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The Glossy Years: Magazines, Museums and Selective Memoirs
By Nicholas Coleridge. 2001
'The most entertaining book of the year' Sunday Times _____________________________________________________Diana touched your elbow, your arm, covered your hand with hers.…
It was alluring. And she was disarmingly confiding."Can I ask you something? Nicholas, please be frank..."Over his thirty-year career at Condé Nast, Nicholas Coleridge has witnessed it all. From the anxieties of the Princess of Wales to the blazing fury of Mohamed Al-Fayed, his story is also the story of the people who populate the glamorous world of glossy magazines. With relish and astonishing candour, he offers the inside scoop on Tina Brown and Anna Wintour, David Bowie and Philip Green, Kate Moss and Beyonce; on Margaret Thatcher's clothes legacy, and a surreal weekend away with Bob Geldof and William Hague. Cara Delevingne, media tycoons, Prime Ministers, Princes, Mayors and Maharajas - all cross his path.His career in magazines straddles the glossies throughout their glorious zenith - from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s to the digital iterations of the 21st century. Having cut his teeth on Tatler, and as Editor-in-Chief of Harpers & Queen, he became the Mr Big of glossy publishing for three decades.Packed with surprising and often hilarious anecdotes, The Glossy Years also provides perceptive insight into the changing and treacherous worlds of fashion, journalism, museums and a whole sweep of British society. This is a rich, honest, witty and very personal memoir of a life splendidly lived.__________________________________________________________'An entertaining whirlwind' Evening Standard'Gentle, jolly . . . Blissfully funny' Sunday Telegraph'An irresistible read, hilarious, honest and insightful. I adored it' Tina Brown'Sparkling' Spectator'Forthright, witty and gossipy . . . a passion for glossy magazines shines through this effervescent memoir' Sunday ExpressHead Over Heels in the Dales
By Gervase Phinn. 2002
Join Gervase Phinn in the classroom where he faces his greatest challenge: keeping a straight face as teachers and children…
alike conspire to have him laughing out loud . . .'So funny, it will echo things that happen in your own life' 5***** Reader Review'A wonderful, entertaining and enjoyable read. The humour is infectious' 5***** Reader Review______ 'Could you tell me how to spell "sex" please?' Gervase Phinn thinks he's heard just about everything in his two years as a school inspector, but a surprising enquiry from an angelic six-year-old reminds him never to take children for granted. This year Gervase has lots of important things on his mind - his impending marriage to Christine Bentley (the prettiest headteacher for miles around), finding somewhere idyllic to live in the Yorkshire Dales, and the chance of a promotion.All of which generate their fair share of excitement, aided and abetted as usual by his colleagues in the office.Funny, uplifting and joyful, Head over Heels in the Dales is the third in Gervase Phinn's much-loved series.______'Gervase Phinn's memoirs have made him a hero in school staff-rooms' Daily Telegraph'A natural storyteller' Yorkshire PostHaunted by Harvard: Continents of Exile: 8 (Penguin Modern Classics)
By Ved Mehta. 2008
Book 8 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one…
of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta.Veritas continues Mehta's journey through education: this time as a Ph.D. student and Residential Fellow at Harvard. His experience illustrates the dramatic changes in institutional habits and behaviour that were to take places in the late 1960s, as well as how dramatically out-of-touch many senior lecturers were to the societal mood around them.The Gift of a Radio: My Childhood and other Train Wrecks
By Justin Webb. 2022
'Searingly honest... gripping... fascinating and hugely entertaining.'- Sunday Times'Moving and frank ... A story of a childhood defined by loneliness,…
