awards for Best Play and the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. It also won six Tony Awards, including Best Play, following an extremely successful transfer to Broadway. In 2006 Bennett was named Author of the Year at the British Book Awards for Untold Stories, his collection of memoirs and diaries.

Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett's television series Talking Heads has become a modern-day classic, as have many of his works for the stage, including Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, The Madness of George III (together with the Oscar-nominated screenplay The Madness of King George) and an adaptation of The Wind in the Willows. The History Boys won the Evening Standard and Critics' Circle awards for Best Play, The Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and the South Bank Award.

Alan Bishop

ALAN BOOTH was born in London in 1946 and travelled to Japan in 1970 to study Noh theatre. He stayed, working as a writer and film critic, until his untimely death in 1993.

Alan Booth

Alan Brazil is a Scottish broadcasting legend and former football player, most notably for Ipswich Town, Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United and internationally for Scotland. He played as a forward before being forced to retire due to a recurring back injury. 
 
After retirement, Alan moved into media presentation, initially on television, before a career in radio where for many years he has presented the Alan Brazil Sports Breakfast show on TalkSPORT.

Alan Brazil

Alan Bullock

Alan Carr

Alan Carr is one of Britain's most successful and treasured comedians. His unique humour and effortless stage presence have earned him a catalogue of awards including Best Chat Show host at the publicly voted for 2015 National Television Awards, winner of the 2013 BAFTA for Best Entertainment Performance and 2013 British Comedy Award for Best Comedy Entertainment Personality. In previous years he has garnered a clutch of awards, from the 2012 National Television Award for Best Talk Show and the 2012 Loaded LAFTA Award for Best Stand-up to the 2010 TV Choice Awards for Best Entertainment Show. There were also nominations for Best New British Comedy &amp; Best Comedy Entertainment Personality at the 2009 British Comedy Awards. 
 
The success of the first series of his own chat show, 'Alan Carr: Chatty Man', in the summer of 2009, led to Channel 4 commissioning 16 further series' as well as numerous Christmas Specials and New Year Specstaculars. In September 2013, the 100th episode aired with A-list guests Justin Timberlake and Rihanna. Guests from past series include: Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Cameron Diaz, Vin Diesel, Adele, Grace Jones, Naomi Campbell, Hugh Grant, Drew Barrymore, Robin Williams, David Walliams, Mariah Carey, Russell Brand, Samuel L Jackson, Miley Cyrus, Robbie Williams, Bette Midler, Sharon Osbourne, One Direction, Gok Wan and Miranda Hart. 
 
The DVD of Alan's 2007 debut stand-up show, 'Tooth Fairy Live' topped the HMV charts and was a Christmas 2007 top seller. 
 
His best-selling debut autobiography 'Look Who It Is' was published in September 2008 by HarperCollins. 
 
In 2011, Alan travelled the country with his second live tour. 'Spexy Beast Live' was a 33-date arena tour and culminated in the successful DVD of the same name. 
 
Throughout 2015, Alan hit the road once again and performed at over 150 sold-out theatre's across the UK and Ireland with his 'Yap, Yap, Yap!' live show. His third stand up DVD 'Alan Carr - Yap Yap Yap! Live' was released by Universal Pictures (UK) in November 2016. 
 
2016 has also seen Alan go global with international performances of his Yap Yap Yap! live show throughout Scandinavia, Montreal (at the prestigious Just For Laughs Comedy Festival) and can currently be seen on tour this summer in New Zealand and Australia this summer, with two shows at the iconic Sydney Opera House. 
 
Alan also hosts Channel 4's flagship fundraising show 'Stand Up To Cancer' which in 2014 went on to raise an amazing £14 million for Cancer Research. Alan returns once again to host 'Stand Up To Cancer' on Channel 4 this October. 
 
Alanatomy: The Inside Story is Alan's second memoir, and will be published by Penguin in October 2016.

Alan Clark

Alan Clements

Alan Connor is the author of Two Girls, One on Each Knee: The Puzzling, Playful World of the Crossword ("witty, charming, encyclopaedic and highly readable" - Spectator) and The Joy of Quiz ("An absolute delight" - Mail on Sunday). He has made quizzes for various TV shows and newspapers and written comedy including BBC Film's The Rack Pack, A Young Doctor's Notebook (Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcliffe) and Have I Got News For You.

Alan Connor

Alan Connor has been the question editor for BBC2's Only Connect and Richard Osman's House of Games. He is the author of books for Pointless and The Traitors and is the puzzle consultant for the BBC1 drama Ludwig. He writes puzzles for various newspapers and has written for Charlie Brooker series and Have I Got News for You. His favourite quiz question is: What word was intentionally omitted from the screenplay of The Godfather?

