This is the story of Alex James's transition from a leading light of the Britpop movement in the 1990s to gentleman farmer artisan cheese-maker & father of five. 'I was hanging around the pigsty in the way I'd previously hung around at The Groucho Club. I felt wonderfully connected grounded in the real world standing in pig muck' Following fifteen years in Blur Alex James did two wild unexpected things. He fell in love & he bought a farm. Moving into a rambling chaotic farmstead in the beautiful Cotswold countryside he decides the best way to learn about farming is the same way he learned most about music: by jumping in & doing it. As his family settles in he discovers the unexpected joys that country life abounds in: finding the first egg from your very own chicken coming across a bramble bush laden with blackberries roasting home-grown pears on an open fire before stumbling on a new venture
- making cheese. Wonderfully warm witty & perfectly observed this is the story of what to do after you've been the bass player in one of the best bands in the world & a life-affirming tale of just how much fun growing up & settling down can be. 'A joy to read. Prose flows & weaves & curls itself into pleasing rhythms... He can write like a god.' SPECTATOR
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This is the story of Alex James s transition from a leading light of the Britpop movement in the 1990s to gentleman farmer artisan cheese-maker & father of five. All Cheeses Great & Small is the follow-up memoir to Alex Jamess first book Bit of a Blur the story of his excessive pop star lifestyle during the nineties. But now Alex has grown up fallen in love & got married. He has also fallen passionately for his new home an enormous rambling farmhouse in the Cotswolds set in two hundred acres of beautiful British countryside. The farm represents not just a new house for Alex but also a new career. As he breathes new life into the old farm he chances across an unexpected calling: making cheese. His cheeses Blue Monday Farleigh Wallop & Little Wallop have received widespread media interest & are now sold through many outlets. The story culminates with an account of the triumphant reformation of Blur for Glastonbury 2009. ...

Traveling back in time from Oxford circa 2060 into the thick of World War II was a routine excursion for three British historians eager to study firsthand the heroism & horrors of the Dunkirk evacuation & the London Blitz. But getting marooned in war-torn 1940 England has turned Michael Davies Merope Ward & Polly Churchill from temporal tourists into besieged citizens struggling to survive Hitler's devastating onslaught. & now there's more to worry about than just getting back home: The impossibility of altering past events has always been a core belief of time-travel theory
- but it may be tragically wrong. When discrepancies in the historical record begin cropping up it suggests that one or all of the future visitors have somehow changed the past
- & ultimately the outcome of the war. Award-winning author Connie Willis returns with a stunning enormously entertaining novel of time travel war & the deeds
- great & small
- of ordinary people who shape history.



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James Herriots stories about his life as a vet in Yorkshire have charmed & delighted millions of readers in the twenty years since his first book If Only They Could Talk was published in 1972. All James Herriots books including two other omnibus editions All Things Bright & Beautiful & All Things Wise & Wonderful are available in Pan. All Creatures Great & Small is the first James Herriot omnibus & contains If Only They Could Talk & It Shouldnt Happen to a Vet together with James & Helens courtship from Let Sleeping Vets Lie. ...

The inspiration for the BBC series of the same name Fresh out of Glasgow Veterinary College to the young James Herriot 1930s Yorkshire seems to offers an idyllic pocket of rural life in a rapidly changing world. But from his erratic new colleagues brothers Siegfried & Tristan Farnon to incomprehensible farmers herds of semi-feral cattle a pig called Nugent & an overweight Pekingese called Tricki Woo James find he is on a learning curve as steep as the hills around him. & when he meets Helen the beautiful daughter of a local farmer all the training & experience in the world cant help him... Since they were first published James Herriots memoirs have sold millions of copies & entranced generations of animal lovers. Charming funny & touching All Creatures Great & Small is a heart-warming story of determination love & companionship from one of Britains best-loved authors. I grew up reading James Herriots books & Im delighted that thirty years on they are still every bit as charming heartwarming & laugh-out-loud funny as they were then Kate Humble ...

When Isabels Yorkshire village is devastated by the Black Death it seems that the world is ending in horror & fear. But for the survivors of the terrible plague a new & freer society will rise from the destruction of the feudal system that enslaved the family. This is a powerful historical novel from one of todays most exciting young writers. ...

On the eve of the next Space Shuttle mission a divided family comes together... Warm witty & wise All Families Are Psychotic is Coupland at the very top of his form. In a cheap motel an hour from Cape Canaveral Janet Drummond takes her medication & does a rapid tally of the whereabouts of her children. Wade has spent the night in jail; suicidal Bryan is due to arrive at any moment with his vowel-free girlfriend Shw; & then there is Sarah a bolt of lightning frozen in midflash
- here in Orlando to be the star of Fridays shuttle mission. With Janets ex-husband & his trophy wife also in town Janet spends a moment contemplating her family & where it all went wrong. Or did it?
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Eighteen-year-old Malcolm Castle became a fireman so he could rush into burning buildings to save fair damsels in distress. He didnt realise he would also be jumping into slurry pits to rescue cows horses & any number of other unfortunate animals. Nothing about the country fire service was quite what Malcolm expected when he joined the watch in Shrewsbury. Yes he had to face the heart-stopping dramas & tragedies of farm & house fires. But as the newest member of the service he was also first in line when swans began to terrorise the high street when a sheepdog got his head caught in a broken fence panel
- & when a flock of owls got stuck on the roof of his local pub. His early days in the brigade in the late 1970s & early 80s was a time when crews tackled fires wearing plastic leggings plastic gloves & cork hats covered in highly flammable gloss paint. Funny moving & gloriously nostalgic ALL FIRED UP paints a unique portrait of rural Britain
- & shows just how surprising a firemans life can be.

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Nothing about the county fire service was quite what Malcolm expected when he joined the watch in Shrewsbury. As the newest member of the service he was first in line when swans terrorised the high street
- & when a flock of owls got stuck on the roof of his local pub. Eighteen years old & more than ready to rush into burning buildings to save fair damsels in distress young Malcolm soon realised he was more likely to be jumping into slurry pits & rivers to rescue any number of unfortunate animals. But for all the embarrassing situations Malcolm found himself in there were heart-stopping dramas too
- & tragic farm & house fires. As he learns on the job & begins to win the respect of the old-timers Malcolm starts to feel that maybe one day he just might make it as a fireman. But first he has to catch the eye of the smiley secretary in the office opposite the station.. . Funny moving & gloriously nostalgic All Fired Up paints a unique portrait of rural Britain
- & shows just how surprising a fireman's life can be.


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The new fabulously addictive read from No. 1 bestselling author Sheila O' Flanagan. As TV's favourite weather forecaster Lainey is good at making predictions. But what she doesn't foresee is that her own life is about to hit a stormy patch. With a string of failed relationships behind her surely history isn't about to repeat itself with her beloved Ken? To add fuel to the fire her estranged mother announces that she's returning to Dublin. Deanna has always been dismissive of Lainey's choices
- particularly in men. & Deanna's lectures are the last thing Lainey needs now. Yet is there more to her mother than she knows? Uncovering some long-concealed family secrets Lainey begins to reassess her life. Is the happy-ever-after she's always dreamed of really what she wants after all?
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