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

Alasdair Fotheringham is a freelance journalist and writer based in Spain. He writes regularly on cycling for the ‘I’, The Independent.co.uk, The Express, ProCycling and Cyclingnews. He has been reporting on the Tour de France and other top road cycling events since 1992. His first book was The Eagle of Toledo, a biography of cycling’s greatest ever climber, Federico Martín Bahamontes. He has also written Reckless, a biography of the ill-fated Luis Ocaña, the 1973 Tour winner and considered Eddy Merck’s top Grand Tour rival, and The End of the Road, an account of the 1998 Tour de France.

Alasdair Fotheringham

Alasdair Wickham

Alastair Campbell was born in Keighley, Yorkshire in 1957, the son of a vet. Having graduated from Cambridge University in modern languages, he went into journalism, principally with the Mirror Group. When Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party, Campbell worked for him first as press secretary, then as official spokesman and director of communications and strategy from 1994 to 2003. He continued to act as an advisor to Mr Blair and the Labour Party, including during subsequent election campaigns. He now splits his time between writing, speaking, politics in Britain and overseas, consultancy and charity, as chairman of fundraising for Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research, and a leading ambassador for the mental health campaign Time to Change. 
 
He lives in North London with his partner of thirty-five years, Fiona Millar. They have three children. His interests include running, cycling, bagpipes and Burnley Football Club. He has published six volumes of diaries, including the number one Sunday Times bestseller, The Blair Years, a memoir on depression, The Happy Depressive, and three novels.

Alastair Campbell

Alastair Nathan Cook was born in Gloucester, December 1984. He is an English cricketer. He plays for Essex County Cricket Club and previously for England. Cook is the fifth highest Test scorer of all time. 
 
He is regarded as England's most successful batsman ever and now he is an icon and role model in sport. 
 
Outside of cricket, Alastair has written columns in the Telegraph and Metro, he is a talented saxophone player and donates his time to raising money for cancer charities and the David Randall Foundation. He is now married with three children.

Alastair Cook

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Paolo Hewitt

Paolo Hewitt has known Paul Weller since they were both teenagers in the depths of Woking, through his ascent to fame with The Jam, the halcyon years of The Style Council and for all of his critically acclaimed solo career. Hewitt has even been the inspiration for some of Weller's songs - and he has extraordinary in-depth knowledge of the inspiration behind the rest. 
 
Once, when Hewitt interviewed Weller for a music magazine, he complained - 'I don't know why people ask me all these questions. All the answers are in my songs.' Largely unnoticed, Weller has used thirty-years of lyrics to explore his personal history and beliefs. Taking as his starting point these lyrics, alongside a lifetime's friendship, Paolo Hewitt shows us the real Paul Weller, the man inside the music.

Paul Weller - The Changing Man

Chris Hunter

SEARING HEAT 
 
You have the most dangerous job in the world's most dangerous place. You are responsible for bomb disposal in the British sector of Iraq.You are the last defence against oblivion. And it's already a hundred degrees in the shade. , 
 
COLD FEAR 
 
You are up against some of the most sophisticated bombmakers in the world. They don't play by the rules of the Geneva Convention. Nothing but your own wits will save you. You're on your own. 
 
SILENCE 
 
Now is the moment of truth. All you can hear is the sound of your own blood pounding through your veins. This could be your last moment on earth. 
 
IT'S JUST YOU AND THE BOMB

Eight Lives Down

Deric Longden

Deric's gentle tales of life in Huddersfield with his wife Aileen and their menagerie of playful cats have won him thousands of loyal fans. And after a few years break Deric returns with the latest, and eagerly awaited, instalment of his memoirs. 
 
Deric is getting on a bit now and so are his cats. Life chez-Longden has adjusted to a slower pace, but everyday is still full of opportunities for the sort of mischief, mishaps and adventures that come with sharing your house and life with a troop of small cats with big personalities. 
 
Paws in the Proceedings has all of Deric's trademark charm, homespun wisdom and gentle wit. His remarkable eye for the humorous detail and the keen observation are very much in evidence, and this is another comic gem that will delight Deric's loyal fans and bring him to a bigger audience than ever before.

