Steve Roud was Local Studies Librarian for the London Borough of Croydon and served as Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society for over fifteen years. He has been researching British folklore for over thirty years and is the joint author of the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, plus other books on traditional drama and folk song, and the Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland, which won the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award in 2004. His publications include London Lore (2008) and The Lore of the Playground (2010). He also compiles the Folk Song Index and the Broadside Index, two internationally acclaimed computer databases of traditional folk and popular song. He lives in Sussex.

Steve Roud

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Nelson Johnson

Through most of the 20th century, Atlantic City, New Jersey, was controlled by a powerful partnership of local politicians and racketeers. Funded by payoffs from gambling rooms, bars and brothels, this corrupt alliance reached full bloom during the reign of Enoch 'Nucky' Johnson - the second of the three bosses to head the Republican machine that dominated city politics and society. 
 
In Boardwalk Empire, Nucky Johnson, Louis 'the Commodore' Kuehnle, Frank 'Hap' Farley, and Atlantic City itself spring to life in all their garish splendour. Author Nelson Johnson traces 'AC' from its birth as a quiet seaside health resort, through the corruption, notorious backroom politics and power struggles, to the city's rebirth as an international entertainment and gambling mecca where anything goes. 
 
Boardwalk Empire is the true story that inspired the epic HBO series starring Steve Buscemi, Michael Pitt and Kelly Macdonald. 
 
'As good, if not better, than the television series' Independent

Boardwalk Empire

The Birth, High Times and the Corruption of Atlantic City

Rosina Harrison

'I was able to get on well with everyone below stairs and above, or so I thought until I began working for Lady Astor...' 
 
In 1929, Yorkshire lass Rosina Harrison became personal maid to Lady Astor: the first female Member of Parliament to take her seat and wife of one of England's wealthiest lords. 
 
Lady Astor was brilliant yet tempestuous, but outspoken Rose gave as good as she got. For 35 years the battle of wills and wits raged between the two women, until an unlikely friendship began to emerge. 
 
The Lady's Maid is a captivating insight into the great wealth 'upstairs' but also the endless work 'downstairs', but it is Rose's unique relationship with Lady Astor that makes this book a truly enticing read. 
 
Please note, The Lady's Maid is the new title for the book originally published as Rose.

The Lady's Maid

My Life in Service

Pen Farthing

'Nowzad was a gentle giant when it came to taking treats. He never, ever snatched. To me it was just further evidence that, deep inside, there was a great dog struggling to find his way out' 
 
When Pen Farthing brings stray dogs Nowzad and Tali back from his tour of Afghanistan, little does he know what he has begun. 
 
Suddenly he has four dogs to look after - two of whom have never been house-trained. And soon he is inundated with requests from other Marines and soldiers to help bring their rescued dogs home. Whether it's little Helmand, Fubar or Beardog, Pen does his utmost to give these dogs the chance they deserve. 
 
No Place like Home is the true story of one man's courage and persistence as he struggles to give his dogs at home, and those still in Afghanistan, the best possible chance. It will warm - and break - the hearts of dog lovers everywhere.

No Place Like Home

A New Beginning with the Dogs of Afghanistan

'Thick with rolls of gleaming new wire, the obstacle was designed to prevent a suicide bomber driving into the compound's thick mud walls. Today, however, it had only succeeded in stopping a terrified-looking small white dog. I knew that the Taliban could be hiding in any one of these buildings, just waiting for one of us. But I knew I couldn't just walk away.' 
 
In a remote outpost of Now Zad, in Helmand province, Pen Farthing's tour of duty will change his life forever, but for entirely unexpected reasons ... 
 
Appalled by the horrors of a local dog fight, he intervenes to free the victims. One of these dogs finds his way into the Marine compound - and into Pen's heart. Soon other strays are being drawn to the sanctuary provided by Pen's makeshift pound, including one young mum who crawls under the compound fence carrying her newborn pups to safety. 
 
But as his time in Helmand draws to an end, Pen cannot leave the dogs of Now Zad to their own fates. He begins hatching plans to help them escape to a better life.

