Uses excerpts from letters, memoirs, and documents to recreate the life of Ada Byron, daughter of the English poet, and discusses her contributions to mathematics and her friendships with the leading mathematicians of the period

"A major influence on the BBC and independent television in Britain in the 1960s, as well as on CBC and the National Film Board in Canada, Sydney Newman acted as head of drama at a key period in the history of television. For the first time, his comprehensive memoirs--written in the years before his death in 1997--are being made public. Born to a poor Jewish family in the tenements of Queen Street in Toronto, Newman's artistic talent got him a job at the NFB under John Grierson. He then became one of the first producers at CBC TV before heading overseas to the U.K. where he revitalized drama programming. Harold Pinter and Alun Owen were playwrights whom Newman nurtured, and their contemporary, socially conscious plays were successful, both artistically and commercially. At the BBC, overseeing a staff of 400, he developed a science fiction show that flourishes to this day: Doctor Who. Providing further context to Newman's memoir is an in-depth biographical essay by Graeme Burk, which positions Newman's legacy in the history of television, and an afterword by one of Sydney's daughters, Deirdre Newman."--

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Epic, moving and important' ROBERT HARRIS 'A modern classic' OBSERVER 'An unforgettable epic of a book' DAILY MAIL From longstanding political columnist and co[Bokinfo]

Born with a famous name to an unhappy marriage, Alexander Newley is the son of the Hollywood stars Joan Collins and Anthony Newley. Their life was one of almost unparalleled privilege and glamour but under the glossy veneer there was trouble: drugs, infidelity, insecurity and emotional trauma. Both Joan and Anthony were infantilised after being thrust into the spotlight so young, rendering them ill-equipped to care for Alexander and his sister Tara when they were born. This book, written with humour and compassion, tells the story of Alexander's nomadic childhood; the disintegration of his parents' marriage; and his battle to make sense of the past. It is also a meditation on art, identity and inheritance, and a portrait of London and Hollywood during the swinging sixties and the seventies. Complementing Alexander's vivid and razor-sharp prose are more than twenty of his own artworks depicting the people who played a pivotal role in his early years.

In September 1925, Sidney Reilly journeyed across the Russian frontier on a mission to overthrow the Bolsheviks and restore the Czar. He vanished without a trace. The circumstances surrounding his death remain a mystery. This classic autobiography reveals the intriguing adventures and exploits of the man widely credited as being the original twentieth-century super-spy, inspiration for Ian Fleming's James Bond. Sidney Reilly , the so-called Ace of Spies, was a womanizing British secret agent who claimed to be Irish but was in fact Russian. Awarded the Military Cross for his daring operations, he met his death in Russia in 1925 after a sting operation by the Soviet Secret Service.

'This war', wrote Winston Churchill to King George VI at the height of the Second World War, 'has brought throne and people closer together than was ever before recorded.' Here is a full and fascinating account of that coming together. It is a study of the contribution made not only by George VI and his redoubtable Queen, but also by the entire royal family during those turbulent years, and of how that contribution strengthened and popularized the monarchy. This is a family saga; an account of the lives, as much private as public, of all the diverse members of what George VI called 'The Firm'. Together with the tireless efforts of the King and Queen, it deals with such aspects as the Duke of Windsor's flirtation with fascism, the mysterious death of the Duke of Kent, the activities of the Athlones in Canada and the Gloucesters in Australia, and the imprisonment of the Princess Royal's eldest son, Viscount Lascelles. Occasionally tragic, often amusing, always interesting, The Royal Family at War is a richly detailed panorama of the monarchy in one of its finest hours. Theo Aronson is the author of over twenty works of royal historical biography including Grandmama of Europe, The King in Love, Napoleon and Josephine and a biography of Princess Margaret. In the course of researching and writing these books he has interviewed major and minor members of Britain’s royal family and members of the royal households, as well as various officials, servants, friends and others whose lives are in some way connected with the monarchy.