the absence of a father and the grim experience of a Quaker boarding school. It is also one of the most perceptive accounts of Britain in the 1970s.'- Misha Glenny'A crisp, unself-pitying memoir of a 'trainwreck' youth ... I've always likes Webb on the radio. But I like him much more after reading this book. He offers precisely the kind of brisk honesty and considered analysis he expects from his interviewees. Our politicians should all read it, and step up their game.' -Telegraph.........................................................................................................................................................Justin Webb's childhood in the 1970s was far from ordinary.Between his mother's un-diagnosed psychological problems, and his step-father's untreated ones, life at home was dysfunctional at best. But with gun-wielding school masters and sub-standard living conditions, Quaker boarding school wasn't much better.Candid, unsparing and darkly funny, Justin Webb's memoir is as much a portrait of a troubled era as it is the story of a dysfunctional childhood, shaping the urbane and successful radio presenter we know and love now.........................................................................................................................................'I thoroughly enjoyed Justin Webb's bonkers childhood. He captures the middle class of the age with a tenacity only possible in one of its victims.' -Jeremy PaxmanGet Lucky: Rituals, Habits and Superstitions of the Rich and Famous
By Chas Newkey-Burden. 2014
Have you ever wondered how Simon Cowell developed the Midas touch? Or how Mo Farah won two Olympic golds? Curious…
to know how Barack Obama focusses before an election? How Marilyn Monroe always looked so glamorous? Or how Dan Brown pens his latest bestseller?Packed full of entertaining trivia and hilarious anecdotes, Get Lucky chronicles the luck rituals of the great and the good. From sports stars and celebrities to writers, tastemakers and multi-millionaires, this book exposes the unusual habits and superstitions behind their success. Read on and be inspired. You never know, some of their luck might just rub off on you…Georges Perec: A Life in Words
By David Bellos. 1993
"It's hard to see how anyone is ever going to better this User's Manual to the life of Georges Perec"…
- Gilbert Adair, Sunday TimesWinner of the Prix Goncourt for Biography, 1994George Perec (1936-82) was one of the most significant European writers of the twentieth century and undoubtedly the most versatile and innovative writer of his generation.David Bellos's comprehensive biography - which also provides the first full survey of Perec's irreverent, polymathic oeuvre - explores the life of an anguished, comical and endearingly modest man, who worked quietly as an archivist in a medical research library. The French son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, he remained haunted all of his life by his father's death in the war, fighting to defend France, and his mother's in Auschwitz-Birkenau. His acclaimed novel A Void (1969) - written without using the letter "e" - has been seen as an attempt to escape from the words "père", "mere", and even "George Perec".His career made an auspicious start with Things: A Story of the Sixties (1965), which won the Prix Renaudot. He then pursued an idiosyncratic and ambitious literary itinerary through the intellectual ferment of Paris in the 1960s and 1970s.He belonged to the Ouvrior de Littérature Potentielle (OuLiPo), a radically inventive group of writers whose members included Raymond Queneau and Italo Calvino. Perec achieved international celebrity with Life A User's Manual (1978), which won the Prix Medicis and was voted Novel of the Decade by the Salon du Livre. He died in his mid-forties after a short illness, leaving a truly puzzling detective novel, 53 Days, incomplete."Professor Bellos's book enables us at once to relish the most wilfully bizarre aspects of Perec's oeuvre and to understand the whys and wherefores of his protean nature" - Jonathan Romney, Literary ReviewGreater London: The Story of the Suburbs
By Nick Barratt. 2012
London's suburbs may stretch for well over 600 square miles, but in historical accounts of the capital they tend to…
take something of a back seat. In Greater London, historian Nick Barratt places them firmly centre stage, tracing their journey from hamlets and villages far out in the open countryside to fully fledged urban enclaves, simultaneously demonstrating the crucial role they have played in the creation of today's metropolis.Starting in the first century AD, he shows how the tiny settlements that grew up in the Thames Valley gradually developed, and how they were shaped by their proximity to the city. He describes the spread of the first suburbs beyond the city walls, and traces the ebb and flow of population as people moved in to find jobs or away to escape London's noise and bustle. He charts the transformation wrought by the coming of the railways, the fight to preserve Hampstead Heath, Epping Forest and other green spaces and the struggle to create a London-wide form of government. He gives an account of wartime destruction and peacetime reconstruction, and then brings the story to the present with a description of the very varied nature of today's suburbs and their inhabitants. In the process, he evokes Tudor Hackney and Georgian Hampton, explains why Victorian Battersea and Finchley were so different from one another, and follows Islington's fall from grace and subsequent recovery.Magnificently illustrated throughout with contemporary engravings and photographs, this is the essential history for anyone who has ever lived in London.The GCHQ Puzzle Book II
