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Nicholas Parsons

Nicholas Parsons enjoyed a long and varied career encompassing theatre, television, film and radio. He was perhaps best known as the straight man to Arthur Haynes in the '60s, as the presenter of Sale of the Century in the '70s and as the chairman of the long-running Radio 4 panel game Just a Minute. 
 
 Along the way, he performed impersonations in the lavatories of a Clydebank engineering yard during the war, was the voice of a Gerry Anderson Texan sheriff, roller-skated in Charlie Girl at the Victoria Palace and appeared in a series of Doctor Who. His comedy chat show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival ran for eighteen consecutive years. 
 
In My Life In Comedy, Nicholas recalls an extraordinary career that led him to star on the West End stage, work with some of Britain's finest comedians, including Kenneth Williams, Tony Hancock, Benny Hill and Paul Merton, and appear in stockings and suspenders in The Rocky Horror Show. 
 
 Funny, thoughtful and at times moving, Nicholas Parsons: With Just a Touch of Hesitation, Repetition and Deviation celebrates a fascinating life in comedy.

Nicholas Parsons: With Just a Touch of Hesitation, Repetition and Deviation

My Life in Comedy

Herbert Breslin

Anne Midgette

In 1967, Luciano Pavarotti was an up-and-coming young tenor with a voice far more impressive than his stage technique or presence. So Decca, his record company, told him, 'Luciano, you're a real nice guy. So you need a real bastard to do your publicity.' Enter Herbert Breslin. The two of them hit it off and thus began a professional association and a friendship that lasted over 36 years. 
 
The King and I is the story of that relationship, during which Breslin guided what he calls, justifiably, 'the greatest career in classical music', moving Pavarotti out of the opera house and into the arms of the mass public. He and Pavarotti changed the landscape of opera and Breslin relates the story of their journey in a candid, witty fashion that is often hysterically frank and profane. His portrait of his friend and client is full of hilarious details that could only come from a true insider. 
 
The King and I is the ultimate backstage book about the greatest opera star of the past century - and the last word comes from none other than Luciano Pavarotti himself.

The King and I

The Uncensored Tale of Luciano Pavarotti's Rise to Fame by his Manager, Friend and Sometime Adversary

William Roache

In 50 Years on the Street: My Life with Ken Barlow, William Roache reflects on half a century of treasured memories accumulated during his time working on the long-running soap. He revisits the programme's most memorable moments and ponders the secret of its success while exploring the history of the show from its very early days of live broadcasts to the current demands of the Street's schedule. 
 
Roache reveals what it is like to have played the perennially popular role of Ken Barlow since the very first episode in December 1960 and reflects upon the actors he has worked with during the past 50 years, using his unique perspective to provide insights and anecdotes galore. 
 
50 Years on the Street: My Life with Ken Barlow is a celebration of William Roache's acting career following a year that marked a very special anniversary both for him and for Coronation Street.

50 Years on the Street

My Life with Ken Barlow

Elaine C Smith

'How did I end up here?' A question Elaine C. Smith asked herself when sitting in the dressing-room of a top theatre in London's West End, about to go on stage with one of the UK's most successful plays. 
 
In Nothing Like a Dame, Elaine reflects on a 50-year journey that took her to the peak of the entertainment world. She recounts her long struggle to make it in a male-dominated, working-class society when women were supposed to just shut up and stay thin, especially in the sexist world of theatre and television, where she was told, 'Look, women just aren't funny.' 
 
Despite many highs and lows, she proceeded to forge a stellar career in show business, hosting her own TV series and becoming a household name thanks to her comic portrayal of Mary Nesbitt, the long-suffering wife in the award-winning BBC comedy Rab C. Nesbitt. 
 
Nothing Like a Dame is a heart-warming memoir: candid, outspoken, hilarious and at times deeply sad.

Nothing Like a Dame

My Autobiography

John Collis

John Denver was America's biggest-selling solo star of the '70s. In commercial terms he was on a par with Sinatra in the '40s, Elvis in the '50s and the Beatles in the '60s. He experimented with a variety of styles and won fans from such diverse worlds as folk, pop and country music. 
 
Beneath the often tranquil surface of his music and his clear, clean tenor voice, however, lurked a darker side to Denver's character. The writer of 'Annie's Song', one of the most straightforward and personal expressions of love, became a wife-beater. The man who cavorted with the Muppets was an alcoholic. The committed environmentalist had his own plane, the most polluting form of transport. 
 
