Michael Symmons Roberts’s fourth book of poetry, Corpus, was the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize, and the Griffin International Prize. His sixth collection, Drysalter, was the winner of both the Forward Prize and the Costa Poetry Prize in 2013. He collaborated with Paul Farley on Edgelands (Cape/Vintage) and will do so again in The Deaths of the Poets (Cape, 2017). He has also worked many times with the composer James MacMillan. He has published two novels, and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Michael Symmons Roberts

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Michael Barrymore

In June 1994, Michael Barrymore, television celebrity and gameshow host, checked himself out of an American clinic where he was receiving treatment for alcohol and drug abuse. Father Martin's 'Ashley' is a rehabilitation centre in Maryland, USA, where Michael lived for thirty days with members of almost every community in America, all seeking the common goal of sobriety. Michael's day-to-day account of that month in his life provides a candid, sometimes painful, funny and revelatory story of human endurance, challenges the stereotyped view of rehab, and allows the reader a first-hand insight into the disease of addiction.

Back In Business

Paul Donovan

All Our Todays is the first book about the BBC's most influential news and current affairs programme, published to celebrate Today's 40th anniversary in October 1997. Paul Donovan tells the programme's story from the early days of Jack de Manio, through the great partnership of Brian Redhead and John Timpson, to the current triumvirate of Jamies Naughtie, John Humphrys and Sue MacGregor. He analyses the reasons for the programme's success, examines its ofter fiery relationship with prominent politicians, and takes the reader behind the scenes in the Today studio. Full of funny and touching anecdotes, this book will be essential reading for Today's five million listeners.

All Our Todays

David Bellamy

David Bellamy is a natural story teller whose memoir will be packed full of funny anecdotes and observations. It is the story of how a city boy, brought up in the middle of London, went for a trip into the countryside one day, an event which was to transform his life by setting in motion the amazing love of nature which would make famous this larger-than-life character. In his infectious style he illumines on, amongst other things, the fact that his father, the manager of a branch of Boots, had to grease his hair straight - because in those days managers of Boots weren't allowed to have curly hair! Then there was the time he and his brother discovered an exploded bomb, kept in the garden shed - and then accidentally blew off the front of the house with it. He reveals his secret passion is  ballet dancing - and how his mother only found out about it when she saw him on stage at the Fairfield Hall in Croydon.  His career as an academic, then author, broadcaster, consultant and television personality, spans 35 years and his main passion - campaigning for the environment - have led to many adventures including his being twice imprisoned in the Third World.

Jolly Green Giant

Jeremy Beadle

This is the remarkable, and sometimes shocking, life story of one of the most famous faces of British television. Born with a rare disease called Poland Syndrome, which meant he spent most of his first two years in and out of hospital, Jeremy Beadle was brought up in a poor, single-parent family. He was repeatedly expelled from school for his practical jokes before taking on a variety of jobs while writing for shows in his spare time. His big break came when Bob Monkhouse took him on to write for Celebrity Squares. His first show, Game for a Laugh, although being branded as 'vulgar' and subsequently rejected by the BBC, spent five years at the top of the ratings and turned him into a household name. The inter-nationally acclaimed Beadle's About and You've Been Framed took the TV ratings by storm and here he reveals the secret techniques employed and recalls the hilarious disasters from behind the scenes. He breaks his silence over his encounters with the Royals, including the prank he played on Prince Charles and also frankly discusses the nature of 'fame' and the British media, after being branded Britain's second most hated man by Punch. Usually fiercely protective of his family, he talks openly about them for the first time, and of the absent father he never knew.

Watch Out!

Damon Beesley

Iain Morris

Following on from last year’s huge Sunday Times bestseller, The Inbetweeners Yearbook, comes The Inbetweeners Script Book, the perfect gift for all die-hard Inbetweeners fan and lovers of fine award-winning literature. 
 
The book features all eighteen scripts of the televised show, each with its own introduction from the writers and creators, Damon Beesley and Iain Morris, sharing behind the scenes stories about filming, the writing process, and the real events that inspired the show’s storylines.