By Gchq. 2018
Train your brain with these fiendishly difficult puzzles, the perfect companion for anyone wanting to keep their mind busy'Fiendishly tricky'…
Daily MailWith their first bestselling book, The GCHQ Puzzle Book, the UK's intelligence and security experts tested us with puzzles, codes and real-life entrance tests from their archives.Now, they are back with a NEW collection of head-scratching, mind-boggling and brain-bending puzzles that will leave you pondering for hours.For those who often found themselves stumped with the first book, The GCHQ Puzzle Book 2 offers even more starter puzzles to get those brains warmed up. Puzzle aficionados needn't worry though, as there is also an 'Even Harder' section to test everyone to their limits . . .Not only that, but in celebration of GCHQ's centenary, the puzzles in this new book sit alongside stories, facts and photos from the organisation's first 100 years at the heart of the nation's security. From the Government Code & Cipher School, to Bletchley Park, through to protecting against cyberattacks, the security of our country is in the hands of GCHQ. With this book, you get exclusive snapshots into the organisation that keeps us all safe.Train your brain to compete with the smartest in the country with this stimulating book of puzzles. If you haven't yet tested yourself with the first instalment of The GCHQ Puzzle Book, check it out now!'This is the perfect gift to fuel his ludicrous presumption that he could have definitely been a spy - even better if he's already dog-eared the first version' Huffington PostSharpen your mind to beat the smartest brains in Britain with the original official GCHQ puzzle bookWould GCHQ recruit you?…
Pit your wits against the people who cracked Enigma in the official puzzle book from Britain's top secret intelligence and security organisationOver the years, their codebreakers have helped keep our country safe, from the Bletchley Park breakthroughs of WWII to the modern-day threat of cyber attack. So it comes as no surprise that, even in their time off, the staff at GCHQ love a good puzzle.Whether they're recruiting new staff or challenging each other to the toughest Christmas quizzes and treasure hunts imaginable, puzzles are at the heart of what GCHQ does. Now they're opening up their archives of decades' worth of codes, puzzles and challenges for everyone to try.In this book you will find:- Tips on how to get into the mindset of a codebreaker- Puzzles ranging in difficulty from easy to brain-bending- A competition section where we search for Britain's smartest puzzlerWith hundreds of stimulating puzzles, The GCHQ Puzzle Book is the perfect companion and will keep you occupied as you attempt to beat the smartest brains in Britain.GOOD LUCK!'Fiendish . . . as frustrating, divisive and annoying as it is deeply fulfilling' Guardian'Ideal for the crossword enthusiast' Daily TelegraphLooking for more ways to test yourself? The GCHQ Puzzle Book 2, a new collection of head-scratching, mind-boggling and brain-bending puzzles is out now!Gardeners' World: Month by Month Planning, Planting and Advice
By Martyn Cox. 2014
Growing vegetables can be a tricky business, and even the most experienced of gardeners will occasionally need to turn to…
a trusted tome for some handy advice. The Veg Grower’s Almanac is just such a book – a compendium of month-by-month tips, advice and items of interest. With sage advice from old Gardeners’ World hands coupled with tips on the best varieties to grow and timely advice on how best to look after your plot, this attractive collection blends practical advice with evocative writing and fascinating facts. Illustrated throughout with charming drawings and sketches, The Veg Grower’s Almanac is a welcome additional to any gardener’s shelf – from hands-on instructions for preparing a seed bed or trying new varieties of tomato to fascinating little-known facts about our favourite crops.Get your pub on with Britain's bestselling travel guide for over 35 years.***Featured in the Guardian, the Times and Mail…
