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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James Hogg

Robert Sellers

Spontaneous, hilarious, irrepressible and, of course, trailblazing - Kenny Everett was revolutionary in television and radio comedy. Chris Evans, Chris Moyles, Rob Brydon and Steve Wright have all cited Kenny as a huge influence on their work - even the great Spike Milligan called him a genius. It was Kenny who developed the radio show format with which we are so familiar today: a mix of music, jingles, funny voices and sound effects. When he seamlessly made the move to television in the seventies, he created unforgettable characters such as Sid Snot, Cupid Stunt and Marcel Wave. 
 
Rarely seen without a smile on his face in public, in reality, Kenny was a deeply insecure man who suffered severe bouts of depression. He also struggled with his sexuality, only coming out to the public in 1985. Diagnosed with HIV in 1987, Kenny died in 1995. 
 
This in-depth and affectionate biography has been fully authorised by Kenny's family and contains original interviews with Kenny's sister, Kate and with his former wife, Lee, as well as entertainment figures such as Barry Cryer, Cliff Richard, Chris Tarrant and Paul Gambaccini. Packed with fabulous stories about the highs and lows of Kenny's life, his great friendships with The Beatles and Freddie Mercury, this is a book that any fan of comedy and entertainment must read.

Hello, Darlings!

The Authorized Biography of Kenny Everett

Ian Gregg

When Ian Gregg was just a boy he joined his father at work selling pies from his van to miners’ wives around Newcastle. Now retired, he can look back on a business that began as a husband-and-wife team in the 1930s, and survived a world war and two major recessions to become our favourite bakery, beloved by everyone from children to office workers to soldiers overseas. 
 
Ian Gregg led the family firm as it grew, employing generations of families from around Newcastle and then becoming a public company with bakeries in Scotland and across the North, and now with shops on every high street. This is a story of extraordinary success, but it is also a triumphant tale of how doing right by your people makes for great business. Bucking every trend, Greggs have always put their customers, employees and local communities before quick profits for directors and shareholders. Their astounding record of charitable works includes hardship grants, an environment fund, sponsorship of the North East Children’s Cancer run and over £1 million raised annually for Children in Need. 
 
Ian Gregg will donate all of his royalties and Greggs plc will donate all its profits from the sale of this book to the Greggs Foundation to help fund more Breakfast Clubs for children.

Bread: The Story of Greggs

Marc Coleman

We're in the midst of a global economic crisis and a domestic economic disaster. 
 
But enough of the hand-wringing. Where did this all come from, where are we now and, most importantly, what's going to happen next? 
 
In a compelling and jargon-free argument, economist Marc Coleman makes sense of this mess we're in with clear, accessible analysis of Ireland's economic situation and where it might be heading. 
 
Addressing first the global dimension - how early warnings were ignored, why American monetary policy failed the world and why an unfinished revolution in globalisation left us defenceless - Coleman makes a case for a new kind of capitalism. 
 
The unravelling threads that created the Irish financial crisis are also untangled. The death of competitiveness, the mismanagement of tax revenues, issues of demographics, bad urban planning, stupid banks and an unsuccessful regulator are all examined and, combined with dysfunctional politics, are shown to be the root causes of the predicament we now find ourselves in. 
 
But all is not lost. 
 
With a positive, can-do approach to the economic crisis, Coleman creates a fix-it manual for the future, explaining how Ireland can prosper again by adopting a smart economy, reforming social partnership and curing a warped fiscal cycle with budgetary and electoral reform. 
 
Ireland's economic nightmare will end. It is a dream not destroyed, merely delayed.

Back From The Brink

Ireland's Road to Recovery

Sean Magee

‘For seventy years now Desert Island Discs has managed that rare feat – to be both enduring and relevant. By casting away the biggest names of the day in science, business, politics, showbiz, sport and the arts, it presents a cross-sectional snapshot of the times in which we live. As the decades have passed, the programme has kept pace; never frozen in time yet always, somehow, comfortingly the same.’ Kirsty Young 
 
BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs celebrates its seventieth birthday in 2012. Since the programme’s deviser Roy Plomley interviewed comedian Vic Oliver in January 1942, nearly 3,000 distinguished people from all walks of life have been stranded on the mythical island, accompanied by only eight records, one book and a luxury. 
 
Here the story of one of BBC Radio 4’s favourite programmes is chronicled through a special selection of castaways. 
 
