Non-fiction

Following his hugely popular account of the previous 2000 years, John O'Farrell now comes bang up to date with a hilarious modern history asking 'How the hell did we end up here?'. "An Utterly Exasperated History of Modern Britain" informs, elucidates and laughs at all the bizarre events, ridiculous characters and stupid decisions that have shaped Britain's story since 1945; leaving the Twenty-First Century reader feeling fantastically smug for having the benefit of hindsight.

Vaclav Havel: iconoclast and philosopher-king, an internationally successful playwright who became a political dissident and then, reluctantly, a president. His pivotal role in the Velvet Revolution, the end of Communism and the birth of a modern, west-facing Czech Republic makes him a key figure of the twentieth century. He was a character of great contradictions, a courageous visionary who put his life at risk, a leader who inspired great loyalty; yet a man wracked with doubt, self-criticism, depression and despair. Above all he was an intellectual and artist, always true to himself, someone who never lost a profound sense of the absurd. Michael antovsky was one of Havel's closest friends. They met as dissidents under Communism, and when a frail Havel was released from prison in May

Tanya Byron shares powerful stories inspired by her years of training as a clinical psychologist. The Skeleton Cupboard is Professor Tanya Byron's account of her years of training as a clinical psychologist, when trainees find themselves in the toughest placements of their careers. Through the eyes of her naive and inexperienced younger self, Tanya shares remarkable stories inspired by the people she had the privilege to treat. Gripping, poignant and full of daring black humour, this book reveals the frightening and challenging induction faced by all mental health staff and highlights their incredible commitment to their patients. Powerfully moving and beautifully written, The Skeleton Cupboard shares the tales of ordinary people with an amazing resilience to the challenges of life.</p

Featuring Latinate and Celtic words, weasel words and nonce-words, ancient words ('loaf') to cutting edge ('twittersphere') and spanning the indispensable words that shape our tongue ('and', 'what') to the more fanciful ('fopdoodle'), Crystal takes us along the winding byways of language via the rude, the obscure and the downright surprising. In this unique new history of the world's most ubiquitous language, linguistics expert David Crystal draws on words that best illustrate the huge variety of sources, influences and events that have helped to shape our vernacular since the first definitively English word was written down in the fifth century ('roe', in case you are wondering).

As the late great Samuel Johnson sagely observed, 'When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.' When author Tom Jones found himself doing the same things week in, week out while living in England's treasured capital, he decided to heed Johnson's words and seek out a thing to do each day in London to make him fall back in love with the city. Here, in Tired of London, Tired of Life, Tom shares the fun, diverting and imaginative things that you can do to keep yourself amused in London. With seasonally appropriate suggestions for each day of the year, you can explore East London by canoe, search for Fagin's lair in Clerkenwell, play petanque in Southwark, seek out Aphrodite in the British Museum on Valentine's Day and enjoy a host of unusual ways to enjoy the capital. So grab your

'England is a country which requires more than a second look, an amazingly diverse place, offering almost-unlimited landscapes, culture and history, and a diversity of opportunities which is unrivalled anywhere else in the world.' Tired of London, Tired of Life author Tom Jones, has come up with another gem. In Mad Dogs and Englishmen he presents us with a seasonal snapshot of things to do in England at any time of the year, come rain or come shine. Using a mixture of unique seasonal events and interesting places to visit (all presented in attractive bite-sized entries), Mad Dogs and Englishmen is a browsable gift book aimed at those who are interested in getting to know their home country better as well as tourists seeking to make the most of their stay in England. In more than 220 pa

In "The Black Swan", Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. Here Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls antifragile are things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. What's more, the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad fo

Britain's favourite writer of narrative non-fiction Bill Bryson travels back in time to a forgotten summer when America came of age, took centre stage, and, in five eventful months, changed the world for ever. In the summer of 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest of the time), a semi-crazed sculptor with a mad plan to carve four giant heads into an inaccessible mountain called Rushmore, a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and a youthful aviator named Charles Lindbergh who started the summer wholly unknown and finished it as the most famous man on earth. (So famous that Minnesota considered renaming itself after him.) It was the summer that saw the birth of talking pictures, the

"1,000 Unforgettable Senior Moments in History", of which we could remember only 249, is filled with excruciatingly embarrassing and totally true stories of major mental lapses and famous acts of forgetfulness. How about President Jimmy Carter leaving the codes needed to launch a nuclear missile strike in a suit sent to the dry-cleaners? Or Ralph Waldo Emerson forgetting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's name at Longfellow's funeral? Did you know that Rod Stewart's "Maggie Mae" was inspired by Stewart's first love, a woman whose full name he can longer recall. Sir Isaac Newton, Harpo Marx, Toscanini, Pope John XXIII - they've all had it worse than you.

How on earth did 'with bells on' come to express enthusiasm? Why is good health compared to a small stringed instrument? ('As fit as a fiddle.') And what do pickles have to do with quandaries? Let's not beat about the bush: despite the fact that we have all used these phrases at one time or another, and even enjoyed expressing them, they are in truth - when you take a moment to consider them - completely senseless and utterly fantastical. We all know what somebody means when they use these phrases due to our common knowledge of them, but it wouldn't be surprising if, when asked to explain them, you found that the cat had got your tongue, or you simply clammed up! "Spilling the Beans on the Cat's Pyjamas" provides us with the meanings to these well-worn and much-loved phrases by putting

Anne Frank's "The Diary of a Young Girl" is among the most enduring documents of the twentieth century. Since its publication in 1947, it has been read by tens of millions of people all over the world. It remains a beloved and deeply admired testament to the indestructible nature of the human spirit. Restored in this "Definitive Edition" are diary entries that were omitted from the original edition. These passages, which constitute 30 percent more material, reinforce the fact that Anne was first and foremost a teenage girl, not a remote and flawless symbol. She fretted about and tried to cope with her own sexuality. Like many young girls, she often found herself in disagreements with her mother. And like any teenager, she veered between the carefree nature of