Paws In The Proceedings

Mike Jackson

General Sir Mike Jackson's illustrious career in the British Army has spanned almost 45 years and all that time he has shown loyalty, courage and commitment to the British army whilst also being an undeniable media attraction. 
 
A man of substance where foreign policy is concerned, he has served in theatres from the Artic to the jungle but is perhaps best known for his role in charge of the British troops to end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, for assembling the British ground component of the coalition that toppled the Taliban, for equipping and organising the army we dispatched to defeat in Iraq and for re-organising the British army with aplomb. His drive, enthusiasm and dominating personality were always popular with his soldiers and drove him right to the top of his profession. He may have been a general but he never stopped caring about the men and women in his charge, despite the politics. 
 
Soldier: The Autobiography exhibits all the qualities for which Jackson is admired; his professionalism, his honesty, his directness, his exuberance and his sense of humour. Most of all it gives a vivid sense of what modern soldiering entails.

Soldier: The Autobiography

Mike Rossiter

On the evening of 30 March, 1982, Commander David Hall, chief engineer of the British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror received a telephone call giving him the order to 'store for war'. At first he didn't believe it. In the early hours of 2 April, Argentine forces invaded the Falkland Isles. 
 
The sinking of the Belgrano was one of the most dramatic moments of the Falklands conflict. For many it signalled Britain's entry into the war and it has been seen as a politically motivated decision deliberately designed to take the country irrevocably into the fight. Now Mike Rossiter - with unprecedented access to sailors from the Belgrano and HMS Conqueror - gives us a dramatic and definitive retelling of the events that led up to the sinking. 
 
With all the pace and tension of a thriller, Sink the Belgrano takes us inside the battle for the South Atlantic and shows us the human drama behind the famous, and controversial, Sun headline 'Gotcha!' We track the collision course between the British submarine Conqueror and the Argentine warship - as the two sides and everyone aboard head towards the climactic moment just outside the exclusion zone set up by the British around the Falkland Isles. We witness the behind-the-scenes arguments , discussions and powerbroking that led to the decision to fire the three torpedoes. And, for the first time, we hear from the sailors on both sides - the personal testimony of the hunt for and attack on the Belgrano, and from the Argentine side the experience of being under attack and the sinking that left 340 members of her crew dead.

Sink the Belgrano

Martyn Downer

Sir Howard Elphinstone, dashing hero of the Crimean War, was awarded the Victoria Cross in 1858 aged just twenty-nine. Handpicked by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to be governor to their third son, Prince Arthur, Elphinstone made an uncertain start at court, uncomfortabe within its cliques and clashing frequently with the impassioned Queen. But after Albert's death in 1861, Elphinstone became not only a surrogate father to Arthur, but also Victoria's most trusted confidant. 
 
Elphinstone's diaries and his prolific correspondence with the Queen shed remarkable new light on her complex personality and life at court. His story portrays in vivid detail the bitter rivalries and tragedies which rocked the palace during the Queen's long seclusion following Albert's death. It reveals the shocking effects of Prince Leopold's bleeding attacks, the security alarm caused by Irish republicans, and the truth behind Victoria's most notorious servant, John Brown. 
 
Artist and soldier, bodyguard and diplomat, confidant and spy: Elphinstone is the forgotten hero of the Victorian court. The Queen's Knight restores him to his rightful place at the heart of the most remarkable royal family in British history.

The Queen's Knight

Lewis Alsamari

Aged 17, Lewis Alsamari was conscripted into the Iraqi army. Things went from bad to worse once his superiors discovered his ability to speak English, and Lewis was selected for Saddam's elite, top secret intelligence service, an offer he literally could not refuse. This left him with only one option - to escape from his native land, leaving his family behind him... 
 
Going under the wire of the army compound where he was posted, Lewis was shot in the leg, making his escape - which required a gruelling journey in disguise across the desert at night with a group of Bedouin, at the mercy of ravenous wolves - all the more arduous. Against the odds, Lewis survived this trek, made it across the border into Jordan, and eventually sought asylum the UK, where he had spent his childhood. 
 
