Alan McDonald

Alan Melville

Alan Moore

Alan Moorehead was born in Melbourne, Australia. He travelled to England in 1937 and became a renowned foreign correspondent for the London Daily Express. Writer, world traveller, biographer, essayist, journalist, Moorehead was one of the most successful writers in English of his day. During World War II he won an international reputation for his coverage of campaigns in the Middle East and Asia, the Mediterranean and Northwest Europe. He died in 1983.

Alan Moorehead

Alan Paton

Alan Pattullo

Alan Pauls

Alan Pollock is a playwright, translator and screenwriter. His numerous plays include One Night in November, Pigs and All Tomorrow's Parties.

Alan Pollock

Alan Root was born in London in 1937 but moved to Kenya as a young boy. He dropped out of school at sixteen but soon found himself behind the camera. He married Joan Thorpe in 1961 and together they produced an array of award-winning wildlife films including Baobab: Portrait of a Tree, commissioned by David Attenborough, Safari by Balloon, The Year of the Wildebeest and Castles of Clay, which was nominated for an Oscar. Alan won over sixty awards during his career, including an Emmy, three Lifetime Achievement Awards an OBE. Alan Root died in August 2017.

Alan Root

Alan Rosenthal

Alan Ruddock

Alan Rugman

Alan Rusbridger

Alan Ryan

Alan S. Blinder

Alan Shearer CBE  grew up in Newcastle, leaving home as a  teenager to pursue a career in professional football with his first  team, Southampton. He went on to  reach football stardom, winning the Premier League with Blackburn in  1995, breaking the world transfer record by signing to Newcastle United  in 1996 and achieving international success as the Captain of England.  Alan also holds the record for most goals scored in Premier League history.

Alan Shearer

Alan Siegel

Alan Simpson

Alan Spence

Alan Stewart

Alan Taylor

Alan Tennant

Alan Thompson

Alan Titchmarsh MBE is known to millions through his career as a television presenter of shows including Love Your Weekend, Love Your Garden, Ground Force, Gardeners' World, The Alan Titchmarsh Show and Spring Into Summer. He has written more than forty gardening books, as well as twelve novels and three volumes of memoirs. He was made MBE in the millennium New Year Honours list and holds the Victoria Medal of Honour, the Royal Horticultural Society's highest award.

Alan Titchmarsh

Alan Unterman

Alan Watts was a British philosopher, writer and speaker who was best known for his expertise in Eastern philosophies including Zen Buddhism and Taoism. He wrote over 25 books and numerous articles on subjects such as personal identity, the true nature of reality, higher consciousness, the meaning of life, concepts and images of God and the non-material pursuit of happiness.

Alan W Watts

Alan Warner is the author of eight novels: Morvern Callar, These Demented Lands, The Sopranos, The Man Who Walks, The Worms Can Carry Me to Heaven, The Stars in the Bright Sky, which was longlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize, The Deadman's Pedal and Their Lips Talk of Mischief. He is Writer in Residence at Edinburgh University.

Alan Warner

Alan Watts

Alan Weisman is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including the global bestseller The World Without Us, which has been translated into 34 international languages and was nominated for numerous awards. His writing has appeared in Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair, The Los Angeles Times Magazine and many other places. Alan has worked on all seven continent and reported from 58 countries, and lives in western Massachusetts.

Alan Weisman

Alanna Mitchell

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Barbara Thiering

Barbara Thiering's previous works have been bestsellers in her native Australia, and Focus magazine said that the impact of her work '...may turn out to be as profound as that of Darwin's Origin of the Species'. This new book continues to reveal the 'real' Jesus and the history of his time by applying to the New Testament the insights and information contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The author argues that the Gospel of John was in fact written in code, by Jesus himself. She carefully analyses all the miracles and supernatural events to show that they did not happen as described. Instead, for those who understand the code, they provide a record of the development of the new religion that went on to lay the foundation of Western culture.

