"Where Freya Stark wrote of the Marsh Arabs, Elizabeth Warnock Fernea goes into the deep interior of desert Iraq in 1955, some fifty years later." A delightful, extremely well-written, and vastly informative ethnographic study, Guests of the Sheik is an account of the author's two-year stay in the tiny rural village of El Nahra in southern Iraq. To help her anthropologist husband gather data, Mrs. Fernea agreed to dress only in the all-enveloping black veils of the women of the harem. Although she shared a small mud-brick cottage with her husband, her daily life was spent only with the women of the town, for in this polygamous society there existed no social communication between the sexes. The hardships were many but the rewards greater, especially for the readers of this extraordinary narrative: this volume gives a unique insight into a part of Middle Eastern life seldom seen by the West and life of the women who have no outwardly apparent role in society, but whose thoughts and ideas are now emerging with force and helping to shape modern Middle Eastern society. "Lives are hard, repetitively hard and unrelenting in all respects. Men live by the goodwill and social standing of those a rung above. And they, by those above them. Tribal status among other tribes, and status within the tribe, dictate where a man may work, whom he might marry and how his children will or will not prosper. Honour is a concept as much alive then as it is today." Paperback, facsimile reprint of the 1965 original, 346 pages, small remainder mark.

The legendary mid-sixties partnership of Joan Baez with Bob Dylan, "the voice and the poet", is often thought to have been dominated by Dylan's musicianship and personality, but the author of this absorbing book suggests the opposite was true. Joanie rose to fame through her involvement with the civil rights movement, appearing on stage with Martin Luther King at the age of 17, and consolidating that success the following year, 1958, with her legendary performance at the Newport Folk Festival. When the family moved from California to the east, Joan enrolled at Boston University, though she was soon performing regularly at Club 47 which she helped to put on the map. She signed up with Vanguard rather than Columbia to avoid the glitter and fuss of the more established label, and colleagues remember Joan's sincerity and "unphoniness" in this early period. In the early sixties she was touring black colleges with unsegregated audiences, and in 1963 she started singing with Dylan, some of whose songs she had covered, at the Monterey Folk Festival. Their legendary Newport performance, preserved on grainy footage, established Dylan's stardom as it had Joan's four years earlier. Baez and Dylan continued to sing together in 1964, but in 1965 the cracks in their partnership became apparent, with jealousies arising and Dylan's insisting that he did not want to engage in active politics. In the late sixties Joan was arrested and imprisoned twice for protests over Vietnam, and with her sisters she modelled the poster "Girls say yes to boys who say no" - encouraging men to refuse the draft. At this time Joan married and became a mother. Baez continued to pursue a politically engaged career, visiting Sarajevo and other war zones, and giving her farewell concert in 2019. A fascinating read. 224pp, discography, black and white photos.

At Yeovil School of Art in Somerset from 1953-1957, Derek Boshier demonstrated the graphic abilities - via a sketchbook of pencil and ink drawings, some coloured with crayon or gouache - of local scenes and European townscapes such as Vourbourg, Amsterdam (fig.5) that have characterised so much of his subsequent work. These images, based on direct observation, have made a lively contribution to social realism. Boshier was the subject of the innovative 1962 TV documentary Pop Goes the Easel, directed by Ken Russell for the BBC's prestigious art strand Monitor. Boshier became a formidable figure in contemporary art, springing from the British Pop Art movement of the 1960s alongside Sir Peter Blake and David Hockney with whom he studied at the Royal College of Art in the very next booth. His engagement with politics and popular culture is notable through his work with David Bowie and The Clash, and in the 21st century he remains a challenging and vibrant spirit, regularly exhibiting new work alongside younger artists. The book title is named after Bryan Ferry's first song on Roxy Music's debut LP. It traces the artist?s career and subsequent abandonment of painting in the late 1960s and 70s during which time Boshier investigated assemblages and collage, book works, set design and illustration as well as photography, film and sculpture. This experimentation with fresh modes of expression included record sleeve and stage sets for Bowie, and the visually explosive CLASH 2nd Songbook, and his role in curating the controversial group show Live at the Hayward Gallery in 1979. Relocation to Los Angeles in the 1990s provided Boshier with rich source material. Hollywood, celebrity, tabloid culture, US foreign policy and technology are preoccupations, the latter manifested by the use of smartphones and apps as recurring motifs. Recently Boshier has created new film works using his iPad. The book features essays by leading academics, curators, critics and practitioners and includes 302 big bold colourful illustrations. A Thames & Hudson 2015 first edition, 24 x 29.5cm.
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The great actor Brian Cox is a gifted storyteller with a sharp eye and caustic wit and he drops in some big Hollywood names in his brutally honest account of his own failings and his love of acting and the profession. It is a treat and a privilege to be invited into his world as he pushes and pulls the rabbit out of the hat, switching from anecdote to diatribe to honest self-reflection and back to his original story before he interrupted himself. 'The affect is of undiminished curiosity and passion for life and work.' From Roman general Titus Andronicus with the RSC to media magnate Logan Roy in HBO's Succession, Brian Cox has made his name as an actor of unparalleled distinction and versatility. Growing up in Dundee, he lost his father when he was just eight years old and was brought up by his three elder sisters in the aftermath of his mother's nervous breakdowns and ultimate hospitalisation. After joining the Dundee Repertory Theatre at the age of 15, Cox could say the rest is history, but that is to overlook the enormous graft that has gone into making the legend we known today. A rags-to-riches seminal autobiography which captures his distinctive voice and his very soul. 374pp, colour photos. Large softback.