One Dog at a Time

An inspiring true story of saving the strays of Afghanistan

Richard M. Langworth

Churchill's wise words about the love of country have rallied nations and made Churchill our greatest national hero. The Patriot's Churchill shows Sir Winston's view of the British way by emphasizing his precepts of collegiality and friendship toward political opponents, magnanimity in victories, and wry reflections after defeats. This is a selection of the best Churchill quotations about Britain gleaned from books, articles, speeches, private papers and conversations, compiled with the assistance or scholars, family members and those who knew him. His belief in the strength, courage and moral fibre of the British was always reflected in the poetic cadence of his rousing words. 
 
'Never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty-never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.' 
 
'We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender' 
 
'Today we may say aloud before an awe-struck world, "We are still masters of our fate. We are still captains of our souls.' 
 
'In a long and varied life I have constantly watched and tried to measure the moods and inspirations of the British people. There is no foe they will not face. There is no hardship they cannot endure.'

The Patriot's Churchill

An inspiring collection of Churchill's finest words

Nicholas Pileggi

The Stardust… The Fremont… The Marina. 
They ran them all. 
And they lost. 
Big time. 
 
No one knew more about casinos than Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal, the gambling mastermind who, along with his best friend and partner, Anthony 'the Ant' Spilotro, virtually ran Las Vegas for the mob. For years it was the perfect arrangement – Lefty provided the smarts, while Tony kept the bosses happy with weekly suitcases filled with millions in skimmed cash. It should have lasted forever but Lefty’s obsessions with running the town – and Tony’s obsession with Lefty’s beautiful showgirl wife, Geri – eventually led to betrayals and investigations that exploded into one of the greatest scandals in mob history. 
 
Casino is the shattering inside account of how the mob finally lost its stranglehold on Las Vegas, the neon money-making machine it had created.

Casino

The Rise and Fall of the Mob in Las Vegas

Michael Walsh

Brothers in War is the immensely powerful and deeply tragic story of the Beechey brothers, and how they paid the ultimate price for King and country. All eight went to fight in the Great War on such far-flung battlefields as France, Flanders, East Africa and Gallipoli. Only three would return alive. Even amid the carnage of the trenches, it was a family trauma almost without parallel. Their wives and sweethearts were left bereft, their widowed mother Amy devastated. It is a tragedy that has remained forgotten and unmarked for nearly 90 years. Until now. 
 
Kept in a small brown case handed down by the brothers' youngest sister, Edie, were hundreds of letters sent home from the front by the Beechey boys: scraps of paper scribbled on in the firing line, heartfelt messages written from a deathbed, exasperated correspondences detailing the absurdities of life in the trenches. From it all emerges the remarkable tale of the lost brothers. 
 
Tragic and moving, poetic in its intensity, Brothers in War reveals first-hand the catastrophe that was the Great War; all told through one family forced to sacrifice everything.

Brothers in War

Monica Dickens

'Life was a wordless battle of wits between us, with her keeping a sharp look-out for signs of neglect, and me trying to disguise my slovenliness by subterfuge. I became an adept at sweeping dust under the bed, and always used the same few pieces of silver' 
 
Unimpressed by the world of debutante balls, Monica Dickens shocked her family by getting a job. With no experience whatsoever, she gained employment as a cook-general. 
 
Monica's cooking and cleaning skills left much to be desired, and her first few positions were short lived, but soon she started to hold her own. Monica discovered the pleasure of daily banter with the milkman and grocer's boy and the joy of doing an honest day's work, all the while keeping a wry eye on the childish pique of her employers. 
 
One Pair of Hands is a fascinating and thoroughly entertaining memoir of life upstairs and downstairs in the early 1930s.

One Pair of Hands

From Upstairs to Downstairs, in this charming 1930s memoir

Hunter Davies

Ivy, Dulcie, Barbara, Ann, Dorothy and Jean all had different reasons for applying to work at Carr’s biscuits, but once they had put on their overalls and walked through the factory gates they discovered a community full of life, laughter and friendship. 
 
To those who didn’t know, the biscuit factory that towered over Carlisle might look like just another slice of the industrial North, a noisy and chaotic place with workers trooping in and out at all hours. For the biscuit girls it was a place where they worked hard, but also where they gossiped, got into scrapes and made lifelong friends. Outside the factory walls there might be difficult husbands or demanding kids, and sometimes even heartbreak and tragedy, but they knew there would always be an escape from their troubles at Carr's. 
 