The Book That Jesus Wrote

John's Gospel

Mike Curtis

Even by SAS standards Mike Curtis has had a remarkable career. A former coal miner and likely Welsh international, he served with 2 Para in the Falklands before going on to join the SAS. 
 
In C.Q.B. he describes his gruelling experience in the Falklands and also focus on two more of his major SAS operations; the first in Iraq where he spent several weeks behind enemy lines; the second in Bosnia where he worked closely with all factions and latterly led a close protection team guarding visiting heads of State. 
 
Goose Green, the first land battle of the Falklands conflict, was the longest, hardest-fought, and most controversial. The outcome there was to set the tone for the remainder of the war, affect international opinion and the morale and determination of both armies. 
 
The SAS infiltrated Iraq in two guises - as road-watch patrols and mobile fighting columns. Constituting the biggest SAS overland fighting force since the Second World War, Mike Curtis's troop constituted a coherent, mobile weapon able to operate round the clock and defend itself against surprise attack. 
 
C.Q.B. is also the first published account of the SAS's activities in former Yugoslavia by a Close Quarter Battle Specialist and John Major's personal bodyguard.

C.Q.B. (Close Quarter Battle)

In her controversial 1992 bestseller Jesus the Man, Barbara Thiering first showed how the pesher method of 'decoding' two separate levels of meaning found in the Dead Sea Scrolls could be used by applying it to the Gospels, and presented a completely new historical interpretation of the life of Jesus Christ. Now, in a new work of remarkable research and scholarship, she sets out to unravel the mysteries that have long surrounded the elusive complexities of the Book of Revelation. 'It was not,' she writes, 'about vision and apocalypse, but about the profoundly important history of the Christian movement from AD 1 to AD 114.' 
 
In Jesus of the Apocalypse, Barbara Thiering presents a new and significant view of the development of Christianity from the time of the crucifixion until the second century AD. She argues that Jesus was no solitary preacher appearing suddenly on the shores of Lake Galilee: he was a central figure in a major political movement to overthrow the pagan Roman empire. Although crucified, he did not die on the cross, and he, and subsequently his sons, took an important role in the evolution of the new underground religion which was developing out of Judaism. 
 
With detective-like perseverance Theiring unfolds the mystery of words, meanings and places that have been allowed to pass unchallenged, including a radical new interpretation of such mystical themes as the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, the seven seals. the Beast whose number is 666, the Great Harlot clothed in scarlet and purple. In so doing, she provides an absorbing and enlightening background to a period that has so often been seen more through the implications of scripture than the facts of history.

Jesus Of The Apocalypse

The Life Of Jesus After The Crucifixion

Catherine Cookson

Catherine Cookson's previous collection of essays and poems, Let Me Make Myself Plain, was published in response to the enthusiastic reception of a series of late night radio Epilogues. Now, following the remarkable success of that volume, she has compiled a further selection of thoughts, recollections, and observations on life - and death - together with another collection of the poems she prefers to describe as 'prose on short lines'. 
 
As in Let Me Make Myself Plain, and indeed in the whole of her extensive writing, Catherine Cookson expresses her thoughts and feelings with remarkable candour and considerable wit. Above all, though, it is her down-to-earth common sense that shines through, as the forthright nature of her views expresses the hard-won philosophy of life she has developed for herself. 
 
In Plainer Still, she reveals many of the qualities that allow her to draw upon the great inner strength she needs to continue the battle of life - one that has, for the past fifty years, given her readers endless pleasure through the medium of her many novels, each of them inspired by the harsh and uncompromising nature of her early life. 
 
As the late John Braine wrote when reviewing Catherine Cookson Country, 'One way or another, she is an inspiration, a noble spirit.' Readers of Plainer Still, a new personal anthology illustrated with black-and-white photographs, will certainly find themselves inspired by the indomitable spirit of this most remarkable lady.

Plainer Still

Tehmina Durrani

When a woman with brains and beauty from a wealthy background decides to take her fate into her own hands and challenge the restrictions of a male-oriented, conservative society, the consequences can be devastating. 
 
