Aurum Press

Prince: Inside the Music and the Masks

2012-01-18T10:26:00.000Z

Over the past 30 years, Prince Rogers Nelson has been one of the most original and charismatic figures in music. Known for seminal hits such as 'Kiss', 'Little Red Corvette' and 'Let's Go Crazy', his restless creativity has made a profound mark on the music industry and popular culture. Even more remarkable, perhaps, is the scale and longevity of his success; at the height of his fame, his album Purple Rain sold a million copies a week in the US, and just four years ago his sell-out London concerts attracted over 350,000 fans.

Prince: Inside the Music and the Masks is the most intimate and authoritative biography ever to be written about this fascinating artist, and Aurum are delighted to be releasing it this February. Acclaimed music journalist Ronin Ro lays bare the life of one of one of the most extraordinary musicians of our time, chronicling Prince's journey from teenage obscurity to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Through unrivalled access to producers, bandmates and close friends, he peels away the masks to tell the story of a true modern icon.

You can read an exclusive excerpt from Prince: Inside the Music and the Masks at the Vanity Fair website.

Coming: February 2012
Format: Hardback, 384 pages
Price: £20

Ray Harryhausen's Fantasy Scrapbook

2012-01-17T11:02:00.002Z

Ray Harryhausen's Fantasy Scrapbook by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton

November saw the release of Ray Harryhausen's Fantasy Scrapbook, a compendium of models, storyboards and concept drawings from the legendary pioneer of stop-motion animation. This new book is compiled from a wide range of never-before-seen artefacts from Ray's life and career, many of them only recently discovered in a Los Angeles garage. Through his original sketches, scripts and letters, it offers fascinating insights into the mind of one of Hollywood's great animators.

With informative introductions to each film and detailed captions for every image, this illuminating volume is a must for all film fans. Harryhausen's seminal work on Jason and the Argonauts, The 7th Joyage of Sinbad and Clash of the Titans remains hugely influential and Ray Harryhausen's Fantasy Scrapbook does his creativity and imagination justice.

"Thoroughly engrossing, whether you’re a Harryhausen fan or just a film fan in general. It’s an absolute delight to browse through and, crucially, captures the character of the man behind the monsters" sfx.co.uk

"This collection truly is a thing of beauty ... A must buy for Ray's fans" Starburst Magazine

Ray Harryhausen's Fantasy Scrapbook is available to buy here.

If the Fantasy Scrapbook has animated your interest and you're looking for more stop-motion history, then look no further. Aurum have published three more books by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton:

The Art of Ray Harryhausen by Ray Harryhuasen and Tony Dalton, with a foreword by Peter Jackson

"A splendid volume... fabulous illustrations" Jonathan Ross

Available in paperback here.

Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton, with an foreword by Ray Bradbury

"A sumptuous account of the veteran animator's life on celluloid" The Independent

Available in paperback here.

A Century of Model Animation: From Méliès to Aardman by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton

"A work full of love for the subject" SFX Magazine

Available in hardback here.

Looking Forward to 2012

2012-01-16T14:23:00.001Z

We're two weeks into the New Year, so if you haven't quite got round to joining the gym or learning a language yet, why not make it your resolution to read one of these great new books from Aurum:

The Austerity Olympics by Janie Hampton

It can't possibly have escaped anyone's notice that London's Olympic year has finally arrived. But while we're getting caught up in this summer's excitement, 2012 will also be a time to look back to when Britain last hosted the Games.

The London Olympics of 1948 were a vastly different occasion to this year's extravaganza. With the Blitz fresh in the city's memory and rationing still in force, the Games were organised for less than one hundredth of a per cent of 2012's massive budget. Janie Hampton's The Austerity Olympics is a vivid account of the Olympic Games of the past. With tales of athletes being ferried to events on double-decker buses and sewing their own kit in makeshift accommodation, the book depicts a world that is far removed from the Games of 2012. It will be a fascinating read for Olympic fanatics and sceptics alike.

Interviews with some of the athletes who competed in 1948 can be read in Kate Youde's fascinating article for the Independent here.

"[Hampton] has an illuminating sense of detail, and her book tells a story that goes beyond that of a sporting event - a story of innocence, hope and pride." The Daily Telegraph

"Hampton's excellent book should be compulsory reading for everyone involved in the 2012 London Olympics." Daily Mail Critics' Choice

Re-issued: April 2012
Format: Paperback, 368 pages
Price: £8.99

The previous edition of The Austerity Olympics is available to buy here.

Banksy: The Man Behind the Wall by Will Ellsworth-Jones

From his home city of Bristol to Los Angeles, New York and London, Banksy's exhibitions have attracted huge audiences. New works of graffiti go viral almost instantly, and such is the commercial value of his work that people have hacked whole walls from buildings because they bear his trademark stencilled designs.

But how much do we really know about this notoriously secretive artist? How has he become the phenomenal success that he is today, and how does he protect his anonymity under the glare of worldwide fame? In Banksy: The Man Behind the Wall, Will Ellsworth-Jones pieces together his subject's life and builds a picture of the world in which he operates. Incorporating interviews with friends and enemies, those who knew him in his early, unnoticed days and those who have watched him come to terms with his new-found fame, this is a book that gets to the very heart of who Banksy is and what his life's work adds up to.

Banksy: The Man Behind the Wall is released in March. In the meantime, you can see a few of his best works at his official website.

Coming: March 2012
Format: Hardback, 320pp
Price: £20

Just Boris: The Irresistible Rise of a Political Celebrity by Sonia Purnell

In May, Londoners will go to the polls to choose their next mayor. The question on the minds of many will be whether the capital keeps Boris Johnson or ends his four-year spell at City Hall. Speculation that he has one eye on Downing Street continues to bubble to the surface, but one thing remains certain: Johnson is Britain's most recognisable and comically self-deprecating politician. He has become notorious for his gaffes and attracted controversy with his candid manner, but has climbed to one of Britain's highest political offices nonetheless.

As a former colleague of Johnson's at the Daily Telegraph, Sonia Purnell holds a unique vantage point over the Mayor of London's remarkable career. In Just Boris, she examines how the archetypal old Etonian came to be a Man of the People capable of charming London; how a shy young boy from a broken home became one of our most distinctive political figures; and how the Johnson family has built a media and political dynasty.

The first comprehensive account of his life and career, Just Boris unravels a political enigma and asks whether the man who has made his mark on London has what it takes to be Prime Minister.

You can read Carole Cadwalladr's review of Just Boris for the Guardian here.

"Sonia Purnell must have had huge fun writing this wonderful book. The only person who won't be amused is Boris himself." Michael Crick

"Future biographers will always be in her debt. Purnell has accumulated a wealth of previously unknown detail." Andrew Grimson, The Spectator

Coming: March 2012
Format: Paperback, 464 pages
Price: £8.99

Just Boris is available to buy in hardback here.

A Round-up of 2011

2012-01-12T16:11:00.001Z

With New Year's Eve already a fast-fading memory, it's time for a look back at Aurum's 2011. Here are some of the books we were most excited about last year...

Britain's Lost Cricket Grounds by Chris Arnot

One of last year's biggest books for Aurum was Britain's Lost Cricket Grounds by Chris Arnot. In this sumptuously illustrated volume, Arnot takes a journey to forty of the country's former cricket grounds. In their heyday, they were cherished focal-points for their local communities, but each of them now has its own sad story of demise and abandonment. The Hastings ground has been replaced with a shopping centre; another, in Sheffield, made way for an expanding football stadium. What unites them all is that magical missing sound: the crack of leather on willow.

Following the success of Britain's Lost Cities and Lost Victorian Britain, Chris Arnot tours the length and breadth of the country, hears the reminiscences of former players and spectators and unearths what is left of their once-loved grounds. The result is a rueful and reflective exploration of our lost sporting heritage.

You can read Steve James's review of Britain's Lost Cricket Grounds for the Daily Telegraph here.

"A beautifully written volume that is rich in history and anecdote... some magnificent photos will invoke poignant memories." www.thesportsbookshelf.com

"Chris Arnot’s heady romantic hymn to a variety of once famous fields is a coffee-table classic for and of posterity. Everyone will mourn for a personal vanished favourite." The Guardian

Britain's Lost Cricket Grounds is available to buy here.

The Secret Life of Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay

2011 also saw the release in paperback of The Secret Life of Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay. This critically acclaimed title, which was a surprise hit of 2010 in hardback, tells the story of the men and women whose code-cracking efforts were a decisive turning-point in the Second World War.

While Bletchley Park may be famous for its work in breaking the Enigma code machine, McKay also brings to life the memories of the ordinary people who found themselves stationed at this secretive Buckinghamshire country home. Through the accounts of Bletchley Park's surviving residents, the book tells tales of winters spent skating on the estate's frozen lake, high-jinks in the accommodation blocks and lives of implacable secrecy. It is the most revealing insight yet into a unique, intriguing and distinctly British episode in history.

You can read Keith Lowe's review of The Secret Life of Bletchley Park for the Daily Telegraph here.

"McKay has succeeded in honouring a genuinely remarkable group of people in a solid, often entertaining and above all warm-hearted way." Daily Mail

"A remarkably faithful account of what we did, why it mattered, and how it all felt at the time." Patricia Brown, wartime Bletchley Park worker, The Guardian

The Secret Life of Bletchley Park is available to buy here.

Fred Trueman: The Authorised Biography by Chris Waters

Throughout his cricketing career in the 50s and 60s, Fred Trueman was known for his fearsome fast bowling and fiery personality. Described by Prime Minister Harold Wilson as 'the greatest living Yorkshireman', he played with a fierce, full-blooded determination to win. Later in life, he would become known as an outspoken commentator for Test Match Special, cementing his status as a cricketing legend.

Chris Waters' perceptive new biography, however, portrays a more complex and troubled figure than anyone might have expected. Drawing on dozens of new interviews with those who knew him best, Waters tells the story of the self-doubting personality beneath Trueman's apparent bravado. This balanced, authoritative study of Fred Trueman's life will surprise - maybe even shock - his many admirers, but also confirms him as an English folk hero.

You can read Rob Bagchi's review of Fred Trueman: The Authorised Biography for the Guardian here.

"His multi-coloured life is given sharper focus by the meticulous research and unforgiving anecdotes of Chris Waters. The strengths of the book lie in the breadth of insights from those closest to Trueman, along with Waters’ own sharp conclusions." The Cricketer

"Perceptive biography… Waters has done a good job in disentangling the man from the myths, many of which were eagerly promoted by Fiery Fred himself." Indpendent on Sunday

Fred Trueman: The Authorised Biography is available to buy here.

And finally...

Sign Language: Travels in Unfortunate English from the Readers of the Telegraph

We have a feeling that Sign Language might have been tumbling out of a few Christmas stockings this year. Full of titillating translations, unintended innuendo and side-splitting spelling mistakes, it's bound to have been raising a few chuckles.

You can catch up with the Daily Telegraph's Sign Language photo galleries here.

Sign language is available to buy here.

2011-10-19T11:21:00.003+01:00

The World History of Animation by Stephen Cavalier

As a director at Disney and contributor to Spielberg's animation team, Stephen Cavalier has acquired a wealth of knowledge about the industry over the course of his career, and his new book, The World History of Animation, is a testament to this experience. This comprehensive collection features key figures from across Europe, North America and Asia, and includes everything from feature films and TV to digital animation and games. Organised chronologically, the book introduces landmark characters and technical innovations, while also paying special attention to the individuals and studios that made it all possible through biographies and interviews. It also lists certain must-see movies, complete with synopses and film stills, making it easy for readers to experience the world of animation on their own.

This beautiful, easy to follow book is perfect for both seasoned film buffs and those looking to expand their knowledge of this extensive and fascinating genre.

Coming: November 2011
Format: Hardback, 416 pp
Price: £35

Upcoming Titles: Autumn 2011

2011-10-19T09:47:00.005+01:00

The Ray Harryhausen Fantasy Scrapbook
by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton

Widely acclaimed as one of the most influential film animators of all time, Ray Harryhausen is responsible for such classic films as Clash of the Titans, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts. In the film world his name is synonymous with the pioneering of stop motion animation and he has been an inspiration to household names such as Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas, among many others.

The Ray Harryhausen Fantasy Scrapbook gives us a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the life and works of this creative genius. Designed in the form of a scrapbook, this collection includes everything from concept drawings, scripts and poster designs to outtakes from classic films, models from unrealised projects and letters from cast and crew. This book is a must-have for film buffs, Harryhausen fans and anyone interested in animation, graphics or the film-making process.

Coming: November 2011
Format: Hardback, 192 pp, 900 colour and b&w illustrations
Price: £30

2011 Releases so far...(Part 3)

2011-08-08T11:32:00.042+01:00

Professor Gary Sheffield, The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army

A radical reassessment of the most controversial general in British history

In 1918, after the armies he commanded had helped to win the First World War, Douglas Haig was feted as the saviour of his country. On his death in 1928 he was mourned as a national hero. But within ten years his reputation was in ruins, and it has never fully recovered.

In this scholarly yet accessible biography, Professor Gary Sheffield reassesses Haig’s reputation. Using extensive research into primary sources, he shows how Haig’s experiences on the Western Front not only made him a highly effective commander but helped him transform the shambolic amateur force of the Somme in 1916 to the victorious army of 1918. He also reveals how, after the war, Haig used his influence as a leader of ex-servicemen to help secure the peace.

This is a powerful rehabilitation of Haig’s reputation as a military commander which offers original insights into his achievements and his place in British history.

Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chief-Douglas-Haig-British-Army/dp/1845136918/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312879197&sr=8-1

Greg King, Wallis: The Uncommon Life of the Duchess of Windsor

The first unbiased account of the fascinating and outrageous life of Wallis Simpson, the commoner who bewitched the King of England …

It was the love story of the century. In December 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated the throne to marry ‘the woman I love’, Wallis Warfield Simpson. American and twice-divorced, Wallis was hardly the sort of woman the Royal Family would have chosen for their future Queen. Their ostracism of her, coupled with a thinly veiled animosity in the British press tainted her reputation for the rest of her life.

In his acclaimed biography Greg King sifts through the decades of rumour and accusation to reveal the woman behind the legend. Wild speculation about her past affairs, her domination of the Duke and her tragic, lonely end are answered. Using previously untapped sources, conducting hundreds of interviews with survivors and expertly marshalling a huge array of documentation, King presents a definitive and sympathetic portrait of the woman who was punished for falling in love.

Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wallis-Uncommon-Life-Duchess-Windsor/dp/1845136942/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312802028&sr=8-1

Andrew Vine, Last of the Summer Wine: The Story of the World’s Longest-Running Comedy Series

NEW IN PAPERBACK

Although Last of the Summer Wine came to the end of its last-ever episode in 2010 after 37 years, repeats are shown regularly on both UK Gold and the Yesterday channel, with new DVD box sets also being released in 2011. The programme has fan clubs from the US to Australia. Andrew Vine’s history of this phenomenal sitcom, which has sold over 10,000 copies in hardback, shows how a quiet comedy about three aimlessly pottering old men that began when British Leyland were still making the Austin Allegro, turned into a programme watched at its peak by a third of the population. It then managed to survive and reinvent itself even in the age of the iPhone, by which time its stars were touching ninety. It made the small town of Holmfirth into a tourist attraction, and gave actors from Thora Hird to Frank Thornton an Indian summer for their careers.

‘[An] authoritative history of the show’ – Mail on Sunday

Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Summer-Wine-Longest-Running-Programme/dp/1845137116/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312803584&sr=1-3

Sinclair McKay, The Secret Life of Bletchley Park: The WWII Codebreaking Centre and the Men and Women Who Worked There

NEW IN PAPERBACK

During World War Two at a rambling Victorian house in the Buckinghamshire countryside, thousands of young people intercepted, decoded and translated enemy messages, whilst some of Britain’s most brilliant minds effectively invented modern computing. Their work was undertaken in total secrecy. This bestselling and critically acclaimed book mesmerisingly describes what life was like for the men and women of Bletchley Park, caught in unusual territory between the civilian and the military.

‘An eloquent tribute to a quite remarkable group of men and women’ Mail on Sunday

‘A truly breathtaking, eye-opening book’ Readers Digest

Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-Life-Bletchley-Park-Codebreaking/dp/1845136330/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312802867&sr=1-1

2011 Releases So Far... (Part 2)

2011-05-16T10:34:00.014+01:00

S. N. Pike, Mile by Mile on Britain’s Railways
Three classic guides to Britain’s mainline railways reissued in facsimile – with a fourth, new, pastiche treatment for the missing fourth (the Great Western).
Fascinating maps to follow every mile from London to Edinburgh, Glasgow and Penzance.
Extensive lineside commentary on sights to be seen from the window, gradients, water-towers for steam locos – all as it was in 1947

‘the bygone era of travel by steam train is brought to life’- Daily Telegraph

Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mile-Britains-Railways-Southern-Railway/dp/1845136128/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305292925&sr=1-1

Whitney Port, True Whit
Fashion icon and MTV mega-star Whitney Port shares personal stories, beauty and fitness secrets and invaluable advice on everything girls need to know to start out their independent lives in style.

‘Intimate and honest, this book provides tips on everything from dating to decorating’- Heat Magazine

Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/True-Whit-Designing-Style-Beauty/dp/184513673X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305295418&sr=8-1

Martin Smith, Kings, Queens and Four-Legged Athletes: The Telegraph book of Horse Racing
It is the sport of Kings and Queens, but also the sport of knaves and bounders, spivs and cheats. Horse racing is the sport of the ordinary man: from housewives with their 50p on whichever horse Lester is riding in the Derby, to anyone who has entered the office Grand National sweepstake. Kings, Queens & Four-Legged Athletes relives horse racing’s greatest moments through the passion and authority of the back pages’ true thoroughbreds past and present, including John Oaksey, Brough Scott, J.A. McGrath, Marcus Armytage, Peter Scott, Paul Hayward and Andrew Baker.