Now he had to work out how to rescue his mother, brother and sister, who had been apprehended by security forces and thrown into jail once Lewis's escape became known. The only thing which could help was money and lots of it, so Lewis fraudulently transferred £37,000 from the accounts of William Hill (where he had a temporary job) into his own bank, and wired it to Baghdad in order to pay the necessary bribes. But, of course, it wasn't quite that simple... 
 
Out of Iraq is an exhilarating and terrifying story of one man's escape from one of the harshest regimes of the modern era. It is testament both to the strength of the human spirit and to the extremes we'll go to in order to keep our loved ones safe.

Out of Iraq

Bryan Sykes

Bryan Sykes, the world's first genetic archaeologist, takes us on a journey around the family tree of Britain and Ireland, to reveal how our tribal history still colours the country today. 
 
In 54BC Julius Caesar launched the first Roman invasion of Britain. His was the first detailed account of the Celtic tribes that inhabited the Isles. But where had they come from and how long had they been there? When the Romans eventually left five hundred years later, they were succeeded by invasions of Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans. Did these successive invasions obliterate the genetic legacy of the Celts, or have very little effect? 
 
After two decades tracing the genetic origins of peoples from all over the world, Bryan Sykes has now turned the spotlight on his own back yard. In a major research programme, the first of its kind, he set out to test the DNA of over 10,000 volunteers from across Britain and Ireland with the specific aim of answering this very question: what is our modern genetic make-up and what does it tell us of our tribal past? Are the modern people of the Isles a delicious genetic cocktail? Or did the invaders keep mostly to themselves forming separate genetic layers within the Isles? 
 
As his findings came in, Bryan Sykes discovered that the genetic evidence revealed often very different stories to the conventional accounts coming from history and archaeology. Blood of the Isles reveals the nature of our genetic make-up as never before and what this says about our attitudes to ourselves, each other, and to our past. It is a gripping story that will fascinate and surprise with its conclusions.

Blood of the Isles

Clifford Irving

'I was down to my last chip, but it never occurred to me not to put it on the line, bet it, and roll the dice one more time . . .' 
 
In 1972 Clifford Irving pulled a sensational hoax involving Howard Hughes, a prestigious New York publishing house and over a million dollars. It made global newspaper headlines and was heralded as the biggest media scam of all time. Its dramatic events have now been made into an international blockbuster film starring Richard Gere. 
 
In his bestselling book The Hoax Clifford Irving recreates his own audacious literary sting when he and fellow conspirator, Dick Suskind, convinced US publisher McGraw-Hill that Howard Hughes, the reclusive billionaire, had commissioned Irving to write his authorised autobiography. A frantic year ensued while Irving forged letters and passports, faked interviews, set up a Swiss bank account and travelled thousands of miles to maintain his story, all the while desperately trying to juggle a wife, a mistress and an editor. Gradually the cracks in the plot started to appear and the nightmare began as Irving and Suskind realised they were set on a crash course towards indictment, conviction and jail.

The Hoax

Imogen Edwards-Jones

Heard the one about the airline that has introduced 'corpse cupboards' on new planes to cope with the number of people who die in the air? Heard the story about the First Class air hostess who got fired for sitting on the face of a passenger during a long haul flight? Heard about the amount of knickers and false teeth that are left behind in the body of the plane? Heard how pissed-off stewards put laxatives in your drinks? Heard about the pilot who ran out of runway? Heard of the disabled passengers who miraculously walk again? 
 
No? Then you haven't read Air Babylon. 
 
Do you know the best place to have sex on a plane? Do you know how to dress for an upgrade? Do you know that one drink in the air equals three on the ground? Do you know who is checking you in? Who is checking you out? Do you know exactly what happens to your luggage once it leaves your sight? Is it secure? Are you safe? Do you really know anything about the business that you entrust your life to several times a year? 
 