Alan Cowell

Alan Curtis

Alan Cutler

Alan Davies

Alan Dean Foster

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Ruth Reichl

Garlic and Sapphires is Ruth Reichl's riotous account of the many disguises she employs to dine undetected when she takes on the much coveted and highly prestigious job of New York Times restaurant critic. 
Reichl knows that to be a good critic she has to be anonymous - but her picture is posted in every four-star, low-star kitchen in town and so she embarks on an extraordinary - and hilarious - undercover game of disguise - keeping even her husband and son in the dark. There is her stint as Molly, a frumpy blonde in an off-beige Armani suit that Ruth takes on when reviewing Le Cirque resulting in a double review of the restaurant: first she ate there as Molly; and then as she was coddled and pampered on her visit there as Ruth, New York Times food critic. Then there is the eccentric, mysterious red head on whom her husband - both disconcertingly and reassuringly - develops a terrible crush. She becomes Brenda the earth mother, Chloe the seductress and even Miriam her own (deceased) mother. 
What is even more remarkable about Reichl's spy games is that as she takes on these various guises, she finds herself changed not just physically, but also in character revealing how one's outer appearance can very much influence one's inner character, expectations, and appetites.

Garlic And Sapphires

Katie Price

Katie Price reveals all about her passionate and whirlwind romance with Peter Andre. 
 
After more than her fair share of heartbreak, Katie has finally found love. Physically and emotionally, she has met her match, and there have been some dramatic changes in her life as a result. Gone are the outrageous party girl antics - instead, meet Katie as you have never seen her before: a woman in love ... with no barriers. 
 
She talks about how Peter proposed, why they kept her pregnancy with Junior a secret for five months, and she reveals what it felt like to be the celebrity bride of the decade. 
 
But behind the fairy tale, Katie talks about her heartache over her son Harvey's continuing ill health and her own struggle to cope after the birth of her son, Junior. She talks, too, about how hard she has found it coming to terms with Pete's past relationships... 
 
Her book is by turns funny, moving, disarmingly honest and utterly frank. This is the one celebrity that will give you the no-holds-barred truth: the woman who always speaks her mind.

Jordan: A Whole New World

Boy George

From his days as a club face alongside Philip Sallon, Marilyn and Steve Strange, through the years of global pop superstardom with Culture Club, his rebirth as a world-class DJ, as a leading light of musical theatre with the award-winning Taboo, a cutting edge photographer and a confrontational and acclaimed fashion designer, one of the many things you can say about George is: he's never stood still. 
 
It's been one hell of a trip. A decade and a half ago, George was coming to terms with the fall-out from serious drug addiction, the failure of his relationship with Jon Moss and the collapse of Culture Club.For lesser men this would have been the end but for George it became the start of a period of remarkable reinvention. 
 
Told with George's trademark biting wit, brutal honesty and sparkling insight, this book reveals the whole story, reappraising his rise to stardom and all the madness that followed.He talks about his solo singing career, his initiation into the dance music scene, and his role as the driving force behind theatrical sensation Taboo.George also discusses the achievement of the apparently impossible task of reuniting the famously fractious Culture Club. 
 
It is only now, many years on from the glittering, glossy Eighties, that George makes an insightful and often hilarious assessment of the impact of that extraordinary era.

Straight

Lyndsey Harris

Andrew Crofts

For the first six years of her life, Sarah Harris was a happy and popular little girl. Until she became the target of a dangerous but invisible enemy - and her life became a living hell. Before long she was suspended from school, alienated from her friends, and terrified of herself. 
 
For her mother, Lyndsey, it was a life beyond her worst nightmares. The daughter she loved so much seemed to have transformed overnight into a child she was almost scared of. Her little girl was doing the unthinkable: stealing razor blades, attempting to poison her friends, even accusing her parents of sexual abuse. 
 
Soon Lyndsey's marriage was on the verge of collapse, social services stepped in, and Lyndsey was fighting to keep her family together - and to save her daughter's sanity. But worse was to come as Lyndsey discovered her family had been victims of the most hurtful betrayal of all...

Betrayed

He's one of America's most recognisable and acclaimed actors-a star on Broadway, an Oscar nominee for The Aviator, and the only person to ever win Emmys for acting, writing, and directing during his eleven years on M*A*S*H. Now Alan Alda has written a memoir as elegant, funny, and affecting as his greatest performances. 'My mother didn't try to stab my father until I was six,' begins Alan Alda's irresistible story. The son of a popular actor and a loving, but mentally ill mother, he spent his early childhood backstage in the erotic and comic world of burlesque and went on after early struggles to achieve extraordinary success in his profession. 
 
