An intimate of the 1960s fashion scene and Fleet Street, Felicity Green never knew who she might be interviewing next - politicians, film stars, the latest pop stars, fashion designers. She was thrilled to be working for the Daily Mirror and she brought a new and original voice and look to the fashion pages of the newspaper. For the first time in newspaper history, she created fashion pages to appeal to both sexes, and the circulation soared to more than five million copies a day. And with all those magical names, which journalist could fail to shine? There was the inimitable Mary Quant, the sheer style genius of Barbara Hulanicki of BIBA fame, the irresistible Twiggy, Kiki Byrne, Foale and Tuffin, Jean Muir, John Bates and Ossie Clark. Felicity sailed happily through all the excitement and her role expanded. Long before her famous Dear Marje column was born, Marje Proops, columnist and agony aunt, had been beloved of the multimillion readers for six years before Felicity came on board as associate editor. Two powerful women, and together they represented the voice of women for The Mirror and got on famously, enjoying being women in a man's newspaper world under the guidance of the brilliant Editorial Director Hugh Cudlipp. There are fantastic cartoons of Felicity by cartoonist Moira Hodell picturing her from the back, and page after page of newsprint features reproduced in facsimile to take us right back to the 60s. Pictured are Her Majesty the Queen, Jackie Kennedy and Liz Taylor all wearing real leopard skin, full length coats, the rarest and best skins of which was the Somali leopard which could cost up to £3,000. 'Cheaper ones cost much less - a few hundred pounds - but who wants a CHEAP status symbol?' And then there are the most famous photographers of the time and their remarkable, classy pictures - David Bailey, Terry Donovan, John Cowan, Brian Duffy, Lewis Morley, John Adriaan and of course Terry O'Neill creating striking, saucy and stylish images bringing visual excitement to The Mirror pages. Here is all the glamour and style capturing the stellar time when London fashion conquered the world, with discussion on bikinis that let the sun shine through, tights to wear with miniskirts, new shapes in bras, the Paris catwalk fashions, a comparison of corset adverts, trouser suits and some crazy fashion statements. It is all fun, entertaining and informative in a big glamorous glossy 192 page history of beauty and fashion. 24.6 x 30.8cm published by the Antique Collectors Club.
Click YouTube icon to see this book come to life on video.

As a founding member of the influential English rock bands Soft Machine and Matching Mole and with a solo career which has lasted for over 40 years, Robert Wyatt has collaborated with artists including Bjork, Brian Eno, Carla Bley, Paul Weller and David Gilmour. His own music remains unclassifiably personal. Alfie Benge is a visual artist, songwriter and pioneering music manager, who has managed Robert's career for over 50 years and is also married to him. Since 1982 they have collaborated on many of Robert's most well-known songs. This unique Faber volume celebrates one of the most enduring creative partnerships of the last half century. Their work is unusual, perceptive, playful, songs that touch your mind and your heart, selected and arranged by the authors themselves and featuring an introduction by Jarvis Cocker. A full presentation of the lyrics, poems, writings and drawings, some of the titles include Dada Was Here, Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road, Pigs, and Vandalusia. The purity and fragility of Robert's singing can lead to the lyrics being overshadowed and finally this is readdressed. Some are fantastically funny like 'Winter of our discotheque' and 'Words take the place of meaning' and some are disturbingly prescient as in Born Again Cretin and NIO (New Information Order). Despite being rendered virtually immobile following his accident, Robert flies in his book so be prepared for lift off. 192pp, illus.

Charles A. Lindbergh's transatlantic flight from New York to Paris in his Ryan monoplane is given the Owners' Workshop Manual treatment in this comprehensive account of the flight, the plane, the context and the personalities. The first non-stop Atlantic crossing had been achieved in 1919 by Alcock and Brown in a Vickers Vimy bomber, winning them a Daily Mail prize of £10,000. This prompted Raymond Orteig to offer a bigger prize for the first flight from New York to Paris, and the race was on. A German airship made a transatlantic flight in 1924, though it did not quality for the prize, and in 1926 Sikorsky pilot Rene Fonck attempted a crossing which ended in tragedy for two of his crew as the overloaded plane crashed on take-off. In the following year Lindbergh finally claimed the prize, only just beating his rival Charles Levine whose Wright Bellanca was grounded by legal wrangles. Several other transatlantic flights quickly followed, including Ruth Elder's attempt which ended in her ditching in the Atlantic, but Lindbergh's is the name that has passed into history. Lindbergh had entered the US Army Air Service aged 22, and in 1926 took a job with the newly formed Air Mail, which entailed navigating at night over poorly marked routes, an experience which stood him in good stead on the transatlantic crossing. In the run-up to the flight, Ryan airlines met Lindbergh's deadline of a 60-day construction period for the Spirit of St Louis, which had a wider wingspan and undercarriage than its prototype. The construction process is illustrated by archive photos and also numerous shots of a reconstructed model. On the flight Lindbergh had to contend with storm clouds cutting off his vision and above all the urge to sleep, but the final touchdown at Le Bourget entered the history books. Lindbergh's later life was complex and tragic, including the sensational murder of his son in 1932. 180pp, numerous photos in black and white and colour, diagrams, maps.

