The memoirs of 25 years of political activism, albeit minor and mostly unsuccessful! Deciding to dedicated his life to eradicating injustice Mark Steel tried to persuade his mates to change their sexist attitudes - only to be called a poof; innocently wandered into the heat of battle during the Brixton riots in 1981 - to be wrongfully arrested for stealing shoes; hidden striking steel workers to defeat Thatcher's union laws; and in the GLA elections of May 2000 he received 1823 votes for the London Socialist Alliance.

In this hard-hitting and explosive book, reforming parliamentarian Leo Abse presents a remarkable analysis of Tony Blair. Originally published in 1996 to critical acclaim and a storm of controversy, the author has completely revised and updated it to scrutinise Blair's premiership years. In a powerfully penetrating and forthright investigation of Blair's pysche. Abse deploys his psychoanalytical scholarship to consider the forces and influences that have driven Blair. He examines the house of secrets in which Blair was reared, where the promiscuous grandmother forever cast a shadow, where the illegitimate stricken father -- authoritative, ambitious and politically unstable -- dominated the household, and where death unfairly invaded the family domain. Abse goes on to show how the traumatic events of Blair's childhood left him a loner, an estranged man who sought to resolve his private dilemmas in rock music and religion and then, belatedly, in politics.

** AN EXPLOSIVE READ. GET READY FOR TRUTHS AND BOMBSHELLS. **'Staggeringly honest... Katie is one of showbusiness's great survivors,' Bryony Gordon 'Katie is the best storyteller,' Jamie Laing'Katie is a survivor,' Elizabeth DayCelebrating twenty years since her bestselling debut autobiography, Being Jordan, and a stellar thirty-year career, This Is Me is Katie Price as you've never heard her before - raw and reflective. Katie explores the incredible highs and devastating lows of her life and turbulent career, as well as the journey she's beenon to get to where she is today.From her first forays into glamour modelling when she was just 17 years old, through a wild ride of Playboy mansions, Eurovision Song Contests, reality TV and everything in between, This Is Me is the true story of Katie's life behind the headlines. But it's not all glitz, glam and cosmetic surgery. For the first time, Katie will reflect on her journey through therapy, PTSD, trauma and the trials of living her life in the media spotlight. It's a true tale of survival during a career that has seen her become a household name - sometimes for all the wrong reasons. But though this is Katie in her most reflective book to date, it's also punctuated with the very real drama she's been dealing with in her life at the moment.Full of life lessons she's learned along the way as well as the pain and heartache of the ones she's still learning, this is the real, explosive and unapologetically honest Katie Price.

Katie Price is one of the most talked-about women in the UK, and she has had an explosive couple of years. Her new autobiography holds nothing back. In it she will talk about: - Her controversial marriage to stripper Kieran; - Their very public split after he slept with one of her oldest friends; - Her difficult pregnancy and the fear she felt giving birth to her fifth child prematurely; - The continued joy and challenges of looking after her severely disabled son, Harvey; - Her public battle with Peter Andre, and the truth behind his allegations; - Why she forgave her third husband Kieran Hayler, and the truth behind his affair with Jane Pountney; And much, much more.

John Marks is something of a national treasure. Warm, funny, passionate, opinionated and occasionally contrary, he is a man whose life for more than 40 years marched in beat with that of the National Health Service. There is scarcely a medical issue or controversy in which John Marks was not involved. Abortion law reform, the doctors' 1970s revolt against the General Medical Council, the foundation of the Royal College of General Practitioners, countless NHS reorganizations, and the bloody battle over NHS pay beds and the pay of junior doctors are just a sample.Then there was the fierce, principled battle over how the medical profession and the public should respond to the terror of a new disease - AIDS. And the great war that was fought over the Conservatives introduction of market forces into the NHS in the late 1980s and early 1990s - an approach to running the NHS that lives on, reincarnated, under the current Labor government.In all of these John Marks played more than a walk-on part. In many he was a principal actor. For anyone wanting fully to understand the BMA's role in all this, this book is thus required reading. But it is much more than just a dry history of times past. It is laced with anecdote, from the horrifying to the hilarious, and on to high politics. John Marks' account of his life and times provides the tale of a warm, human, liberal and occasionally buccaneering man whose passion for life and causes leaves even those who do not always agree with him eager to count him among their friends.

