CYRIL’S LOTTERY OF LIFE depicts bizarre and comic events with a sexual undertone centred on an unconventional English lawyer’s practice and his colourful and wacky clients.Alphabet fetishes and phobias, a terminal desk-top adventure, an investigation into mysterious anonymous messages, a secretary secretly in love with her boss, an overload of cholesterol-filled kosher food, a chief superintendent whose blow-up doll makes a dramatic public appearance, a bottle fed judge who nightly retires...

On 6 May 2014, two reports condemning the conduct of Alan Shatter, Minister for Justice, Equality and Defence, were delivered to government buildings in Dublin. Shatter resigned from cabinet the next day under pressure from Taoiseach Enda Kenny, his reputation destroyed and his political career in tatters. The GSOC bugging scandal had precipitated an avalanche of Garda corruption allegations and Shatter was in the eye of the storm. He was savaged by the media, and accusations of his coveri...

In Life Is a Funny Business Alan Shatter revisits his early life experiences and explores how he was shaped and influenced by them.For the first time he describes the tragedy and comedy in his family history and background, depicted through the lens of an Irish Jewish boy growing up in 1950s and 60s Dublin, and his insights as a member of Ireland s small Jewish community.His story travels through the Ireland of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and his early years of social and polit...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Funny, forthright and sharp as a knife . . . O'Grady writes just as he speaks.' Daily MirrorLilian Maeve Veronica Savage, international sex kitten, was born on the steps of The Legs of Man public house, Lime Street, Liverpool on a policeman's overcoat. Her mother, the lady wrestler Hell Cat Savage, had no such luxuries as gas and air. She just bit down on the policeman's torch and recovered afterwards at the bar with a large ...

Sheila Tofield tells her moving true story about being a single mother in 1950s Britain, in The Unmarried Mother.'A searing, honest testimony' Lesley PearseSheila grew up in Rotherham, the daughter of an uncaring mother who made her believe she was useless, stupid and - most painfully of all - unlovable. As a young woman, her worst childhood fears were confirmed when her fiancé broke off their engagement without an explanation. Hea...

From the Sunday Times bestselling authorWhich fifty people made Britain the wreck she is? From ludicrous propagandist Alastair Campbell to the Luftwaffe's allies, the modernist architects, it's time to name the guilty.Quentin Letts sharpens his nib and stabs them where they deserve it, from TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh, the dumbed-down buffoon who put the 'h' in Aspidistra, to the perpetrators of the 'Credit Crunch'.Margaret Thatcher rupture...

'There was a lot that we kept from my mother. My dad would say to me as a teenager "Don't tell your mother." We couldn't face the disapproval.'Sue Johnston always seemed to be disappointing her mother. As a girl she never stayed clean and tidy like her cousins. As she grew older, she spent all her piano lesson money on drinks for her mates down the pub, and when she discovered the Cavern she was never at home. The final straw was when Sue left her steady j...

The Iron Lady, the definitive Margaret Thatcher biography, is available just in time for the movie starring Meryl Streep as one of the most infamous figures in postwar politics.Whether you love her or hate her, Margaret Thatcher's impact on twentieth-century history is undeniable. From her humble, small-town upbringing to her rise to power as the United Kingdom's first female prime minister, to her dramatic fall from grace after more than three decades of ...

A classic Agatha Christie short story, featuring Miss Marple, from the collection Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories.At a meeting of the Tuesday Night Club, attorney Mr. Petherick relates an incident involving the late Simon Clode, a wealthy client. Obsessed by his granddaughter’s death, Clode turned to spiritualist Eurydice Spragg to contact her in the afterlife, and then decided to write a new will leaving Eurydice as the benefactor and excluding hi...

This is Julian Clary's story, in his own words - the tale of an awkward schoolboy who became a huge worldwide success on stage and screen.After a sheltered suburban upbringing, Julian was sent to St Benedict's, where beatings from 'holy' men gave him some brutal life lessons, and other 'unholy' boys his first awakenings of sexuality. He had just one true friend and ally, Nick - to his other school peers, Julian's aloof demeanour made him an enigma or simply a figure of ridicule. In...

From the tragic massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, to signing the Treaty of Rome when Britain entered the Common Market, Barbara Hosking was there.This is the story of a Cornish scholarship girl with no contacts who ended up in the corridors of power. It is also the very personal story of her struggle with her sexuality as a bewildered teenager, and as a young woman in the 1950s, a time when being gay could mean social ostracism.Born during the General Strike in 192...

Pauline Quirke was a skinny child, a slim teenager, a curvy woman, then - according to her bathroom scales (curse them) - just plain fat. Yes, the 'F' word. Tipping the scales at nearly 20 stone, with creaking knees and a dodgy ankle to boot, at the beginning of 2011 Pauline had reached a crisis point. Something had to change, and fast.It was never going to be an easy ride, but with her trademark warmth and sense of humour, Pauline recounts the highs and lows of the rollercoaster y...