Air Babylon is a trawl through the highs, the lows, and the rapid descents of the travel industry. It catalogues the births, the deaths, the drunken brawls, the sexual antics, and the debauchery behind the scenes of the ultimate service industry - where the world is divided into those who wear the uniform and those who don't...

Air Babylon

'Something strange occurs to guests as soon as they check in. Even if in real life they are perfectly well-mannered, decent people with proper balanced relationships, as soon as they spin through the revolving hotel doors the normal rules of behaviour no longer seem to apply.' 
 
All of the following is true.Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. All the anecdotes, the stories, the characters, the situations, the highs, the lows, the scams, the drugs, the misery, the love, the death and the insanity are exactly as was told by Anonymous - someone who has spent his whole career working in hotels at the heart of London's luxury hotel industry. However, for legal reasons, the stories now take place in a fictitious hotel known as Hotel Babylon. More than a decade is compressed into a day. Everything else is as it should be. The rich spend money, the hotel makes money and the chambermaids still fight the bellboys over a two-pound coin.It's just another twenty-four hours in an expensive London hotel.

Hotel Babylon

What is fashion? What is fashionable? Who decides what is in? What is out? Why is it green one year, and blue the next? Why is one little black dress worth three thousand pounds and another thirty quid? Is the catwalk that catty? Is everyone high on drugs and full of champagne? What makes a supermodel so super? And a designer too hot to touch? Who is making the money? Who owns who? Who hates who? And who's in each other's pocket? 
Following in the glamourous footsteps of Hotel Babylon and Air Babylon, Fashion Babylon will get under the well-cut skin of the fashion industry. Using a world renowned source, Fashion Babylon will take you through six months in a designer's life. Starting at the end of one catwalk show, it will explain how a collection is put together - from the rail of found objects, to how it gets on to the catwalk, into the shops and onto the covers of a magazine. It will tell you who goes to the shows, where they sit and whose backside one needs to kiss to get there. It will introduce you to a host of places and characters, it will take you into a world where women get paid tens of thousands for getting dressed in the morning and where a wrong shirt length can cost you your career. 
Witty, naughty and full of gripping detail Fashion Babylon will explain the mark -ups, talk you through fashion's two seasons and discuss the money and commerce behind one of the most international, lucrative and secretive of businesses. With something for the simple follower of fashion as well as the hardcore fashionista, Fashion Babylon will change the way you sashay into Top Shop, flick through the pages of Vogue and enter the portals of Harvey Nichols forever.

Fashion Babylon

Pip Granger

The only daughter of alcoholic parents, novelist Pip Granger spent much of her childhood outside looking in. 
 
No strangers to the demon booze, her parents were deeply involved in a passionate relationship that rose to exciting highs and plunged to terrible and often frightening lows. Drink explained the series of crises, the furious rows and life-threatening accidents Pip had to contend with, and it also explained why her home life was so very different from that of most other people she knew. Just after her first birthday her family was evicted from their cottage in Sussex for non-payment of rent - a pattern that was to recur throughout her childhood. Home became a place best avoided, and soon Pip was spending time with her ne'er-do-well father in cafes, snooker-halls and other low dives in London's Soho where she made a series of lasting friendships with the unlikeliest of people. 
 
Brave, funny, original and totally authentic, Alone is a heartbreaking book about alcohol abuse, parental neglect, and the courage of a little girl to find her own way through a trouble-filled world.

Alone

Throughout the 1990s, Deric Longden has shared his life with Aileen Armitage and four cats: Thermal, Tigger, Frink and shabby old Arthur. And the cats have found that sharing a life with Aileen can be a very painful business. She hardly ever trips over them these days, but they are always in danger of being mistaken for a cardigan, or inadvertently locked away in the cellar. 
 
Ever since Thermal came in from the cold to enter his life, Deric has seen his world increasingly taken over by cats. What with planning their menus, entertaining their friends, listening to their worries and observing their adventures, he has little time left over for his professional life as a writer. But there are rich rewards. One way or another, the cats that Deric and Aileen share their lives with are an endless source of interest and laughter. 
 