Samer Nashef is a cardiac surgeon at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge and a world leading expert on risk and quality in surgical care. He tells heart-stopping stories of transplants, coronary artery bypasses, aorta repair and cardiac arrest and also delivers humane advice about medical realities rarely observed - the futility of obsessing over diet, the necessity of calculating risks, the role of decision making, and the resilience of doctor and patient alike. He takes a scalpel to the medical profession and asks if patients get the standard of care they have a right to expect from their surgeons. Nashef is co-creator of the Euroscore System, a safety and monitoring tool that predicts the outcomes of heart surgery and he has saved thousands of lives too. In his spare time he compiles cryptic crosswords for the Guardian and the Financial Times under the pseudonym The Naked Surgeon. His Monologues speed from the transporting of a donor's heart at the motorway hard shoulder to cautionary stories of excessive intervention gone awry in US hospitals, to a traumatic trip to bring advanced cardiac surgery to the Palestinian West Bank. Magnificently warm, Nashef has the best imaginable bedside manner. 276pp, paperback.

'The libidinal, erotic and romantic need not come together in one lover. We can fuck without devotion, adore without horniness, gape without love - this has been the stuff of literature and song for millennia.' Yet sex talk is oddly superficial and much of daily life is certainly sexualised, typically while trying to sell us something. In 'The Secret Life of Catherine M'. Catherine remembers the beautiful anonymity of orgies, the free abandonment of herself to men. Similarly, theorist David Halperin describes gay bathhouses as opportunities for sex without elaborate straight courting rites. European philosophers and theologians have been at the forefront of this campaign against carnal joy and have deemed lust ignoble. Plato was writing in the 4th century before Christ and raised without any Christian shame. In his Symposium he portrays flirting with wit and charm and has no qualms about describing an erect penis. The generation after Plato, the early Stoics were not prudish about sex - statesman Seneca called desire a 'secret destruction'. The philosopher and commune leader Epicurus believed that sex was natural but superfluous and that sex was often healthier to relieve lust than not, especially if longing and love led to pain. Here is figurative fucking, achieving oneness, and sexual intercourse while being 'ashamed of being in the body'. For Augustine our genitals are wilful and capricious, and procreation without orgasm is the ideal. In his Paradise, men ejaculate like they might reach for a fruit - calmly, with no shudder. Aristotle rarely discussed sex and sexuality; 13th century theologian Thomas Aquinas married Augustine's fear of lust to Aristotle's virtue theory, and idea of a purposeful universe. For Aquinas, we were not made by God ...to wank or suck one another. These are all sins and the only allowable fucking is between a married man and woman to make babies.... In the 15th century, philosopher Marsilio Ficino was clearly in love with the younger Giovanni Cavalcanti, but was wary of 'the filths of the body' as he put it in De Amore. To many, screwing was safer as an intellectual or poetic trope than as an actual part of philosophical life. On sex, the most radical departure from medieval and Renaissance ideas came in the 18th century with philosophers like Rousseau, Diderot and Voltaire. The Marquis de Sade took this brazen materialism and turned it against his era's gentile rationality and the aristocratic aesthete used his position to rape and torture the poor, eventually being jailed then committed for his crimes. He was typical of another powerful man abusing women and another thinker who made sense of sex only by stripping it of everything but pure physicality. Inspired by philosophy, literature and private life, Damon Young explores the paradoxes of the bedroom in a book which more than teases your mind. 278pp.

