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76963 CALL THE DOCTOR by Ronald White-Cooper Drinking Bovril Will Not Cure Lumbago, I Want You To Sew It Back On, Honey Water and Faith are all chapter headings from this jolly memoir of a country GP between the wars. Ronald White- Cooper studied medicine at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and served as a doctor on the Western Front between 1916 and 1918. He


became a GP in Dartmouth in 1920 and practiced there until 1949 when he returned to South Africa to work. He died in 1976 and these memoirs were found in a trunk in the attic and have been edited by his granddaughter. An experienced surgeon, Ronald had worked in Bethnal Green, in the terrible conditions of the Somme and had arrived in Dartmouth as a newlywed looking for a fresh start. He found some unexpected challenges. Not only were the local villagers unimpressed by his new-fangled ways, but he would need all his wits and skills to deal with the cases that came through the door each day. Whether it was a grumpy old farmer, a manic dentist or a midwife convinced she was being haunted, Ronald helped his patients as best he could, from premature births and ever-prevalent TB to attempted suicides. In a world without antibiotics, life was unpredictable. Full of eccentric characters. 280pp in paperback with many photos, especially of his pretty blonde wife. £7.99 NOW £4


76901 COMANDANTE: The Life and Legacy of Hugo


Chavez by Rory Carroll First published in late 2012, this definitive work was updated following Hugo Chavez’s death on 5 March 2013 and is here offered in paperback reprint. Hugo Chavez was a true phenomenon. A democratically elected revolutionary, his aspirations made him a symbol of hope to the Venezuelan people,


yet he was regarded as a despot - with much justification - by just as many people who lauded him as a hero. Nearly two years since his death, Hugo Chavez continues to polarise opinion in Venezuela and rest of the world as dramatically as he did during his 14-year rule, with his followers lamenting his loss and his critics swift to pick apart the crumbling reality of the illusion he created of a thriving, oil-rich Venezuela. Rory Carroll was based in Caracas for five years as the Guardian’s chief Latin America correspondent and during that time got closer than any outsider ever did to the heart of Chavez’s political court. This is his authoritative chronicle of the rule one of history’s most compelling leaders which draws upon his own immediate dealings with the man and his entourage and interviews with and anecdotes from those in his inner circle and those who were ejected from it to describe the bizarre court of “el Comandante”. An incisive picture of a man who brooked little criticism and the tragic absurdity of life in a country awash with petrodollars but whose inhabitants went without the rudiments of healthcare. 301pp, photos. £9.99 NOW £4


76980 JUST THE JOB, LAD: More Tales of a Yorkshire


Bobby by Mike Pannett Here is another in the popular series based on the real-life experiences of a policeman who returns to his North Yorkshire roots and finds that working a rural beat throws up even more challenges than his years in the Metropolitan Police ever did. When a drug dealer targets the towns and villages of Ryedale, Mike


launches an investigation that will uncover nationwide connections. News of a proposed ban on hunting with dogs raises hackles amongst his friends and contacts, threatening to put him in the firing line. The drama of the anti-hunt demo threatens to stop a train bringing a local MP to town and Mike has to call on all his resources to handle an inflammatory situation with the media looking on. As if that were not enough, as he starts working towards his sergeant’s exams, there is trouble on the home front. The roof at Keeper’s Cottage springs a leak during a thunderstorm, and he and his wife find themselves sharing a sofa with a skinny builder’s mate wearing a tea-cosy hat. 385 paperback pages, with map.


£8.99 NOW £3.50 “Allo, Allo, Allo”!!! 75069 BOBBY ON THE BEAT: Memoirs of a


London Policeman in the 1960s by Bob Dixon Bob Dixon joined the Metropolitan Police in 1961 and served for 15 years in uniform, plain clothes and CID. For ten of those years his beat was London’s East End, a tough area at the best of times, but particularly tricky at that time with the docks still active. Bob’s first arrest, a lady of the night as well known for her drinking as her profession, provided him a rude awakening with a well- aimed knee to his unmentionables. Chinese waiters would chase non- paying customers through Limehouse with machetes, a 5am stop-and- search of Ronnie Kray and numerous shocking murders are all part of this candid and hugely enjoyable memoir. 255pp paperback. £7.99 NOW £4