In the middle of the pandemic, one family moved from their comfortable modern house on a smart estate in Oldham, Manchester to a centuries-old farmhouse, surrounded by nothing but fields as far as the eye could see. So how did they end up on this 120 acre working farm in the Peak District? Kelvin Fletcher is a much-loved British actor who lifted the coveted trophy on Strictly Come Dancing in 2019 and his childhood sweetheart, now wife, Liz is a Voice Over artist and actor. With their two children they have appeared in BBC One's Kelvin?s Big Farming Adventure. Here in their own words is their remarkable story. In pyjamas and wellies, they chase pigs back into the pen and through the mayhem of kids and muddy troughs they begin a new life in the countryside. After just eight months, they had 40 sheep, three pigs and three alpacas waiting for their breakfast, and by the end of this book, a new baby was to make three kiddes, or would that be four with twins? And not forgetting Ginger the dog. 325 pages, colour photos.

With over 30 years' experience as a nurse, Anthea Allan thought she had seen it all, but with Covid came the greatest trial, personally and professionally, of her life. Thrust hourly into life and death challenges while on the critical care unit of St George's hospital in South London, Anthea processed her shocking experiences through writing. It started with an email to request biscuits, but her appeal to help boost morale of her fellow nurses soon turned into a series of astonishingly moving stories, detailing the realities of being a frontline worker. Soon her accounts were circulating far and wide, capturing the attention of the nation and being feted by the likes of Richard Branson and Good Morning Britain's Susanna Reid. "Not many doctors know how to programme a ventilator. It doesn't matter how many ventilators there are, critical care nurses are required to operate them. We don't have enough critical care nurses." These are deeply personal, moving stories with all the names changed to protect identities and privacy. Colour photographs include rainbow cakes, holding the hands of a patient delivering end of life compassion, her co-workers wearing their scrubbers' caps and a picture with her own daughter on St George's helipad. Anthea's book is a testimony to love, resilience and the human spirit. Includes colour photographs, 328 pages.

A multi award-winning non-fiction title of the year of 2022, this astonishing new portrait of the master of spy fiction is written by the woman he kept secret for almost half his life. John Le Carré led a life entirely constructed of secrets. First as a British 'spook' during the Cold War, then as a world-renowned writer of espionage fiction, but also in his personal involvements. He guarded his private life with fierce determination, so that even when he finally permitted his life story to be written there was still one element he insisted be excluded - the women. Married with children for virtually all his adult life, Le Carré (David Cornwell) had a number of secret affairs, usually conducted abroad with women encountered by chance on his travels. These relationships were always intense, dramatic, even tragic, yet each was destined to last no more than a few months. But there was one love affair that withstood the test of time - just one woman in all his life whom he took into the innermost sanctum of his writing and his heart. The book is the account of Sulieka Dawson's unique and enduring love affair with Le Carré, written with honesty and insight and shedding bold new light and an alternative measure of the man over the literary legend. The human heart is after all a mysterious thing. With lots of sex, clandestine assignations and luxury breaks, she candidly describes how this controlling man was needy of her special love. 340pp, colour photos on endpapers.