‘A veritable treasure trove, the book covers the splendour of Royal Ascot and the Derby…through to the homeliness of the most humble country course’ – The Daily Telegraph
‘Editor’s Top Choice’- Ireland’s Equestrian Magazine Jan. 2011

Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kings-Queens-Four-Legged-Athletes-Telegraph/dp/1845136101/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1305536231&sr=8-1

Charlie Spedding, From Last to First
Charlie Spedding describes himself as ‘not particularly talented’ – at least, compared to the group of people he had chosen to find himself among. These were the athletes in the Olympic marathon. So how did he end up with a bronze medal? How did he win the London Marathon? And why does he still hold the English record for the distance?
In this remarkable autobiography he explains how someone who was almost bottom of the class when he first went to school, and even worse at sport, eventually turned himself into a genuinely world-class athlete, competing in top marathons all over the world, and genuinely going from last to first.

Book of the Week, Independent on Sunday, 27 March: ‘It’s an equal pleasure to accompany him on that journey’

Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-First-long-distance-runners-journey/dp/1845136284/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305286392&sr=8-1

Judith B. Tankard, Gertrude Jekyll and the Country House Garden
Gertrude Jekyll was one of the most important garden designers of the twentieth century. A prolific writer and a hugely influential plantswoman, her circle of friends included some of the most distinguished architects, horticulturists, artists, and writers of the time. This new volume in the Country Life Archives series celebrates Jekyll's gardens and her legendary theories on color, planting, and design with a selection of her most famous collaborations with Sir Edwin Lutyens and other important architects. The text is illustrated with over 150 superb photographs that capture the enduring magic of Jekyll's creative genius.

‘one to get your hands on…packed with rarely seen images of her work’- The Guardian.

Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1845136241/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=103612307&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0711207461&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=0YE2HVHYREV12R7EZ3HQ

Barry Turner- Beacon for Change
As the 2012 Olympics sets about transforming a swathe of east London, Barry Turner’s book marks the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain, which did the same for London’s South Bank after the second world war.

‘A scintillating new history of the festival of Britain.’, Richard Morrison for The Times

Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beacon-Change-Festival-Britain-Shaped/dp/1845135245/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305297324&sr=1-1

Giles Worsley, England’s Lost Houses
From the archives of Country Life
As the twentieth century recedes into history, the story of the country house over the past hundred years becomes increasingly fascinating. England’s Lost Houses is essential reading for all those seeking to understand what really happened.
Giles Worsley, who died in 2006, was the former architecture correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. He was also a former architectural editor of Country Life and editor of Perspectives on Architecture.

Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Englands-Lost-Houses-Archives-Country/dp/1845136144/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305298533&sr=1-1

2011 Releases So Far... (Part 1)

2011-05-16T10:03:00.017+01:00

Stephen Brook, MW, The Finest Wines of California
This guide, the fourth in the acclaimed Finest Wines series, from Hugh Johnson’s award-winning team, casts a whole new light on the California region. Authoritative, bang up-to-date, and brimming with fascinating information, this essential guide is required reading for all wine lovers.

‘This book is exceptional. It is well-written. It is informative. It is readable and entertaining’- Winesights, Toronto, Canada.

Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Finest-Wines-California-Stephen-Brook/dp/184513611X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305286695&sr=1-1

Gideon Haigh, Ashes 2011
Most people gave England a modest chance of success. Some, like Glenn McGrath, insisted that history would repeat itself and Australia would administer another whitewash. What no-one anticipated was that the 2010-11 Ashes Tests would see one of the most complete performances ever by an England touring side and the first Ashes victory on Australian soil for 24 years, with, uniquely, three innings victories. It was a series full of remarkable records, and every member of the England side made crucial contributions.

Now, Gideon Haigh tells the full story of this amazing sporting achievement. Beginning with the build-up to the series - Australia going into it on the back of an uncharacteristic losing run, England after a year of quietly solid consolidation – he covers each Test, day by day, with pithy match reports and elegant analyses.

‘Cricket-lovers who know Gideon Haigh’s work will need no convincing: those who don’t will find this an ideal place to start. What makes Haigh so good? One reason is that he not only tells us what happened, he explains what it meant, where it fits into cricket history, of which he has a consummate grasp. Above all, he is a supreme stylist, with the ability to make one laugh out loud.’ – Simon Redfern, Independent on Sunday

‘[Haigh] is the most elegant of writers whose prose is a delight to read whatever the content.10/10 – this is the best tour book we’ve read.’- cricketweb.net

Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ashes-2010-11-Englands-Record-Breaking-Victory/dp/1845136136/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305296095&sr=1-1

Harper’s Bazaar Fashion
Sophisticated, elegant and intelligent, Harper’s Bazaar Fashion is the style resource for women everywhere. Packed with invaluable style insight and practical advice, and illustrated with hundreds of fabulous photos of the world’s hottest celebrities, and beautiful original illustrations from the world’s top fashion designers, This stunningly presented gold style bible will no doubt become the must-have accessory of the season!

‘bursting with tips’- Telegraph Magazine

Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Harpers-Bazaar-Fashion-Guide-Personal/dp/1845136616/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305298848&sr=1-5

Matthew Hayden, Standing My Ground
Matthew Hayden is one of the most commanding batsmen the game of cricket has ever seen – and one of the great enigmas. A devout Catholic and a ruthless on-field sledger. A brutal enforcer, and a soft-hearted family man. The Australian record-holder for highest score in Tests and One Day Internationals, who was at times troubled by self-doubt and doubters.
In Standing My Ground Hayden confronts these contradictions head-on. He talks frankly about the forces that shaped his journey from fringe international to a giant of the game. He dissects Australia’s tactic of verbal warfare and his own role as a key aggressor, taking us on a privileged tour inside the sporting machine that dominated all corners in a golden age of Australian cricket.

‘The book is not all serious analysis of the game of cricket. Hayden’s description of his first commentary stint with Geoffrey Boycott, and his confession he did not face Brett Lee in the nets because he was scared (said tongue in cheek), are lighter moments, in what is a well written autobiography. Overall this book is an enjoyable read and should be a big seller this Christmas.’- http://www.cricketweb.net/cricketbooks/6507.php

Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Standing-My-Ground-Autobiography-Matthew/dp/1845136624/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305293887&sr=8-1

Terry Nation, The Man Who Invented The Daleks
‘A tale of monsters, megalomaniacs and the golden age of British television’
In 1963, the Daleks were first introduced to British television and straight away became impressed on the nation’s consciousness. There they have remained, instantly recognisable, terrifying and delighting generation after generation. In his new biography, The Man Who Invented the Daleks, Alwyn Turner explores the often strange worlds of their creator, Terry Nation; a man whose impact on modern British culture has, until now, been relatively unexplored.
Turner sheds light on a strange world of ambitious young writers, producers and performers without whom British culture today would look very different.

‘Alwyn Turner shapes Nation's extraordinary career into a wonderfully rich account of British popular culture since the war. Carefully researched and beautifully written, his book covers everything from the early days of Doctor Who’ http://www.doctorwhoappreciationsociety.co.uk/Celestial_Toyshop/Books.html

Available here : http://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Who-Invented-Daleks-Strange/dp/1845136098/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1305207125&sr=8-1

Robin Oakley, The Cheltenham Festival: A Centenary History
The Cheltenham Festival is a work of history and celebration – telling the story of how jump racing beneath Cleeve Hill in Gloucestershire became a vast sporting event attracting more than 50,000 spectators a day. It is also the story of the craic and the characters, like the Irishman who won enough to pay off his mortgage on Istabraq then lost it all punting on Ireland's fancy in the Gold Cup. "To be sure, it was only a small house anyway", he shrugged. This anecdote-filled study is a book for the committed festival-goer and every armchair racing fan.

‘a highly readable history’- The Independent on Sunday

‘It’s the human element that entertains most’- Sport Magazine
Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cheltenham-Festival-Centenary-History/dp/1845136365/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305297917&sr=8-1

Dave Pelz, Golf Without Fear
The renowned instructor behind pros such as Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh shows you how to conquer the ten shots you fear the most.
Dave Pelz conducted worldwide surveys to determine which shots golfers fear the most, and has now created a methodology and conditioning process proven to teach golfers how to conquer their top 10 most feared shots. The first book to use the "Golfer's Eye View" - a technique developed for Pelz by photographer Leonard Kamsler - Dave Pelz's Golf without Fear features Pelz's signature combination of science and savvy.

Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Golf-Without-Fear-Feared-Confidence/dp/1845136632/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1305287725&sr=1-2

The Man Who Invented The Daleks

2011-05-12T14:41:00.000+01:00

‘A tale of monsters, megalomaniacs and the golden age of British television’

In 1963, the Daleks were first introduced to British television and straight away became impressed on the nation’s consciousness. There they have remained, instantly recognisable, terrifying and delighting generation after generation. In his new biography, The Man Who Invented the Daleks, Alwyn Turner explores the often strange worlds of their creator, Terry Nation; a man whose impact on modern British culture has, until now, been relatively unexplored.

Turner not only reflects on how the Daleks became an overnight success, to be immersed in British pop culture for all time, but also reveals their inventor’s bemusement at the phenomenon he created, reflecting on tales of fan mail being addressed to simply ‘the Dalek man, London’. This biography however goes beyond the world of Dr. Who and his greatest nemesis to explore a career that influenced a great deal of the television culture we know today.

Alwyn W. Turner is the author of, amongst other titles, Crisis? What Crisis: Britain in the 1970s and Rejoice! Rejoice!: Britain in the 1980s.

‘Alwyn Turner shapes Nation's extraordinary career into a wonderfully rich account of British popular culture since the war. Carefully researched and beautifully written, his book covers everything from the early days of Doctor Who’ http://www.doctorwhoappreciationsociety.co.uk/Celestial_Toyshop/Books.html

The Man Who Invented the Daleks is released in May 2011 and is available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Who-Invented-Daleks-Strange/dp/1845136098/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1305207125&sr=8-1

True Whit Competition

2011-05-11T14:39:00.011+01:00

Whitney Port, MTV reality star turned clothing designer, now launches her new lifestyle guide, True Whit; a personal and honest template for ‘designing a life of style, beauty, and fun’. Through a range of chapters on everything from career advice and relationship issues to fashion tips, fitness plans and even decorating ideas, Whitney shares the secrets to an independent and glamorous world.

Now, Aurum Press, in association with Lookfantastic, are offering you the chance to quiz the girl herself and receive some individual advice and ‘Whittyisms’ on any element of creating a fabulous and stylish life of your own. All you have to do is send your question to the Lookfantastic Twitter page and, on 19th May 2011, Whitney will be personally responding to a selection of submissions. For full details about the competition and how to enter, follow this link: http://blog.lookfantastic.com/?p=3563.

Whitney Port, True Whit is available to buy now: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/184513673X/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1A1GA14XN229ZJ1NQEFE&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=467128533&pf_rd_i=468294

You can see cosmopolitan.co.uk’s feature on the book here: http://www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/campus/student-careers/interview-tips

‘Intimate and honest, this book provides tips on everything from dating to decorating’- Heat Magazine.

Spring 2011 Titles

2011-02-21T12:44:00.027Z

Ashes 2011 by Gideon Haigh

England's stunning victory over Astralia in the Ahses series galvanised the nation. Now, Gideon Haigh, aclaimed as the 'finest living cricket writer', has written the first book about this remarkable sporting feat. Following each Test day by day, mixing vivid reportage with erudite wit, Haigh's chronicle is no 'instant bok' but rather a characteristically considered and memorable work.

Coming: February 2011
Format: Hardback, 256pp w./ 8pp colour plates
Price: £12.99

The Sport of Kings, Queens and Four-Legged Athletes Edited by Martin Smith

Horse racing is a massive commercial industry with a multi-million pound turnover in betting, breeding and prizemoney. But it is also a fun day out. The Sport of Kings... relives racing's greatest moments through the passion and authority of the sports pages' true thoroughbreds inclusing John Oaksey, Brough Scott and J.A. McGrath.

Coming: February 2011
Format: Hardback, 384pp
Price: £20

Mile by Mile on Britain's Railways by S.N. Pike

Back in 1947 someone called S.N. Pike - we know almost nothing about him - published three pamphlets which mapped in forensic detail one of Britain's mainline rail routes. Today, Aurum reissues those three - adding a fourth in the same style - in this single volume. Full of period interst, this delightful book reminds us of what once could be seen at leisure on a long railway journey.

Coming: March 2011
Format: Hardback, 160pp w./ line drawings throughout
Price: £12.99

The Cheltenham Festival by Robin Oakley

The Cheltenham Festival is nowadays the biggest event in the racing year in visitor numbers and 2011 marks a hundred years since the birth of the Festival. A work of both hisory and celebration, Oakley's book is a must have for both the committed festival-goer and the armchair racing fan.

Coming: March 2011
Format: Hardback, 304pp
Price: £20

Subdued Magic : Raymond Chandler a Life by Tom Williams

A majour new biography of one of the twentieth century's most popular, influential and enduring literary figures. Tom Williams' fascinating book covers everything from Chandler's isolated upbringing to his growing alcohol problems, pointing out the origins of his prose, characters and style along the way.

Coming: April 2011
Format: Hardback, 400pp w./ 16pp B&W plates
Price: £20

The Man Who Invented The Daleks by Alwym W. Turner

Terry Nation was one of the most successful and prolific writers for television and radio that Britain ever produced, and his most famous creations, the daleks, ensured the success of Doctor Who. This is the first serious, mainstream account of Terry Nation's life and tremendous contribution to British television.

Coming: May 2011
Format: Hardback, 356pp
Price: £20

The VW Camper Van: a biography by Mike Harding

The Volkswagen Camper van has long escaped its military origins and become the embodiment of freedom and the open road. Combining his endless curiosity flair for stand up comedy, Harding has created a wonderful social history of the postwar yearsthrough the prism of a single transport icon.

Coming: April 2011
Format: Hardback, 256pp
Price: £16.99

‘To The Last Round’ wins inaugural military history award

2010-12-02T11:44:00.011Z

To The Last Round
The Epic British Stand on the Imjin River, Korea 1951
by Andrew Salmon

On the eve of Remembrance Day 2010, a book on Britain's bloodiest - but almost completely unknown - post-1945 battle won the inaugural Hampshire Libraries (Special Collections) Award for the Best Military Book of 2009 from a field of 60 key military titles.

“In a list of very strong military books, this is an excellent book," said renowned broadcaster and bestselling historian Professor Richard Holmes, the patron of the award. "It well-deserves the winning award."

"A neglected battle that in fact deserves to join the first rank of British military actions, To the Last Round is a book that does its subject proud," added Librarian Andrew Dalziel. "This is easily one of the best books I have read on a military subject in recent years: truly inspiring."

The inaugural award is designed to highlight the three "armed services" collections - aviation, naval and military - in Hampshire Libraries. The military collection alone boasts 18, 000 titles.

Salmon, a Seoul-based reporter, sent an acceptance speech filmed on the Imjn battleground, where the 1951 British positions remain fortified to this day against the North Korean threat.

"I'd like to thank the award panel for recognizing an unknown author writing about a forgotten war," Salmon said. "Though Korea remains the biggest, bloodiest and most brutal conflict fought by British soldiers since World War II, it is almost completely unknown in the UK; I hope this award will bring veterans some long-overdue recognition."

Salmon and film makers Dan Gordon and Howard Reid are hoping to create a documentary on the book. The author is currently finalizing a prequel, Scorched Earth, Black Snow which tells the story of the Australian and British soldiers in North Korea in winter 1950, the most dramatic, but most terrible months of the war, in the words of the men who came home. It will be published by Aurum in early 2011.

Richard Holmes handing the award to Sam Mercer (representing the author), a veteran of the Gloster battalion annihilated on the Imjin, and a survivor of the grim North Korean POW camps. A chance meeting with Mercer, who lost a leg and an eye in the fighting, provided Salmon with the inspiration for his book. Richard Sullivan of Osprey Publishing (the award sponsors) stands between them.

Graham Eames was there on behalf of Aurum Press and Andrew Salmon

Bon Voyage!

2010-10-26T12:14:00.019+01:00

Bon Voyage!
The Telegraph Book of River and Sea Journeys
Edited by Michael Kerr

In this follow- up to the highly successful Last Call for the Dining Car, The Telegraph’s Michael Kerr has amassed the very best of the paper’s writing on journeys by water – from ocean liners, cruise ships, tramp and African river steamers, all the way to single-handed yachtsmen and canoeists tackling the Missouri.

Bon Voyage! details the last voyage of the QE2 and the first of the biggest cruise liner ever built. There is an account of the 1936 launching of the Queen Mary in front of 150,000 onlookers on the Clyde. It features no less than Henry Stanley, writing exclusively for the Telegraph in the nineteenth century about his epic African journey down the Congo.

Also included are pieces about Bombay’s insanely crowded commuter ferries, Francis Chichester rounding Cape Horn, and a couple who tried to sail their amphibious Volkswagen Beetle around the world but only got as far as the North Sea. Anyone who enjoys reading Gavin Young, Eric Newby or Jonathan Raban’s travel writing will love this book.

Michael Kerr is Deputy Travel Editor of the Daily Telegraph. He lives in Surrey.

Bon Voyage! The Telegraph Book of River and Sea Journeys is avaiable to purchase here.

New Gavin Stamp Book Released

2010-10-26T10:09:00.034+01:00

Lost Victorian Britain
A Vanished World of Nineteenth-Century Architecture
Gavin Stamp

"This is a book which no member of the Victorian Society should be without" The Victorian

"This is an important book. It tells the story of the loss of so much grace and beauty in the English architectural landscape. It should be on the desk of every architect and every town planner.” The Northern Echo

Aurum’s series of large-format, lavishly-illustrated architecture titles has in recent years hit a rich seam with its chronicles of lost architecture. The books cover the magnificent and grand buildings from previous centuries that for a variety of reasons – but above all cavalier demolition by twentieth-century planners devoted to the cause of modernism – are now no more, and exist only in heartbreakingly poignant photographs. Gavin Stamp’s own Britain’s Lost Cities was the most recent.

Now, Stamp follows with another superb book, chronicling an astonishing and depressing array of the finest Victorian architecture – all sacrificed to the wrecking ball. From public baths to hotels, town houses, factories and banks; photographs are all we have left. Gavin Stamp’s indignant and scholarly text looks back at the circumstances of their loss, and analyses the twentieth-century mindset that could hold so many magnificent buildings in such little regard.