Born into one of Pakistan's most influential families, Tehmina Durrani was raised in the privileged milieu of Lahore high society, and educated at the same school as Benazir Bhutto. Like all women of her rank, she was expected to marry a prosperous Muslim from a respectable family, bear him many children, and lead a sheltered life of air-conditioned leisure. When she married Mustafa Khar, one of Pakistan's most eminent political figures, she continued to move in the best circles, and learned to keep up the public façade as a glamorous, cultivated wife, and mother of four children. 
 
In private, however, the story-book romance of the most talked-about couple in Pakistan rapidly turned sour. Mustafa Khar became violently possessive and pathologically jealous, and succeeded in cutting his wife off from the outside world. For the course of the fourteen-year marriage, she suffered alone, in silence. 
 
When Tehmina decided to rebel, the price she paid was extremely high: as a Muslim woman seeking a divorce, she signed away all financial support, lost the custody of her four children, and found herself alienated from her friends and disowned by her parents. 
 
Following the divorce, she felt she had to tell her story. When Pakistan publishers balked at the controversial nature of her manuscript, she published it herself. The book was a bombshell and shook Pakistani society to its foundations. Her at last was someone who had succeeding in reconciling her faith in Islam with her ardent belief in women's rights. Tehmina's story, adapted now for western readers, provides extraordinary insights into the vulnerable position of women caught in the complex web of Muslim society.

My Feudal Lord

Brian Clough

For the last three decades Brian Clough has been the most charismatic manager in football. Funny, outrageous, sentimental, he stands out sharply from the bland men in suits. Though his talent has earned him a fortune, he remains a working-class hero. As a player he was one of the most gifted forwards of his day. He scored 251 goals in 274 League appearances - and would have scored more had a cruel injury not forced him to retire. 
 
As a manager his record was full of superlatives. He took both Derby County and then Nottingham Forest out of the doldrums of the Second Division and made them world-beaters. Tactically brilliant, Clough had an unmatched ability to motivate players. He is the best manager England never had. Behind his back, they call him Old Big 'Ead. He has never been far from controversy, and some of his rows, particularly with his long-standing managerial partner Peter Taylor, are the stuff of tabloid legend. Not so long ago he was televised running onto the pitch to wallop some unruly supporters. More recently he has taken legal advice to counter rumours about illegal ticket deals. Dull he isn't. Despite his outgoing nature, Clough has always guarded his privacy. At last he has decided to tell his full story: from terraced council house in Middlesbrough, to luxurious mansion in an exclusive suburb of Derby; from fitter to socialist millionaire. He speaks of the influence of his strong, proud mother, his courtship and marriage to his glamorous wife Barbara, his children, particularly his goal-scoring son Nigel, and his health, which has been the subject of press speculation and concern. This is an extraordinary life, told by an extraordinary man.

Clough The Autobiography

Winston Groom

With an Introduction by 
P.J. O'Rourke 
 
 
 
THE WORLD WILL NEVER 
BE THE SAME ONCE 
YOU'VE SEEN IT THROUGH 
THE EYES OF FORREST GUMP 
 
America's most lovable new hero is winning smiles and hearts everywhere these days - in the Paramount motion picture, Forrest Gump, starring Tom Hanks, and in the novel by Winston Groom 
(available in Black Swan paperback), hailed by critics as one of the funniest books they've ever read.Now the fun continues in this delightful confection of wit and wisdom from the world according to Gump... 
 
'ALWAYS BE ABLE TO LOOK BACK AND SAY "AT LEAST I DIDN'TLEAD NO HUMDRUM LIFE"'

Gumpisms: The Wit & Wisdom Of Forrest Gump

Catherine Cookson is known and loved for her vibrant and earthy novels set in and around the North-East of England, past and present. Her autobiography makes plain how it is she knows her background and her characters so well. 
 
The Our Kate of the title is not Catherine Cookson, but her mother, around whom the autobiography revolves. Despite her faults, Kate emerges a warm and loveable human figure. 
 
