Biography / Autobiography ironic, witty and no-nonsense style in the years spent as


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foreign correspondent in the world’s most dangerous places, as well as lecturer, teacher and esteemed literary critic. Here, too, are the people with whom has enjoyed friendship and/or crossed swords - Martin Amis, Noam Chomsky, Ted Hughes, Margaret Thatcher, Jorge Borges and many more. He recounts his formative years as a hard-line socialist activist, the authors who shaped his formidable intellect (Waugh, Wodehouse, Marx) and the complex, warm relationship he enjoyed with his mother Yvonne, whose Jewish heritage he discovered only after her suicide in 1973. This confirms his position as arguably the greatest living essayist in the English language. 24 pages of b/w photos, 435pp. $26.99 NOW £6


70458 CLARISSA EDEN: A MEMOIR: From Churchill to


Eden edited by Cate Haste Although born in 1920 into the aristocracy, Clarissa Churchill never readily identified with the class. Daughter of Gwendoline and John (“Jack”) Spencer-Churchill, the younger brother of Winston, at the age of 32 she married Antony Eden, then three years later in 1955 entered Number 10 Downing Street as the wife of the new Prime


Minister. A renowned beauty, she was equally at home with her mother’s Liberal intellectual circle. In her youth she mixed with pillars of the Oxford academic community and her close circle of friends included some of the most influential cultural figures of the 20th century. The Suez Crisis and Eden’s ensuing poor health cut short their political life together. 48 pages of b/w photos, 288 page paperback.


£12.99 NOW £5 70472 GYPSY BOY ON THE


RUN by Mikey Walsh Described as ‘a revelation’ by Stephen Fry, this is the true-life story of bestselling author Mikey Walsh. It follows his previous autobiography, Gypsy Boy, and tells more of his childhood and journey to acceptance. Walsh grew up living in a caravan on sites across the UK, adoring his family and the rich and vibrant Romany culture he had been born into. However, he


was faced with a heart breaking decision - should he stay and keep secrets, or escape and find where he truly belonged? Going it alone, Mikey soon discovers that life on the outside world is nothing like he thought it would be. His father has put a contract out on him, causing him to be hunted by gangs of thugs determined to claim the reward, and Mikey realises that his life will never be the same again. This is an extraordinary story, brimming with vivid characters and unforgettable moments - a true blend of humour and harsh reality, powerful to the very last page. Softback, 306 pages. £13.99 NOW £4


70589 IN THE GARDEN OF


MEMORY: A Family Memoir by Joanna Olczak-Ronikier From the synagogues of 19th century Vienna to Britain in the war years, the story of the Horowitz family follows the lives of four generations of Polish Jews who lived through and mostly survived the turbulent 20th century. Full of tales of bravery as well as comical anecdotes, the book follows the


family members as they are dispersed around the world, to European spas, tsarist prisons, soviet war camps and the British RAF. One became an undercover agent, another a zoologist in France, another a leading Freudian psychiatrist. Amazingly only two members were victims of the Holocaust, although WW2 left lasting psychological after-effects on all the survivors. An ultimately uplifting story told with a tender matter-of-factness. 354pp with many photos. Paperback. £8.99 NOW £4


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


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 by Ramon Mercader, a agent of the NKVD, 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, Trotsky has been in exile for over a decade. Living in a borrowed villa and surrounded by naive American acolytes who idolised him, his existence was further complicated by emotional and sexual tension between him, his hosts and his wife. Contents same as 68342 Stalin’s Nemesis. $27.50 NOW £4


68344 WAIT FOR ME! by Deborah Devonshire ‘Debo’ was the youngest Mitford sister and is now the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire. Known to all her friends simply as Debo, she looks back on a life lived at a cracking pace in her funny, touching and good-hearted memoir. She is an exhilarating writer with a gift for storytelling and a prose style of elegant simplicity. It is also a touching memorial to a vanished age. 370pp in paperback with many photos. £7.99 NOW £4


