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72573 JAPANESE WARRIORS, ROGUES AND BEAUTIES: Woodblocks from Adventure Stories
by Kendall H. Brown Long considered to be a
disposable form of popular culture, these types of books were not carefully preserved or collected. Heroes, villains and damsels in distress abound. Selected from woodblock-printed covers and frontispiece illustrations published in Osaka between 1898 and 1903, they include samurai and strong men, demons and detectives, courtesans, sumo wrestlers and other vivid characters in scenarios ranging from romantic to grotesquely violent, providing a link between an ancient storytelling tradition and the beginning of mass-published popular literature. 112 paperback pages in glowing colour. £18.99 NOW £6
72406 CAMERA WORK: The Complete Photographs
by Alfred Stieglitz
Photographer, writer, publisher, and curator Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) was a visionary far ahead of his time. Around the turn of the 20th century, he founded the Photo-Secession, a progressive movement concerned with advancing the creative possibilities of photography, and by 1903 began publishing Camera Work, an avant-garde magazine devoted to voicing the ideas, both in images and words, of the Photo- Secession. Camera Work was the first photo journal whose focus was visual, rather than technical, and its illustrations were of the highest quality hand-pulled photogravure printed on Japanese tissue. This book brings together all photographs from the journal’s 50 issues. 5.5" x 7.7", 552 pages. Text in English, French and German. ONLY £12
BIOGRAPHY/ AUTOBIOGRAPHY
73206 STIEG: From Activist to Author
by Jan-Erik Pettersson Until the posthumous publication of the mega-selling Millennium Trilogy with its unforgettable heroine Lisbeth Salander, Stieg Larsson was best known in Sweden for his
commitment to left-wing causes and as an anti-fascist activist. Horrified by the rise of Swedish far-right extremism in the 1980s, Larsson
threw himself into monitoring and exposing these shadowy, violent groups, gaining an international reputation for his depth of knowledge and achievements, but at the cost living in constant fear for his life. Jan-Erik Pettersson has spoken in particular to all who knew Larsson and his partner Eva Gabrielsson on Expo magazine, and is well aware of his subject’s strengths and failings. Here he shows how this energetic champion of social justice and women’s rights, a man willing to put his life at risk in order to defend the things in which he believed, later brought together these strands in the Millennium books, with Expo as Millennium magazine, he himself having many character traits in common with Blomqvist and the various corrupt and criminal types lifted straight from life. 304pp paperback. £8.99 NOW £3.50
73339 C. S. LEWIS: Images of His World by Douglas Gilbert and Clyde S. Kilby
The book offers a ‘beautiful window’ into the people and places that shaped the life of a beloved author, scholar, critic and apologist - who became famous for his series of books about the magical kingdom of Narnia. Much of the text is in Lewis’
own words. The illustrations introduce us to friends of his such as J. R. R. Tolkien and also transport readers to the enchanting places that Lewis loved, one of which was the deer park outside his rooms at Magdalen College Oxford. Already, at a very young age, he was writing and illustrating imaginative stories and poems. He was a brilliant and talented child, growing up in Belfast and captivated by the myths and legends of the North. Although Lewis was reared in a nominally Christian home, and made serious efforts to practise Christianity, he later abandoned his belief and, by 15, in an effort to be a ‘free man’, was calling himself an atheist. One of the most compelling sections of this volume is the revelation of how, after 23 years, he finally acknowledged that ‘true freedom arose from bond slavery to Jesus Christ’. His wife, too - with whom he shared a tragically short marriage before it was cut short by her death from cancer - had been an active member of the Communist party before professing a turn to Christianity as a result of reading Lewis’ books. A moving and enlightening book. 144 pages 27cm x 20.5 cm very lavishly illustrated with colour plates and b/w archive photos. £13.99 NOW £6
73320 TAXI! Never a Dull
Day - A Cabbie Remembers by Douglas J. Findlay
Little did Findlay know, when, in the 1950s, he took a job as a taxi driver, that driving a cab would broaden his experience of life to the extent that it did. He got into fights, met ‘hooks, crooks and comic singers’, found the inside of a police cell uninviting and even became friendly with a notorious madam who ran a brothel
in central Edinburgh. He got to know and like a doctor with a sideline as an abortionist, and risked his life
tangling with an ex-RAF policemen who murdered two people six weeks after his altercation with Findlay! En route, the cabbie also met an extraordinary range of colourful characters, including Charlie the Gangster, Pedro the Pirate, and Mr Goldbaum and his Housewives’ Friend. A riotous romp through the demi-monde that lurks behind Edinburgh’s genteel façade. 230 paperback pages.