75819 NAZI PRINCESS: Hitler, Lord Rothermere and Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe by Jim Wilson


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“Spy, agent, intriguer, manipulator, adventuress - the label differed whether you were in Berlin or London.” Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe was not born into the nobility but her marriage to a Hungarian prince secured her a position in European aristocratic circles and she proceeded to use her looks and intelligence to make a living out of it. In 1927 she targeted the fabulously


wealthy British press baron Lord Rothermere, 23 years her senior, who was already an admirer of the Nazi doctrines being preached by Hitler. Five years later she negotiated a generous annuity plus expenses from Rothermere in return for providing entree into Nazi circles. She took as her lover Fritz Wiedemann, Hitler’s personal adjutant, reporting back to Rothermere, who used the material she relayed for propaganda. When Rothermere terminated her annuity she took him to court, gambling on the hope that he would back down to avoid his obsequious correspondence with Hitler being read out in court. But Rothermere was too rich to care and Stephanie was finally exiled to internment in the United States. 191pp, photos. £17.99 NOW £7


76071 CONFESSIONS OF A MALE NURSE by Michael Alexander


From stampeding nudes to inebriated teenagers, Michael Alexander never knew what he was getting himself into, but now 16 years in the nursing profession, as the only man in a gynaecology ward, he has pretty much dealt with everything - body parts that came off in his hands, teenagers with phantom pregnancies, doctors unable to tell the difference between their left and right, violent drunks, singing relatives, sexism and more nudity than the sex industry. A touching and frequently hilarious memoir. 318pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3.50


76580 MAGGIE: The First Lady by Brenda Maddox


Curiosity is the author’s response to the enigma of Margaret Roberts Thatcher and the great changes wrought since 1979 in Britain. How did she become Britain’s first woman Prime Minister when her contemporaries picked Shirley Williams or Barbara Castle as far more likely? Did she deploy the so-called feminine wiles when called upon to do a man’s job, such as sending men to war? Did she really end socialism and the Cold War? Here are plenty of new insights, a vivid picture of the very different world of a provincial town in the 1930s, and an account of Thatcher’s first attempt to enter Parliament at the 1950 General Election while she was just plain Margaret, the daughter of Alderman Roberts. Good too on her Oxford career. 275pp, paperback, photos. £8.99 NOW £3


76485 SPECIAL RELATIONSHIPS: People and Places by Asa Briggs


One of our most respected British historians describes how he got his unusual name, a question often put to him, and considers whether having been born in Bradford, an industrial town surrounded by moors, has shaped his writing and his ideas of history. A great traveller with a strong sense of the visual, he visits Leeds, Birmingham, Chicago and Melbourne among places that figure in his own ‘map of learning’, a term that he was the first to use. He also speculates on time travel, the history of wine and sport. His career has been as unconventional as this book and outside academic life he focuses on his wide range of friends including John Reith, Dennis Foreman, Harold MacMillan, Jim Callaghan, Denis and Edna Healey, Richard Crossman, Penelope Lively, P. D. James and John Sainsbury among them. 242pp, colour photos and illus. £19.99 NOW £7.50


76597 TESTAMENT OF FRIENDSHIP: The


Story of Winifred Holtby by Vera Brittain In her bestselling autobiography Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain passionately recorded the agonising years of the First World War, lamenting the loss of her lover, brother and her closest friends. In her second book, here she tells the story of the woman who helped her survive the aftermath of the War, the writer and reformer Winifred Holtby. They met at Somerville College, Oxford, in 1919 and their friendship continued through Vera’s marriage and their respective writing careers until Winifred’s untimely death at the age of 37 in 1935, just before the publication of her greatest novel, South Riding. Here is a moving record of a friendship between two women of courage, determination and intelligence. Paperback, 508pp. £12.99 NOW £5


74502 MY DEAR HUGH,


by Richard Cobb, edited by Tim Heald Richard Cobb and Hugh Trevor-Roper were among the leading historians of the second half of the 20th century, and Trevor-Roper’s methodical habits meant that Cobb’s half of their correspondence has survived. Here is a glorious picture of the witty, erudite and thoroughly back-stabbing milieu which the two professors inhabited. A letter of 1977 opens tantalisingly with the words “No, she has not been eaten by the Pope”. Cobb writes to Hugh: “I am glad you trounced the trendy bishops”. As chairman of the Booker prize committee he boasts that he managed to keep Martin Amis off the list in 1984. He confesses that in his 71st year he still observes female anatomy “with great interest”. A shrewd commentary on literary life. 239pp, cast of characters. £20 NOW £5.50