Gavin Stamp is one of Britain’s most eminent architectural historians and writers. His other books for Aurum are Lutyens Houses and the acclaimed Britain’s Lost Cities. For many years he was Chairman of the Twentieth Century Society.

Lost Victorian Britain is available to purchase here.

New Release

2010-10-25T17:03:00.011+01:00

The Classical Country House
From the Archives of Country Life
David Watkin

The Classical Country House takes a fresh, innovative look at the traditional British country house, revealing the major influence of Classicism from the seventeenth century to the present day.

Written in five parts, the book first examines the birth of English Classicism, then the flowering of Classical design, before recounting how eighteenth-century austerity gave way to the richer styles of the nineteenth century’s Italian Renaissance Revival. The final chapters look to the last century and beyond, and at how the Classical language of design is expressed in houses as diverse as Nashdom, Gledstone and the British Embassy in Washington D.C.

David Watkin has selected over 150 of the finest images from the Country Life archive to illustrate an incisive study of twenty-six important houses and their architects in what is a major addition to architectural history.

David Watkin is an Emeritus Fellow of Peterhouse and Emeritus Professor of the History of Architecture at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of over twenty books, including Morality and Architecture, A History of Western Architecture, and Roman Forum. He is a leading authority on Classicism and its successive renewals.

The Classical Country House is available to purchase here.

BBC VFX Book Released

2010-10-25T16:24:00.042+01:00

BBC VFX
The History of the BBC Visual Effects Department

By Mat Irvine and Mike Tucker

• The definitive history of the world’s first, largest and longest-running dedicated TV effects department.

• Covers fifty classic BBC shows in every genre.

• Series featured include Doctor Who, Blake's 7, Monty Python, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Goodies, Are You Being Served and many more.

• Filled with anecdotes and insights into how the effects were created.

• Illustrated throughout with fascinating production photos and sketches, most of which have never been published.

The BBC Visual Effects Department closed its doors in 2003. For almost fifty years it had been responsible for some of television’s most iconic images – from exploding newsreaders on Monty Python’s Flying Circus to Blake’s 7’s majestic Liberator sailing through outer space.

Using interviews with the effects designers, together with concept drawings, production photographs and stills from completed programmes, this book tells the story of the VFX Department and celebrates the work of a group of craftsmen who lived by the mantra, ‘If it can be imagined, it can be made…’

Working largely before the age of CGI, the Department was responsible for every kind of visual effect, from physical effects such as rain and explosions, to miniatures and models, to sculpture and animatronics.

Filled with fascinating insights, wonderful stories and numerous photographs and artworks which have never been published, this is an essential book for FX fans and anyone who loves television

Mat Irvine and Mike Tucker worked for many years in the BBC Visual Effects Department. Mat left the BBC in 1993 and has been pursuing other projects as writer, producer and director. Mike now runs The Model Unit at Ealing Studios. Both, individually, are writers, Mat having written twelve books on scientific and hobby subjects while Mike is the author of several original novels and Doctor Who novelisations.

BBC VFX: The History of the BBC Visual Effects Department is available to purchase here

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

2010-10-25T16:07:00.012+01:00

Fifth Avenue, 5.A.M.
Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s

by Sam Wasson

‘A brilliant chronicle of the creation of Breakfast at Tiffany's… This is a memorable achievement’
Peter Bogdanovich

‘A sparkling time capsule of old Hollywood magic and mythmaking… as infectious as Mancini’s score’
Kirkus

Before Breakfast at Tiffany’s Audrey Hepburn was still a little-known actress with few film roles to speak of; after it – indeed, because of it - she was one of the world’s most famous fashion, style and screen icons. Truman Capote’s original novel is itself a modern classic, its high-living author of perennial interest.

Now, this little book - the first about Audrey Hepburn’s greatest screen role - tells the story of how it all happened: how Audrey got the role (for which at first she wasn't considered, and which she at first didn’t want); how long it took to get the script right; how she came to wear the little black dress; and how Henry Mancini’s soundtrack with its memorable signature tune ‘Moon River’ completed the irresistible package.

Sam Wasson is also the author of a biography of Blake Edwards.

Fifth Avenue, 5.A.M. Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's is available to purchase here.

Exciting New Release

2010-10-25T15:53:00.018+01:00

Leonard Rossiter:
Character Driven
The Untold Story of a Comic Genius

Affectionate, honest and long overdue, Character Driven is the first biography of one of Britain’s greatest, but least-known character actors. Whether playing seedy landlord Rupert Rigsby in Rising Damp or frustrated suburban dreamer Reggie Perrin, Rossiter’s performances were iconic and utterly memorable. Like Peter Sellers or Ronnie Barker, his characters loom larger in our national consciousness than the actor who played them. Until now, Rossiter himself has remained a mystery.

Via exhaustive research and in-depth interviews with those who knew and worked with Rossiter, Guy Adams reveals the man behind the threadbare cardigan and manic grimace.

Leonard Rossiter: Character Driven will finally shed light on the personality of one of the greatest comic actors of the twentieth century, and reveal why he was able to give such epoch-defining performances.

Guy Adams worked as an actor for twelve years before becoming a writer, specialising in TV and entertainment. He is the author of the official guide to Life on Mars and the bestselling humour book based on the series, The Rules of Modern Policing: 1973 Edition. He also wrote the Torchwood novel The House That Jack Built.

Leonard Rossiter: Character Driven is available to purchase here.

I Could Go On...Unpublished Letters to The Daily Telegraph released

2010-10-20T10:05:00.016+01:00

• The follow up to last Christmas’ Best Seller AM I ALONE IN THINKING..?

• Another hilarious collection of letters

• Over 70,000 copies sold of its predecessor

• #1 Independent bookshops’ Christmas bestseller

'SIR – My first thought on seeing your headline, "Pupils to be taught about sex at seven" was "What, in the morning?"'

‘SIR- If anyone is unsure or not to vote for David Milliband, I would draw their attention to the photo of him in The Daily Telegraph wearing a two-buttoned suit with both buttons done up.’

'SIR – Having seen some pictures of Tiger Woods’ acquaintances, I’m thinking of taking up golf.'

In 2009 a small volume of unpublished letters to The Daily Telegraph, Am I Alone in Thinking….? captured the public imagination and became a Christmas bestseller. But to those who compile the newspaper’s daily Letters page the book’s huge appeal was no surprise. While they can publish no more than 20 letters each day, another 600 will have gone to waste and for every serious contribution there are many more that are simply very funny, and, alas, there’s never enough room to include them all.

Here then is the eagerly-awaited sequel chronicling yet another year through the whimsical preoccupations and hobbyhorses of the Telegraph’s wonderfully waggish readers. Chris Evans’ supplanting of Sir Terry Wogan on Radio 2; Tiger Woods’ peccadilloes; Gordon Brown’s long farewell – such are among the issues that exercised 2010 epistolarians.

Iain Hollingshead was deputy Letters editor of the Daily Telegraph and is now one of the paper's feature writers. He lives in London.

I Could Go On... is available to purchase online here.

Excitement Surrounds the Launch of New Star Wars Book.

2010-10-19T11:06:00.024+01:00

Excitement has surrounded the launch of J.W.Rinzler’s new book, The Making Of: The Empire Strikes Back. For months, fan websites and blogs have been ablaze with activity as Star Wars fans and cinephiles across the world eagerly anticipated the sequel to Rinzler’s critically acclaimed The Making Of: Star Wars. Fortunately, they have not been disappointed. With its exclusive access to the Lucasfilm archives, The Making Of: The Empire Strikes Back offers a treasure trove of never-before published photos, design sketches, paintings, production notes, interviews, anecdotes, and scripts, to offer a complete behind-the-scenes look at the production of an iconic film.

On Saturday fans celebrated the launch of The Making Of: The Empire Strikes Back at Bristol’s Forbidden Planet with an Empire Strikes Back themed extravaganza. Complete with costumes and lightsabers, fans from all generations enjoyed celebrating both the movie and the launch of this highly anticipated book. Similar celebrations have been planned at Southampton’s Forbidden Planet for this Saturday (23/10/10).

The Making of The Empire Strikes Back is available to buy online here.

Exciting New Release

2010-10-18T15:58:00.035+01:00

The Making of The Empire Strikes Back
J.W. Rinzler
Foreword by Ridley Scott

An exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of arguably the greatest and most cherished of all the Star Wars films, the most important motion picture sequel of all-time, and a movie that changed pop culture forever: Star Wars: Episode V- The Empire Strikes Back.

J.W. Rinzler, author of the acclaimed The Making of Star Wars, once again uses his unprecedented access to the Lucasfilm archives, and their treasure trove of never-before published photos, design sketches, paintings, production notes, interviews, anecdotes, and scripts, to take us back thirty years to relive the entire production process for one of the most anticipated movies ever produced- along the way unveiling stories as entertaining, enthralling and mind-boggling as the film itself.

As a longstanding member of the Lucasfilm staff, J.W. Rinzler has enjoyed unparalleled co-operation and support from the original moviemakers, including both George Lucas and veteran director Irvin Keshner. The result is a truly definitive account that is destined to become a must-have for all true Star Wars fans and serious cinephiles.

Johnathan Rinzler is a New York Times bestselling author and longtime editor at Lucasfilm Publishing.

“It’s not often we come across jobs we’re envious of, but JW Rinzler’s role as official chronicler of LucasArts films sends us into fits of jealousy. As with his Star Wars and Indiana Jones books, this is an immaculately presented trawl through the dustiest recesses of the Skywalker Ranch activities, packed with unseen concept art, on-set pictures and hours of interviews recorded in 1980 (but never used) that capture the uncertainty about the film that plagued the set. Unendingly fascinating.” The Shortlist

The Making of The Empire Strikes Back is available to buy online here.

Playing to Win Released in Paperback

2010-09-14T16:06:00.005+01:00

‘A bona fide football man…Whelan should be celebrated’ The Independent

Few figures in British business or sport have enjoyed Dave Whelan’s success. As a footballer he played in all four divisions. As a businessman he created one the country’s leading high street brands. And as chairman of Wigan Athletic he’s taken his club all the way from the Third Division to the Premiership.

Dave’s story is one of ambition, enterprise and tenacity – but also of a fierce loyalty. It begins in wartime Wigan with the Whelans’ desperate struggle to survive. Dave describes the terrifying wasp-like hum of the Luftwaffe; he remembers the deathly winter of 1942, peeing on his hands to stop his fingers from freezing; admits how hunger drove ordinary families to lie, cheat and steal; and relives a remarkable reunion with the father he’d never known – a returning soldier.

In peacetime a boyhood love affair with football leads him to sign with Blackburn Rovers and when national service calls he joins the Army football team, becoming close friends with ‘Busby Babes’ Bobby Charlton and Duncan Edwards.

Then, a vicious tackle in the 1960 FA Cup final spells the twilight of his playing career – but a new dawn in business. Starting as a market trader, he breaks the mould from day one: taking on Boots single-handedly in the Appeal Court; negotiating the sale of his supermarket chain to Ken Morrison – whilst stood at a urinal; and transforming a single tackle shop in Wigan into JJB Sports, the UK’s biggest sports retailer and a £1 billion PLC.

In 1995 he used his personal fortune to buy struggling, hometown Wigan Athletic, vowing to take the Latics all the way to the Premier League. At the time he was ridiculed, but ten years later, on the final day of the Championship, Dave watched, ecstatic, as his club beat Reading 3-1 to finally secure their place.

Sometimes tragic, frequently controversial and always heartfelt, Playing to Win lifts the lid on a life lived on the pitch and in the boardroom and tells how a hungry kid from Wigan’s backstreets became a national success and a local hero. Whelan's story was a great success in hardback, turning him into a local hero and now with the new release in paperback, Playing to Win offers football fans and general readers another chance to catch this engaging read.

Dave Whelan was the founder of retailer JJB Sports and is the chairman of Wigan Athletic Football Club. All the author’s profits will go to the new Wigan Boys and Girls Club

Playing to Win is available to buy in paperback now in local bookstores and online via the following link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dave-Whelan-Playing-Win-Autobiography/dp/1845135792/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1284559060&sr=8-2

More Great New Releases

2010-09-14T12:40:00.004+01:00

Bordeaux has long symbolised the peak of prestige for French wine. Yet despite its outstanding reputation, the region has remained relatively closed to consumers, as forbidding as the highest château gates or the most tannic of its young wines. However, in this highly approachable, beautifully illustrated guide, Master of Wine James Lawther draws on his insider’s knowledge to open up Bordeaux.

He has identified the 90 producers with the finest wines and the most interesting stories to tell, taking us inside their châteaux and offering intimate portraits of both the properties and the people who shape this fascinating region. Lawther uses language but also over 100 original colour photographs; beautifully designed maps; flap page-markers and silk ribbon to weave these hidden stories.

Published in conjunction with The World of Fine Wine Magazine, current holder of the coveted Gourmand award for The World’s Best Wine Magazine, this guide, the third in the acclaimed Finest Wines series, from Hugh Johnson’s award-winning team, brings the region to life more vividly than ever before.

The Finest Wines of Bordeaux is authoritative, bang up-to-date, and full of actionable information making it required reading for all wine lovers and the perfect present!

James Lawther MW passed the Master of Wine examination in 1993. He has been based in Bordeaux for the past 15 years, making the region his speciality and tasting widely. He is a contributing editor of Decanter magazine, a contributor to The World of Fine Wine, and author of The Heart of Bordeaux.

The Finest Wines of Bordeaux is available to pre-order now on http://www.amazon.co.uk/Finest-Wines-Bordeaux-James-Lawther/dp/1845136071/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1284464612&sr=8-1

More Great New Releases

2010-09-14T11:39:00.006+01:00

Admirers called it God’s Wonderful Railway' and detractors knew it as the 'Great Way Round' - but 175 years after its foundation, the Great Western Railway company is remembered with the most affection of any of Britain's great railways.

Published as part of the GWR's 175th anniversary - this new book by Andrew Roden is the first one-volume history of the railway in over 20 years.

It built and ran the great main line from London to the West Country and Cornwall and was engineered by the legendary Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who built wonders including Box Tunnel and the Saltash Bridge. Its locomotives were designed by great men like Gooch, Churchward and Collett and were complemented by stations from the soaring Paddington and Bristol Temple Meads to those idyllic country byways with little more than a pagoda shelter and a couple of milk churns awaiting collection. With its burnished green engines, chocolate and cream carriages, the 'Cornish Riviera' and that fabulous stretch of railway at Dawlish, the Great Western Railway has passed into legend.

In this celebratory book, railway journalist Andrew Roden offers a comprehensive insight into this remarkable railway's history but also reveals why all of us owe this great company a huge debt of thanks. A thrilling read, Great Western Railway will satisfy not only railway enthusiasts but the casual reader alike.

Great Western Railway is out now and is available to buy in local bookstores and online at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Western-Railway-Andrew-Roden/dp/1845135806/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1284462255&sr=8-1

Exciting New Release

2010-09-13T12:28:00.003+01:00

From the author of the definitive history of Dad's Army comes the first biography of one of Britain's best loved comed actors. Do You Think That's Wise tells the previously untold story of John Le Mesurier.

Best known for starring in Dad’s Army, where his Sergeant Wilson was the languid, rakish, distracted foil to Arthur Lowe’s pompous, chippy Captain Mainwaring, John Le Mesurier is one of our most loved character actors. ‘Do you think that’s wise, sir?’ and ‘Would you mind awfully…?' are just two of Sergeant Wilson’s expressions that sum up his unorthodox, unruffled approach to service life.

But, occasionally, life mirrors art and there was much of Sergeant Wilson in ‘Le Mez’, as he was known to friends and family. Just as Wilson appeared to enjoy a close – but unmarried – acquaintance with Private Pike’s mum, so Le Mesurier had three unconventional marriages, one with the comic actress Hattie Jacques. His third wife left him for an affair with Tony Hancock and he tended to prioritise an early-morning scan of the Racing Post above rehearsals. A phone call from Le Mez was often to suggest, ‘Playtime…?’ always delivered in his irresistible drawl.

This biography of Le Mesurier is fully authorised by his family, and provides a touchingm funny and insightful account into the man behind the much-loved Sergeant Wilson. The book will appeal not only to diehard Dad's Army fans but to everyone and anyone who still laughs at Dad’s Army when they catch it on BBC or UK Gold.

Graham McCann is already the author of a number of books inclduing biographies of Terry-Thomas, Frankie Howerd and Morecambe and Wise, and books on Fawlty Towers and Dad’s Army. He lives in Cambridge.

Do You Think That's Wise is out this month and is available to buy on www.amazon.co.uk

I Could Go On... Named Part of Top 12 for Christmas Catalogue

2010-09-02T11:40:00.005+01:00

Independents have chosen 12 titles by authors including poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, John le Carré and Julia Donaldson as the highlights of the Christmas Books Catalogue 2010.

The 150-strong list is produced jointly by the Booksellers Association and Book Marketing Limited, and is the first marketing campaign for the new IndieBound initiative. The catalogue is also supported by Gardners. Christmas Books titles are chosen by independent booksellers for independent booksellers.

The catalogue will be supported by additional material available via the IndieBound website, including author interviews, sample chapters, recipes, competitions and signed books. Extra copies of counterpacks will be produced to encourage local independent retailers to display the catalogue.

The 12 titles:

Another Night Before Christmas by Carol Ann Duffy (Picador)

*I Could Go On: Unpublished Letters to the Daily Telegraph (Aurum Press)*

Map of A Nation: A Biography Of The Ordnance Survey Rachel Hewitt (Granta)

Our Kind of Traitor by John Le Carré (Viking)

Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday)

Tender: Volume II: A cook's guide to the fruit garden, Nigel Slater (Fourth Estate)

The Best Of Matt 2010 by Matthew Pritchett (Orion)

The Red Queen by Philippa Greogry (Simon & Schuster)

Cave Baby by Julia Donaldson (Macmillan Children's Books)

Quentin Blake's Magical Tales, John Yeoman, illustrated by Quentin Blake (Pavilion Children's)

Shadow by Michael Morpurgo (HarperCollins Children’s Books)

Zog by Julia Donaldson, Illustrated by Axel Scheffler (Alison Green Books, Scholastic)

I Could Go On... Unpublished Letters to The Daily Telegraph is part of Aurum's Autumn collection and is the follow-up to the very successful Am I Alone in Thinking? I Could Go On... will be available in October.

