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[[Category:New Reviews|Entertainment]]==Entertainment==__NOTOC__{{newreview|author=Peter Doggett|title=The Man Who Sold The World: David Bowie And The 1970s|rating=4.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=With hindsight, it’s difficult to argue with the oft <!-expressed opinion that David Bowie was the single most important rock musician of the 1970s. Having been a perpetual ‘one to watch’ from around 1966 onwards but with only one hit during that decade, ‘Space Oddity’, from 1972 onwards he went through several remarkable self-reinventions in musical style, with an uncanny knack of being able to preINSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-empt the next big trend. In examining his whole career but focusing largely on his work throughout that particular decade, Peter Doggett looks specifically at every song he recorded, including cover versions. There are also boxed-out features on each album, and articles on related topics such as ‘The Art of Minimalism’ and ‘The Heart of Plastic Soul’. He concludes that by 1979 the man’s extraordinary creativity was more or less spent and his subsequent output, successful though it may have been, was in effect treading water up to his ‘elegant, unannounced retirement’ in 2007.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548879</amazonuk>}}

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Scarlett ThomasPatti Smith|title=Monkeys with Typewriters: How to Write Fiction and Unlock the Secret Power Year of Stories|rating=4|genre=Reference|summary=I really wasn't expecting a book about how to write fiction to change my TV viewing habits. Alter my reading? Possibly. Improve my writing? Hopefully. But watching Grand Designs in a completely different light?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857863789</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lois Banner|title=Marilyn: The Passion and the ParadoxMonkey

|summary=With On the possible exception coast of Princess DianaSanta Cruz, Marilyn Monroe is probably Patti Smith enters the lunar year of the most writtenmonkey -about deceased woman in twentieth-century history. The thirty-six years of her life one packed with mischief, sorrow, and the manner of her death will no doubt continue to provide an opportunity for as many writers as they have since her sudden passingunexpected moments. After In a decade of research Lois Bannerstranger's words, ''Anything is possible: after all, a Professor it's the year of History and Gender Studies at university in California, has added another weighty tome to the relevant shelvesmonkey''. As a self-styled pioneer Smith wanders the coast of second-wave feminism and the new women’s historySanta Cruz in solitude, she has some interesting insights to offer into reflects on a year that brings huge shifts in her subject’s life - loss and ageing are faced head on, as a gender role modelit the shifting political waters in America.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408814102</amazonuk>1526614758

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kirk BlowsWalton_Ask|title=Hammered: Heavy tales from the hard rock highwayAsk For Blues|author=Malcolm Walton|rating=3.5|genre=EntertainmentAutobiography|summary=Kirk Blows Malcolm Walton's book is clearly a memoir about his introduction to the former editor Trad Jazz scene of hard rock journal Metal Hammer. Just to confusethe late 1950s and early 1960s, but he is also well known as has chosen to write it in the form of a sports writer and an authority on 'the other Hammers'novel, namely West Ham FC. However claiming in his prologue that this would give the book is nothing a different approach to do the music memoir. His protagonist 'Martin' takes on Malcolm's mantle and begins with sporthis first discovery of the Salvation Army band with his grandfather. Instead it devotes its attention to This catapults him into a brace love of music, initially taking piano lessons, and later delving into his interviews with various hard rock luminaries. These took place for true love – the journal some years ago, and have now been revised and updated for book publicationtrumpet.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654850</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude CarriereMoore Bientot|title=This is Not the End of the Book;A Bientot...|author=Roger Moore|rating=4.5

|summary=In many ways, The news of the cover death of my edition Sir Roger Moore in May 2017 came as a great shock: he was one of this book is perfectly appropriatethose people you knew would go on forever. Huge, bold serif script, with nothing but the typeface; a declamatory instance There was just one small glimmer of the art light in the most common of fonts, and that perfect semisadness -colon at the end news that a matter of the bookdays before his death he's name - proving that that itself is not d delivered the be-all and end-all. Buy this finished manuscript of his book, as you can, in electronic form''À bientôt…'', to his publishers. Just a few months later a copy landed on my desk and you might see this cover for ten seconds at most, but I didn't even bother to look as though I could resist reading it is so much part and parcel of what's withinstraight away.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552450</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Molly CarrMaslanka Sherlock|title=A Sherlock Holmes Who's Who (With of Course Dr.Watson): The Puzzle Book|author=Christopher Maslanka and Steve Tribe|rating=2.54

