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Blood Kindred: W. B. Yeats, the Life, the Death, the Politics
By W J McCormack. 1934
In June 1934, W. B. Yeats gratefully received the award of a Goethe-Plakette from Oberburgermeister Krebs, four months after his…
early play The Countess Cathleen had been produced in Frankfurt by SS Untersturmfuhrer Bethge. Four years later, the poet publicly commended Nazi legislation before leaving Dublin to die in southern France. These hitherto neglected, isolated and scandalous details stand at the heart of this reflective study of Yeats's life, his attitudes towards death, and his politics.Blood Kindred identifies an obsession with family as the link connecting Yeats's late engagement with fascism to his Irish Victorian origins in suburban Dublin and industrializing Ulster. It carefully documents and analyses his involvement with both Maud Gonne and her daughter Iseult, his secretive consultations with Irish army officers during his Senate years, his incidental anti-Semitism, and his approval of the right-wing royalist group L'Action Française in the 1920s. The familiar peaks and troughs of Irish history, such as the 1916 Rising and the death of Parnell, are re-oriented within a radical new interpretation of Yeats's life and thought, his poetry and plays. As far as possible Bill McCormack lets Yeats speak for himself through generous quotation from his newly accessible correspondence. The result is a combative, entertaining biography which allows Ireland's greatest literary figure to be seen in the round for the first time.Blood and Sand: The BBC security correspondent’s own extraordinary and inspiring story
By Frank Gardner. 2006
On the June 6, 2004, while on assignment in Riyadh, BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner and cameraman Simon Cumbers were…
ambushed by Islamist gunmen. Simon was killed outright. Frank was hit in the shoulder and leg. As he lay in the dust, a figure stood over him and pumped four more bullets into his body at point-blank range...Against all the odds, Frank Gardner survived. Today, although partly paralysed, Frank continues to travel the world, reporting and making documentaries for the BBC. This acclaimed memoir was brought up to date with a new chapter that recounted his return to Saudi Arabia for the first time since he was shot and the story he tells continues to move and inspire, and remains an affirmation of his deep understanding of - and affection for - the Islamic world in these uncertain times.___'Gardner tells his remarkable tale well and bravely, with an astonishing lack of anger and enduring love and respect for the Islamic world' SUNDAY TIMES'Brave, unsentimental and genuinely inspiring' EVENING STANDARD 'What makes Gardner's moving, often humorous, deeply personal story so important is the fact that he has woven into it a brilliantly dispassionate, clear-eyed account of the Islamic world' SCOTSMAN'A witty, self-deprecating, inspiring testament' DAILY TELEGRAPHA Blaze of Autumn Sunshine: The Last Diaries
By Tony Benn. 2013
In this final volume of diaries, Tony Benn reflects on the compensations and the disadvantages of old age. With the…
support of a small circle of friends and his extended family, he continues his activities on behalf of social justice, peace and accountability in public life, to a background of political change and the international economic crisis. Following an illness in 2009 the diaries, kept for over sixty years, cease. Published here alongside these last diaries are Tony Benn’s highly personal insights into the challenges of old age and failing health, of widowhood,and of moving out of the family home after sixty years. Finally, we share in Tony Benn's hopes for the future based on his years of experience and his natural optimism.Black Water: By Strength and By Guile
By Don Camsell. 1992
Don Camsell joined the men in black of the SBS in 1974. From the deserts of Oman to the hills…
of Port Stanley, from the bottom of Gibraltar harbour to the deep, cold, black waters of Loch Long and from the QE2 to the back alleys of Belfast, his new role demanded that Don fought in just about every theatre of war - overt or covert.Emperor of Rome: Ruling The Ancient Roman World
By Mary Beard. 2023
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Best Books of 2023: New Yorker, The Economist, Smithsonian Most Anticipated Books of Fall: Washington…
