On Monday, 9 February 1970, a new television series made its debut on BBC1. Taking modern life and technology as a springboard, "Doomwatch" presented a weekly dose of thrills as a small group investigated and made safe threats from everything from a plastic eating virus to killer rats and bombs! Indeed the very name of the series has become synonymous with imagined or real threats to human life from technology, nature and science.This is the story of "Doomwatch". From its origins in 1968, ...

A compelling look at the contemporary art and artists that are transforming Detroit's physical landscape.Detroit's unique and partly abandoned cityscape has scarred its image around the world for decades. But in the last several years journalists have begun to view the city through a different lens, focusing on the wide range of contemporary artists finding inspiration amid the emptiness and adding a more complex chapter to the story of a city long labeled as a hau...

"Deeply researched and densely atmospheric," a true crime account of a serial killer who acted under cover of London's historic environmental catastrophe. ( New York Times Book Review)London was still recovering from the devastation of World War II when another disaster hit: for five long days in December 1952, a killer smog held the city firmly in its grip. Some twelve thousand people died from the poisonous air. But in the chaotic aftermath, another kille...

Now a major TV series ‘A masterpiece that reads like a thriller’ Time OutA gripping and probing account of the biggest criminal manhunt in British history.It is over 40 years since Peter Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering 13 women and attacking 7 more. Still, he remains a killer of almost mythical proportions; his surviving victims, and their families, forever attached to his infamy.Michael Bilton’s acclaimed account is a powerful indictment of the calami...

A new, updated edition puts all the Doctors under the microscope—including Matt Smith—with facts, figures and opinions on every Doctor Who story televisedDoctor Who has seen many ups and downs in its long and colorful history, and this guide tracks all of them. From humble beginnings in November 1963 to its cancellation in 1989 and eventual resurrection in 2005, Doctor Who has always been a quintessential element of sci-fi, and Br...

To mark the 20th anniversary of Kenneth Williams’ death, a beautiful coffee table book celebrating his life, including never-before-seen photographs, sketches and personal testimony from Williams’ closest friends, for the very first time.2008 marks the 20th anniversary of the death of legendary comic actor and broadcaster Kenneth Williams. Among the actor's bequests, in a will which itself was controversial enough to require re-examination, was a large cache of private papers and m...

Winner of four major prizes for the best critical/biographical book related to crime fiction: the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and H.R.F. Keating Awards; and shortlisted for both the Agatha and Gold Dagger Awards.‘Martin Edwards is the closest thing there has been to a philosopher of crime writing.’ The TimesIn the first major history of crime fiction in fifty years, The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their C...

Winner of the H.R.F. Keating Award for best biographical/critical book related to crime fiction, and nominated for the Edgar Allen Poe and Macavity Awards for Best Critical/Biographical book.Ninety crime writers from the world’s oldest and most famous crime writing network give tips and insights into successful crime and thriller fiction.Howdunit offers a fresh perspective on the craft of crime writing from leading exponents of the genre, past and ...

So who was Jack the Ripper? No-one in the annals of crime is capable of arousing such passionate debate as the perpetrator of the Whitechapel Murders in 1888. Was he a demented Royal, a Masonic assassin, a sexually-frustrated artist, a member of the Czarist secret police, a crazed reformist or even an escaped gorilla? More than a century has passed since this unknown killer murdered East End prostitutes under the very noses of the police and yet we seem no closer to uncovering the Ripper's...

Sir Sean Connery is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one of them being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award) and three Golden Globes (including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award). He was knighted by Elizabeth II in July 2000, and received the Kennedy Center Honors in the US.Connery is best known for portraying the character James Bond, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983 (six Eon Productions films and the non-Eo...

Sean Connery's personification of secret agent James Bond invigorated Britain and its cinema, allowing a cash-strapped, morale-sapped country in decline to fancy itself still a player on the world stage. But while Bond would make Connery the first actor to command a million dollar-plus fee, the man himself was forever pouring scorn on the fantasies audiences found it increasingly hard to separate him from.Spirited, argumentative and sardonically celebratory, Christopher Bray's ...

Now in paperback, this book examines comic publishing and reading in Britain, from the late-Victorian era to the present. Cultural historian James Chapman explores the origins and evolution of these beloved publications, tracing the rise of characters such as lovable rogue Ally Sloper. From the heyday in the 1950s and ’60s with titles like Eagle to the controversial era of violent comics in the ’70s, including cult favourite 2000AD, and the adult comics boom in the ’80s, ...