If a nineteenth century lady had neither a husband to support her nor money of her own, almost her only recourse was to live in someone else's household and educate their children - in particula- r, their daughters. Marooned within the confines of other people's lives, neither servants nor family members, governesses occupied an uncomfortable social limbo. And being poor and insignificant, their papers were mostly lost. But a few journals and letters have come down to us, giving a vivid record of what it was to be a lone professional woman at a time when such a creature officially did not exist. Features the Brontes and Anna Leonowens, whose memoirs inspired The King and I.

Personal narratives of a British officer on the Western front during World War I.

Felicity Kendal began writing these richly entertaining and deeply honest memoirs at her father's bedside as he lay in a coma. As she moves hauntingly between the present and the past, Felicity Kendal recaptures her magical childhood in India, her complex relationship with her father and the rest of the family, her love affairs and the acting career that led to her being recognised as one of the outstanding actresses of her generation. 'A remarkable first book about acting, travelling, exile, loving and losing; a book about families and, above all, a book about fathers and daughters.' Angela Lambert, Good Housekeeping

-Appeals to popular culture book buyers and collectors, especially those dealing in biographies and memoirs, popular music history, punk culture, or the Clash -Published to follow the Clash's 40th anniversary in 2016, this is a testament to the man who both facillitated the band's formation and held it together From the growth of punk and beyond, this visually rich collection of art, fashion and ephemera, accompanied by essays, draws from the archives and philosophy of one of the 'prime instigators' of UK punk - Bernard Rhodes. Wake Up! To the World of Bernard Rhodes is a first-hand account of the punk movement. Bernard Rhodes shares his title of 'prime instigator of UK punk' with Malcom McLaren. Been there, seen it, done it hardly does Rhodes' story justice. Inspired by the avant-garde Situationist movement, and the designer of radical t-shirts for McLaren and the Vivienne Westwood Kings Road shop, it was Rhodes who introduced John Lydon to the Sex Pistols before engineering the formation of the Clash. With him as their manager, and the co-creator of their super-committed style, the Clash became and remains one of the biggest bands of the era, and a symbol of punk as a positive force. Alongside his two stints with them, Rhodes also nurtured the Specials and Dexy's Midnight Runners to huge success.

At the end of the millennium, the leading British industry magazine, The Bookseller, selected the ten people who had most influenced its century. Tom Maschler—described as "the most important publisher in Britain; the most innovative, adventurous, and newsworthy"—was one of them. It went on to say that for nearly 20 years, "he made publishing glamorous." Over the course of his career, Maschler launched the careers of Thomas Pynchon, Joseph Heller, Gabriel García Márquez, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, and Bruce Chatwin, among others. From the party where Norman Mailer stabbed his wife to the porch where Ernest Hemingway shot himself, this frank and fascinating memoir affords a rare glimpse into the golden days of British publishing. An extraordinary literary memoir by one great publishers of the 20th century.

Don't Tell Sybil is a libidinous memoir by a master raconteur. George Melly (1926-2007) was impossible to ignore in London cultural circles between the 1950s and 90s. He first came to attention as a jazz singer, notable for risqué songs performed with verve rather than with great technical ability. An arresting personality, Melly dressed the part: his outrageous suits became a mark, and his talents as a raconteur soon brought him fame as a TV talkshow guest (usually late-night shows, for reasons of propriety). His cheerful bisexuality, recounted throughout his three volumes of autobiography, scandalized and then delighted a public whose own sexual attitudes changed over the decades they describe. Don't Tell Sybil is a supplementary volume of autobiography which treats in more detail Melly's youthful and long-lasting attraction to Surrealism, and his equally lengthy friendship with the contradictory character who headed up the English Surrealist group, E.L.T. Mesens. Their adventures form the core of this book--adventures of which Mesens did not want his wife, Sybil, to learn, hence the book's title. Mesens was a perfect subject, an artist and prankster who could be as punctilious and stingy as the most respectable bourgeois. Anecdotes of the artists who showed at Mesens' gallery, such as Schwitters and Magritte, pepper the narrative, a hugely affectionate memoir by a character who was truly larger than life. This new edition is augmented with previously unpublished photographs relating to Melly and English Surrealism.

Stuart Hall’s retirement from the Open University in 1997 provided a unique opportunity to reflect on an academic career which has had the most profound impact on scholarship and teaching in many parts of the world. From his early work on the media, through his influential re-working of Gramsci for the analysis of Britain in the late 1970s, through his considered debates on Thatcherism and more recently on “race” and new ethnicities, Hall has been an inspirational figure for generations of academics. He has helped to make universities places where ideas and social commitment can exist alongside each other. This collection invites a wide range of academics who have been influenced by Stuart Hall’s writing to contribute not a memoir or a eulogy but an engaged piece of social, cultural or historical analysis which continues and develops the field of thinking opened up by Hall. The topics covered include identity and hybridity, history and post-colonialism, pedagogy and cultural politics, space and place, globalization and economy, modernity and difference.

