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.

Sub-titled 'Prince Philip's Life in His Own Words', at the age of 21 he wrote to a relative: 'I know you will never think much of me. I am rude. But it is fun' he added prophetically. He complained to a friend: 'I am nothing but a bloody amoeba. I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his children.' And he once remarked 'Constitutionally, I don't exist.' 'I would have been of great value to the Queen to have someone who was, in a sense, professionally qualified in something, not just traipsing around.' The worst part about marrying British royalty for Prince Philip was having to give up his career in the Navy. When pressed for his secret for handling so many public appearances, he shot back to the interviewer: 'I never pass up a chance to go to the loo or take a poo.' 'One reason I took up carriage driving is that I like watching the ponies doing all the work' the self-confessed 'pretty idle' Prince Philip once said. Despite his reputation for never suffering fools gladly, he said that after 50 years he had learned to suffer fools 'with patience' and even humour. This affectionate self-portrait brings together the best of his blunt speech making, his mocking of the media and captains of industry, fond teasing of Her Majesty himself and a host of less well-known stories about the Prince to give a fascinating firsthand insight into the royal world as a 'fella who belongs to Mrs Queen'. Bibliophile misses our dear Royal Warrant grantor. 192pp, paperback.

Drawing on his rich private archive, these essays illuminate not only Trevor-Roper's own career, but the preoccupation and values of a generation shaped by the struggle against Hitler and then by the Cold War. More than any other historian of his generation, Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914-2003) remains a vitalising intellectual presence in Britain and beyond. Convinced of the historian's duty to inform the public mind, he traversed the boundaries of professional specialisation in search of broad conclusions that would bring an historical dimension to contemporary thought and debate. He addresses a wide range of subject matter as well as exploring recurrent features of his work: his belief in controversy, his espousal of unconventional opinions, his literary sensibility, and his exhilarating prose. There is particular attention on British and European history from the Renaissance, through the wars of religion to the Enlightenment and the Second World War. After this research and his own career in wartime intelligence, he produced his most famous book 'The Last Days of Hitler'. Chapters include The Puritan Revolution, Ecumenism and Erasmianism: The Wiles Lectures 1975, The Politics of Scottish Enlightenment, The Special Service in Germany and Himmler's Masseur Gina Thomas among them. 352pp in large softback.