If You Were the Only Girl


Book Description

When Lucy s father dies, she is forced to take a job in service as a scullery maid at Windthorpe House, home to the aristocratic Hetheringtons, who lost three of their sons in the Great War. When their only remaining son, Clive returns home, he and Lucy strike up an immediate bond but Clive, much to his family s alarm, decides to volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, though when he returns, he is injured. With the outbreak of war ever more certain, the two fall in love. But Hitler s troops are gathering and fate has something very different in store for both of them







The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton


Book Description

From the bestselling author of Behind Closed Doors and A Cornish Summer comes a funny and heart-warming look at what happens when your whole world is turned upside-down . . . 'Like a breath of fresh air. Warm, funny and has a lovely storyline' 5***** Reader Review 'Giggle out loud funny. Well written and very entertaining' 5***** Reader Review 'Funny and unpredictable. Like listening to a friend tell a good story' 5***** Reader Review ___________ Evie Hamilton's biggest worry in life is whether or not she can fit in a manicure on her way to fetch her daughter from clarinet lessons. Little does she know that her charmed and happy life is about to be turned upside-down . . . For one sunny morning a letter lands on Evie's immaculate doormat. It's a bombshell, knocking her carefully arranged and managed world completely askew as it threatens to sabotage all she holds dear. What will be left and what will change forever? Is Evie strong enough to fight for what she loves? And can her entire world really be as fragile as her best china? . . . ___________ Praise for Catherine Alliott: 'Classy, wonderfully gossipy and breathless' Red 'We defy you not to get caught up in Alliott's life-changing tale' Heat 'Alliott at her best' Daily Telegraph




John Osborne


Book Description

John Osborne, the original Angry Young Man, shocked and transformed British theater in the 1950s with his play Look Back in Anger. This startling biography–the first to draw on the secret notebooks in which he recorded his anguish and depression–reveals the notorious rebel in all his heartrending complexity. Through a working-class childhood and five marriages, Osborne led a tumultuous life. An impossible father, he threw his teenage daughter out of the house and never spoke to her again. His last written words were "I have sinned." Theater critic John Heilpern’s detailed portrait, including interviews with Osborne's daughter, scores of friends and enemies, and his alleged male lover, shows us a contradictory genius–an ogre with charm, a radical who hated change, and above all, a defiant individualist.




Hitler's Airwaves


Book Description

Jazz was banned from German broadcasting as soon as the Nazis came to power in 1933. Yet throughout World War II, American jazz and swing were core components of the Third Reich's propaganda. Jazz classics such as W.C. Handy's famous St. Louis Blues, their lyrics neatly tampered with, came over the airwaves, alongside the famous Germany Calling programmes directed at Britain and allied forces around the world.




Breverton's First World War Curiosities


Book Description

A remarkable compendium of oddities, curiosities and little-known facts from the Great War, featuring the greatest battles, war slang, heroes and heroines, animals, spies, weapons, and much more.




The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations


Book Description

The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations contains over 8,000 quotations from 1914 to the present. As much a companion to the modern age as it is an entertaining and useful reference tool, it takes the reader on a tour of the wit and wisdom of the great and the good, from Margot Asquith to Monica Lewinsky, from George V to Boutros Boutros-Galli and Jonathan Aitken to Frank Zappa.




What is a Wommett?


Book Description

Mick Abrahams first rose to fame as a guitarist during the 1960s and was a founder member of Jethro Tull, although his time with the band was to prove short lived owing to the vividly contrasting musical styles of himself and Ian Anderson. In his autobiography What is a Wommett Mick finally puts the record straight about this parting of the ways and the events that have shaped the man and his music since that time up to the present day. Perhaps best known for his time with Blodwyn Pig, the band he formed after leaving Tull, Abrahams has continued to delight fans with his own brand of blues, jazz and rock on highly acclaimed albums spanning several decades. With a fitting foreword by radio presenter and champion of great music, Bob Harris, this autobiography provides a fascinating insight into the character of an upbeat man who hasn't allowed anything to keep him down for long. Packed with anecdotes and stories about Mick's life in and out of the spotlight, this book is a must have for his fans and anyone who remembers the excitement of the emerging new musical talent of the sixties.




A Companion to the British and Irish Short Story


Book Description

A Companion to the British and Irish Short Story provides a comprehensive treatment of short fiction writing and chronicles its development in Britain and Ireland from 1880 to the present. Provides a comprehensive treatment of the short story in Britain and Ireland as it developed over the period 1880 to the present Includes essays on topics and genres, as well as on individual texts and authors Comprises chapters on women’s writing, Irish fiction, gay and lesbian writing, and short fiction by immigrants to Britain




The Drums of Winter


Book Description

The Drums of Winter is a sweeping epic, a family saga, a novel of history. Set in the time of the American Revolution, it details the decline and fall of a great family, the proud love of a noble woman, a young man’s search for his true father, and a conflict between brothers which moves from Europe to American and climaxes in one of the decisive battles of the Revolutionary War. The Haynows are the most powerful family in Hessia. Baron Haynow is a strong, self-made man, deeply in love with his wife, Anna, whom he rescued from poverty twenty years before. When the American colonists rebel against the British, it seems at first a chance to increase the Haynow family power by monopolizing the American tobacco trade. Then an intrusive figure from the past appears, resurrecting old loves, old jealousies. Anna learns that her first husband , long believed dead, is still alive in America—and that Haynow has withheld his letters from her. The revelation sets in motion a chain of conflicts that shatter the Haynow family. How these conflicts are resolved on the battlefields of the American Revolution—with Robert a mercenary under the command of his hated brother, Claus; and Anna risking death in search of her first love—provides the unexpected climax to this rich and compelling novel.