For the original article please visit:
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/127150-indies-choose-top-12-for-christmas-catalogue.html

Lakeland Book of the Year 2010

2010-07-23T16:43:00.003+01:00

The winner has been announced for the Lakeland Book of the Year 2010 - Cumbria's answer to the Booker Prize...

We are very pleased to say that Hercules and the Farmer's Wife by Chris Wadsworth has won the title!

Chris also won the category prize for the Bookends prize for Arts and Literature.

www.golakes.co.uk/information/lakeland-book

'I Owe My Survival to my Captor'

2010-07-02T14:15:00.006+01:00

The remarkable story of a Japanese POW camp prisoner.
Last month, in an article for the Daily Express, John Baxter, former Royal Engineers corporal, wrote of the unlikely friendship between himself and Japanese guard Hyato Hirano which was forged whilst John was held as a Prisoner of War in Indonesia. He touchingly details how Hirano showed John and his fellow PoWs kindness and generosity despite his position as their captor.

This article illustrates but one chapter of John Baxter's fascinating story. The full story is in Missing, Believed Killed, Baxter's full account of his experience written without a hint of bitterness as, by his own admission he has 'no resentment towards the Japanese', despite his maltreatment.

His story begins in 1942 when John was captured by the Japanese in Indonesia. For the next 3 years he was held as their prisoner, during which time he was starved and beaten and contracted malaria, diphtheria, for which he received no treatment. At one point he was given a fifty-fifty chance of surviving and moved to an isolation cell where he was kept awake at night by the sound of coffins being made for fellow prisoners who had not been so 'lucky'. He spent the last two years of the war working in the hard labour mines in Kyushu, from where he witnessed the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki 40 miles away, and felt the scorching wind from the blast. Remarkably, John Baxter survived these experiences and made it back to Britain- a journey which was an adventure in itself. In February 2009 he celebrated his 90th birthday. Having written up his diaries from this time, he now decided to tell his story. It is a story not just of survival but of ingenuity, resourcefulness and quiet heroism.

John's fascinating account of one man's attempts to sabotage the Japanese war effort is illustrated with contemporary photographs and artefacts from his time in the camps. This touching book will appeal to WW2 historians and the general reader.

For the full Daily Express article please visit www.express.co.uk/posts/view/182134/John-Baxter-I-owe-my-survival-to-my-captor, and to purchase please go to www.amazon.co.uk/Missing-Believed-Killed-John-Baxter/dp/1845135385

A Nice Review for Miss Savidge

2010-07-02T14:03:00.006+01:00

"As tales of triumph over adversity go, May Savidge's story surely beats much of the competition. Rather than let her 500-year-old home be demolished to make way for a road, she moves it, brick by brick, tile by tile, 100 miles to Norfolk, where she single-handedly rebuilds it. Aged 60 when the rebuilding starts, her work is left to be completed by niece Christine Adams, who devotes years of her own life to carrying out her remarkable aunt's wishes as well as sifting through May's own archive of letters, diaries, calendars, notes, theatre programmes, dresses, photographs- indeed, virtually everything that ever came into her possession. This is a story of stoicism, heartbreak, suffering and great loss, but in which the indomitable Miss Savidge's determination not to lose her most beloved possession shines brightly and her note-to-self to 'Write funny story of furniture in attic' is fulfilled."

Jill Morris, Your Family History

Bowie: The Man Who Sold the World

2010-07-02T12:06:00.008+01:00

"Bowie: A Biography shows us how the man has transcended his nihilistic tendencies...as the story continues, it's obvious to the reader that Bowie has attained a certain artistic dignity and a vision of something profound." Larry Cordola, Vintage Rock Book Review

David Bowie. One of the most protean figures inrock music, he remains a source of perennial fascination to his considerable fanbase, even when he's lying low. What is the state of his health? Is he working on a new album? Will he tour again?

The story of his life, from south London beginnings, is one of amazing and tireless self re-invention. From the sixties musical outsider to the androgynous, white-faced waif of Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, the techno-composer in Berlin and subsquently the raucous racket-making aberration of his Tin Machine phase. This is alongside becoming a distinguished film actor in such porductions as The Man Who Fell to Earth and Mr Lawrence.

One thing is for sure: this succession of alter egos has always been symptomatic of a restless musical creativity and an endless quest for innovation. His astonishing run of canonical albums, from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust through Young Americans and Low to Scary Monsters, and countless classic tracks span psychedelia, glam-rock, 'plastic soul', electronic and industrial influences to disco, pop and even heavy metal.

It is fifteen years since the last comprehensive biography, and now Marc Spitz has talked to those who know or have worked with Bowie to produce an even-handed, thoroughly researched and quirkily readable portrait of anenigmatic and elusive individual, for whoese recent musical silence we are all the poorer.

A must have for Bowie fans, this book is long enough tocover every aspect of his life, but certainly not on oversize product of obsession, this is a readable quirky, assiduous book. Marc Spitz is the author ofa book about the US West Coast punk scene. He writes for all the major music magazines and lives in New York.

David Bowie: A Biography is available at www.amazon.co.uk/Bowie-Biography-Marc-Spitz/dp/1845135512/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_2

All his shows ARE great

2010-07-01T15:09:00.012+01:00

"If Grade had appeared in fiction, he'd be dismissed as a cliche. Fortunately, he existed, and this entertaining book is a worthy monument." Louis Barfe, The Independent

In his review for Spectator Business Dominic Prince not only proclaims that "Chester tells the Lew Grade story well, the detail is good and he deals with the old man's demise generously", but also reveals that he believes Lewis Chester's account of Grade's life to be better than the account that Prince himself co-authored with Quentin Falk!

Lew Grade was the last of the old-time media moguls, who shaped, and inmany ways revolutionised, post-war Britain's popular culture for over fifty years. From humble, Jewish immigrant beginnings in the East End of London, Lew Grade became world Charleston champion (and could dance it well into his eighties), then, along with brothers Bernard and Leslie, a top show business promoter and theatre proprietor, eventually booking Hollywood's biggest names, from Shirley Maclaine to Sammy Davis Jr. The birth of commercial television saw him win a franchise with ATV, where he presented long-running hits like Sunday Night at the London Palladium and the bizarre crossbow-firing game show The Golden Shot, which brought the nation together in front of the television, and epic mini-series like Jesus of Nazareth. But posterity will probably thank him for bringing Thunderbirds and The Muppets to British screens.

For media students he is a pioneering figure in the history of commercial television; for the rest of us he is the larger-than-life impresario who brought the best of Hollywood to our theatres and gave show business a razzle-dazzle it has never lost.

Lewis Chester was a member of the celebrated Sunday Times Insight Team of investigative journalists . His last book was Troublemaker.

All My Shows are Great: The Life of Lew Grade can be purchased at www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1845135083/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_i1?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=084YTZM44S0TB4KWDSMZ&pf_rd_t=101&p_rd_p=467198433&pf_rd_i=468294

Exciting releases this month

2010-07-01T14:40:00.030+01:00

The story of Britain's ultimate steam locomotives...

Andrew Roden, author of Mallard and The Flying Scotsman completes his successful trilogy for Aurum with a book about the finest and most powerful steam locomotive ever built in Britain.

Designed by the great William Stanier, the class began life in the Thirties as the 'Princess Coronation' class. The Duchesses were the flagships of the West Coast mainline for the LMS, designed to compete with the famous streamlined 'Pacific' class locomotives on the East Coast. Andrew Roden has talked to surviving drivers and firemen, and hose involved in the subsequent preservation of Duchess of Hamilton and Duchess of Sutherland, to tell the story of one of Britain's finest engineering achievements, including the restoration of Duchess of Hamilton to its original streamlined form.

Andrew Roden is the editor of the International Rail Journal. He lives in Cornwall.

Why Can't the Government do Anything Properly?

Richard Bacon and Christopher Hope's illuminating book is an immensely topical look at examples of the bureaucratic incompetence and bungling that affect us all.

Any single mother locking horns wih the Child Support Agency for maintenance from their father; any farmer nearly bankrupted waiting for rural support payments; any parent despairing at the black hole into which their child's SATS results have disappeared- all will testify to the endless delay, bureaucratic paralysis, computer breakdowns and blithering incompetence that characterise the government's dealings with us. And anyone who reads the newspapers might infer similar problems from similar fiascos concerning foreign prisoners, dentists' contracts, data transfer losses and tax credits- not to mention the looming introduction of ID cards: a litany of cock-ups commemorated with a string of exasperated reports from the long-suffering Commons Public Accounts Committee charged with conducting the sorry inquest.

Richard Bacon, as an MP for South Norfolk and a member of the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, has direct constitency experience of all the problems he surveys. In a lively style he and his co-author, the Whitehall Editor of the Daily Telegraph, tackle the questions that the country are posing. Why is the government nowadays incapable of organising even the proverbial social event in a brewery? Why does it waste vast amounts of money in the process? If big companies can commission IT systems that work, why can't the civil service?

In this lively, shocking book Bacon and Hope look at ten notorious government fiascos, and the considerable effort that went into creating them.

"A great book about a great band. Chris Campion's recounting of the Police saga is well researched and often very funny." Stephen Davis, author of Hammer of the Gods

Ambition brought The Police together. It also tore them apart- but not before they became thebiggest band in the world and the first supergroup of the Eighties. In Walking on the Moon Chris Campion tells the full, uncensored story of their spectacular rise. Written with a fan's eye for detail, this no-holds-barred account follows the band from their early struggle to make a mark in the volatile late '70s punk scene, through their emergence- masterminded with the help of legendary manager Miles Copeland III- as an international rock phenomenon.

The Police have sold more than 50 million albums worldwide and are ranked at 70 in the Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Yet, although Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland have all released memoirs, until now there has never been a comprehensive and unbiased biography of The Police. Walking on the Moon features for the first time the arduous touring and recording schedule that saw the band crack America, the unorthodox business strategies that catapulted them to the top, and the bouts of infighting that caused their early demise. Campion details the shock 2007 reunion that saw them re-emerge as a global touring spectacle after a 20-year hiatus from the music industry and explores how the band members' conflicting personalities and the chaotic personal life of frontman Sting informed some of their biggest hits.

Much more than simply an entertaining romp, the book offers insightful critical analysis of the broader factors that enabled The Police's success, and reveals a band struggling to balance commercial ambition with a desire for artistic credibility. This is an epic tale of Eighties rock and the role played within it by one of the biggest names in music. A perfect gift for any fans of The Police from the former contributing editor to Dazed and Confused and Vice magazines. Chris Campion has also written for the Observer, the Daily Telegraph and Bizarre.

All of the above titles are released this month and are available on www.amazon.co.uk

A Mobile Fortune: The Life and Times of Denis O'Brien

2010-07-01T14:04:00.009+01:00

'Denis O'Brien's unique position at the crossroads of business, media nd politics makes Siobhan Creaton's searching study of his career essential reading for anyone interested in the workings of power' Finan O'Toole

He is the Irish telecomes tycoon with business interess from Ireland to the Caribbean; a billionaire powerful enough to have graced the cover of Forbes magazine; an indefatigable entrepreneur who invests where others fear to tread, bringing his bright red Digicel brand to some of the world's poorest and most dangerous nations.

In building his business empire- from Esat Telecom to Digicel- Denis O'Brien has smashed the hegemony of state-run networks and the cosy alliances of governments and traditional suppliers- even audaciously snatching the sponsorship of West Indies cricket. As notable for his low-profile philanthropy as for his high-profile joust with, among others, Sir Anthony O'Reilly, he is equally capable of forensically monitoring every last taxi fare and throwing hundreds of millions into a takeover bid for the Independent News and Media group. But his huge wealth and commercial dominance have not been achieved without controversy: a long-running Tribunal in Ireland is still investigating the circumstances surrounding the first mobile phone licence he won in 1996 amid allegations of political corruption.

Now Siobhan Creaton, formerly the experience finance correspondent of the Irish Times and author of Aurum's acclaimed and constantly-selling book on Ryanair, has spoken to those who know and have dealt with O'Brien to produce the first comprehensive biography of this fascinating, contradictory and immensely influential man. Siobhan Creaton lives in Dublin.

A Mobile Fortune can be purchased at www.amazon.co.uk/Mobile-Fortune-Times-Denis-OBrien/dp/1845134524

Out now in Hardback: SHADOWPLAYERS- The Rise and Fall of Factory Records

2010-07-01T12:29:00.016+01:00

The definitive, authentic story has never been told- until now.

"Definitive and comprehensive, this is the actual story of Factory Records" Peter Saville

"Shadowplayers offers a meticulously researched year-by-year account of the label's beginnings, its triumphs and eventual dissolution. Nice brings an encyclopaedic zeal to his recollections of such fleeting musical oddities as Crawling Chaos, Swamp Children, Biting Tongues and The Wendys, alongside Factory's more famous players" Fiona Sturges, The Independent

"Familiar Manchester music saga retold in epic detail" **** Q Magazine

"An immaculately researched history of a label born in 1978 with Joy Division and whose later peaks...are as interesting as the famous, financially induced troughs" Ben East, Metro Scotland

In 1978, a 'Factory for Sale' sign gave Alan Erasmus and Tony Wilson a name for their fledgling Manchester club night. This proved to be the launch of one of the most signigicant musical and cultural legacies of the late twentieth century. The club's electrifying live scene soon translated to vinyl, and Factory Records went on to become the most innovative and celebrated record label of the next thirty years. Always breaking new ground, Factory introduced the listening public to bands such as Joy Division, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, A Certain Ratio, Section 25, The Durutti Column and later New Order, James and Happy Mondays - yet its founders' avowed ambition was not chart success but 'a laboratory experiment in popular culture'. In the years since, the label and its troubled folly, The Hacienda, have become both a legend and a cautionary tale.

Shadowplayers is the most complete, authoritative and thoroughly researched account of how a group of provincial anarchists and entrepreneurs saw off bankers, journalists and gun-toting gangsters to create the most influential, acclaimed and adored music of modern times.

This is the definitive study of the label and would make a treasured possession or gift.

Shadowplayers can be purchased at www.amazon.co.uk/Shadowplayers-Rise-Fall-Factory-Records/dp/1845135407

Out Now: National Trail Guides

2010-07-01T11:32:00.023+01:00

Revised and updated editions of the National Trail Guides are now available. These guides are the official guidebooks to the fifteen National Trails in England and Wales and are published in association with Natural England, the official body charged with developing and maintaining the trails. The guides' connection with Natural England, whose purpose is to protect and improve England's natural environment, mean that the guides include background information on local history, wildlife, archaeology and landscape.

There are beautiful full colour photographs throughout, as well as 1:25 000 Ordnance Survey mapping marked with points of interest along the route shown alongside the text to give detailed illustrations of the route in question. If this does not suffice, the guides' comprehensive 'Useful Information' sections provide further places of reference, such as useful websites, as well as details of public transport, local facilities, local organisations and information for cyclists and horse riders if necessary.

The guides are suited to walkers, cyclists and horse-riders, whether you are a long-distance walker or a weekend stroller, there are optional shorter walks if you do not want to tackle the larger parts of the trails. All feature stunning views, famous landmarks, and interesting information about some of England's most beautiful trails.

The wide variety of guides are available to purchase at www.amazon.co.uk . Please also visit http://www.nationtrail.co.uk/ for more information about the full variety of English trails.

No National Trail explorer should leave home without one!

All you need is one book...

2010-07-01T10:49:00.007+01:00

South Downs Way: 100 Miles of walking or riding over the chalk downlands.

The 100 miles of the South Downs Way are a particularly attractive National Trail- for the walker, the horse rider or mountain biker. Following the spacious chalk downland that sweeps from the pleasant south coast seaside town of Eastbourne to the ancient cathedral city of Winchester, it offers fabulous views, a magnificent sense of solitude, and at the same time, easy transport connections and plenty of sights to see, from the pretty Sussex village of Alfriston to Cissbury Ring iron age fort, not to mention the sudden colourful flash of a hang glider serenly soaring above Devil's Dyke.

For the long-distance walker or cyclist, the horse-rider or the weekend stroller, this official guide offers everything you need in one volume. Whichever category you fit into you'll find valuable information, be it details of horsebox parking, vets, saddlers and farriers for horse riders or cycle repair shops along the way. The guide also offers circular routes off the Trail for shorter walks or rides, as well as details of pubs and refreshments along the way.

South Downs Way can be purchased at http://www.amazon.co.uk/. For information about upcoming events and walks along South Downs Way go to http://www.nationtrail.co.uk/ which will also provide you with images of the route to inspire you for your next trip!

Out now: The Capital Ring

2010-07-01T10:23:00.012+01:00

The Capital Ring. 78 miles of green corridor encircling inner London. Not only is it a wondrous window on the green and tranquil flipside of a buzzing capital city; it also affords a fascinating vision of a metropolis constantly transforming itself- above all with the mesmerising views of the 2012 Olympic Park from the Ring's quiet riverside progress through east London.

This comprehensive guide provides up-to-date information on one of Transport for London's officially designated walking routes, taking in the capital's parks, woodlands, towpaths, river banks and historic cemeteries, including information on public transport, accommodation and places of interest. It visits famous landmarks such as the Thames Barrier, Eltham Palace and Highgate Woods- but also encounters lesser known treasures like the Parkland Walk, Abney Park Cemetery and the windmill on Wimbledon Common.

The guide, which divides the route into 15 sections, each starting and finishing at a public transport point, is packed with a vast amount of information which will guide walkers to the many and varied treasures that lie along the Ring's route. Complete with specially prepared 1:16666 Ordnance Survey maps and key sites numbered in the text and on maps for easy identification, the guide is useful for experienced walkers or those wishing to take in the sites casually.

