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[[Category:New Reviews|Entertainment]]==Entertainment==__NOTOC__{{newreview|author=Lois Banner|title=Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=With the possible exception of Princess Diana, Marilyn Monroe is probably the most written-about deceased woman in twentieth-century history. The thirty-six years of her life and the manner of her death will no doubt continue to provide an opportunity for as many writers as they have since her sudden passing. After a decade of research Lois Banner, a Professor of History and Gender Studies at university in California, has added another weighty tome to the relevant shelves. As a self-styled pioneer of second-wave feminism and the new women’s history, she has some interesting insights to offer into her subject’s life as a gender role model.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408814102</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kirk Blows|title=Hammered: Heavy tales from the hard rock highway|rating=3|genre=Entertainment|summary=Kirk Blows is the former editor of hard rock journal Metal Hammer. Just to confuse, he is also well known as a sports writer and an authority on 'the other Hammers', namely West Ham FC. However this book is nothing to do with sport. Instead it devotes its attention to a brace of his interviews with various hard rock luminaries. These took place for the journal some years ago, and have now been revised and updated for book publication.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654850</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carriere|title=This is Not the End of the Book;|rating=4.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=In many ways, the cover of my edition of this book is perfectly appropriate. Huge, bold serif script, with nothing but the typeface; a declamatory instance of the art in the most common of fonts, and that perfect semi!-colon at the end of the book's name - proving that that itself is not the beINSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-all and end-all. Buy this book, as you can, in electronic form, and you might see this cover for ten seconds at most, but it is so much part and parcel of what's within.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552450</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Molly Carr|title=A Sherlock Holmes Who's Who (With of Course Dr.Watson)|rating=2.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=Given the amount written about Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, even the most dedicated of Sherlockians must sometimes require a refresher on the characters. As I'm certainly not the most dedicated of anything, although I love Holmes and have read the entire canon, I was eagerly anticipating the chance to remind myself of those within. Sadly, this book has done little to quench my anticipation.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780920822</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Robert Cannon|title=Opera|rating=4.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=Opera, Cannon tells us in the introduction to this book, 'has never ceased to grow and change – often quite radically.' His aim is to describe and show the many different facets 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 in a very conscious way across Europe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521746477</amazonuk>}}

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Francesca BeaumanPatti Smith|title=Shapely Ankle Preferr'd: A History Year of 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 you'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 history. What's more, she gets to write about a lot more than just the contents of the adverts in this brilliant book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009951334X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Colin Grant|title=I & I: The Natural MysticsMonkey

|summary=Just mention On the word reggaecoast of Santa Cruz, and Patti Smith enters the name that nearly always springs to mind is that lunar year of Bob Marley the monkey - one packed with mischief, sorrow, and the Wailersunexpected moments. The music has always been very much In a product of the Jamaican culturestranger's words, nurtured in years of turbulent history. In this book Colin Grant''Anything is possible: after all, born in Britain it's the year of Jamaican parents, goes back deep into its roots, and in the process examines monkey''. As Smith wanders the childhood lives coast of the Wailers’ three main personalities, namely Bob Marley, Peter ToshSanta Cruz in solitude, she reflects on a year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and Neville Livingstonageing are faced head on, better known as Bunny Wailer, to provide an account of it the group – but much more than thatshifting political waters in America.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099526727</amazonuk>1526614758

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bruce RobinsonWalton_Ask|title=The Rum Diary - A ScreenplayAsk For Blues|author=Malcolm Walton|rating=3.5|genre=General FictionAutobiography|summary=Kemp has lied Malcolm Walton's book is clearly a memoir about his way onto a failing newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rica, as introduction to the only candidate for Trad Jazz scene of the joblate 1950s and early 1960s, and but he has chosen to write it in the form of a semi-comatose state induced by too many miniatures from novel, claiming in his prologue that this would give the hotel minibar, stumbles into book a conspiracy of epic proportions, via classic bar room brawls and nightclub mayhemdifferent approach to the music memoir. On the way he (almost) writes horoscopes His protagonist 'Martin' takes on Malcolm's mantle and bowling championship stories, meets the fantastically erotic girlfriend begins with his first discovery of the evil businessman, and teams up Salvation Army band with a proto-Nazi out of his mind on grandfather. This catapults him into a cocktail love of hootch and LSDmusic, initially taking piano lessons, and a photographer side kick. There is no question that this is Hunter S Thompson territory, especially when all the above is combined with a witty, slow-talking hero who in spite of later delving into his alcoholic haze sees clearly through true love – the exploitation of a third world country by its massive first world near neighbourtrumpet. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555697</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mick O'SheaMoore Bientot|title=Amy Winehouse: A Losing GameBientot...|author=Roger Moore

