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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Jason Manford

The is the tale of a cheeky little sod from Salford called Jason growing up surrounded by his properly funny and most definitely shameless family and his discovery that being funny might actually get him somewhere. Other than detention, mugged, dumped or sacked that is. 
 
It's about being part of a big, northern, working-class family forever struggling with money, but never short on laughs or misadventures, who show that when the chips are down what really matters is sticking together.

Brung Up Proper

My Autobiography

Rosemary Ackland

Joss Ackland

Rosemary Ackland began writing her diary in 1945, aged just fifteen. For the next fifty-eight years, through happiness and heartache, she continued to write. Even after the tragic onset of Motor Neurone disease, which left her mute and immobile, her diary was still an outlet - in fact, then more than ever. 
 
Her simple, heartfelt jottings were never intended for an audience. But, during her last days, as he helped her hold a pen, her husband Joss read her words for the first time. Deeply moved by her lifetime's recollections he asked her consent to publish them and she agreed. 
 
My Better Half and Me weaves together Rosemary's diaries with Joss's commentary to tell of an extraordinary love story that lasted over fifty years. Their life together was remarkably full. At first they lived on a shoestring, struggling to bring up their new family on just Joss's payas a young actor. Once his career took off their lives became a dynamic whirl of tours across the country. But they remained an extremely close-knit family, with lives shaped by their seven children, by the tragic, untimely death of their eldest son, and later, by the birth of their grandchildren. 
 
Above all, this intimate and candid story, shows how lucky they were to have each other. In turbulent times they were each other's rock. Theirs was truly and old-fashioned romance.

My Better Half and Me

Michael Simkins

As a boy, Michael Simkins always wanted to be someone. While his friends were out getting laid and stoned, he was tucked up at home dreaming of his name in lights, of holding an audience rapt, of perhaps becoming a TV heart-throb, or having someone, anyone, ask for his autograph in the supermarket. This is the true story of an obsessive pursuit of acting fame. It is a life marked by occasional hard-fought successes and routine helpings of ritual humiliation: scout hut Gilbert and Sullivan, dodgy rock operas, sewage farm theatre workshop, Christmas panto hell, straight-to-video film flops, leading roles in Crimewatch reconstructions and dressing up as a chicken to advertise TV dinners. It is a hilarious tale of turgid theatre, tights, trusses and tonsil tennis with Timothy Spall.

What's My Motivation?

Lynda Bellingham

'Looking back, perhaps the single biggest problem was fear. Fear of failure, fear of other people - but mostly fear of myself. It has taken many years to discover who I really am. It's never too late to find yourself, however lost you may be ...' 
 
In Lynda Bellingham's blisteringly honest autobiography, the much-loved actress and Loose Women panellist reveals the truth about her life, including her search for her birth mother, only to lose her again to Alzheimer's, and her many years married to an abusive man while playing the 'nation's mum' in the Oxo adverts. 
 
But Lynda never lost her sense of humour, and among the darker moments she recalls hilarious anecdotes from her time on stage and screen. Lost and Found is an inspiring story of getting through the tough times with the strong spirit of a survivor, and finally finding true love.

Lost and Found

My Story

Paddy McGuinness

Get the kettle on, the biscuits out and settle in for a belting read. 
 
Let Paddy McGuinness take you back, far, far away from celebrity land, to a two-up, two-down terrace in 1970s Bolton, where he grew up. They were happy times, but money was tight. Paddy slept on a mattress he dragged in from the street, and at 17 he struggled severely with the stress of juggling a college course and two jobs to support his beloved mum. 
 
But while cash may have been short, grit and wit were in over-supply, and this is the improbable true story of the lad who went from kipping in abandoned cars in Bolton to racing supercars on Top Gear, via laying concrete floors in prisons, a lively career in a leisure centre, a showbiz intervention by school pal Peter Kay and eye-popping adventures in the world of teledom. 
 
There has been mischief and misadventure, joy and sorry, huge success and unexpected challenges. It's a lifey well lived, and an unforgettable personal memoir written from the heart.

My Lifey

Shane Spall

'Tim and I both understood we had done something really stupid. We had underestimated the danger involved in going out to sea. We had no radio, compass, life raft or flares. In other words, we were a couple of idiots.' 
 
This is the story of Shane and Timothy Spall and their Dutch barge The Princess Matilda. After a summer on the Thames they head out to sea with only a road atlas and a vast amount of ignorance - and it is absolutely terrifying! 
 
