Cairo between the wars was a "wild cosmopolitan playground of fun and glamour", and this panorama of the nightclub scene focuses on the women performers and impresarios who wielded huge influence and enjoyed a high degree of independence. Ezbekiyya was Cairo's nightlife district, whose leading venues included the Grand Kursaal music hall, the Printania Theatre, the Casino de Paris cabaret and the Abbaye des Roses night club, while Emad al Din was the street at the hub of the entertainment industry. In 1919 Egypt left British colonial rule and part of the Ezbekiyya quarter's appeal was the cosmopolitan population, including WWI refugees, spies, and sybaritic aristocrats, but as WWII approached the clientele was mainly Muslim and Arab. Yaqub "James" Sanua was the influential polyglot impresario regarded as the father of Cairo theatre pre-WWI, but the feminist movement was also strong and the dancer Shafiqa had been queen of the music hall in the 1890s, earning fabulous sums and blazing a trail for the feminist decadence of inter-war nightlife. In the 1920s the English dancer and choreographer Dolly Smith was in demand at every big theatre, while Mounira al-Mahdiyya, a leading singer of the 20s, was known to step in to male roles if required, following in the footsteps of Sarah Bernhart, the world's biggest female star. Mounira adapted Carmen for her troupe and thus helped to launch Arabic opera. The vaudeville artist Rose al Youssef was mentored by the impresario Aziz-Eid, and the dancer Fatima Rushdi actually married Aziz -Eid in spite of the fact that he was 40 to her 16. Fatima went on to a theatrical and film career that included playing Mark Antony in Julius Caesar among other male roles as an homage to Bernhart, and she was also a writer and director. Aziza Amir was another legendary performer who moved into film production and screenwriting. Meanwhile Madame Langlois, a procurer with violent red dyed hair, bought a chateau on the proceeds of pimping "Exquisite Parisian girls". After WWII a new puritanism set in and there were fewer vaudeville opportunities for women, with the Ezbekiyya falling into decay and disuse. A rollercoaster narrative. 373pp, black and white reproductions.

Educated at Cambridge but born in Oxford in 1941, Miriam Margolyes is a veteran of stage and screen and an acclaimed voice artist, and a potty mouth she has too! 'I have no secrets. I decided very early on in life that the strongest position was to be completely open.' Creator of myriad unforgettable characters from Lady Wiseadder to Professor Sprout, Miriam is the nation's favourite and most cheeky national treasure. At the age of 80 she finally decided to tell her life story. Find out how being conceived during an air raid gave her curly hair, what pranks led her to being known as the naughtiest girl ever to be educated at Oxford High School, and how as a teenager she ended up posing nude for Augustus John. Find out what she did when Warren Beatty asked 'Do you fuck?' and much more, with a cast list stretching from Martin Scorsese to Barbra Streisand, a cross-dressing Leonardo DiCaprio to an incomprehensible Isaiah Berlin, this biography is as full of life and surprises as its shockingly honest author. 438pp, many photos including colour.

Gloucester Crescent is a curving, leafy street, tucked between Camden Town and Primrose Hill, filled with the sound of clacking typewriters and children playing. Unremarkable in many ways unless you notice the lady in the van outside one house and the familiar-looking famous residents crossing the road. The son of Jonathan Miller writes his memoir, written the eyes of a growing child, the story of a very particular family and their circle of brilliant, idealistic and intellectual friends in the London of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. William explores the back gardens of homes of his famous neighbours, attends dramatic rehearsals with his dad, fails exams and is bullied at school, gets drugs from the philosopher A. J. Ayer's wife, and tries to watch the moon landing with Alan Bennett and a room full of writers. But against this backdrop of lively anecdote and hitherto-unseen domestic detail, William struggles at school and at home and his at times heart-breaking memoir is about how we grow up and move on from our childhoods, and what happens when we come back. A funny, tender and moving story of a young boy trying to find his own identity, a memoir about love, life, art and whole of life. Wonderful. 336pp, paperback, photos and other illus.