|genre=BiographyEntertainment|summary=At the risk The news 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 (of Sir Roger Moore in May 2017 came as well as other general sources) that she a great shock: he was a gifted performer, with a jazz voice which could have qualified her for a lengthy career long after scores one of aspiring X-Factor contestants had given up singing and opted for less glamorous, more steady careersthose people you knew would go on forever. After all, her idols had been not only nearThere was just one small glimmer of light in the sadness -contemporaries like Michael Jackson and Missy Elliott, but also those the news that a matter of an earlier generation such as days before his death he'd delivered the classic 1960s girl groupsfinished manuscript of his book, as well as Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett''À bientôt…'', with whom she was thrilled to record his publishers. Just a duet four few months before she diedlater a copy landed on my desk and I didn't even bother to look as though I could resist reading it straight away.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654826</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gillian LynneMaslanka Sherlock|title=A Dancer in WartimeSherlock: One Girl's Journey from the Blitz to Sadler's WellsThe Puzzle Book|author=Christopher Maslanka and Steve Tribe

|summary=IWho doesn've been there, and so, despite all number of free press screenings, has Mark Kermode. When t love a major cinema chain I probably shouldn't namegood puzzle, but will - Odeon - moved from their smelly inner-city fleapits especially those really fiendish ones that get the brain working extra hard? There really is nothing to compare to a major new development far that buzz we get from any convenient bus routes, they started their multiplex life with the best intentions, having an arthouse film every week, on a WednesdayAha! moment, when everything falls into place and an offer of free entry courtesy of the local newspapersolution reveals itself. This was brilliant for me - or would have been, if they'd managed If puzzles are your thing then you may wish to put your grey cells to keep up with my expectations. I lost track of the number of weeks they had the wrong film on the projector, and particularly how many times they started the right one without glimpsing that it was being shown on the wrong-sized screen, through the wrong lenses, not matching test with the gate, or even upside down. ''The projectionist of course had eleven other screens to worry about, pressing a button for each and never needing (or wanting?) to watch a movie. Kermode is correct in that if we must still think of cinemas in the parlance of theatres, and film-showings as performancesSherlock Puzzle Book'', based on the projectionist can ruin a show just as a bad actor can a stage playpopular TV series.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847946038</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert RossCorcoran_Dylan|title=Marty FeldmanDo You Mr Jones?: The Biography 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', Bob Dylan with what looked like an uniquely fearsome face on the front cover. A year or two later, I saw a photograph of Marty Feldman Poets and was convinced he must have inspired it if not actually been the model.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857683780</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewProfessors|author=Nick Hasted|title=You Really Got Me: The Story of The KinksNeil Corcoran

|summary=Bob Dylan'People s award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in America talk about 2016 'The Beatles, for having created new poetic expressions within the Stones, The Who.great American song tradition' For me it's 'The Beatles, the Stones, The Kinksproved highly controversial.' Those words, quoted It inevitably led some people in the book, are those of Pete Townshend of The Who himselfliterary world to take stock and look at his work and reputation with a fresh eye. He is certainly not alone in his verdict that, at the height This volume of the swinging sixties essays was first published in Britain2002, the Muswell Hill quartet were No 3 in the premier music league. Patchy chart success since their heyday has done nothing to diminish their reputation, or that of leader Ray Davies as one of the most gifted British songwriters of the last fifty yearsand is now reissued with a new foreword by Will Self.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849386609</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Marcus GrayKyncl_Stream|title=Route 19 Revisited: The Clash Stream Punks|author=Robert Kyncl and London CallingMaany Peyvan