Yet Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is not a memoir of show business ups and downs. It is a moving and funny story of a boy growing into a man who then realizes he has only begun to grow. It is the story of turning points in his life, events that would make him what he is - if only he could survive them. 
 
From the moment as a boy when his dead dog is returned from the taxidermist's shop with a hideous expression on his face, and he learns that death can't be undone, to the decades-long effort to find compassion for the mother he lived with but never knew, to his acceptance of his father in him, personally and professionally, he learns the hard way that change, uncertainty and transformation are what life is made of, and the good life is made of welcoming them. 
 
Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, filled with curiosity about Nature, good humour and honesty, is the crowning achievement of an actor, author, and director, but surprisingly, it is the story of a life more filled with turbulence and laughter than any he's ever played on the stage or screen.

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed

Helena Frith Powell

Why is it that French women look just as glamorous in a T-shirt and pair of jeans as in a sleek designer dress? How do they look sexy, chic and timelessly elegant from eighteen to eighty? Pencil-thin, stylishly dressed and, always, impeccably groomed? 
 
In search of answers, travel and lifestyle journalist Helena Frith Powell goes behind the scenes to investigate the famous French je ne sais quoi. Talking to fashion gurus, beauty experts and It Girls, professional seducers, lingerie designers and personal shoppers, she discovers a whole new world: indispensable wardrobe and beauty secrets; shopping done the right way and exercise routines promising lasting success; advice on sex toys, family life, relationships and clandestine affaires. French women, Helena realises, achieve maximum effect with the least amount of effort. And with the help of a few little secrets, you too can become impossibly French ...

Two Lipsticks and a Lover

John Burnett

In 1998, on the lookout for adventure and willing to take a risk, John Burnett left the comforts of the mainstream and became a UN relief worker in Somalia. He was completely unprepared for the realities of working in a country without government or law, where the only authority comes from a loaded gun. Held at gunpoint by a child soldier, having to watching a baby die of malaria in his arms, the experience profoundly changed the way he saw the world.

Where Soldiers Fear To Tread

At Work in the Fields of Anarchy

Chelsea Handler

'Many people feel like a one-night stand is something to be ashamed or embarrassed of. I disagree...' 
 
We've all (well not quite all, perhaps) had at least one: a one-night stand. Often embarrassing and uncomfortable, occasionally outlandish, but most times just a necessary and irresistible evil, the one-night-stand is a social rite as old as sex itself and as common as a bar stool. 
 
Enter Chelsea Handler. Gorgeous, sharp, and anything but shy, Chelsea loves men... Lots of them. My Horizontal Life chronicles Chelsea's romps through the bedrooms of a host of potential suitors, uncovering what can happen in one night of passion between a man and a sometimes very intoxicated woman. 
 
From her short fling with a Vegas stripper named Thunder to her even shorter fling with a very short man, she recalls her myriad one-night stands with hilarious honesty. My Horizontal Life is a sensationally frank and funny memoir of sexual life, and a gloriously quirky take on why we do the things we do. Whether you have been there yourself or not, its one guilty pleasure you won't be ashamed to talk about in the morning...

My Horizontal Life

Stephen Venables

Like the swallows, our son Ollie came in the spring and left in the autumn. Dancing, singing, swooping - there was something birdlike about his energy, joy and laughter - but also the fleeting, enigmatic quality of his life. 
 
When he was two he lost all his speech, as autism turned his life - and ours - into a baffling challenge. Then at four he had to face a new challenge when he almost died from leukaemia. But chemotherapy worked its magic and he made a full recovery. He was a tough survivor and nothing seemed to dim his spirit: he could light up a room and energize everyone around him. So it was a huge shock, after several cancer-free years, when a fatal brain tumour was discovered. This time his body had had enough and he died very suddenly. He was twelve. 
 
Ollie had extraordinary courage and endurance. Time after time he bounced back, determined to enjoy life. He was obstinate, mischievous, playful, flirtatious, quixotic, funny. He generated - and continues to generate - huge amounts of laughter. And he was very beautiful. We always felt that if autism had not unravelled the wiring of his neural pathways, he would have achieved extraordinary things. 
 
This is the story of the journey we made with Ollie. Unlike a mountaineer, pursuing extreme experiences out of choice, he had difficulty thrust upon him: he was forced to be brave. For me, too, the journey was far more compelling than any expedition.