With a beautifully decorated colourful slipcase of mushrooms and butterflies and flowers, slip out the heavyweight hessian cloth backed 24 x 32cm hardback and you are in for a treat. The Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection, 50,000 plus books, manuscripts, posters, photographs and ephemera, was placed on long-term loan at Harvard University in the summer of 2012 by his family. The bulk of the collection explores drug use by individuals with emphasis on the 1800s and 1900s in America. Domingo (1957-2009) was a collector and visionary who filled his homes and warehouses with the world's greatest private collection related to the subjects of drugs, sex, magic and rock and roll. A library of more than 100,000 items, it contained everything from rare manuscripts and photos to posters, bottles, letters, opium pipes, pinball machines, newspaper articles, Allen Ginsberg's stars and stripes paper top hat, posters for Andy Warhol's films like Trash (1970) and Heat (1972), a large cardboard stand of Brigitte Bardot to small rather beautiful booklets, rare posters and book jackets, Japanese erotica or shunga, love letters and pictures of naked girlfriends. It included the work of diverse figures including Timothy Leary, Sigmund Freud, the Marquis de Sade, Charles Baudelaire, the Rolling Stones, Aleister Crowley and many more. There are huge full page images of vintage medicine boxes and bottles, some containing cocaine and the government report on Coca-Cola from 1907 on its chemical breakdown. One poster says Attention Coke Lovers - Freebase: The Greatest Thing Since Sex! A veritable cornucopia organised by the following chapters: Stones, Weed, Beat, Pop, Acid, Erotica, Coke, Revolt, Occult, Opium, Mots et Images and Rock. At once fantastical, informative and hallucinatory, this is a rare art book with a difference. 24 x 32cm, 480 pages dripping with quality colour images, a real trip down the rabbit hole of libraries.

The much-hyped ascent of the Montgolfier balloon in 1783 ushered in a century and a half of balloon frenzy. Perhaps surprisingly, women were at the centre. By 1784 a queue to be the first woman in the sky had formed and the honours went to four aristocratic Parisian ladies, while two weeks later an opera singer ascended in Lyon and treated the crowds to the rendering of an aria. The King of Sweden was present to watch and the event was a diplomatic success, though the descent involved some ignominy. Once the initial excitement of flight died down, new methods of maintaining public interest included promoting the spectacle of women climbing into a balloon and having their skirts blown about, while the language of ballooning was a gift for cartoonists with its many double entendres. By 1785 the fever had spread to England, where the redoubtable Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, asked the Prince of Wales to support her plea to be the first female balloonist. The entrepreneur Count Zambeccari chose Miss Grice, but she proved too heavy for the balloon which also included the Count and a wealthy sponsor, so she was summarily, though metaphorically, dropped. The lightweight 14-year-old Rosine Simonet, followed by her sister Leonora, took flight from British soil, but the first British woman in the air was a well-known actress called Letitia Sage who wowed her fans with plunging necklines and vaudeville razzmatazz. Letitia ascended with the naturalist George Biggin as her only companion, and members of Brooks's Club immediately started betting on the possibility of having sex 1000 yards from the earth. Balloon fever spread to America, with trapeze artist Leonora Dare making a living with spectacular aerobatics. Finally with the advent of aeroplanes a new thrill took over. 16.5 x 24 cm, 175pp, photos.

Fashion is a performance and the author of this study of women's fashions in 1920s America, the era of the Flapper, looks at how women use fashion as coded ways of expressing certain social attitudes. In the public sphere, there was controversy over women's costumes in staged entertainment, for instance in the hugely popular Ziegfeld Follies where sexually provocative displays by women were a constant source of censorship. Florenz Ziegfeld's motto, "glorifying the American girl", was an example of the doublethink possible in the entertainment world. Proper and improper ways to dress, including not only skirt lengths but also posture and demeanour, were a staple source of copy in the women's magazines of the period, and the author shows how debates about fashion negatively impacted the feminist agenda when it came to pressing for votes for women, jury duty and other aspects of full citizenship. The debate on fashion was closely linked with pronouncements about morality, and "no aspect of fashion so kindled the fury of moralists as short skirts". Moralists tried to argue that most women's figures were not up to the exposure of more flesh. Looser corsets were a particular subject of moral concern when combined with dancing to jazz music, and the assumption was that looser clothes meant looser morals. But equality was unstoppable in the postwar years. As one poster put it, "Men do not walk on pegs - why should women?". Swimming costumes of the one-piece, clinging sort were condemned, but the athletic image was gaining ground, as contemporary adverts and cartoons demonstrate. The "long civil war of swimwear" lasted for three decades, with the final taboo being broken when men discarded the upper half. 204pp, paperback, illustrations.