Few writers have found so much enjoyment in the company of cats, and none has written better about their charm, and the fascinating range of their personalities. Enough to make a Cat Laugh will enchant cat-lovers everywhere, and give Longden-lovers an unforgettable treat.

Enough To Make A Cat Laugh

In 1990, spurred on by the success of his writing and his marriage to the writer Aileen Armitage, Deric Longden made a momentous move to a foreign country. Huddersfield, in Yorkshire, with its distinctive manners and customs and its wealth of remarkable characters, would surely provide him with all the material he needed for his planned book, one of the great classics of travel literature. But two years later, when he sat down to write, the major events of everyday life kept intruding: the demands of a houseful of cats, the problem of getting the cooker repaired, the memories evoked by sorting through old clothes in the wardrobe . . . 
 
Still, I'm a Stranger Here Myself is a travel book of a kind, where the most hilarious adventures can happen between the kitchen and the bathroom, and where a morning's shopping can provide enough anecdotes to last a lifetime. Once again Deric Longden demonstrates his genius for taking the most ordinary materials of life and transforming them with his own special brand of gentle, inspired humour.

I'm A Stranger Here Myself

The little cat Deric Longden saw sitting forlornly on an upturned bucket belonged to the neighbours, but somehow when it began to rain it seemed only natural to bring him inside. Once there he slipped so easily into Deric and Aileen's lives that there was an unspoken agreement that he had found his real home. Little did he know that he had entered the Longden world, in which the unexpected (almost) always happens. . . 
 
Aileen being Aileen, it was probably inevitable that sooner or later the kitten would be trapped in the refrigerator. And Deric being Deric, the obvious way to thaw him back to life was to make a little coat for him out of a shrunken thermal vest. Thus the cat who came in from the cold got his name - Thermal - and joined the wonderful cast of characters in the ongoing Longden saga.

The Cat Who Came In From The Cold

Joshua Davis

Joshua Davis had a dream. He dreamt of being the best. It didn't really matter what he was the best at, he just wanted to be number one, the big enchilada, to say that he had made it. This is how it began: Josh was driving through the Mojave Desert one day when he saw a sign for the American arm-wrestling championship - all comers welcome. He decided to enter. He came fourth, out of four, but this was enough to secure him a place on Team USA and the chance of a show-down with the 'Russian Ripper' at the world championships in Poland (that didn't end very well either). 
 
But Josh had tasted the dizzy rush of competition and wanted more. And more turned out to be the most outlandish contests in the world - from bull fighting in Spain and backward running in Italy, to sumo wrestling and the World Sauna Championship in Finland. 
 
Joshua's quest is by turns hilarious, harrowing and a little insane, but it is also inspiring - because, after all, every underdog deserves his day.

The Underdog

Lynn Picknett

Clive Prince

In the course of their investigations into Leonardo da Vinci and the Turin Shroud, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince found clues in the work of the great Renaissance artist that pointed to the existence of a secret underground religion. More clues were found in a twentieth-century London church. These were the beginnings of a quest through time and space that led the authors into the mysterious world of secret societies and such bodies as the Freemasons, the Knights Templar and the Cathars and finally back to the ideas and beliefs of the first century AD and a devastating new view of the real character and motives of the founder of Christianity and the roles of John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene. 
 
They reveal nothing less than a secret history, preserved through the centuries but encoded in works of art and even in the great Gothic cathedrals, whose revelation could shake the foundations of the Chruch.

The Templar Revelation

Secret Guardians Of The True Identity Of Christ

When I was a teenager, I thought you could get pregnant from sitting in a jacuzzi. Not that I'm sure I even knew what a jacuzzi was, but I knew they were racy places where racy things happened. Men, as far as I remember, didn't even have to be there. So long as they'd been in the water in some sort of excitable state, pregnancy was inevitable - even if you kept your pants on. You see pregnancy was that easy, that dangerous and it could ruin your life. 
 
Almost 20 years later and pregnancy could still ruin my life. Although now it is not the threat of what having a baby would do, but of not having a baby at all. I have been trying to get pregnant for two years and have not even come close to hearing the pitter-patter of tiny feet...' 
 
