4 Biography / Autobiography


68894 A YEAR IN ARCHITECTURE


This gorgeous, inspirational book is a diary with a difference: each date (it can be used any year) is illustrated by a masterpiece of world


architecture, accompanied by a thought-provoking quotation from a great writer. The first day of the year opens with the Taj Mahal and a quotation from Ruskin. The 1928 Chrysler Building, the 2004 Sage, Gateshead, and Zaha Hadid’s BMW plant in Leipzig are superbly photographed side by side with older buildings such as the 12th century Abbey of Cluny, the 17th century Bridge of Sighs in Venice (to the accompaniment of a quotation by Byron), the 10th century Medina at Córdoba and the 9th century Buddhist Borobudur Temple in Indonesia. Quotations are from Goethe, Nietzsche, Dryden, Buddha, Frank Lloyd Wright, Coleridge, Aristotle, Piranesi and numerous others, and they all surprise and delight. Colour illus. A book to treasure in heavy landscape format, with one double spread for each day of the year. £24.95 NOW £9.50


68698 FRA ANGELICO by Diane Cole Ahl


Born in Mugello, Tuscany, as Guido di Pietro, Fra Angelico (c.1395-1455) was given the name by which he is known by his Dominican Order, who called him Angelicus pictor (angelic painter), on account of both his skill and piety. Dedicating his life and talent to the service of God, the friar painted altarpieces, frescoes and manuscripts of supreme beauty for over four decades. He is today one of the most celebrated painters of the early Italian Renaissance, whose works still resonate with religious sensitivity, and was formally beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1982. Here we have a sumptuous and comprehensive study of his entire career. In 240 10"×11½” pages of heavyweight paper it presents all of Fra Angelico’s most famous works, mostly full page or double page spread, and sets them all in their full historical and cultural context. The level of detail in both the reproductions and the minutiae of his life and career is quite astounding, and there are appendices featuring digital reconstructions of the churches and priories where his altarpieces and frescoes were originally created, mini- biographies of important people in his life story, a life chronology and context of events, a glossary with map. 166 colour reproductions. First time discounted. £39.95 NOW £30


66937 DECORATIVE ARTS edited by Jakob Heinrich von Hefner-Alteneck


When Kunstwerke und Geräthschaften des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (1852-1863) was published, what purchasers in fact bought was a small printed museum of unusual treasures. With 216 hand-coloured copperplate engravings, the publication gives a comprehensive overview of applied arts in Europe from the 9th to the 16th centuries. The objects presented comprise furniture, metalwork, jewellery, tapestries, and works of bookbinding. Carefully selected masterpieces such as the gilt Corvinus goblet, an enamelled saltcellar and medieval ivory combs are depicted, along with a decorative sword, now lost. The editor Jakob Heinrich von Hefner-Alteneck (1811-1903) was head of the Royal Cabinet of Prints and Drawings in Munich. The signatures on the plates show that most of the illustrations stem from the hand of artist Jakob Heinrich von Hefner-Alteneck and he can therefore be considered as the work’s main draughtsman. Considering that Becker died before the completion of the work, the most influential figure behind it was undoubtedly Hefner- Alteneck. By selecting masterpieces from public and private collections, and reproducing them faithfully in pictures, the editors created a document of artistic quality in itself which also provides evidence of works which have since been lost. This new edition gives more than a glimpse of the treasure chambers of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This complete reprint was created on the basis of an original copy in the Württembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart. 12" x 17", 408 pages. Text in English, French, German. ONLY £88


BIOGRAPHY / AUTOBIOGRAPHY


Life is not being told a man has just waxed the floor.