Ollie

The True Story of a Brief and Courageous Life

John Pearson

Britain's foremost writer on crime turns to the disappearance of Lord Lucan. The basis of the upcoming ITV drama, Lucan, starring Rory Kinnear and Christopher Eccleston 
 
For over thirty years, John Pearson has provided us with literary exposures of some of the most enigmatic people and underground organisations of our modern world. The Gamblers follows the fortunes of five men at the centre of the ultra-fashionable Clermont Set: the Clermont Club's eccentric founder John Aspinall; Dominic Elwes, who was to betray the Set's code of silence; the socialite owner of Annabel's, Mark Birley; the womanising, multi millionaire James Goldsmith; and the infamous Lord 'Lucky' Lucan. 
 
At the heart of the Set lay a belief that risk-takers are the people who make civilisation tick.Cruel, heartless and snobbish, they gambled with their fortunes and kept a stiff upper lip when they lost.This and a loyalty to each other that transcended everything else enabled them to rise above crises such as the long affair between Birley's wife and James Goldsmith, and the facial mutilation of the Birley's son by one of Aspinall's tigers.Pearson revels in the charisma, charm and wit of these dastardly but debonair millionaires, and reveals how their code led to one of the great unsolved mysteries of the twentieth century.

The Gamblers

Gilda O'Neill

In the 1940s, nearly a quarter of a million East Londoners decamped annually for the hopfields of Kent. Most of the pickers were women, who would take their children and other dependent relatives to stay in the hoppers' huts on the farms. 
 
This book records the memories of some of them, in their own lively words. Funny, nostalgic and ironic by turns, they tell of hopping as 'a break from him', an escape from the chesty London smog, respite from the bombs of war, as well as a source of income - and the nearest thing to a holiday that adults or children were likely to get. It was a time of hard graft, of laughter and companionship and long evenings around the faggot fire. In the memories of those who were there, it was a time when the sun always shone ... 
 
Gilda O'Neill was herself a hop picker as a girl. In this vivid book she not only pays tribute to the creative genius of the working class of London's East End, but examines the role of memory and oral history in our understanding of the past.

Lost Voices

Memories of a Vanished Way of Life

Julia Scheeres

All Julia Scheeres ever wanted was to have a normal, happy family. But when her fanatical mother decides they should all move to rural Indiana, Julia's life begins to unravel. 
 
In the blistering heat of the isolating community, Julia and her adopted brother David struggle together through adolescence. But with a mother who whose first concern is her church missionaries, and a distant father whose rare presence is resented by all and feared by others, home for Julia becomes a place of unspeakable secrets...

Another Hour On A Sunday Morning

Roger McGough

Roger McGough is one of Britain's best-loved poets, and something of a national institution. His name is ubiquitous with matter-of-fact Scouse humour, easy-going charm, and perfect observations of the idiosyncrasies of everyday life, whether you know him from his poetry, or from his regular broadcasts on television or radio. 
 
Roger first rose to prominence in the 1960s as a member of the pop group The Scaffold, who had two number one hits - Thank U Very Much and Lily The Pink. He began his poetry career performing with The Grimms, alongside fellow Liverpool poets Adrian Henri and Brian Patten, with whom he went on to publish The Mersey Sound, which remains the biggest-selling British poetry book ever. 
 
This is his autobiography - and like the best of his poetry it is packed full of hilarious observations, unbelievable stories, nostalgic reminiscences and bittersweet tales of love, life and loss. From his memories of growing up in Liverpool, playing in bombed out houses as a young boy, to the skiffle-crazed days of his adolescence, through to his time at university - and his meetings there with Larkin. He explores his sudden, almost overnight fame and success with Mike McCartney et all in The Scaffold, as well as his time working with George Martin, and co-writing the Yellow Submarine film script for the Beatles, through his international touring days, to the present. 
 
He certainly has many a story to tell about meeting some fascinating characters: Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Marlon Brando, Alan Ginsberg, Pete McCarthy and Salman Rushdie all appear amongst others, but it's his sheer story-telling nous, and his gift for observing the minutia of everyday life, and to completely capture a moment in time which sets this apart from other books. 
 
His life story is one that will be universally identifiable to those who grew up with him - who embraced the verve and irreverence of the sixties, only to end up as slightly embittered romantic cynics. This is done here in the most funny, poignant, bittersweet, and melancholic autobiography you will read this year - a man whose hugely popular take on it all resonates with honesty and humour.

Said And Done

The Presleys

The Number One Sunday Times Bestseller 
 
Forty years after his death, Elvis Presley remains one of the world's most beloved and iconic figures. 
 
There has been an impressive array of bestselling Elvis books over the years, but there has never been a book like this. Now, for the first time, Elvis, the man, husband father and artist, is remembered intimately and honestly by his ex wife Priscilla, daughter Lisa Marie and other close family members. 
 
Including deeply personal documents and previously unseen family photographs, this sensational book also features new interviews with family and friends. 
 
