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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Joseph O'Connor

The Irish Male at Home and Abroad is the hilarious sequel to Joe O'Connor's bestseller The Secret World of the Irish Male. From flirting lessons in downtown Manhattan to being offered a good ride in Disneyland by the now legendary Wanda, it was a long, strange and hilarious trip. Now, in The Irish Male at Home and Abroad, O'Connor returns faster, funnier and filthier than ever before. 
 
Impersonating Santa Claus in a busy Dublin store on Christmas Eve, spending a penny in Lord Jeffrey Archer's penthouse loo, traipsing the local-radio publicity circuit in 100-degree Australian heat, on the run in revolutionary Nicaragua, contemplating the Shroud of Turin, or making a deposit in a grotty sperm bank - here are tall tales and short stories: absurd, anarchic and unforgettably side-splitting adventures from home and abroad. 
 
Laugh-out-loud funny, yet always affectionate and sometimes poignant, O'Connor roams through an Ireland of wife-swapping sodomites and late-night sodalities, when not getting lost in the restless new Europe of beach holidays, terrible beauties and Baywatch lookalikes. It's going to be another weird and uproarious trip. But like Wanda once said: Hitch a ride, sweetheart, and hang on real tight!

Irish Male At Home And Abroad

Benjamin Lee

A hilarious collection of the most agonizing real-life inconveniences faced by the iPhone-losing, polenta-burning, Eurostar-missing middle classes, illustrated by Matt Blease 
 
‘My pug has hiccups’ 
 
 ‘I've given myself a croissant headache’ 
 
‘I just dropped batteries in my quinoa’ 
 
‘Think I’ve forgotten how to ski’ 
 
Can't find your melon baller? Wrestling with wrapping paper? Struggling to figure out how to properly pronounce quinoa?? Get your daily trials into perspective with this hilarious collection of the top #MiddleClassProblems from around the globe. 
 
Since 2010, Benjamin Lee has run the hugely popular @MiddleClassProb account, and in this book he has selected the all-time highlights.

Middle Class Problems

Problems but not real actual problems, just middle class ones

Tim Moore

The spangled insanity, the stubborn reinforcement of crude national stereotypes, the scoreboard shamelessly corrupted by cross-border friendship and hatred... throughout those long post-ABBA decades, the Eurovision Song Contest has been drawing 450 million of us to the sofa for all the wrong reasons. And the most gloriously wrong of all: our enduring fascination with the unfortunates left to wander the desolate summit of Mount Fiasco without a point to their names. 
 
From Lisbon to Liverpool, from the Black Sea to the Baltic, Tim Moore travels the continent to track down the thirteen Eurominstrels who suffered the entertainment world's prime humiliation.

Nul Points

Roddy Doyle

Pat had been best friends with Joe Murphy since they were kids. But years ago they had a fight. A big one, and they haven't spoken since --- till the day before Joe's funeral. 
 
What? On the day before his funeral Joe would be dead, wouldn't he? 
 
Yes, he would... 
 
Roddy Doyle's first book for the Quick Reads programme to support adult literacy is fast, funny and just a tiny bit spooky.

Dead Man Talking

Mr Bingo

'Gorgeous and funny! Like a labrador doing stand-up' Noel Fielding 
 
The brainchild of a late night and one too many drinks, Hate Mail began with self-styled 'Master of Pens', Mr. Bingo, sending a single tweet off into the pipes of the internet. It read: 'I will send a postcard with an offensive message on to the first person who replies to this'. Then, the replies came in. 
 
Over 1000 abusive postcards later, Mr. Bingo has become the world's hate mailist par excellence, verbally and visually abusing people the world over, all eager to receive their own bespoke piece of personalised spite. 
 
Irreverent and insidiously inspired, Hate Mail: The Definitive Collection, is the ultimate celebration of Mr. Bingo's Hate Mail project.

Hate Mail

THE DEFINITIVE COLLECTION

Dr Johnson

In 2009 Dr Samuel Johnson made a surprise re-emergence from eighteenth century retirement and began Twittering. 
 
It proved the perfect vehicle for his acerbic, aphoristic wit and he has quickly become the darling of the site. The Guardian calls him the 'greatest' thing on Twitter and the Telegraph dubs him its 'star'. 
 