74569 WAINWRIGHT LETTERS edited by Hunter Davies


This selection from the letters of Alfred Wainwright presents a vivid picture. He was a legendary fell walker, author of the unique Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells, and latterly TV star, but above all he was a fluent, eloquent and diligent correspondent. The editor has estimated that AW must have written up to 10,000 in his life. They range from his early years in Blackburn to his established position as Borough Treasurer in Kendal, and cover all aspects of his professional and personal life, as well as the voluminous correspondence that was a consequence of his writing and publishing the Pictorial Guides. Late in life, he found unexpected love and happiness. Maps. £20 NOW £5


75221 JOSEPH ANTON: A Memoir by Salman Rushdie


This compelling volume is the true story of what actually happened to the author on 14th February 1989 and during the terrifying years that followed. Out of the blue, Salman Rushdie was telephoned by a BBC journalist and told that he was under a fatwa. In other


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words, he had been ‘sentenced to death’ by the Ayatollah Khomeini. The crime he had committed was to have written a novel called The Satanic Verses, in which - it was alleged - he had criticised Islam, the Prophet and the Qur’an. He was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team, who asked him to choose an alias. Rushdie chose the first names of two writers he loved - Conrad and Chekhov - and became known as Joseph Anton. Rushdie reveals how he and his family lived for more than nine years with the threat of murder, how he kept on working, how he fell in and out of love. 636 pages. $30 NOW £5.50


75178 STEPHEN HAWKING: An Unfettered Mind by Kitty Ferguson


Stephen Hawking is possibly the most recognisable person on the planet - a man almost totally physically helpless, speaking through a voice synthesiser from a wheelchair, whose mind soars brilliantly across the cosmos. Born in Oxford on 8 January 1942 he went up to University College, Oxford to study physics aged just 17, excelled at his subject and as a rower and cox, and in 1965 married Jane Wilde. By now his physical problems, noticed in 1962 and diagnosed as Motor Neurone Disease in 1963, were worsening, but in spite of this they produced three children as well as working at the height of academia. Hawking’s work in the field of theoretical physics is simply breathtaking. His 1988 book A Brief History of Time was the first time that the Big Bang, black holes and other specialist cosmology had ever been explained to the non-specialist reader. Photos. 310pp, paperback. ONLY £6


75234 SIGMUND FREUD: Life and Work


1856-1939 by Barbara Sternthal Here is Sigmund Freud as we have never before seen him - up close. The book extends to cover the literary quality of his works, and the ebullient and sometimes self-ironic tone of his letters, as well as focussing on his Jewish identity, embedding his biography firmly in the social and cultural context of the metropolis of Vienna. The publication of his The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899 laid the foundations for a new theory of psychology which was to stretch beyond its boundaries and develop into a phenomenon defining an era of culture and the arts. Four decades of development of the theories Freud had called ‘psychoanalysis’ now began. 159 pages, 139 illus. ONLY £4


75671 IN SEARCH OF A PAST by Ronald Fraser


First published in 1984, the leading oral historian of 20th century Spain Ronald Fraser turns his attention to his own origins. Here he gathers the recollections of the servants who worked at the manor house outside London where he grew up. It was the where his parents - one American the other Scottish - learned to embrace the lifestyle of the idle local gentry. He submits to a course of psychoanalysis and delves into a past riven by confusing emotions and conflicting class allegiances. Reprint, 187pp. £20 NOW £2


75307 RAYMOND CHANDLER A LIFE: A


Mysterious Something in the Light by Tom Williams


In the most thorough and comprehensive biography ever written, which is based on intensive research, new interviews, previously unpublished letters and archives on both sides of the Atlantic, a literary gumshoe casts light on this most mysterious of writers. The Raymond Chandler unveiled by this book is a man who, from an early age, was troubled by desertion and loneliness. His childhood was overshadowed by the cruel collapse of his parents’ marriage and by his father’s alcohol-fuelled violence, which eventually forced the boy and his doting mother to flee to Ireland and, later, London. But class- bound England proved stifling and, in his early 20s, Chandler returned to the US, where he met his one great love, Cissy Pascal, a married woman 18 years his senior. It was only during middle age, after his own alcoholism had wrecked a lucrative career as an oil-man, that Chandler seriously turned to crime fiction. The death of Cissy left him suicidal and he never recaptured the verve of his earlier writing but, somehow, the lonely ambiguous world of Philip Marlowe endures, compelling generation after generation of crime writers to follow him ‘down those mean streets’. 386 pages with b/w archive photos. £20 NOW £7