On their travels, memories are triggered of childhood trips to the seaside, but also of more recent times. A decade before, Tim had been diagnosed with acute leukaemia and was given only days to live. Shocked at how life can pass you by they decided that when, and if, Tim got better, they would buy a boat. 
 
As Tim and Shane explore the coast from the Medway to Cornwall, eventually they start to wonder, could they make it out of England altogether? Could Matilda make it to ... Wales?! 
 
Taking over five years, The Voyages of The Princess Matilda is a minor epic, charting a very personal, moving and uplifting story of an everyday couple's adventure around their much loved homeland. 
 
** Winner of the British Travel Press's Narrative Travel Book of the Year Award **

The Voyages of the Princess Matilda

Michael J. Fox

In September 1998, Michael J. Fox stunned the world by announcing that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease - in fact, he had been secretly fighting it for seven years. In this candid book, with his trademark ironic sensibility and sense of the absurd, he tells his life story - from his childhood in western Canada to his meteoric rise in film and television and, most importantly, the years in which - with the unswerving support of his wife, family and friends - he has dealt with his illness. He talks about what Parkinson's has given him: the chance to appreciate a wonderful life and career, and the opportunity to help search for a cure and spread public awareness of the disease.  He feels as if he is a very lucky man indeed.

Lucky Man

A Memoir

Sue Johnston

'There was a lot that we kept from my mother. My dad would say to me as a teenager "Don't tell your mother." We couldn't face the disapproval.' 
 
Sue Johnston always seemed to be disappointing her mother. As a girl she never stayed clean and tidy like her cousins. As she grew older, she spent all her piano lesson money on drinks for her mates down the pub, and when she discovered The Cavern she was never at home. The final straw was when Sue left her steady job at a St Helen's factory to try her hand at that unsteadiest of jobs: acting. 
 
Yet when Sue was bringing up her own child alone, her mother was always there to help. And playing her much-loved characters Sheila Grant in Waking the Dead and Barbara in The Royle Family- although her mum wouldn't say she was proud as such, she certainly seemed to approve. And in her mother's final months, it was Sue she needed by her side. 
 
The relationship with your mother is perhaps the most precious and fraught of any woman's life. When she began writing, Sue set out to record 'all the big things, and all the small things. Everything I wanted to tell my mother but felt I never could'. The result is a warm, poignant and often very funny memoir by one of Britain's favourite actresses.

Things I Couldn't Tell My Mother

Jim Davidson

'People will be surprised by the honesty of this book. There will be no holds barred'  Jim Davidson. Somehow the last decade saw Jim Davidson transformed from foul-mouthed stand-up comic to being the face of BBC light entertainment, Chairman of the British Forces Foundation and close friend of Prince Charles.  Close To The Edge details this remarkable change in a fresh and deeply intimate style.  Jim comes clean about himself, his actions and his motives.  From the times he spent in the rehabilitation clinic to the full story of the break up of his four marriages, he re-evaluates his life in a critical and self-aware manner - making Close to The Edge an entertaining and unusually powerful autobiography.

Close to the Edge

David Gilmour

Jesse didn't want to go to school anymore. After much deliberation, his father offers him an unconventional deal: he can drop out, sleep all day, not work, not pay rent, but on one condition - that he watches three films a week, of his father's choosing. 
 
What follows is an unusual journey as week by week, side by side, they watch the world's best (and occasionally worst) films - from True Romance to Chunking Express, A Hard Day's Night to Rosemary's Baby, and La Dolce Vita to Giant. The films get them talking: about girls, music, heartbreak, work, drugs, money, friendship - but they also open doors to a young man's interior life at a time when a parent is normally shut out. Gradually the father's initial worries are set aside as he watches his son morph from chaotic teenager to self-assured adult - who even starts to get up before noon. As the film club moves towards its poignant and inevitable conclusion, the young man makes a decision which surprises even his father... 
 
The Film Club is a book that goes straight to the heart. Honest, unsparing, and emotive, it follows one man's attempt to chart a course for his beloved son's rocky passage into adulthood.

The Film Club

No School. No Work ... Just Three Films a Week

Keith Allen

'He'll either win the Victoria Cross or go to prison,' said Keith Allen's headmaster, 1966. 
 
Born a Navy baby, Keith Allen learnt young that when things get too settled you move on. That's the way he has lived his life ever since - always leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. 
 
He might have been a professional footballer if his criminal behaviour hadn't got in the way. He spent time in prison, went on the run, drifted through squats and festivals, survived marriages, relationships and parenthood. He has loitered with intent in the worlds of comedy, music art, theatre and film, but never long enough to ever fully conform to expectations. He's become renowned for his extrovert and contentious behaviour, his radical opinions and his acting pedigree. But at 54-years-old ... has he finally grown up? 
 