|summary=Given the amount written about Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan DoyleWho doesn't love a good puzzle, even especially those really fiendish ones that get the most dedicated of Sherlockians must sometimes require a refresher on brain working extra hard? There really is nothing to compare to that buzz we get from the characters. As I'm certainly not the most dedicated of anythingAha! moment, although I love Holmes when everything falls into place and have read the entire canonsolution reveals itself. If puzzles are your thing then you may wish to put your grey cells to the test with ''The Sherlock Puzzle Book'', I was eagerly anticipating based on the chance to remind myself of those within. Sadly, this book has done little to quench my anticipationpopular TV series.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780920822</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert CannonCorcoran_Dylan|title=OperaDo You Mr Jones?: Bob Dylan with the Poets and Professors|author=Neil Corcoran

|summary=Opera, Cannon tells us in the introduction to this book, Bob Dylan'has never ceased to grow and change – often quite radically.' His aim is to describe and show the many different facets s award of opera in its development over the centuries, and its relevance to the modern world. While he does not intend to write a history as such, he has organised this book chronologically as opera developed Nobel Prize for Literature in a very conscious way across Europe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521746477</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Francesca Beauman|title=Shapely Ankle Preferr2016 'd: A History of for having created new poetic expressions within the Lonely Hearts Advertisement|rating=5|genre=History|summary=You might think the Lonely Hearts ad a trivial matter. You might think it should appear in lower case and not be capitalised, but yougreat American song tradition'd be in disagreement with Ms Beauman, who gives a big L and a big H to it every time she writes of it in her survey of its historyproved highly controversial. What's more, she gets to write about a lot more than just the contents of the adverts It inevitably led some people in this brilliant book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009951334X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Colin Grant|title=I & I: The Natural Mystics|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Just mention the word reggae, and the name that nearly always springs literary world to mind is that of Bob Marley and the Wailers. The music has always been very much a product of the Jamaican culture, nurtured in years of turbulent history. In this book Colin Grant, born in Britain of Jamaican parents, goes back deep into its roots, and in the process examines the childhood lives of the Wailers’ three main personalities, namely Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Neville Livingston, better known as Bunny Wailer, to provide an account of the group – but much more than that.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099526727</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Bruce Robinson|title=The Rum Diary - A Screenplay|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Kemp has lied his way onto a failing newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rica, as the only candidate for the job, take stock and in a semi-comatose state induced by too many miniatures from the hotel minibar, stumbles into a conspiracy of epic proportions, via classic bar room brawls and nightclub mayhem. On the way he (almost) writes horoscopes and bowling championship stories, meets the fantastically erotic girlfriend of the evil businessman, and teams up with a proto-Nazi out of look at his mind on a cocktail of hootch and LSD, work and a photographer side kick. There is no question that this is Hunter S Thompson territory, especially when all the above is combined reputation with a witty, slow-talking hero who in spite of his alcoholic haze sees clearly through the exploitation of a third world country by its massive first world near neighbourfresh eye. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555697</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mick O'Shea|title=Amy Winehouse: A Losing Game|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=At the risk This volume of stating the obvious, this is a sad book. Writing this review some five months after her death, now the immediate smoke has cleared, it is apparent from this book (as well as other general sources) that she essays was a gifted performer, with a jazz voice which could have qualified her for a lengthy career long after scores of aspiring X-Factor contestants had given up singing and opted for less glamorous, more steady careers. After all, her idols had been not only near-contemporaries like Michael Jackson and Missy Elliott, but also those of an earlier generation such as the classic 1960s girl groups, as well as Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, with whom she was thrilled to record a duet four months before she died.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654826</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Gillian Lynne|title=A Dancer first published in Wartime: One Girl's Journey from the Blitz to Sadler's Wells|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=At eight years old, Gill Pyrke was driving her parents crazy, as she couldn't sit still and was nicknamed ''wriggle-bottom''. Her mum took her to see the family GP and told him in great detail how annoying she was. The doctor asked if he could talk to Gill alone and put on some music. She started to dance around and climbed on to his desk. He prescribed ballet classes. She started off in a Bromley dance class where one of her classmates was later to be the famous ballerina Beryl Grey. This story is lovely and funny2002, and has lots of elements of a dream story, yet is told in now reissued with a very down to earth style which makes it very convincing. The same could be said of the whole of Gillian Lynne's memoir of her early years, starting out on a brilliant career in dancenew foreword by Will Self.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701185996</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jermaine JacksonKyncl_Stream|title=You Are Not Alone: Michael Through A Brother's Eyes|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=It is inevitable that the books we have already seen about Michael Jackson in the two years since his sudden passing will be merely the tip of the iceberg. Yet for those which comprise and are based on first-hand knowledge of his life and death, there will surely be few if any to rival this account by his brother Jermaine and ghostwriter Steve Dennis.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007435665</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewStream Punks|author=Mark Kermode|title=The Good, the Bad Robert Kyncl and the MultiplexMaany Peyvan