69911 FIRST LADY OF FLEET STREET: The Life, Fortune and Tragedy of Rachel Beer by Eilat Negev


and Yehuda Koren The name Rachel Beer may be unfamiliar to readers but, as well as being a member of the famous Sassoon family, and aunt to the poet Siegfried Sassoon, she was a truly remarkable woman in her own right. The author paints a vivid


picture not only of the first and only woman to edit not one, but two national British newspapers simultaneously, but also of two venerable Jewish families and their rise to eminence. As a woman, Rachel was barred from not only the Press Gallery of the House of Commons but also from the London Clubs where she would have been likely to glean political gossip. Nonetheless, she managed to make her controversial views known not only on social and women’s issues but also on national and foreign political events including the notorious Dreyfus Affair. Her husband abandoned the Jewish religion and baptized their son. But worse was to follow when her much loved husband died and she succumbed to pathological chronic grief which resulted in a prolonged depression. This sensitive, in-depth study accesses and assesses the career and life of a woman of distinction. 342 pages with b/w archive photos. £20 NOW £4.50


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, 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. 338pp in paperback. Illus. £8.99 NOW 75p


68421 WINDOWS ON THE WORLD by Frederic Beigbeder


The author was born in 1965 and lives in Paris, working as a publisher, literary critic and broadcaster. On the morning of September 11th 2001, he had booked breakfast for himself and his two young sons at Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 107th floor of one of the towers of the World Trade Center. ‘In a moment from now, a large Puerto Rican woman will start to scream. A suited executive’s mouth will fall open... In a moment, time will become elastic. All these people will finally come to know one another. In a moment, they will all be Horsemen of the Apocalypse, all united in the End of the World.’ Weaving together fact, fiction, dark humour and autobiography. 312pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW 60p


68516 SPILLING THE BEANS by Clarissa Dickson-Wright


This is the bestselling autobiography from the one half of the TV partnership Two Fat Ladies. 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 it 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. Hilarious anecdotes. 328pp with colour and b/w photos. $29.95 NOW £5.50


68528 BY THE WATERS OF LIVERPOOL by Helen Forrester


Now aged 17, Helen’s parents are as irresponsible as ever, wasting money while their children still lack adequate food and clothing. But for Helen, things are looking up. She has educated herself at night school and is now making friends in her first proper job as she meets a handsome seaman and falls in love for the first time. But the clouds of the Second World War are gathering and Helen experiences at first hand the horror of the Blitz and the terrible toll of the war. 439pp in paperback. £8.99 NOW £2


69605 JELLIED EELS AND ZEPPELINS: Witness to a


Vanished Age by Sue Taylor How can you cram more than 90 years of someone’s life into the pages of a book? Ethel May Elvin, a child of ‘delicate health’ escaped the dreaded Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-19 as well as both World Wars, including the London Blitz. She came out of it all and is still


laughing, and here is her own journey through life in the 20th century from Walthamstow E17 in an ordinary working class family. She recalls her father’s account of standing sentry at Queen Victoria’s funeral, doodlebugs and dugouts, bombs, buses and her dog Dalmatian Bill, motorbikes and primus stoves, boyfriends and Christmas time. 134pp in illustrated paperback. £8.99 NOW £3.50


68778 LIFE OF A LONG-DISTANCE WRITER: The Biography of Alan Sillitoe by Richard Bradford


Sillitoe’s first two works of fiction, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) and The Loneliness of the Long- Distance Runner (1959) changed the history of the English language novel, and the abundance of work he produced subsequently was outstanding. In the latter 1960s, he turned against these totalitarian states and campaigned tirelessly on behalf of political prisoners. At the turn of the 21st century he had developed a fascination with Judaism, becoming a staunch defender of the need for a Jewish homeland, and still enjoying ruffling feathers whilst still well into his 70s. Includes correspondence with Ted Hughes. 390pp, photos. £25 NOW £4.50


