Publication date: 1994-06-01
Dewey code: 973
RRP: £10.99
Price: £4.99
Review MLK : The Martin Luther King, Jr. Tapes : Featuring Speeches given by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. / Soundworks,U.S.:
Publication date: 2008-04-14
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.77
Review Dixie Dean - the Forgotten Tapes / Trinity Mirror Sport Media:
Creator: Andrew Sachs
Publication date: 2007-09-07
RRP: £16.99
Price: £1.95
Review A Prison Diary: Belmarsh: Hell / Macmillan Digital Audio:
Publication date: 2006-08-03
RRP: £14.99
Price: £1.81
Review My Story (CD) / Orion:
Creator: Mike Read
Edition: Abridged
Publication date: 2003-09-01
Dewey code: 782.42166092
RRP: £14.98
Price: £1.95
Review Paul Mccartney (Beatles) / Sanctuary Publishing Ltd:
Publication date: 2002-12-06
Dewey code: 320
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.99
Review A Mad World, My Masters / Macmillan Audio Books:Some people just aren't cut out for the suburbs. As one of the BBC's top foreign correspondents, John Simpson has been at the epicentre of many of the world's flashpoints for more than 30 years. Afghanistan, Belgrade, Hong Kong, Baghdad; you name it, he's been there. And what's more, he hasn't just met the great and the good, such as Clinton and Blair, he's met the top bogey men, too. He's had Osama Bin Laden pleading with some Afghani guerrillas to kill him and his crew, he's interviewed Emperor Bokassa, Colonel Gadhafi and Arkan and had close up dealings with Saddam Hussein. And it goes without saying he was one of the first people in the entire world to see in the new millennium on the specially named Millennium Island, which the Kiribati government claimed just squeezed inside the international date line. Small wonder, then, that Simpson is a source of dozens of good stories. Many of these have been written up elsewhere in his autobiographical Strange Places, Questionable People, but there are plenty left over for this latest book in which Simpson eschews chronology and just sticks to some plain old-fashioned story telling, with sections on villains, spies, icons etc. Unsurprisingly, Simpson has a journalistic eye for detail and nuance and never holds back from telling you the things you want to know; so when he went to interview Bokassa, he managed to sneak a look inside his giant deep freeze to see if there were any human body parts. It sounds trivial but it isn't; in a strange sort of way the examination of the contents of a deep freeze can be every bit as revealing as an hour on a shrink's couch. [+]Simpson is a genial companion, not much given to introspection, and the book races seamlessly from anecdote to anecdote. And yet underpinning the narrative is Simpson's global malaise, a feeling that everywhere in the world is becoming more and more similar and that it's increasingly hard to find anywhere genuinely wild and remote. Simpson has been to many of those places, but the way he describes them makes them seem fairly similar in their own kind of way. McDonalds and the Gap may be thin on the ground, but there are bullets and danger aplenty. To have been to so many of these places is an achievement in itself; to have returned unscathed is a minor miracle; John Simpson has led a charmed life in more ways than one. -John Crace.
Publication date: 2008-03-19
RRP: £9.99
Price: £6.93
Review Ken Dodd: The Biography / Sound Entertainment Limited:
Publication date: 2003-07-07
Dewey code: 790
RRP: £10.00
Price: £2.74
Review Trowel and Error / Hodder & Stoughton Ltd:Trowel and Error is described as a "touch of the memoirs" by the author. Alan Titchmarsh is now a national institution; with his characteristic good humour and charm, he is unquestionably the country's number-one television gardener and presenter with even an unlikely reputation as a sex symbol (a reputation that started as a joke). Apart from his considerable gardening acumen, of course, he has also proved to be a novelist of genuine ability, with such books as Mr MacGregor and Animal Instincts. Communication is, needles to say, his special skill, and it was to be expected that Trowel and Error (the groan-inducing pun is all part of the Titchmarsh armoury), would be revealing and evocative. Titchmarsh announced to school friends of the age of 10 that he would be the next Percy Thrower, although those ambitions were, he tells us, fudged in some uncomfortable encounters with the opposite sex (Titchmarsh always picked girls who were taller than him, and the relationships didn't last). In fact his Yorkshire childhood in the 1950s is one of the most purely enjoyable parts of the book, with his stamping ground of Ilkley Moor the seat of his passionate love for nature. His first experiences as a gardener at the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew are full of the kind of quirky incident that makes his writing appealing. As his fame grew, Titchmarsh began rubbing shoulders with the likes of Nelson Mandela Julia Roberts and the Queen, and such encounters are highly diverting. Many a book conceals a rampant ego behind an "aw, shucks" manner, but Titchmarsh comes across as a genuinely nice guy-one who is self-deprecating. This is a truly engaging (and often very funny) autobiography. [+]-Barry Forshaw.
