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, ...

"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...

The World was my Lobster tells the story of George Cole's more than 70 years in the acting profession that began with a walk-on part at the age of 14 in the stage musical The White Horse Inn in 1939, and continues today having included such roles as David Bliss in the radio and television versions of A Life of Bliss, Flash Harry in the St. Trinian's films, and Arthur Daley in television's Minder.Adopted when he was only 10 days old, George Cole grew up in south London in the 1920s. On the ...

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 ...

In 1981, Peter Sutcliffe, the 'Yorkshire Ripper', was convicted of thirteen murders and seven attempted murders. All his proven victims were women: most were prostitutes.Astonishingly, however, this is not the whole truth. There is a still-secret story of how Sutcliffe's terrible reign of terror claimed at least twenty-two more lives and left five other victims with terrible injuries. These crimes - attacks on men as well as women - took place all over England, not just in his known killin...

The pages of The Diary of Jack the Ripper reveal the unimaginable - that over a century ago, the legendary serial killer at work in London's Whitechapel kept a record of his bestial mutilations of women. The writer of the horrific journal is James Maybrick, a depraved drug-taking, womanising, 49-year-old Liverpool cotton merchant with a history of domestic violence. In this analysis of his diary, investigative author Shirley Harrison explains all about the origins of the text, the rigorous...

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...

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, ...

It is 1888 and the foggy streets of Whitechapel, one of the poorest areas of Victorian London, are gripped by fear. Five women thought have been murdered by the same hand, all but one of their corpses terrifyingly mutilated. But who were these women? And who could the murderer be? This fascinating book contains over one hundred facts about the awful crimes of the serial killer we all know as Jack the Ripper. Organised into sections covering each individual victim, clues to the Ripper’s ide...