68862 CONVERSATIONS WITH MYSELF by Nelson Mandela


Here is the private man behind the public figurehead - from letters written in the darkest hours of his 27 year incarceration at Robben Island to the draft of an unfinished sequel to Long Walk to Freedom, doodles scribbled during meetings to the recording of troubling


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dreams, journals whilst on the run during the early ’60s to sound recordings of chats with friends. This is the chance to spend time with Nelson Mandela the man in his own direct, clear words. Slightly scuffed. 454pp with b/w photos and green satin bookmark. £25 NOW £5


68924 ROAD BACK HOME: A Bittersweet


Northern Childhood by Sid Waddell Everybody knows Sid Waddell as the overexcited voice of TV darts, but how many of you knew that this son of a miner from Lynemouth in Northumberland graduated from Cambridge with a degree in history and ended up big in TV darts by being a BBC Sports producer in the 1970s? Theirs was a colourful community with good times and hard work, peopled by god-fearing women and hard-drinking men. B/w photos, 318 page paperback. Contents same as 67092. £6.99 NOW £2


68609 MACMILLAN: The Official Biography, 20th


Anniversary Edition by Alistair Horne


Now published in one volume to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its original publication, this biography offers a vivid portrait of one of the 20th century’s most complex political figures. Horne describes the politician’s background and his full


role in the Suez crisis, explaining his baffling volte-face and the role of his reputation in winning him the Prime Ministership after Eden’s resignation. Macmillan’s rehabilitation of the demoralised Tory Party, his inspired visit to Khrushchev to calm the escalating Cold War, his recognition of the rise of black nationalism within the Commonwealth and his re-establishment of the Special Relationship with America ensured his place as one of the most consummate politicians of British history. The Night of the Long Knives and the Profumo affair, as well as his battle with prostate cancer ultimately forced Macmillan out of office. 1,295 pages with silk bookmark. £60 NOW £11


68982 MUST YOU GO? My Life with Harold Pinter by Antonia Fraser


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Partly based on the diaries of the beautiful and famous prize-winning biographer, on her own recollections and on quotations from her husband’s words and those of his friends, this memoir is not Antonia Fraser’s complete life, but purely and simply her time with Pinter. Intriguingly, her diaries always pay special attention to any green shoots where Pinter’s writing is concerned, perhaps a consequence of a biographer living with a creative artist and observing the process at first hand. The two stayed together for 33 years until his death. 328 pages, colour and b/w photos. £20 NOW £6.50


69027 BITTER BLUE: Tranquilisers, Drugs,


Dependency by Jeremy Reed ‘My pills were always blue. Bitter blue.’ The book is a highly personal and subjective response to a 12 year benzodiazepine dependency, touching on the lives of those writers who have devoted themselves to inner experimentation. Lou Reed’s apprehension of recreational drugs is quite distinct from the committed explorations of imaginative potential realised in their writings by Anna Kavan, Jean Cocteau and Marcel Proust to mention a few of the writers discussed here. It took him two and a half years with cravings, hallucinations and violent panic attacks, but he did not go back to the drug. 136pp. £15.99 NOW £1.50


69270 DIARY OF A YOUNG


WIFE 1953 by Hazel Wheeler Working in the local libraries in and around Huddersfield, Hazel desperately fights to fit her passion of writing around the unenviable daily demands of a 1950s housewife. ‘6am washing clothes. Cooked breakfast, ironing. Cleaned oven, bedroom, the windows. Walked Crosland Moor then down the fields to mother’s. Played with


Major (the dog) in the field. Library. 140 issues. Left at 8.30pm.’ Hazel Wheeler is a feisty young woman who passed her 11 plus to attend Greenhead Girls High and who chronicles in her daily diary the first shaky steps of marriage. Studded with the author’s own photographs and contemporary advertising. 128pp in large softback. £12.99 NOW £5