Here you will find the Iranian vinyl of 'Whole Lotta Love', the Angolan 'Over the Hills', the Spanish 'D'yer Mak'er', which was translated as 'El Tintero', and the Turkish 'Immigrant Song', with an illustration of migrants running. The very first Jimmy Page solo single 'She Just Satisfies' dates from 1965, and that's where it really all began. Ross Halfin's first album he ever brought was Led Zeppelin II and he has at least 20 versions of it now. At the very beginning of 'Whole Lotta Love', Robert Plant either coughs or sighs as the guitar kicks in with the greatest guitar riff of all time. During the course of their 12-year career Led Zeppelin released only eight studio albums and no singles but now there are more than 1,000 official singles and 2,000 LPs on the market. This definitive volume illustrates practically them all in full colour and includes the rarest and most interesting vinyl releases, one-of-a-kind rarities, bizarre regional variations, official albums and bootleg recordings of legendary concerts. Who can forget Live in Japan, Earls Court or Live at Budokan in '72? A huge heavyweight 12" square album sized volume, there are page after page of colour images featuring beautiful handmade artwork, coloured vinyl, labels and covers documented by photographer Ross Halfin in superb detail, and all annotated with details of their release. The book also has a 40 page comprehensive discography with all known album and single vinyl releases from around the world including catalogue numbers, release or recording dates and additional notes. A real labour of love and a graphic designer's and art lover's paradise, this brings back so many memories and raises a smile like page 92 with the Phony Beatlemania Has Bitten the Dust strictly limited edition, numbered and on red Virgin vinyl. Remember the days when we spent hours poring over our album covers, squeezing every detail of the meaning out of the artwork? The bonus here is a gallery of images of the gorgeous Robert Plant with his long golden locks! Exquisitely produced hardback, 216pp with plastic protective sleeve - naturally.
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The era of the Album, Long Playing Record or LP began in 1967 with 'Sgt Pepper'. The Beatles didn't just collect together a bunch of songs, they Made An Album. 15 years later, the Walkman had already taken music out of the home and into the streets. The record business had begun trying to reverse-engineer the creative process in order to make big money, and nobody would play music or listen to it in quite the same way ever again. During that time the LP became a mark of sophistication, an instrument of education, a poster saying things you dare not say yourself, a means of attracting the opposite sex and for many the single most desirable object in their lives. This fabulous creation of a book takes us from recording studios where musicians were doing things they had never done before, to the sparsely furnished apartments where their efforts would be received like visitations from a higher power. In a love letter to the LP, this is a true enthusiast's account of the golden age of Vinyl, and Hepworth has more insider knowledge and knows more rock anecdotes than any man alive. 344 page paperback, eight pages of archive photos.

Davies looks back on The Kinks, the era-defining band that has sold 50 million records. From the spectacular highs of rock stardom where the shy kid from Muswell Hill struggled with the limelight as much as he relished it, to his fair share of tragedy. After suffering a stroke, instead of panicking or feeling isolated, instead Davies became ultrasensitive to everybody's feelings. 'This phenomenon of seeing inside people's pain became a song called 'God In My Brain' which I included on an album released soon after I left hospital called Fractured Mindz.' 'After being discharged, I stayed with Ray for two weeks, which was nice for a couple of days, but soon became a nightmare. My brother is very talented and gifted...but I sometimes feel he's like a vampire the way he draws so much energy from people.' Full of tales of the tumultuous times and ups and downs of his infamous relationship with his brother Ray, along with frequently dramatic and hilarious encounters with the likes of John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Moon, Chrissie Hynde and Jeff Beck, as well as detours into Dave's mystical side, all this makes for a thrilling and wildly entertaining journey through the heyday of rock 'n' roll and beyond. 282 page paperback, 16 pages of colour photos.

'How a Few Skinny Brits with Bad Teeth Rocked America', we have another tremendously enjoyable read full of great stories and expertly told by the great rock 'n' roll raconteur. The Beatles landing in New York in February 1964 was the opening shot in a cultural revolution which nobody had predicted. Suddenly the youth of the richest and most powerful nation on earth was trying to emulate the music, manners and modes of a rainy island that had recently fallen on hard times. The resulting fusion of American can-do and British f*** you didn't just lead to great rock 'n' roll. Out of it also came a uniquely fruitful special relationship based on three chords, long hair, a shared language and an ability to misunderstand each other. From The Beatles playing Shea Stadium to the Rolling Stones at Altamont, from the Who performing their rock opera at the Metropolitan Opera House to David Bowie touching down in the USA for the first time with a couple of gowns in his luggage, being Big in America lit a fire in the English imagination which still burns to this day. Chapters include Blue Jean Baby, LA Lady, Squeeze my Lemon Till the Juice Runs Down My Leg, Engerland Swings Like A Pendulum Do, I Love Jennifer Eccles and 'This Mellow-Thighed Chick Just Put My Spine Out of Place among them. Rock 'n' roll! 314 page well illustrated paperback.