- Ogden Nash


69468 ALL IN ONE BASKET: Nest Eggs


by Deborah Devonshire The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, once chatelaine of Chatsworth, combines two of her most popular books, Counting My Chickens and Home to Roost, with some new material to delight readers who rejoice in observant, skilful and very often laugh-out-loud prose. She tackles a broad range of


subjects from marble mania through changing language and cold houses to President Kennedy’s funeral without ever losing either her sense of humour or her effortless style. En route, the reader is treated to glimpses of her Mitford childhood, wonderings about who tourists actually are and a hilarious account of a journey from Inchkenneth, an island off the coast of Mull, to Oxfordshire, by train, accompanied by two dogs and a goat. Nothing seems to rattle the lady, even milking the goat in the First Class Waiting Room although she has only a Third Class ticket. An endearing collection of anecdotes from a lovable author. 359 pages with witty line drawings by Will Topley. Introduced by Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett. £20 NOW £10


69498 SELECTIVE MEMORY: An


Autobiography by Katherine Whitehorn Here is the warm hearted, honest journalist who wrote in the Observer in 1963 about taking garments back out of the clothes baskets ‘because it had become, relatively, the cleaner thing.’ It was an article which discussed how ‘we sluts could outwit our doomed conditions’. One correspondent said that hers was the only baby in Ruislip


with blue nappies, another had found she was wiping the kitchen table with the kitten. Katherine Whitehorn, the star columnist, railed against those who thought women were ‘only born to breed and bake’. She tackled the problems of children and money, food and hospitals, divorce and discrimination, she finessed the holding of glass, plate, handbag, gloves and fork in one hand at cocktail parties and helped abolish the distinction between ‘women’s writing’ and anything considered serious. From her childhood in Mill Hill, North London, to six schools here and there, two universities, about a dozen jobs, two families in some ways, and a long career in journalism until her relatively recent death, here is her long and happy life with the thriller writer Gavin Lyall and their two sons. A splendidly engaging autobiography. 269pp in paperback with photos. £8.99 NOW £4


69449 WHERE KINGCUPS GREW: A Westcountry


Childhood by Lewis Wilshire Wilshire’s gentle humour has charmed his readers for well over half a century in his broadcasts on BBC Radio Bristol and Somerset Sound and through his many books and newspaper articles. Here is his personal selection of stories about his childhood, largely spent with his beloved Gran and Granfer in their


Soundwell cottage, which was at the time well beyond the outskirts of Bristol. We meet his eccentric relations and childhood companions in a now-lost landscape of Methodism and hardships amid the stone-walled meadows where kingcups once grew. Beautifully decorated pages with cameos, sepia photographs and line art, there is a treat and a delight on every page as we go along with father and mother on a day out at Tintern Abbey, meet farmers, nanny, Aunt Anne, the stone-waller and read the incredible story of Uncle Joe’s teeth. 192pp in paperback. £9.95 NOW £3


69510 WHAT’S THA UP TO? Memories of a Yorkshire


Bobby by Martyn Johnson Johnson was a ‘beat bobby’ with the Sheffield City Police Force for seven years before he was seconded to CID and here he looks back at the very early 1960s, the colourful streets and the camaraderie which was second to none at the time. ‘I turned boys into men and policemen into coppers,’ said the


sergeant. ‘Policemen have got brains, but coppers, they’ve got brains and common sense.’ No two days were ever the same for the bobby-on-the-beat; come rain or shine he patrols his patch with a sharp eye for troublemakers and a kind word for those in need of a friend. Whether he was pursuing unlikely coal thieves, tracking down peacocks gone AWOL or investigating mysterious flying saucers over Sheffield, Sergeant Johnson faced every new challenge with a smile. Told with self deprecating northern humour, wit and some colourful local language. 248pp in paperback. £5.99 NOW £3


69481 EDITH CAVELL by Diana Souhami


The renowned First World War nurse Edith Cavell was the war’s true angel of mercy and here her story is related by a first-rate biographer. ‘Souhami deftly demonstrates the trials of making a living as a nurse and cleaving a career in the expanding world of ‘white blouse labour’ in the late 19th century. Edith Cavell remains an enigma...’ - FT. Edith Cavell was a pioneering


nurse who tragically became a war hero. On 20th August 1914, she watched 50,000 German soldiers march into Brussels. Nothing in her Victorian upbringing as the vicar’s daughter in a small Norfolk village, nor her nursing career, had prepared her for the subversion of her new life as a Resistance worker. ‘Deeply regret to inform you that Miss Edith Cavell has been executed by German authorities on charge of assisting escape of British soldiers. She died as she lived devoted to the service of her country.’ Her biographer vividly evokes a culture of public duty and Christian sacrifice which today we have lost. 478pp in paperback with illus. £8.99 NOW £4.50