Post, Los Angeles Times, TODAY, Literary Hub, and Publishers Weekly "A vivid way to re-examine what we know, and don’t, about life at the top.... Emperor of Rome is a masterly group portrait, an invitation to think skeptically but not contemptuously of a familiar civilization." —Kyle Harper, Wall Street Journal A sweeping account of the social and political world of the Roman emperors by “the world’s most famous classicist” (Guardian). In her international bestseller SPQR, Mary Beard told the thousand-year story of ancient Rome, from its slightly shabby Iron Age origins to its reign as the undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean. Now, drawing on more than thirty years of teaching and writing about Roman history, Beard turns to the emperors who ruled the Roman Empire, beginning with Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BCE) and taking us through the nearly three centuries—and some thirty emperors—that separate him from the boy-king Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE). Yet Emperor of Rome is not your typical chronological account of Roman rulers, one emperor after another: the mad Caligula, the monster Nero, the philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Instead, Beard asks different, often larger and more probing questions: What power did emperors actually have? Was the Roman palace really so bloodstained? What kind of jokes did Augustus tell? And for that matter, what really happened, for example, between the emperor Hadrian and his beloved Antinous? Effortlessly combining the epic with the quotidian, Beard tracks the emperor down at home, at the races, on his travels, even on his way to heaven. Along the way, Beard explores Roman fictions of imperial power, overturning many of the assumptions that we hold as gospel, not the least of them the perception that emperors one and all were orchestrators of extreme brutality and cruelty. Here Beard introduces us to the emperor’s wives and lovers, rivals and slaves, court jesters and soldiers, and the ordinary people who pressed begging letters into his hand—whose chamber pot disputes were adjudicated by Augustus, and whose budgets were approved by Vespasian, himself the son of a tax collector. With its finely nuanced portrayal of sex, class, and politics, Emperor of Rome goes directly to the heart of Roman fantasies (and our own) about what it was to be Roman at its richest, most luxurious, most extreme, most powerful, and most deadly, offering an account of Roman history as it has never been presented before.Elle a osé réussir (in English, She Dared to Succeed), delves into the life of a woman who, for more…
than 30 years, broke multiple glass ceilings in the Canadian media and political worlds. Well-known in the broadcasting industry, she was propelled to the political forefront following her appointment to the Senate of Canada (1995) and her election as President of the Liberal Party of Canada (2006). She had to overcome many challenges throughout her career: sexism, prejudice against single mothers and career women, wage disparities, and harassment in the workplace. Above all, she experienced the opprobrium reserved for Senate members—all of whom were exonerated—targeted as part of the Senate expenses scandal (2012-2016). In this book, she bears witness to the human cost of this chapter of Canadian history. This biography, with a foreword by the Hon. John Manley, is the fruit of impressive research by the author, who not only interviewed Madame Charette-Poulin at length, but also conducted 67 interviews, including with prominent Canadians such as Right Honourable Jean Chrétien and Brian Mulroney, the Honourable Sheila Copps, Sharon Carstairs, Mike Duffy, Hugh Segal, Céline Hervieux-Payette, Vivienne Poy, Linda Frum, Sheila Fraser, as well as judges Robert Desmarais, and Robert Del Frate. She dared to succeed... despite it all.Also available in English (She Dared To Succeed)Available in hardcover, trade paperback, and accessible PDF et ePUB formats.G-Man (Pulitzer Prize Winner): J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century
By Beverly Gage. 2022
Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in BiographyWinner of the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography, the 2023 Bancroft…
Prize in American History and Diplomacy, and the 43rd LA Times Book Prize in Biography | Finalist for the 2023 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for BiographyNamed a Best Book of 2022 by The Atlantic, The Washington Post and Smithsonian Magazine and a New York Times Top 100 Notable Books of 2022 &“Masterful…This book is an enduring, formidable accomplishment, a monument to the power of biography [that] now becomes the definitive work&”—The Washington Post&“A nuanced portrait in a league with the best of Ron Chernow and David McCullough.&”—The Wall Street JournalA major new biography of J Edgar Hoover that draws from never-before-seen sources to create a groundbreaking portrait of a colossus who dominated half a century of American history and planted the seeds for much of today's conservative political landscape.We remember him as a bulldog--squat frame, bulging wide-set eyes, fearsome jowls--but in 1924, when he became director of the FBI, he had been the trim, dazzling wunderkind of the administrative state, buzzing with energy and big ideas for reform. He transformed a failing law-enforcement backwater, riddled with scandal, into a modern machine. He believed in the power of the federal government to do great things for the nation and its citizens. He also believed that certain people--many of them communists or racial minorities or both-- did not deserve to be included in that American project. Hoover rose to power and then stayed there, decade after decade, using the tools of state to create a personal fiefdom unrivaled in U.S. history. Beverly Gage&’s monumental work explores the full sweep of Hoover&’s life and career, from his birth in 1895 to a modest Washington civil-service family through his death in 1972. In her nuanced and definitive portrait, Gage shows how Hoover was more than a one-dimensional tyrant and schemer who strong-armed the rest of the country into submission. As FBI director from 1924 through his death in 1972, he was a confidant, counselor, and adversary to eight U.S. presidents, four Republicans and four Democrats. Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson did the most to empower him, yet his closest friend among the eight was fellow anticommunist warrior Richard Nixon. Hoover was not above blackmail and intimidation, but he also embodied conservative values ranging from anticommunism to white supremacy to a crusading and politicized interpretation of Christianity. This garnered him the admiration of millions of Americans. He stayed in office for so long because many people, from the highest reaches of government down to the grassroots, wanted him there and supported what he was doing, thus creating the template that the political right has followed to transform its party.G-Man places Hoover back where he once stood in American political history--not at the fringes, but at the center--and uses his story to explain the trajectories of governance, policing, race, ideology, political culture, and federal power as they evolved over the course of the 20th century.Black Country to Red China: One girl's story from war-torn England to Revolutionary China
By Esther Cheo Ying. 1980
Born in pre-Revolutionary China and brought up in the Midlands, Esther Cheo Ying returned to China in 1949 after a…
traumatic childhood, convinced that there she would find the happiness and sense of belonging she longed for. Caught up in the turmoil of civil war and sympathetic to the Communist Revolution, she joined the Red Army and then stayed on to work in the new People's Republic. But despite her determination to make a new life in China could she truly be happy in a country which encouraged constant self-criticism and viewed her as a 'false foreign devil'? Black Country to Red China is an extraordinary account of life before the Cultural Revolution, but it is also a fascinating insight into one woman's struggle to come to terms with your own identity.Bertie Ahern Autobiography: The Autobiography
By Bertie Ahern. 2009
Bertie Ahern, three times Irish Taoiseach, is often described as an enigma. The Old IRA man's son who delivered peace…
in Northern Ireland. A working class boy responsible for the Celtic Tiger. The man of faith who ushered in progressive, cosmopolitan secular Ireland. An ardent nationalist admired by European leaders. 'I know 25 per cent of Bertie Ahern', said his finance minister, Charlie McCreevy, 'and that's 24 per cent more than anyone else.'Now in this frank and revealing autobiography, Ahern gives his own account of a remarkable political life and the personal story that accompanies it. He shows the cost to his family of a life played out in the public eye and, for the first time, discloses what really happened in his final weeks in power.Here for the first time is the truth behind the man who is Bertie.Ahern has been at the cutting edge of Irish politics for over three decades. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann in the Fianna Fáil landslide victory in 1977 that saw Jack Lynch returned as Taoiseach. In 1982, Charles Haughey appointed him Government Chief Whip. In volatile political times, he strongly supported Haughey during three challenges to his leadership of Fianna Fáil.In 1987, Bertie Ahern received his first cabinet portfolio as Minister for Labour. It was a time when the Irish economy was in crisis. Ireland had a higher debt per head than Ethiopia or Sudan. Unemployment stood at 16%. Ahern negotiated Ireland's first social partnership agreement, which underpinned economic recovery and put in place the foundations for a period of sustained growth. In 1991, he was appointed Minister for Finance. International commentators first began to refer to 'Ireland's Tiger economy' in this period. When Bertie Ahern left the Department of Finance in late 1994, for the first time in almost 30 years, Ireland had a budget surplus.Bertie Ahern succeeded Albert Reynolds as leader of Fianna Fáil in November 1994. Following the General Election in 1997, he became Ireland's youngest ever Taoiseach. The Ahern Era was a time of unprecedented progress in Irish society. Over the course of his tenure in office, Ireland's economy out-performed that of every other European country. For the first time ever, the number of people in employment in the State reached 2 million.Working closely with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, Ahern won widespread