Miriam Gross, as a journalist and editor, has worked with some of the most influential figures of the 20th century poets, philosophers, playwrights and politicians. This book offers recollections from 40 years at the heart of English cultural life. Brought up in wartime Jerusalem, she was deposited by her parents, speaking no English, at the bohemian Dartington Hall School; and then continued her education at Oxford where eschewing her quiet, tea-drinking contemporaries at St Anne s she found her way into more glamorous academic circles. From there it was a short hop to pre-spell-check Fleet Street. Her descriptions whether she is having to mend her boss's bra on her first day at work, or rewriting Angus Wilson's slapdash book reviews, or being asked to make the women s pages of the Observer more raunchy show a merciless eye for the bogus and the absurd. Alongside reflections on everything from feminism and motherhood to education and anti-semitism, she recounts her numerous infatuations, both requited and unrequited, with the sort of self-deprecating candour that makes this memoir a classic of its kind.

The name of Cyril Ornadel may not be known to many outside the musical theatre. The back of his head, however, was for many years the most famous on television, for Cyril Ornadel was the conductor in the orchestra pit for ITV's immensely popular programme, Sunday Night at the London Palladium. But this efficient and unassuming man was the musical director for numerous West End 'hit' shows: Kismet, Call Me Madam, Pal Joey, Wonderful Town, The King and I and My Fair Lady, to name but a few. He is also a composer in his own right. His song 'Portrait of My Love' is a standard, known and loved by an entire generation, while 'If I Ruled the World' from Pickwick, the musical he wrote with Wolf Mankowitz and Leslie Bricusse, became a world-class hit and turned into what was virtually the late Sir Harry Secombe's theme tune. Now, in this rich and illuminating memoir, Cyril Ornadel shares the fruits of his experience in almost every aspect of the music business - theatre, films, recording, composing, orchestrating, conducting, producing. With wit, wisdom and humility he candidly discusses the triumphs and disasters of his lifelong love affair with Show Business.

When Cosmo Landesman's American parents decided to move their young family to London in the swinging sixties, it was not to pursue a quieter life on this side of the pond. Quite the reverse: it was out of unbridled, unashamed lust for fame and fortune. But things did not go according to plan, and as a child Cosmo found himself charged with raising his starstruck parents and trying to cope with the publicity stunt of their 'open marriage'. Over the years he wrote press releases, blurbs and proposals for their plays, film treatments, novels, book ideas and demo tapes. He found himself playing the roll of creative midwife, personal manager, publicist, psychoanalyst and apologist. Not any more. In this hilarious memoir he finally lays bare his extraordinary childhood and the twists and turns of his parents' bizarre desire for the spotlight - and how they were always doomed to failure.

Milton Shulman has been a much-loved and outspoken arts critic for the Express and then the Evening Standard for forty years. These are his witty, anecdotal memoirs on the careers, interviews and encounters over the years. His broadcasts on Stop the Week as well as frequent radio and TV appearances have made him a nationwide figure.

Elias Canetti originally intended Party in the Blitz to capture an image of his time in post-war London. Well known throughout Europe, Canetti scorned British intellectuals who weren't familiar with his work. By force of will alone he accumulated English followers, but not before being christened "the godmonster of Hampstead." Canetti's memories of various people in his social circle are brief and scathing brimstone sketches. T.S. Eliot, Iris Murdoch, Wittgenstein, Herbert Read, Bertrand Russell-Canetti rakes them all over the coals. To Canetti, T.S. Eliot was nothing more than an American emigrant trying desperately to act British, and Canetti's portrayal of Iris Murdoch, with whom he had an affair, is nothing short of brutal. Michael Hofmann's translation pulls no punches, delivering the goods on Canetti's searing injection: "when you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about."

For fifty years, Peter Brook's opera, stage, and film productions have held audiences spellbound. His visionary directing has created some of the most influential productions in contemporary theater. Now at the pinnacle of his career, Brook has given us his memoir, a luminous, inspiring work in which he reflects on his artistic fortunes, his idols and teachers, his philosophical path and personal journey. In this autobiography, the man 'The New York Times' has called "the English-speaking world's most eminent director" and 'The London Times' has named "theater's living legend" reveals the myriad sources behind his lifelong passion to find the most expressive way of telling a story. Whether in India's epic "Mahabharata" or a stage adaptation of Oliver Sak's "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," South Africa's" Woza Albert" or "The Cherry Orchard," Brook's unique blend of practicality and vision creates unforgettable experiences for audiences worldwide.

Clare's memoirs of Berlin and its inhabitants in the aftermath of World War II aims to be a kaleidoscopic portrait of the defeated Germans and the British, American and French occupiers.

"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"--

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

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.

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.

Yvonne Kapp, best known today for her biography of Eleanor Marx, was a remarkable woman whose life spanned virtually the entire twentieth century. "Time Will Tell" charts her life: 'enfant terrible' in London, the literary editor of "Vogue" in France in the late 1920s, work for anti-fascist refugee committees in 1930s' London, research for the Amalgamated Engineering Union and the British Medical Research Council, then, in her later years, work as a translator and a biographer. Kapp is a gifted writer on the details of family life and a fine recorder of shifting political and cultural patterns. Accounts of the many encounters she had with various important figures--Quentin Bell, Rebecca West, Paul Robeson, John Heartfield, Melanie Klein and Herbert Morrison, to name only a few--are expertly woven into the fascinating story of her own life. This is the autobiography of a woman who took issue with the dominant political movements of her age, with Fascism and with Communism, while at the same time reflecting on the changing cultural and political climate in Britain during her lifetime.