Aaron Dignan is the founder of The Ready--a global organizational transformation and coaching practice--that helps companies large and small adopt new forms of self-organization and dynamic teaming. Clients include Johnson &amp; Johnson, Microsoft, Lloyds Bank, Citibank, Boeing, Mailchimp, Airbnb, Dropbox, and charity: water. 
 
He is also the founder of Murmur--a SaaS startup that helps teams scale culture through the magic of working agreements. The Murmur platform will allow every team on the planet to define and share their ways of working. 
 
Dignan is the author of Brave New Work (2019) and Game Frame (2011), co-host of the Brave New Work podcast, and a friend to misfit toys.

Aaron Dignan

Aaron Edwards is a senior lecturer in defence and international affairs at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, specialising in terrorism and counter-insurgency. He is the author and editor of several books, including Defending the Realm: The Politics of Britain’s Small Wars Since 1945, and has lectured all over the world on aspects of national and international security. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Aaron Edwards

Aaron Robertson is a writer, an editor, and a translator of Italian literature. His translation of Igiaba Scego’s Beyond Babylon was short-listed for the 2020 PEN Translation Prize and the National Translation Award, and in 2021 he received a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, Foreign Policy, n+1, The Point, and Literary Hub, among other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Aaron Robertson

Aaron Shapiro

Aaron T Beck

Aaron Vallance

Aaron Young was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, and read Politics and Communications at The University of Liverpool. He is a BAFTA-nominated director, producer and executive producer with over 20 years of experience across projects for the BBC, PBS, Channel 4, Channel 5, UKTV, UK Film Council and Arts Council England. A long-time collaborator of acclaimed historian, James Holland, he is the producer and director of the BAFTA-shortlisted BBC titles ‘Battle of Britain: The Real Story’ and, ‘Dam Busters: The Race to Smash the German Dams’, as well as ‘The Battle for Malta’, ‘Normandy ’44: The Battle Beyond D-Day’, the RTS-nominated ‘Imphal &amp; Kohima: Britain’s Greatest Battle.’, and the 3-part series, 'Normandy '44: D-Day and the Battle for France. His most recent credits include 'Hidden Histories of WWII', 'Lost Temples of Cambodia', the RTS-winning ‘Lost Home Movies of Nazi Germany’, and ‘Prue Leith: Journey with My Daughter’. Aaron was named in the inaugural list of BAFTA ‘Brits to Watch.’ He is the co-owner of award-winning film and television production company, Bright Button Productions, and lives with his wife and children in Poundbury, Dorset.

Aaron Young

Aatish Taseer

Abbe Prevost

Abbey Bryant is an NYC-based award-winning illustrator. With her BFA in Children's Book Illustration, her notable illustrated books include Nautilus award winner Hazel Mist, Hypnotist as well as an Enchanted Fairy House Kit with Scholastic's Klutz! 
 
As a queer illustrator, LGBTQ+ themes and stories hold a spot near to her heart. Most days she can be found around the city drawing New Yorkers or sketching trees at the park.

Abbey Bryant

Abbey Clancy is a model, television presenter and the host of chart-topping podcast The Therapy Crouch. She was the runner-up of Britain's Next Top Model in 2006, winner of Strictly Come Dancing in 2013 and went on to present Britain's Next Top Model. Later this year she will host Celebrity Homes on ITV.

Abbey Clancy

Abbie Greaves studied at Cambridge University before working in a literary agency for a number of years. She was inspired to write her first novel, The Silent Treatment, after reading a newspaper article about a boy in Japan who had never seen his parents speak to one another before. 
 
Abbie lives in Brighton with her boyfriend.

Abbie Greaves

Abbie Ross is a British author and psychotherapist. Her first book, Hippy Dinners, a funny and poignant memoir of her bohemian childhood in 1970s North Wales, has been optioned by Baby Cow, who are developing it into an 8-part television series. 
Before turning to writing, Abbie had a successful career as a producer at Aardman Animations, the acclaimed studios behind Wallace &amp; Gromit and the film Chicken Run. 
Today, she divides her time between her thriving psychotherapy practice in Bristol, and her writing, and finds that the two careers complement each other perfectly.