A fascinating insight into the golden age of 1970s and 80s rock 'n' roll told through the eyes of music legend Bernie Marsden and most notably his role in establishing one of the world's most famous rock bands of all time - Whitesnake. Touring with AC/DC, befriending The Beatles, writing one of the world's most iconic rock songs, this is the story of a young boy from a small town who dreamt one day of playing the guitar for a living and ended up a rock legend. Bernie's astonishing career in the industry includes tours in Cold War Germany and Franco's Spain to meeting and befriending George Harrison and touring Europe with AC/DC. It's a story of hard graft, of life on the road, and meeting and playing with your heroes, of writing the multi-million selling hit 'Here I Go Again' and, at the age of 30, Bernie leaving Whitesnake due to serious conflict with his management. This is something he explores in this memoir for the very first time. Packed with stories and encounters with the likes of Ringo Starr, Elton John, Cozy Powell, Ozzy Osbourne, B.B. King and Jon Lord, we drift back to a time and a place we won't ever get back again. The glorious David Coverdale writes in 2019 in his Introduction, 'Bernie quite boldly suggested himself for the band I was putting together after Deep Purple. He immediately established himself by playing and singing great, and bringing his excellent sense of derisive humour to the mix, which was a huge part of early Whitesnake... and our choruses inspired the creation of the Almighty Whitesnake Choir - ah, sweet memories. Bernie was truly an invaluable band-mate, friend, musician and co-composer of many of my favourite Whitesnake songs, particularly 'Walking in the Shadow of the Blues' and 'Here I Go Again'.' 274 page paperback with many colour and archive photos.

The frank and forthright wine critic is a renowned expert on organic and biodynamic techniques. Monty Waldin knows what he likes to drink, and knows how he likes it to be made, yet as his 40th birthday loomed, he found himself increasingly satisfied with just writing about wine. It was time he realised to put his money where his mouth is and produce bottles of his very own. Renting a vineyard in the foothills of the French Pyrenees, Monty has just 12 months to put his beliefs into practice and make a decent tasting organic wine. It could have ended in career suicide, and Monty faced that possibility with only a four-legged companion at his side, his ever-faithful dog, Harry. There in the notoriously unpredictable weather of the Pyrenees, as well as how equally unpredictable locals will react to having an English wine novice hanging around, Monty with his second-hand van purchased for just one euro which had only one gear and an aversion to roads began his adventure. It begins with a car crash which left Monty with a sort of back injury that his doctors ordered him to stay in bed with, just when he should begin digging. Published to accompany the major Channel Four TV series, whether you have dreamt of owning your own vineyard or just enjoy a glass or two of decent red, Monty is a wonderfully warm and witty companion who has clearly made lots of friends and learned all about chickens and geese and irrigation canals and has a lot to be proud of. With many sections of both colour and black and white photographs, 298pp.

From the Prologue: 'He'd taught his sons to reel in something that feels like Moby Dick on this boat. He'd accidently shot himself in both legs on this boat. He'd fallen drunk from the flying bridge on this boat. He's written achy, generous, uplifting, poetic letters on this boat. He propositioned women on this boat. He'd hunted German subs on this boat. He'd saved guests and family members from shark attack on this boat. He'd acted like a boor and a bully and an overly competitive jerk on this boat. She had been intimately his, and he hers, for 27 years.' Sub-titled 'Everything He Loved In Life, And Lost, 1934-1961', the book is a New York Times bestseller. Hendrickson has delved into the life of Ernest Hemingway and done what is seemingly impossible - present him to us in a whole new light. With poetic sensibility, he focusses on the period 1934-61, from the pinnacle of Hemingway's fame to his suicide. We see how, even in his most accomplished period, Hemingway carried within him the seeds of his tragic decline. Throughout this period he had one constant, along with the devils that haunted him his whole life - his beloved boat Pilar, built to his specifications in a Brooklyn boatyard, delivered to him in Florida, and then abandoned in Cuba towards the end of his life, when Hemingway was ill beyond recovery. The boat represented and witnessed everything he loved in life - virility, deep-sea fishing in all its competitive nature, access to the beloved ocean, freedom, women and booze, the formative years of his children. We see Hemingway in Paris, in Key West, in Cuba, in New York and so often on Pilar, or wanting to be. Hendrickson chose the close connection between Hemingway's life and the words that would wind up in the pages of his books - the fictions he invented about his life - how the darkness was always there and the joie de vivre. We see Hemingway with Maxwell Perkins, his friend and rival F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marlene Dietrich, his four wives and three children, and we get insight into his troubled son Gigi, a doctor who lived his adult life mostly as a cross-dresser, and died squalidly and alone in a Miami women's jail. He was the son Hemingway forsook the least, yet the one who disappointed him most, as Gigi acted out for nearly his whole life so many of the tortured, ambiguous tensions his father felt. 'We have a wonderful current in the Gulf still in spite of the changes in weather and we have 29 good fish so far. Now they are all very big and each one is wonderful and different.' - September 13th 1952. 534pp, illus.