"A deliciously revealing biography."―Mail on Sunday
Charming, loyal, promiscuous, and in possession of a truly wicked sense of humour, William Tallon entered royal service at the age of fifteen and became one of the most notorious figures ever to have graced the royal household.
Sometimes scandalous, often shocking, and always entertaining, Backstairs Billy is the fascinating life story of the man who spent half a century working in the Queen Mother's household, giving us a rare glimpse of what life in the British royal family is really like.
Tom Quinn edits Country Business magazine and writes occasional obituaries for The Times.

Backstairs Billy: The Life of William Tallon, the Queen Mother's Most Devoted Servant

Biographies & Memoirs

QUINN, Tom

Historical

The Robson Press

"Bel Mooney's enchanting emotional journey links us all together, and is as wise as it is touching." —Joanna Lumley
When her beloved small dog, Bonnie, died, Bel Mooney was astonished at the depth of her ongoing sorrow. Sharing her loss online and in a newspaper article brought a deluge of responses, spurring Mooney to explore these feelings further. Why do humans mourn pets? Can animals themselves grieve—and do they have souls?
The author sets off on an emotional journey to learn more about pet bereavement. She is astounded by inexplicable "signs" of her dog's spirit, watches Bonnie's ashes being turned into glass, talks to experts, and discusses the mysterious, enduring energy of love. She discovers why ancient Egyptians mummified animals and what different faiths, myths, writers, and scientists have to say on the subject. She also looks back over her own life and reflects on lessons learned from companion animals—and from wildlife, too.
As informative as it is deeply moving, Goodbye, Pet &amp; See You in Heaven is an intensely personal, uplifting look at the love we share with pets, both in life and afterwards. Enriched by heartfelt stories and inspirational words, it is a book to be treasured by anyone who has ever loved an animal.
Bel Mooney is one of Britain's most successful journalists and has written for Cosmopolitan, the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Times, The Times and the Daily Mail. She is the author of over twenty-five books, and her young adult novel The Voices of Silence was a New York Public Library Book of the Year.

Goodbye, Pet & See You In Heaven: A Memoir of Animals, Love and Loss

Self-Help

MOONEY, Bel

Death & Grief

Interest in the British royal family is inexhaustible. Just take the amazing clamor over the recent wedding of William and Kate! But who are the Royals, and what do they get up to when we aren't watching them?
In Not in Front of the Corgis, a veteran Royal commentator and author of more than twenty books on the Royals peeks behind the curtains to tell us what they really get up to in their spare time. The book asks questions like what the Queen watches on TV and why she does not have a driving license, and answers thousands of questions about the world's most famous family, including who are the most popular Royals to work for, and who the least? Who is the grandest of the Queen's children and why? Why do Edward and Andrew pay less than Charles' private secretary for the rent of their homes, and what records did the Queen Mother like to dance to?
Not in Front of the Corgis is a unique and fascinating miscellany containing everything you ever wanted to know about the Royal Family, away from the spotlight.
Brian Hoey has been a writer and broadcaster for over forty years, covering countless Royal events, including the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981 and Princess Diana's funeral in 1997.

Not in Front of the Corgis: Secrets of Life Behind the Royal Curtains

Hoey, Brian

Reference

Once in a while there comes along a story so powerful and so emotive that it makes you rethink your own values. This is the story of Nathan Shapow, a young Latvian, born in Riga, with nothing more on his mind than becoming a world-renowned boxer. However, the sound of jackboots marching across Europe and the systematic extermination of the Jews put an end to his boxing dreams. He was to fight a different sort of fight: one for survival. The prize? His life. Seeing his youth disappear in the squalor of the ghettos and the horror of the concentration camps, Nathan fell back on his previous existence to sustain him. The years of training, the running, the speed of work, the three-round amateur fights in the gym, the street fights in Riga, and the sheer competitive nature he developed saved him on more than one occasion, especially when he was forced to box for his life against a top German fighter in a concentration camp. The Boxer's Story is an extraordinary and powerful true story that reads like a thriller. It will deeply affect everyone who reads it.
Nathan Shapow was born in Riga, Latvia, and survived various camps including Birkenau and Stutthoff. After the war he went to Palestine, where he fought for the creation of Israel. He lives in Los Angeles, California, with his wife and family.

The Boxer's Story: Fighting for My Life in the Nazi Camps

HARRIS, Bob

Shapow, Nathan

Community & Culture

In 1950 David Alliance arrived in Manchester with £14, within six years, aged twenty-four, he bought a loss-making textile mill, turned it around in six months and went on to build the biggest textile company in the western world, employing over 80,000 people. Lord Alliance describes his business philosophy and his charitable work in Iran and Israel.