|summary=I've been there, and so, despite all number watch quite a lot of free press screenings, has Mark KermodeYouTube. When I play music videos when I want to listen to a major cinema chain particular song I probably shouldndon't name, but will - Odeon - moved from their smelly inner-city fleapits already have in my collection. I use it to find out how to a major new development far from any convenient bus routesdo things, they started their multiplex life with the best intentions, having an arthouse film every week, on a Wednesday, and an offer of free entry courtesy of the local newspaper. This was brilliant for me - or would have been, if instruction videos they'd managed seem to keep up with my expectationshave for pretty much anything. At the gym, I lost track of the number of weeks they had the wrong film 'll stick it on on the projectormy phone, and particularly how many times they started the right one without glimpsing that prop it was being shown up on the wrongcross-sized screen, through trainer and watch some behind the wrong lenses, not matching scenes interviews with the gatecast of my favourite shows. And sometimes I'll treat it as if it is Netflix, or even upside down. The projectionist of course had eleven other screens to worry aboutwatch series with new episodes releasing every few days, pressing exclusively on YouTube. Having a button for each and never needing (or wanting?) new smart TV adds an extra, easy way to watch without having to plug in my laptop or squint at a moviesmall phone screen. Kermode is correct in that if we must still think of cinemas in the parlance of theatresSo yes, I like YouTube and film-showings as performances, I use YouTube. But I didn't know a whole lot about the projectionist can ruin a show just as a bad actor can a stage playsite it until I read this book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847946038</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert RossJVDK_Swing|title=Marty FeldmanWe Can Swing Together: The Biography Story of a Comedy Legend|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Some years ago, I was given a Penguin edition of Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', with what looked like an uniquely fearsome face on the front cover. A year or two later, I saw a photograph of Marty Feldman and was convinced he must have inspired it if not actually been the model.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857683780</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewLindisfarne|author=Nick Hasted|title=You Really Got Me: The Story of The KinksJohn Van der Kiste

|summary=It all began with a group of youngsters in North Shields. Rod Clements, Simon 'People in America talk about Si'The BeatlesCowe, the Stones, The Who.Ray 'Jacka' For me itJackson and Ray Laidlaw formed 's 'The BeatlesDowntown Faction'', soon changing the Stones, The Kinksname to ''Brethren'' when they were joined by singer-songwriter Alan Hull. As a US-based group had a similar name they opted to change the name again - and ''Lindisfarne'' Those words, quoted in (with the name taken from an island off the book, are those Northumberland coast) was born. More than forty years on and with numerous changes of Pete Townshend of The Who himselfpersonnel the band is still very much around. He is certainly They might not alone be touring or producing much in his verdict that, at the height way of the swinging sixties in Britainnew material, but they still perform, the Muswell Hill quartet were No 3 in the premier music league. Patchy chart success since their heyday has done nothing to diminish their reputationwith Rod Clements, or that of leader Ray Davies as one of the most gifted British songwriters of original members on his fourth stint with the last fifty yearsgroup.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849386609</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Marcus GrayJVDK_ELO|title=Route 19 RevisitedElectric Light Orchestra: The Clash and London CallingSong by Song|author=John Van der Kiste

