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Biography
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Let That Be a Lesson
From the age of eight, Ryan Wilson dreamt of being a teacher. This is the inside story of his time at the chalkface, from fresh-faced trainee with grand ideals to exhausted assistant head battling ever-changing government demands. It is a tribute to the colleagues who befriended him and to the chaotic, brilliant, maddening students who inspired and enraged him. From Sean, the wannabe gangster with a soft heart, to David, the king of innuendo, and terrifyingly clever Amelia. And, above all, it's about the lessons they taught him: how to be patient and resilient, how to live authentically and how to value every day.
£9.99
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Mother's Boy
In 'Mother's Boy,' Booker-Prize winner Howard Jacobson reveals how he became a writer. It is an exploration of belonging and not-belonging, of being an insider and outsider, both English and Jewish.Jacobson was 40 when his first novel was published. In 'Mother's Boy' he traces the life that brought him there. Born to a working-class family in 1940s Manchester, the great-grandson of Lithuanian and Russian immigrants, Jacobson was raised by his mother, grandmother and aunt Joyce. His father was a regimental tailor, as well as an upholsterer, a market-stall holder, a taxi driver, a balloonist, and a magician.Grappling always with his family's history and his Jewish identity, Jacobson takes us from the growing pains of childhood to studying at Cambridge under F.R. Leavis, and landing in Sydney as a maverick young professor on campus.
£18.99
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Infidel
The astonishing and bestselling life story of the renowned campaigner for religious tolerance and women's rights, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
£10.99
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The Case of the Married Woman
Poet, pamphleteer and beauty, Caroline Norton dazzled 19th-century society with her vivacity and intelligence. After her marriage in 1828 to the MP George Norton, she continued to attract friends and admirers to her salon in Westminster, including the widowed Prime Minister Lord Melbourne. Racked with jealousy, George Norton took the PM to court, suing him for damages on account of his 'Criminal Conversation' (adultery) with Caroline. Despite an acquittal, Norton legally denied Caroline access to her 3 children under 7. He also claimed her income as an author for himself, since the copyrights of a married woman belonged to her husband. Caroline channelled her energies into reform: the rights of a married woman and specifically those of a mother. Antonia Fraser portrays a woman who refused to be curbed by the personal and political constraints of her time.
£10.99
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Explorer
'Explorer' is the story of what first led Benedict Allen to head for the farthest reaches of our planet - at a time when there were still valleys and ranges known only to the remote communities who inhabited them. It is also the story of why, thirty years later, he is still exploring.
£18.99
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Starlight Wood
We think we know the Romantic countryside: that series of picturesque landscapes familiar from paintings, poems and music that are still part of Britain's idea of itself today. But for the Romantics themselves, the countryside was a place where radical change was underway both within and around them. 'Romanticism isn't a cultural artefact; it's a way for thought to move,' writes highly acclaimed biographer and poet Fiona Sampson in this transporting and vividly evocative book, in which she spends a year walking in the Romantics' footsteps, from Kent to Kintyre.
£20.00
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Toffee Apples and Quail Feathers
After the death of her beloved mother Jennifer Worth, Suzannah Worth was sorting through papers at the family home. She came across a handwritten manuscript simply labelled 'Fifth Book'. Astonished, Suzannah settled down with a cup of tea to read the papers, and found her mother's distinctive voice flooding back to her, and the voices of the characters she knew so well from Call the Midwife. Suzannah had discovered several unpublished Call the Midwife stories, featuring characters such as Fred, Sister Monica Joan and Trixie. They were as funny, warm and heartbreaking as the original.
£14.99
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Stonehouse
This is the biography of John Stonehouse, Labour cabinet minister and Privy counsellor, spy for the Czech State Security (StB) and convicted fraudster. Stonehouse rose to Privy Counsellor and Cabinet Minister in Harold Wilson Labour government in the late 1960s, but then fell dramatically, committing fraud and betraying his wife and family through an affair with his secretary, Sheila Buckley, before faking his own death off a Miami beach in 1974. He was soon apprehended, in Australia, where he was initially thought by the police to be Lord Lucan, that other notable fugitive from justice of the time. As a British MP he was able to stay in Australia without a valid passport and he could not be extradited. When Stonehouse eventually returned to the UK, he continued, much to the dismay of Wilson, to work as an MP for a full year before he faced trial at the Old Bailey for fraud in 1976.
£12.99
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Forever Young
Hayley Mills' teenage decade in Hollywood produced some of the era's greatest coming-of-age family movies: Pollyanna, The Parent Trap and In Search of the Castaways. Now, and for the first time, Hayley wants to tell the story of those years, and in her own words. The trigger was being taken back to see Walt Disney's restored office - rather like the scene from Saving Mr Banks - and having the Disney archives opened up to her. There she discovered for the first time all the machinations that had gone into shaping - and arguably arresting - her career. As one of the era's great teen idols, she realised she spent a decade not being allowed to grow up, with the world changing around her just as she was changing herself. This is a story Hayley tells up to the age of 21, 'because that's when my life became my own - it's the bit that went before that I want to take back'.
£9.99
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The Elephants of Thula Thula
A powerful, gripping story about an extraordinary herd of elephants, and the woman dedicated to keeping them safe.