69488 HAROLD MACMILLAN by Charles Williams The author is otherwise known as Lord Williams of Elvel, former industrialist and Labour peer and one of Britain’s most distinguished biographers. His subject, Harold Macmillan, was a figure of paradox. Outwardly, it was his Edwardian elegance and civilised urbanity. Inwardly, it was emotional damage from his wife’s open adultery. He was a courageous soldier in the First World War and from then on it was


politics rather than the family business of publishing which was to be his future. Appointed Minister in Residence in North Africa, his career flowered and he became indispensible to Conservative cabinets and as Churchill’s Minister of Housing in the early 1950s he achieved the target of building 300,000 houses annually. Over the Suez affair in 1956 he played a difficult and somewhat devious hand and Eden’s resignation left him as the clear choice of his cabinet colleagues to become Prime Minister, a position he held from 1957 to 1962. A fluid and engaging chronicle of man and the times. 548pp in paperback with many photos. £14.99 NOW £6


69499 SMOKE IN THE LANES by Dominic Reeve


Subtitled Happiness and Hardship on the Road with the Gypsies in the 1950s, Dominic Reeve describes his life among the gypsies - the feuds and fairs, and the joyful muddy squalor of an outdoor existence. In the 1950s the Romani people lived on the brink of great change. In their brightly painted wooden wagons, they journeyed between


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horse-fairs and traditional stopping-places - stoic, humorous and wild, often poverty-stricken but protective of their freedom, they lived on the fringes of a society that was soon to close around them. Reeve evokes an unforgettable cast of fireside characters - bold children, fierce matriarchs and dandyish villains in snap-brimmed hats, and tells the sharp deals done and rings run around country policeman. Plus the love affairs, dances and open air feasting in his unsparing record of a disappeared world. 343pp in paperback. £5.99 NOW £3.25


69520 HIDDEN ROADS: A


Memoir of Childhood by Kevin Crossley-Holland A luminous memoir from a poet and classic children’s author who revisits the foreign land of childhood. First memories as a war baby, starting a museum, being coached at Lord’s, living above the spring line below the great chalk cross at Whiteleaf in the Chiltern Hills, and roaming in the beechwoods, holidays on the Norfolk coast, falling under the spell


of Arthurian legends - this is a book about budding self- awareness. Above all, it revolves around the sanctity and splintering of family, the bonding of brother and sister, and a deep connection with the English countryside. A beautiful and evocative recreation of a middle class childhood in the 1940s and 50s which never wastes a word and evokes a sense of place in a deep way. 230pp in illustrated paperback. £7.99 NOW £4


69614 WHEN WE WERE YOUNG: A Compendium of Childhood


by John Burningham In this magical and moving selection, you will laugh and cry as John Burningham gives an enchanting and truthful compendium of childhood where the well known and unknown contribute funny, moving and magical memories. Refreshingly dark memories of the


wonderful years of childhood, these tales are entertaining in themselves but their real value is how they elucidate the adults the children grew into. Here is Michael Palin’s memory of seaside holidays with his dad, Seamus Heaney’s evocation of a crashed Cadbury’s chocolate van (‘a trail of silver papers up the road’), Donna Tartt’s sighting of a hummingbird and Benjamin Zephaniah’s mischievous exposure to adult hypocrisy. Whether the childhoods are from the war years or later, from town or country, ordinary or unbelievable, the book is a fascinating insight into that ‘other country’, the past. With a rich selection of quotations and more than 50 of Burningham’s distinctive, witty and poignant drawings. 312pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £4