|summary=When I began reading these 500 pages or soMy memories of pop music in the early sixties revolve around guitars and drums, my initial feeling was – how could anybody write a book THIS long on one album? Soon, it became clear that I had been slightly misled by sometimes the titlepiano with only occasional excursions into strings and brass. Although 'London CallingPop music rarely stands still and it wasn', t long feted before the basic instruments were seen as the best LP (now a CDconstraints and The Beatles, naturally) ever made by one of punk's most seminal groups, is the focal point, this volume also charts in detail the history The Rolling Stones and development of the Clash The Beach Boys began to that pointexperiment, with other groups following where they led. Amongst these groups was The Move and their subsequent career (lead guitarist and decline)songwriter, Roy Wood. Wood wanted to develop the group's sound by adding more instruments but was prevented from achieving what he wanted by cost limitations and their legacybecause the rest of the group didn't really share his enthusiasm.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099524201</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Barbara SinatraWatkins_Lets|title=Lady Blue EyesLet's Make Lots of Money: My Life With Frank Sinatra|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Barbara Blakeley, born in 1926, was married firstly to Robert Oliver, an executive, with whom she had a son, and secondly to Zeppo Marx. But it was the already thrice-married and thrice-divorced Francis Albert Sinatra, whom she had idolized as a singer for a long time, with whom she would make her most enduring marriage, and vice versa. They tied the knot Biggest Man in 1976, and stayed together until his death in 1998.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091937248</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewPop|author=Philip Norman|title=John Lennon: The LifeTom Watkins|rating=54

|summary=For part Who on earth would be a manager in the larger than life, here today gone tomorrow world of my formative yearspop? Anybody with an ego, John Lennon was one of a ruthless streak, an opportunity to embrace the four most famous people in the world. All chances and accept that we have learnt about him in the thirty years or so since his death has kept his name firmly in the public eyeit's not going to last, if not always for the best of reasonsevidently. At over 800 pages, this Tom Watkins is just one of several to have walked the lengthiest biographies written about the extraordinary life fine line and times , for part of the former Beatletime, quite successfully. It's also surely one As his memoirs suggest, part of the most impartialtime was achievement enough. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>000719742X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Donald SpotoKendrick_Scrappy|title=Possessed: The Life of Joan CrawfordScrappy Little Nobody|author=Anna Kendrick

|summary=Thanks to the memoir 'Mommie DearestCelebrity autobiographies. It' s a genre long tainted by her adopted daughter Christina, the enduring image examples of movie star Joan Crawford is one of an alcoholicpeople who clearly didn't deserve to be a celebrity, sadistic monster. Spoto clearly believes that this portrait is let alone have a gross exaggerationghost-writer create their book, and is at pains by those who did so little but managed to churn out five memoirs before they were even thirty. But more recently it's become a way of staking a claim to rectify the balanceimportance for female comics. Having previously They've not all written biographies of Alfred Hitchcock and Marilyn Monroe among othersautobiographies, as Bridget Christie proved, he clearly knows but enough have to provide for a rapidly-filling shelf at the subject of cinema inside outbookstore. 2016 we had Amy Schumer winning a GoodReads award, Lena Dunham's been at it, and has written we've also got Anna Kendrick. Now she's not a very thorough chronicle strict comic – not all of Crawford's career. The impression the reader is left withher films are designed to make you laugh, however, is and some of them that in looking at her family life and art he are just don't – but this has perhaps striven too far to present her as a person more sinned against than sinning, a legendary talent, beauty and above all a grossly maligned adoptive motherbe in the same bracket.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091931274</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Keith RichardsRopek_Tragic|title=Tragic Magic: The Lifeof Traffic's Chris Wood|author=Dan Ropek