Abbie Ross

Abbie Spallen

Abbie Taylor lives in Dublin. She works as a doctor and has two daughters.

Abbie Taylor

Abby L Yates co-founded the Ghostbusters with Erin Gilbert. Ghosts from Our Past was her first book, now finally back in print.

Abby L Yates

Abby Lee

Abby Rawlinson is an integrative therapist with a private practice based in east London, UK. Her work mixes traditional psychotherapeutic theories with cutting-edge, evidence-based techniques into a style that feels relatable, down-to-earth, and compassionate. Abby regularly contributes to articles, including but not limited to Stylist, Elle, BBC, Harpers Bazaar, Sheerluxe, Women's Health, and Psychologies. She can be found on Instagram @therapywithabby or online at therapywithabby.co.uk

Abby Rawlinson

Abby Wambach is a two-time Olympic gold medallist, FIFA World Cup champion, six-time winner of the U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year award and one of Time’s Most Influential People. She is a founder of Treat Media, an award-winning media company that makes art for humans who want to stay human. Abby is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Wolfpack and the New York Times bestseller Forward. Named one of the ‘50 Most Powerful People in Podcasting,’ she is co-host of the chart-topping podcast We Can Do Hard Things, which has received over a half billion plays. Abby is an executive producer of the Sundance award-winning film Come See Me in the Good Light, part owner of the NWSL’s Angel City Football Club and sits on multiple boards. Her most recent book, We Can Do Hard Things: Answers to Life’s 20 Questions, created with Glennon Doyle, Amanda Doyle and Treat Media, is being hailed as ‘the guidebook for being alive.’

Abby Wambach

Abel &amp; Cole’s story starts in 1988 with Keith Abel flogging potatoes door-to-door. ‘Of course potatoes are organic,’ he thought, ‘they’re vegetables’. However, he quickly discovered how unnecessarily complicated our food system had become and, consequently, realised the huge benefits of going organic and never looked back. In fact, Abel &amp; Cole still get veg from the farm where Keith's first organic spuds came from. 
To this day, their priorities remain the same. Now, selling 100% organic produce, Abel &amp; Cole believe that organic farming (a holistic system that encourages biodiversity) is the very best way to go. It protects our countryside and the critters that inhabit it, insists on the very best animal welfare, supports your local community and, frankly, tastes heaps better. Abel &amp; Cole think so anyway.

Abel & Cole Limited

Abhijit Banerjee, winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics, is the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). In 2011, he was named one of Foreign Policy magazine’s top 100 global thinkers. Banerjee served on the U.N. Secretary-General’s High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda.

Abhijit V. Banerjee

Abhishek Mukherjee, 30, is a Delhi-based journalist. He holds a bachelor's degree in English literature from Delhi University, a post-graduate diploma in journalism from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Raipur. He also likes dogs.

Abhishek Mukherjee

Abi Elphinstone grew up in Scotland where she spent most of her childhood running wild across the moors, hiding in tree houses and building dens in the woods. After being coaxed out of her tree house, she studied English at Bristol University and then worked as an English teacher in Africa, Berkshire and London. She is the bestselling and multi-award shortlisted author of RUMBLESTAR (first in The Unmapped Chronicles), SKY SONG &amp; THE DREAMSNATCHER TRILOGY, published by S&amp;S. When she's not writing, Abi volunteers for Beanstalk, speaks in schools and travels the world looking for her next story.

Abi Elphinstone

Abi Falase is a Black British writer and director, reimagining fundamental societal concepts in inventive new worlds. Abi has written and directed a number of plays, including The Village and Rush with the Almedia Theatre, as well as Rift for Immediate Theatre and was shortlisted for the BBC Scriptworks ‘A Thousand Stories’ scriptwriting competition in 2021.

