Having judged Britain in Bloom for 25 years, trained at RHS Wisley and worked for the GLC before becoming a Superintendent of the Central Royal Parks and then Superintendent of Greenwich Royal Park, Jim Buttress is now a judge at the RHS. He presides over the country's favourite flower shows including Chelsea and Hampton Court and has been watched by millions on the BBC's The Big Allotment Challenge. But how did this practical gardener from Purley go on to have one of the most impressive careers in British horticulture? In his warm and funny memoir, Jim takes us from his boyhood obsession with Percy Thrower to his working life with day-to-day duties including anything from having a drink and a chat with the Queen Mother to working out how to water some elephants who had taken up residence in Hyde Park. Jim also reveals what it's like to exhibit and to win gold at the Chelsea Flower Show and shares his many adventures as a judge including a threat with a punch on the nose from the odd irate loser. 'I've spent the vast majority of my life working with some of nature's most beautiful creations, and it has to be said in some pretty incredible settings.' He is a warm-hearted knowledgeable companion through his 306 page story complete with many colour photographs from his own albums.

Radical statesman and MP for over 50 years, Tony Benn was the pre-eminent diarist of his generation. His political activity continued after 'retirement' through mass meetings, broadcasts and social media. He died in 2014. With an era of bland, professional and focus-group politicians, Tony Benn stood out as a magnificent figure. A genuine radical all his life, he was a fearless campaigner and a legendary figure in the Labour movement. He also penned some of the most memorable political diaries and is a mischievous wordsmith and a large-hearted human being who wouldn't mind if the whole world disagreed with him. He was the campaigning voice on issues such as the abolition of the death penalty, the case against the European Union, opposition to war and support of workers' rights. This volume brings together seven decades of his electrifying speeches, thoughtful journalism and passionate advocacy of ten unconventional causes. Iain Dale said, 'There will never be another diarist like Tony Benn. He is the primus inter pares of the genre.' Defending virtues of socialism and democracy, in a world growing colder, harder and more unequal, his inspiration will be sadly missed. 260pp.

Sub-titled 'From the Beat to the Screen, My Life As A Female Detective', here is the jaw dropping reality facing women cops. This gritty memoir from a former DCI and the inspiration for a legendary TV Detective Jane Tennison in Lynda La Plant's Prime Suspect, Jackie Malton was a no-nonsense girl from Leicestershire. She joined the police force in the 1970s, a time of sex segregation in the police force. Male recruits were given a truncheon and female recruits received a handbag. Jackie was determined to become a detective and worked in CID and the famous Flying Squad before rising to become one of only three female detective chief inspectors in the Metropolitan Police. She describes the struggles she faced as a gay woman where sexism and homophobia were rife and how she dealt with rapists, wife beaters, murderers, blackmailers and armed robbers. But it was tackling the corruption in her own station that proved the most challenging. She describes life in the Sweeney, the Fraud Squad and as a hostage negotiator and as a consultant on many police dramas including Cracker, The Bill and Life on Mars and of course revisiting the most notorious murder cases for the TV series The Real Prime Suspect. 'Searingly honest, shocking and funny.' Her final words are to express gratitude to the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. 302pp.

There are many women shaping the stories of the North of England right now like the screenwriter Sally Wainwright whose dramas Last Tango In Halifax and Happy Valley are redefining the type of roles available to northern female actors. Then of course there has been a female Dr Who and the brilliant Maxine Peake from Bolton. Cartimandua was a Northern queen, more powerful and cannier than Boadicea - what made one stay in the memory and the other disappear? Proud Northern lasses are celebrated in this comic writer's celebration of the queens of the north - warrior women, leaders, fighters, diplomats and rulers. Kate Fox takes us on a sharp and funny journey from rebels to writers, athletes to astronauts like Helen Sharman from Sheffield, the Woodbine-smoking football player Lily Parr and those who laid the ground for modern stars from Victoria Wood to Little Mix, Nicola Adams to Lubaina Himid. There is plenty of muck and bras here, Elisabeth Gaskell's North and South to Billy Elliot, the Full Monty via Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Kes, Coronation St., the working class politician Ellen Wilkinson who was instrumental in the Jarrow March, aristocrat Gertrude Bell who was the architect of modern Iraq, Sheila Fell, the Van Gogh of Cumbria and the outspoken Sunderland singer Nadine Shah. All of them hammering out their words, ideas and creations from the Northern cities, far from the centre of power. From the queen of the desert to Barbara Hepworth and plenty on the comedian's greatest heroine, the late great Victoria Wood. 291pp, paperback.