66950 ELIZABETH: Fifty Glorious Years by Jennie Bond


Elizabeth was just 25 years old when her father, King George VI, died and she took on a momentous role as monarch of Great Britain and the Commonwealth - a role that she never imagined she would be called upon to fulfill. Her reign has seen profound sociological, political and economic changes in the world, but her dedication to what, at times, must be a remarkably lonely job has never wavered. 160 large pages, colour and b/w illus, with chronology. £20 NOW £4


68516 SPILLING THE BEANS by Clarissa Dickson-Wright This is the bestselling autobiography from the one half of the TV partnership Two Fat Ladies. Clarissa has lived her life on a grand scale. Her mother was an Australian heiress, her father a brilliant surgeon, but he was also a tyrannical and violent drunk. Clarissa was determined and clever and ambition led her at the age of 21 to be the youngest woman ever


called to the Bar. Shortly after, disaster struck when her adored mother died suddenly and Clarissa’s grief led to a mind-numbing decade of over indulgence during which she drank and partied away her entire enormous inheritance. It was cooking that brought her success as well as sobriety and peace. With hilarious anecdotes. 328pp with colour and b/w photos. $29.95 NOW £6


67381 RIFLING THROUGH MY DRAWERS by Clarissa Dickson Wright


Clarissa Theresa Philomena Aileen Mary Josephine Agnes Elsie Trilby Louise Esmerelda Dickson Wright, to give the inestimable Fat Lady her full name, is a real one-off. Celebrated cook and champion of the countryside and rural pursuits, she was also the youngest woman ever to be called to the Bar, although freely admitting to a catalogue of outrageous behaviour during a 12-year fight with alcoholism in the 70s and 80s. Whether she is meeting the President of the Sandringham WI (an equally redoubtable lady also known as Queen Elizabeth II) or being crudely propositioned by a burly greyhound courser, eating raw pike or boiled gannet and battling the forces of Health and Safety, she brings to the table a hugely enjoyable feast of opinion, anecdote and good old-fashioned common sense. Colour photos, 289pp paperback. £13.99 NOW £6


68040 ELEANOR RATHBONE AND THE


POLITICS OF CONSCIENCE by Susan Pedersen


When women demanded the vote in the early years of the 20th century they promised to use their newly acquired political rights to remake both their country and their world. Eleanor Florence Rathbone (1872-1946) was the woman who best fulfilled that pledge. She was born into a wealthy but liberal Liverpool family, and cut her political teeth in the city’s suffrage movement. She spent 20 years crafting social reforms for women and children, and was for 17 years the most effective female member of the House of Commons. Her last ten years she devoted to the rescue of Spanish Republicans and Jews threatened by Hitler’s rise to power. A vivid portrait of the worlds of Oxford idealism, Edwardian feminism and provincial liberalism. 469pp, b/w photos. ONLY £5.50


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67465 MAN WHO LOVED CHINA by Simon Winchester


The life story of the remarkable eccentric scientist Joseph Needham, who fell in love with a Chinese student and went on to unlock the most closely held secrets and mysteries of Middle Kingdom China. In 1937, while working as a biochemist at Cambridge University, a young Chinese biochemist called Lu Gwei-djen knocked on his door, and his life - and that of his wife of 13 years, Dorothy - changed forever. Needham and Lu embarked on what was to become a lifelong affair, and very soon his mistress persuaded the ever-enthusiastic Needham to travel in 1943 to China. He then embarked on a series of extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this ancient empire, searching everywhere for evidence to bolster his conviction that the Chinese were responsible for the invention of some of mankind’s greatest innovations years - even centuries - before the rest of the world. He began his Science and Civilisation in China, describing the country’s astonishing history of invention and technology. By the time he died in 1992, aged 94, he had produced an astonishing 17 colossal volumes, making him the greatest one-man encyclopaedist ever. Photos. 316pp. $27.95 NOW £5