Online and on BBC Radio 4***Now in its 39th edition, The Good Pub Guide remains Britain's best-loved guide to pubs around the country. Organised county by county, yearly updates and reader recommendations ensure that only the best pubs make the grade. Whether you're seeking a countryside haven or a bustling city inn, a family friendly eatery or somewhere with great craft beer, The Good Pub Guide will never steer you wrong. It offers comprehensive information on everything from opening hours and prices to pub dogs, with starred reviews marking truly outstanding establishments.Discover the best in each county for beer, food and accommodation, and find out the winners of the coveted titles of 'Pub of the Year' and 'Landlord of the Year'. Packed with honest, entertaining and up-to-date information, this is the only pub guide you'll ever need and the perfect gift for any pub lover and opens with special contributions from James Blunt, Seedlip founder Ben Branson, Great British Bake Off winner Candice Brown and best-selling author Christopher Winn.The Good Pub Guide 2020
By Fiona Stapley. 2019
Britain's bestselling travel guide for over 35 years and the only truly independent pub guide of its kind.***Featured in the…
Guardian, the Times and Mail Online and on BBC Radio 4***The 38th edition of this much-loved book is as irreplaceable as ever. Organised county by county, its yearly updates and reader recommendations ensure that only the best pubs make the grade. Here you will not only find a fantastic range of countryside havens, bustling inns and riverside retreats, but also pubs known for their excellent food, some specialising in malt whiskey and craft beers.Discover the top pubs in each county for beer, food and accommodation, and find out the winners of the coveted titles of Pub of the Year and landlord of the Year. Packed with hidden gems, The Good Pub Guide continues to provide a wealth of honest, entertaining and up-to-date information on the countries drinking establishments.The Good Pub Guide 2019
By Fiona Stapley. 2018
Britain's bestselling travel guide for over 30 years and the only truly independent guide of its kind.***Featured in the Guardian,…
the Times and Mail Online and on BBC Radio 4***The 37th edition of this much-loved book is as irreplaceable as ever. Organised county by county, its yearly updates and reader recommendations ensure that only the best pubs make the grade. Here you will not only find a fantastic range of countryside havens, bustling inns and riverside retreats, but also a growing number of gastropubs and pubs specialising in malt whiskey and craft beers.Discover the top pubs in each county for beer, food and accommodation, and find out the winners of the coveted titles of Pub of the Year and landlord of the Year. Packed with hidden gems, The Good Pub Guide continues to provide a wealth of honest, entertaining and up-to-date information on the countries drinking establishments.Fuck You, 2016
By Bob A. Grypants. 2016
In the year that David Bowie died, Brexit shocked us, 'Hiddleswift' was a thing and Trump trumped, we are all…
asking ourselves was 2016 really the worst year ever? Find out in this special* commemorative book**.Inside this cathartic memento of the annus shitabulus that was 2016 you'll find a hilarious guide to everything that went wrong and the few - very few - things that actually went right. For example:- How was it that politics completely jumped the shark this year?- From Bowie to Prince, Ali to Cohen, we celebrate the many extraordinary artists who died rather than see Trump become President (Did Castro make it into the book? Close, but no cigar)- Compare 2016 with other terrible years in history - is it really the very worst?- Make sense of Manbuns, Pokemon Go, Hygge, Nigel Farage and other nonsense- With the aid of an electron microscope we hunt for something good that actually happened- Feel relieved about all the bad things that didn't occur - yet (there's always 2017, folks!)Featuring some really badly drawn illustrations, this comic compendium will soothe your troubled soul - before you throw it in the bin and prepare your mightily hungover self to face 2017. It has to be better, right?* i.e. hastily put together** Warning: this book will spontaneously combust at midnight on December 31st 2016Frost: The Authorised Biography
By Neil Hegarty. 2015
Sir David Frost was the only person to have met and interviewed every British Prime Minister since Harold Wilson as…
well as seven Presidents of the United States. With unparalleled, authorised access to David’s family and friends, in this book Neil Hegarty documents how he became the most successful TV host in the world, his work defining the mood of the moment.Frost didn’t just report the news, he made the news.Fantastic Mr Dahl
By Michael Rosen. 2012
Life story of Roald Dahl, World's No.1 storyteller, creator of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr Fox, Matilda, The…