69462 IRIS MURDOCH AS I KNEW HER by A. N. Wilson


A. N. Wilson probably knew Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) better than anybody, other than her husband of 43 years, John Bayley. In the late 1980s she asked him to be her biographer, and the fact that he completed the job four years after her death, rather than when she was still alive, has proved highly relevant. In 1995 Iris began to suffer from what she thought was writer’s block. Sadly, it was the onset of Alzheimer’s, and tragically, ever since, Murdoch has been remembered as the face of Alzheimer’s, rather than the literary genius she undoubtedly was. The film Iris which came out in 2001 was based largely on Bayley’s increasingly spiteful memoirs of her, and focused on her decline rather than her talent. Thus Wilson was glad to set the record straight, especially for those whose image of Murdoch is either sexy young undergrad (as played by Kate Winslet) or deranged frump in a dirty cardigan (Judi Dench). Here is Iris the witty conversationalist, the emotional chaotic and, above all, the writer par excellence. Unashamedly personal, Wilson gives us back the fierce intelligence and philosophy of his subject which will amuse, delight and occasionally sadden the reader. Photos, 285pp. £18.99 NOW £6.50


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. In the 1950s the Romani people lived on the brink of great change. In their brightly painted wooden wagons, they journeyed between 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. 343pp in paperback.


£5.99 NOW £3.25 e-mail: orders@bibliophilebooks.com 70151 FOUR MEALS FOR


FOURPENCE by Grace Foakes ‘Behind and around these tenement buildings were narrow, mean little streets and alleyways, with small drab houses, mostly with


underground kitchens, where people lived in semi-darkness for most of their lives. Three or four families occupied one house, sharing the kitchen with its one cold water tap. Sometimes the tap was in the yard outside.’ Mostly dockers with large


families and small incomes, this was the world into which Grace Foakes was born in Wapping in the early 1900s. With a child’s clear eye, she describes the sights, sounds and smells of the old East End of London. Hop picking, the Beano Club, schooldays and wellington boots, pinafores on Sunday, special breakfast on Christmas day right through to courtship and marriage, having her beautiful daughter Kathleen and moving out to the new council estate in Dagenham where everything was clean and colourful and the grey grim streets were left behind. 281pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3


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 an 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


70146 THE COOK’S TALE: Life Below Stairs as it Really Was by Nancy Jackman and Tom Quinn


A century ago, country families with a position to keep up were judged on the quality of the food prepared for dinner parties and guests. So for the leisured classes a good cook was amongst the most highly prized and best paid of all the servants, but to be a cook it was necessary to endure a gruelling


apprenticeship And if being a cook brought some status it did not bring wealth or freedom, as Nancy Jackman explains in this account of her extraordinary life. But she was expected to do a lot more than cooking - to kill the chickens, oversee the pig-sticker, deal with the tradesmen and shout at the kitchen maids. Born in 1907 in a remote Norfolk village, Nancy’s family lived in a cottage so small that access to the single upstairs room was via a ladder. Her earliest memories were of a green, sunny countryside still unspoilt by the motorcar. Nancy left school at the age of 12 to work for a local farmer who forced her to stand in the rain when she made a mistake, physically abused her and eventually tried to rape her. Nancy continued to work as a cook until the 1950s. 248pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3.50


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. 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.’ 478pp in paperback with illus. £8.99 NOW £4.50


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. 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


70189 MIDWIFE ON CALL:


Tales of Tiny Miracles by Agnes Light


After fainting from shock at the first birth she attended as a student, Agnes gradually grew to adore her job and lifelong friends that worked with her on the maternity ward in the 1960s. She recalls how she struggled at first with the strict rules of hospital etiquette, dealing with hysterical fathers to the miracle of multiple births in this heart warming,


poignant and funny book, rich with period detail. 275pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £4


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’. Katherine Whitehorn railed against those who thought women were ‘only born to breed and bake’. She tackled the problems


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