Michael Meyer's translations of Strindberg and Ibsen have often been described as definitive, as have his biographies of both writers. His Strindberg translations made him the first Englishman to receive the Gold Medal of the Swedish Academy, and his life of Ibsen won the Whitbread Biography prize. He has now turned his attention to his own life and his friendships with some of this century's most famous literary and theatrical names.

The iconoclastic writer and director of the revered classic Withnail & I—"The funniest British film of all time" (Esquire)—returns to London in a decade-long examination of the most provocative murder investigation in British history, and finally solves the identity of the killer known as "Jack the Ripper."In a literary high-wire act reminiscent of both Hunter S. Thompson and Errol Morris, Bruce Robinson offers a radical reinterpretation of Jack the Ripper, contending that he was not the madman of common legend, but the vile manifestation of the Victorian Age's moral bankruptcy.In exploring the case of Jack the Ripper, Robison goes beyond the who that has obsessed countless others and focuses on the why. He asserts that any "gentlemen" that walked above the fetid gutters of London, the nineteenth century's most depraved city, often harbored proclivities both violent and taboo—yearnings that went entirely unpunished, especially if he also bore royal connections. The story of Jack the Ripper hinges on accounts that were printed and distributed throughout history by the same murderous miscreants who frequented the East End of her Majesty's London, wiping the fetid muck from their boots when they once again reached the marble floors of society's finest homes.Supported by primary sources and illustrated with 75 to 100 black and white photographs, this breathtaking work of cultural history dismisses the theories of previous "Ripperologists." A Robinson persuasively makes clear with his unique brilliance, The Ripper was far from a poor resident of Whitechapel . . . he was a way of life.

Joanne Limburg suffers from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: she thinks things she doesn't want to think, and she does things she doesn't want to do. As a small child, she would chew her hair all day and lie awake at night wondering if heaven had a ceiling; a few years later, when she should have been doing her homework, she was pacing her bedroom, agonising about the unfairness of life as a woman, and the shortness of her legs. By the time she was an adult, obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours had come to dominate her life. She knew that something was wrong with her, but it would take many years before she understood what that something was. "The Woman Who Thought Too Much" follows Limburg's quest to understand her predicament and to manage her symptoms, taking the reader with her on a long, twisted journey through consulting rooms, libraries and internet sites, as she seeks to discover all she can about rumination, scrupulosity, avoidance, thought-action fusion, fixed-action patterns, anal fixations, schemas, basal ganglia, tics and synapses. On the way, she encounters competing interpretations of her condition, as offered by psychoanalysts, neuropsychiatrists and cognitive psychologists, and does her best to come to terms with an illness which turns out to be both common, and even - sometimes - treatable. This candid, moving and beautifully written memoir is a sometimes shocking, often sad, and yet also humorous revelation of what it is like to live with so debilitating a condition. It is also an exploration of the inner world of a poet and an intense evocation of the persistence and courage of the human spirit in the face of mental illness.

On the surface, David Baddiel's childhood was fairly standard: a lower-middle-class Jewish family living in an ordinary house in Dollis Hill, north-west London. But David came to realise that his mother was in fact not ordinary at all. Having escaped extermination by fleeing Nazi Germany as a child, she was desperate to make her life count, which took the form of a passionate, decades-long affair with a golfing memorabilia salesman. Meanwhile, as Baddiel investigates his family's past, his father's memories are fading; dementia is making him moodier and more disinhibited, with an even greater penchant for obscenity. As with his mother's affair, there is both comedy and poignancy to be found: laughter is a constant presence, capable of transforming the darkest of experiences into something redemptive.

Of all royal lost causes, none has a stronger fascination than that of the Stuart Pretenders to the British throne. For well over a century, four successive Stuart kings laid claim to the crown. The first was James II, deposed in 1688 by his daughter, Mary, and her husband, William of Orange; then came James III the Old Pretender and his son, Bonnie Prince Charlie; finally, there was Henry IX who died in 1807, the last descendant in direct and legitimate line from James II. This book tells the story of these four men, and of their families. It is an account of their public and private lives, their personalities, their relationships with others, and the extraordinary hold which they never ceased to exercise over their adherents. It is a book about people and the twilight of one of the world's most romantic, colourful and ill-fated dynasties. Theo Aronson is the author of over twenty works of royal historical biography, published in eleven languages. Among the widely read are Grandmama of Europe, The King in Love, Napoleon and Josephine and a biography of Princess Margaret.