George Melly is nudging 80. He is still swinging and singing, fly-fishing, flirting, and for now just playing at senility. But he walks very slowly these days. He's losing control over his bladder, and his bowels. He no longer, being quite deaf, enjoys noisy parties. He's been seriously ill once, and not quite well often. And he's constantly being probed and tinkered with, at St Mary's Hospital: like an old car in and out of the garage. Sex has walked out on him, but Irish Whiskey, in only slightly diminished quantities, remains a good friend. This remarkably cheerful book is his diary of it all. A darkly funny, frank, and larger-than-life account about how he feels to be growing old and irresistibly slowing down.

"This is an autobiography of one of the pioneers of hearing implants, Dr. Ellis Douek, who was the first to monitor the hearing of a baby at birth, and who participated in the development of a middle ear device for the restoration of hearing that now bears his name: Douek-MED. The book sheds light on the life of a surgeon from the early days of the UK National Health Service, and covers the highlights of Douek's medical career"--

When Ellis Douek was nine, his mother insisted that he take up embroidery, in case he became a surgeon when he grew up. Of course she was right, for he became Consultant ENT Surgeon at Guy's Hospital in London. The Douek parents had the unerring quality of belonging in whichever country they lived - Egypt, the Sudan, Columbia and, finally, England. Ellis Douek's memoirs describe the hedonism of life in Egypt, the Suez Crisis which uprooted them, 1950s Bradford, and Paris. He began his medical training in Paris where he, his sister Claudia (Claudia Roden, the cookery writer), and brother Zaki lived free of adult supervision. His training continued in London during a time of smog, digs and landladies. Ellis's days as an army medic provide hilarious accounts of whisky-sodden soldiers, circumcisions and bureaucratic procedures.

Elkie Brooks is a genuine national treasure. Blessed with one of the richest and most distinctive voices in showbusiness, she has been entertaining people around the world for the last five decades. Her professional debut at age 15 began a career that has spanned most musical genres and collaborations with some of the finest musicians of their generation, making her a household name. Along the way she has recorded some of the most iconic songs in rock history, including Lilac Wine, Sunshine After the Rain, Fool (If You Think It's Over) and her signature tune Pearl's A Singer. But the road to stardom was never an easy journey. Along the way she has experienced hardships that would have daunted most, and dealt with them with the same spirit, grit and determination that colours the extraordinary emotional power of her singing.

A political adviser to the formidably intellectual Foreign Secretary Tony Crosland and to Prime Minister Jim Callaghan, and a senior journalist at The Times and The Economist, David Lipsey has been close to the heart of government for more than four decades. Providing a unique perspective on a period of great economic and political upheaval, In the Corridors of Power details such flashpoints as the 1976?77 IMF crisis, which saw Britain under a divided government hovering on the edge of national bankruptcy, and reveals why Jim Callaghan ducked an election in 1978? and led Labour to disast ...

In July 1961, just before David Aaronovitch's seventh birthday, Yuri Gagarin came to London. The Russian spaceman was everything the Aaronovitch family wished for - a popular and handsome embodiment of modern communism, of the forward march of history. When Gagarin went to Highgate to visit the tomb of Karl Marx, the local communists came out to cheer, David's father, a full-time worker for the Communist Party, and his mother among them. But who were they, these ever hopeful, defiant and (had they but known it) historically doomed people? In a sense they were like a non-magical version of the wizards of J K Rowling's world, living part secretly with and parallel to the non-communist majority, sometimes persecuted, sometimes ignored, but carrying on their own ways and traditions. Where others went to church they went to Socialist Sunday School, where others watched the Black and White Minstrels they went to see the Red Army Choir (always providing that visas had been issued). Society's up was their down, its heroes were their villains and vice versa. Trade unions were never more noble than when militant, the blacks were right and the whites were wrong. Who wanted American TV when you could have Russian movies? A memoir of early life among communists and an exploration of the world that created that life, Party Animals first took David Aaronovitch back through his own memories of belief and action. But there was much more to it. He found himself studying the old secret service files, his mother's diaries and letters, uncovering the unspoken shame and fears that provided the unconscious background to his own existence as a party animal. Only then did he begin to understand what had come before - both the obstinate heroism and the monstrous cowardice. And the elements that shape our fondest beliefs