Clare Balding looks back at the last time that the Olympic Games came to London in 1948. Three years after the end of the Second World War, Britain was still gripped by austerity. Rationing was still in force, severe bomb damage was still much in evidence & no new sports facilities could be built. Visiting athletes were put up in schools & RAF camps. Yet the Games were a resounding success & actually made a profit. Clare Balding meets athletes who competed in 1948, including cyclist Tommy Godwin, who won two bronze medals, & Dorothy Manley, who won silver in the athletics. She also talks to Roger Bannister who saved the day for the British team in the opening ceremony. The programme also

Includes:: fascinating voices from the archives, including Dutch sprinter Fanny Blankers-Koen, who won four gold medals.

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Details: Rosie & her friends live on a scrap heap. they are clever rats & decide to gather all the rubbish together &
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This is the first book in a brand new series from bestselling author, Maggie Stiefvater. Fans of SHIVER (9781407115009), LINGER (9781407121086) & FOREVER (9781407121116) will love this new quartet! Blue has spent the majority of her sixteen years being told that if she kisses her true love, he will die. When Blue meets Gansey's spirit on the corpse road she knows there is only one reason why
- either he is her true love or she has killed him. Determined to find out the truth, Blue becomes involved with the Raven Boys, four boys from the local private school (lead by Gansey) who are on a quest to discover Glendower
- a lost ancient Welsh King who is buried somewhere along the Virginia ley line. Whoever finds him will be granted a supernatural favour. Never before has Blue felt such magic around her. But is Gansey her true love? She can't imagine a time she would feel like that, & she is adamant not to be the reason for his death. Where will fate lead them? Look out for the next book, THE DREAM THIEVES, out 18th September 2013!

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A malevolent power is on the prowl
- & its hungry for death.

Edie is a barmaid at The Tup in the small town of Ravenglass.


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An arresting medieval mystery from bestselling author, Edward Marston…

The small village of Maldon is controlled

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For 15-year-old Michael Berg, a chance meeting with an older woman leads to far more than he ever imagined. The woman in question is Hanna, & before long they embark on a passionate, clandestine love affair which leaves Michael both euphoric & confused. For Hanna is not all she seems.

Years later, as a law student observing a trial in Germany, Michael is shocked to realize that the person in the dock is Hanna. The woman he had loved is a criminal. Much about her behaviour during the trial does not make sense. But then suddenly, & terribly, it does
- Hanna is not only obliged to answer for a horrible crime, she is also desperately concealing an even deeper secret.


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Ray Mears shows how the success of a vital World War II mission depended on survival skills.

Sixty years ago, four men

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The first 7 episodes of the U.S. documentary TV series following the lives & lifestyles of a group of wealthy women in a Southern Californian gated community. Examining the reality behind shows such as Desperate Housewives, five women who live in one of ...

Who was the real Jane Austen? Overturning the traditional portrait of the author as conventional & genteel, bestseller Paula Byrne's landmark biography reveals the real woman behind the books. In this new biography, bestselling author Paula Byrne (author of Perdita, Mad World) explores the forces that shaped the interior life of Britain's most beloved novelist: her father's religious faith, her mother's aristocratic pedigree, her eldest brother's adoption, her other brothers' naval & military experiences, her relatives in the East & West Indies, her cousin who lived through the trauma of the French Revolution, the family's amateur theatricals, the female novelists she admired, her residence in Bath, her love of the seaside, her travels around England & her long struggle to become a published author. Byrne uses a highly innovative technique whereby each chapter begins from an object that conjures up a key moment or theme in Austen's life & work-a silhouette, a vellum notebook, a topaz cross, a laptop writing box, a royalty cheque, a bathing machine, & many more. The woman who emerges in this biography is far tougher, more socially & politically aware, & altogether more modern than the conventional picture of 'dear Aunt Jane' would allow. Published to coincide with the bicentenary of Pride & Prejudice, this lively & scholarly biography brings Austen dazzlingly into the twenty-first century. ...

Who was the real Jane Austen? Overturning the traditional portrait of the author as conventional & genteel, bestseller Paula Byrne's landmark biography reveals the real woman behind the books. Claire Tomalin's biography of Jane Austen was published in 1997 &, although it contained little new research, sold xxxxxxx. Paula Byrne
- an internationally renowned Jane Austen scholar & a best-selling biographer
- has uncovered a very different Jane Austen to the Jane of popular imagination. This Jane, revealed in the first biography written for a general readership but based on the most up-to-date scholarship
- is a woman deeply immersed in the culture around her, but also far ahead of her time in her independence & tough-mindedness. Throughout, this book gives the sense of Austen as an astute commentator on human nature in general & her own age in particular, & above all as a writer of independence & ambition. Each chapter is focussed on a key moment in Austen's life: eg. when her handicapped brother is removed from the family, when her exotic cousin Eliza arrives in the family circle, when her aunt was arrested for shoplifting, her time alone in London. The book also gives detailed attention to the novels themselves. After this book, no longer can Austen be viewed as someone who did not engage with the great political events of her time. How many lovers of her work are aware that the Prince Regent kept a debauched household down the road from her village, that she was related by marriage to other major literary figures of the time such as the libertine Gothic novelist William Beckford & her favourite poet George Crabbe. The book will also identify her long lost seaside love as well as argue that her assumed 'genteel' sense of humour could also be savage, highly subversive irony.


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