|summary=When I began reading these 500 pages or so, watch quite a lot of YouTube. I play music videos when I want to listen to a particular song I don't already have in my initial feeling was – collection. I use it to find out how could anybody write a book THIS long on one album? Soonto do things, it became clear that I had been slightly misled by with the titleinstruction videos they seem to have for pretty much anything. Although 'London CallingAt the gym, I'll stick it on on my phone, long feted as prop it up on the cross-trainer and watch some behind the scenes interviews with the best LP (now a CD, naturally) ever made by one cast of punkmy favourite shows. And sometimes I's most seminal groups, ll treat it as if it is the focal pointNetflix, this volume also charts in detail the history and development of the Clash to that pointwatch series with new episodes releasing every few days, exclusively on YouTube. Having a new smart TV adds an extra, their subsequent career (and decline)easy way to watch without having to plug in my laptop or squint at a small phone screen. So yes, I like YouTube and their legacyI use YouTube. But I didn't know a whole lot about the site it until I read this book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099524201</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Barbara SinatraJVDK_Swing|title=Lady Blue EyesWe Can Swing Together: My Life With Frank SinatraThe Story of Lindisfarne|author=John Van der Kiste

|summary=Thanks It all began with a group of youngsters in North Shields. Rod Clements, Simon 'Si' Cowe, Ray 'Jacka' Jackson and Ray Laidlaw formed ''The Downtown Faction'', soon changing the name to the memoir 'Mommie Dearest' Brethren'' when they were joined by her adopted daughter Christina, the enduring image of movie star Joan Crawford is one of an alcoholic, sadistic monstersinger-songwriter Alan Hull. Spoto clearly believes that this portrait is As a US-based group had a gross exaggeration, similar name they opted to change the name again - and is at pains to rectify ''Lindisfarne'' (with the name taken from an island off the balanceNorthumberland coast) was born. Having previously written biographies More than forty years on and with numerous changes of Alfred Hitchcock and Marilyn Monroe among others, he clearly knows personnel the subject of cinema inside out, and has written a band is still very thorough chronicle of Crawford's careermuch around. The impression They might not be touring or producing much in the reader is left withway of new material, howeverbut they still perform, is that in looking at her family life and art he has perhaps striven too far to present her as a person more sinned against than sinningwith Rod Clements, a legendary talent, beauty and above all a grossly maligned adoptive motherone of the original members on his fourth stint with the group.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091931274</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Keith RichardsJVDK_ELO|title=LifeElectric Light Orchestra: Song by Song|author=John Van der Kiste

|summary=Nearly forty years agoMy memories of pop music in the early sixties revolve around guitars and drums, Keith Richards was considered sometimes the next most likely rockpiano with only occasional excursions into strings and brass. Pop music rarely stands still and it wasn'n'roll star t long before the basic instruments were seen as constraints and The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys began to succumb to drugsexperiment, with other groups following where they led. Amongst these groups was The man has defied all the odds in staying aliveMove and their lead guitarist and songwriter, and continuing Roy Wood. Wood wanted to do develop the group's sound by adding more instruments but was prevented from achieving what he has been doing for almost half a century. In wanted by cost limitations and because the process, he has earned the sometimes grudging, sometimes unqualified respect rest of those who would once never given him the time of daygroup didn't really share his enthusiasm.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297854399</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christopher IsherwoodWatkins_Lets|title=Diaries Volume 1Let's Make Lots of Money: My Life as the Biggest Man in Pop|author=Tom Watkins

|genre=AutobiographyEntertainment|summary=In January 1939 Christopher Isherwood left England for America Who on earth would be a manager in the company larger than life, here today gone tomorrow world of poet WH Auden. This hefty volume covers his diaries from that date until August 1960pop? Anybody with an ego, 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 Emigrationa ruthless streak, an opportunity to embrace the end chances and accept that it's not going to last, evidently. Tom Watkins is just one of 1944; The Post-war Years, several to 1956; and The Late Fifties. After these we have a chronology walked the fine line and glossary, or to put it more accurately a section for part of brief biographies the time, quite successfully. As his memoirs suggest, part of the main characters mentioned, these two sections comprising over a hundred pages altogethertime was achievement enough.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555824</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Eric SiblinKendrick_Scrappy|title=The Cello Suites: In Search of a Baroque MasterpieceScrappy Little Nobody|author=Anna Kendrick