Abi Falase

Abi Titmuss

Abie Longstaff is the eldest of six children and grew up in Australia, Hong Kong and France. She knows all about squabbling, chaos and bossing younger sisters around. So she logically began her career as a barrister. She started writing when her children were born. Her favourite childhood books were Hating Alison Ashley, A Little Princess, Maura's Angel and The Black Stallion and she sneakily reads them again sometimes. Abie lives in Hove with her family.

Abie Longstaff

Abigail Ahern

Abigail Balfe is a queer, auDHD author-illustrator and Emmy award-winning creative based in Brighton. Before writing books full-time, Abigail led digital campaigns for pop stars such as One Direction and Little Mix, and for TV broadcasters including Channel 4 and Netflix. She also performed stand-up comedy and won several small trophies for her onstage humour, which featured life-size illustrations, ridiculous songs, and rambling stories about her family. In 2023, Abigail was named one of the Top 50 Influential Neurodivergent Women in the UK.

Abigail Balfe

Abigail Docherty

Abigail Foster is a Chartered Accountant and founder of Elent Finance, a financial education company designed to demystify the world of finance and empower you to achieve financial wellbeing. 
 
Abigail has worked with leading financial institutions across the UK, including HMRC, the Bank of England and Downing Street, and global companies such as Google and Goldman Sachs. She hosts a weekly money segment on LBC radio and has also appeared as a finance expert on ITV, Channel 5 and Sky News.

Abigail Foster

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Orlando Figes

The Europeans is a richly enthralling, panoramic cultural history of nineteenth-century Europe, told through the intertwined lives of three remarkable people: a great singer, Pauline Viardot, a great writer, Ivan Turgenev, and a great connoisseur, Pauline's husband Louis. Their ambitious lives and complex loves were bound up with an astonishing array of writers, composers and painters all trying to make their way through the exciting, prosperous European cultural landscape that came about as a result of huge economic and technological change. This culture - through trains, telegraphs and printing - allowed artists of all kinds to exchange ideas and make a living, as they travelled across the whole continent from the British Isles to Imperial Russia. 
 
The Europeans is Orlando Figes' masterpiece. It describes huge changes through intimate details, little-known stories and through the lens of Turgenev and the Viardots' touching, strange love triangle. Events which we now see as central to European high culture are made completely fresh, allowing the reader to revel in the sheer precariousness with which the great salons, premieres and bestsellers came into existence.

The Europeans

Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture

Liza Tarbuck

I am genuinely distracted by everything, and I don't think I'm alone in this. I consider my love of distraction a thing to be cherished. 
 
Like the annuals of my youth, this book is filled with puzzles, activities and mental musings. I hope that every page tickles your fancy. This book might be a perfect conversation starter at a dinner table, or the last thing you're flipping through before bed. I promise that you'll laugh at least once. 
 
So here we go. I am passing my distractions on to you.

I An Distracted by Everything

Uwe Schütte

The story of the phenomenon that is Kraftwerk, and how they revolutionised our cultural landscape 
 
'We are not artists nor musicians. We are workers.' Ignoring nearly all rock traditions, experimenting in near-total secrecy in their Düsseldorf studio, Kraftwerk fused sound and technology, graphic design and performance, modernist Bauhaus aesthetics and Rhineland industrialisation - even human and machine - to change the course of modern music. This is the story of Kraftwerk as a cultural phenomenon, who turned electronic music into avant-garde concept art and created the soundtrack to our digital age.

Kraftwerk

Future Music from Germany

John Craven

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, John was, to children and parents alike, a friendly guide to the big wide world as the presenter of the world's first news programme for children, Newsround. And then, for a new audience, in 1989, John hosted the first episode of Countryfile - a show that he's now presented for almost three decades. 
 
In this funny, moving and unique first memoir, John recounts his childhood, the high points and low points of one of the longest entertaining careers in history, and the people, family and animals in his own life that have shaped it.

Headlines and Hedgerows

A Memoir

Nick Tosches

The tormented life of Jerry Lee Lewis is the most fabled in rock 'n' roll history. 
 
Demon-shadowed and God-fearing, his relentless, all-consuming pursuit of self-destruction clouded his life and his music. 
 