acclaim for his perseverance and skill in negotiating the Good Friday Agreement, which has provided the political framework for a lasting peace in Northern Ireland.On the international stage, he was a respected figure who enjoyed an acclaimed Presidency of the European Council in 2004. He presided over the completion of the largest ever expansion of the EU and concluded negotiations on a European constitution. He is one of only five visiting statesmen to have addressed both the United States Congress and the Houses of Parliament in Westminster.At home, Ahern enjoyed phenomenal electoral support. He was the first Taoiseach since 1944 to win three successive General Elections.Bertie Ahern resigned on 6th May, 2008. He had served for ten years, ten months and ten days as Taoiseach.The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990
By Tony Benn. 1995
The Benn Diaries, embracing the years 1940-1990, are already established as a uniquely authoritative, fascinating and readable record of political…
life. The selected highlights that form this single-volume edition include the most notable events, arguments and personal reflections throughout Benn's long and remarkable career as a leading politician.The narrative starts with Benn as a schoolboy and takes the reader through his youthful wartime experiences as a trainee pilot, his nervous excitement as a new MP during Clement Atlee's premiership and the tribulations of Labour in the 1950s, when the Conservatives were in firm control. It ends with the Tories again in power, but on the eve of Margaret Thatcher's fall, while Tony Benn is on a mission to Baghdad before the impending Gulf War.Over the span of fifty years, the public and private turmoil in British and world politics is recorded as Benn himself moves from wartime service to become the baby of the House, Cabinet Minister, and finally the Commons' most senior Labour Member.The Benn Diaries: The Definitive Collection
By Tony Benn. 2017
Tony Benn was one of the twentieth century's most charismatic politicians. The Benn Diaries, kept for almost seventy years, are…
a uniquely authoritative, fascinating and readable record of the political life of our times. This single-volume edition is the selected highlights of the complete diaries from Tony's schooldays in the 1940s until he ceased keeping a record of his day-to-day thoughts in 2009. The narrative starts with Tony as a schoolboy and takes the reader through his experience as a trainee pilot during the war, his tentative first days as a backbencher in Atlee's post-war government, through his battle to remain in the Commons after the death of his father. From cabinet posts and leadership battles, through election highs ands lows to becoming a retired widower. Tony Benn was a consistently radical voice campaigning for the causes he was passionate about. This volume is the definitive legacy of the best political diarist of our times.Behind the Black Door
By Sarah Brown. 2011
In this personal memoir about life at 10 Downing Street, Sarah Brown shares the secrets of living behind the most…
famous front door in the world.Sarah gave up a successful career in business to serve the country. A passionate campaigner for women and children, she mobilised over a million people through her early adoption of Twitter.If you've ever wondered what it's like to pack for a photo call with supermodels or pause a speech in front of hundreds when the autocue fails, it's all here - from what to do when the school play clashes with a visit to the White House to what it feels like to support the man you love as he takes tough decisions to stave off global financial meltdown...Intimate, reflective, surprising and funny, Behind the Black Door takes us backstage to reveal what it's like to be an ordinary woman, wife and mother in extraordinary circumstances.Behind Enemy Lines: The Autobiography of Britain's Most Decorated Living War Hero
By Richard Bath, Sir Tommy Macpherson. 2010
With three Military Crosses, three Croix de guerre, a Légion d'honneur and a papal knighthood for his heroics during the…
Second World War, Sir Tommy Macpherson is the most decorated living soldier of the British Army. Yet for 65 years the Highlander's story has remained untold. Few know how, aged 21, he persuaded 23,000 SS soldiers of the feared Das Reich tank column to surrender, or how Tommy almost single-handedly stopped Tito's Yugoslavia annexing the whole of north-east Italy. Twice captured, he escaped both times, marching through hundreds of miles of German-held territory to get home. Still a schoolboy when war broke out, Tommy quickly matured into a legendary commando, and his remarkable story features a dizzyingly diverse cast of characters, including Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Montgomery and Charles de Gaulle.Battersea Girl: Tracing a London Life
By Martin Knight. 2006
A couple of years ago, Martin Knight began a quest to delve into his family history. He had a head…