A bestseller on publication in 1985, this biography draws largely on the remaining 145 volumes of Cecil Beaton's manuscript diaries dating from 1922 to 1974 when he suffered his stroke. He began keeping a diary at Harrow, but destroyed it when he was about 20 because he was frightened that it might be found. He began his day to day diary at Cambridge in October 1922 and filled 56 volumes with closely scrawled material including his first trip to America from 1928-29, his year in Hollywood working on My Fair Lady, summing up a particular summer or weekend, an occasion such as the Duke of Windsor's wedding, and a fictional account of a day spent with his Delhi secretary Jean MacFarlane in 1944 which in fact was spent with his Cairo secretary Pamela Burns in 1942. In this biography, only the original manuscript diaries are quoted, especially when a published version also exists. Much of this material was at times unpublishable and it remains a candid portrait of its writer, and a valuable mirror to the many worlds in which he moved. Nothing has been changed from the expressions he and his circle used, many of which are no longer considered acceptable but they are as they were written at the time, some incredibly bitchy and snobbish and cruel. Cecil Beaton was not just a great photographer but one of Britain's greatest cultural icons who captured some of the most celebrated portraits of the 20th century and was also a designer of the iconic sets and costumes for the films My Fair Lady and Gigi. In 1980, he personally chose Hugo Vickers to be his biographer and entrusted him with his vast collection of diaries and letters written both personally and professionally over the course of his life. Drawing on five years of intensive research and interviews with the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Truman Capote, Princess Grace of Monaco and Sir John Gielgud, the biography explores Beaton's metamorphosis from being the child of a staid middle class family to an international figure mingling with the glittering stars of his age and detailing his great love for Greta Garbo and his private sense of failure. Republished 2020 paperback with Beaton family tree, 804pp, eight pages of colour and black and white photos.

Award-winning biographer and leading authority on royalty Andrew Morton turns his attention to our late Queen and her sister Margaret. 'Margaret had a confession to make. She told her sister that she had fallen in love with Group Captain Peter Townsend, their father's former equerry who now enjoyed the ancient title of Comptroller of the Queen Mother's Household... Tall, slim with piercing flinty grey-blue eyes and an unwavering gaze, he was every inch the matinee idol - and a bona fide war hero to boot.' He was one of 'The Few', a Battle of Britain pilot who had saved the nation from Nazi conquest. But Peter was almost sixteen years Margaret's senior and had two boys of school age and was soon to be a divorcee. Margaret must obtain the Queen's permission before she married any man but both sisters knew that the teachings of their church were hostile to divorce. They were the closest of sisters and the best of friends, but when, in a quixotic twist of fate, their uncle Edward VII decided to abdicate the throne, the dynamic between the sisters was dramatically altered. Margaret would for ever more have to curtsey to the sister she called Lilibet and bow to her wishes. Elizabeth would always look upon her younger sister's antics with a kind of stoical amusement, but Margaret's struggles to find a place and position within the royal system was often a source of tension. Morton uncovers the hidden truths about the infamous romance between Princess Margaret and Townsend and whether she was really forced to choose between love and livelihood. The sisters? education was conducted at home, usually at Buckingham Palace with its 775 rooms and a staff of more than 700, their lives strictly protected and they rarely played with other children. Elizabeth was serious, Margaret affectionate, pretty and playful. From the idyll of their early childhoods, through their hidden wartime lives, into the divergent paths they took following their father's death and Elizabeth's accession to the throne, Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh plays an important role in this collective biography. Insightful and informative, there is never a dull page. 384pp, 16 pages of colour and black and white photos. Contents same as 93915.

There was a widespread sense of loss when Victoria Wood died in 2016 while working on her biography, but as part of the research for that book 'Let's Do It', the critically acclaimed Sunday Times bestseller, her official biographer Jasper Rees uncovered a treasure chest of unseen work. From Victoria's first piece of comic prose for the school magazine, through to material written for the great TV shows of her maturity, this joyful hoard of unreleased material spans nearly half a century. Here are sketches, songs, stand-up monologues that no one else could have written, details of her university days in Birmingham in 1971, dialogues and exchanges at the bus stop complete with stage directions like 'Ext. The canal bridge. The man stands smoking. He finishes his cigarette, grinds it out on the bridge wall, throws it into the water and walks in the direction of his room. Int. School room the morning after the party...' 'Dorothy sees herself in black satin except Dorothy's got nothing to pop from the sort sexy ladies pop out of.' And there are rare photos in colour and black and white including the Bush Theatre 1978 where Victoria Wood and Julie Walters performed for the first time together from among the dozens of private album snapshots included. 285pp, illus.