67576 COCO CHANEL: The Legend and the Life


by Justine Picardie


Feared and revered by the rest of the fashion industry, Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel died in 1971 but her legacy lives on. Drawing upon unprecedented access to the Chanel archive, the author uncovers the consequences of what the designer covered up, unpicking the seams between truth and myth. Remarkable new details are unveiled about Coco’s early years in a convent orphanage and her flight into unconventional adulthood as the reader discovers what lies beneath the glossy surface of a fashion icon. This portrait takes a fresh and penetrating look at how Coco made herself into her own most powerful creation. 345 pages lavishly illus. £25 NOW £9


67942 A LIFE LIKE OTHER PEOPLE’S: From the Acclaimed Untold Stories by Alan Bennett


In a poignant, yet never sentimental memoir of his parents’ marriage and his own childhood, the much loved writer recalls Christmases with Grandma Peel and the lives, loves and deaths of his unforgettable aunties, Kathleen and Myra. With the sudden descent of his mother into depression and, later, dementia, a long-held family secret is uncovered. As with all Alan Bennett’s work, this book is at times unbearably moving and at others irresistibly funny. 243 pages with b/w archive photos.


£12.99 NOW £6 68258 TROTSKY: Downfall


of a Revolutionary by Bertrand M. Patenaude The ice-pick assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico on the evening of 20 August 1940 (he died of his injuries the following day) by Ramon Mercader, a agent of the NKVD, Stalin’s secret police, is the most notorious of the 20th century’s political murders. A brilliant writer and orator, Trotsky was renowned


as the charismatic intellectual of the Russian Revolution, but he was also a ruthless authoritarian who could and should have become Lenin’s successor as ruler of the Soviet Union. But instead, by WWII, Stalin ruled the Soviet bloc and Trotsky has been in exile for over a decade. Living in a borrowed villa and surrounded by naive American acolytes who idolised him as the supreme theoretician of world revolution, his existence was further complicated by emotional and sexual tension between him, his hosts and his wife and the constant stream of exotic visitors that trooped through the villa. At the same time, Stalin’s wolves were gathering. Contents same as 68342 Stalin’s Nemesis. $27.50 NOW £6


68353 BLOOD-DARK TRACK: A Family History by Joseph O’Neill


Joseph O’Neill’s grandfathers, one Turkish, one Irish, were both imprisoned during WWII. The Irish grandfather, a handsome rogue from a rural family, was an active member of the IRA and was interned with hundreds of his comrades. His other grandfather, a hotelier from a tiny Turkish Christian minority, was imprisoned by the British in Palestine on suspicion of being a spy. Aged 30, the author set out to uncover his grandfathers’ stories. A story of murder, espionage, paranoia and fear, and of human vulnerability to the violence of history. 338pp in paperback. Illus. £8.99 NOW £2


68541 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.


edited by Clayborne Carson


Beginning with the Early Years, and goes through Seminary Life, Boston University, meeting and falling in love with the attractive singer Coretta Scott, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, The Montgomery Movement Beginning, The Birth of a New Nation, A Brush with Death, A Pilgrimage for Non-violence, The Sit-in Movement, Atlanta Arrests and Presidential Politics, the Albany Movement, the Birmingham Campaign, the March on Washington, the Nobel Peace Prize, Malcolm X, the Chicago Campaign, Black Power, Beyond Vietnam and in some of the chapter headings. Here was the mild-mannered, inquisitive child and student who rebelled against segregation, the dedicated young minister who constantly questioned his faith, the loving husband and father and the reflective, world-famous leader. Includes his views on John F. Kennedy, Mahatma Ghandi and Richard Nixon. 400pp, paperback, photos. £11.99 NOW £4.50


68546 THE BOLTER by Frances Osborne The richly wrought descriptions of glittering Paris nights and lush mountain landscapes of Kenya’s Happy Valley are fabulous in this break-neck paced biography. In 1934, Idina Sackville met a son she had last seen 15 years earlier when she shocked high society by running off to Africa with a near-penniless man, abandoning him, his brother and their father. So scandalous was Idina’s life - she was said to have had ‘lovers without number’ - that it was kept a secret from her great granddaughter, Frances Osborne. Brilliantly captures an entire lost society. Apologies for the sticker. 319pp in paperback with b/w photos. £8.99 NOW £4.50


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