Our gouty man of letters finds the modern world in a parlous state. It is peopled with fools like "Raisin-ey'd Tyrant Mister Nick GRIFFIN" and "BABOON-SLAYER, Fop, Macaroni, Dandy &amp; Folderol, Mister AA Gill". His attempts to negotiate a path through the vagaries of modern life do not fare well either - for instance, on a trip to "Mister LIBERTY'S blast'd Haberdashery", upon finding "all else clad as Lumber-Jacks, I left thwart'd &amp; alone... unwilling to dress as an unmanly Pastiche of Mister COBAIN." 
 
In his Dictionary of Modern Life, our gouty man of letters takes a wickedly funny look at all things modern. From Top Gear and the Daily Mail to Dubstep and Celebrity Big Brother, nothing escapes his sardonic gaze.

Dr Johnson's Dictionary of Modern Life

Survey, Definition & justify'd Lampoonery of divers contemporary Phenomena, from Top Gear unto Twitter

Karrie Fransman

The House That Groaned is a graphic novel that explores bodies and the spaces they inhabit. 
 
It is set in an old Victorian tenement housing six lonely individuals who could only have stepped out of the pages of a comic book. There is the retoucher who cannot touch, a grandmother who literally blends into the background and a twenty-something bloke who's sexually attracted to diseased women. 
 
Yet, as we learn the stories behind these extreme characters, it becomes apparent that we may share simlar issues - as individuals and as a society.

The House that Groaned

Stephen Collins

Here are some comics by Stephen Collins. 
 
Or, to be precise, a little over 100 comics by Stephen Collins. 
 
They constitute your opportunity to 
 
a) discover what plastic bags really think about 
b) learn the true identity of Kim Jong-Un’s life coach 
c) have everything ruined by the internet 
 
Enjoy!

Some Comics by Stephen Collins

Philippa Rice

Baby: A Soppy Story is a collection of comics by New York Times bestselling graphic novelist Philippa Rice, based on real-life moments with her baby. 
 
It is a collection about the small, intimate, heart-warming experiences of a couple expecting their first baby. From planning and pregnancy to childbirth and raising a newborn, Baby focuses on the everyday moments of parenthood. 
 
Easily read between naps, it is the perfect gift for new or expectant parents.

Baby

A Soppy Story

Fenella Smith

The Brothers McLeod

Caroline Smith

What’s your favourite dog breed? Is it a corgi (the Queen's favourite and they know it), a French Bulldog (like a bulldog, but more chic) or it an Afghan Hound (slightly aloof and require shampoo – curlers optional)? 
 
You will meet them all in this charming guide to our beloved four-legged friends. Featuring over one hundred dog breeds, each are depicted in a beautiful watercolour and accompanied by a witty character profile. Attractively illustrated and delightfully humorous, this canine compendium makes for an ideal gift and is the perfect book for dog lovers of all ages. 
 
Also available by the same author: Cats – a Feline Compendium 
 
‘Charmingly illustrated’ Elle

Breeds

A Canine Compendium

In 1989, Tim Moore moved into the last house in Chiswick with an outside toilet. Intrigued by a subsequent encounter with an elderly former resident, he finds himself inspired to travel back to the land before now, experiencing the hardships and pleasures enjoyed and endured by Moores gone by. 
 
The journey that follows takes him through the world of historical re-enactment: living on bramble leaves, Johnny cake and porridge, Moore travels from the Iron Age to the Steam Age, from Roman legionary to Tudor master to Yankee spy, sharing straw beds and daft hats with period obsessives driven by socio-historical curiosity, disillusionment with the modern world, or a simple nostalgia for campfires, flatulence and brutality. 
 
I Believe in Yesterday is an odyssey through 2,000 years of filth and fury, to a time where men were men, the nights were black, the world was your outside toilet and everything tasted faintly of leeks.

I Believe In Yesterday

My Adventures in Living History

Emma Chichester Clark

In 2014 Cape published Plumdog, a year’s worth of entries from Emma Chichester Clark’s blog of the same name which records the daily life of Plum, her dog, in Plum’s own words and Emma’s delightful illustrations. It was seized on by dog lovers everywhere and became the bestselling book written by a dog of that year … indeed quite possibly since records began. 
 
Another Year of Plumdog is exactly what it says: another year of leaping, catching balls, diving into rivers, puddles, the North Sea, and hanging out with friends.

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