From personal diary entries to unearthed artefacts, Elvis by the Presleys is a publishing phenomenon and comes closer than any other book in revealing the private dreams and truths of the extraordinary and complex man, who became the king of Rock and Roll.

Elvis by the Presleys

Mavis Marsh

On 12th October 1995, Mavis Marsh answered her door to the news every parent dreads most. 'It's your son,' the policeman told her. 'He's been in an accident.' Only hours earlier Matthew had been set for a dazzling future but, in one terrible night, a devastating tragedy altered everything. 
 
Days later, Mavis found herself standing at her son's bedside as doctors told her to give up all hope. According to them, the damage to Matthew's brain was too severe for him to recover, and the boy she had known and loved was gone forever. 
 
But Mavis and her husband Keith couldn't give up on their only son. And refusing to accept the diagnosis, they started to work with Matthew themselves, desperately urging their comatose son to fight. For months they tried, to no avail. But then, almost half a year later, he suddenly started to respond ...

Shattered

Gyles Brandreth

This is the definitive account of one of the most extraordinary stories of our time. Gyles Brandreth, acclaimed biographer of the Queen and Prince Philip, presents a unique portrait of their son, Charles, Prince of Wales, and of the one 'non-negotiable' love of his life, Camilla Shand, now Duchess of Cornwall. 
 
What are Charles and Camilla really like? What is their heritage? What has made them the way they are? This is both a revealing portrait of two unusual individuals and a family saga like no other, told with unrivalled authority and insight - and humour - by a best-selling writer who has met all the key characters in the drama: Charles, Camilla, Diana, their children, their families and their friends.

Charles & Camilla

Barbie Probert-Wright

Jean Ritchie

Two sisters. A broken childhood. A heartbreaking journey. 
 
The extraordinary true story of surviving the unimaginable ... 
 
In 1945, seven-year-old Barbie and her sister Eva were trapped, terrified, in wartorn Germany. With their father missing, and hundreds of miles from their mother, news of the approaching army left them confronted with an impossible choice: to face invasion, or to flee on foot. 
 
Eva, aged nineteen, was determined to find her mother. For Barbie, twelve years younger, the journey was to be more perilous but, spurred on by her sister's courage and her desperate desire to be reunited with her mother, she joined Eva on a journey no child should ever have to endure. 
 
Over three hundred miles across a country ravaged by a terrible war, they encountered unimaginable hardship, extraordinary courage and overwhelming generosity. Against all the odds, they survived. But neither sister came out of the journey unscathed ...

Little Girl Lost

Ben Mezrich

For nearly five years, he was known as the 'Darling Of Las Vegas'; the biggest high roller to hit Sin City in decades, a hotshot, twenty one year-old kid with a seemingly unlimited bankroll and an even more unlimited lust for big money action. His name was Semyon Dukatch, and stories swirled in his wake. Some said he was a Russian arms dealer, others a pop star from Eastern Europe. But the truth was even more unlikely: he was a twenty-one year old graduate student who had a plan that would one day make him richer than anyone could possibly imagine. 
 
The Darling of Las Vegas quickly became a legend in the casino world. He is the only person banned from the island of Aruba. He was held, at gunpoint, in a cave in Monte Carlo and told that if he ever returned, he'd be murdered. And he made millions of dollars playing blackjack, using three simple techniques that gave him the edge, techniques that are revealed in this book for the first time. 
 
This is his story, the ultimate true story of Las Vegas, the book Vegas doesn't want you to read...

Breaking Vegas

Leslie Thomas

From Barnardo boy to original virgin soldier; from apprentice journalist in London's Fleet Street to famous novelist... 
 
At times funny, at times sad, but always honest and utterly compulsive, Leslie Thomas's story is straight out of fiction. As an orphan, he picked his way through the rubble of post-war Britain and was sent on national service to the Far East. Later he became a Fleet Street reporter, with hilarious experiences to relate, and then became the bestselling author of The Virgin Soldiers - the novel that, although scandalous in its day, is now recognised as a classic of its kind. He is also the creator of Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective, which has been adapted into a popular television series. In 2005, Leslie Thomas was awarded an OBE for services to literature. 
 
With a new introduction for this edition, this is an amazing story, and Leslie Thomas's magic touch brings it crackling to life with warmth, wit and humour.

