A Life Like Other People’s, by Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett’s A Life Like Other People’s is the core of his collection, Untold Stories. It is a poignant memoir of his parents’ marriage and his own childhood, recalling Christmases with Grandma Peel and the lives, loves and deaths of his unforgettable aunties, Kathleen and Myra. With the sudden descent of his mother into depression and, later, dementia, a long-held family secret is uncovered in this heart-rending and at times irresistibly funny work of autobiography by one of the best-loved English writers.

Something Sensational to Read on the Train, by Gyles Brandreth

This is a diary packed with famous names and extraordinary stories.  It is also rich in incidental detail and wonderful observation, providing both a compelling record of five remarkable decades and a revealing, often hilarious and sometimes moving account of Gyles Brandreth’s unusual life – as a child living in London in the ‘swinging’ sixties, as a jumper-wearing TV presenter, as an MP and government whip, and as a royal biographer who has enjoyed unique access to the Queen and her family.

Something Sensational to Read on the Train takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride from the era of Dixon of Dock Green to the age of The X Factor, from the end of the farthing to the arrival of the euro, from the Britain of Harold Macmillan and the Notting Hill race riots to the world of Barack Obama and Lewis Hamilton.

With a cast list that runs from Richard Nixon and Richard Branson to Gordon Brown and David Cameron – and includes princes, presidents and pop stars, as well as three archbishops and any number of actresses – this is a book for anyone interested in contemporary history, politics and entertainment, royalty, gossip and life itself.

We Need to Talk About Kelvin, by Marcus Chown

Marcus Chown uncovers the cosmic signs in the world around us. Look around you …

• The reflection of your face in a window tells you that the universe at its deepest level is orchestrated by chance.
• The iron in a spot of blood on your finger tells you that out in space there must be a furnace at a temperature of 4.5 billion degrees.
• The static on a badly tuned TV screen tells you that the universe began in a big bang.

In fact, your very existence tells you this may not be the only universe but merely one among an infinity of others, stacked like the pages of a never-ending book.

Marcus Chown, author of the hugely successful Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You, shows how familiar features of the world reveal profound truths about the ultimate nature of reality. With the aid of a falling leaf, or a rose, or a starry night sky, Chown makes cutting-edge science clear and meaningful. His new book will literally change the way you see the world.

How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood, 1941-1981, by William J. Mann

I don’t pretend to be an ordinary housewife.’

So said Elizabeth Taylor, and therein lay her secret. From her days as a youthful minx at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to her post-studio reign as America’s lustiest middle-aged movie queen, Taylor has defined the very essence of Hollywood stardom. Marching through the decades swathed in mink, discarding husbands nearly as frequently as she changed her diamond necklaces, Taylor dominated the headlines as no other star before or since. From America’s sweetheart to America’s homewrecker and then back again, she uncannily reflected (and at times predicted) the always shifting cultural zeitgeist.

How to Be a Movie Star is a different kind of book about Elizabeth Taylor: an intimate look at a girl who grew up with fame, who learned early – and well – how to be famous, and how that fame was used and constructed to carry her through more than sixty years of public life. Indeed, one might say Elizabeth went to school to learn how to be famous, her education courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the greatest, most glamorous movie studio of all time. Care has been taken to recreate in delicious detail the intricate star-making machinery of MGM, back in the days when the studio churned out a full-length movie every nine days.

The critic Andrew Sarris has written, ‘Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor were the most beautiful couple in the history of cinema. Those gigantic close-ups of them kissing [in A Place in the Sun] were unnerving – like gorging on chocolate sundaes.’

Some years ago, Taylor called herself ‘Mother Courage’, and vowed she’d be dragging her sable coat behind her into old age. Today, stars of her calibre are at a premium. If not the greatest, she is certainly the last.

The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi, by Andrew McConnell Stott

The son of a deranged Italian immigrant, Joseph Grimaldi (1778–1837) was the most celebrated of English clowns. The first to use white-face make-up and wear outrageous coloured clothes, he completely transformed the role of the Clown in the pantomime with a look as iconic as Chaplin’s tramp or Tommy Cooper’s magician. One of the first celebrity comedians, his friends included Lord Byron and the actor Edmund Kean, and his memoirs were edited by the young Charles Dickens. But underneath the stage paint, Grimaldi struggled with depression and his life was blighted with tragedy. His first wife died in childbirth and his son would go on to drink himself to death. In later life, the extreme physicality of his performances left him disabled and in constant pain. The outward joy and tomfoolery of his performances masked a dark and depressing personal life, and instituted the modern figure of the glum, brooding comedian. Drawing on a wealth of source material, Stott has written the definitive biography of Grimaldi and a highly nuanced portrait of Georgian theatre in London, from the frequent riots at Drury Lane to the spectacular excess of its arch rival Sadler’s Wells; from stage elephants running amok to recreations of Admiral Nelson’s sea battles on flooded stages at the height of the Napoleonic Wars. Joseph Grimaldi left an indelible mark on the English theatre and the performing arts, but his legacy is one of human struggle, battling demons and giving it his all in the face of adversity.