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2003-03-06
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £13.00
Price: £4.80
Review Head Over Heels in the Dales / Penguin:
Publication date: 2006-10-06
RRP: £16.99
Price: £6.40
Review North Face of Soho / Macmillan Audio Books:
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 2004-07-16
Dewey code: 790
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.20
Review Strange Places, Questionable People / Macmillan Audio Books:
Publication date: 2006-11-20
RRP: £16.99
Price: £13.97
Review Mixed Fancies / Simon & Schuster Audio:
Creator: Lorelei King
Publication date: 2002-11-18
Dewey code: 364
RRP: £13.99
Price: £6.24
Review Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed / HarperCollins Audio:
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2007-11-20
Dewey code: 792.7028092
RRP: £16.99
Price: £6.42
Review Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life / Simon & Schuster Audio:
Publication date: 2008-07-17
RRP: £16.99
Price: £10.19
Review The Smoking Diaries / Faber and Faber:
Creator: Gervase Phinn
Publication date: 2008-10-31
RRP: £9.99
Price: £7.88
Review A School Inspector Calls / Sound Entertainment Limited:
Publication date: 2006-06-05
RRP: £14.99
Price: £5.25
Review Sold to the Man with the Tin Leg / Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books:
Creator: Jill Balcon
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2004-07-01
Dewey code: 941
RRP: £13.99
Price: £9.98
Review Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self / Penguin Audiobooks:Claire Tomalin was born to write a biography of Samuel Pepys. Her previously acclaimed biographies of Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft have defined her as a scrupulous biographer who establishes a unique empathy with her subjects. In Pepys Tomalin has found her perfect subject, a man who is "both the most ordinary and the most extraordinary writer you will ever meet". Pepys wrote his diary throughout the 1660s, "a period as intellectually thrilling as it was dangerous and bloody", and Tomalin's book vividly brings to life the tumultuous world of 17-century London, where Pepys grew up. Pepys' life spanned the execution of one king and the restoration of another, and Tomalin elegantly recreates both Pepys' public and private lives. From his early days in London and then Cambridge, Tomalin pieces together the crucial years when "the private Samuel Pepys began to develop and yearn". She chronicles his rise through the bureaucracy of the restored king, Charles II, to his position as energetic reformer of the navy and successful husband to his vivacious, mercurial wife Elizabeth. But the book also deals with Pepy's personal tragedies, his struggle to secure patronage as a commoner, his frank and hilarious extra-marital exploits, and the cataclysmic Fire of London in 1666. This is a fine biography of an extraordinary man who "found the energy and commitment to create a new literary form" while also coming across as a generous, likeable, flawed human being. Tomalin's admiration for her subject is infectious, and will ensure that her biography becomes the standard reference for anyone interested in both Pepys's life and his art. [+]-Jerry Brotton.
Authors
- Matthias Uhl
- Henrik Eberle
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2006-01-15
Dewey code: 943.086092
RRP: £20.49
Price: £18.75
Review The Hitler Book: The Secret Dossier Prepared for Stalin from the Interrogations of Hitler's Personal Aides / Tantor Media, Inc:
Publication date: 2006-11-03
RRP: £14.99
Price: £2.62
Review Just Julie / Macmillan Audio Books:
| Models & Brands:
MLK : The Martin Luther King, Jr. Tapes : Featuring Speeches given by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Dixie Dean - the Forgotten Tapes, A Prison Diary: Belmarsh: Hell, My Story (CD), Paul Mccartney (Beatles), A Mad World, My Masters, Ken Dodd: The Biography, Trowel and Error, Head Over Heels in the Dales, North Face of Soho, Strange Places, Questionable People, Mixed Fancies, Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life, The Smoking Diaries, A School Inspector Calls, Sold to the Man with the Tin Leg, Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, The Hitler Book: The Secret Dossier Prepared for Stalin from the Interrogations of Hitler's Personal Aides, Just Julie |
