Peter and Judy Cook were the stunningly attractive and brilliant epitome of the Swinging Sixties. Married to Peter for more than 20 years, Judy strips away the veneer and writes candidly about her life with the tortured, hugely influential comic genius, and his obsessively competitive relationship with Dudley Moore.
Les Cummings spent many years of his childhood in a local authority children’s home. Conditions were harsh, with terrifying violence meted out by some of the staff. Sent to live with foster parents for nearly three horrendous years, he was beaten, starved and sexually abused. He spent many days at a time locked in a cupboard under the stairs. His life was slipping out of control, until one day he found the strength to break free of his abusive past.
Have you heard the one about Winston Churchill being a druid? Coca-Cola owning Santa Claus? Alligators in Sewers? Or the Beast of Bodmin Moor? We all love a good story. But have you ever wondered where the urban legends, conspiracy theories and old wives’ tales we hear every day really come from? And whether any of them are actually true?
Private investigator Harry Lind doesn’t believe in ghosts and so doesn’t think twice about the ramblings of a drunken old hack. Little Grace Harper went missing over twenty years ago and missing girls can’t just reappear…or can they? It takes a brutal murder to make him think again.
A mother’s moving memoir of the hugely talented singer and songwriter, Kirsty MacColl, best known for the legendary Christmas anthem Fairytale of New York (with The Pogues), and tragically cut down by a recklessly and illegally driven speedboat off the coast of Mexico in 2000 at the age of 43
When Julie, Ann Ming’s 22-year-old daughter, went missing, she was certain she had been murdered. Despite extensive searches of Julie’s house and the surrounding area, the police failed to find her, but three months later, Ann was horrified to discover her daughter’s body, still in the house. A violent local man, Billy Dunlop, was tried for murder but walked free. Knowing he could not be tried again under the law of double jeopardy, he callously bragged about his ‘perfect crime’. But Dunlop had not reckoned on the steely determination of Ann Ming, who would make legal history by overturning the law, for which she received an MBE.
Foreword by Mohammed Ali
A bareknuckle fighter in the same league as Lenny McLean and Roy Shaw, Monaghan has an unbroken record of 114 fights. Muhammed Ali had this to say about the author: “Paddy and I have been friends since the early 1960s. He has a great story to tell, and he knows it. He has written from the heart.”
The bestselling autobiography by the enduringly respected business leader, popular for his incisive and witty contributions to the BBC hit show Dragon’s Den, explains not only how he got to and stayed at the very top of British retailing, but also how anyone can achieve their dreams in business by following his simple guidelines.
Abandoned at the age of 3 by her mother outside the gates of the Poor Sisters of Nazareth Convent in Belfast, Frances and her two sisters were left to the tender mercies of the nuns. Brutally beaten, worked like a slave, abused and molested, the convent regime stripped her of everything – her innocence, education and any self-esteem. But the hope of rescue or escape continued to burn inside her. Suffer the Little Children is a gripping and moving story of Frances’s determined and successful struggle in later life, to force an admission of guilt and an apology from the nuns who had tormented her.
Repeatedly raped, beaten, abused and battered from the age of 8 by a male relative, Jayne’s childhood was a living hell. One thing had kept her sane: the love and care she received from her older brother, Stuart. But he had demons of his own, and Jayne watched in despair, as he became increasingly consumed by rage with his wife, until, at a fateful Sunday afternoon barbecue, Stuart went berserk, shooting both her and her sister dead. Destroyed is a heart-stopping true story told by a woman, who finally managed to overcome her harrowing past, and establish a normal and happy family life for herself. A top 10 bestseller.
Mud, shells, flies, dinner parties and rats guzzling hair-cream were all part of the courageous life of this ‘unimportant officer’, Alexander Stewart, who fought on the Western Front in three of the bloodiest battles in history. His shocking, but absorbing and darkly humorous personal account was rediscovered by his grandson, the actor Cameron Stewart, who has written the commentary.