Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Joseph Delaney

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Paul Atterbury

To mark the centenary of the start of World War I, the Antiques Roadshow team filmed a series of specials at the Somme, where the public brought in their family's war memorabilia and photographs. These 'antiques' weren't financially valuable, or in some cases even very beautiful, but the stories that came attached to these momentoes were priceless. 
 
Antiques Roadshow: World War I in 100 Family Treasures takes 100 of the most fascinating and moving stories and shows how they fit in to the wider history that was occuring around them. From Rifleman Frank Edwards, who led the 'big push' in September 1915 kicking a football in front of the troops (and survived to tell the tale) to the formidable Catherine Murray Roy, one of the first 50 nurses to be sent to the front lines in France. The story behind each object paints an intimate portrait of a long-lost relative, and quotes from the modern-day participants in the roadshow provide a moving link between the families then and now. 
 
Fully illustrated, and featuring all the stories from the show, this is a truly unique way of telling the story of those ordinary lives that were, by the onset of war in 1914, thrown into the most extraordinary of circumstances.

Antiques Roadshow: World War I in 100 Family Treasures

Liz McIvor

Canals hold a unique place in British culture, with associations of lazy summer afternoons, journeying through lush green countryside. But as Liz McIvor explains in the book to accompany her BBC series, the story of our canals is also the story of how modern Britain was born. It was the canals that helped open up the trade of the Industrial Revolution, furthered the new science of geology, and even ushered in a new form of architecture. The legacy of our canals is all around us. 
 
In Canals: The Making of a Nation, McIvor takes us on a journey across the network of English canals to tell a deeper story of how our waterways changed our lives. It’s a very modern tale, full of high finance and greedy investors, cheap labour and the struggle for workers’ rights, and new frontiers in family and child welfare. It’s a unique and compelling exploration of Britain’s golden age.

Canals: The Making of a Nation

David Hall

Fred Dibnah

Britains favourite steeplejack and industrial enthusiastic, the late Fred Dibnah, takes us back to the 18th century when the invention of the steam engine gave an enormous impetus to the development of machinery of all types. He reveals how the steam engine provided the first practical means of generating power from heat to augment the old sources of power (from muscle, wind and water) and provided the main source of power for the Industrial Revolution.    In Fred Dibnahs Age of Steam Fred shares his passion for steam and meets some of the characters who devote their lives to finding, preserving and restoring steam locomotives, traction engines and stationary engines, mill workings and pumps. Combined with this will be the stories of central figures of the time, including James Watts -  inventor of the steam engine - and Richard Trevithick who played a key role in the expansion of industrial Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Fred Dibnah's Age Of Steam

Richard Porter

From the Austin Allegro to the Renault Safrane, and from the MGB to the Volkswagen Beetle, this book brings together 50 of the worst cars ever to grace the roads of Britain. 
 
The book features everything from the aesthetically pathetic to the mechanically misguided and includes tales of the most bizarre and appalling cock-ups in motoring history. 
 
With full-colour photos to illustrate each entry, this chronicle of classically Crap Cars will transport you back to the beige and brown world of the seventies and eighties and your very own Morris Marina.

Crap Cars

Ambitious but Rubbish reveals the off-camera secrets behind some of Top Gear’s most memorable creations. 
 
 From the challenge of turning a Reliant Robin into a rocket and the genesis of the Hammerhead-i Eagle Thrust electric car to the complexities of building a caravan airship and the inspiration for destruction-testing a Toyota Hilux, this book is packed with the previously untold stories behind dozens of classic TV moments. 
 
 Top Gear has never shied away from trying to answer questions no one has even thought to ask. Questions like ‘Can you make a convertible people carrier?’, ‘Can you cross the Channel in a pick-up?’ and ‘Can you turn a combine harvester into a snow plough?’. Ambitious but Rubbish reveals how those insane ideas came about with remarkable tales of ingenious invention and idiotic engineering. 
 
 This book is essential reading for any Top Gear fan and a terrific insight into the creation of the world’s biggest car show. It’s also a terrifying window into the minds of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. Don’t say you weren’t warned about that last one.

Top Gear: Ambitious but Rubbish

The Secrets Behind Top Gear's Craziest Creations

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