Colin Saunders is a member of the London Walking Forum, which first conceived the idea of the two London orbital routes (The London Loop, the second, outer, route is also the subject of one of Aurum's Recreational Path Guides) and developed the Capital Ring in collaboration with the London boroughs through which it runs.

Start planning your trip now, go to http://www.amazon.co.uk/ to buy the book and then head to http://www.bwf-ivv.org.uk/ to organise events or group walks. Other useful links can also be found in the book's Useful Information section.

Out now in Paperback: The Wisden Cricketer, Flying Stumps and Metal Bats.

2010-06-02T16:44:00.004+01:00

Since 2003 the Wisden Cricketer has run a monthly feature called ‘Eyewitness’. Each article takes a seminal moment in the history of cricket and invites the key protagonists to reminisce about it, relive it and reflect. Now for the first time the very best of ‘Eyewitness’ has been collected in one volume. The result is a fascinating tour of cricket’s most memorable moments, as told by the very people who were there and who made them happen.
Here is everything from David Steele’s remarkable Test summer of 1975 to Brian Lara’s awe-inspiring first season with Warwickshire; from the Packer Revolution to Michael Holding kicking down John Parker’s stumps during West Indies’ ill-tempered 1979 tour of New Zealand; from the day the incongruous clang of Dennis Lillee’s aluminium bat first rang out across a cricket field to Essex bowling Surrey out for 14 and ‘weak Victorian’ Dean Jones being hospitalised after his 210 slog in the 40° heat of Madras.
Above all, every story is told in the words of the cricketers, reporters and bystanders who witnessed them. Like Graham Gooch reliving his magnificent triple century against India. Or Lancashire all-rounder David Hughes describing darkness fall over Old Trafford as he plundered 24 off John Mortimore at the end of an astonishing 1971 Gillette Cup semi-final.
Whether re-awakening memories of past glories or opening old wounds, Flying Stumps and Metal Bats is a unique oral history and the perfect gift for any fan of the endlessly unpredictable, ever controversial game that is cricket.

The Wisden Cricketer is the world’s highest-selling monthly cricket magazine. Launched in 2003, it was the result of a merger between Wisden Cricket Monthly and the Cricketer.

Out now in Paperback: Original Rudeboy, from Borstal to The Specials

2010-06-02T16:40:00.004+01:00

1979. The dawn of Thatcher’s Britain. It’s a country crippled by strikes, joblessness and economic gloom, divided by race and class - and skanking to a new beat: 2-Tone.
The unruly offspring of white boy punk and rude boy ska, the new music’s undeniable leaders were The Specials. Bursting out of Coventry’s concrete jungle, their lyrics spoke of failed marriages, petty violence, crowded dance floors, gangsters and race hate - but with a wit that outshone their angry punk forebears.
On stage they were electric, and at the heart of this energy was the vocal chemistry of the ethereal Terry Hall and Jamaican rude boy Neville Staple.
In 1961, aged only five, Neville was sent to England to live with his father – a man for whom discipline bordered on child abuse. Growing up black in the Midlands of the Sixties and Seventies wasn’t easy, but then Nev was hardly an angel. His youth was marked by scuffles with skins, compulsive womanising, and a life of crime that led from shoplifting to burglary and eventually Borstal and Wormwood Scrubs.
But throughout there was music, and now Nev tells how a very bad boy became part of the most important band of the Eighties. He remembers sound system battles; the legendary 2-Tone tour with The Selecter, Madness and Dexy’s – and their clashes with NF thugs. He recalls the band’s increasing tensions and eventual split; his subsequent foray into bubblegum pop with Fun Boy Three; and a new found fame in America, as godfather to bands like Gwen Stefani’s No Doubt. Finally he reflects on The Specials’ reunion and how even now, thirty years on, they can’t help tearing themselves apart.
Raucous and charming Original Rude Boy is the story of a man who done too much, much too young.

Neville Staple was a frontman with The Specials, a member of the hugely successful pop trio Fun Boy Three and now tours the world with own his own ska act The Neville Staple Band. Visit him at: www.nevillestaple.co.uk

Tony McMahon is a journalist and TV producer living in south London.

Out now in Paperback: Inside the Box

2010-06-02T16:20:00.005+01:00

‘The producer – for the last thirty-four years – was Peter Baxter’
Studio announcer Andy Rushton signs off Peter Baxter’s final show, June 2007

Since its first live broadcast in 1957, Test Match Special had become synonymous with British summertime, proudly fulfilling its slogan ‘Don’t miss a ball, we broadcast them all’. Peter Baxter has been at the show’s heart for most of its history, and now for the first time shares his best moments and most memorable characters from his privileged position inside the TMS commentary box.

Having worked alongside TMS greats John Arlott, Brian Johnston, Henry Blofeld and Jonathan Agnew, no one is better qualified than Peter Baxter to celebrate thirty years of cricket in this fascinating, funny and personal account of a sporting and broadcasting institution.

Out now in Paperback: The North Will Rise Again

2010-06-02T16:02:00.004+01:00

‘An extraordinary history… The range of voices breathing new life into past events is vast’ **** Mojo

‘The Morrissey and Marr recollections are particularly revealing’ The Word

Buzzcocks. Joy Division. The Fall. The Smiths. The Stone Roses. Happy Mondays. Oasis. Manchester has proved to be endlessly rich of musical talent over the last 30 years.

Highly opinionated and usually controversial, stars such as Mark E. Smith, Morrissey, Ian Brown and the Gallagher brothers have always had plenty to say for themselves. Here, in John Robb’s new compilation, Manchester’s musicians tell the story of the city’s thriving music scene in their own words.

From the fury of punk to the raucousness of Britpop, Manchester has been at the heart of musical innovation. The revolution began with the Buzzcocks at Lesser Free Trade Hall in 1976; the city’s own record label, Factory, gave the world Joy Division, New Order and Happy Mondays. There was the cerebral genius of The Smiths, and the rivalry between The Stone Roses and Oasis to headline the most massive gig.

Now, in dozens of new interviews with Manchester’s proudest sons, from Morrissey to Ian Brown, John Robb tells the story of the city’s unique music scene.

John Robb is a leading music journalist and the author of the bestselling biography of the Stone Roses. His other books include Punk: An Oral History, The Charlatans … We Are Rock and The Nineties: What the F**k Was That All About? He lives in Manchester.

Former boxing champion speaks out

2010-05-13T10:01:00.006+01:00

"Errol Christie will always remember 5 November 1985. His arrival in the ring at Wembley Arena to fight Mark Kaylor in a final eliminator for the British middleweight title was greeted by a prolonged volley of abuse. It came from what an editorial in Boxing News had called "the extreme right wing fascist element in Britain, an element which is represented in Kaylor's home territory of West Ham"."

So opens Chris Arnot's extensive profile of the former boxing champion in Wednesday's SocietyGuardian, which follows on the heels of the launch of Christie's autobiography No Place to Hide.

Christie's formative years were marked by violent battles fought against racists in and around the predominantly white Coventry estate where he grew up. The fortitude garnered from such a rough upbringing was what propelled Christie, now 46, into an amateur boxing career which then became a three-year term as captain of the English boxing team. His success peaked in 1983 when he was crowned European champion. Unfortunately, this event induced much violent indignation among Christie's compatriots - compatriots who felt the man, a foreign alien in their eyes, had no right to represent their country. In fact, the colour of Christie's skin was an issue right up to the end of his boxing career in 1985 when he was defeated by Kaylor.

Christie now trains white-collar professionals on how to box. He also dedicates much of his time giving talks on discipline and self-respect in schools and community centres across the country.

"Churchill sent MI-19 to find evidence of collaboration "

2010-05-13T09:42:00.002+01:00

Barry Turner, the author of Outpost of Occupation, has caused quite a stir on BBC Jersey.

Most Dangerous Enemy Brought To Life

2010-05-05T12:05:00.008+01:00

When it was launched in 2000, it was agreed among critics that Stephen Bungay's The Most Dangerous Enemy was the definitive history of the Battle of Britain. This three-month battle in 1940 has been the historical event foremost in symbolising Britain's character and destiny. To mark its 70th anniversary, Aurum will be bringing out a fully-illustrated, large-format edition of Bungay's remarkable book in June 2010. It will contain over 150 photographs, maps, diagrams of battle tactics and satirical cartoons from the era - many of them never before published - to bring to life this most fascinating story. The book is both an indispensible reference book for the military scholar as well as a gripping read for anyone with a passing interest in this famous battle.

Paddy Ashdown - Man of Action

2010-05-05T11:35:00.005+01:00

With the prospect of a cataclysmic upset to the British electoral system hanging over us, the launch of the paperback version of Paddy Ashdown's bestselling autobiography couldn't be timelier. Of course, the former leader and founder of the Liberal Democrats has achieved much more than planting the seeds of a "third way" for Britain's electorate. These include his time as Royal Marine Commando, a spy and of course as the United Nations High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His chronicle - which paints a portrait of a Man in Action who also happens to be a good, principled character - was described by the Daily Telegraph as one of the most exciting and readable political memoirs available.

Blackberry, a biography

2010-05-05T11:07:00.004+01:00

Known by that dubious epithet "Crackberry" for its vital role in keeping the business world ticking and the rumor mills greased, the Blackberry now has its official biographer in Rod McQueen. For this fascinating business story hitherto untold, the award-winning Canadian tech and business journalist, gets upclose and personal with the founders of Research In Motion, the company behind the device. Expect riveting details and much much more.

Daily Telegraph waxes lyrical about Rejoice! Rejoice!

2010-05-05T10:51:00.006+01:00

A witty, engrossing review of Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain in the Eighties by Telegraph critic Roger Lewis.

Life's Too Short - a television extravaganza

2010-05-05T10:09:00.014+01:00

Pint-sized actor and Yaxley's biggest star Warwick Davis will feature in his own television series alongside Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the creators of hit series The Office and Extras. The BBC series will be based on Davis' autobiography Size Matters Not, published by Aurum Press. According to Davis' own website, the BBC describes the programme, dubbed Life's Too Short, as: "an observation comedy which follows Warwick's day-to-day life in a small world where big things happen. It's a frustrating world but an optimistic and warm one".

So optimistic, in fact, that it was Davis' rare genetic disorder that launched him into showbiz. The actor, now 40, has enjoyed a 29-year career starring alongside the likes of Val Kilmer and David Bowie. But he is probably most fondly remembered for his role as Wicket the Ewok in several Star Wars films and as Filius Flitwick in the Harry Potter series
Davis is currently on a book-signing tour around the UK. For details of dates and locations, please visit his website.

Rejoice, Rejoice! by Alwyn Turner

2010-04-26T16:57:00.003+01:00

New from Alwyn Turner we have the spring release of Rejoice, Rejoice!

This is the 1980s follow up to the success of Turner's Crisis? What Crisis?

The first full-length, in-depth history of this most fascinating of decades. If the Seventies, the subject of his previous book, were the last gasp of the old Britain, the Eighties were a truly transitional, politically revolutionary decade, when Thatcherism remade Britain's economy and its society, but when Britain's social fabric also changed in many infinitely more encouraging ways: the response to famine in Ethiopia with the global Live Aid concert; gay rights.

Witty, formidably well-informed, on political intrigue as well as every last soap opera and rock album, this is a piece of genuinely new history.

Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article7082806.ece

Size Matters Not Book Signing - Waterstone's Piccadilly 28th April, 7pm

2010-04-26T11:40:00.009+01:00

On Wednesday, 28 April at 7pm Waterstone's Piccadilly will be hosting an evening with Warwick Davis.

Tickets are £3 but redeemable against the purchase of the book on the night

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=7005995

Out Now in Paperback: Hercules and the Farmer's Wife by Chris Wadsworth

2010-04-22T17:24:00.034+01:00

Chris Wadsworth conjures up people and situations with verve and great
narrative style - an intriguing tapestry of art and personalities.

Penelope Lively

An ode to happiness and creativity and a reminder that we all have the ability to enrich our own lives, Hercules and the Farmer's Wife and Other Stories from a Cumbrian Art Gallery features a range of heartwarming and at times bittersweet tales that provide a private view into the secret world of art. From Lowry's Fish and Chip Shop and the Cumberland of Sheila Fell, to the transvestite postman, the man who was irresistible to women, the mystery of the purple house, the farmer and the brain surgeon...oh, and a cat called Fedden.

The owner of the gallery Chris Wadsworth recalls how she came to make art her business and transform the local area with her avant-garde vision. And did I mention its got vicars trying to flog Mick Jagger carpets?!

Available from all good bookstores priced at £8.99, immerse yourself in the contemporary art of Cockermouth!

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/chris+wadsworth/hercules+and+the+farmer27s+wife/7319866/

Out Now in Paperback: Miss Savidge Moves Her House by Christine Adams

2010-04-21T17:29:00.023+01:00

This story will appeal to those who still believe that an Englishman's home is his castle...May Savidge's dream to save a piece of our architectural heritage has been realised.

Daily Telegraph

The British love an underdog. Now available in paperback, A Lifetime in the Building has a new title to emphasise the mass appeal of its rebellious heroine, May Savidge. When confronted with a compulsory purchase notice for her medieval hall house to be bulldozed for a roundabout, May decided it was time to move; but she took her home with her. In what could be described as a real-life version of Pixar's Up, May's experience is more relevant than ever today and her niece Christine Adams tells her heartbreaking and courageous story in a highly personal and nostalgic voice. With extracts from her aunt's numerous letters and diaries which she inherited with the house, Adams paints a vivid portrait of a determined woman and the home to which she dedicated the rest of her life.

With an introduction by Paul Atterbury of the BBC hit Antiques Roadshow, Miss Savidge Moves her House is available in all good bookstores priced at £8.99. Now is your chance to catch the book which sold out two printings!

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/christine+adams/michael+mcmahon/miss+savidge+moves+her+house/6996180/

April Title-Size Matters Not: The Extraordinary Life and Career of Warwick Davis

2010-04-21T15:12:00.079+01:00

Who else can say that they've helped destroy a Death Star? Defeated an evil sorceress? Taught magic to Harry Potter? Become a Jedi Master? Reluctantly hitchhiked across the galaxy in search of the answer to the Ultimate Question? Or embarked (six times, no less) on a psychotic killing spree as a gold-obsessed leprechaun? Been kicked in the face by Ricky Gervais (twenty-three times)?

Despite (or indeed partly because of) the fact that Warwick Davis is three-foot-six, he has enjoyed an incredible and versatile career in film. In his own wise and witty words, Davis recounts his experiences, from his breakthrough role as Wicket the Ewok in the incomparable Star Wars franchise when he was only eleven through to his more recent characters, including Filius Flitwick in the Harry Potter films.

Always focusing on the opportunities that his condition has given him, whilst simultaneously recalling the difficulties that have arisen and how he has overcome them in a relatable and realistic way, Davis' narrative style is engaging, thought-provoking and very funny. With a touching foreword by George Lucas, and anecdotes featuring various famous figures ranging from Michael Jackson to David Bowie to Princess Diana, Size Matters Not proves that good things really do come in small packages...

From the top: At the Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince premiere; during the shooting of Willow (courtesy of Lucasfilm Ltd); with family as Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; with Michael Jackson whilst making Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.

Available now as a hardback priced at £16.99, don't miss out on this Force of nature!

www.warwickdavis.co.uk

Nina Simone - The Biography by David Brun-Lambert

2010-03-03T11:47:00.004Z

"The greatest female artist of the twentieth century" - Elton John

The flamboyant artist, the tireless warrior, the submissive then forsaken woman, the diffident lover addicted to men, the loose cannon, the breathless fighter, the absolute diva, the visionary creator, the dramatist, the voice of doom. Not to mention the first black classical concert player...

In this revealing biography, well respected music writer David Brun-Lambert reveals the tortured, tragic and awe-inspiring life of one of the greatest singers and musicians of modern times. The High-Priestess of Soul, Nina Simone sang and composed some of the most outstanding songs of the century. A child musical prodigy, she was rejected by the all-white board of an elite classical music school, a setback which would be the fuel that would propel her through an extra-ordinary life which took in the battle for civil rights, the birth of the cool, a fight against mental illness, and a series of intense and impassioned loves and losses.

The complete life story of one of the twentieth-century's brightest and most difficult talents.

January Title: The Red and the White by Huw Richards

2010-01-20T17:10:00.004Z

THE RED AND THE WHITE: THE STORY OF ENGLAND v WALES RUGBY by Huw Richards

It is the one match, the Welsh one, which every Englishman wants to be a part of, which just has got to be won. Nothing really compare to the atmosphere of this Welsh Match. It’s a confrontation, it’s history
Dean Richards

A win against France, the Scots or the Irish is always welcome. But there is nothing the Welsh supporter relishes more than a victory over the English – especially if it is at Twickenham

Gareth Edwards

No match in the history of the Six Nations is more feverishly anticipated than England v Wales. Wales has its history of playing the finest rugby of all the home nations, England its enviable strength in depth and forward muscle. With a shared sporting heritage stretching back for more than a century, it is the most closely contested clash of teams in British sport.
From Henry Taylor’s opening score for England in 1881 to Leigh Halfpenny’s try for Wales in their victory at the Millennium Stadium in 2009, The Red and the White brings together the legendary matches, mud baths, punch-ups, star players and many generations of fans to tell the thrilling story of this most epic of rivalries.
Huw Richards has talked to many veterans of these matches, as well as to present players and administrators to tell the whole history of Wales v England at rugby: a contest that is a clash of cultures and histories as well as a titanic sporting occasion.

January Title: Lucky Kunst by Gregor Muir

2010-01-20T14:15:00.005Z

Lucky Kunst: the rise and fall of Young British Art

by Gregor Muir

'Muir doesn't put a foot wrong... this lucid, lurid, indiscreet memoir of gilded gutters, "more drugs than milk", Sensation, Hirst's shark and Emin's bed, is an unrivalled record of 1990s Cool Britannia, when British art wowed the world' Jackie Wullschlager

Financial Times

In 1988 no-one outside a semi-derelict, little-frequented backwater of East London had heard of Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin or the Chapman brothers, let alone envisioned putrefying sharks or fried eggs and a kebab as pioneering works of art. But Gregor Muir, the 'embedded journalist' of the nascent community of Young British Artists, was there to witness their outrageous, hilarious and very badly-behaved rise to fame...