£8.99 NOW £3.50 72970 CLIMBING THE
STAIRS by Margaret Powell For all Downton Abbey fans, here is the sequel to the bestselling ‘Below Stairs’. Margaret’s mind turns to finding a young man while working below stairs in 1920s London, but it is hard to look beguiling when you are elbow deep in dishwater. As a kitchen maid, it is not just being at the beck and call of the people upstairs that is difficult, but having
to deal with temperamental cooks, starchy butlers and chauffeurs with a roving eye. Marriage is the only escape, but with just one evening off a week, Margaret has no time to lose. Between Perce the bus conductor (who brings his mother on dates) and Mr Hailsham the elderly fishmonger, her initial prospects are hardly the stuff of dreams. Then she meets Albert the milkman, and having spent their whole lives serving others, can they start to figure out what they want for themselves? A sharp-eyed tale from a time when the idea of masters and servants began to lose its sway. 199pp in paperback.
£6.99 NOW £3.75
73315 POET McGONAGALL: A Biography
by Norman Watson
Familiar to millions throughout the world as the worst poet ever, William McGonagall is a literary legend whose execrable rhymes and terrible scansion have assured him a very special place in the poetic pantheon. Yet, until now, he has largely escaped the biographer’s pen. Here the author explores the
life and times of this one-time Dundee weaver, who became Scotland’s ‘other national poet’ - other, that is, than Robert Burns. Despite the fact that little is known about McGonagall, the author manages to compile an absorbing, revealing and hugely entertaining biography. We are not sure where he was born, where he was brought up or, indeed, where exactly he is buried. We cannot prove whether he was really Scots or actually Irish, and almost nothing about his first 50 years is in the public domain. We do not know how many poems he wrote or pamphlets of unappreciated verse he published. What we do have are the outrageous tragedies and paeans he penned in celebration of victories, heroic deeds and various public figures of the time, and these speak volumes about the man himself. 306 pages with b/w photos, notes and two appendices: William McGonagall Gazetteer and Chronology of William McGonagall’s Poems and Songs. £20 NOW £9
60667 WILD MARY: A Life of Mary Wesley by Patrick Marnham
The author of ‘The Camomile Lawn’ published her first novel in 1983 when she was 70 years old. Born Mary Farmar and related to the Duke of Wellington, Mary married for escape and her first marriage to Lord Swinfen was brief and conventional. In the late 1930s, she began a fascination with Heinz Ziegler, a Czech university professor and wartime air gunner. At the outbreak of the Second World War Mary was, as she put it, ‘roped into Intelligence’, where she worked on breaking codes. MI5 and her rackety life during the Blitz eventually inspired her novels, many of which were concerned with multiple wartime love affairs. She drew on her eccentric friends and her love of Cornwall and the West Country. Arsenic and old lace guaranteed. 289 pages, photos. £20 NOW £6
71858 GROWING UP IN A WELSH VALLEY: Beneath a Valley Sky by Bronwen Hosie
This collection of nostalgic, humorous and moving tales follows Rhymney-born Dai Morrissey as he leaves the valley aged 18. Travelling to England he finds work with Hudson & Terraplane, fitting radios into their luxury cars. Along the way he meets a few celebrities and also his future wife. WWII brings an end to carefree days, with Dai witnessing the tragic effects of war firsthand. He survives and goes on to have six children including Bronwen, the author of this book. Photos, 128pp in large softback.
£12.99 NOW £3.75
71720 DIAMOND QUEEN: Elizabeth II and Her People by Andrew Marr
In an impressively thick volume, arranged thematically, Andrew Marr dissects the Queen’s political relationships, crucially those with her prime ministers, and investigates why she spends three hours every day reading the contents of the red boxes sent over from Downing Street. He examines her role as the Head of the Commonwealth, and looks at what she actually does, from walkabouts to meetings with visiting heads of state and other dignitaries. He also looks at the drastic changes in the media since her accession in 1952 and analyses how the monarchy, and its monarch, have had to change and adapt as a result. 418 pages, many photos in colour and b/w. Scuffed jacket.