Born in deep south Louisiana and raised on the Old Testament, 'The Killer' was continually torn between a harsh Pentecostal God and the worship of alcohol, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. Nick Tosches's electrifying account chronicles the monumental highs and lows of the ever indomitable and ever wild Jerry Lee, who rises to dizzying heights as a rock 'n' roll icon, only to lose it time and time again to his inner demons. 
 
Searing, mythic and gloriously written, Hellfire is an evocative, audacious journey into the soul of rock 'n' roll itself.

Hellfire

The Jerry Lee Lewis Story

Peter Biskind

Are Batman and 24's Jack Bauer heroic loners defending our way of life - or right-wing vigilantes attacking it? Is Avatar just a National Geographic version of Star Wars or a passionate assault on capitalism? And what about Game of Thrones - sword and sorcery fantasy, or lesson in mainstream politics? 
 
In The Sky is Falling! bestselling cultural critic Peter Biskind takes us on a dizzying ride across two decades of pop culture to show how the TV and movies we love have taught us to love political extremism. Welcome to a darkly pessimistic, apocalyptic world where winter has come, the dead are walking, and ultra violence, revenge and torture are all in a day's work. Welcome to the new normal.

The Sky is Falling!

The Unexpected Politics of Hollywood’s Superheroes and Zombies

How Vampires, Zombies, Androids and Superheroes Made America Great for Extremism

Nick Hornby

Tom and Louise meet in the pub opposite their counsellor's office ten minutes before their session is about to start. Their marriage is in a state of crisis because Louise has been unfaithful, after a long period in which Tom wasn't interested in having sex with her at all. 
 
The plan in these ten minutes is to talk about the agenda for the session, what they talked about last week, what they never talk about, and what is wrong with the couple whose counselling slot immediately precedes their own. Frequently they talk about things that are really not important to their difficulties but which animate and provoke them anyway. 
 
In this way, we learn about the history and the future of a marriage. Anyone who has ever been in a relationship made more complicated by time, and familiarity, will recognise themselves in this brilliantly funny comedy written by one of our most beloved writers,one who captures relationships like few others.

State of the Union

A Marriage in Ten Parts

Paul Kildea

Chopin's Piano begins in November 1838, when George Sand, her children and Frederick Chopin took a boat to Majorca for the winter. It describes their circumstances there, and how Chopin completed one of the most revolutionary works in the history of music - his Preludes - on 'a small Mallorquin piano' which he picked up when they arrived and carted up to the monastery in the mountains where he and Sand lodged. Kildea traces the history of the Preludes, their pianists, their interpretations, and the history of the Mallorquin piano itself, to find an unexpected path through the history of romantic music - via Wanda Landowska in Berlin in 1913, Paris in 1940-41 when the Nazis seized the piano, down to the end of romantic music. It is an astonishing narrative and detective story, an unclassifiable and thrilling book, which explores in an original way the changing meaning of music through time.

Chopin's Piano

A Journey through Romanticism

Daniel Levitin

Dividing the sum total of human musical achievement, from Beethoven to The Beatles, Busta Rhymes to Bach, into just six fundamental forms, Levitin illuminates, through songs of friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion and love, how music has been instrumental in the evolution of language, thought and culture. And how, far from being a bit of a song and dance, music is at the core of what it means to be human. 
 
A one-time record producer, now a leading neuroscientist, Levitin has composed a catchy and startlingly ambitious narrative that weaves together Darwin and Dionne Warwick, memoir and biology, anthropology and a jukebox of anecdote to create nothing less than the ' soundtrack of civilisation' .

The World in Six Songs

How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature

Using musical examples from Bach to the Beatles, Levitin reveals the role of music in human evolution, shows how our musical preferences begin to form even before we are born and explains why music can offer such an emotional experience. 
 
