Historian Lucy Worsley visits Jane Austen's childhood home, her schools, holiday destinations and houses both grand and small of the relations upon which she was dependent, and the home she shared with her mother and sister toward the end of her life. In places like Steventon Parsonage, Godmersham Park, Chawton House, and a small, rented house in Winchester, Worsley discovers a Jane Austen very different from the one who famously lived a 'life without incident'. In this new biography, it is the story of Jane's life which shows us how and why she lived as she did, examining the rooms, spaces and possessions that mattered to her, and the way in which the home is used in her novels to mean a place of both pleasure and a prison. It gives a flavour of the accepted rules and customs of the period and familiar locations such as Bath. There are fascinating snippets of detail like how Jane and her sister wore pattens to protect their shoes from the mud, how Jane received £10 (the equivalent of £900 today) for her first published novel and how her father actively encouraged her writing, bought her a writing desk, created a room in which she could write and approached publishers on her behalf. With all of the television historian's enthusiastic interjections, and two sections of colour plates. 387pp, paperback.

Ruth Galloway and DCI Nelson are on the hunt for a murderer when Covid rears its ugly head. Can they find the killer despite lockdown? Ruth is in London clearing out her mother's belongings when she makes a surprising discovery - a photograph of her Norfolk cottage taken before Ruth lived there. Her mother always hated the cottage, so why does she have a picture of the place? The only clue is written on the back of the photo - Dawn, 1963. Ruth returns to Norfolk determined to solve the mystery, but then Covid hits and she and her daughter are locked down in their cottage attempting to continue with work and home-schooling. Happily the house next door is rented by a nice woman called Zoe who they become friendly with while standing on their doorsteps clapping for carers. Meanwhile Nelson is investigating a series of deaths of women that may or may not be suicide when he links the deaths to an archaeological discovery. He breaks curfew to visit the cottage where he finds Ruth chatting to her neighbour whom he remembers as a carer who was once tried for murdering her employer. Only then her name wasn't Zoe. It was Dawn. 'An intelligent and gripping recreation of those first weeks of lockdown in 2020.' 399pp, paperback.

In 1922, three men - only one of whom had previously heard of 'broadcasting' - founded the BBC. In doing so, Arthur Burrows, Cecil Lewis, and John Reith set out to accomplish something utterly bold: using what had been a weapon of war - Marconi's wireless - to remake culture for the good of humanity. 20 years later, when George Orwell famously quit the Corporation, he decided he was done 'doing work that produces no result'. Yet the BBC is now one of Britain's most beloved institutions. Stars once fainted at the microphone; now a select few spend their Saturdays waltzing for the nation's entertainment in front of studio cameras. From Daleks to Desert Island Discs, the BBC has blazed a trail for British entertainment. Yet it has also always been at the forefront of global change, both breaking and covering the most important stories of the century on Panorama and BBC News. The first in-depth history of the iconic radio and TV network that has shaped our past and present. Tennis from Wimbledon, the Beatles and the Stones, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth and the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Morecambe and Wise and Eastenders - for 100 years, the British Broadcasting Corporation has been the preeminent broadcaster in the UK and around the world, a constant source of information, comfort, and entertainment through both war and peace, feast and famine. The BBC has broadcast to over 200 countries and in more than 40 languages. Mixing politics, espionage, the arts, social change, and everyday life, The BBC is a vivid social history of the organization that has provided both background commentary and screen-grabbing headlines and now facing massive social change, streaming services and competition. Illus, 656 pages.

Sub-titled 'Fairport, Folk Rock and Finding My Voice 1967-75'. In this "droll and very British" memoir, guitarist/songwriter Richard Thompson describes the founding of the band Fairport Convention and life on the road in its heyday. Thompson grew up in a typical 1960s suburban house, with its radiogram and G-Plan furniture. Aged 11 in 1960, Thompson was inspired by Cliff Richard's backing group The Shadows to dream of owning a Fender Stratocaster guitar. His dad brought home a damaged instrument, mended it, and Thompson acquired a beginner's manual. His first guitar teacher, Pete, disappeared when the squat he lived in was razed to the ground, but in spite of setbacks, by the age of 18 Thompson was a competent electric guitarist. His break came when he met Simon Nicol of the Electric Shuffle Orchestra who lived in a big house called Fairport on Hampstead's Fortis Green. Renaming themselves "Fairport Convention" they performed covers of the Byrds and Lovin' Spoonful and started to get bookings. In 1967 Fairport opened for Pink Floyd, a gig memorable for the fact that Floyd's Syd Barrett overdosed on LSD and Dave Gilmour had to play his guitar parts behind stage. Record producer Joe Hopkins of Sound Techniques, who had stage-managed Newport when Dylan went electric, signed Fairport up at that gig. Soon they were doing weekly live shows at Speakeasy, where Jimi Hendrix joined them onstage a few times. Looking down on the Beatles as mere pop artists, Richard refused a birthday party invite from Paul McCartney but with hindsight was embarrassed by his snobbery. In 1969 a fatal road accident killed Richard's girlfriend Jeannie and their superb drummer Martin Lamble. The band eventually reformed and meanwhile Richard's songwriting reflected his new interest in spirituality. Following his marriage to Linda in 1973 the couple made a life-changing pilgrimage to Mecca. The book ends with the decline of folk rock, the end of his marriage and the search for a new direction. 290pp, paperback with colour and other photos including promotional posters and Fairport performing at the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music June 1970 and RT with Linda in Hampstead.