In My Wildest Dreams

Steven Jacobi

What makes people laugh? Where does the urge to make people laugh come from? And just how hard can it really be to become a stand-up comedian? In pursuit of the answers to these questions - and more - writer and comedy obsessive, Steven Jacobi has set himself a horrifying task: to perform as a stand-up comic in six comedy clubs around Britain. (The Amused Moose, at the Enterprise in Chalk Farm; XSMalarkey in Manchester; the Cheeky Monkey at the Station in Kings Heath, Birmingham; Ha! in New York; Oi! Oi! in Eastbourne and Up the Creek in Greenwich, London.) 
As he gathers together material for his big adventure, Jacobi tracks down his comedy heroes, Ken Dodd and Woody Allen and seeks their advice and wisdom. He looks at the long tradition of British humour and looks to, among others, a Python, Eric Sykes, Frank Skinner and Steve Coogan to get their take on comedy. 
Only then does he embark on his ordeal, logging - in unsparing detail - the venues, audiences, hecklers and humiliation. All the while charting his all-important material, evolving - and hopefully refining - as he travels across the country on his masochistic odyssey.

Laughing Matters

Mark Wallington

Mark Wallington has a dream. He is going to change the face of British comedy. 
 
Unfortunately for the residents of north London, he's going to finance this dream by becoming a gardener. 
 
The result is The Day Job, an account of a year spent working in other people's gardens: people like Mrs Fleming who is convinced there is buried treasure in the bottom bed; Mr Walters who is trying to create a fascist state policed by gnomes in his well-guarded plot in Gospel Oak; Mrs Glover who is probably the most attractive woman living in Britain; and poor Mr Nugent, who likes to save his urine in jam jars and pour it over his compost. 
 
Over four seasons Wallington crosses Hampstead Heath from job to job. He survives brushes with the evil contract gardeners who keep trying to knock him off his bicycle. He strives to impress literary agent Herman Gapp who might represent him - depending on what sort of job he does on Gapp's Alpine Terrace. He even finds time to fall for a housecleaner-cum-actor named Helen, as he becomes part of a strange band of artistes, each with a day job of their own, all waiting for that first break. 
 
This is the story of long nights spent in the back room of a pub trying to write unsolicited scripts, and of much longer days spent trying to understand the British and their strange obsession with gardening.

The Day Job

Adventures of a Jobbing Gardener

Robin Campbell

Ali Campbell

Born and raised in a council house on Birmingham's notorious Balsall Heath under the watchful eye of their staunchly socialist, folk singer father, Robin and Ali Campbell were to become members of the most successful reggae band in the world, a career that has spanned four decades. 
 
But this is not the autobiography of a pop band legend, but rather the story of two working class brothers crashing and burning and fighting back against the odds. It is the story of growing up in the 1960s to the sounds of Motown and ska, folk music and skiffle and radical politics and - most importantly - the new and infectious sound of reggae that was to capture the ears of these two teenage kids from the Midlands. 
 
Instilled by their father from an early age to always do things their own way, the brothers - in between dead end jobs and the dole office - put together a band that would show Balsall Heath what reggae was all about . Mismanagement, drink, drugs, divorce, paranoia and jail terms would dog the band and threaten to destroy it all - including the brother's relationship and yet they come to amass record sales in excess of 50 million, with nearly 50 hit singles to their credit - from 'Red Red Wine' and 'Don't Break My Heart' to 'Homely Girl' and 'I Got You Babe'.

Blood And Fire

Bob Geldof

Bob Geldof first visited Africa in 1984. The following year, Live Aid inspired a generation to raise millions for the starving in Africa. 
 
Over twenty years on, passion undiminished, Geldof returns to what he calls the Luminous Continent. This is his personal diary. Unflinchingly honest, and stunningly illustrated with his own photographs, Geldof in Africa paints a unique picture of this extraordinary and beautiful land.

Geldof In Africa

Valentino Rossi

Valentino Rossi is the greatest living motorcyclist. His legions of fans adore him (over 4,000 turned up to see him in Leicester Square last March). He has fought through the 125 and 250 class groups to win the World Championships five times and has been ranked in the top three places at the World Championships for the last nine years. He is currently the MotoGP World Champion, and has won on a Honda bike - considered the best - and most recently on a Yamaha - considered the worst. He is arguably the greatest racer ever - and certainly the most entertaining - his post race antics and cheeky personality have won him as many fans as his on-track prowess. He is the kind of star who only comes along once in a while - a Muhammad Ali or Pele - hugely talented, massively driven, yet also scorching charismatic, unnervingly rebellious and totally endearing - a twentieth-century version of the hell-raisers of old. 
 