Music is an obsession at the heart of human nature, even more fundamental to our species than language. In This Is Your Brain On Music Levitin offers nothing less than a new way to understand it, and its role in human life

This is Your Brain on Music

Understanding a Human Obsession

Sue Perkins

A few years ago I was asked if I'd like to make a documentary on the Mekong River, travelling from the vast delta in Vietnam to the remote and snowy peaks of Tibet. 
 
Up until that point, the farthest East I'd been was Torremolinos, in the Costa Del Sol. 
 
Here's the thing: 
 
I am scared of flying. 
I have zero practical skills. 
I can't survive if I am more than a three minute walk from a supermarket. 
For the last seven years I have suffered with crippling anxiety 
I bolt when panicked. 
I cannot bear to witness humans or animals in distress 
I have no ability to learn languages. 
I am a terrible hypochondriac 
 
And I am no good with boats. 
 
So I said yes.

East of Croydon

Travels through India and South East Asia inspired by her BBC 1 series 'The Ganges'

Julie Kavanagh

Born on a train in Stalin's Russia, Rudolf Nureyev was ballet's first pop icon. No other dancer of our time has generated the same excitement - both on and off stage. 
 
 
Nureyev's achievements and conquests became legendary: he rose out of Tatar peasant poverty to become the Kirov's thrilling maverick star; slept with his beloved mentor's wife; defected to the West in 1961; sparked Rudimania across the globe; established the most rhapsodic partnership in dance history with the middle-aged Margot Fonteyn; reinvented male technique; gatecrashed modern dance; moulded new stars; and staged Russia's unknown ballet masterpieces in the West. He and his life were simply astonishing.

Rudolf Nureyev

The Life

Zadie Smith

No subject is too fringe or too mainstream for Zadie Smith's insatiable curiosity. From social media to the environment, Tarantino to Jay-Z to Knausgaard, she has endless fascination and the boundless wit, insight and wisdom to match. In Feel Free, pop culture, high culture, social change and political debate all get the Zadie Smith treatment: dissected with razor-sharp intellect, set brilliantly against the context of the utterly contemporary, and considered with a deep humanity and compassion. 
 
This electrifying new collection showcases its author as a true literary powerhouse, demonstrating once again her credentials as an essential voice of her generation.

Feel Free

Essays

David Cairns

Berlioz was one of the towering figures of Romanticism: not only was he a great and revolutionary composer, but also the finest composer of his day and an outstanding critic and writer. Yet throughout his life he struggled for money and his music was persistently reviled in his native France. With exceptional insight and sympathy, David Cairns draws together the major strands of Berlioz's life: his tempestuous marriage to the actress Harriet Smithson; the genesis of his famous works, including the Requiem, Romeo and Juliet and his crowning masterpiece The Trojans; his friendships with Mendelssohn, Liszt, Princess Wittgenstein and Wagner; and, finally, his last years haunted once again by personal tragedy. Here, as never before, is Berlioz the artist - and the man.

Berlioz

Servitude and Greatness 1832-1869

No artist's achievement connects more directly with early experience than that of Berlioz. David Cairns draws on a wealth of family papers to recreate in authentic and intimate detail the provincial milieu of Berlioz's boyhood, showing how the son of a village doctor was already transforming himself into the composer of the Fantastic Symphony. Berlioz's desperate attempts to win his father's approval for his vocation, his struggles to establish himself on the Parisian musical scene, and his passionate pursuit of love are all brought vividly to life in this first volume of David Cairn's award-winning biography.

The Making of an Artist 1803-1832

Timothy Day

The sound of the choir of King's College, Cambridge - its voices perfectly blended, its emotions restrained, its impact sublime - has become famous all over the world, and for many, the distillation of a particular kind of Englishness. This is especially so at Christmas time, with the broadcast of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, whose centenary is celebrated this year. How did this small band of men and boys in a famous fenland town in England come to sing in the extraordinary way they did in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries? 
 
It has been widely assumed that the King's style essentially continues an English choral tradition inherited directly from the Middle Ages. In this original and illuminating book, Timothy Day shows that this could hardly be further from the truth. Until the 1930s, the singing at King's was full of high Victorian emotionalism, like that at many other English choral foundations well into the twentieth century. 
 