Some, like Barbara, only applied because she needed the extra cash, until things got a bit easier at home. Her supervisor cross examined her about who would be looking after the kids while she was at work, but let her have the job. Like many of the women who joined up ‘temporary’ Barbara went on to stay at Carrs for 32 years. 
 
Beginning in the 1940s, these heartwarming and vividly-remembered stories have all been told by the women themselves to Hunter Davies.

The Biscuit Girls

Paul Flynn

‘One of the most important books about gay culture in recent times’ The Quietus 
 
Long-listed for the Polari First Book Prize 
 
In 1984 the pulsing electronics and soft vocals of Smalltown Boy would become an anthem uniting gay men. A month later, an aggressive virus, HIV, would be identified and a climate of panic and fear would spread across the nation, marginalising an already ostracised community. Yet, out of this terror would come tenderness and 30 years later, the long road to gay equality would climax with the passing of same sex marriage. 
 
Paul Flynn charts this astonishing pop cultural and societal U-turn via the cultural milestones that effected change—from Manchester’s self-selection as Britain’s gay capital to the real-time romance of Elton John and David Furnish’s eventual marriage. Including candid interviews from major protagonists, such as Kylie, Russell T Davies, Will Young, Holly Johnson and Lord Chris Smith, as well as the relative unknowns crucial to the gay community, we see how an unlikely group of bedfellows fought for equality both front of stage and in the wings. 
 
This is the story of Britain’s brothers, cousins and sons. Sometimes it is the story of their fathers and husbands. It is one of public outrage and personal loss, the (not always legal) highs and the desperate lows, and the final collective victory as gay men were final recognised, as Good As You.

Good As You

From Prejudice to Pride – 30 Years of Gay Britain

Arthur Brand

The true story of a detective, two bronze horses and the dictator who set the world on fire. 
 
When detective Arthur Brand is summoned to a meeting with one of the most dangerous men in the art world, he learns that a clue has emerged that could solve one of the Second World War’s unexplained mysteries: what really happened to the Striding Horses, Hitler’s favourite statue, which disappeared during the bombing of Berlin. 
 
As Brand goes undercover to find the horses, he discovers a terrifying world ruled by neo-Nazis and former KGB agents, where Third Reich memorabilia sells for millions of dollars. The stakes get ever higher as Brand carefully lays his trap to catch the criminal masterminds trying to sell the statue on the black market. But who are they? And will he manage to bring them to justice before they discover his real identity? 
 
With a plot worthy of John Le Carré, Hitler’s Horses is a thrilling retelling of one of history's most extraordinary heists.

Hitler's Horses

The Incredible True Story of the Detective who Infiltrated the Nazi Underworld

Evelyn Prentis

'When do you have a bath?' I asked Mrs Turgoose. 
'I hope you're not suggesting that I don't look after meself properly,' she said crossly. 'There was a woman who used to use it, but that was because she was a bit stuck up. She soon went off the idea when it started to get cold.' 
 
After working as a nurse for thirty years, Evelyn left the hospital to become a full-time Matron at The Lodge - a home for elderly ladies of reduced circumstances. 
 
Evelyn was nothing like the matrons she had known and feared in the past. In spite of broken nights and hot dinners left to get cold, Mrs Peters with her temper and Mrs Harrison with her 24-hour piano playing, her new role offered a chance to make a difference to her ladies' lives. 
 
Even though it did mean she was on call twenty-four hours a day, this is Evelyn's funny and affectionate memoir of her years - at last! - as a Matron.

Matron at Last

David Webster

Paratrooper David Kenyon Webster jumped into the chaos of occupied Europe on D-Day, fighting his way through Holland and finally capturing Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. He was the only member of Easy Company to write down his experiences as soon as he came home from war. 
 
Webster records with visceral and sometimes brutal detail what it is like to take a bullet in the leg, to fight pitched battles capturing enemy towns, and to endure long periods of boredom punctuated by sudden moments of terror. But most of all, Parachute Infantry shows how a group of comrades entered the furnace of war and came out brothers.

Parachute Infantry

The book that inspired Band of Brothers

Harriet Salisbury

The Museum of London Group

London's East Enders are known for being a tough, humorous and lively lot. In the early 20th century, families crowded into single rooms, children played on the streets and neighbours' doors were never locked in case you needed an escape route from the police... 
 