|summary=At the end of the 20th century Eric Siblin was Celebrity autobiographies. It's a rock and pop critic for genre long tainted by the 'Montreal Gazette'. This, he says, was, a job which filled his head 'with vast amounts examples of music, much of which I people who clearly didn't want deserve to be there'. Aware that there were vast horizons crying out a celebrity, let alone have a ghost-writer create their book, and by those who did so little but managed to be explored, he went churn out one night to hear five memoirs before they were even thirty. But more recently it's become a recital from the Boston cellist Lawrence Lesser, featuring the solo cello suites way of Bach. The contrast between hearing one solitary performer playing staking a simple wooden cello claim to importance for an audience a fraction of the size could female comics. They've not all written autobiographies, as Bridget Christie proved, but enough have hardly been more different to provide for a rapidly-filling shelf at the stadium style gigs he had been covering regularly until thenbookstore. About three years earlier, he 2016 we had reviewed Amy Schumer winning a show by U2GoodReads award, noting that for the 52Lena Dunham's been at it,000 fans who attended and we've also got Anna Kendrick. Now she'wanted s not a strict comic – not all of her films are designed to see more than four Lilliputian musicians making huge noises...technology blew everything out make you laugh, and some of proportion.them that are just don' The inevitable hate mail soon rolled t – but this has to be inthe same bracket. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546787</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lindsay ReadeRopek_Tragic|title=Mr Manchester and the Factory GirlTragic Magic: The Story Life 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>}} {{newreviewTraffic's Chris Wood|author=Larry Stempel|title=Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical TheaterDan Ropek|rating=4.5

|summary=Stempel is an associate professor of music at an American university so I would imagine that this book is primarily Chris Wood was a labour member of loveTraffic, the group formed by Steve Winwood in 1967 after he left The Spencer Davis Group. In the Preface Stempel bemoans the loss of important research material over the yearsA gifted musician best known for his flute and saxophone work, whether it be musical scoreshe also played keyboards, playbills or similar. It happens. It is bass guitar and contributed backing vocals as well as having a fact hand in writing several of life. Simply thrown away the songs and one or discarded as being considered not important. It's only a musical, after all. A bit light and frothytwo instrumentals. Stempel thinks otherwise - and This biography takes its title from the name of one of his time telling us exactly whycompositions for their fifth album.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393067157</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter DoggettDolby_Sound|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 Speed 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>}} {{newreviewSound|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 villains in them are a bit pants. What is The Penguin but the moniker world'Syds worst Mafioso, with a hobby of waddling along like his pet birds? Where else do you win an Oscar of all things by playing a two-bit killer who just fell in a vat of random chemicals and changed colour, and got mardier as a result (although recently he' (s become a nanotech genius – but let's make him Syd from now onnot go there) was born ? And what is it with the gimp in Cambridge in 1946. The fourth the see-through plant pot because he is the embodiment of cold? And that's just some of the better-known enemies of five children''Batman'', he was one of the better goodies. You can imagine how awful the only one baddies related to inherit any lasting artistic talent, which came from his father Maxthe bad goodies can be. The latter was a senior pathologistAnd if you can't, member of this is the local Philharmonic Society, gifted singer, pianist and watercolour painterperfect primer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571238548</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michele MonroFletcher_Midnight|title=Matt MonroIn the Midnight Hour: The Singer'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 a regular fixture on the light entertainment circuit, and overseas, particularly in Latin America and the Philippines, he was undoubtedly one Life & Soul of Britain's most successful exports ever, and at one point he was the biggest selling artist in Spain. His idol Frank Sinatra, to whom he was often compared, often said that Matt was the only British singer he ever really listened to.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848566182</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewWilson Pickett|author=Don Felder|title=Heaven And Hell: My Life in the Eagles, 1974 - 2001Tony 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>