John Collis has delved deep to discover exactly who John Denver was. By unravelling the complexities of the singer's personality and background, he reveals Denver as a complicated, contradictory man, much more intriguing than the sometimes placid surface of his music might suggest. Millions of people around the globe found something in his music that touched their souls; Collis, by charting Denver's career and development as an artist, explores his legendary contribution not only to the world of music but also to the society of which he was a protagonist and a victim.

John Denver

Mother Nature's Son

Ian Bell

By the middle of the 1970s, Bob Dylan’s position as the pre-eminent artist of his generation was assured. The 1975 album Blood on the Tracks seemed to prove, finally, that an uncertain age had found its poet. 
 
Perverse or driven, Dylan refused the role. By the decade’s end, the counter-culture’s poster child had embraced conservative, evangelical Christianity. Fans and critics alike were confused; many were aghast. Still the hits kept coming. 
 
Then Dylan faltered. His instincts, formerly unerring, deserted him. In the 1980s, what had once appeared unthinkable came to pass: the ‘voice of a generation’ began to sound irrelevant, a tale told to grandchildren. 
 
Yet in the autumn of 1997 something remarkable happened. Having failed to release a single new song in seven long years, Dylan put out the equivalent of two albums in a single package. He called it Time Out of Mind. So began the renaissance, artistic and personal, that culminated in 2012’s acclaimed Tempest. 
 
In the concluding volume of his groundbreaking study, Ian Bell explores the unparalleled second act in a quintessentially American career. It is a tale of redemption, of an act of creative will against the odds, and of a writer who refused to fade away. 
 
Time Out of Mind is the story of the latest, perhaps the last, of the many Bob Dylans. This one might yet turn out to have been the most important of them all.

Time Out of Mind

The Lives of Bob Dylan

David Bret

At 1.28 a.m. on Wednesday, 23 March 2011, just three weeks after celebrating her 79th birthday, the biggest star Hollywood has ever known died. The tributes and eulogies to Elizabeth Taylor were legion. A weeping Elton John said, 'We have just lost a Hollywood giant. More importantly, we have lost an incredible human being.' 
 
In Elizabeth Taylor: The Lady, The Lover, The Legend, 1932-2011, acclaimed biographer David Bret has written the revealing, incisive and definitive life story of the most controversial cinematic icon since Mae West. While never yielding in his admiration and respect, Bret has stripped away the veneer to portray the star as she really was: sometimes arrogant, attention-seeking, avaricious, reckless, monstrous towards her peers, generous, even foolish at times but, above all, through the tumultuous relationships and the personal mayhem, a survivor. 
 
 Elizabeth Taylor was the very last of the Hollywood greats. As David Bret writes, 'Most of her contemporaries - Garbo, Streisand and Dietrich excepted - were compelled to walk in the shadow of her sun. Of today's stars, not one may be deemed worthy of stepping even within a mile of that shadow.

Elizabeth Taylor

The Lady, The Lover, The Legend - 1932-2011

Sheila Tracy

From Palace to Palais, the musicians who played in the big bands tell their own stories, bringing to life an unforgettable era. 
 
Pre-war reminiscences give an insight into a never-to-be-forgotten era, when London's nightclubs were the haunts of the aristocracy and of royalty, and the Prince of Wales would jump at any opportunity to play drums with the resident band. The elegant world of top hat, white ties and tails has gone for ever, but in Talking Swing the musicians relive those nights when they played for as long as the customers wanted to dance - often into the early hours of the morning. Out of London, there were the variety tours, where the band was top of the bill and there wasn't an empty seat in the house. 
 
The problems faced by British musicians during the war years, when London's society bands continued to play throughout the Blitz, were enormous, and they are vividly portrayed in Talking Swing. 
 
Amongst those recalled are Ambrose, Jack Hylton, Geraldo, Ted Heath and Syd Lawrence, who took over when almost everyone else had packed it in and who kept on swinging against all odds. This was the golden age of the big bands, and the story of those days is told by the men and women who made the music.

Talking Swing

The British Big Bands

Chris Welles Feder

Of all the myriad stars and celebrities Hollywood has produced, only a handful have achieved the fame - and, some would say, infamy - of Orson Welles, the creator and star of what is arguably the greatest film ever, Citizen Kane. Many books have been written about him, detailing his achievements as an artist as well as his foibles as a human being. None of them, however, has come so close to the real man as Chris Welles Feder does in this beautifully realised portrait of her father. 
 
In My Father's Shadow is a classic story of a life lived in the public eye, told with affection and the wide-eyed wonder of a daughter who never stopped believing that some day she would truly know and understand her elusive and larger-than-life father. The result is a moving and insightful look at life in the shadow of a legendary figure and an immensely entertaining story of growing up in the unreal reality of Hollywood.

In My Father's Shadow

A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles

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