|summary=Nearly forty years agoChris Wood was a member of Traffic, Keith Richards was considered the next most likely rock'n'roll star to succumb to drugs. The man has defied all the odds group formed by Steve Winwood in staying alive, and continuing to do what 1967 after he has been doing for almost half a centuryleft The Spencer Davis Group. In the process, he has earned the sometimes grudging, sometimes unqualified respect of those who would once never given him the time of day.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297854399</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Christopher Isherwood|title=Diaries Volume 1|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=In January 1939 Christopher Isherwood left England A gifted musician best known for America in the company of poet WH Auden. This hefty volume covers his diaries from that date until August 1960flute and saxophone work, when he celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday. A 49-page introduction setting out the background leads us into the entries, which are divided into three sections – The Emigration, to the end of 1944; The Post-war Yearsalso played keyboards, to 1956; bass guitar and The Late Fifties. After these we have contributed backing vocals as well as having a chronology hand in writing several of the songs and glossary, one or to put it more accurately a section of brief biographies of the main characters mentioned, these two sections comprising over a hundred pages altogetherinstrumentals.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555824</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Eric Siblin|This biography takes its title=The Cello Suites: In Search of a Baroque Masterpiece|rating=3.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=At the end of the 20th century Eric Siblin was a rock and pop critic for the 'Montreal Gazette'. This, he says, was, a job which filled his head 'with vast amounts of music, much of which I didn't want to be there'. Aware that there were vast horizons crying out to be explored, he went out one night to hear a recital from the Boston cellist Lawrence Lesser, featuring the solo cello suites name of Bach. The contrast between hearing one solitary performer playing a simple wooden cello for an audience a fraction of the size could have hardly been more different to the stadium style gigs he had been covering regularly until then. About three years earlier, he had reviewed a show by U2, noting that his compositions for the 52,000 fans who attended and 'wanted to see more than four Lilliputian musicians making huge noises...technology blew everything out of proportion.' The inevitable hate mail soon rolled intheir fifth album. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546787</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lindsay ReadeDolby_Sound|title=Mr Manchester and the Factory Girl: The Story of Tony and Lindsay Wilson|rating=4|genre=Entertainment|summary=Mr Manchester, as Tony Wilson came to be known, could have been the next John Humphrys. Instead he ended up becoming the next Malcolm McLaren – or, perhaps, a far less successful version of Richard Branson. After graduating from Cambridge University with a degree in English he became a trainee news reporter for ITN, and for much of his life he worked as an anchorman for regional evening news programmes. Yet he is less remembered for this than for his championship of alternative music and punk rock, founding of Factory Records and involvement with the Hacienda Club. Although he loved the Beatles and folk music in general, he disliked much of the contemporary music scene until he saw the Sex Pistols live in the summer of 1976.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654567</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Larry Stempel|title=Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater|rating=4|genre=Entertainment|summary=Stempel is an associate professor of music at an American university so I would imagine that this book is primarily a labour of love. In the Preface Stempel bemoans the loss of important research material over the years, whether it be musical scores, playbills or similar. It happens. It is a fact Speed of life. Simply thrown away or discarded as being considered not important. It's only a musical, after all. A bit light and frothy. Stempel thinks otherwise - and takes his time telling us exactly why.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393067157</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSound|author=Peter Doggett|title=You Never Give Me Your Money: The Battle for the Soul of the Beatles|rating=5|genre=Entertainment|summary=When four young Liverpudlians got together to make music in the early 1960s, they can have had no idea of their future impact on the world around them. Likewise they would surely not have had an inkling of the extraordinary business minefield which their existence as a group would create, and which would leave the scars long after they had gone their separate ways, even after two of them had died. As at least one of them ruefully commented, they must have provided several lawyers' children with a very expensive education.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532360</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alan Davies|title=Teenage Revolution: Growing Up in the 80s|rating=3.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Born in 1966, Alan Davies grew up in Essex, the son of a staunchly Conservative-voting father and a mother who died of cancer when he was only six. It was a childhood dominated at first by 'Citizen Smith' and the other TV sitcoms, 'Starsky and Hutch', 'Grease', Barry Sheene, the Barron Knights, and Debbie Harry. The book begins at 1978, ''the year I started venturing out more'', and finishes at 1988, when he graduated from Kent University to find that stand-up comedy could be an alternative to finding a job where he would have to do what he was told.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141041803</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Clinton Heylin|title=Still on the Road: Songs of Bob Dylan, 1974-2008Thomas Dolby

|summary=Heylin is also obviously a fan, a very knowledgeable and obsessive one to boot. He has never met or directly interviewed his subject (who is known to guard his privacy quite fiercely most of the time), but his research materials include official recording sessionographies and interviews conducted by others. All this is naturally invaluable information for his analysis and history of all the 600-plus songs the man is known to have written or coFrom struggling post-written from 1974 punk musician to almost the present day. In terms of his discographypop star, that spans the albums from ‘Blood on the Tracks’, released in 1975 and commonly regarded as probably his best post-1960s set, Silicon Valley innovator to ‘Together Through Life’university professor, which appeared in 2009.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849010110</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Marina Hyde|title=Celebrity: How Entertainers Took Over The World and Why We Need an Exit Strategy|rating=3.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=I have what is perhaps Thomas Dolby has had a regular-sized interest in A and B-list celebrities. I can name the off-spring of many an actressremarkable if not unique career, tell you who the spokespeople for certain brands are, write a list of celebs with publicly declared devotions to certain religions, even win often reinventing himself on the odd pub quiz thanks to knowing the birth names of various performersway. I know all sorts of things about this rather small subset of society, but I know the ''what'' more than the ''why'', and that's exactly the problem, according to this book. After all, if more of us sat down to wonder about what it actually ''This memoir is'' that the likes of Geri Halliwell based on his extensive notes and Nicole Kidman bring to the UN, we might seriously question how and why they ever got involved in the first placejournals.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532050</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rob ChapmanMorris_Legion|title=Syd BarrettThe Legion of Regrettable Supervillains: A Very Irregular Head Oddball Criminals from Comic Book History|author=Jon Morris