Last Call for the Dining Car: The Telegraph Book of Great Railway Journeys, edited by Michael Kerr

2009-10-27T14:41:00.008Z

The trip, rather than its end, is the thing.

These days, air travel is easily the fastest way to travel, and with the rise of low cost airlines, it can be the cheapest. Increasingly we are using short-haul flights as an alternative to rail travel. A rail journey however can be about so much more than just getting from A to B. As travel writer Paul Mansfield states in his account of a five day rail journey from London to Lisbon; “I could have made this journey by plane in about two hours – and missed everything”.

A train can still take us on a genuine journey, whether it weaves through vertiginous mountain passes, across expansive planes, or indeed whether the adventure itself is in being thrown together with a motley array of other travellers. Could it lead to a romantic encounter in the dining car? Or will you be sharing your sleeping car with a sinister stranger?

When Paul Theroux’s The Great Railway Bazaar was first published in 1975, its tenet was the travellers’ mantra ‘the journey is the goal’. Theroux defied traditions of travel literature as he sought not to report on unfamiliar cultures, but to submit himself to chance experiences along the way. The book became an instant classic of travel literature, and an inspiration to a generation of rail travellers.

Last Call for the Dining Car, too, tackles these themes. Michael Kerr, the Daily Telegraph’s deputy travel editor, has waded deep into the Telegraph archives to compile a riveting anthology of all the best railway travel to have appeared in the paper. Here are epic journeys across India, high over the Andean Altiplano, from Moscow to Peking, on the Sunset Express across America to California, and from Leicester Square to Charing Cross on the Piccadilly Line.

With contributions from Michael Palin, Nicholas Crane and John Simpson amongst others.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/journeysbyrail/5159915/Ten-spectacular-train-journeys.html

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Call-Dining-Car-Telegraph/dp/1845134974

Outlaw Journalist: The Life & Times of Hunter S. Thompson by William McKeen

2009-10-16T10:06:00.004+01:00

· ‘This is the Great Red Shark of Hunter biographies… Read it or die’ Greg Palast

Hunter S. Thompson changed the way we think about journalism. One of the pioneers of New Journalism, he wrote books that continue to entertain decades after they were published, melding fact and fiction in a supercharged Gonzo prose style to chronicle his drink- and drug- fuelled adventures. His major work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is now a bestselling classic. Requesting his ashes blasted into the blue Colorado sky to drift slowly back over the crowd at his funeral was typical of his menacing humour. There was no one better at capturing America, from the presidential campaign trail to the Hell’s Angels’ lair.

William McKeen became friends with Thompson after writing a monograph on his work. He has interviewed many of the writer’s associates who would not speak before, from childhood friends to assistants at his Colorado home, getting behind the drink and drugs to reveal a charismatic figure who was happy to be considered an outlaw but took the calling of journalism as his vocation. Outlaw Journalist is the definitive biography of this compelling American icon.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Outlaw-Journalist-Life-Hunter-Thompson/dp/1845133986

Bounder!: The Biography of Terry Thomas

2009-09-21T10:32:00.004+01:00

Bounder!: The Biography of Terry Thomas by Graham McCann, is available now. The fascinating story of one of England's most beloved comics, follows his life from his regular childhood in North Finchley to his extravagantly dressed celebrity lifestyle and final decline from Parkinson's Disease. The gap-toothed 'dandy' saunters from page to page in this book, his swagger and perfectly tailoured suits never failing to entertain but it is his tragic illness (that would render him virtually penniless) that is captured sensitively and empathectically shining a light on Thomas's private life and true persona. For a quick snap-shot of his life, click on the link below. So juicy is his life, you won't be able to resist buying the book!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1052851/I-say-What-bounder--All-dandy-comic-legend-Terry-Thomas-really-liked-jolly-eager-girls.html

2009-09-02T14:59:00.004+01:00

"Music seems to have an almost wilful, evasive quality, defying simple explination, so that the more we find out, the more there is to know, leaving its power and mystery intact, however much we dig and delve. Daniel's book is an eloquent and poetic exploration of this paradox." Sting.

If what Sting has said about Daniel Levitin's second book,The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature, sounds complicated, rest assured it is more entertaining than anything else! Following on from his best selling book This is your Brain on Music, Levitin, the session musician turned neuroscientist, now blends art and science together and explores how music is perceived both culturally and scientifically.

Dipping in and out of personal musical memories ("I'm standing right next to the bed where Jon and Yoko launched this protest, where they sang the song. I hear it playing in my head..."), Levitin floats from The Supremes to Beethoven, The Beatles to Ella Fitzgerald in his quest to truly understand music and its meanings. Split into six categories: Friendship, Joy, Comfort, Knowledge, Religion and Love, music is the puzzle Levitin passionately pieces together.

Have you ever wondered why certain melodies stick in your head or why gushy love-songs make you feel emotional? Have you ever argued with someone over what gets played on the radio? If so, this book might really relate to you. With suggestions that music has been an evolutionary necessity (Levitin believes that it was music and dance which aided communication and self-protection before the spoken word), our love for music is not as new as we think.

"...how might these different functions of music have influenced the evolution of human emotion, reason and spirit across distinct intellectual and cultural histories? What role did the musical brain have in shaping human nature and human culture over the past fifty-thousand years or so? In short, how did all these musics make us who we are?" Levitin.

Levitin invites us to join him on a journey of musical re-discovery and enlightenment and by answering some of these questions, we can start to learn about ourselves along the way.

David Levitin's The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature is priced at £14.99 and available now.

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6506459

Dave Whelan: Playing to Win

2009-08-24T11:40:00.004+01:00

Dave Whelan talks about Manchester Utd, his childhood and the beginnings of his business empire with Jim White from The Independent:

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/dave-whelan-i-could-have-bought-united-20-years-ago-1775720.html

Dave Whelan Playing to Win: The Autobiography available from http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6708033

Me: The Authorised Biography, by Byron Rogers

2009-08-06T11:14:00.003+01:00

Book review from The Indepedent

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/me-the-authorised-biography-by-byron-rogers-1764848.html

Coming Soon - The Most Dangerous Enemy

2009-07-20T17:04:00.004+01:00

Almost seventy years since Spitfires, Merlins and Hurricanes fought to protect Britain’s skies, it is surprising how little is publicly known about the Battle of Britain. Many people may not even be aware that the RAF’s triumph in this battle was integral in saving our country from German invasion in the Second World War. What collective memory exists at all undoubtedly features a soaring Spitfire as the hero of this epic battle, with little more detail than the faint sound of air-raid sirens. However, in the 1980s and 90s, scholars began to counter this image, publishing works which devalued Churchill’s leadership and the quality of the Spitfire’s engineering. Not sure who to believe, Stephen Bungay set out to discover the truth behind these myths. The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain contains his surprising revelations. The book brings to light stories of first-hand experience, compiled from extensive research and interviews, one of which reveals how oblivious some fighter pilots were about the significance of their actions. Outnumbered, and with little previous experience of air warfare, it appears that British pilots managed an astounding victory.

The Most Dangerous Enemy has been described as “the most exhaustive and detailed account of the Battle of Britain”, but the book is far from an alienating history textbook. Bungay manages to make an event over sixty-nine years old accessible to a modern reader by establishing the background to the battle without patronising the knowledgeable or veering into dull statistics. We learn how the Battle of Britain may not have happened, had Churchill not have been elected as Prime Minister, and how Churchill’s military confidence and sense of moral obligation stood alone against government and public calls for peace.

For the avid historian there is still much to learn about the Battle of Britain, and Bungay weaves his newfound knowledge into an exciting and compelling narrative. This is a thoroughly readable account of one of the most important battles in British history, finally providing a comprehensive and thoughtful insight into our country’s past.

The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain by Stephen Bungay will be available from August in paperback at £8.79
http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6708044

Try Something Different This Holiday...

2009-07-02T11:26:00.002+01:00

Janie Hamilton’s The Austerity Olympics and Paddy Ashdown’s A Fortunate Life proved their success last weekend when they were named as two of the ‘100 Best Holiday Reads’ in The Sunday Times. Hamilton’s book was heralded as “a delightful jog through the trials and tribulations of putting the 1948 games together on a shoestring”, whilst the former leader of the Liberal Democrats was praised for his “action-packed reminiscences”. Why not pack one of these inspiring reads in your suitcase this summer?

Read the full list at this address:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_reviews/article6569320.ece

The Real Story of The Clash - Out Now

2009-07-02T10:41:00.007+01:00

Released for the 30th anniversary of their classic album, ‘London Calling’, Pat Gilbert’s revised edition of Passion is a Fashion: The Real Story of The Clash sheds light on the hidden personalities which made up one of the most influential punk-rock bands of the 70s and 80s. Gilbert draws on MOJO archives and interviews with friends, producers and the boys themselves to reveal what really went on behind the music. From steps taken to invent the band’s iconic image to the dampening of their rebellious spirit after signing on with CBS, we learn what led to the band’s eventual separation and legacy. Gilbert’s personal quest for knowledge delivers plenty of new material in this definitive biography, but what truly separates Passion is a Fashion from the many other books written about The Clash is the real sense of an emotional connection between the author and his material. Gilbert’s own passion for the band inspired his research and this ardour is evident in his writing, making this a must-read for any music-lover.

Passion is a Fashion: The Real Story of The Clash is available now in paperback from £7.99
http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6541473

BBC London speak to Janie Hampton, author of 'The Austerity Olympics'

2009-06-22T12:29:00.009+01:00

Find it hard to believe that the 1948 London Olympics was hosted on a budget of just £760? So did we...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/elms

Janie's book is out now in paperback priced at £8.99

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6541515

Coming Soon at Aurum Press...

2009-06-18T12:47:00.005+01:00

The result of five years of meticulous research, Murray Engleheart and Arnaud Derieux’s AC/DC Maximum Rock & Roll is widely recognised as the most comprehensive book ever written about the world’s number one rock band, AC/DC. Charting everything from their rise to fame to the sudden death of the legendary Bon Scott to the making of the landmark Back In Black album, this unrivalled biography reveals why Australia’s loudest rock and roll export are still able to blast their way through sell-out tours 30 years after their first appearance.

AC/DC Maximum Rock & Roll is coming soon in paperback priced at £16.99

Journalist for the Sunday Telegraph and the Guardian, Byron Rogers lived happy in the assumption that he knew all that was worth knowing about Byron Rogers. Until, that is, he started receiving steamy, passionate love letters from female readers. What was really baffling was that, despite these women’s claims to the contrary, he’d never actually met any of them. Determined to get to the bottom of these mysterious goings-on, Rogers turns detective in this strange and witty memoir, Me: The Authorised Biography, only to find himself struggling to reclaim centre stage of his own life.

Me: The Authorised Biography is coming soon in hardback priced at £16.99

How to Take a Spiderman/Peter Parker Approach to Wikipedia, Andrew Lih Explains

2009-06-17T11:43:00.005+01:00

With millions of users every day, Wikipedia has fast become a phenomenon. But, can we really trust the quality of articles written by a bunch of nobodies? Find out in this recent interview with Andrew Lih, editor/administrator of Wikipedia and author of the book The Wikipedia Revolution:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/by-a-bunch-of-nobodies-a-qa-with-the-author-of-the-wikipedia-revolution/

The Wikipedia Revolution by Andrew Lih is out now in paperback at £14.99 and is available at: http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6493063

Paddy Ashdown: A Different Side of Politics?

2009-06-11T12:15:00.015+01:00

Released this April, Paddy Ashdown’s autobiography A Fortunate Life tells the no-nonsense story of the rather unconventional politician critics have been describing as ‘a man driven not by a wish to accumulate power or money but by compassion, decency and principle’. As reports of MPs' gross expense claims continue to pour out by the day, Paddy’s memoir seems to raise the hope that there can be room in politics for those wanting to give rather than get after all.

“very entertaining, clear and wise” says The Times

Please click here to read Rod Liddle’s full review of A Fortunate Life:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article6105183.ece

Tennis Superstar Pete Sampras talks about his recent autobiography 'A Champion's Mind' on 'The Tonight Show' with Jay Leno

2009-06-10T11:27:00.005+01:00

Christine Adams Visits The Holt Bookshop

2009-06-09T16:55:00.009+01:00

On Friday, June 19th, The Holt Bookshop welcomes you to join Christine Adams, from 6:30 p.m. onwards, as she talks about her fascinating new book A Lifetime in the Building: The Extraordinary Story of May Savidge and The House She Moved.

Tickets cost £5 and are redeemable against the cost of any book in stock on the night.

The Holt Bookshop is situated at 10 Appleyard, Holt, Norfolk, NR25 6AR. For more information, please call 01263 715858 or visit: http://holtbookshoponline.tbpcontrol.co.uk/tbp.direct/customeraccesscontrol/home.aspx?d=holtbookshoponline&s=C&r=10000334&ui=0&bc=0

A Book Depository Interview with Alwyn W. Turner

2009-06-09T16:19:00.008+01:00

Click on this link to find out why Alwyn W. Turner felt compelled to write his most recent book Crisis? What Crisis? Britain in the 1970s:

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/interview/with/author/alwyn-turner

The Sunday Times gives Janie Hampton's 'The Austerity Olympics' a glowing review

2009-06-09T15:18:00.010+01:00

As described by Andrew Holgate of The Sunday Times, Janie Hampton's book on the 1948 Olympics is a 'delightfully brisk and impressively researched jog through the history of the London tournament'.

To read his review in full, please click here: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article3900666.ece

Janie Hampton: The Austerity Olympics: 1948/2012?: A Talk

2009-06-09T11:33:00.010+01:00

On Saturday, June 20th, we invite you to join Janie Hampton, author of The Austerity Olympics, as she takes a look at the greatly successful 1948 ‘Ration Book Olympics’, hosted by post-war London in the midst of economic crisis. With the London 2012 Olympics fast approaching and many of us asking whether big budget plans really will prove to be money well spent, this talk promises to raise some interesting debate.

Tickets are priced at £9.50 and the talk is set to start at 10 a.m. at Kings Place, York Way, N1 9AG.

For more information, please call 0844 264 0321 or visit: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/events/show-23611236-details/Janie+Hampton%3A+The+Austerity+Olympics%3A+1948/2012/%3A+Talk/showReview.do

June Releases

2009-06-08T16:18:00.013+01:00

First on our list this month…

A distinct original, Audrey Hepburn is perhaps best loved for her incomparable elegance, luminous beauty and inimitable sense of style. Out now in paperback, Pamela Clarke Keogh’s Audrey Style celebrates the life of this captivating star, whose trademark boyish figure, cropped hair and ballet slippers resonate still through the fashion world of today. Complete with first time interviews from those closest to her, this style biography features original sketches from leading fashion designers, such as Vera Wang, Manolo Blahnik and Alexander McQueen and over 90 colour and black-and-white photographs, many of which have never before been published. From the struggles of her early life to the complex relationship she shared with her mother, from her weight to her loves, Audrey Style reveals all that contributed towards Audrey’s transformation into one of the most memorable women of the 20th century.

Audrey Style is issued in paperback at £11.99 and is available at:
http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6690562 [Also available in hardback.]

Next, we have a tale of triumph from first-time author Christine Adams…

A Lifetime in the Building is the remarkable story of May Savidge, her compulsive hoarding and the home she single-handedly demolished and rebuilt at the age of 60. Inheriting the sadly dilapidated house upon Auntie May’s death 23 years later, Christine Adams and her family soon discover that, throughout her life, this extraordinary woman had carefully stored away every bus ticket, every sweet wrapper, every glamorous dress ever worn. Faced with the daunting task of having to rummage through this strange wealth of belongings piece by piece, Christine quickly finds herself plunged into a bygone world filled with heartbreak, heroism and hard-fought battles with bureaucracy. With an introduction by Paul Atterbury of the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow, this is the intriguing book of a woman’s quest to lay the ghost of her Auntie May and the house she built to rest.

A Lifetime in the Building is issued in hardback at £16.99 and is available at: http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6541510

And finally, our music titles for this month include…

Passionate, intelligent and hard-hitting, Pat Gilbert’s Passion is a Fashion: The Real Story of the Clash offers the first real behind-the-scenes glimpse into the complex history of a band that shaped a generation of disillusioned youth with their ferocious mix of politics and punk rock. Written by the former editor of the internationally acclaimed music magazine Mojo, this book examines the early lives of the Clash’s classic line up, the tensions arising from their particularly gruelling and chaotic touring, the tragic death of Joe Strummer and more. Drawing on over 70 original interviews with key contributors to the band’s success, such as Kosmo Vinyl, Don Letts and Caroline Coon, as well as the band members themselves, Passion is a Fashion: The Real Story of the Clash sheds new light on those areas of the story all too often overlooked.

Passion is a Fashion: The Real Story of the Clash is issued in paperback at £7.99 and is available at:
http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6541473 [Also available in hardback.]

Book signing TONIGHT

2009-04-02T14:41:00.006+01:00

Tonight, Waterstone's Nottingham are hosting a Brian Clough vs. Don Revie Fight Night followed by a book signing. Starting at 7pm, the show will start with a moderator-led discussion between Rob Bagchi, author of The Unforgiven, and Duncan Hamilton, who compiled Old Big 'Ead: The Wit and Wisdom of Brian Clough.

This will be followed by a Q&A session and book signings. Tickets are £3, redeemable on purchase of either book on offer. It promises a successful night, with a great deal of local media interest throughout the last couple of days and weeks, the highlight being an interview with Rob and Duncan on BBC Radio Nottingham yesterday.

Waterstone's Nottingham is situated at Bridlesmith Gate, about 5mins from the train station.

April’s great titles

2009-04-02T11:46:00.020+01:00

AURUM'S MAIN TITLE THIS SPRING
A FORTUNATE LIFE: The autobiography of PADDY ASHDOWN, an autobiography by a politician which is totally unlike the traditional political memoir. It is the story of a life lived to the full, as a Royal Marine Commando, a member of the Special Boat Service and an international peacemaker, as well as an MP and a party leader. At a time when politicians are viewed with derision and suspicion, Paddy Ashdown is widely respected and admired, even by his political opponents. This books shows why.