£18.99
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The Man from the Future
The smartphones in our pockets and computers like brains. The vagaries of game theory and evolutionary biology. Nanotechnology and nuclear weapons. All bear the fingerprints of one remarkable man: John von Neumann. Taking us on an astonishing journey, Ananyo Bhattacharya explores how a combination of genius and unique historical circumstance allowed a single man to sweep through so many different fields of science, sparking revolutions wherever he went. Insightful and illuminating, 'The Man from the Future' is a thrilling intellectual biography of the visionary thinker who shaped our century.
£12.99
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The Captain's Apprentice
'The Captain's Apprentice' is a beautifully written exploration of the world of Edwardian folk music, and its influence on the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.
£20.00
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Taste
Before Stanley Tucci became a household name with The Devil Wears Prada, The Hunger Games, and the perfect Negroni, he grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night around the table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in 'The Tucci Cookbook' and 'The Tucci Table', and now he takes us beyond the recipes and into the stories behind them. 'Taste' is a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with anecdotes about growing up in Westchester, New York, preparing for and filming the foodie films Big Night and Julie & Julia, falling in love over dinner, and teaming up with his wife to create conversation-starting meals for their children. Each morsel of this gastronomic journey through good times and bad, five-star meals and burnt dishes, is as heartfelt and delicious as the last.
£10.99
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A Different Stage
In this warm, intimate and humorous book, rich with nostalgia and unexpected intimate detail, Gary Barlow unpacks the people, music, places, things and cultural phenomena that have made him the man that he is. From the working men's club where it all began through to the sold out stadium tours, this is the story of Gary's life told through music.
£30.00
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I'm Glad My Mom Died
Jennette McCurdy details how she overcame harrowing struggles as a child TV star-including anorexia and bulimia, addiction, severe obsessive-compulsive disorder and a traumatic relationship with her mother.
£20.00
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The Diary of a Young Girl
A timeless story rediscovered by each new generation, 'The Diary of a Young Girl' stands without peer. For both young readers and adults it continues to bring to life this young woman, who for a time survived the worst horror the modern world had seen.
£9.99
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Agatha Christie
With access to personal letters and papers that have rarely been seen, Lucy Worsley's biography is both authoritative and entertaining and makes us realise what an extraordinary pioneer Agatha Christie was - truly a woman who wrote the twentieth century.
£25.00
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Later...With Jools Holland
'You never knew what you were going to be confronted with when you went on Later?' Nick Cave'Later? is a voyage of discovery for us as well as the viewers' Dave Grohl
£25.00
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Face It
'I was saying things in songs that female singers didn't really say back then. I wasn't submissive or begging him to come back, I was kicking his ass, kicking him out, kicking my own ass too. My Blondie character was an inflatable doll but with a dark, provocative, aggressive side. I was playing it up, yet I was very serious.'
£12.99
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The Accidental Duchess
She didn't realise she was falling in love with a duke . . . Filled with anecdotes and insights, this is a unique and fascinating look into the life of an accidental duchess.
£22.00
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Please Mister Postman
Born in condemned housing in West London in 1950, with no heating, no electricity and no running water, Alan Johnson did not have the easiest start in life. But by the age of 18, he was married, a father and working as a postman in Slough. This sequel to Alan's bestselling memoir 'This Boy', describes the next period in Alan's life with every bit as much honesty, humour and emotional impact as his bestselling debut. 'Please, Mr Postman' paints a vivid picture of a bygone era - Britain in the 1970s was a very different country to the one we know today - and reveals another fascinating chapter in the life of one of our best loved public figures.
£12.99
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Madly, Deeply
Alan Rickman remains one of the most beloved actors of all time across almost every genre, from his breakout role as Die Hard's villainous Hans Gruber to his heart-wrenching run as Professor Severus Snape, and beyond. His air of dignity, his sonorous voice and the knowing wit he brought to each role continue to captivate new audiences today. But Rickman's artistry wasn't confined to just his performances. Fans of memoirs at large will delight in the intimate experience of reading Rickman detailing the extraordinary and the ordinary in a way that is 'anecdotal, indiscreet, witty, gossipy and utterly candid'. He grants us access to his thoughts, not only on plays, films and the craft of acting, but also politics, friendships and life.
£25.00
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Terry Pratchett
At six years old, Terry was told by his headteacher that he would never amount to anything. He spent the rest of his life proving that teacher wrong. At sixty-six, Terry had lived a life full of achievements: becoming one of the UK's bestselling writers, winning the Carnegie Medal and being awarded a knighthood for services to literature. Following his untimely death from Alzheimer's disease, the mantle of completing Terry's memoir was passed to Rob Wilkins, his former assistant, friend and now head of the author's literary estate. Drawing on his own extensive memories, along with those of Terry's family, friends, fans and colleagues, Rob recounts Terry's extraordinary story - from his early childhood to the literary phenomenon that his Discworld series became; and how he met and coped with the challenges that 'The Embuggerance' of Alzheimer's brought with it.
£25.00
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Journeys To The Other Side Of The World
Following the success of the original Zoo Quest expeditions, in the late 1950s onwards a young David Attenborough embarked on further travels in a very different part of the world. From Madagascar and New Guinea to the Pacific Islands and the Northern Territory of Australia, he and his team were not just searching for rare animals, but were aiming to record the way of life of some of the tribes of these regions, whose traditions had never been seen by most of the British public before. Written with David Attenborough's characteristic charm, humour, and humanity, this book is a unique, and inimitable, adventure among people, places, and the wildest of wildlife.
£12.99
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