Arthur Dents accidental association with that wholly remarkable book The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy has not been entirely without incident. Arthur has travelled the length breadth & depth of known & unknown space. He has stumbled forwards & backwards through time. He has been blown up reassembled cruelly imprisoned horribly released & colourfully insulted more than is strictly necessary. & of course he has comprehensively failed to grasp the meaning of life the universe & everything. Arthur has though finally made it home to Earth. But that does not mean he has escaped his fate. For Arthurs chances of getting his hands on a decent cuppa are evaporating along with the worlds oceans. Because no sooner has he arrived than he finds out that Earth is about to be blown up.. .again. ...

This is a sharply observed bittersweet tale of the trials of teenage pregnancy. Lana Spiggs is fed up with everyone telling her what to do. If it isn't her mother nagging & shouting it's her teachers nagging & shouting. What Lana wants is to be grown-up. She wants her own flat her own husband & her own children
- & then no one will be able to boss her around any more. When Lana meets Les on her fifteenth birthday she knows he is The One. & when she gets pregnant without even trying she knows it's her ticket to freedom
- even though everyone else calls it a prison sentence. But can her dream of Happy Families stand up to reality? By turns funny & hard-hitting this is expressive & accessible teen fiction
- teenage girls will find it utterly compelling. It sensitively deals with an important & difficult subject without ever becoming moralistic or patronizing. It is both infuriating & endearing Dyan Sheldon's heroine is always feisty & entertaining.


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The landscape of the British Isles is filled with history much of which we miss as it flashes past the car window. Do we even realise that we're following the same path as the Tolpuddle Martyrs or that we're driving past the exact spot where King Harold was killed shot through the eye with an arrow? As a lover of both history & the British countryside Charlie Connelly decided to rectify this & set out on a series of walks that recreate famous historical journeys. En route he retells the story of the original trip while discovering who & what now inhabit these iconic routes. Walking in England Scotland Ireland & Wales Charlie journeys alongside Boudicca's ghost in Norfolk relives Bonnie Prince Charlie's flight to Skye disguised as Flora Mac Donald's maid & takes the same 32-mile round trip as the starving Louisburgh famine walkers. He suffers broken toes becomes trapped in the Scottish Parliament & encounters dead poets & a surprisingly high number of mad old women in woolly hats. Told with Charlie's customary charm & wit & Did Those Feet will reveal the historical secrets hidden in the much-loved coastal country & urban landscapes of Britain. ...

From the moment Judi Dench appeared as a teenager in the York Mystery Plays it was clear that acting would be her career. Trained at Londons Central School of Speech & Drama it was her performance in her twenties as Juliet in Franco Zeffirellis memorable Old Vic production that turned her into a star. In the theatre since she has played every classic role from Titania to Cleopatra. She first became a household name via television thanks initially to a sitcom A FINE ROMANCE in which she played alongside the actor Michael Williams whom she married in 1971. She has since made nine series of another sitcom AS TIME GOES BY (with Geoffrey Palmer) as well as plays & classic serials such as CRANFORD. In the cinema her films have ranged from LADIES IN LAVENDER (opposite Maggie Smith) through NOTES ON A SCANDAL with Cate Blanchett to SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE in which she played Queen Elizabeth a role which gained her a Hollywood Oscar. But it is her role as M in seven James Bond films that has gained her worldwide recognition. This book is however much more than a career record. Her marriage to Michael Williams their daughter & her impish sense of humour contribute vividly to her account of more than half a century as Britains best-loved actress. ...

From the Inside Flap A sweeping saga spanning 1898 to 1984 stretching from the mining fields of South Wales to the film sets of Hollywood & from the playhouses of Cardiff to the grand theatres of Broadway
- this new & far reaching biography rakes over the coals of the life of Britains greatest ever actor Richard Burton. & how one extraordinary man had three fathers three mothers seven brothers six sisters & four wives & how he loved them all. & how that man earned US$75 million from the start of his career in 1951 to when he died in 1984; the equivalent of US$1.5 billion in todays money making him the highest-paid actor in Hollywood history. From the Back Cover & God Created Burton is the first complete biography of the greatest Welshman ever to have lived. The man conquered Hollywood like no other British actor before or since. His achievements were considered all the greater as they were accomplished in the era of such great British actors as Laurence Olivier & John Gielgud as well as great American stars such as Humphrey Bogart Clark Gable & Cary Grant. Burtons achievement was even more pronounced as his prowess uniquely spanned theatre film & television unlike any other actor before him. In the end he became a genuine legend in his own lifetime & in the mid-sixties for one year he stood at the very pinnacle of Hollywood as the worlds most bankable actor. He also loved & lost some the most beautiful & talented actresses of the era including Elizabeth Taylor Claire Bloom & Susan Strasberg. But he could have achieved even more if it had not been for his addiction to alcohol a fate inherited from his father & which stayed with him right to the end of his days eventually killing him & tarnishing an otherwise extraordinary career.
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Double acts dont come any closer than the The Two Ronnies. Messrs Barker & Corbett kept a nation laughing for two decades & yet despite the rigorous work that went into writing rehearsing & broadcasting almost a hundred episodes to millions of viewers each week the pair never shared a cross word. For the first time Ronnie Corbett tells the story of the their rise from theatre through The Frost Report & into their own legendary show as well as how some of their greatest sketches including Mastermind & Fork Handles came into being. This is the story of one of the great British institutions of the last thirty years & a hilarious & moving look inside the working lives of two of our most-beloved comedians. ...

At the time of Jesuss birth the world was in ferment. Across Europe North Africa the Middle East & Asia
- societies rife with gods
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From Americas most celebrated true-crime writer comes the heartbreaking real-life drama of a doomed young woman hopelessly trapped in a web of sexual intrigue political manipulation & emotional deception by her charming & successful
- but ultimately deadly
- lover. In the most complex & shocking book of her long career Ann Rule delves into the motivation that drove a seemingly successful man to kill & she explores hitherto unknown aspects of a fatal affair between a beautiful young woman who moved confidently in the heady world of the upper echelons of government & a widely admired millionaire attorney who was an immensely popular political figure. Ann Rule brilliantly traces the lives of both Ann Marie Fahey & Tommy Capano as she discloses the intimate details of their ill-fated bonding. A vulnerable trusting woman becomes spellbound by a charming duplicitous married man & what begins as a seemingly unremarkable affair is slowly transformed into an obsessive convoluted & deadly relationship.

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Who is Radio 4's 'fourteen-stone budgie'? How did Phyllis Willis & Mavis Davis make announcer Charlotte Green lose her cool? What does ' Ruth' really think about The Archers? When did Today stop having a keep-fit spot? & who was the Spam Fritter Man & what became of him? This wonderful history-cum-guide answers these & many other questions about the irreplaceable world of Radio 4. It is an essential reading for every devotee. ...

Peter Jefferson presented the Shipping Forecast for over 40 years & his familiar voice continues to be heard reading"ations on Radio 4s"e/ Unquote". This book is both an affectionate memoir & an account of the science behind the forecast: Peter explains how it came about who collects all the information & what its like to read this bulletin. Even though the information in the forecast is now readily available in many formats the Shipping Forecast is something of a must listen A" for fans gathered over the decades. For reasons not quite understood it has become a much-loved part of the British cultural landscape with an avid following of listeners who find its poetry is the perfect cure for insomnia." ...