No other British political leader of the post-war generation could have written a book like this for the simple reason that no other modern politician has led a life as varied, adventurous and dramatic as its author. He is deadly serious when writing about the things that matter to him - his family, his country, his party, the Bosnian people whose cause he adopted when it was deeply unpopular to do so - but he also has a refreshing gift for seeing the funny side of most situations and illustrates it with self-deprecating wit and a wealth of anecdote.

A FORTUNATE LIFE: The autobiography of PADDY ASHDOWN is issued in hardback at £20.00 and is available at: http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6424003

Aurum is renowned for publishing some excellent military history, such as this next title:

To the Last Round: The Epic British Stand on the Imjin River, Korea, 1951 by Andrew Salmon.

This vivid narrative tells the story of the bloodiest battle fought by British soldiers since World War II in the words of the men who survived. Remarkably, it is the first - and only - book-length account of this legendary tragedy ever to be published.

To the Last Round: The Epic British Stand on the Imjin River, Korea 1951 by Andrew Salmon is published in paperback by Aurum Press and is available at http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6423994.

A sweetly-charming memoir of life in the Lake District is next on Aurum's list.

Hercules & the Farmer’s Wife And Other Stories from a Cumbrian Art Gallery by Chris Wadsworth which is a charming memoir in a similar vein to Gervase Phinn’s The Other Side of the Dale and Jack Sheffield’s Teacher, Teacher!

When Chris Wadsworth, and husband Michael, upped sticks in the South and moved north to the Lake District she had no inkling she was about to begin a new life as the owner of an art gallery. In Hercules & the Farmer’s Wife Chris tells their stories, and recounts the many other unlikely incidents –from the ghost in the garden and the mystery of the Purple House, to break-ins by agents of MFI – that make up life in a Lake District gallery. By turns funny, and others bittersweet, Chris Wadsworth offers a private view of the wonderful world she discovered when she made art her business.

Hercules & the Farmer’s Wife And Other Stories from a Cumbrian Art Gallery is issued in hardback at £14.99 and is available at:

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6511069

Our musical titles this spring include:

Journey of A Thousand Miles: My Story by Lang Lang with David Ritz tells the remarkable story of a boy who sacrificed almost everything - family, financial security, childhood, his reputation in China's insular classical music world - to fulfil his promise as a classical pianist. Born in Shenyang, China, he started playing piano at age three and started studying at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing at ten. At 15 he won a scholarship to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia; by 19 he was selling out Carnegie Hall.

Now 26, Lang Lang tours relentlessly, delighting rapt sell-out audiences with his trademark flamboyancy and showmanship.

Journey of a Thousand Miles: My Story by Lang Lang with David Ritz is published in hardback by Aurum Press at £16.99 and is available at: http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6511068

Next on the list, our sports book, and as usual, Aurum has some top-notch titles out:

In Pete Sampras: The Autobiography - A Champion's Mind by Pete Sampras with Peter Bodo, arguably the greatest player in tennis ever recounts his biggest triumphs, rivalries and personal trials. For the first time, his fans can get a real glimpse into what made (and still makes) this unique sportsman tick. He describes his the titanic matches fought, his relations with rivals such as Stefan Edberg, Andre Agassi and John McEnroe, and how he survived despite the media pressure and tragedies such as the death of coach Tom Gullikson from cancer.

Frank, insightful and passionate, A Champion's Mind is a unique and intimate account of what it takes to win.
Pete Sampras: The Autobiography - A Champion's Mind by Pete Sampras with Peter Bodo is published now in hardback by Aurum Press at £16.99. Copies can be ordered at: http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6490482

Another sports title is George Myerston's Fighting for Football. This book offers a unique take on the First World War, by looking at the story of Tim Coleman, a footballer who led the first players' strike, and played for Arsenal, Everton and Nottingham Forest. In 1914, Coleman joined up with the Footballers' Battalion and went to fight on the Western Front where he won the Military Medal. This is the first biography of this exceptional man who ended his life in obscurity as a window-cleaner.

Fighting for Football by George Myerson is out in hardback, published by Aurum Press at £14.99. It can be purchased at http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6511070

More football nostalgia can be found in Rob Bagchi and Paul Rogerson's The Unforgiven, which goes back to the Golden Age of British football, and more specifically the hey-day of Leeds United under Don Revie. Winning multiple trophies and titles, this Leeds United with players such as Billy Bremner and Jack Charlton was hugely successful, but also reviled and despised as no other team of the time. At the centre of the book stands Don Revie, eccentric and unconventional, who saw himself as the 'head of the family.'

The Unforgiven by Rob Bagchi and Paul Rogerson is re-issued in paperback by Aurum Press at £8.99 and is available on http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6487844

If football is not really your thing, but you are still looking for good sports books, try the next two Cricket-focused titles:

Bradman's Invincibles: The Story of the 1948 Ashes Tour by Roland Perry recounts that monumental and legendary Ashes series when the Australian team under Donald Bradman went a whole summer without a defeat.

Roland Perry's book is a comprehensive account of the whole tour, match by match, as this remarkable side - featuring great bowlers such as Lindwall and Miller as well as batting maestros like Bradman - moved from county to county, conquering all before them.

Published in time for the eagerly awaited 2009 Ashes series, Bradman's Invincibles is the definitive account of a remarkable sports team.

Bradman's Invincibles: The Story of the 1948 Ashes Tour by Roland Perry is out in hardback at £20, published by Aurum Press. It can be ordered online at http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6487843

In the same vein to Bradman's Invincibles is Gideon Haigh's fourth and final collection of cricket writing, published under the title Inside Out: Writings on Cricket. Here are extended pieces on cricketing greats from Don Bradman to Sunil Gavaskar, dissertations on the enduring significance of the Bodyline series, and the first auguries offered by Twenty20. By turns considered, sagacious, waspish and droll, this is another indispensable volume for anyone interested in how cricket works.

Inside Out: Writings on Cricket is out in paperback at £8.99, published by Aurum Press, and is availble to purchase on http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6511064

Golf enthusiasts will be kept satisfied, we hope, with Hacked Off: One Man's All-or-Nothing Bid to crack the Secret of Golf by Tony Lawrence. In it, the author takes one whole year off after being defeated by his nephew at golf to master the damn game once and for all. He goes to see a putting coach, a short-term coach, a golf physiotherapist, a nutritionist, a hypnotherapist and a professor of sports science. Somewhere along the way his marriage survives, despite the dents in the furniture and the holes in the carpets. And at the end of the year, will his efforts prove to have been worthwhile?

Hacked Off: One Man's All-or-Nothing Bid to Crack the Secret of Golf by Tony Lawrence is out in hardback now at £12.99, published by Aurum Press. Copies can be purchased on http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6493062

Enough of sports now, and back to more mundane daily matters, ie. commuting.

Aurum Press regularly publish The Guide to Commuterland in conjunction

with Daily Telegraph, and the new edition, by Caroline McGhie, is out now.

This is the indispensable guide to commuter town for anyone looking for a home within commuting range of London. Each section of the book follows one of the main lines that radiate out from London's termini, together with its branches and spurs, station by station. In total over 1200 towns and villages are described. In short, this book is a godsend for house-hunters who can quickly narrow down their search to focus on the areas that are most likely to meet their needs, without ever leaving the comfort of an armchair.

Caroline McGhie's The Daily Telegraph Guide to Commuterland is issued by Aurum Press in paperback at £14.99 and can be purchased on http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6511067.

CNN interview with the 'Muslim Bridget Jones', Shelina Z. Janmohamed

2009-03-12T17:08:00.001Z

Aurum's March’s releases

2009-03-04T09:35:00.016Z

Hardbacks out this month are:

The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia by Andrew Lih is one of the first 'biographies' of the first mass-market internet encyclopedia. Lih’s is ‘a story which challenges notions from neutrality, authority and ownership to civil liberties and the profit motive, to illustrate how people have created the world’s greatest encyclopedia'.

The Wikipedia Revolution by Andrew Lih is issued in paperback with flaps at £14.99 and is available at:

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6493063

The World in Six Songs: How the musical Brain Created Human Nature by Daniel J. Levitin is the eagerly anticipated follow-up to the New-York Times bestseller This is Your Brain on Music. Levitin describes how music played a pivotal role in the creation of human culture and society and illustrates how music is at the core of what it means to be human.

The World in Six Songs: How the musical Brain Created Human Nature by Daniel J. Levitin is issued in paperback with flaps at £14.99 and is available at:

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/simpleSearch.do?simpleSearchString=the+world+in+six+songs&searchType=0

Our release in Architectural literature is The Book of the Edwardian & Interwar House by Richard Russell Lawrence. This book describes the reasons for the building of houses in Britain during the Edwardian period and millions more during the two world wars. The first part of the book explores the styles and adaptations copied by builders and then individual chapters are then dedicated to elements of the house and decorative styles fashionable at the time.

The Book of the Edwardian & Interwar House by Richard Russel Lawrence is issued in jacketed hardback at £30 and is available at:

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6074729

Next to our paperback releases which include:

Crisis? What Crisis? Britain in the 1970s by Alwyn W. Turner tells the story the social history of Britain in the 1970s through soaps and sitcoms, music and movies, fiction, fashion and sport of the time seen through the eyes of the mass media.

Crisis? What Crisis? Britain in the 1970s by Alwyn W. Turner is issued in paperback at £8.99 and is available at:

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6485152

And finally, The Head Gardeners by Tony Musgrave is a nostalgic look at the head gardeners of Victorian and Edwardian Britain who were responsible for the transformation of horticulture into a profession. Musgrave also illustrates the recreation of garden houses and employment of up to fifty staff to create horticultural cultivation of great standards.

The Head Gardeners by Tony Musgrave is issued in paperback at £8.99 and is available at:

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6424012

BBC World Service interview with Shelina

2009-02-20T10:28:00.001Z

Click on this link http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2009/02/090218_arranged_marriage_nh_sl.shtml to listen again to Shelina Janmohamed's interview on the BBC World Service's Newshour on February 18th at 1pm.

The popularity of love, headscarfs and happy endings

2009-02-19T14:33:00.005Z

We are playing a little game at Aurum at the moment, called 'Guess how far up the rankings Love in a Headscarf has climbed in the last hour.' It went from about 2,000th position in the week before publication (already a pretty spectacular achievement) to about 800th the day of the launch, and climbed to 65th today. It is number 1 in the Islam category and number 2 in the Women's biography category - excuse me, I just checked and it is now number 1 in Women's biography. Amazon have just placed another order for more stock of the books with our sales team.

And it seems as though most of the publicity is only just starting. With a serial starting today in the Daily Mail, an interview yesterday at the BBC World Service and more to come before the end of this week, sales are set to climb sky-high.

One other thing: it is nice to find that it is not just the usual celebrity memoirs and ghostwritten chick-lit that is proving popular with readers nowadays. The success of Love in a Headscarf is proof for first-time authors everywhere, that if you have a story worth telling, tell it, and someone will listen.

Hot Dates and Headscarves - Interview with Shelina Janmohamed in The Guardian (18 Feb 09)

2009-02-18T09:56:00.003Z

Buses roll by outside, the day unfolding in a succession of sirens and shouts, and in her small flat in west London, Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is discussing how she came to find her husband. Janmohamed is better known as spirit21, a blogger who has provided a unique perspective on the life of a British Muslim woman over the last three years, addressing issues that range from the political role of Turkey to Jack Straw's comments about women who wear the veil. She is also now author of Love in a Headscarf, a book that hovers somewhere between chick-lit and memoir, as it follows Janmohamed's journey through the process of arranged marriage.

The memoir is irreverent and feminine: perhaps not the most conventional tone for discussing this topic. "I love chick lit," she says. "I noticed when I started reading it that it was very much about 'How do you find the prince?' And what I wanted to do was tell that universal story, but from the perspective of being a Muslim woman."

Janmohamed was always aware that her marriage would be arranged, and is frustrated by the common misconception that such unions bypass the desires of the bride and groom. "The Islamic view on marriage is that the man or woman should make an active choice as to who they want to marry," she says. "And there's no long-term dating procedure, but it's essential that the two people have met, that they've had as much discussion as they like and that they feel comfortable with each other."

Introductions are usually organised by parents and a designated matchmaker, but there was, she recalls, "a lot of frank discussion about what I would want in a partner" beforehand. She credits this with helping her to make an informed choice and teaching her about herself. "You look at your list and you think, 'Gosh, I'm so shallow!'" she laughs, "because it's ·'good-looking, tall, handsome . . .'"

In her memoir, Janmohamed focuses on the intersection between the cultural representations of love and the reality. "The big question I ask is, 'What is love?'" she says. "Because we all watch lots of Hollywood films, and it's always Prince Charming and you live happily ever after. And I still watch them, and I swoon at the hero, and I wish life was like that. But when you come from an Asian background it's different - it's all practical and serious, and if you fall in love at the end then that's very good, dear."

In the book's opening chapter, Janmohamed is introduced to her first prospective husband, and her expectation is that he is destined to be "Mr Right" - that the arranged marriage can exist in tandem with the rom-com. But as her search continues, she begins to recognise the disparity between these two ideas of love. "I think as you grow up and things don't work out as you think they will you get pushed to ask the questions - is my paradigm of the world something that is true? Are we shortchanged today because all we think about is romance? Or is the Asian tradition perhaps too staid?"

Janmohamed is keenly aware of how non-Muslims tend to view arranged marriage and Muslim women in general. She recalls visits to bookshops where she would find "shelves and shelves of misery memoir and all these women in black veils with camels walking in the background and titles like I Was Sold Into Marriage." She smiles flatly. "And the only other stories that we saw were of Muslim women who had somehow broken through this oppression, had decided that Islam was the source of it and had rejected it, and had gone off to be - and the only way to put this is in quotation marks - 'liberated'. And you know, this is a really serious issue, the idea that women don't get to exercise their free choice and are pushed into areas of life that they shouldn't be forced into: that does need to be addressed. But I think it's really important that as part of that wider picture of what it is like to be a Muslim woman there are some positive stories told." She lifts her hands. "I like being a Muslim woman!"

Janmohamed's parents emigrated from Tanzania in 1964, arriving with two suitcases, one son and £75 to their name. Their daughter followed soon afterwards, and was brought up in a fairly liberal north London home, familiar with her parents' culture and faith, while attending a local girls' school and mixing with people from different backgrounds. For many years she kept the three strands of her life - school, home and the mosque - quite separate, but finally began to reconcile them in her search for a husband.

This search began when she was 19 and studying at Oxford. The issue of education was an uncomfortable one, she recalls. Her parents had always encouraged her studies, "but there were people around saying 'Well, just make sure that you're not too educated because the men will be scared of you.'" Still, she stresses, this is another example of the universality of her story. "I think women generally have this idea that they have to giggle at men's jokes," she says, "and can't be too smart and can't make men feel like they don't know enough."

It took Janmohamed a decade to find the man she would marry, but today she hesitates to talk about her husband; she smiles nervously and explains that she doesn't want to reveal too much about the end of the novel. "What I will say is that he went through the whole process like all the others." During the years of her search she was introduced to more suitors than she can even remember, and the book recounts those would-be husbands who most influenced her thinking. "One of the fascinating things is that because the timescale is so shortened, you have to reveal yourself immediately. So within two or three meetings you would be saying, 'What do you want to do with the rest of your life? How many children do you want to have?' And actually I think that's very liberating; you know somebody very quickly.

"So there were men I would meet who were running very late and not think anything of it, not even an apology; and so you would think, 'That person clearly doesn't have any respect for me.' Or people who didn't want to spend any money, and I thought, 'Well, if you're not even going to spend any money to impress me at this stage, you're clearly not going to be very generous when we get married.'" More startling were the suitors who asked if she would consider not wearing a headscarf. "I found that quite shocking," she says, "because I wasn't forced to wear it, I'd taken that choice as an independent woman, and I expected of all the people in the world who would respect that choice it would be my husband."

The discussion of faith in Britain is, she believes, only just beginning. "I think in Britain it has taken a long time to be able to talk about these subjects - in the 60s and 70s it was about race, and you had to be very careful how you framed discussions about race. And now as we come into the 21st century that discourse is about faith. As Muslim women we seem to get stuck in the middle of this - because we look different," she says. "And I get really fed up with reading stories in the papers about how all Muslim women are oppressed. Even when I tell people I have a job and I'm educated and I travel round on my own, people still say, 'Well, you're still oppressed, you just don't know it.'"

"When Islam was first brought here in the seventh century it was extremely radical - which is a naughty word, you're not allowed to say the word 'radical' if you're a Muslim, because it means you're going to blow something up - but Islam was radical because the Prophet Mohammed said women are equal to men, black people are equal to white people, rich people are equal to poor people," she says. "I think Muslims look back to that and say to women, 'Look, you had rights that no one had anywhere in the world!' And that's right, but most Muslim women's lives are not like that. So Muslim women are caught in a gap; they're either told they're oppressed or they're not oppressed. But no one asks Muslim women what they think. And in the grand scale of literature, the voices Muslim women have are very few."

It was this want of a voice that convinced her to begin her blog, while working for a mobile telecoms company. "I started writing because I couldn't find anyone that was expressing a view based on critical thinking," she explains. "There's this view that the Islamic world is violent, oppressed and anti-democracy and all the other stereotypes. And then there's a view within the Muslim community - and we have to be honest about this - that says, 'The west is bad.' But I'm a British Muslim; I'm a Muslim and I'm from the west."

The success of the blog prompted people to suggest she write a book about being a Muslim woman. "And I would think, yes, I must, and it's very worthy. And when I sat down to write it I realised I didn't want to write a story that was 'This is Islam and these are the pillars . . .' People can read that in a text book. I thought I wanted to tell a universal story and the best story to tell is the story of love".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/feb/18/shelina-zahra-janmohamed-arranged-marriage

Love in a Headscarf is published by Aurum Press and priced at £10.99

Paddy Ashdown's A Fortunate Life

2009-02-17T10:40:00.003Z

As mentioned in an earlier blog entry, Aurum is preparing for the publication of Paddy Ashdown's memoir, A Fortunate Life in April. We were all highly excited last Tuesday when not just one, but two (!!) lords visited our offices - Lord Tebbit, here to see Jeremy Robson at Aurum's sister company JR Books, and Lord Ashdown.