So begins The Stork Club, Imogen Edwards-Jones' very personal, very moving and very funny memoir of her (and her husband's) trials and tribulations with IVF. Poked and prodded by endless doctors, pumped full of an exotic cocktail of drugs and forced to try to have sex at the most inopportune moments, Imogen pulls no punches in her account of this process. In her words, 'The fertility game is like a marathon, where you just have to keep on running. No matter how many times the finishing line is moved, no matter how increasingly heavy the going or unpleasant the terrain, you pick yourself up and, ever more determinedly, keep on going. Until one day, you pray, you might just make it...

The Stork Club

David Hall

Fred Dibnah's World celebrates the life and work of Britain's best known steeplejack and national treasure, Fred Dibnhah. Before his death in 2004, Fred presented many popular series, including Magnificent Monuments, The Age of Steam and Made in Britain, all of which attracted viewers in their millions. 
 
Fred is the companion to the 12-part BBC2 series celebrating the life of this great man, which combines highlights from some of Dibnah's classic programmes with previously unseen footage. The book can of course go much further than the series, including an extraordinarily account of Fred's childhood which evokes a lost England and our great industrial heritage. Fred's passion for the glories of the Victorian age and his fascination with the landscape he grew up in, plus his admiration for the craftsmen and labourers who made it all possible, captivate us on every page. 
 
Fred is the personification of everything that made England great in the first place. And this is a glorious tribute to a man whom millions came to love.

Fred

The Definitive Biography Of Fred Dibnah

Bridget Harrison

You're about to turn thirty, all your friends are getting engaged and pregnant - and your body-clock is ticking. Then you get an offer to move to New York. So you take a chance and break up with your boyfriend - only to land yourself in the singles capital of the world. 
 
When Bridget Harrison arrived in Manhattan to work for America's most famous tabloid, the New York Post, she was in at the deep end from day one. Dispatched by day to cover murders and muggings in the roughest corners of New York, by night she began to write a column about her search for love in a dating shark tank. So far so Sex and the City - until she realised the one man she was falling for also happened to be her boss (and unfortunately this wasn't fiction). 
 
 
THE HIGHS: 
Being sent out to cover your first breaking news story 
Having the chance to go on a new blind date every week 
Realizing you love your editor 
 
THE LOWS: 
Finding no-one you interview can understand your accent 
Going on a new blind date every week 
Realizing you love your editor

Tabloid Love

Diana Preston

Spanning fifty years, Before the Fall-Out tells the full story of how an exhilarating quest to unravel the secrets of the material world produced the knowledge of how to destroy it.And of how a scientific adventure shared openly between nuclear physicists from many different nations transmuted into a secretive wartime race for the ultimate weapon of mass destruction - the atom bomb. 
 
As much as on the science, Before the Fall-Out focuses on the 'human chain reaction' - the intertwined lives of the many scientists of many nations whose compulsive curiosity led, however unwittingly, ultimately to Hiroshima. In her page-turning account Diana Preston reveals how individuals responded to events - from Allied scientists debating the morality of deploying the bomb, to Japanese civilians who became its first victims, and to a German chemist working on the Nazi bomb project while concealing a Jewish pianist in his Berlin apartment. Diana Preston draws on fresh material including interviews with the last living scientist to have worked with Marie Curie, the only senior scientist to have walked out on the Manhattan Project on moral grounds, and the German scientist who accompanied Werner Heisenberg on his controversial wartime visit to Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. 
 
A Manhattan Project scientist said that the only secret of the bomb was that it could be made: once this was known, any nation could replicate it. Before the Fall-Out helps us make better sense of our own, dangerous world and of the threats and moral dilemmas that face our society today.