The choir's modern sound was brought about by two intertwined revolutions, one social and one musical. From 1928, singing with the trebles in place of the old lay clerks, the choir was fully made up of choral scholars - college men, reading for a degree. Under two exceptional directors of music - Boris Ord from 1929 and David Willcocks from 1958 - the style was transformed and the choir broadcast and recorded until it became the epitome of English choral singing, setting the benchmark for all other choral foundations either to imitate or to react against. Its style has now been taken over and adapted by classical performers who sing both sacred and secular music in secular settings all over the world with a precision inspired by the King's tradition. 
 
I Saw Eternity the Other Night investigates the timbres of voices, the enunciation of words, the use of vibrato. But the singing of all human beings, in whatever style, always reflects in profound and subtle ways their preoccupations and attitudes to life. These are the underlying themes explored by this book.

I Saw Eternity the Other Night

King's College, Cambridge, and an English Singing Style

Dawn French

This is Dawn French's fabulously inventive take on modern life - the twists and turns, the surprises, the hurts and the delights. Yes, especially those. It's a way for readers to take a lovely ramble through the year together with Dawn. Think of it as Dawn's diary, with places for the reader to personalize the book with their own thoughts and experiences . . . perfection.

Me. You. Not a Diary

The No.1 Sunday Times Bestseller

Geoff Dyer

Where Eagles Dare is both a thrillingly realized Alpine Second World War adventure with tough, compelling acting from its two great stars, Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood, and a flippant travesty, infantilizing the central disaster in Europe's modern history in favour of huge explosions and camp SS officers. 
 
Geoff Dyer has loved Where Eagles Dare since childhood and in 'Broadsword Calling Danny Boy' he twists and turns very entertainingly to both extoll and denigrate the acme of the late 1960s action movie. Like his earlier Zona - on Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker - this is a scene-by-scene reaction to watching the film. The book might have as an ideal reader somebody who has not even seen Where Eagles Dare, but who will enjoy it simply as a comic tour-de-force. But for the film's legions of fans, whose hearts will always belong to Ron Goodwin's theme tune and the opening shots of a snow-camouflaged Junkers Ju-52, this book will be the fulfilment of a dream.

'Broadsword Calling Danny Boy'

On Where Eagles Dare

Suzannah Lipscomb

Part of the new Ladybird Expert series, Witchcraft is an accessible, authoritative and captivating introduction to the magical myths that have coloured the popular imagination for centuries. 
 
Written by celebrated historian and broadcaster Dr Suzannah Lipscomb, Witchcraft explores the moment in history when witches were perceived to be especially dangerous: the famous witch hunts between 1450 and 1750. 
 
You'll learn how the figure of the witch remains culturally relevant. In horror films, TV shows and pop culture, the figure of the witch retains her potency to attract and repel. 
 
Witch hunts in one form or another have persisted for thousands of years. Understanding why people were and continue to be persecuted for witchcraft matters now, more than ever.

Witchcraft: A Ladybird Expert Book

Nathan Carter

Nathan Carter has become Ireland's biggest country music star. He is heralded by many as reviving the country music genre and bringing it into the mainstream. He has sold out venues across the UK and Ireland, has landed his own primetime show, and is loved and respected by legions of fans across Ireland. 
 
But how did a lad from Liverpool accomplish all this before the age of 27? 
 
In his revealing and inspirational autobiography, Nathan reminisces about his music filled childhood, and growing up in Merseyside with his Liverpool-Irish family. From his first taste of showbiz at the tender age of four, to his success on the north of England club circuit and his subsequent relocation to Donegal, Nathan explores the twists of fate that took him to chart success and to become Ireland's adopted poster boy for country music.

Born for the Road

My Story So Far

Fiona Maddocks

Part of the new Ladybird Expert series, Twentieth-Century Classical Music is an accessible, authoritative, and entertaining introduction to the Western classical music that captured the defining moments of the contemporary world. 
 
Written by The Observer's classical music critic Fiona Maddocks, Twentieth-Century Classical Music will take you on an acoustic journey through history with a curated playlist on each page. 
 