£25 NOW £7 72505 ALWAYS THE
CHILDREN by Anne Watts This is the story of Anne Watts who grew up in a village in North Wales in the 1940s. Defying her Merchant Navy father’s views, she trained as a nurse and midwife at Manchester Royal Infirmary, joined Save the Children fund and was posted to Vietnam in 1967. One of only a few British nurses in the region, Anne witnessed the random cruelty
of warfare, nursing injured children and caring for wounded and dying servicemen. Over some 45 years she brought courage and compassion to those in need. Woven into her compelling memoir is the story of how her idyllic childhood was shattered by the discovery of a shocking family tragedy when she was 10 years old which was to shape her destiny. 386pp in paperback, colour photos.
£6.99 NOW £3.50 71933 CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD DIARIES:
Volume One: 1939-1960 edited by Katherine Bucknell
Christopher Isherwood was one of the most celebrated writers of his generation. He left Cambridge without graduating, briefly studied medicine and then turned to writing novels. The famous and hugely praised musical Cabaret was based on his book Goodbye to Berlin. In these intimate writings, Isherwood records his search for a new life in California, his work as a successful screenwriter in Hollywood, his pacifism during World War II, and his friendships with such gifted artists and intellectuals as Greta Garbo, Charles Chaplin, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton and Aldous Huxley. He continued both to write novels and to sustain his literary friendships with, amongst others, E. M. Forster, Somerset Maugham, Tennessee Williams and a host of others. 1,050 paperback pages. £20 NOW £6
72052 LAURA ASHLEY by Martin Wood
Drawn from first-hand accounts of Laura Ashley’s family, friends and colleagues, this is not only the story of a remarkable woman, but also of an extraordinary partnership and the creation of a highly successful and influential brand. Against the background of Laura’s life - from her birth in South Wales in 1925 to her sudden and untimely death in 1985 - the author chronicles the designs, products and intrinsic style which are the essence of this iconic print and fashion house. He describes how she and her husband, Bernard worked together as a team, combining his drive, business acumen and appreciation of colour and design with her taste, eye for fashion and unerring ability to spot a trend. They launched a range of household textiles and furnishing, the ‘Laura Ashley Style’ quickly became a phenomenon. 192 pages 24cm x 29.5cm, 200 photos in colour and b/w. £35 NOW £12
72141 INSTEAD OF A BOOK: Letters to a
Friend by Diana Athill and Edward Field The irrepressible Diana Athill was, until she retired, a well-known and much respected editor. For over 30 years, she has corresponded with the American poet Edward Field, freely exchanging jokes, pleasures and pains with an old friend. This sparkling, witty volume incorporates gossip about mutual friends, sharp pen portraits and uninhibited accounts of her relationships. We loved her throwaway remark, after learning that she might have to have radiation treatment on the same day as she was scheduled to give a talk, ‘I must find out whether the radiation will leave me looking like Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer!’ 328 pages. £20 NOW £5
72142 AFTER A FUNERAL by Diana Athill When Diana Athill met the man she called Didi, an Egyptian in exile, she fell in love instantly. Didi moved into her flat, they shared housework and holidays, and a life of easy intimacy seemed to beckon. But Didi’s sweetness and intelligence soon revealed a darker side - he was a gambler, a drinker and a womaniser, impossible to live with but impossible to ignore. With painful honesty, Diana explores the three years they spent together, a period that culminated in the talented writer’s suicide, in her flat. 158pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.75
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72150 RUNNING WITH SCISSORS by Augusten Burroughs
When Augusten Burroughs was 12, his mother, a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton, gave him away to a psychiatrist, a man who would have benefitted from a touch of therapy himself. Augusten’s father was an alcoholic professor at the University of Massachusetts and neither parent had any time for him. Here is the story of the bizarre years he spent in the doctor’s dilapidated Victorian mansion, getting to know the paedophile in-patient who lived in the garden shed, eating Valium tablets like other kids eat sweeties, and restoring the vintage electro shock therapy machine to liven up those quieter moments. 304pp in paperback. £5.99 NOW £2.50
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72545 TED AND I: A Brother’s Memoir by Gerald Hughes