The Great Silence: 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War, by Juliet Nicholson

Peace at last, after Lloyd George declared it had been the war to end all wars , would surely bring relief and a renewed sense of optimism? But this assumption turned out to be deeply misplaced as people began to realise that the men they loved were never coming home.

The Great Silence is the story of the pause between 1918 and 1920. A two-minute silence to celebrate those who died was underpinned by a more enduring silence born out of national grief. Those who had danced through settled Edwardian times, now faced a changed world. Some struggled to come to terms with the last four years, while others were anxious to move towards a new future.

Change came to women, who were given the vote only five years after Emily Davidson had thrown herself on the ground at Ascot race course, to the poor, determined to tolerate their condition no longer, and to those permanently scarred, mentally and physically, by the conflict. The British Monarchy feared for its survival as monarchies around Europe collapsed and Eric Horne, one time butler to the gentry, found himself working in a way he considered unseemly for a servant of his calibre. Whether it was embraced or rejected, change had arrived as the impact of a tragic war was gradually absorbed.

With her trademark focus on daily life, Juliet Nicolson evokes what England was like during this fascinating hinge in history.

Secret Britain: The Hidden Bits of our History, by Justin Pollard

Some of our most intriguing history is missing. Perhaps there has been a conspiracy, a cover-up? Or maybe some stories have been lost, forgotten or were just too embarrassing to talk about at the time? But now they are back, revealed in all their glory: secret passages, events, societies, loves, identities and even dark secrets of the grave.

After much sleuthing, Justin Pollard takes us into undisclosed historical waters to discover why the city of Burlington isn’t on the map; how ‘Agent Pickle’ saved the lost treasure of Bonnie Prince Charlie; what Sir Thomas Overbury knew in 1613 that got him murdered with a poisoned enema and how Virginia Woolf sweet-talked her way aboard HMS Dreadnought dressed as Abyssinian Prince.

Secret Britain will also reveal the tragic love story behind the Rolls Royce mascot; how agent Garbo managed to get an MBE and an Iron Cross; the sinister properties of the Hand of Glory; the lost smuggling ship Peggy; the Mystery Runner of Nos Galan; the extraordinary history of the Fairy Flag of Dunvegan; London’s only Nazi war memorial and the secrets of the WWII Monopoly board.

Those Who Marched Away, edited by Alan Taylor

War infects everything it touches. For everyone, whether combatant or not, it is the most testing of times, when the old certainties and moral imperatives cannot be guaranteed. Life hangs by a gossamer thread and many people who would otherwise not keep diaries are moved to record what they see, feel and do. Arranged as a diary around a calendar year, The War Diaries tells many individual stories from many wars down the ages, with several compelling entries for each day of the year. The diarists come from every walk of life; from faceless foot-soldiers to those charged with orchestrating battle, from the Home Front to the Holocaust, from famous writers, political leaders and fighting men and women to ordinary working people enveloped by events over which they have little influence. Together, they contribute an intimate insight into what has been described both as ‘the most exciting and dramatic thing in life’ to ‘the universal perversion’.

The Country Diaries, edited by Alan Taylor

4 July, 1877 [Dorset] ‘Country life at Sturminster. Vegetables pass from growing to boiling, fruit from the bushes to pudding, without a moment’s halt, and the gooseberries that were ripening on the twigs at noon are in a tart an hour later.’ Thomas Hardy

The unique beauty of the British countryside has been celebrated down the ages through music, poetry, and art. It has also been celebrated in countless private diaries. This delightful treasury gathers together the very finest – from Rev Gilbert White’s journal of life at his famous home in Selborne, to Beatrix Potter’s holiday diaries from Perthshire. Elsewhere, the thoughts of Dorothy Wordsworth and John Fowles rub shoulders with the words of Alan Clark and Queen Victoria. Together these private records paint a rich and surprising picture of a landscape and a way of life we think we know so well.

A Gambling Man: Charles II and The Restoration, by Jenny Uglow

From acclaimed biographer Jenny Uglow, a portrait of Charles II and the first decade of the Restoration: a time of glamour and gossip, drama and risk, faction and crisis.

Charles II was thirty when he crossed the channel in fine May weather in 1660. His Restoration was greeted with maypoles and bonfires, like spring after the long years of Cromwell’s rule. But there was no going back, no way he could ‘restore’ the old. Certainty had vanished. The divinity of kingship fled with his father’s beheading. ‘Honour’ was now a word tossed around in duels. ‘Providence’ could no longer be trusted. As the country was rocked by plague, fire and war, people searched for new ideas by which to live. Exactly ten years later Charles would stand again on the shore at Dover, laying the greatest bet of his life in a secret deal with his cousin, Louis XIV.

The Restoration decade was one of experiment: from the science of the Royal Society to the startling role of credit and risk, from the shocking licence of the court to the failed attempts at toleration of different beliefs. Negotiating all these, Charles, the ‘slippery sovereign’, layed odds and took chances, dissembling and manipulating his followers. The theatres were restored, but it was the king who was the supreme actor. Yet while his grandeur, his court and his colourful sex life were on display, his true intentions lay hidden.

A Gambling Man is a portrait of Charles II, exploring his elusive nature through the lens of these ten vital years – and a portrait of a vibrant, violent, pulsing world, in which the risks the king took forged the fate of the nation, on the brink of the modern world.

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