World War 2 changed everything. During the Blitz, men set off for work never to return and rows of houses were reduced to rubble overnight. Yet the East Enders' ability to keep calm and carry on cemented their reputation for cheerful resilience. 
 
They say Hitler killed off the bugs but, along with the slums, the Blitz destroyed a way of life. After the war families were scattered - some to estates on the edge of London, others to isolated high-rise blocks. The old East End communities were gone forever. 
 
Told by the residents themselves, The War on Our Doorstep is an eye-opening, moving and laugh-out-loud depiction of the history of London's East End and what it means to be an East Ender.

The War on our Doorstep

London's East End and how the Blitz Changed it Forever

Andrew Collins

Andrew Collins was born 37 years ago in Northampton. His parents never split up, in fact they rarely exchanged a cross word. No-one abused him. Nobody died. He got on well with his brother and sister and none of his friends drowned in a canal. He has never stayed overnight in a hospital and has no emotional scars from his upbringing, except a slight lingering resentment that Anita Barker once mocked the stabilisers on his bike. Where Did It All Go Right? is a jealous memoir written by someone who occasionally wishes life had dealt him a few more juicy marketable blows. The author delves back into his first 18 years in search of something - anything - that might have left him deeply and irreparably damaged. With tales of bikes, telly, sweets, good health, domestic harmony and happy holidays, Andrew aims to bring a little hope to all those out there living with the emotional after-effects of a really nice childhood. Andrew Collins kept a diary from the age of five, so he really can remember what he had for tea everyday and what he did at school, excerpts from his diary run throughout the book and it is this detail which makes his story so compelling.

Where Did It All Go Right?

Growing Up Normal in the 70s

Geoffrey C. Ward

Ken Burns

**The New York Times Bestseller** 
**The book of the landmark documentary, The Vietnam War, by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick** 
 
The definitive work on the Vietnam War, the conflict that came to define a generation, told from all sides by those who were there. 
 
More than forty years after the Vietnam War ended, its legacy continues to fascinate, horrify and inform us. As the first war to be fought in front of TV cameras and beamed around the world, it has been immortalised on film and on the page, and forever changed the way we think about war. 
 
Drawing on hundreds of brand new interviews, Ken Burns and Geoffrey C. Ward have created the definitive work on Vietnam. It is the first book to show us the war from every perspective: from idealistic US Marines and the families they left behind to the Vietnamese civilians, both North and South, whose homeland was changed for ever; politicians, POWs and anti-war protesters; and the photographers and journalists who risked their lives to tell the truth. The book sends us into the grit and chaos of combat, while also expertly outlining the complex chain of political events that led America to Vietnam. 
 
Beautifully written, this essential work tells the full story without taking sides and reminds us that there is no single truth in war. It is set to redefine our understanding of a brutal conflict, to launch provocative new debates and to shed fresh light on the price paid in ‘blood and bone’ by Vietnamese and Americans alike.

The Vietnam War

An Intimate History

Maureen Wells

In 1941, as the Second World War raged on, 20-year-old Maureen Bolster began writing to her boyfriend Eric Wells. He was stationed in the Middle East while Maureen remained on the Home Front. Their letters would be the only communication between the young love-struck couple for four long years. 
 
Filled with warmth and humour, this charming collection of Maureen's letters describes her life working for the war effort back home. Uproarious incidents occur when she encounters lecherous GIs, immoral lodgers and irascible landladies in her work first as a billeting officer; then as a Wren courier, bravely delivering secret documents by trains, boats and planes; and finally as a Wren stoker. But all the while her thoughts are with her sweetheart Eric as he fights for his country in such far away places as Bahrian, Cairo, Mosul and Beirut. 
 
Funny, touching and romantic, Entertaining Eric tells the true story of a love that survived war and separation - against all odds.

Entertaining Eric

A Wartime Love Story

Pam Hobbs

'Dad walked determinedly down the path, joined by two neighbours with five children between them. As we reached the corner of Kent Avenue, I looked back for one last wave. But Mum had buried her head in her pinny and it was a year before I saw her again.' 
 
In June 1940, 10-year-old Pam Hobbs and her sister Iris took the long journey from their council home in Leigh-on-Sea to faraway rural Derbyshire. 
 