This special book is a compilation of essays on a remarkable but little-known story that lasted over half a century of world-renown physicist, the late Sir Rudolf Peierls and his wife Genia Kannegiser. Peierls collected a lot of prestigious awards in his lifetime, and in the beginning of WW2, he and Otto Frisch were responsible for the inception of the Anglo-American nuclear program (1940). He was also one of the key contributors in the research at Los Alamos during those turbulent times. Most previous books on Peierls have focused on his scientific research, while the contents for this volume sheds light on his private life in dramatic circumstances. The extensive contributions were not only gathered from the relatives of Genia, the couple's daughters, Landau's students, and from Russian and English archives, but they also include the unique perspectives of the author who is a professional theoretical physicist and is also fluent in Russian, his native language. So, this fascinating story of love, friendship and physics between Rudolf and Genia is being told for the first time from a surprisingly new angle through correspondence between Genia and Rudolf, memoirs and other documents, interesting and informal excerpts from Peierls' private "diary" covering the years 1979-1994 that will take the reader on a journey through communism, world war, the trials and tribulations of the loving couple with distinctly very different personalities.

In the popular imagination the Special Air Service Regiment, or SAS, is perceived as both protector and avenger of the Crown and emblematic of staunch British individualism. In Dangerous Men, John Newsinger analyses the recent glut of popular books, magazines and films based on the activities of the SAS and assesses the aggressive masculinity, graphic violence and military prowess that are represented in many of the works, and their use in perpetuating myths of muscle-flexing nationalism. The book is divided into four parts covering the myth of the SAS analysed through historical works, and its representation in personal memoirs, fiction, survival manuals, TV documentaries and Hollywood film. Through the works examined, Newsinger deconstructs a range of real and imagined scenarios in which the SAS are pitted against an array of perceived enemies of the state, including the representation of the its role in the storming of the Iranian Embassy and in conflicts from the Falklands to the Gulf. Among the works examined are the bestselling memoirs by Michael Paul Kennedy, Andy McNab, Peter de la Billiere, Chris Ryan, and Jenny Simpson; fiction by James Follett, Terence Strong, Gerald Seymour and the Soldier A-Z series; key historical accounts by Philip Warner,Tony Geraghty, James Adams, and Mark Urban; and acclaimed films such as Who Dares Wins and The Rock .

"The best voice that ever graced 2-Tone."-- Rolling Stone "The iconic queen of ska. . . . It's gritty, witty, and compelling."-- Elle Lead singer for platinum-selling 2-Tone band The Selecter, Pauline Black has been in the music business for over thirty years. The only woman in a movement dominated by men, she was very much the Queen of British Ska. She saw The Specials, Madness, Dexy's Midnight Runners, and all the other top bands of that generation at their very best . . . and worst. Black was born in 1953 of Anglo-Jewish/Nigerian parents. Adopted by a white, working class family in the fifties, Pauline was always made to feel different, both by the local community and members of her extended family, who saw her at best as a curiosity, at worst as an embarrassing inconvenience. Weaving her rise to fame and recollections of the 2-Tone phenomenon with her moving search for her birth parents, Black By Design is a funny and enlightening memoir of music and roots. Pauline Black is a singer and actress who gained fame as the lead singer of seminal 2-Tone band The Selecter. The band's new album was released in September 2011.

The number one bestselling memoir of one of New Labour's three founding architects, now with a revealing new chapter updating this paperback edition. Peter Mandelson is one of the most influential politicians of modern times. The Third Man is his story - of a life played out in the backroom and then on the frontline of the Labour Party during its unprecedented three terms in government. Much of the book is devoted to the defining political relationships of Peter Mandelson's life - with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Charting what he terms the 'soap-opera' years of the Labour government, his book continues to ruffle feathers with an updated preface bringing the story up to the tempestuous present.