BFG, James and the Giant Peach and many more, brought to life by Michael Rosen - author, poet and former Children's Laureate. Written especially for children, with fun pages and illustrations by Quentin Blake.So, how did Roald Dahl get into writing? Where did he get his ideas from? What ingredients in his life turned him into the kind of writer he was? Michael Rosen comes up the answers to these key questions in his lively biography of the world's No.1 storyteller, written specially for children. Full of stories and funny anecdotes from Roald Dahl's school days and family life, Michael Rosen's fascinating observations creates a vivid picture of one of the most famous writers of all time.Fanny Burney: Her Life
By Kate Chisholm. 1998
Fanny Burney (1752-1840) is best known as the author of EVELINA, one of the most engaging novels of the eighteenth…
century. But for much of her long life, she was also an incomparable diarist, witnessing both the madness of George III and the young Queen Victoria's coronation. To read the journals she kept from the age of sixteen is to step back into Georgian England, meeting Dr Johnson, Garrick and Reynolds, being chased round the gardens of Kew Palace by the King. . . She was lady-in-writing to Queen Charlotte; she married an aristocratic emigre from the French Revolution and had her first and only child when she was forty-two; she was in Paris as Napoleon's armies marshalled against England, and in Brussels she heard the muffled guns, and watched the wounded being carried back from Waterloo. Kate Chisholm's delightful biography, incorporating the latest research and illustrate with unusual portraits and drawings, is lively, funny, shocking, informative and deeply moving; it paints a vivid portrait of a woman of great talent, against the changing background of England and France, a culture and an age.Elsewhere: One Woman, One Rucksack, One Lifetime of Travel
By Rosita Boland. 2018
'Utterly engaging.' - Sunday TimesFrom her first life-changing solo trip to Australia as a young graduate, Rosita Boland was enthralled…
by travel. In the last thirty years she has visited some of the most remote parts of the globe carrying little more than a battered rucksack and a diary.Documenting nine journeys from nine different moments in her life, Elsewhere reveals how exploring the world – and those we meet along the way – can dramatically shape the course of a person’s life. From death-defying bus journeys through Pakistan to witnessing the majestic icescapes of Antarctica to putting herself back together in Bali, Rosita experiences moments of profound joy and endures deep personal loss.In a series of jaw-dropping, illuminating and sometimes heart-breaking essays, Elsewhere is a book that celebrates the life well-travelled in all its messy and wondrous glory.Father and Son: A Study Of Two Temperaments (Penguin Modern Classics)
By Edmund Gosse. 1983
At birth Edmund Gosse was dedicated to 'the Service of the Lord'. His parents were Plymouth Brethren. After his mother's…
death Gosse was brought up in stifling isolation by his father, a marine biologist whose faith overcame his reason when confronted by Darwin's theory of evolution. Father and Son is also the record of Gosse's struggle to 'fashion his inner life for himself' - a record of whose full and subversive implications the author was unaware, as Peter Abbs notes in his Introduction. First published anonymously in 1907, Father and Son was immediately acclaimed for its courage in flouting the conventions of Victorian autobiography and is still a moving account of self-discovery.Falco: The Official Companion
By Lindsey Davis. 2012
One of the stories from the bestselling historical fiction Falco series.As the girl came running up the steps, I decided…
she was wearing far too many clothes...So, in 1989, readers were introduced to Marcus Didius Falco, the Roman informer, as he stood on the steps of the Temple of Saturn, looking out across the Forum: the heart of his world. Twenty years and twenty books later, Falco fans want a companion volume.Only here will you learn the author's private background, including her descent from a failed assassin and how atheism improved her knitting. Here too are the real glories and heartache involved in research and creation: why the baby had to be born in Barcelona, which plots evolved from intense loathing of management trainees, what part a thermal vest played in the iconic Falco's conception. It can't be a complete handbook to ancient Rome, but it covers perennial issues. There are a hundred illustrations, some specially commissioned, others from family archives. Enlightening quotations come from the Falco books and from eminent sources: Juvenal, through Chandler, to 1066 and All That.Readers have asked for this book. Their paranoid, secretive author agrees it is now or never. Time to spill beans on the travertine...