Roy Plomley, inventor of the programme as well as its presenter for over forty years, quizzes the young Cliff Richard about ‘these rather frenzied movements’ the 1960s pop sensation makes on the stage. Robert Maxwell tells Plomley’s successor Michael Parkinson that ‘I will have left the world a slightly better place by having lived in it.’ Diana Mosley assures Sue Lawley that Adolf Hitler was ‘extraordinarily fascinating’ and had mesmeric blue eyes. And Johnny Vegas tugs Kirsty Young’s heart-strings with his account of a childhood so impoverished that family pets were fair game: ‘My dad had always claimed that rabbits were livestock, but we’d never eaten one before.’ 
 
Desert Island Discs is much more than a radio programme. It is a unique and enduringly popular take on our lives and times – and this extensively illustrated book tells in rich detail the colourful and absorbing story of an extraordinary institution.

Desert Island Discs: 70 Years of Castaways

Gene Kerrigan

Ireland’s economic collapse hit with bewildering speed and cut deep into many lives. At a time when we most needed leadership, our politicians let us down, telling us we were all to blame for the recession and that we just needed to suffer a little pain to make everything right again. It was a Big Lie. 
This book offers an alternative view to the official cover story of austerity. It’s about the great majority of us who weren’t gambling with our future. It’s about what’s being done to us, who is doing it and why. It’s also about who benefits from this and who gets it in the neck. And what we might do about that. 
Gene Kerrigan delves deep into the muddy waters of the boom and crash, the chaos in the banks, the intervention by the troika and the erosion of democracy. He looks at how the Dáil and the media became full of mindless free market cheerleaders, how the country became laden down with unregulated bankers, and how the government acquiesced in imposing a destructive programme of austerity on the Irish people. 
Meanwhile, the elites in our society wrap the green flag around themselves, calling for sacrifice and patriotism, while they hold on fiercely to every perk and privilege. 
It’s time to tell the truth.

The Big Lie - Who Profits From Ireland’s Austerity?

Sarah Ryle

From one man’s Hackney market stall to a company serving fifty million customers in thirteen countries every week, this is the extraordinary story of one of Britain’s most remarkable companies. Told by those who themselves feature in it – Tesco’s own employees – it relates a fascinating social history as well as an epic business venture. 
 
Drawn from hundreds of hours of interviews with Tesco staff, collected by National Life Stories at the British Library, these personal accounts from across the decades are frank, insightful, sometimes funny and, above all, very human. 
 
How, then, did Tesco grow from Jack Cohen’s barrow in Hackney to the hypermarkets in Hungary and Thailand and a home-delivery service to customers from Cheshire to the Czech Republic? Why and how did Tesco survive and (mostly) thrive where other British companies stalled? And what impact has Tesco’s success had on its employees and consumers? Here is Tesco’s authentic story, carefully researched and engagingly written by Sarah Ryle, told for the first time by the people at the very heart of the business.

The Making of Tesco

A Story of British Shopping

Julia Gillard

‘[This] should be required reading for anyone who says feminism’s work is done.’ (Evening Standard) 
 
Here, in her own words, Julia Gillard reveals what life was really like as Australia’s first female prime minister. 
 
‘I was prime minister for three years and three days. Three years and three days of resilience. Three years and three days of changing the nation. Three years and three days for you to judge.’ 
 
____________________ 
 
On Wednesday, 23 June 2010, with the government in turmoil, Julia Gillard asked Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for a leadership ballot. 
 
The next day, Julia Gillard became Australia’s twenty-seventh – and first female – prime minister. Australia was alive to the historic possibilities. Here was a new approach for a new time. 
 
It was to last three extraordinary years. 
 
This is Julia Gillard’s chronicle of that turbulent time, a strikingly candid self-portrait of a political leader seeking to realize her ideals. It is her story of what it was like – in the face of government in-fighting and often hostile media – to: 
 
 Manage a hung parliament 
 
 Build a diverse and robust economy 
 
 Create an equitable and world-class education system 
 
 Ensure a dignified future for Australians with disabilities 
 
And doing this all while meeting international obligations and building strategic alliances for the future. This is a politician driven by a sense of purpose – from campus days with the Australian Union of Students, to a career in the law, to her often gritty, occasionally glittering rise up the ranks of the Australian Labour Party. 
 
Julia Gillard does not shy away from her mistakes, admitting freely to errors, misjudgements and policy failures, as well as detailing her political successes. This dazzling memoir is a reflection of what it means – and what it takes – to be a female leader in contemporary politics.

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