Courtiers, by Lucy Worsley

From Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator of the Historic Royal Palaces, a hugely engaging book about the men and women who lived and worked at Kensington Palace.

Ambitious and talented people flocked to court in search of power and prestige, but Kensington Palace was also a gilded cage. While its inhabitants were cocooned in comfort and splendour, successful courtiers had level heads and cold hearts; their secrets were never safe. Among them, a Vice Chamberlain with many vices, a Maid of Honour with a secret marriage, a pushy painter, an alcoholic equerry, a Wild Boy, a penniless poet, a dwarf comedian, two mysterious turbaned Turks and any number of discarded royal mistresses.

An eye-opening portrait of an enthralling group of royal servants, Courtiers also throws new light on the dramatic lives of George II and Queen Caroline: a lover murdered, babies snatched, horrific illnesses and tearful deathbed reconciliations.

Peter Pan’s First XI, by Kevin Telfer

The creator of Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie, was a hugely enthusiastic cricketer of very little talent. That didn’t stop him from leading perhaps the most extraordinary amateur cricket team ever to have taken the field. Some of the twentieth century’s most famous writers including A. A. Milne, P. G. Wodehouse and Jerome K. Jerome, regularly turned out for Barrie’s team between 1890 and 1913. This very Edwardian vision of village cricket was only brought to an end by the First World War.

Those years of golden summers were recounted in Barrie’s letters and journals, many revealed here for the first time. Cricket lovers will identify with Barrie’s attempts to assemble a team of competent players.

In Peter Pan’s First XI, Kevin Telfer weaves together cricket, literature, history, humour and biography to create an entertaining account of this little-known band of cricketing Peter Pans – and the age in which they lived.

Africa United, by Steve Bloomfield

A superb portrait of the divided continent of Africa, told through one fo the few things that unites it. Football inspires competition and inflames passions nowhere as strongly as in Africa. Take the player born and raised in Congo who scored the winning goal for Rwanda against the country of his birth and promptly had his house burnt down for his trouble. Or the Kenyan football chant ‘Oliech! Odinga! Obama!’, which celebrates the country’s star striker, its popular prime minister and its most famous adopted son. Meanwhile, the influence of African football continues to spread rapidly through Europe. Today, no Premiership team is complete without a major African star – Drogba, Essien, Touré, Adebayor, and Kanu. Countless African players are now enriching English football and becoming household names. Steve Bloomfield’s wide-ranging and incisive book investigates Africa’s love of football, its increasing global influence, the build-up to the 2010 World Cup and the social and political backdrop to the greatest show on earth.

Read an extract

A Gambling Man, 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.

An interview with Jenny Uglow

Siberian Education, by Nicolai Lilin

Set in a small and tight-knit community of ‘honest criminals’ in a remote part of Russia, this is a tale of an extreme boyhood – exotic, violent and completely unique. Told from the perspective of a boy gaining his ‘education’ as a member of the Mafia-like Urkas in Transnistria, we get a glimpse inside the strict codes of honour and the rituals of this bizarre community. Besides having a deep distrust of outsiders – especially the police – the community is split into ‘honest’ and ‘dishonest’ criminals and crime is all-pervasive. Even their youngest children are taught to understand violence and when it is appropriate to use it. By the age of six, Nicolai Lilin is given his first ‘pike knife’ by an uncle and by the age of twelve he has been convicted of attempted murder. A huge bestseller in Lilin’s current home country, Italy, Siberian Education is an extraordinary snapshot of a violent world.

Watch the author talk about the book, and read two chapters

Nomad, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Nomad is a philosophical memoir, telling how Ayaan Hirsi Ali came to America in search of a new life, and the difficulties she faced in reconciling her two worlds. With vivid anecdotes and observations of people, cultures, and political debacles, this narrative weaves together Hirsi Ali’s personal story — including her reconciliation with her devout father who had disowned her when she denounced Islam — with the stories of other women and men, high-profile and not, whom she encounters. With a deep understanding and intimate perspective of the situation of Muslim women and moderates in the world today and her singular, unwavering intellectual courage, Hirsi Ali offers her always notable, often controversial analysis of Islam vis a vis the superiority of Western democratic values.

Achieving the Impossible, by Lewis Gordon Pugh

In July 2007, Lewis Gordon Pugh became the first person to swim at the North Pole, in temperatures that would kill a normal person, primarily to raise awareness of climate change. Nicknamed ‘the human polar bear’ for his ability to raise his body temperature at will, he has pioneered swims in the world’s most hostile waters, redefining what it is possible to achieve in terms of endurance.

A former member of the SAS, Lewis tells his fantastic story here for the first time. Chapters cover his childhood, growing up with his ‘hero’ Surgeon Rear Admiral father, his early life in South Africa, his gruelling training in the army’s elite regiment, his inspiration and, of course, plenty of action/adventure stories, chronicling his many nail-biting endurance swims. With practical lessons taken from his own life, Lewis explains how recognising one’s passions and taking calculated risks is essential for anyone looking to fulfil their goals. The book will also cover his expedition kayaking to the North Pole in summer 2008 and preparing for his most dangerous swim yet – on Everest! – planned for May 2010. His story is inspiring, entertaining and thrilling in equal measure, and its 39-year-old author is a much-needed role model for our times.

Unplayable, An Inside Account of Tiger’s Most Tumultuous Season, by Robert Lusetich

Since his professional debut in 1996, Tiger Woods has reigned as the world’s greatest living golfer, having singlehandledly increased the popularity of the game and become one of the most recognized faces in the world.

His major knee surgery in 2008 and subsequent nine month absence from professional play raised questions about whether he would be able to return to the same level of play and fulfil his destiny that had before appeared all but assured. And more than just Tiger’s legacy hung in the balance — his continued winning was understood to be crucial for the entire sport, so the stakes were huge for fans, the pro tour, the networks, sponsors, not to mention all the individuals and businesses that make a living off golf.

Robert Lusetich set out in January 2009 to follow Woods for the year. The only journalist to cover every PGA TOUR tournament Tiger played, Lusetich interviewed tournament directors, agents, caddies, PGA Tour officials, sponsors, rival players and those inside Woods’s camp, and has continued to cover Woods through the end of the season, including the subsequent scandal surrounding his marital infidelities.

Unplayable is the definitive, comprehensive behind-the-scenes look at how the 2009 season unfolded for Woods, both personally and professionally. The book offers a richly compelling narrative of Tiger’s victories and defeats — all while conveying the untold story of the bitter rivalries and ongoing tensions among top players — and explains how Woods managed to lead a double-life while dominating in one of the world’s most competitive sports.

Standing apart from all of the other reporting on the scandal to date, Unplayable gives much needed insight into how one of the world’s most reclusive celebrities maintained a public persona at odds with his private life.

No Angel, by Jay Dobyns

In 2001, Jay Dobyns was the first federal agent to infiltrate the inner circle of the Hells Angels. His aim was simple: to examine the criminal underbelly of the world’s most famous biker group and bring a major case against them. No Angel tells the thrilling, adrenaline-soaked story of one man on the brink of losing himself, and lifts the lid on one of the world’s most infamous underworlds. It is a riveting tale of meticulous undercover detective work and a rare and fascinating glimpse inside the secretive world of outlaw biker gangs.

Jay Dobyns on the Bookhugger crime panel

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