start on many amateur genealogists, as 30 years earlier he had produced a school project on the very subject. The project was based on the papers and oral history of his then elderly grandmother, Ellen Tregent. Martin dusted this off and began to assemble the chain of events that shaped his grandmother's life. He even made contact with several living relatives who had known Ellen or some of the people and events she described.Ellen Tregent was born in 1888 and died in 1988 - her lifetime encompassing an unprecedented century of social change and world upheaval. She was born into a poor working-class family in Battersea, London. Her grandfather had arrived from Ireland 40 years earlier to escape almost certain death as potato famine ravaged his country. In Battersea Girl, Martin Knight charts Ellen's long and eventful life and the lives of her siblings. They encounter abject poverty, disease, suicide, murder, war and inevitably death, but, equally, the spirit of stoical people who were determined to make the most of their lives shines through in this enchanting book.Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon: Feminist, Artist and Rebel
By Pam Hirsch. 1998
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon was the most unconventional and influential leader of the Victorian women's movement. Enormously talented, energetic and…
original, she was a feminist, law-reformer, painter, journalist, the close friend of George Eliot and a cousin of Florence Nightingale. As a painter, Barbara is now recognised as a vital figure among Pre-Raphaelite women artists. As a feminist she led four great campaigns: for married women's legal status, for the right to work, the right to vote and to education. Making brilliant use of unpublished journals and letters, Pam Hirsch has written a biography that is as lively and powerful as its subject, recreating the woman in all her moods, and placing her firmly in the context of women's struggle for equality.Barack Obama: The Making of a President
By Dawne Allette. 2009
"I was not born into money or status. I was born to a teenage mom in Hawaii, and my dad…
left us when I was two. But my family gave me love, they gave me education, and most of all they gave me hope..."Punctuated with his own words, this biography traces the people, places and experiences that made Barack Obama the powerful man he is today. His story takes us from Kenya to Hawaii and Indonesia to Chicago, embracing many cultures. It also reaches from the past to the present, with photographs of Obama growing up and a timeline of significant events in black history.Barack Obama's story of hope and determination culminates with an account of his historic Inauguration Day and his first 100 days in office.Always By My Side: Losing the love of my life and the fight to honour his memory
By Christina Schmid. 2012
A LOVE LOST.A LIFE CUT SHORT.'From the moment I set eyes on him I adored him. The connection between us…
was so strong it went beyond everything else. His job, my job, his lifestyle, my lifestyle. All that fell away.'And then one earth-shattering day Christina's worst nightmare came true when Oz was killed on his final day of duty before flying home to his family.This is Christina and Oz's story: a story about love and loss, hope and despair and of living in constant fear. Christina's extraordinary bravery and composure is an inspiration to anyone who has ever lost someone they love.Always a Marine: The Return to Civvy Street
By Steven Preece. 2005
In Amongst the Marines, Steven Preece vividly depicted his excessive, violent lifestyle as an elite Royal Marine Commando. Now Always…
a Marine covers the author's struggle to leave that lifestyle behind following his departure from the service. Back on civvy street for the first time in over seven years, Preece finds it extremely difficult to adapt and struggles to shake off the belligerent mentality he developed while in the Marines. Despite these difficulties, he marries and starts a family, but this positive change is not enough to turn his life around. Preece soon discovers that his tendency towards violence will not be tolerated in the civilian workplace and, after finding himself blacklisted by many companies in his area, he is forced to look for employment abroad. This quest for work takes Preece to France, where he is caught up in a hotel fire; Germany, where he is double-crossed out of his job and later teams up with an ex-SAS trooper; Morocco, where an incident lands him in jail and he is later shot at by border police; and Thailand, where he fights in a boxing ring with a former French Legionnaire and gets caught up in a business scam.Having settled back in the UK, Preece's behaviour remains excessive. He severely injures his head and suffers minor brain damage after a heavy-drinking session. Upon recovering, he looks for something else to believe in and begins training in ninjutsu, the martial art of the ninjas, who view aggression as a sign of weakness. This, combined with the love of his family, finally enables him to put his past behind him. Always a Marine is the action-packed, often shocking account of one ex-Marine's 13-year struggle to control the aggression he learnt as a serviceman in order to become a respectable civilian.Alfie: The Life and Times of Alfie Byrne