'He has great gifts as a psychologist and excellent insight into the Continental mind.' In the darkest days of the Second World War, with Europe falling under German occupation in 1935 and Britain facing invasion, a 36-year-old refugee from the Nazis, Louis de Wohl, made a curious offer to British Intelligence. His popular autobiography was filled with name dropping of minor European royalty and Hollywood moguls. Based on the widely-held belief that Hitler's every action was guided by his horoscope, de Wohl claimed he could reveal precisely what advice the Fuhrer's astrologers were giving him. Rather than being dismissed out of hand as a crank, Churchill could see de Wohl's worth for himself. He was subsequently made an army captain and quartered in the Grosvenor House Hotel, from where he passed detailed astrological readings to the War Office and Naval Intelligence, before being transferred to work for the SOE in the United States. Was it possible that senior military and naval intelligence officers could take the ancient and arcane practice of astrology seriously? Was de Wohl genuine or merely a charlatan and imposter? When he began his involvement with MI5 in 1938 and British Intelligence in 1940 he was already a successful practising astrologer to London's 'great and good.' James Parris examines the evidence, including recently released files, and reaches remarkable conclusions about this bizarre aspect of the war. Archive photos, 288 pages.

A lavishly illustrated art compendium and biography of Arthur Barbosa, the artist who, over more than 60 years, provided dust jackets for some of the 20th century's most famous authors of fiction, including Georgette Heyer, Doris Leslie, C. S. Forester, Patrick O'Brian, Joanna Trollope, Graham Greene, Sax Rohmer, Jules Verne, Anthony Powell, Lytton Strachey and, of course, George MacDonald Fraser. Born in Liverpool, he moved to London at the end of the 1920s where he became a noted and respected illustrator and commercial artist. A lifelong friend of Rex Harrison, he also numbered among his friends and acquaintances Cecil Beaton, Frederick Ashton, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Living in London during the Jazz Age and WWII, he grew old in a small Kentish village. He married three times and moved with the movers and shakers in '30s London. An accomplished interior designer, he was also an expert in the esoterica of military uniforms which shows in his splendid colourful artworks, posters for example Scott & Bailey 1922 Diamond Jubilee, murals and adverts as well as prized book jackets for romances and children's books, diversions of young and old on cycling, duelling, Brighton Regent's Resort and page after page of glamorously decorated military men and more recently on bottles of port and sherry from Tescos! Heavyweight tome, 23 x 30cm packed with colour illus. and hundreds of line artworks and engravings on glossy paper. Collector's item. 350 pages.
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Award-winning biographer and leading authority on royalty Andrew Morton turns his attention to our late Queen and her sister Margaret. 'Margaret had a confession to make. She told her sister that she had fallen in love with Group Captain Peter Townsend, their father's former equerry who now enjoyed the ancient title of Comptroller of the Queen Mother's Household... Tall, slim with piercing flinty grey-blue eyes and an unwavering gaze, he was every inch the matinee idol - and a bona fide war hero to boot.' He was one of 'The Few', a Battle of Britain pilot who had saved the nation from Nazi conquest. But Peter was almost sixteen years Margaret's senior and had two boys of school age and was soon to be a divorcee. Margaret must obtain the Queen's permission before she married any man but both sisters knew that the teachings of their church were hostile to divorce. They were the closest of sisters and the best of friends, but when, in a quixotic twist of fate, their uncle Edward VII decided to abdicate the throne, the dynamic between the sisters was dramatically altered. Margaret would for ever more have to curtsey to the sister she called Lilibet and bow to her wishes. Elizabeth would always look upon her younger sister's antics with a kind of stoical amusement, but Margaret's struggles to find a place and position within the royal system was often a source of tension. Morton uncovers the hidden truths about the infamous romance between Princess Margaret and Townsend and whether she was really forced to choose between love and livelihood. The sisters' education was conducted at home, usually at Buckingham Palace with its 775 rooms and a staff of more than 700, their lives strictly protected and they rarely played with other children. Elizabeth was serious, Margaret affectionate, pretty and playful. From the idyll of their early childhoods, through their hidden wartime lives, into the divergent paths they took following their father's death and Elizabeth's accession to the throne, Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh plays an important role in this collective biography. Insightful and informative, there is never a dull page. 384pp, 16 pages of colour and black and white photos. Contents same as 94056.