Watch a clip of Paddy Ashdown chatting about his upcoming title and click on the link below the video to preorder a copy from Waterstone's.

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6424003

Comic fans listen up!

2009-02-12T11:21:00.001Z

Amongst Aurum's eclectic range of published titles, one of the quirkiest are The Leather Nun and Other Incredibly Strange Comics by Paul Gravette and Peter Stanbury, published in 2008.

The Orbital Comics Gallery will be hosting the INCREDIBLY STRANGE COMICS exhibition from March 3rd until April 9th which links in wonderfully with the book.

Gallery Address: 148 Charing Cross Road, London, WC2H 0LB

For further information and ticket prices, call 0207 240 7672 or email comics@orbitalcomics.com

Love in a Headscarf: A Note from the Author

2009-02-11T13:42:00.000Z

As a first-time author the launch of my book this weekend is an indescribably exciting moment. Indescribable is not a good state of being for an author, and yet it is the only appropriate expression for this moment of super-sweet anxiety. My book, “Love in a Headscarf”, will be published this Saturday on Valentine’s Day. As this is a book about love, both romantic and divine, I find this a rather charming and coquettish subversion of our now notorious Hallmark Holiday.

Love in a Headscarf is a light-hearted and humorous book that weaves between multiple layers of culture, faith and raw human emotion. It asks the questions that so many of us ask: what is love, and how will I find it? My search may have started in a different way to many people, and with a different perspective, but it is the same universal human search. At its heart it is the intertwined story of how I found myself, my faith, and love.

Love in itself is also complicated, and I explore the interrelationship between romantic love, companionship and Divine Love. The subtitle of the book “Muslim woman seeks the One” alludes to the enigma of this search, and how often we try to resolve the seeming contradiction of finding and loving a person, with the search and love for something greater than ourselves. The insight and discovery of Divine Love was a major part of my personal journey and the (re)discovery of my faith, and I wanted to take the reader on that journey with me.

These are extremely challenging themes, and I hope readers will enjoy the journey that we go on together through these complexities, but in a way that steps back from the seriousness, and just enjoys the humour and comedy of day to day life. Some of the stories I find quite unbelievable myself, and in some cases they are quite absurd but always very funny. Our modern angst can create some situations and ideas that can only be unravelled by reading someone else’s experiences of it – and sharing one from a completely different perspective is sometimes the best way to do it.

I have been writing for several years about topics such as British Islam, Muslims and Muslim women. It is an area of high emotion, and often of confusion, that bubbles up constantly in our public discussions. I was constantly asked to write about my experiences in order to make a contribution to the debate, but I wanted to do it in an unexpected manner, which is why I chose humour – not something for which books about Muslims are known. So this breaks the mould – so go out and read it, because it is a book about being a modern woman, a modern Muslim woman, unlike anything else, I promise you!

Most people who grow up with multiple cultures and narratives will empathise with the fact that life seems to be full of contrasts and contradictions. The most natural way to convey these is through humour, because comedy itself is created out of those unexpected and contradictory experiences. I also felt that humour was the most accessible medium to unravel serious stereotypes and ideas because, as Peter Ustinov said, “Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.”

I wrote the book in a style which was new to me, and so I feel both brave and nervous at the same time in revealing a new side of me as a writer. But I look back on the journey that I’ve been on in the book, and realise that the journey itself and the honesty with which it is described are courageous too. I hope that readers will pick up the book and laugh with me at my modern angst and neuroses, will empathise with it, but most of all will finish the book and say ‘that was a cracking good read.’

By Shelina Janmohamed, journalist, writer and first-time author of Love in a Headscarf (published on February 14 by Aurum Press, £10.99)

Harper's Bazaar Review of Love in a Headscarf

2009-02-10T15:10:00.000Z

Here's a review that appeared in Harper's Bazaar on January 23rd (with the link below):

http://www.harpersbazaar.co.uk/going-out/Love-in-a-Headscarf/gallery

"An Islamic spin on the ‘Looking for The One' genre. Hijab-wearing Shelina is Oxford educated, more than moderately religious and has told her liberal-ish parents that she's up for an arranged marriage. Unfortunately, her Muslim ideals clash with theWestern ideas of romance she has picked up from films like Grease. Part of you wonders why she doesn't just rebel against the whole charade yet it's also fascinating that she doesn't.There's also great colour from the likes of the ‘buxom aunties' who are present at every meeting, frowning and serving perfectly bronzed samosas."
(Aurum £10.99)

Love in A Headscarf

2009-02-04T13:42:00.000Z

On Sunday morning at 8am (for all you early birds out there),
tune into Inspirit with Jumoke Fashola on BBC London 94.9
to listen to Shelina Janmohamed,
first-time author of Love in a Headscarf.

An interview with Shelina will also be appearing
in The Guardian's G2 section during w/c 16th of February - I will update on which day exactly in the coming week hopefully - with further features and interviews expected in the course of this month. So keep your eyes and ears out for this exciting new voice in British literature!

February releases

2009-02-04T11:48:00.000Z

February sees the release of five exciting and varied books from Aurum, covering a range of topics:

Memoir Love in a Headscarf, written by young British Muslim Shelina Janmohamed, is her story of finding love, Muslim style. There is laughter and there is heartache in this modern and topical romance, as well as a fresh look at the life of a Muslim woman in the UK.

Love in a Headscarf by Shelina Janmohamed is issued in paperback at £10.99 from 14th February. You can order a copy at: http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6423987

We are also seeing the release of music biographies from two of the world’s greatest performers. Nina Simone: The Biography by David Brun-Lambert, is the first full biography of the jazz singer and songwriter. Brun-Lambert charts her life from when she was born, as Eunice Kathleen Waymon in North Carolina, to her fight for racial equality, and her self-imposed exile from America in 1970. This is the first book to tell Simone’s extraordinary story.

Nina Simone: The Biography by David Brun-Lambert is issued in jacketed hardback at £20 and is available at: http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6423998

Our other musical biography is James Brown: The Godfather of Soul, republished by us after being out of print in the UK for 20 years. Originally co-written by Brown himself, this is a frank, revealing and passionate tale of the extraordinary life of a truly legendary performer.

James Brown: The Godfather of Soul by James Brown with Bruce Tucker is issued in paperback at £8.99 and is available at: http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6424001

Into sport now and we have The Red and the White: The Story of England v Wales Rugby. Wales has a history of playing the finest rugby of all the home nations, but England has a history of enviable strength, and these two sides are known for their epic encounters on the rugby field. Huw Richards, rugby correspondent for the Financial Times, has chronicled many of the memorable meetings between these two since the 1970s, and shows that it is not just a contest between two teams, but a clash of cultures and histories as well as a titanic sporting occasion.

The Red and the White: The Story of England v Wales Rugby by Huw Richards is issued in jacketed hardback at £16.99. It is available at: http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6506457

Finally we have The Sharp End: The Fighting Man in World War II, John Ellis’s hugely successful study of the experiences of the fighting soldier in World War Two, originally published in 1980.

Ellis uses testimony from British, American and Commonwealth soldiers from all theatres of the Second World War about their training, attitudes and aspirations, the different landscapes and climates, and their reactions to the experience of battle. This comprehensive and detailed study is an essential for the bookshelf of anybody interested in modern military history.

The Sharp End: The Fighting Man in World War II by John Ellis, with an introduction by Max Hastings is issued in paperback at £9.99.

It is available at: http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6424011

Ray Harryhausen: Events

2009-02-04T09:38:00.001Z

In association with Aardman Animations Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton will be signing copies of their latest book A Century of Model Animation on
Thursday 12 March 2009 at 5.30pm
at Watershed, 1 Canons Road, Bristol, BS1 5TX

Following the book signing Encounters Short Film Festival present a
screening of Jason and the Argonauts (U) Dir: Don Chaffey (104mins)
at 6.30pm
Tickets: £6 (£4.50 concessions). To book: phone 0117 927 5100
or buy online at http://www.watershed.co.uk/

An Intern's Experience by Kathrin Malzkorn

2009-01-28T13:25:00.000Z

I have been an intern at Aurum Press for 3 weeks now, this being my last week. Today I would like to explain why I chose to be an Intern at Aurum. I am from Munich in Germany and am studying German and English Literature in my third year. Since it is obligatory in my studies to go abroad for six months, I came to London to gain some work experience in the English-speaking world. As a student of German and English it goes without saying that Literature and Publishing always attracted me and I would love to start a career in the hopes of eventually becoming an Editor. After already gaining some experience at Random House in Munich, I started working in London at Andrew Nurnberg Associates, a Literary Agency.

Now, after working mainly with fiction, I was keen on gaining insight into a non-fiction publishing house. I particularly dreamt of working in a place that publishes books I actually like and find interesting to read, because what fascinates me most about non-fiction publishing is the extraordinary possibility of bringing together a love of books and a love of what the book is about, may it be hiking or photography. Mainly attracted by the excellent biographies of Aurum Press – one of my favourites is ‘Conversations with Woody Allen’ – I soon discovered the broad range of books Aurum is publishing and what a challenge this diversity of books is for the editors here.

That is the reason why Aurum Press was, at least for me, the perfect place for an internship in publishing. During my time at Aurum I got to know the many processes involved in publishing and especially ways of promoting the final product. The highlight of every week is the editorial meeting. Discussions about new, creative and original ideas for books, marketing plans and publishing processes revealed how publishers work and which aspects play a role in their decisions. I loved the fact that the publishers really believe in the success of every book they publish. Their trust in a book or in an idea has been always the decisive factor whether books get published or not. This love and faith in their own books is visible in all of the publications at Aurum. If you learn as an intern how much work, effort and passion lies in each book, respect for the profession of publishing increases immensely. And the experience of being at Aurum has certainly increased my respect for publishing and my ultimate hopes for a publishing career.

2009-01-15T10:43:00.000Z

We are all very excited about the upcoming release of Paddy Ashdown's memoirs, A Fortunate Life. It promises an intriguing insight into the political landscape of the late 1980s and 1990s. As high representative in Bosnia - Herzegovina (2002-2006) and recommended for the role of UN representative in Afghanistan as well as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Lord Ashdown was deeply involved in global and British politics. This is a highly readable, fascinatingly detailed memoir of a life of a unique politician.

The Autobiography of Paddy Ashdown: A Fortunate Life will be published in April 2009 by Aurum Press and is priced at £20.

2009-01-14T15:28:00.000Z

After working on the look and style of the blog, which readers hopefully will find attractive, it is time to turn attention to the (even more) important stuff - the content. Every month I will update you on new publications with links to Waterstone's and Amazon. There will be updates on book signings and launch parties to coincide with book publications.

I am also very excited about getting some of our authors to write some articles for the blog, and am very pleased to say that Shelina Janmohamed will be the first to contribute to the Aurum blog. Shelina is the author of Love in a Headscarf, her memoir about finding love as a Muslim woman in Britain, which is out in February. She already runs a very successful blog called Spirit21 which was named Best Blog and Best Female Blog at the 2008 Brass Centre Awards (the link is on our blogroll). Keep checking this space for her article.

And finally, next to news, updates and author contributions, I am also planning some insights into publishing, particularly aimed at anyone with a keen interest in publishing who might be keen to know how things work at Aurum Press.

One last thing: both our January titles, Lucky Kunst and The Desert War, arrived fresh from the printers this week. Both look fantastic, and we are expecting big things from both titles. Keep an eye out for them in your local bookstore or order online (links below).

January Titles

2009-01-08T15:33:00.000Z

2009 is here with a number of great titles. January starts us off with two books, both ground breaking in their own way, on two completely diverse topics: War and Art.

Alan Moorehead's fascinating study of the 1940 North Africa Campaign is being re-issued by Aurum under the title The Desert War - The Classic Trilogy on the North African Campaign 1940-1943. The author was sent to cover the North Africa campaign by the Daily Express in 1940, and his experiences form the basis of his Desert War Trilogy which has become a classic of military history.

The Desert War by Alan Moorehead is issued in paperback at £10.99. You can order copies at http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/simpleSearch.do?simpleSearchString=Desert+War+Trilogy&searchType=0.

Lucky Kunst: The Rise and Fall of Young British Art by Gregor Muir is also out this month. This is the first history of the movement called Young British Artists (YBA), written by a man who knew Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas, the Chapman brothers, etc. long before they were famous. In this hilarious and picaresque story, Muir charts the course of these artists through ten years from their beginnings in Shoreditch to the establishment of the White Cube Gallery and the seminal 'Sensation' show at the Royal Academy in 1997.

'(Lucky Kunst)...explains really clearly and accurately what was happening at the time because Gregor was actually there.' Tracey Emin, The Independent (January 8th 2009) - Check out Tracey's full article on Lucky Kunst via this link: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/tracey-emin/tracey-emin-my-friend-gregor-and-i-fell-out-when-i-miaowed-during-his-inaugural-speech-1231753.html

Lucky Kunst by Gregor Muir is issued in paperback on 26th January at £14.99. You can order copies at http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/simpleSearch.do?simpleSearchString=Lucky+Kunst&searchType=0&Image1.x=19&Image1.y=5

Mary Whitehouse - A Very Strange Woman

2008-05-29T08:24:00.000+01:00

Back in the late-1970s the legendary anti-porn crusader came to my school to lecture us about the evils of the modern world, the moral pitfalls that we, as tender teenagers, should take care to avoid.

I asked her a question, in fact. Asked her about how absurd it was that the blasphemy laws protected a minority faith in a secular society. (This in the context of the prosecution she was mounting of Gay News magazine for blasphemous libel.) She didn’t answer, of course – she was too seasoned for the likes of me to get even to first base.

But two things stayed with me from her speech.

First, her obsession with communism. She argued that the Soviet Union was attempting to undermine capitalism, democracy and Christianity (which were apparently interchangeable constructs) through the medium of pornography.

And second, her belief that her campaign to clean the filth out of society had been successful. She cited as evidence for this the absence of satire on television, perhaps failing to notice that by that stage the Sex Pistols meant a great deal more to most of us than That Was The Week That Was. She was, I thought, too busy celebrating past conflicts to recognize that the country had changed, and that all the changes were, from her point of view, surely for the worse.

Amanda Coe’s play, Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story, on BBC2 last night, was equally stuck in the mud of an old battlefield. Centred on Whitehouse’s struggle to get a hearing from the BBC – and from her sworn enemy Hugh Carleton Greene, the then director-general – it was set entirely in the 1960s. And, as her friend Bill Deedes once pointed out, ‘The 1960s were rough times for people with the message Mrs Whitehouse sought to deliver.’

The Whitehouse we saw was thus an essentially impotent figure. Played by Julie Walters in a manner that was less Mary Whitehouse than it was, er, Julie Walters, she was seen as a thorn in the flesh of the BBC, but little more than a thorn. Perfectly true of the times, of course, but she became much more significant.

The play followed her from her days as concerned Christian parent into the birth of her more familiar incarnation as a self-publicizing complainer about pretty much anything and everything: Dr Who, Pinky and Perky, the lyrics of the Beatles’ ‘I Am the Walrus’ (not for its clear drug-fuelled consciousness, but for the use of the word ‘knickers’). And then it stopped. Which was a shame, because that’s just when she became really interesting.

Amidst all the headline-grabbing stuff in the early-1970s about Chuck Berry’s ding-a-ling, Whitehouse had a much more political agenda. The mass membership of her National Viewers and Listeners Association (VALA) was primarily motivated by a distaste for what was perceived to be obscenity, but she had no hesitation in using the platform this gave her to intervene in matters of party politics. For her, as for Roy Jenkins on the opposite side of the fence, permissiveness and liberalism skipped hand-in-hand.

So when Panorama had the nerve to ask some difficult questions of Northern Ireland prime minister, Brian Faulkner, she demanded to know ‘where the sympathies of the BBC lie in relation to Northern Ireland’. And during the three-day week in January 1974, called by Tory prime minister Ted Heath in response to an overtime ban by the National Union of Miners, she denounced the corporation for being ‘committed to polarisation of public sentiment in favour of the miners.’

There was just a hint of this in Filth, as Whitehouse complained about the BBC’s ‘propaganda for the left that verges on communism’. But mostly the play presented her as a single-issue campaigner. ‘Dearie me,’ she said, ‘we’re not political.’

And that simply wasn’t true. She’d first met her husband, Ernest (played brilliantly here by Alun Armstrong) in the 1930s when they were both members of the evangelical Oxford Group, later known as Moral Re-Armament. And although the Oxford Group was primarily and overtly religious, it had a strong political, as well, as moral, compass. Its founder, Frank Buchman, was so committed to the cause of anti-communism that he was even seduced by the ideological allure of fascism: ‘I thank Heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler,’ he enthused in 1936.

The Whitehouses shared Buchman’s passionate opposition to the Soviet Union as a godless, evil force in the world. Ernest Whitehouse believed that the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament prophesied the (temporary) triumph of communism, and his wife had no hesitation in seeing reds both under and in the bed: ‘They’ve infiltrated the trade unions,’ she argued. ‘Why does anyone still believe they haven’t infiltrated broadcasting?’

As VALA continued into the political turmoil of the 1970s, these attitudes – present from the outset – came ever more to the fore, helping to build the social coalition that would ultimately see the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

Whitehouse’s ability to win battles remained dubious at best, and the campaigns against sex and swearing on television were ultimately doomed to failure. But she did live to see a new right-wing consensus built in this green and pleasant land. And she even lived to see the overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe.

Which brings me back to that claim of hers that’s been baffling me for nearly thirty years now. Was she really saying that porn was fuelled by Moscow gold? Did she really believe that the controlling interest in capitalism’s most profitable industry was held by the Soviet Union, at a time when that country was not exactly renowned for its ability to foster enterprise? And if so, who’s funding it now, when the Internet is being deluged with porn from the democratic nations of the former Soviet bloc?

What a very strange woman she was.

Alwyn Turner author of Crisis? What Crisis? Published by Aurum Press http://aurumpress.co.uk/, order now from http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6074732