By Trevor White. 2017
The first biography of the beloved long-time Lord Mayor of DublinAlfie Byrne was that rarest of things: a genuinely popular…
politician. He is still a figure of legend in Dublin, where he was elected Lord Mayor ten times. He was also a TD and a Senator; and only a backroom deal prevented him from contesting the race to become the first President of Ireland - a race he would have been favourite to win. Rising from inner-city Dublin to become known as the 'Lord Mayor of Ireland', he was a truly remarkable figure. And yet there has never been a biography of Alfie Byrne - until now.Trevor White's sparkling book tells the story of a man of many parts and contradictions. He was an urbane man of the world who left school at thirteen. He was a teetotal publican. He was a Parnellite who opposed violence, but he was sympathetic to the Easter rebels. His politics were fundamentally conservative, but he was deeply devoted to the poor of his native city.This is the story of an energetic young man who offered to lead his community and refused to stop governing for forty years. His ambition and charm won admirers in the great cities of the world - and in the tenements of Ireland's capital. At his best, he represented and encouraged a broader understanding of what it means to be Irish. And, through it all, he was a great personality, the living embodiment of Dublin.'Not just the definitive biography of the definitive Dubliner, Alfie is a wonderfully written social, political and cultural history of the country through the capital's most famous son through a tumultuous half century. At last, justice has been done to the legend that was Alfie Byrne.' Joe Duffy'Trevor White brings [Alfie Byrne] vividly to life in the pages of his elegant new biography' Leo Varadkar, Sunday Independent'White has found a deliciously rich seam to mine in Alfie Byrne ... Byrne's Dublin is revived in glorious Technicolor, and with much affection. It's a lively, boisterous, contradictory, occasionally maddening place, Much like the man himself, really.' Irish Times'Hugely entertaining ... This is the first proper account of his life, and it's bolstered by White's access to Byrne's family papers' Irish Independent'Peppered with delectable anecdotes ... Well researched and spryly written, this is an elegant account of one of our capital city's half-forgotten sons' Sunday Business Post'This enormously enjoyable biography doesn't seek to canonise Alfie, or to demonise him. It does what all good biographies should, which is simply to tell us the protagonist's true story; and it does what all great biographies should do, which is to make that story a delight to read.' Irish Daily Mail'Alfie could easily have been a sentimental rags-to-riches story about the son of a docker who escaped Sean O'Casey's "long haggard corridors of rottenness and ruin" to become a minor power broker among the bankers and lawyers while living in a Dublin 6 pile. Instead, White , who admires his quarry, doesn't pull punches when it comes to describing how the career of the genial Byrne eventually lost steam.' Sunday Times'Brilliantly told ... an inimitable portrait of Dublin for the forty-two years, 1914-56, that Alfie dominated the political scene' Cara'Trevor White has done today's citizenry some service in providing us with a balanced and well-researched account of the phenomenon that was Dublin's own Alfie Byrne' Dublin Review of BooksAirhead: The Imperfect Art of Making News
By Emily Maitlis. 2019
FEATURING EMILY MAITLIS' GROUNDBREAKING INTERVIEW WITH PRINCE ANDREWThe news has never been more prominent - but are we getting the…
full story? Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis gives us a behind-the-scenes look at some of the biggest news stories and interviews of recent years 'Smart, funny and brilliantly told' Elizabeth Day 'Revelatory, riveting and frequently hilarious' James O'Brien 'Absolutely irresistible' Jeremy Vine ________ In this no holds barred account of life in the seconds before, during and after going on air, Newsnight presenter, leading journalist, and queen of the side eye Emily Maitlis gives us the insider info on what we don't get to see on-screen. Giving us the inside scoop on her interviews with everyone from Emma Thompson to Russell Brand, and Donald Trump to Tony Blair, as well as covering news stories such as President Clinton's affairs, Boris Johnson's race to PM, Grenfell, #MeToo, and that interview with Prince Andrew. Airhead is a brilliant exposé of the moments that never make the news. From News Presenter of the Year and 2020 BAFTA nominee ________ 'Funny and subtly smart' GUARDIAN, BOOKS OF THE YEAR DAILY MAIL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 'Deliciously funny . . . Irresistible' The Times '[Emily] is so absolutely of the moment' Evening Standard