|summary=Roger BarrettAs much as I like comics – and I do, whether superhero ones or not – I have to admit one thing, who later acquired namely that the moniker 'Syd' (let's make him Syd from now on) was born villains in Cambridge in 1946them are a bit pants. What is The fourth of five children, he was Penguin but the only one to inherit any lasting artistic talentworld's worst Mafioso, which came from with a hobby of waddling along like his father Max. The latter was pet birds? Where else do you win an Oscar of all things by playing a two-bit killer who just fell in a senior pathologist, member vat of the local Philharmonic Societyrandom chemicals and changed colour, gifted singer, pianist and watercolour painter.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571238548</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Michele Monro|title=Matt Monro: The Singergot mardier as a result (although recently he's Singer|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=In terms of British chart statistics and record sales, Matt Monro never quite fulfilled his full potential. When measured against the achievements of contemporary ballad singers like Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck, he fell some way short. Yet the former Terry Parsons was become a regular fixture on nanotech genius – but let's not go there)? And what is it with the light entertainment circuit, and overseas, particularly gimp in Latin America and the Philippines, see-through plant pot because he was undoubtedly one is the embodiment of Britaincold? And that's most successful exports everjust some of the better-known enemies of ''Batman'', and at one point he was of the biggest selling artist in Spainbetter goodies. His idol Frank Sinatra, You can imagine how awful the baddies related to whom he was often comparedthe bad goodies can be. And if you can't, often said that Matt was this is the only British singer he ever really listened toperfect primer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848566182</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Don FelderFletcher_Midnight|title=Heaven And HellIn the Midnight Hour: My The Life in the Eagles, 1974 - 2001& Soul of Wilson Pickett|author=Tony Fletcher

|summary=In terms of record sales Tamla Motown groups and income from live tourssingers apart, hardly anyone matched in the Eagles' rate of success during mid-sixties there were three major names in the 1970ssoul music field who mattered above all. Yet the constant search to better themselves with each record, James Brown was something of a cult name who rarely bothered about or troubled the in-fightingsingles charts, the drugs and egos, soon got Otis Redding was on the better verge of themshooting into the stratosphere when he died in an aeroplane crash. They say it is tough at The other was the topman from Alabama, and nobody is better equipped to tell 'the often painful story than their former guitarist Don Felderwicked Pickett'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753826771</amazonuk>

 {{newreview|author=Will Birch|title=Ian Dury: The Definitive Biography|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Ian Dury was always one of the most individual, even contrary characters in the musical world. In a branch of showbiz where people often relied on good looks as a short cut to stardom, he was no oil painting. During the pub rock era, he and his group, the Blockheads, ploughed a lonely furrow which owed more to jazz-funk than rock'n'roll, and his songs extolled the virtues of characters from Billericay or Plaistow rather than those from Memphis or California. Alongside the young punk rock upstarts with whom he competed for inches in the rock press, he was comparatively middle-aged. As if that was not enough, in his own words childhood illness had left him a permanent 'raspberry ripple'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0283071036</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mark Simpson|title=Alastair Sim: The Star of Scrooge and the Belles of St Trinian's|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=The mere mention of Alastair Sim conjures up visions of pictures made during the 1950s when a more gentle humour was the order of the day. Yet the man hated and did his best to avoid publicity, claiming that the person the public saw on screen revealed all that anybody needed to know about him. How he would have fared twenty years later in the age of a more intrusive press, one cannot but wonder.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752453726</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Clayton|title=The Richard Beckinsale Story|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=A generation probably knows Richard Beckinsale only from repeats on the UK Gold TV channels, and from occasional mentions in the context of 'how great he would have been if only…' In 1978 The Sunday Times Magazine tipped the 30-year-old sitcom favourite as a rising major star of the 80s who would blossom into one of the great all-round stage actors. One year later, he was dead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752454404</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Val DoonicanPaling_Reading|title=My Story, My LifeReading Allowed: Val Doonican - The Complete Autobiography|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=In the 1960s, if Harold Wilson was the personification of politics and the Beatles the collective icon of youth culture, Val Doonican was similarly at the very apex of light entertainment. He may no longer have such a high profile – but he's outlasted them both. Over four decades he has refused to bow to passing fads and fashions, remained true to himself, and in the process he has never really put a foot wrong. As he says towards the end, 'When you find out what it is you do best, True Stories and what the public wants Curious Incidents from you, then stick with it, and do it as well as you can.' With the possible exception of his contemporary and long-time professional and personal friend Rolf Harris, it's difficult to think of another person in showbiz who comes across as more genuinely likeable, and more a genuine case of 'what you see is what you get'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906779619</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewProvincial Library|author=Jo Berry|title=The Ultimate DVD Easter Egg Guide: How to Access the Hidden Extras on Your DVDChris Paling