Before the Fall-Out

From Marie Curie To Hiroshima

John Peel

John Ravenscroft

Alexandra Ravenscroft

Florence Ravenscroft

Sheila Ravenscroft

Thomas Ravenscroft

William Ravenscroft

Through nigh-on forty years of laconic brilliance on Radio 1, a musical taste which defined a culture and his wildly popular Radio 4 show, Home Truths, John Peel reached out to an audience that was as diverse as his record collection. He was a genuinely great Briton, beloved by millions. John's unique voice and sensibility were evident in everything he did, and nowhere is that more true than in these pages. 
 
Margrave of the Marshes is the astonishing book John Peel began to write before his untimely death in October 2004, completed by the woman who knew him best, his wife Sheila. It is a unique and intimate portrait of a life, a marriage and a family which is every bit as extraordinary as the man himself - a fitting tribute to a bona fide legend.

Margrave Of The Marshes

Anthony Summers

Robbyn Swan

In 1941, at age twenty-five, Sinatra told a friend, 'I'm going to be the best singer in the world'. Two years on, the bobbysoxers were already weeping and screaming for him in their thousands. Half a century on Bono defined him as 'the Big Bang of popular music'. 'To hell with the calendar,' a music critic wrote before his death in 1998, 'The day Frank Sinatra dies, the twentieth century is over.' 
 
There have been many books about Sinatra, but the last comprehensive biography was Kitty Kelly's HIS WAY, published in 1986. it has taken renowned biographer Anthony Summers years to research this new biography, which promises to be the definitive story of a musical and film career spanning six decades. In this massively documented book, meticulous investigation is coupled with sensitivity to examine every aspect of Sinatra's life, public and private, from his obscure beginnings in an immigrant neighborhood in Jersey City to his twilight years as a living legend in Palm Springs. It tells the human story of an American icon who was irresistible to women and who was plagued throughout his life by scandal and hints of links with the Mafia. In this book, Summers finally uncovers the whole truth.

Sinatra

The Life

John Twelve Hawks

Fans of Scott Mariani, Ken Follett and Michael Connolly will love this riveting, fast-paced, high-tech thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author John Twelve Hawks. 
 
"A cyber 1984...Page-turningly swift, with a cliffhanger ending" - NEW YORK TIMES 
"Compelling...Picture The Matrix crossed with William Gibson and you'll have a sense of The Traveller" - NEWSDAY 
"The pace is fast, the characters intriguing and memorable, the evil dark and palpable, and the genre-bending between fantasty and thriller seamless..." - KIRKUS REVIEWS 
"So good I couldn't put it down" -- ***** Reader review 
"Both thought-provoking and entertaining. I was totally gripped" -- ***** Reader review 
"Expertly crafted" -- ***** Reader review 
 
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WHAT LIES AHEAD IS ALREADY HERE... 
 
 America is a difficult place to live below the surface. But Gabriel and Michael Corrigan are trying to do just that. Since childhood, the brothers have been shaped by the stories that their father has told them about the world in which they live. Since his mysterious disappearance, they have been living 'off the grid' - that is, invisible to the intrusive surveillance networks that monitor our modern lives. 
 
 But no-one is as invisible as they would like to believe. Nathan Boone, a mercenary, has been tasked to hunt down the brothers. The only person who stands between them and certain death is Maya, a tough young woman playing at leading a normal life. But her background is anything but normal. She has been trained to fight and survive at whatever cost. 
 
When she is summoned to protect the brothers, she must leave everything behind if she is to succeed.

The Traveller

a thriller so different and powerful it will change the way you look at the world

Colby Buzzell

'Once we passed the checkpoint at the border, it hit me. I was like, Holy Shit, this is it, I'm entering a combat zone. Cool!' 
 
At twenty-six Colby Buzzell, unemployed and living at home, decided to join the US Army. Within months he was in Iraq, a machine gunner in the controversial Stryker Brigade Combat Team, an army unit on the cutting edge of combat technology and the first of its kind. 
 
Trapped amid 'guerrilla warfare, urban-style' in Mosul, Iraq, Buzzell was struck by the bizarre and often frightening world surrounding him. He began writing a blog describing the war - not as being reported by CNN or official briefings - but as experienced by the soldier on the ground. His story is a brutally honest and hard-hitting account of the absurdities of modern war. These are the real stories of the war: a firefight where the resistance came from 'men in black'; a night spent chain-smoking in the guard tower counting the tracer bullets being fired over the city; and the hesitation of a young soldier who had been passed around from platoon to platoon because he was too afraid to fight. 
My War is a powerful story of a young man and a war, unlike any you have read before.