The Inbetweeners Scriptbook

Ingrid Pitt

At the age of five, Ingrid Pitt found herself in a concentration camp. Ingrid and her mother escaped from the guards while on a forced march and presented themselves to the partisans, unsure if they would kill them. They spent the rest of the war in the forests. Ingrid fell in love for the first time and watched in despair as British bombers flew overhead. She still cannot see the vapour trials of planes without being transported back to her childhood vigil. After the war Ingrid came to London, where she developed a career as a Hammer House of Horror movie star, but, as she proundly says, `I was always the biter, never the bitten!' She also acted in mainstream films, such as WHERE EAGLES DARE. She had a child by her first marriage and a grand passion which lead to her marrying a racing driver. They lived in Argentina for a while and were good friends of President Peron and Isabelits Peron. Ingrid even spent an evening with the embalmed body of Eva Peron. Written with great passion and warmth, this is a rare childhood memoir and the story of Hammer`s most galmorous actress. Above all, this is a story of a survivor.

Life's A Scream

James Young

A marvellously funny and sharply observed account of a journey to Russia by one of Britain's most talented young writers. Moscow - a labyrinth where the humans try to keep one step ahead of the roaches. Everyone on the move, some in search of the quick buck, and others just trying to survive. All dazzled by the neon glare of the western dream. The soviet monolith has broken down in tribalism, tribes who go to war not just on the streets but in overheated rooms, with drugs, vodka and Cindy Crawford carrier bags. James Young gives an unparalleled account of today's Moscow from the bottom side up. He takes us on a odyssey through this strange no man's land where East meets West, where the old certainties have gone, the KGB men wear Italian suits, the Mafia tycoonskis style themselves on the Godfather flicks and the rest are queuing to change dollars.

Moscow Mule

Gavin Edwards

People love Bill Murray movies, but even more, they love crazy stories about Bill Murray out in the world. 
Bill reads poetry to construction workers. Bill joins in strangers' kickball games. Bill steals a golf cart in Stockholm. Bill follows the Roots – a hip hop band – around. Bill pays a kid $5 to ride his bicycle into a swimming pool. 
 
The most popular Bill Murray story of all time (which he will neither confirm nor deny): on a crowded street, he puts his hands over a stranger's eyes from behind and says "Guess who?" When he lifts his hands to reveal his identity as Bill Murray, he tells the gobsmacked stranger, "No one will ever believe you." 
 
For The Tao of Bill Murray: Real-Life Stories of Joy, Enlightenment, and Party Crashing, best-selling author Gavin Edwards tracked down the best authentic Bill Murray stories. People savour these anecdotes; they consume them with a bottomless hunger; they routinely turn them into viral hits. 
 
The book not only has the greatest hits of Bill's eye-opening interactions with the world, it puts them in the context of a larger philosophy (revealed to the author in an exclusive interview): Bill Murray is secretly teaching us all how to live our lives.

The Tao of Bill Murray

Real-Life Stories of Joy, Enlightenment, and Party Crashing

A note from the editor: 
 
Dear Respected Online Customer 
 
Welcome to the page of the first ever official Rudge Park yearbook. And thank you very much in advance for purchasing the book at the incredibly reasonable price they are bound to be selling it at. 
 
When I put myself forward to be the editor of the yearbook, my Head of Sixth Form Mr Gilbert was the first to wish me words of wisdom and support. His actual words - 'Well, McKenzie, I'm looking forward to seeing how you piss this one up' - were the inspiration behind this book. Sadly, and this is not an apology, due to a print schedule that can only be described as fascistic, I wasn't able to finish the book to my exact liking. However, I was very lucky that my 'friends', Jay Cartwright, Simon Cooper and Neil Sutherland decided to supply a lot of the material 
 
So, inside this 'masterpiece' (Polly McKenzie) you'll find: Simon's Love Poetry, Jay's A-Z of Sex and (nonsensical) Business Plan, the Camber Sands Caravan Club newsletter, Neil's Biology coursework, entitled Do You Put the Balls In? and his map of Rudge Park, along with some incisive pieces of journalism, most likely written by me. And there's lots of other random stuff which has never seen the light of day. God knows how it got in there. 
 
It is my greatest, and only, achievement from my two years at Rudge Park. May it bring you years of happiness and joy, and not just on the toilet. 
 