Revelatory and unapologetically honest, Grow Up takes you on a break-neck journey through the chaotic life of someone who's broken all the rules.

Grow Up

Miles Jupp

** Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award ** 
 
Fanatical about cricket since he was a boy, Miles Jupp would do anything to see his heroes play. But perhaps deciding to bluff his way into the press corps during England's Test series in India wasn't his best idea. 
 
By claiming to be the cricket correspondent for BBC Scotland and getting a job with the (Welsh) Western Mail, Miles lands the press pass that will surely be the ticket to his dreams. Soon, he finds himself in cricket heaven - drinking with David Gower and Beefy, sharing bar room banter with Nasser Hussain and swapping diarrhoea stories with the Test Match Special team. 
 
But struggling in the heat under the burden of his own fibs, reality soon catches up with Miles as he bumbles from one disaster to the next. A joyous, charming, yet cautionary tale, Fibber in the Heat is for anyone who's ever dreamt about doing nothing but watching cricket all day long.

Fibber in the Heat

Ronnie Corbett

A true great of British comedy, Ronald ‘Ronnie’ Corbett, is hailed as one of the finest comedians of his generation. 
 
Son of an Edinburgh baker, Ronnie rose to fame as one half of the infamous Two Ronnies alongside Ronnie Barker. Known for his versatility, quick-wit, family-friendly dialogue, and meandering monologues, Corbett was a staple of British television for more than 50 years. In his autobiography, he tells the complete story, from his school technique of estimating the height of a girl before daring to ask her to dance, to his days as a night club barman in London, and finally, to his decades long career as a stand-up and sitcom star. Including tales of how he first met David Frost, John Cleese and Michael Palin, this book is written with all of Ronnie’s trademark warmth and wit. 
 
Celebrating his life and career, this is Ronnie’s own honest and definitive account of his truly dramatic journey.

High Hopes

Jude Angelini

Jude Angelini’s tales of depravity are uncompromising, brutally honest and shocking. From growing up poor in a factory town outside Detroit to his adult life as a popular radio personality on Sirius XM, Hyena charts Angelini’s descent into ever more debauched sexual and drug-fuelled exploits, from one-armed strippers, women with abuse-fantasies and a night on dust that he thinks he’ll never wake up from. 
 
Yet underneath this series of deplorable autobiographical stories is an echo of heartbreak, loneliness, and the eternal poetry of a man struggling to be heard. Vividly told in his distinctive voice, Jude Angelini’s fi rst book is a blackly comic masterpiece.

Hyena

Len Goodman

Better Late Than Never is the extraordinary true story of how a man born into poverty in London's East End went on to find stardom late in life when he was chosen to be head judge on BBC1's Strictly Come Dancing. Len Goodman tells all about his new-found fame, his experiences on Strictly Come Dancing, and also on the no.1 US show Dancing with the Stars and his encounters with the likes of Heather Mills-McCartney and John Sergeant. 
 
But the real story is in his East End roots. And Len's early life couldn't be more East End. The son of a Bethnal Green costermonger he spent his formative years running the fruit and veg barrow and being bathed at night in the same water Nan used to cook the beetroot. There are echoes of Billy Elliot too. Though Len was a welder in the London Docks, he dreamt of being a professional footballer, and came close to making the grade had he not broken his foot on Hackney Marshes. The doctor recommended ballroom dancing as a light aid to his recovery. And Len, it turned out, was a natural. At first his family and work mates mocked, but soon he had made the final of a national competition and the welders descended en masse to the Albert Hall to cheer him on. With his dance partner, and then wife Cheryl, Len won the British Championships in his late twenties and ballroom dancing became his life. 
 
Funny and heart-warming, Len Goodman's autobiography has all the honest East End charm of Tommy Steele, Mike Read or Roberta Taylor.

Better Late Than Never

From Barrow Boy to Ballroom

Cilla Black

Cilla Black is without doubt one of Britain's most treasured personalities. Generations have grown up with Cilla's music, TV shows, and performances. But how much do we really know about 'the girl with the bright red hair and the jet black voice'? What's It All About? is Cilla's own story, told for the first time ever. It's the story of a woman who has worked ceaselessly to stay at the top for forty years despite setbacks and personal tragedy; a life of incredible highs and terrible lows. In this deeply personal autobiography she tells her unique story in intimate and vivid detail for the very first time. This is the real Cilla Black.

What's It All About?

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