My War

Killing Time in Iraq

Clare Coulson

Do you know where to source the loveliest products for your home? 
 
How to stop moths destroying precious knitwear? 
 
Treat a calamitious stain quickly? 
 
Avoid culinary disasters in the middle of a dinner party? 
 
House Rules is an informative, fun style guide containing advice on every aspect of modern living, from cleaning and storage to cooking and entertaining. Packed with insider tips from the professionals, it is an indispensable addition to any bookshelf.

House Rules

Andy McNab

Immediate Action is a no-holds-barred account of an extraordinary life, from the day Andy McNab was found in a carrier bag on the steps of Guy's Hospital to the day he went to fight in the Gulf War. 
 
As a delinquent youth he kicked against society. As a young soldier he waged war against the IRA in the streets and fields of South Armagh. As a member of 22 SAS Regiment he was at the centre of covert operations for nine years - on five continents. 
 
Recounting with grim humour and in riveting, often horrifying, detail his activities in the world's most highly trained and efficient Special Forces unit, McNab sweeps us into a world of surveillance and intelligence-gathering, counter-terrorism and hostage rescue.There are casualties: the best men are so often the first to be killed, because they are in front. 
 
By turns chilling, astonishing, violent, funny and moving, this blistering first-hand account of life at the forward edge of battle confirms Andy McNab's standing in the front rank of writers on modern war.

Immediate Action

Valérie Tasso

‘Today as I was leaving home, I saw a guy in the street. Just by exchanging glances, we decided to make love.’ 
 
Valerie Tasso is an unashamedly promiscuous French woman who becomes a high-class prostitute in Madrid. This is her story, told in riveting and explicit detail. From sex in a graveyard, to unusual acts with coca-cola bottles, she explores every fetish with joyful abandon. 
 
In the tradition of Belle du Jour and The Sexual Life of Catherine M, Valerie Tasso's memoir is an addictive tale of passion and promiscuity.

Insatiable

The Erotic Adventures Of A French Girl In Spain

Deborah Wearing

Clive Wearing has one of the most extreme cases of amnesia ever known. In 1985, a virus completely destroyed a part of his brain essential for memory, leaving him trapped in a limbo of the constant present. Every conscious moment is for him as if he has just come round from a long coma, an endlessly repeating loop of awakening. A brilliant conductor and BBC music producer, Clive was at the height of his success when the illness struck. As damaged as Clive was, the musical part of his brain seemed unaffected, as was his passionate love for Deborah, his wife. 
 
For seven years he was kept in the London hospital where the ambulance first dropped him off, because there was nowhere else for him to go. Deborah desperately searched for treatments and campaigned for better care. After Clive was finally established in a new special hospital, she fled to America to start her life over again. But she found she could never love another the way she loved Clive. Then Clive's memory unaccountably began to improve, ten years after the illness first struck. She returned to England. Today, although Clive still lives in care, and still has the worst case of amnesia in the world, he continues to improve. They renewed their marriage vows in 2002. 
 
This is the story of a life lived outside time, a story that questions and redefines the essence of what it means to be human. It is also the story of a marriage, of a bond that runs deeper than conscious thought.

Forever Today

A Memoir Of Love And Amnesia

Five Minute Mum

Flaptastic

Fluffy

Folk Art

Football Academy

Football Skills

Forbidden Spaces Trilogy

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

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

G.F. Newman’s The Corrupted

Gabriel's Inferno

The Roman grip on Britain is growing weaker and Druids are on the rise. Emperor Nero has turned away. Boudicca is preparing to lead tribes to war. 
 
Standing in her way is Gaius Valerius Verrens, commander of the veterans legion. In this battle he earns the accolade of Hero of Rome - but where will that title lead him next?

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