Set in 1979 amidst the blizzards and power cuts and struggles for Scottish independence and political unrest of the day, Cambridge graduate from Fife Allie Burns is working as a journalist for the Glasgow Daily Clarion. She runs into colleague Danny Sullivan on the train and they team up in an investigation into an international tax fraud which gets them noticed. Together they expose the criminal underbelly of respectable Scotland but risk making powerful enemies, but Allie won't stop there. She discovers a home-grown terrorist threat and comes up with a plan to infiltrate the group and make her name. But she is a female journalist in a man's world and putting a foot wrong could be fatal. With all the dark atmosphere of a rather gloomy Glasgow riddled with alleys and where much drink is taken, McDermid herself was a newshound at the time and it shows. This is her best book in years. 418pp in glamorous hardback with fairly large print.

One of the most beautiful and brilliant women of her time, Gladys Deacon dazzled and puzzled the glittering social circles in which she moved. Born in Paris to American parents in 1881, she emerged from a traumatic childhood - her father having shot her mother's lover dead when Gladys was only 11 - to captivate and inspire some of the greatest literary and artistic names of the Belle Epoque. Marcel Proust wrote of her, 'I never saw a girl with such beauty, such magnificent intelligence, such goodness and charm.' Berenson considered marrying her, Rodin and Monet befriended her, Boldini painted her, and Epstein sculpted her. She inspired love from diverse dukes and princes and the interest of women such as Gertrude Stein. In 1921 when Gladys was 40, she achieved the wish she had held since the age of 14 to marry the 9th Duke of Marlborough, then freshly divorced from his fellow American Consuelo Vanderbilt. Gladys's circle now included Lady Ottoline Morrell, Lytton Strachey and Winston Churchill who described her as 'a strange, glittering being'. But life at Blenheim was not a success. When the Duke evicted her in 1933, the only remaining signs of Gladys were two sphinxes bearing her features on the west terraces and mysterious blue eyes in the grand portico. She became a recluse, and the wax injection she had to straighten her nose when she was 22 had by now ravaged her beauty. Gladys was to spend her last years in the psych-geriatric ward of a mental hospital, where she was discovered by a young Hugo Vickers. Intrigued and compelled to unmask the truth of her mysterious life, he visited her over the course of two years and eventually published this marvellous biography, his first book, in 1979, two years after Gladys's death. 40 years on, he has now completely rewritten and revised his original biography, updating it with previously unavailable material. We enter the heady world of the upper classes at a time of great social, artistic and political change. 388pp, paperback with photos.

Funny, furious and foul-mouthed just as you'd expect, this Sunday Times bestselling autobiography is Billy Connolly's raucous run through his life. After 50 years of belly laughs, energy and outrage, and somewhat baggy pants and very long hair, Billy Connolly announced his retirement from live stand up comedy in December 2018. When he first started out in the late 60s he played banjo in the folk clubs of Scotland and between songs would improvise a bit, telling anecdotes from the Clyde shipyard where he had worked. He learned what audiences found funny from his own brilliant mimes to the power of speaking irreverently about politics or explicitly about sex, and soon the monologues got longer and the songs shorter. He never wrote scripts and created comedy freshly on stage in the presence of a live audience. Always with a beautiful sense of the absurd he riffed on his family, hecklers, swimming in the North Sea or naked bungee jumping, and he got away with it, his comedy spanning generations and different social tribes. 330pp.

The death of a 90 year old woman with a heart condition should not be suspicious. DS Harbinder Kaur certainly sees nothing to concern her in carer Natalka's account of Peggy Smith's death, but then Natalka reveals that Peggy lied about her heart condition and that she was sure someone had been following her, and that Peggy Smith had been a 'murder consultant' who plotted deaths for authors and knew more about murder than anyone has any right to. And when clearing out Peggy's flat ends in Natalka being held at gunpoint by a masked figure, well then DS Harbinder Kaur thinks that maybe there is no such thing as an unsuspicious death after all. Told with Elly Griffiths' characteristic charm, urbane and witty and hugely popular. 344pp, paperback.

Never underestimate Miss Marple. A movie star, a deadly cocktail, a murder. When glamorous Marina Gregg came to live in St Mary Mead, tongues were sure to wag. But with a local gossip's sudden death, has one tongue wagged a bit too much? As the police chase false leads and two more victims meet untimely ends, Miss Marple starts to ask her own questions. What secrets might link a peaceful English village and a star of the silver screen? The pieces finally drop into place with a satisfying click as Christie's ingenious plot and fiendish twists keep us hugely entertained in this cosy mystery. First published in 1962 and therefore with the somewhat now 'dated' vocabulary of the time, it is utterly charming. 280pp in compact glamorous hardback reprint.

A phenomenal bestseller from Britain's favourite cook in 1985, at last in paperback facsimile reprint but beware the glue on the jacket has gone brittle, but thankfully the pages are all intact. They are very heavy glossy pages with colour plates of such delicious recipes as Provençale Crusted Cod and Mozzarella in Carrozza, Braised Steak Au Poivre and Pork Chop with Apples and Cider, Chinese Stir Fry Chicken with Broccoli and Mushrooms and Chicken Tikka Kebab, Marinated Kipper and Potato Salad, Basque Eggs, Singapore Noodles and Michael's Mango Fool and Rhubarb and Orange Shortcake Crumble. Designed for healthy eating, here are solo soups, simply eggs, fun fish, one man's meat, prime pasta and rice, the lone vegetarian, singular salads and sauces, vegetable variations, and super snacks plus delicious desserts like Jamaican or Butterscotch Bananas, Muesli Biscuits or an individual Bread-and-Butter Pudding or Crème Caramel. Super simple, one to three recipes per page and easy for beginners like Leek Fritters or Mushrooms in Garlic Butter. 224pp, softback, colour photos.