Gerald Hughes was nine years old when baby Ted was born on 17th August 1930. From the moment Ted could toddle, they were inseparable, with Ted following his older brother everywhere, roaming the Yorkshire countryside, camping, making fires, pitching tents, hunting rabbits, rats, woodpigeons and stoats, flying kites, building model planes and fishing. All of these adventures were to fuel the future Poet Laureate’s fascination with wildlife and the countryside. Those carefree, magical days are beautifully recalled in these pages along with delightful portraits of the close-knit Hughes family - Mam, Dad, grandparents and a host of colourful aunts and uncles. Gerald reveals some hitherto unpublished letters about Sylvia Plath and on recollections of their sister Olwyn and Ted’s widow Carol. Frieda Hughes provides the foreword. Author’s sketches. 218pp. £16.99 NOW £5.50
Biography / Autobiography 3
PLAYBOY for Boys! 72421 HUGH HEFNER’S PLAYBOY: 6
Volumes Slipcased by Hugh
M. Hefner The archetypal Playboy himself Mr. Hugh Hefner presents a very glamorous illustrated
autobiography with chronological highlights from Playboy magazine’s first 25 years. His personal life and career, from cartoon-drawing childhood to astonishing success with Playboy, are revealed in the most intimate portrait ever. Released on the 60th anniversary of the magazine, this sumptuous six- volume anthology celebrates the decadence, sophistication and wit of the original men’s magazine and its creator. The box set highlights the extraordinary years from 1924 to 1979, with a selection of each era’s spiciest centrefolds and writing by literary icons Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Ian Fleming and Ray Bradbury, sartorial elegance and features on fashion, travel features, cars, Jazz and music, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe to Farah Fawcett uncovered, letters, society, hot clubs and strip venues and more. A long autobiographical text about his youth, military service, early career as a cartoonist, numerous girlfriends and eventual success with Playboy. Includes behind-the-scenes shots from the Playboy Mansion,
Playboy Clubs, and the Big Bunny jet. 25 gatefold
Playmate-of- the-month centrefolds, 6 volumes in slipcase lined with artwork also, 7.0 x 9.8", 1910 pages. New from Taschen. ONLY £100
72261 NO ONE BUT A WOMAN KNOWS by Margaret Llewelyn Davies
A classic collection of stories from motherhood from before the war. Just ten shillings coming in to last 12 weeks, an agricultural labourer’s wife, how one woman consoled herself with an orphan boy, strikes, out of work and short time - beneath each story is the wife’s allowance, how many children, how many stillborn, or her wages. 257pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50
72278 WHAT’S THA UP TO NAH? by Martyn Johnson
Subtitled ‘A Yorkshire Bobby’s Life on the Beat’, PC Martyn Johnson is back on the beat with more hilarious and heartwarming stories from the golden age of policing. From drunken dogs and runaway horses to high-speed chases after Burglar Bill, there is always something keeping him busy and another troublemaker to put to rights. And with a cuppa-tea stop and a familiar face on every corner, he is never far from a friend. 243pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £4
72363 THE TEMPTRESS: The Scandalous Life of Alice de Janzé and the Mysterious Death of Lord Erroll by Paul Spicer
The scandalous life of Alice, Countess de Janzé, here is passion and murder in Kenya’s Happy Valley. No one paid too much attention to the privileged and decadent colonial set until on a January morning in 1941, Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll, was shot dead at the wheel of his Buick. Some say the good-looking womaniser had it coming. Cuckolded husband Jock Delves Broughton stood trial for Erroll’s murder but was acquitted and the mystery remained unsolved, until now. American heiress Alice de Janzé had been conducting a clandestine affair with Joss for years. 262pp with photos. Remainder mark. $25.99 NOW £5.50
72365 WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN WINTER: A
Memoir in Blindness by Candia McWilliam Candia McWilliam was born in Edinburgh in 1955 and her first three novels A Case of Knives (1988), A Little Stranger (1989) and Debatable Land (1994) each won major literary awards. A descent into divorce, alcoholism and writer’s block appeared to have destroyed her writing career, but she fought back and her life seemed to be back on course by 2004. Then, in a cruel twist of fate for one whose life revolved around reading and writing, in 2006 she began to suffer from blepharospasm rendering her functionally blind. She embarked upon a painful personal voyage, a memoir that offered no hiding place - her childhood in Edinburgh, devastating alcoholism, finding and losing her bearings at Cambridge and in London, her marriages, her divorces, her children and, looming over everything, her mother’s suicide. We end in 2009, when following a complex operation she has regained most of her sight. 440pp. $27.99 NOW £5
72529 HER MAJESTY: 60 Regal Years by Brian Hoey
Affectionate anecdote is combined with impartial analysis - we look at Lilibet and the early days, Elizabeth and Philip, Buckingham Palace, the inner circle, family ties, the impact of Diana, the Camilla factor, mother and daughter, a woman of faith, hostess to the world, with her ministers home and abroad, royal money, the sport of queens, the case against the monarchy, royal protection, the public image, royal style and the world traveller among this far ranging collection of vignettes and opinions. 357pp in paperback. £9.99 NOW £4
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