Early in the century, Schoenberg pioneered musical experiments which turned old traditions on their head. Then Stravinsky's sensational Rite of Spring, written on the eve of WWI dramatically altered the course of all classical music that followed. 
 
 From the influence of the jazz age and the sounds of cities, the nationalism of folk revival, Russian revolutions from the Bolsheviks to Stalin, to the fall of the Berlin Wall, you'll learn how Western composers painted with a new orchestral palette to capture the sentiments of their time.

Twentieth-Century Classical Music

A Ladybird Expert Book

Maria Alyokhina

From activist, Pussy Riot member and freedom fighter Maria Alyokhina, a raw, hallucinatory, passionate account of her arrest, trial and imprisonment in Siberian jail for standing up for what she believed in. 
 
'One of the most brilliant and inspiring things I've read in years. Couldn't put it down. This book is freedom' Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick 
 
'A women's prison memoir like no other! One tough cookie!' @MargaretAtwood 
 
'Once you begin reading, you are completely disarmed, unable to put it down until the last page' Marina Abramovic 
 
People who believe in freedom and democracy think it will exist forever. 
 
That is a mistake. What happened in Russia - what happened to me - could happen anywhere. 
 
When I was jailed for political protest, I learned that prison doesn't just teach you to follow the rules. It teaches you to think that you can never break them. 
 
It's inevitable that the prison gates will open at some point. But this doesn't mean that you leave the 'prisoner' category and go straight into the category of 'the free'. 
 
Freedom does not exist unless you fight for it every day. 
 
This is the story about how I made a choice.

Riot Days

Eddie Izzard

The stand-up comedian of his generation. Star of stage and screen. Tireless supporter of charity. Runner. Political campaigner. Fashion icon. Human. There is no one quite like Eddie Izzard. 
 
This is the story of how a boy who wanted to become a professional footballer and win the lead in Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat found comedy. Affecting, witty and nothing less than rousing, readers will, as Eddie himself says, 'look at my life and say, 'If that idiot transvestite can run a whole bunch of marathons, play the Hollywood Bowl, and travel across France with a French-speaking tour, then what's holding me back?''

Believe Me

A Memoir of Love, Death and Jazz Chickens

Min Kym

'All my life my Stradivarius had been waiting for me, as I had been waiting for her . . .' 
 
The thing you live for: Gone. 
 
At twenty-one, violinist prodigy Min Kym found the one - a 1696 Stradivarius. At last she had found her true voice. Together they toured the world, playing to rapt audiences. 
 
But in 2010 Min's violin was stolen at a train station - and suddenly her world collapsed. Unable to play, with little hope of ever finding the instrument that was now an extension of herself, she could see no future. 
 
Yet Min knew that the music was still inside her - if only she could rediscover what she had lost, she might just find herself . . .

Gone

A Girl, a Violin, a Life Unstrung

Stephen Fry

Spanning 1979-1987, The Fry Chronicles charts Stephen's arrival at Cambridge up to his thirtieth birthday. 
 
'Heartbreaking, a delight, a lovely, comfy book' The Times 
 
'Perfect prose and excruciating honesty. A grand reminiscence of college and theatre and comedyland in the 1980s, with tone-perfect anecdotes and genuine readerly excitement. What Fry does, essentially, is tell us who he really is. Above all else, a thoughtful book. And namedroppy too, and funny, and marbled with melancholy' Observer 
 
'Arguably the greatest living Englishman' Independent on Sunday 
 
'Extremely enjoyable' Sunday Times 
 
'Fry's linguistic facility remains one of the Wildean wonders of the new media age. The patron saint of British intelligence' Daily Telegraph

The Fry Chronicles

Penguin Picks

Alan Carr

It must seem strange to you that I've called a book Alanatomy. 
For anyone who has taken the time to see my stand-up performances or watched my chat show, Chattyman, knows that my body has hardly been kind to me - in fact there've been times when we've actually stopped talking to each other. Balding, myopic, often flaky with psoriasis, back fat that hangs suspended like a cape, a voice that could strip varnish, an increasingly dodgy hip and even dodgier teeth. Why would you draw attention to it? you must ask. Couldn't you just call the book something else? Do you think the Great British Public is ready to pore over your body? 
 