75325 A LIFE OF PHILIP K. DICK: The Man


Who Remembered the Future by Anthony Peake


Philip Kindred Dick’s relatively short life of 53 years nevertheless spanned a hugely eventful period in American and world history. An autodidact and voracious absorber of political, philosophical and theological ideas, he was one of the greatest and certainly most ambitious authors of the 20th century, whose 44 novels and 120 short stories, though usually classified as science fiction, offered much more, typically involving ordinary people caught up in the machinations of authoritarian, controlling governments and their technology. Married five times, living hand-to-mouth for decades then earning stratospheric sums, he suffered from mental instability and hallucinations which most likely informed his visionary writing. Eleven of his novels have been made into major Hollywood movies including Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report. A chronological survey of PKD’s life and work. Photos and cartoons. 256pp. £12.99 NOW £6


75455 KATE MOSS: The Making of an Icon by Christian Salmon


Spotted at the age of 14 in 1988 in JFK airport, her lightning ascent to the top of the supermodel world and choice luxury brand figurehead with its stratospheric rewards happened with no apparent effort on her part. Despite tabloid scandals involving sex, a lot of drugs, rock ‘n’ roll paramours and more than a few trips to rehab, she has had the ability to reinvent herself. 60 typically jaw-dropping and telling images probe the Moss phenomenon, a story of an icon, a muse, a legend and an enigma. 128pp. £14.99 NOW £4.50


Biography / Autobiography Ancestors


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A Guide to the Records 76852 PAUPER


ANCESTORS: A Guide to the Records Created by the Poor Laws in England and Wales


by David T. Hawkins with foreword by James Stansfeld


One of Britain’s leading genealogists, and the author of Railway Ancestors (code


76853), here explains how the comprehensive repository of information stored in records can provide an important, must-have resource for both genealogists and family historians. From the 16th century onwards, many laws were enacted to provide support for the poor and needy, and some parishes established poor-houses in which to look after the homeless. In Victorian England, poverty was regarded as almost a sin, brought about by the people themselves. It was an uphill struggle to convince politicians to persuade the rich that help should be given to the poor as a right and not simply sometimes, as charity. In 1834, with the creation of the Poor Law Commission, the whole of England and Wales was formed into Unions of parishes, and each Union built its own workhouse. In the eyes of the general public, the workhouses gained a reputation for cruelty yet, astonishingly, this system was not abolished until the creation of the NHS in 1948. Being part of the government bureaucracy, detailed records were kept of everything: rate-payers, collectors of rates, workhouse overseers and the staff and inmates of workhouses, as well as impoverished families who were helped to move to the north of England to work in industry. There were also lists of those given assisted passage to Australia, and children who were sent to Canada. This volume is a


fascinating collection of documents and a mine of information. Happy hunting! A huge 507 pages with b/w archive photos, list of abbreviations, index of place names and ships, index of personal names and five appendices. £30 NOW £8


76853 RAILWAY ANCESTORS: A Guide to the Staff Records


of the Railway Companies of England and Wales 1822-1947


by David T. Hawkins Almost every family tree will have a railway employee in one of its branches, so wide- ranging was the network of


lines connecting the far-flung corners of the British Isles. After the introduction of trains, entirely new forms of employment came into being, and many employees worked for their whole lives on the


railways. Generations followed their forbears, since the work carried a certain status and railway jobs were much coveted. Now readers will be able to gain much pleasure from tracing their forebears through this excellent, supremely comprehensive illustrated guide, which opens up to genealogists and railway enthusiasts the vast range of unique information stored in the documentary archives of the railway companies of England and Wales. It describes in fascinating detail the sources available to the researcher and how to gain access to them. There is an alphabetical listing of all the known railway companies which existed in England and Wales prior to nationalisation - almost one thousand in total - together with their dates of opening in each county and the location of their staff records. Until the publishing of this volume, no-one had been brave enough to tackle the immense problems most searchers had in trying to find railwaymen in the records. Before 1923, staff records were a


nightmare. Now, you will be able to find the exact reference you want, without spending time referring to lists and documents which are irrelevant. A vast 507 paperback pages with archive documents and photographs, prefaces to the First and Second Editions, list of abbreviations, index of persons, index of railway companies, stations and institutions. £20 NOW £7


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