Our Kate is an honest statement about living with hardship and poverty, seen through the eyes of a highly sensitive child and woman, whose zest for life and unquenchable sense of humour won through to make Catherine Cookson the warm, engaging and human writer she is today.

Our Kate

Sattareh Farman-Farmaian

Sattareh Farman Farmaian, the daughter of a once-powerful and wealthy Iranian prince, was raised and educated in the 1920s and 1930s in a Persian harem compound, along with numerous mothers and more than 30 brothers and sisters. As a young woman, she broke with Muslim tradition and travelled to America, where she became the first Persian to study at the University of Southern California. Her new life in the West fired a vision to lift her own people out of backwardness and poverty, and she returned to Iran to found the Tehran School of Social Work. For more than 20 years, Sattareh and her students waged a war against poverty, disease and overcrowding, and then, soon after the collapse of the Shah's regime, she was forced to flee the country in fear of her life. In this account of her experiences, she provides an insider's view of Iran's journey through the 20th century and of the events which led up to, and followed, the Islamic revolution.

Daughter Of Persia

Robert Mason

'I read this as a young pilot about to embark on a career flying military helicopters. It should have put me off for life. Robert Mason tells a gripping account of the relentless courage and heroism amidst the insanity of the Vietnam war. The final few pages are the most shocking I have read in any book.' Tim Peake 
________ 
 
A stunning book about the right stuff in the wrong war. 
 
As a child, Robert Mason dreamed of levitating. 
 
As a young man, he dreamed of flying helicopters - and the U.S. Army gave him his chance. 
 
They sent him to Vietnam where, between August 1965 and July 1966, he flew more than 1,000 assault missions. In Chickenhawk, Robert Mason gives us a devastating bird's eye-view of that war in all its horror. 
 
He experiences the accelerating terror, the increasingly desperate courage of a man 'acting out the role of a hero long after he realises that the conduct of the war is insane,' says the New York Times. 
 
'And we can't stop ourselves from identifying with it.' 
 
CHICKENHAWK contains the most vivid, astoundingly intense descriptions of flying ever written. It is a devastating account of men at war, of courage and cowardice, boredom and exhilaration, lasting friendship and sudden death. It is not a book for weak stomachs, but its powerful message will stay in the memory long after the last page is turned.

Chickenhawk

Find Spot

Finn Fitzpatrick Series

First Favourite Tales

The First Festivals series invites children to explore the world's culture from the comfort of their home, encourages the development of hand-eye coordination and is recommended for children aged 2 and over.

First Festivals

First Impressions

First Steps with Spot

Five Minute Mum

Flaptastic

Fluffy

Folk Art

Foolproof

Football Academy

Football Skills

Forbidden Spaces Trilogy

Fortuna Sworn

Foul Play

DICK FRANCIS was one of the most successful post-war National Hunt jockeys and author of forty-three bestselling novels, a volume of short stories (Field of 13), the biography of Lester Piggott and his own autobiography (The Sport of Queens). He was rightly acclaimed as one of the greatest thriller writers in the world. 
 
 Since his death, his son FELIX FRANCIS has taken over the literary reigns from his father and Dick's legacy lives on through the Dick Francis novels. The Francis flair is clear for all to see in these national treasure thrillers, and readers will appreciate the sporadic reappearance of beloved series characters Sid Halley and Jeff Hinkley.

Francis Thriller

Frank Behr

Once a Detective Inspector in the Nottinghamshire Force, Frank Elder has retired to an isolated cottage in Cornwall, and is trying to live the quiet life. The past, however, is never far behind him.

Frank Elder

Fred

Free Collars Kingdom

Jean Plaidy combines imagination with facts to bring the French Revolution alive in this dynamic historical fiction series. From Louis XV’s debauchery to Marie Antionette’s demise, it is clear there was only one way this was going to end.

French Revolution

French Vintage Classics

Frieda Klein

Fright Club

From Scratch

Frontline Nurses Series

Frostheart

Fun With Ladybird

Funnybones

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