A Bazaar Life: The Autobiography of David Alliance

Alliance, David

Professionals & Academics

Finding The Plot: 100 Graves to Visit Before You Die

"The most fun I have ever had with dead bodies."—Bill Bryson
In this riveting and often hilarious book—part travelogue and part social history—Ann Treneman visits the most interesting graves in Britain. You'll meet prime ministers, queens and kings, highwaymen, scientists, mistresses, writers, painters, poets, rakes and rogues, victims, the meek and mild, and the just plain mad.
At times absurd, at times poignant, Finding the Plot is an entertaining guide to the Anglo-Saxon underworld. Ann Treneman was born in Iowa City but grew up in McMinnville, Oregon. She now lives in London where she is parliamentary sketchwriter for the Times newspaper.

Finding the Plot: 100 Graves To Visit Before You Die

History

Treneman, Ann

Europe

Though there have been numerous biographies of Greta Garbo, this is the first to fully investigate the two so-called missing periods in the life of this most mysterious and enigmatic of all the Hollywood stars. The first, during the late 1920s, when Garbo disappeared completely for several months, forcing the studio to employ a lookalike, was almost certainly to conceal a pregnancy. The second occurred during World War II, when Garbo was employed by British intelligence to track down Nazi sympathizers. In Greta Garbo: Divine Star, David Bret has acquired a large amount of previously unsourced material along with anecdotes from friends and colleagues of the star which have never before been published. For the first time, he paints a complete portrait of her childhood and youth in Sweden. Bret has also sourced copies of all Garbo's films—with the exception The Divine Woman, of which no print survives, including the silent—before scenes were trimmed or cut.
David Bret is one of Britain's leading showbusiness biographers. His many, highly successful, biographies include those of Edith Piaf, Doris Day, Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow, Errol Flynn, and Mario Lanza.

Greta Garbo: Divine Star

Bret, David

Arts & Literature

This is not just another Elvis Presley biography, although it gets closer to the real Elvis story than many of the hundreds that have dealt with the life of the man his contemporaries have called "The King." As the author Michael Freedland puts it in his introduction, "Everyone knows Elvis." But not the way his close friends, employees, and others who entered his life knew him. For this is their story.
Freedland interviews those who knew Elvis intimately, from the now elderly woman who was at school with him and whose parents foreclosed on the shack they rented, to Elvis's mother when his father was in jail, to the maid who prepared his peanut butter sandwiches and hamburgers and watched him line up the girls he wanted to take to his bed. In between, we meet the black man who remembered sneaking into a local cinema with Elvis in defiance of Deep South race laws and members of the so-called "Memphis Mafia," who went where he went, laughed when he laughed, and suffered when he suffered—and usually received a brand new Cadillac for their troubles. There's also his doctor who denies giving him fatal doses of the drugs he collected along with the hamburgers.
Writer and broadcaster Michael Freedland went all over the West Coast and South to talk to these people who shared Elvis's life, telling the complex Presley story in a way more true to the real man than the usual collection of dates, film, and song titles.

Elvis Memories: The Real Presley - By Those Who Knew Him

FREEDLAND,Michael

Humor & Entertainment

"A wonderful, fascinating account of two stars of the post-war literary generation, and their mutual influence."—Good Book Guide
Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin were close from the moment they met as undergraduates at Oxford. They were, however, very different personalities. Kingsley was charming, sociable, and completely amoral whilst Larkin was awkward and insecure. Their relationship with one another is fascinating in part because it provided the inspiration behind their work. In fact, parts of Lucky Jim were based on Larkin's life, a fact the poet begrudged for the rest of his life. An extraordinary study of one of the most controversial literary friendships of the twentieth century.

The Odd Couple: The Curious Friendship between Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin

Bradford, Richard

These are diaries of Sherlock Holmes's landlady, the unflappable Mrs. Hudson, humorously describing life with the great detective and his ever-faithful companion, Watson. With mysterious visitors, disappearances, shouts, and bangs, life below stairs at 221b is silly, slapstick, and sentimental in equal measure. This affectionate and hilarious sketch of a remarkably enterprising Victorian female and her equally remarkable tenant is a must-have for any Sherlock Holmes aficionado. Behind every great man is an even greater woman . . . demanding rent!
Barry Cryer is a comedian and writer. Bob Cryer is an actor and writer. They live in London.

Mrs Hudson's Diaries: A View From the Landing at 221b

Barry Cryer

Bob Cryer

Humor

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