All who know Rossi say he is a consummate professional, that he works harder than anyone could ever realise, but that most of all, he still loves what he does. He just seems to win more because he's still enjoying himself so much.He is infamous for his on the edge riding, pushing himself and his bike to the very limits of what they can do, and screaming around racecourses in record times. But he is also well known for his good looks, his techni-coloured hair and cheeky humour - and for his sheer youthful exuberance in victory - his post-match victory laps have become a thing of legend. Previously he has driven victory laps in full beach gear, including flip-flops, with a man sized chicken riding pillion (and also, in a jibe to Max Biaggi who had an unceremonious break-up with the model Naomi Campbell, with a life size doll of Claudia Schiffer strapped on behind him.) 
 
His warmth of character coupled with his amazing career statistics to date - his first GP win aged 17, his first world title at 18, his first 500 class win at 21 and his first MotoGP win at 22 - mean that this young man has the motorcycle racing world at his feet. His raw talent coupled with his firm belief in the 'entertainment' aspect of his sport and the importance of his fans, means that he really is the David Beckham of bikes - he has done the near impossible and transcended his own territory. His appeal - being at the top of his game without being a purist, still being seen to be young and excited by the game, and being a perfectionist on and off the track when it comes to his driving - means that he really is one of the superstars of the sporting world.

What If I Had Never Tried It

Lisa Chaney

When James Matthew Barrie died, in 1937, his funeral was an occasion for national mourning. Crowds gathered; reporters and newsreel men came to record the day, and many well-known figures followed the coffin to its resting place in the little churchyard up on the hill. In London, a month later at St Paul's Cathedral a memorial service was held for the Scottish weaver's son who died Britain's playwright extraordinaire. 
 
A succession of novels and long-running plays had brought Barrie enormous wealth, critical acclaim, an hereditary Baronetcy and the Order of Merit. His public following extended to Hollywood where his work was performed by the stars of the silver screen. Unhappily such achievements did little to ameliorate the strains in Barrie's private life. Hampered by a stigmatising divorce, he was also struck by a series of tragic bereavements from which he never fully recovered. At the same time as savouring his public image, Barrie gave no more than a handful of interviews. During his lifetime this inscrutable, enigmatic man succeeded in his desire to remain only partially known. 
 
Barrie was already famous for sophisticated political satires and social comedies when, with the creation of Peter Pan, his immense artistic gift was displayed at its extraordinary best. In the play, where 'All children except one grow up', Barrie had touched on a universal nerve, the problem of growing up. With Peter Pan he created one of the greatest twentieth-century myths and a work of art quite unlike anything that had gone before. It became a part of the common culture of the Western world, and is as relevant today as on that first performance one hundred years ago.

Hide-And-Seek With Angels

The Life of J.M. Barrie

Hugo Vickers

Harold Nicolson called her 'the greatest Queen since Cleopatra', while Cecil Beaton called her 'a marshmallow made on a welding machine'. Stephen Tennant said: 'She looked everything that she was not: gentle, gullible, tenderness mingled with dispassionate serenity, cool, well-bred, remote. Behind this veil she schemed and vacillated, hard as nails.' Who was she? 
 
The Queen Mother's story has not yet been properly told. This was partly due to her long life, and the difficulty that always exists when a biography of a living person is attempted, partly because she was a queen - and the real person gets hidden behind the perceived image - and partly because she is hard to pin down. 
 
From her privileged aristocratic childhood, to the Abdication and the problems with Diana - this book questions how she faced her challenges and crises, assesses her role, how powerful she was, and how she coped. This is a candid, personal portrait of one of Britain's most loved national treasures. 
 
Hugo Vickers, an acknowledged expert on the House of Windsor, has spent seventeen years researching this book, and observed the Queen Mother in public and private over a period of forty years.

Elizabeth, the Queen Mother

Donovan Leitch

Donovan's autobiography charts his life from a post-war, Glaswegian childhood to the height of an international career as one of the leading figures of the 1960's music scene. 
 
Always feeling like an outsider he found relief through music and poetry. The book reveals how he came to be influenced by Buddhist teachings and the music of Woody Guthrie and Joan Baez. The book explores the significance of falling deeply in love with the woman who was to become his muse, and the profound sense of loss he felt when their relationship came to an end, and how the loss affected him both personally and creatively. 
 
A leader of the folk revival in both Britain and America, the book recounts how he rose to be an international star, releasing songs such as Mellow Yellow and Catch the Wind, and his most successful album, Sunshine Superman. Donovan is acknowledged as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 1960's. 
 
The book provides a frank account of his early experiments with drugs and his search for self. He reveals the story of how he developed friendships with Baez, Dylan and the Beatles, with whom he a shared spiritual sojourn to meditate with the Maharishi in India. Donovan's autobiography offers first-hand insights into his music and poetry, recollects his rise to fame and the way in which destiny was to play a hand by re-uniting him with the lost love of his life through a chance meeting.