Living away from Mum and Dad for two long years, Pam was moved between four foster homes. In some she and Iris found a second family, with babies to look after, car rides and picnics, and even a pet pig. But other billets took a more sinister turn, as the adults found it easy to exploit the children in their care. 
 
Returning to Essex, things would never be the same again, and the war was far from over. Making do with rations, dodging bombs and helping with the war effort, Pam and her family struggled to get by. 
 
In Don't Forget to Write, with warmth and vivid detail, Pam describes a time that was full of overwhelming hardship and devastation; yet also of kindness and humour, resilience and courage.

Don't Forget to Write

The true story of an evacuee and her family

'We were quickly learning to live with war. We became very proficient at moving the patients who could walk quickly to the shelters when the sirens went. We were equally proficient at talking those who couldn't walk into believing that they would be safe where they were. Some believed us, others didn't.' 
 
Surprising Matron as well as herself, Evelyn Prentis managed to pass her Finals and become a staff-nurse. Encouraged, she took the brave leap of moving from Nottingham to London - brave not least because war was about to break. 
 
Not only did the nurses have to cope with stray bombs and influxes of patients from as far away Dunkirk, but there were also RAF men stationed nearby - which caused considerable entertainment and disappointment, and a good number of marriages ... 
 
But despite all the disruption to the hospital routine, Evelyn's warm and compelling account of a nurse in action, shows a nurse's life would always revolve around the comforting discomfort of porridge and rissoles, bandages and bedpans.

A Nurse in Action

Max Arthur

This unique landmark oral history uses first-hand accounts from ordinary men and women who were there. Gripping, poignant, surprising and even humorous, the personal experiences of these soldiers, civilians, marines and medics from both sides tell us what it was really like to live through what was supposed to be the war to end all wars. Skilfully assembled by acclaimed author and historian Max Arthur using the IWM’s remarkable sound archive, Forgotten Voices of the Great War became an instant classic on first publication with close to half a million copies sold. 
 
In 1972, the Imperial War Museum began a momentous and important task. A team of academics, archivists and volunteers set about tracing First World War veterans and interviewing them in order to record the experiences of ordinary individuals in war. Since then the Sound Archive has grown to become the largest and most important oral history collections in the world. It now contains over 34,000 recordings, including interviews with veterans of both world wars – both service personnel and non-combatants – recordings relating to Britain and the Empire in the inter-war period 1919–1939, conflicts since 1945 and the Holocaust. 
 
In 2002, Ebury Press published the first edition of Forgotten Voices of the Great War. It was both the first time many of these recordings had been transcribed and published, and the only comprehensive oral history of the First World War. Twelve further books covering aspects of the Second World War, the Falklands and the Victoria Cross followed, selling well over a million copies to date.

Forgotten Voices Of The Great War

Clara Kramer

On 21 July 1942 the Nazis took control of the small Polish town of Zolkiew, life for Jewish 15-year-old Clara Kramer was never to be the same again. While those around her were either slaughtered or transported, Clara and her family hid perilously in a hand-dug bunker. Living in the house above and protecting them were the Becks. 
 
Mr Beck was a womaniser, a drunkard and a self-professed anti-Semite, yet he risked his life throughout the war to keep his charges safe. Nevertheless, life with Mr Beck was far from predictable. From the house catching fire, to Beck's affair with Clara's cousin, to the nightly SS drinking sessions in the room just above, Clara's War transports you into the dark, cramped bunker, and sits you next to the families as they hold their breath time and again. 
 
Sixty years later, Clara Kramer has created a memoir that is lyrical, dramatic and heartbreakingly compelling. Despite the worst of circumstances, this is a story full of hope and survival, courage and love.

Clara's War

Lyn Smith

Following the success of Forgotten Voices of the Great War, Lyn Smith visits the oral accounts preserved in the Imperial War Museum Sound Archive, to reveal the sheer complexity and horror of one of human history's darkest hours. 
 
The great majority of Holocaust survivors suffered considerable physical and psychological wounds, yet even in this dark time of human history, tales of faith, love and courage can be found. As well as revealing the story of the Holocaust as directly experienced by victims, these testimonies also illustrate how, even enduring the most harsh conditions, degrading treatment and suffering massive family losses, hope, the will to survive, and the human spirit still shine through.

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