Yours 
 
William McKenzie, Editor

The Inbetweeners Yearbook

Chris Terrill

This is the tie-in book to a two part BBC 1 documentary series to be screened at 9.00pm in October and which will end on the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar on 21st October. Chris Terrill is famous for his fly on the wall documentaries which have been watched by millions and received wide critical acclaim. We have had HMS Brilliant and The Cruise (audience reached 11 million). Chris has based himself for the last few months in the very heart of the modern day naval experience. We will see: a Royal Naval Chaplain exorcising a haunted barracks in Portsmouth, a vodka-fuelled Trafalgar Day celebration in the British Embassy in the Moscow in 2004, a Polaris submarine crossing the Atlantic on an exercise in which it will 'pretend' to nuke America, the patrol of the frigate HMS Chatham in the Gulf, suddenly diverted to Sri Lanka after the Tsunami and the Fleet Review, where HMS Chatham in honour of her humanitarian role in Asia, will lead the entire assembly of a hundred warships, British and foreign, down the Solent. Chris is the only film maker to be granted exclusive, behind the scenes access by the Navy this year. During the filming Chris will capture the heart and soul of the sailors aboard, and on shore: there will be plenty of irreverence, practical jokes and laughs, and the human reality of the families left behind for months on end as warships and submarines go on extended tours of duty. This will be the fullest ever account of the Modern Navy in a year when the Trafalgar Day celebrations and the Fleet review will attract an avalanche of publicity.

Shipmates

Muriel Burgess

Shirley Bassey is one of the all-time greats of the entertainment business. She has sold more records than any other British female singer and still commands massive audiences around the world. Now, after a career spanning decades, her life story can be told: the story of a triumph over enough tragedies to last several lifetimes. The personal hardships that have fuelled the emotionalism of her songs have never before been revealed. Here her poverty-stricken childhood in Wales is detailed: how her mother struggled to bring up seven children on Income Support after their Nigerian father was deported; how she worked in a saucepan factory when her first struggles for stardom were halted by her pregnancy at sixteen. Shirley had a series of tortured loves: she married a homosexual Cockney who died of an overdose; she had a highly publicised affair with actor Peter Finch; and her second marriage, to an Italian, also failed. The shocking death of her second daughter, Samantha, just before her 21st birthday caused Shirley to lose her voice for nearly a year. Behind the showbiz glamour and consummate professionalism lies a fiercely resilient and independent woman.

Shirley

John Glatt

The Chieftains have become international superstars as well as being an institution in Folk Music. They have performed and recorded with such stars such as Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, The Rolling Stones, Mark Knopfler. . . . and others. This authorised biography will trace the history of the band and its members from its small beginnings in Ireland in the early 1960s to their current status, and will feature exclusive interviews with all the members of the band and many of their friends and collaborators, along with photographs and other memorabilia from the band's own collection.

The Chieftains

The Authorised Biography

Randy Blythe

The incredible memoir from Lamb of God frontman, Randy Blythe. 
 
In 2010, a nineteen-year-old super-fan rushed the stage during a Lamb of God concert in Prague. To protect himself, singer Randy Blythe pushed the fan away. Unbeknownst to Blythe, the young man hit his head on the floor when he fell and later died from the injury. Blythe was promptly incarcerated on charges carrying a prison term of five to ten years. Thirty-seven days later, he was released on bail to await trial. Although legal experts told him not to return to the Czech Republic to face the charges, Blythe explained that he “could not run away from this problem while the grieving family of a dead young man searched hopelessly for answers that [he] might help provide.” 
 
After a five-day trial, he was acquitted on March 5, 2013. 
 
In Dark Days, Blythe tells the story of his incarceration and the wild life that led up to it. As he explains, “Most substance abuse books end with the author getting sober. My book starts there.”

Dark Days

Richard Bacon

Have you ever been stitched up to the national press by your best mate? 
 
Or unintentionally upset a band with a slip of the tongue on a live TV show? 
 
Or ruined a dinner party by transforming everything alcoholic into water? 
 
Hello. I’m Richard Bacon and this is A Series of Unrelated Events. All of the stories are true. All of them happened to me. I’ve made the mistakes so you don’t have to (you’re welcome). 
 
So now, if you should ever find yourself sobbing on top of a box of gherkins in the stockroom of a Mansfield McDonald’s… having a Twitter conversation with your mum while she’s pretending to be an illiterate dog… performing stand-up to an audience who are funnier than you are… or just letting down all of the children of Great Britain… 
 
…you’ll know exactly what to do.

A Series of Unrelated Events

Wiley

‘Wiley is Wiley, and if you don’t know me, you don’t know much.’ 
 
*Winner of the NME Best Music Book Award 2018* 
 
A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 
A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 
A TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR 
 
'The greatest UK MC of all time' Noisey 
 
Wiley. Godfather of grime. He's one of Britain's most innovative musicians – and the movement he started in east London in the early 2000s is taking over the world. 
 
This is his story. This is ESKIBOY. 
 
'Perhaps the most influential musician working in Britain today' Guardian 
 
'Wiley is the pioneering force of grime, the most revolutionary musical movement in Britain since punk' The Times 
 
'A glimpse of the 21st-century rock'n'roll' Sunday Times

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