2005

Foreword by Roy Hudd OBE

Without doubt, the most entertaining, best written and superbly illustrated single volume available on British music hall.  During the three decades prior to the First World War, Marie Lloyd, Harry Lauder, Dan Leno, Little Tich, Ada Reeve, Vesta Tilley, G.H. Elliott, George Robey and many more great entertainers ruled the stages of Great Britain’s Hippodromes and Empires.  Richard brings them all to life again in this glorious book.

The essential biography of the excoriating and courageous American comic by his close childhood friend and “co-conspirator”, Kevin Booth, who has written an intimate and vividly insightful narrative of Bill Hicks’s brief 33 years of life in all its brilliance.  Kevin and other friends who travelled the stand-up circuit with Bill, reveal the subtleties, insecurities and character of this unforgettable man, who inspired so many of his generation of comics.

A teenage girl was found dead in 2003 on the Costa del Sol having gone missing on the night of a local fiesta. Her murder bore remarkable similarities to that of another teenage girl nearby four years previously, and the Spanish police slowly groped towards the awful possibility that they were dealing with a serial killer.  The author obtained exclusive interviews with all those closely involved for this in-depth investigation of the case.

Christine’s own frank and colourful story of her adventures in life, love and politics, which is by turns surprising, revealing and touching.  Married to former Tory Minister, Neil Hamilton, now a leading light of UKIP, these two stalwarts have emerged unbowed and undaunted from the many public battles, which they have fought together.

Where is the last chance saloon?  Who were Gordon Bennett and Smart Aleck?  Why do we have a hunch, get the cold shoulder, laugh like a drain, or get dressed up to the nines?  We use these phrases every day and yet have little or no idea where most of them come from.  Here Albert Jack takes us on a fascinating journey through the curious and often bizarre origins of hundreds of our favourite words and expressions.

In 1955, Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in Britain, was found guilty of murdering her boyfriend, David Blakely.  Ruth’s sister, Muriel Jakubait, tells us that behind Ruth’s glamorous lifestyle, there was childhood abuse and cruel manipulation.  In the shadows was Ruth’s jealous other lover, the controlling and duplicitous MI5 operative, Desmond Cussen.  It was Cussen, who taught Ruth how to shoot and clean guns, plied her with alcohol, supplied her with the fateful weapon and drove her to the Hampstead pub, where Blakely was drinking.  Ruth Ellis is a powerful story of deadly deception at the height of the Cold War.