Maggie is John Sergeant's mordant analysis of Margaret Thatcher's career and, more importantly, the legacy she has left to the Conservative party, which he would argue has been little short of disastrous. He takes us from the glory days of three successive election victories to the machinations that saw Mrs Thatcher's departure from Downing Street, and on to the years since, during which she has exerted a remarkable and sometimes baleful influence on the party she once led. Sergea...

John Sergeant's acclaimed memoir takes us from his somewhat eccentric childhood to his thirty years' service with the BBC.Memorably handbagged by Margaret Thatcher on the steps of the Paris Embassy as she lost the leadership contest, and the man to whom Ron Davis confessed his midnight perambulations on Clapham Common, Sergeant has been the man on the spot in most of the major news stories of the last twenty years. His mordant wit, keen sense of the absurd and acute powers of analy...

The comedy panel game where all the questions are about the guest hostWelcome to The Personality Test, the panel show in which a brand new host takes the chair for every episode to present a quiz entirely themed around themselves. Each gets to run the show by their own rules, devising topics and queries based on their life, whims, fancies and past glories. Among the showbiz celebrities in the hot seat are Gyles Brandreth, Jennie Bond, Antony Worrall Thomps...

On the Margin was a six part BBC TV satirical comedy sketch show written and performed by Alan Bennett, with journalist and TV presenter John Sergeant and actor Virginia Stride. It was first broadcast in 1966 and was such a critical success that it was repeated twice the following year. Although Alan Bennett - already famous due to Beyond the Fringe - took swipes at contemporary Britain, his love of his country’s cultural heritage always remained. Besides Bennett, the ser...

Twelve rare archive editions of the humorous radio quiz show that gives a poke in the eye to the people and stories that make the news.For over forty years The News Quiz has graced the Radio 4 airwaves with an irreverent sideways look at the headlines. Having first appeared in 1977, it boasts a tantalising archive of episodes to remind us of the news from yesteryear, refracted through the satirical gaze of regular panellists including Alan Coren, Andy Hamilton, Mark Steel,...

Barging Round Britain by David Bartley is a beautifully-illustrated guide to a unique and fascinating part of our history: the canal network.Explore the people and places that have forged this national treasure, from the birth of the Industrial Revolution to the leisure explosion on our waterways today. Fully-illustrated with maps and photographs, the book will trace canal routes across the UK, from the Georgian grandeur of Bath to the dramatic splendour of the Scottish Hi...

"In offering this book to the public, I have not undertaken to present a history of my life. I do not consider my life of enough importance to warrant making a book about it. What I have undertaken to do is to tell some of the exciting experiences that have fallen to the lot of that noble band, the Texas Ranger force, of which I had the honor to be a member for twelve years. I had the leading part, it is true, in the incidents related, but the reader will see that I was not the whole show—...

Allowing you to uncover the woman behind the 'Iron Lady' image, 'Iron Lady: The Thatcher Years' takes a thorough yet lighthearted look at the life and times of Britain's longest-serving twentieth-century prime minister. As both the first woman to become leader of a European country and the first British premier to achieve re-election for three consecutive terms, Margaret Thatcher's legacy is such that even today she plays a significant role in British political life. Reflecting on her life...

'One of the best political biographies I have ever read' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday TimesNot For Turning is the first volume of Charles Moore's authorized biography of Margaret Thatcher, the longest serving Prime Minister of the twentieth century and one of the most influential political figures of the postwar era.Charles Moore's biography of Margaret Thatcher, published after her death on 8 April 2013, immediately superced...

**'Lord Sugar is a self-made man and one of Britain's finest business brains. His story so far is inspirational to the end' The Sun'Sugar is unusual among celebrity memoirists in that he's a clever man who has done a lot with his life, and the tale of his rise from nothing, and nowhere is genuinely revealing' Private EyeFrom a Hackney council estate to the House of Lords, this is the extraordinary story of one of our greatest entrepreneurs.**Alan S...

A History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr confronts head-on the victory of shopping over politics. This edition also includes an extra chapter charting the course from Blair to Brexit.It tells the story of how the great political visions of New Jerusalem or a second Elizabethan Age, rival idealisms, came to be defeated by a culture of consumerism, celebrity and self-gratification. In each decade, political leaders think they know what the...

This enchanting collection brings together hundreds of his wittiest and wickedest quips as a record of all that was best about this lovable, infuriatingly conceited, wildly funny, and brilliantly talented Englishman.