A naive young man, a railway enthusiast and radio buff, was caught up in the fall of the British Empire at Singapore in 1942. He was put to work on the 'Railway of Death' - the Japanese line from Thailand to Burma. Exhaustively and brutally tortured by the Japanese for making a crude radio, Lomax was emotionally ruined by his experiences. Almost 50...

Bad news ... ... for anyone who thought Carrie Fisher had finally stopped talking about herself: Sorry, but after all of her seemingly endless blathering on about her nosebleed, high-class problems, it appears she has yet another brand-new problem to overshare about (though don't expect to relate to it). This time, the electro-convulsive shock ther...

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race," a falsehood that damages us all but falls...

* * * WINNER OF THE 2014 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS POPULAR NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR * * * 'I adored this book, and I could quote from it forever. It's real, odd, life-affirming, sharp, loving, and contains more than one reference to Arsenal FC' Nick Hornby,The Believer 'Adrian Mole meets Mary Poppins mashed up in literary north London . . . Enormous...

Steven Gerrard is the former captain of Liverpool football team and of the England national football team, and is the only player ever to have scored in a FA cup final, a league cup final, a UEFA cup final and a champion's league final. His entire career, since 1998, has been spent at Anfield with Liverpool. In this book he charts his full playing...

With insight and great wit, Emmeline's autobiography chronicles the beginnings of her interest in feminism through to her militant and controversial fight for women's right to vote. While Emmeline received a good education, attending an all-girls school and being expected to conform to social norms, she rebelled against conventional women's roles....

Aged 17, Kevin Bridges walked on stage for the first time and brought the house down. He only had a five-minute set but he discovered he really could earn a living from making people laugh. Kevin began life as a shy, nerve-ridden school-boy. Reaching his teens, he followed his true calling as the class clown. This was a guy going somewhere-off the...

'At Victoria station the R.T.O. gave me a travel warrant, a white feather and a picture of Hitler marked "This is your enemy". I searched every compartment, but he wasn't on the train...' In this, the first of Spike Milligan's uproarious recollections of life in the army, our hero takes us from the outbreak of war in 1939 ('it must have been som...

It must seem strange to you that I've called a book Alanatomy. For anyone who has taken the time to see my stand-up performances or watched my chat show, 'Chattyman', knows that my body has hardly been kind to me - in fact there've been times when we've actually stopped talking to each other. Balding, myopic, often flaky with psoriasis, back fat th...

'My namer is Maria Antonoinetta Fontana, but everyone call me Toni.' 'I'm Spike, sometimes known as stop thief or hey you.' 'Yeser, I know.' The sixth volume of Spike Milligan's off-the-wall account of his part in World War Two sees our hero doing very little soldiering. Because it's 1946. Rather, he is now part of the Bill Hall Trio-a 'Co...

'It's all over, Von Arnheim has surrendered and he's very angry.' 'This could mean war...' The third volume of Spike Milligan's laugh-a-line account of life as a gunner in World War Two resumes on the eve of victory in North Africa. Now Britain's looniest war hero must combat some of the direst threats a soldier has ever faced-boredom ('Christ, I...

A voice is calling across the land, "Bombardier Milligan." "Bombadier Milligan is dead," I replied in a disguised voice. The voice replied, "Then he's going to miss his breakfast." The fourth volume of Spike Milligan's legendary account of his time in the army during World War Two begins as he and his regiment land in sunny Italy in 1943 (...

'I had not informed my parents of my return, I wanted it to be a lovely surprise; it was, for me, they were away...' The seventh and last volume of Spike Milligan's memoirs sees our hero returning from war and Italy...but to what? Aside from shooting large, inaccurate guns at Germans, all he has done for five long years is blow a trumpet, tell r...

'Keep talking, Milligan. I think I can get you out on Mental Grounds.' 'That's how I got in, sir.' 'Didn't we all.' The second volume of Spike Milligan's legendary recollections of life as a gunner in World War Two sees our hero into battle in North Africa-eventually. First, there is important preparation to be done: extensive periods of loiteri...

When I began writing this book, I went home to see if my mum had kept some of my stuff. What I found was that she hadn't kept some of it. She had kept all of it - every bus ticket, postcard, school report - from the moment I was born to the moment I finally had the confidence to turn round and say 'Why is our house full of this shit?' Sadly, a recy...

'Back to those haunting days in Italy in 1944, at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, with lava running in great red rivulets down the slope towards us, and Jock taking a drag on his cigarette and saying, "I think we've got grounds for a rent rebate."' The fifth volume of Spike Milligan's unsurpassed account of life as a Bombardier in World War Two sees...

Over the past seven years, Bruce Springsteen has privately devoted himself to writing the story of his life, bringing to these pages the same honesty, humor, and originality found in his songs. Born to Run will be revelatory for anyone who has ever enjoyed Bruce Springsteen, but this book is much more than a legendary rock star's memoir. This is a...

As a fourteen-year-old, he was Malcolm Little, the president of his class and a top student. At sixteen, he was hustling tips at a Boston nightclub. In Harlem, he was known as Detroit Red, a slick street operator. At nineteen, he was back in Boston, leading a gang of burglars. At twenty, he was in prison. It was in prison that Malcolm Little starte...

Coogan, once a tabloid fixture, is now a respected film actor, writer and producer. He runs his own production company, Baby Cow, has a raft of films to his name (from 24 Hour Party People to Alpha Papa, the critically-acclaimed Partridge film), six Baftas and seven Comedy Awards. He has found huge success in recent years with both The Trip and Phi...

In August 2014, Farida, like any ordinary teenage girl, was enjoying the summer holidays before her last year at school. But Farida lived in the mountains of northern Iraq - and what happened next was unimaginable. Her village was an ISIS target. ISIS jihadists murdered the men and boys, including her father and brother, before taking Farida and th...

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of In Order to Live written by Yeonmi Park and read by Eji Kim. Yeonmi Park was not dreaming of freedom when she escaped from North Korea. She didn't even know what it meant to be free. All she knew was that she was running for her life, that if she and her family stayed behind they w...