And Now on Radio 4 offers an enthusiast's guide to the shows that have made Radio 4 what it is, and also explores some of the wonderful corners of the network's history that are long forgotten by all but a few. Who, for instance, now recalls Ronnie Barker's starring role on Radio 4 in a sophisticated cabaret-cum-sketch-show called Lines from My Grandfather's Forehead? What about Spike Milligan's intimate, soul-bearing account of his upbringing in colonial India, Plain...

It’s now ninety years since the BBC made its first broadcast and the British love affair with radio began.This book is a journey through that fascinating history and a celebration of the many wonderful voices that were part of it: Marion Cran, who pioneered the first gardening programme in the 1920s; The Goons and Kenneth Horne, comedy greats of the 1950s; John Peel, Alan Freeman, Kenny Everett and other heroes of the pirate stations; all the way up to Eddie Mair, Fi Glover and Dan...

14 November 2012 marks the ninetieth anniversary of the BBC's first ever broadcast and the beginning of the British love affair with radio. This fascinating book takes as its starting point those early, tentative programmes broadcast from Marconi House on the Strand, and follows the story of those magical radio voices through the years of economic depression, war and austerity, to the swinging Sixties and up to the digital era.Above all, it celebrates the great, the forgotten and t...

The Sunday Times BestsellerAll Michael Parkinson really wanted to do was play cricket for Yorkshire and England. However, he soon realised that to be paid to watch films, football and cricket would be the best way to spend life, and he became a journalist.Television beckoned and for three decades Parkinson interviewed the movers and shakers of the late twentieth century, making his television programme the must-see event of the week. In singing wit...

Terry Wogan was one of Britain's best-loved radio and television celebrities witty, charming and relaxed and undoubtedly captured the nation's heart. Here, Terry tells his life story from his beginnings as a young Limerick boy to his incredible success as an enduring celebrity with shows such as Wogan and The Eurovision Song Contest.Is It Me? is written in Terry's own inimitable style, with self-deprecating humour and a wry take on everyday life. The stor...

Classic stills from the life of one of Britain's most venerated entertainers.This is the extraordinary life story of comic legend Denis Norden, told in momentary snapshots by the master British comedian himself. Containing reminiscences of a career stretching back to the golden age of the radio, through the heyday of cinema and the early pioneering days of television comedy, Back Then showcases Denis Norden's creative genius at its very best.Told with Denis' hallmark flashe...

Television and sport is the ultimate marriage of convenience. The two circled each other warily for a while - sport anxious the sofa-bound might spurn the live product, TV reluctant in a limited channel world to hand over too much screen time to flannelled fools and muddied oafs.But they got together, and stayed together, for the sake of the money, and now you cannot imagine one without the other. They are indivisible, like an old couple sitting in a teashop finishing each other's ...

But what does your furniture point at?' asks the character Joey in the sitcom Friends on hearing an acquaintance has no TV. It's a good question: since its beginnings during WW2, television has assumed a central role in our houses and our lives, just as satellite dishes and aerials have become features of urban skylines. Television (or 'the idiot's lantern', depending on your feelings about it) has created controversy, brought coronations and World Cups into living rooms, allowed ...

The essential humour gift book of the year returns in the anticipated fourth volume of this bestselling series Ð guaranteed to provoke laughter and amazement.The first volume of unpublished letters to the Daily Telegraph, Am I Alone in ThinkingÉ?, not only became a Christmas bestseller but also established the paperÕs letter-writers as a uniquely waggish, eccentric and maverick institution. They can be relied upon,particularly in the letters slightly too pungent or off-the wall to ...

This book suggests crime fiction is now the most relevant and valid form of writing which can deal with modern Ireland in terms of the post-'Troubles' landscape and post-Celtic Tiger economic boom. The book takes a chapter by chapter approach with each chapter and author discussing a different facet of Irish crime writing for example, Declan Hughes discusses the influence of American culture on Irish crime writing and Tana French reflects on crime fiction and the post-Celtic Tiger Irish id...

Unravel the meaning, origin, and usage of over 6,000 phrases from book and film titles, idioms and cliches, to nicknames, slogans and quotations with this modern and entertaining guide to wonderful phrases by one of the world’s best-known wordsmiths.The ideal replacement or complement to that tatty old copy of Brewer's Phrase and Fable most of us have about the house, A Word in Your Shell-Like is an entertaining look at both familiar and unfamiliar phrases by one of the key world a...

The seventh book in the best-selling series of Unpublished Letters, this is a year in review made up of the wry and astute observations of the unpublished Telegraph letter writers.In a year in which even the most seasoned commentators have struggled to keep pace with the news cycle, letter writers to The Daily Telegraph have once again provided their refreshing take on events. Readers of the Telegraph Letters Page will be fondly ...