Nothing less than a catalogue of the most courageous motoring disasters of all time, Tony Davis has stepped behind the wheel of some of the world's most notoriously bad cars. From the 1958 Ford Edsel, which made ' Edsel' a byword for failure, to the much-loved travesty that was the P76 (when people took in the P76 for warranty work they provided a list of things that didn't need fixing), these cars really are the pits. Bad design, appalling execution, ridiculous pretensions, ludicrous names -- this detailed & hilarious look at automotive atrocities from the 1950s to the present day is nothing les than a motoring Hall of Shame.

101 of the world's most downright awful cars are given the once-over, from the East German Trabant, with its cotton-reinforced body, to the dafter-than-you'd-believe-possible Lightburn Zeta Sports, via the Corvair, Cedric, Pinto & Imp. It's all here -- the harebrained, the unsightly, the excruciatingly dull & the magnificently unsuccessful.

From Alfa to Zeta, from the tiny to the gargantuan, & from the endearingly incompetent to the bombastically stupid, Naff Motors will leave you not only laughing, but also wondering how so many car manufacturers got away with so much for so long.



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Set in the 1920s, this marvellously sensitive autobiography recreates the varied community of Nairn, with its fishermen & townsfolk, its crofters & its prosperous upper-middle-classes. Nairn has witnessed many of the triumphs & tragedies of Scottish history, & these are recalled with intuitive understanding. But it is also the scene of David Thomson's formative years when he suffered an eye injury which nearly blinded him & shaped his whole future. ...

Nancy Mitford was witty, intelligent, often acerbic, a great tease & an acute observer of upper-class English idiosyncrasies. With the publication of her novels, above all The Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate & The Blessing, she became a huge bestseller & a household name. An inveterate writer of letters, she wrote almost daily to, among others, Evelyn Waugh, Harold Action, John Betjeman, Lord Berners, Lady Seafield, &, of course, her sisters
- a correspondence that lies at the base of this biography, written with the fullest cooperation of Nancy Mitford's family & friends. Selina Hastings captures equally the gaiety & frivolity & the unhappy truth of Nancy Mitford's life: her failed marriage & her long, unfulfilled relationship with 'the Colonel' contrasting sharply with literary celebrity & glittering social success. She has written a biography that is superbly entertaining & clear-eyed, of a life that Diana Mosley spoke of as being 'so sad one can hardly bear to contemplate it'.
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Keston Hall, Buckinghamshire, is the seat of the Lydiard family & the imposing setting for a compelling love story that begins in 1907.

Beautiful & spirited, Grace Merrill seems to stand with the world at her feet. But then, quite unexpectedly, a family tragedy obliges Grace to abandon her artistic talents & enter a life in service at the Hall. In this Upstairs Downstairs world of sadistic housekeepers & drunken butlers there is genuine hardship & drudgery for those employed in servicing the few.

But Grace soon discovers that she has another talent when, through the merest chance, she manages to escape from the kitchen to the nursery floor. Here she learns to love Lady Lydiard



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Keston Hall, Buckinghamshire, is the seat of the Lydiard family & the imposing setting for a compelling love story that begins in 1907.

Beautiful & spirited, Grace Merrill seems to stand with the world at her feet. But then, quite unexpectedly, a family tragedy obliges Grace to abandon her artistic talents & enter a life in service at the Hall. In this Upstairs Downstairs world of sadistic housekeepers & drunken butlers there is genuine hardship & drudgery for those employed in servicing the few.

But Grace soon discovers that she has another talent when, through the merest chance, she manages to escape from the kitchen to the nursery floor. Here she learns to love Lady Lydiard



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