|summary=Consider the Easter Egg - at least I once made a comical faux pas in the way DVD collectors meana library when I was younger, but it certainly didn't put me off returning. Sometimes I once declared in a pointless hidden addself-on, important way that is there I would start at the beginning of the books for no reason. Sometimes they can be a priceless bonusyoung children and not stop til the end, seemingly gifted by then do the disc producers to same for those in for the knowolder children – ''and then do it all over again with them'', I said, costing - pointing at least in the case of some animated instances large- many thousands of poundsprint shelves. Some oik on set with ''I hope not'', was the response – but little me was only aware of a camcorderneed for large font for my fellow whippersnappers, they are and notfor any other reason. Since then I've needed libraries, and going to them has been guilty several times of clicking away in directions second nature. On the dole I made sure I could use the menus don't seem free Internet they provided to encourage on the off-chance pay me back for my council tax; later I find something (or, was intent on finding out if a PCSenior Library Assistant girl was worthy of her title, just sweeping the PC mouse over any and every title card in case of course, it highlights something previously invisible)saved a fortune on books for study and fun. Forcing several titles I'm not alone in sharing the warmth of both their heating system and chapters by going straight the very thing they were born to provide – books, but there was still a huge step up between my level of use and knowledge of them to actually working in case they're something secret one. Which is not a hobby I like to admit towhere Chris Paling comes in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752875205</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gary Giddins and Scott DeveauxSpringsteen_Born|title=JazzBorn to Run|author=Bruce Springsteen

|summary=At first glance this 700-page volume might look No, you haven't stumbled into a little dauntingmusic review from the 1970s, I'm talking about The Boss's autobiography. Do not be dauntedLots of books have been written about Springsteen by folk who knew him, worked with him and by others who have only read the cuttings. If you want a small pocket book which merely scratches at Over the last seven years he has been going about – not putting the surface and can probably be digested in record straight, exactly – but telling it from his own perspective. As he puts it: ''Writing about yourself is a sitting or two, look elsewherefunny business''. On By his own admission, it isn't the other hand, if you want an extremely readable and comprehensive book on jazz which can not only be read cover to coverwhole truth, discretion holds him back but also retained as ''in a work of reference project like this, the writer has made one promise, to use again and againshow the reader his mind.'' ''In these pages, I doubt if 've tried to do this can be bettered.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393068617</amazonuk>''

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nick HornbyJVDK_Beatles|title=An EducationA Beatles Miscellany: The ScreenplayEverything You Always Wanted to Know About the Beatles but Were Afraid to Ask|author=John Van der Kiste

|summary=Adroit marketing? WellYou might have thought that just about everything which could be said about the Beatles had been said and certainly, yes. there''An Education'' has s been published, no shortage of coursebooks about what went wrong, what happened to coincide with the film's general release in the UK. Hardly surprising since our national appetite for nosiness seems insatiable and cosy background details prop up every telly series money and film these dayseven what went right. As well as the screenplay, Nick Hornby has provided an introduction But what I've never seen before is a 'miscellany' - all those little facts which are so hard to track down and diary of the filmthis is where historian John Van der Kiste comes into his own: he's successful premiere at a man with an eye for detail and the Sundance Festival in Utahability to bring everything together into a very readable whole. Beyond trivia, I think this fascinating little book presents an excellent It'how to' guide for wannabes from one s a wonderful collection of Britain's most respected screen and novel writersthe small facts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141044748</amazonuk>