Sub-titled 'Laying Bare and Learning to Repair Our Love Lives', here is a book to achieve better sex in ten steps by a renowned sex therapist. Think about the last time you had sex. Who initiated it? When and where did it happen? What was off-limits and why? Did you lose yourself in pleasure and connection, or did you come away feeling disappointed or even ashamed? Ian Kerner shows you how to create a sex life that works for you and helps you figure out what's working and what's not, where you might be missing some elements. He also discusses many common sexual problems such as low desire, issues with climaxing, and erectile unpredictability - and how to resolve them. He begins with desire and the call to sexual action, touch, psychological stimulation side by side and face to face, exploring erotic themes, expressing your inner kinks, deep arousal for male and female, that orgasm is a journey not a destination, entering a state of revery and getting your glow on. Create sex scripts that confirm meaning or might delay ejaculation, and he touches on porn, trauma and pain and gender dysphoria. For adults of all sexual persuasions, this is a very popular psychologist, and the sensitivity with which he writes about such personal and potentially embarrassing situations is extraordinary. For example Ella, who still had a penis and as a trans woman was taking medication which made her need to pee a lot and how her newish girlfriend Gemma suggested she wears an adult diaper, and how eventually Gemma was able to give Ella pleasure and move in a more sexual direction below the waist. There are fantastic sentences such as 'Think of G-spot stimulation as adding some serious bass to the treble of clitoral stimulation.' And 'Speaking of vibrators, we're living in a Golden Age of sex toys' (now better designed and produced). 354pp, large softback.

Finely drawn sketches, portraits and fantasies by one of the major theatre and opera, stage and costume designers of the 20th century, many of Lila De Nobili's colour artworks have never been previously published before this publication. Parisian cats have been celebrated by painters, writers and chansonniers since the 19th century when Steinlein created the poster for the cabaret Le Chat Noir. An important place among these artists is occupied by Lila De Nobili who moved to the French capital in 1945 and never left the 7th Arrondissement, its quintessential neighbourhood. She painted and designed stage sets for the Scala in Milan, the Opéra in Paris, Covent Garden in London and was sought by the most famous directors. She designed costumes for Maria Callas, Edith Piaf, Audrey Hepburn and Ingrid Bergman. Just after the events of May 1968, she devoted herself exclusively to painting and adopted her first cat Ulysse and the feline family soon grew. She never tired of sketching and drawing them, and painting them in watercolour and most of these intimate works full of insight and subtlety were gifted to a friend, herself a cat lover and thanks to this collection, now published in book form. Also included are fantasies and stories including Dominique, affectionate cards featuring her cats Mitzi and Rouki, a tabby and a pale ginger. Some of the cats are dressed as can-can dancers or Siamese cats as Pierrot, costume sketches for Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty at Covent Garden, but best of all are the beautifully observed small cats looking curiously or snuggled under the covers inside a cardboard box and kittens looking for a home. Exquisitely coloured renderings, 144 landscape pages measuring 21.6 x 16.5cm.
Click YouTube icon to see this book come to life on video.

Sub-titled 'Why Staying Small is the Next Big Thing for Business', Paul Jarvis left the traditional world of business when he realised that devoting his days to a high-pressure, high-profile corporation was not his idea of success. He quickly discovered for himself the immense benefit of deliberately cutting out the outdated corporate hierarchy that constantly demands more productivity, more output and more annual growth. His book is a refreshing new approach to running a successful business that focusses on getting better rather than bigger. Jarvis shows how remaining small can provide the freedom to pursue more meaningful pleasures in life, and help you avoid the headaches that routinely arise in the day-to-day grind of a traditional growth-orientated business. Learn how to set up your business, determine your desired revenues, deal with an unexpected crisis, keep your key customers happy, and of course accomplish all of this on your own terms. His chapters cover what is required to lead, growing a company that doesn't grow, determining the right mindset, personality, scalable systems, teaching everything you know, utilising trust and scale, and the hidden value of relationships. He gives one example of the oldest continuously run hotel in the world, in existence for about 1,300 years (it opened its doors in AD705) which has been managed by 52 generations of the same family in the picturesque countryside of Japan's Yamanashi prefecture where the focus has been on customer service. Penguin paperback, 249pp.

When the Famous Five hear of an escaped convict in the area, they are on red alert. Dick is woken by a light flashing through his window. Is someone trying to send him a coded message? Why would an escaped convict send Dick this message in the middle of the night and what can it mean? The police refuse to help, so the Five have no choice - yet again, they will be solving this mystery all by themselves. Fantastic new cover art by Laura Ellen Anderson will draw young readers ages 9-11 into this timeless classic adventure. 196pp, paperback.

Join Milly-Molly-Mandy as she rescues a baby hedgehog, has a tea party, looks after a baby, goes motoring, goes on an expedition, helps to thatch a roof, writes letters, learns to ride, makes a garden, camps out and goes carol singing among the 12 delightfully charming stories about the once upon a time little girl in the candy-striped dress. All great nostalgic fun, collect all five in the series. 192pp, paperback. Ages 4-8, large print and line art.