The Hurdy Gurdy Man

Trevor Norton

This is the beautifully told tale of Norton's growing love of the sea, from family holidays in Whitley Bay as a boy, to his first over zealous attempts at diving. 
 
All that we know and love of the British seaside weaves throughout this funny, nostalgic and richly told memoir. Fortune telling gypsies found on crumbling promenades, lighthouses standing to attention, fishing villages giving way to arcades and brass bands and sand-playing in the bracing chill of a British summer. 
 
Throughout, Norton introduces us to a eclectic mix of sea-loving characters all of whom have helped to inform and shape his own journey to becoming a marine biologist. Like the early guides to the seashore by the Naturalist Philip Henry Gosse as much a part of the myth and history of the British coastline as fishermen's tales of mermaids and eerie monsters beneath the waves. 
 
This is both a history and a memoir of an enduring, if at times perplexing, love of the sea that won't fail to resonate with all who have felt the pull of the shores.

Underwater to Get out of the Rain

A Love Affair with the Sea

John Bryant

'If you want to win something, run 100 metres. If you want to experience something, run a marathon' - Emil Zatopek 
 
The London Marathon salutes 25 years of the London Marathon by exploring the incredible physical and mental challenge that lies at the very heart of marathon running. It begins with the author standing on the start line at Blackheath for the very first London Marathon in March 1981. And it ends 26 miles and 25 years later, as the author emerges, still running, past Buckingham Palace and on through the miles and memories to the finish. 
 
From the legend of Pheidippides and the mystery of Spiridon Louis - who won the first modern Olympic marathon in 1896 - to the agony of Paula Radcliffe, reduced to tears on the long road to Athens more than a century later, this is a story of dreams, pain, struggle and achievement. The courage and the craziness of the characters who for 25 years have run the streets of London, have turned this race into the greatest marathon in the world. 
 
The London Marathon is a testament to their endeavour, and to the spirit that leads them each spring to tackle their own suburban Everest. This is their story.

The London Marathon

Jane Aiken Hodge

As an internationally bestselling phenomenon and queen of the Regency Romance, Georgette Heyer is one of the most beloved historical novelists of our time. She's written more than fifty novels - romances, detective stories and contemporary works of fiction - yet her private life was practically inaccessible to any but her closest friends and relatives. 
 
With this classic biography we catch a glimpse into Georgette Heyer's world and that of her most memorable characters. With access to private papers and archives, Jane Aiken Hodge reveals a formidable, energetic woman, with an impeccable sense of style and, beyond everything, a love for all things Regency. 
 
Lavishly illustrated from Georgette Heyer's own research files, her family archives and other Regency sources, complete with extracts from her correspondence and references to her work, The Private World is a delight and a must-read for every Georgette Heyer fan.

The Private World of Georgette Heyer

Dread Pirate Fleur

Dream Master

Drenai Novels

DropZone

Duggee's Little Library

Dungeon Crawler Carl Series

Duty Calls

A gripping three-part series based on real historical events. Three Roman legions massacred. Three Imperial Eagles lost. One man vies for revenge.

Eagles of Rome

For thirty years, the O’Donnels have ruled the East End, but there’s a price to pay for this power, and it’s usually in blood.

Eastend Trilogy

Easterleigh Hall

Eat Around Italy

Eat Around Spain

Eat Right For Blood Type

Ebb and Flo

Ed Reardon's Week

Elemental Emergence

Elfies Spellbook

Eliot Biographies

Emma Trilogy

Emma and James

Empire of Salt

In the Swedish town of Engelsfors, a mysterious forcedraws seven teenagers together. They are the Chosen Ones, and they have been chosen to drive back the demons that threaten to overwhelm the world

Engelsfors Trilogy

England's Medieval Queens

English Heritage

Erica Martin Thriller

Eternal Ones

Eve of Man Trilogy

Everyman's Library Barbreck

Everyman's Children's Classics has more than 50 titles in print. It offers the finest editions currently available of the world's greatest children's books in handsome, full cloth hardcover bindings. 
 
The library brings back into print major illustrators such as Ivan Bilibin, Kate Greenaway, Arthur Rackham, Nicolas Bentley, Walter Crane, Aubrey Beardsley, Edward Ardizzone, W.Heath Robinson and Mervyn Peake.

Everyman's Library CHILDREN'S CLASSICS

The finest editions available of the world's greatest classics from Homer to Achebe, Tolstoy to Ishiguro, Proust to Pullman, printed on a fine acid-free, cream-wove paper that will not discolour with age, with sewn, full cloth bindings and silk ribbon markers, and at remarkably low prices. All books include substantial introductions by major scholars and contemporary writers, and comparative chronologies of literary and historical context.

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