Well, as I turn 40 and take stock of my showbiz life over the last 10 years or so, I have learnt to embrace my flaws and face my shortcomings. In fact, strange as it might seem, the things I hate about myself have become my trademark and I am slowly, begrudgingly learning to, if not love them, to at least live with them. I am ready now to take a long hard look at myself and that's what Alanatomy is. It's the story of my rise to fame: the joys, the traumas, the parties, the disappointments. Hopefully you will find it witty, fun and heart-warming, but more importantly honest, and that it will keep you entertained every time you pick it up. 
 
Alanatomy is the chance for you to get beneath my skin and see the real me because, and to continue the anatomical theme if I may, this showbiz existence can sometimes feel like an autopsy - picked at, probed and scrutinized, with every inch of your body held up for analysis, but unlike an actual autopsy, you are very much alive. 
 
So I give you Alanatomy: The Inside Story. I am laying myself out on the slab for your entertainment; naked, stripped bare. Grab your scalpel, peel back the skin and go deep, have a good old probe around at my life so far. Yes, you are going to find guts, a fair bit of cheek, maybe even a little bit of gristle, but hopefully, you'll find a whole lot of heart.

Alanatomy

The Inside Story

Roger Scruton

'The ideal interpreter of the Ring ... a fascinating and valuable study ... absorbing and convincing' Sunday Times 
 
The Ring of the Nibelung is one of the greatest works of art created in modern times. Roger Scruton's brilliant and passionate exploration of the drama, music, symbolism and philosophy of Wagner's masterpiece - with its themes of love, death, sacrifice and freedom - shows how, ultimately, it expresses the truth about the human condition. 
 
'Highly original and penetrating ... tremendous' Tim Blanning, Literary Review 
 
'A rich, historical account ... After reading this book, only the most unadventurous reader would turn down the chance to see Wagner's masterpiece' Economist 
 
'A brilliant gallop through the master's religious, musical and philosophical contexts' Sue Prideaux, Spectator 
 
'Scruton is one of the finest philosopher-musicians since Schopenhauer' Jonathan Gaisman, Standpoint

The Ring of Truth

The Wisdom of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung

Luke Stephenson

Helen Champion

For clown lovers and art lovers alike, the only collection of clown faces painted on eggs anywhere in the world 
 
The Clown Egg Register is a unique record of two hundred and fifty clown faces, each one painted on to an egg. The eggs act as copyright for a clown's personal visual identity, preserving the unwritten rule that a clown must never copy the face of another. It is a tradition that began in the United Kingdom in the 1940s at Clowns International, the oldest established club for clowns. 
 
In this book, the inimitably eccentric collection of images is paired with biographies of each clown, revealing details of their private and public lives, and giving a glimpse into this outmoded art form that continues to delight and terrify children everywhere.

The Clown Egg Register

Barry Humphries

Barry Humphries was loved all over the world for his alter ego Dame Edna Everage and her famous catchphrase 'Hello Possums!' 
 
But beyond his own monstrous creation, this remarkable memoir takes a nostalgic look over his life and career, and the private life that Dame Edna overshadowed. 
 
More Please, the first of several autobiographies by Humphries, won critical praise and the J.R. Ackerley prize.

More Please

Ben Ratliff

The most significant revolution in the recent history of music has to do with listening: it is now possible to listen to nearly anything at any time, to ignore albums, and to instantly flit across genres and generations, from 1980s Detroit techno to 1890s Viennese neo-romanticism. Yet music criticism has historically focused on the musician's intent, not the listener's experience. Every Song Ever is therefore the definitive field guide to listening in an age of glorious, overwhelming abundance. By revealing the essential similarities between wildly different kinds of music, Ben Ratliff shows how we listen to music now, and suggests how we can listen better.

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