A fascinating account of life as a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain The Lost World of British Communism is a vivid account of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Raphael Samuel, one of post-war Britain’s most notable historians, draws on novels of the period and childhood recollections of London’s East End, as well as memoirs and Party archives, to evoke the world of British Communism in the 1940s. Samuel conjures up the era when the movement was at the height of its political and theoretical power, brilliantly bringing to life an age in which the Communist Party enjoyed huge prestige as a bulwark for the struggles against fascism and colonialism.

Miserable at an elegant day school for girls, Victoria Coren finds an escape in the mysterious world of poker. Twenty years later, she has won a million dollars and forgotten to have children. What price adventure? This is a true story of happiness and heartbreak, smoke and mirrors, bright lights and shady characters. It is a memoir of friendship and belonging, love and loss. It might also teach you how to win a million . . .

During a career spanning more than forty years, the award-winning journalist and broadcaster Robin Lustig has lived in, worked in and reported from more than eighty countries. Now, in Is Anything Happening?, he tells the inside story of the triumphs and disasters he experienced along the way. He describes coming under fire in Pakistan and crashing the bongs of Big Ben on Remembrance Sunday. He was in Berlin on the day Germany was re-unified, and in Moscow for the final day of the Soviet Union. He also met some of the world's most revered, and reviled, political leaders, from Nelson Mandela to the 'butcher of Bosnia', Radovan Karadzic. And Lustig famously presented a special news programme covering the sudden death of Diana, Princess of Wales, just hours after the announcement was made. In this highly personal memoir, both funny and poignant, Lustig describes growing up as the son of refugees from Nazi Germany, retracing the journeys of his immigrant forebears, and standing on the very spot where his grandmother was murdered by a Nazi death squad in 1941. After more than thirty years of reporting from and about the Middle East - including three years based in Jerusalem for The Observer - he reflects on the continuing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and reaches a startling and controversial conclusion: that the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 may well have been a mistake for both Jews and non-Jews.

This is an eloquent and deeply felt memoir exploring the author's complex relationship with his Jewish identity. "If I Am Not Myself" is a passionate, thought-provoking exploration of what it means to be Jewish in the twenty-first century. It traces the author's upbringing in 1960s Jewish-American suburbia, his anti-war and pro-Palestinian activism on the British Left, and life as a Jew among Muslims in Pakistan, Morocco, and Britain. Interwoven with this are the experiences of his grandfather's life in Jewish New York of the 1930s and '40s, his struggles with anti-Semitism and the twists and turns that led him from anti-Fascism to Militant Zionism. In the course of this deeply personal story, Marqusee refutes the claims of Israel and Zionism on Jewish loyalty and laments their impact on the Jewish Diaspora. Rather, he argues for a richer, more multi-dimensional understanding of Jewish history and identity, and reclaims vital political and personal space for those castigated as self-haters by the Jewish establishment.

'Enlightening ... Funny, smart, original and provocative ... It is hard to imagine the stalwarts of Mock the Week recognising the Druze militia leader Walid Jumblatt in a London cinema' NEW STATESMAN 'Few standups have come close to capturing a fraction of this creative energy in a book ... Alexei Sayle is an exception' GUARDIAN "What I brought to comedy was an authentic working-class voice plus a threat of genuine violence - nobody in Monty Python looked like a hard case who'd kick your head in." In 1971, comedians on the working men's club circuit imagined that they would be free to continue telling their tired, racist, misogynistic gags forever. But their nemesis, a nineteen-year-old Marxist art student, was slowly coming to meet them... Thatcher Stole My Trousers chronicles a time when comedy and politics united in electrifying ways. Recounting the founding of the Comedy Store, the Comic Strip and the Young Ones, and Alexei's friendships with the comedians who - like him - would soon become household names, this is a unique and beguiling blend of social history and memoir. Fascinating, funny, angry and entertaining, it is a story of class and comedy, politics and love, fast cars and why it's difficult to foul a dwarf in a game of football.