Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World - Simon Callow

2012 marks the bicentenary of Dickens’ birth, a writer who’s work continues to inspire contemporary writers, film and television adaptations, and artists the world over, with Helena Bonham Carter as Ms. Havisham in the latest incarnation of Great Expectations due out in November.

Callow has focused on a lesser-known aspect of Dickens’ creative life, in a bid to offer an alternative to the scores of autobiographies sure to be reissued in this bicentennial year, that of Dickens’ love for the stage.

A child entertainer from a very young age, Dickens wrote, staged and acted in countless theatre productions right up until his death.

His dramatic personality and adoration of the theatrical process shaped how he presented the characters, settings and plots in his darkly, humorous gothic stories.

Dickens loved to see his fans enjoying his work and felt the creative process was completed by presenting his stories first-hand to legions of adoring fans at public readings where he brought those, now iconic, characters to life with his dramatic skill.

Callow, a famously exuberant and flamboyant performer himself, (best known for his role as one half of the May-December gay couple in Four Weddings and a Funeral) explores how Dickens’ own personality, wit, love for performing and lust for attention transferred to the page, making his timeless stories and character spring to life for his readers, even 200 years on.

Desert Island Discs: 70 years of castaways - Sean Magee & Kirsty Young

BBC Radio 4 is often dismissed as stuffy and old-fashioned, holding little relevance in this digital age, but it has been the home of one of the most enduringly relevant radio programmes of all time, Desert Island Discs.

Since the man who devised the programme, Roy Plomley, interviewed the first ever castaway in January 1942, more than 3000 of the day’s most influential, controversial and news-worthy faces have talked through the eight records, one book and single luxury they would take with them to the mythical desert island.

To celebrate 70 years of Desert Island Discs, Kirsty Young, sometime Have I Got News For You anchor and presenter of the radio show since 2006, has brought together over 80 of the most memorable guests to grace the airwaves over the past seven decades.

The show has only had four presenters, who have each scored equally impressive coups with their celebrity bookings.

Plomley, who served as presenter for over forty years had the pleasure of Alfred Hitchcock and Margaret Thatcher’s company, as well as the young, now Sir, Cliff Richard, whom he quizzed about his “frenzied” on-stage dancing.

Plomley’s successors, Michael Parkinson and Sue Lawley, saw the likes of Elton John, Tony Blair and HRH Princess Margaret during the 1980s and 1990s, while today’s presenter, Kirsty Young, has lured similarly impressive guests, from Morrissey to Johnny Vegas, the latter of whom gave, surprisingly, one of the most personal and affecting interviews to be captured in the book.  

Sleb - Andrew Holmes

Felix Carter is famous, ‘properly’ famous, he’s the stylish, rough-and-ready, pop sensation every guy wants to be etc. etc.

Chris Sewell, a married, alcoholic, 30-something advertising executive is also famous, but only because he shot Felix Carter dead and is now the nation’s most infamous lifer, courting his adoring public from his prison cell. 

This 2003 publication was presumably re-released last month to cash in on our relentless obsession with celebrity, a phenomenon even author, Andrew Holmes, must have expected to have died down by now, but his satirical hero, Chris, who’s ‘fame’ is of the most questionable kind, is more relatable now than ever.

Sleb is chick-lit for men - an easy-going, readable, first-person caper, with plenty of guy-friendly criminal behaviour, minimal dialogue from fussy-females, vigilante displays of political and social power and frequent references to Star Wars, boozing, laddish behaviour and early Noughtie’s gadgetry. 

Despite this, Holmes - a journalist by trade and hence, well-trained in the art of organising sensationalised titbits into a page-turning news story – has constructed a layered, time-bending, ‘whodunnit’ style plot, even though we know who did it, as he tells us so himself fairly early on, but it’s the why and the how that the author tantalisingly drags out. 

Sleb is gory, messy and brash but even if that’s not your thing, Chris’ complicated motives should hold your interest until the end.

The Great British Bake Off: How to turn everyday bakes into showstoppers - Linda Collister

What should have been a niche tea-time show on BBC2 has turned out to be one of the channel's biggest ever ratings winners, with the third series of The Great British Bake Off bringing in around 4 million viewers per episode.

Building on the previous series tie-in book, How to Bake: The Perfect Victoria Sponge and Other Baking Secrets, baking expert, Linda Collister's, latest offering vows to take your skills to the next level, with extra special twists on everything from quick school bake sale cookie and cake recipes, to savoury pastries and breads and more ambitious show-stopping special occasion bakes. 

Also included within the mouth-wateringly photographed pages is 'The Best of the Bake Off', which reveals the most impressive recipes from the amateur bakers on the show, as well as all of presenters, Mary Berry and Mark Hollywood's, 'Technical Challenges' from the series. 

If you're new to the baking game or have only just become a fan of the show, then it's advisable you start with Linda's first book rather than jumping straight into this 'showstoppers' collection as the emphasis really is on those next-level finishing touches, presentation advice and expert tips, with the fundamentals of baking considered a given.

Are We Nearly There Yet? A Family’s 8000 Mile Car Journey Around Britain - Ben Hatch

Ben and Dinah dreamt of becoming hard-nosed journalists, blowing the lid off political wrong-doings and uncovering global scandals, but with both of them nearing 40 and clinging to the last of their professional dreams, they sign up for a laughably stressful freelance job writing a family guidebook that would see them and their two young children travelling around Britain for five months.

The four of them pack their lives into a Vauxhall Astra and pinball between blagged free hotels and what seems like every single last “attraction” the British Isles has to offer, from Shakespeare’s birth place to Northampton’s riveting shoe museum.

A touchingly written side-story about Ben’s sick dad provides some heart and the author doesn’t shy away from dealing with the real-life, day-to-day business when you’re faced with losing a parent. Hatch doesn’t side-step real life at all in fact, resisting the urge to create a bubble around the family’s unusual temporary existence living between their car, hotel rooms and twee attractions, allowing disappointments about Ben and Dinah’s careers and relationships to crop up often.

The book eventually reveals itself to be, not a mid-life crisis diary, but rather a later in life ‘finding yourself’ gap-year type adventure. The message is to appreciate where you are in life, what you’ve got and what you’ve achieved, rather than succumbing to ‘grass is greener’ syndrome or dwelling on past regrets.

An invaluable personal account for the author’s posterity but a little self-indulgent. The actual guidebook the trip spawned looks a lot more fun.

Girls in White Dresses - Jennifer Close

Isabelle, Mary and Lauren have been friends since college but have now reached the age where their peers go one way (marriage, mortgage, procreation) or the other (job-hopping, bed-hopping, bar-hopping). The loveably dysfunctional trio attend wedding after wedding while muddling through the unexpected turns their own lives take.

Each chapter focusses on a different character and delves into the nominated narrator’s own life, blinkering against the other girls’ issues and problems. This not only helps you connect with every single girl, but also helps you recognise how, despite having a close-knit support system, everyone suffers, tackles and conquers life’s challenges largely on their own, with inner-reserves of strength and humility. 

Girls in White Dresses is a real anthem for those who feel like everyone except them is where they should be in life, with a better job, relationship and lifestyle. The author doesn’t conform to the ‘life porn’ trap as with most chick-lit, her characters have pokey, affordable apartments and steady, dull jobs, there’s no chic city loft-living or inexhaustible income streams, you can actually relate to these women.

Again mirroring real life, you don’t notice the characters growing up and despite the pace settling in the last few chapters, at the last page it’s suddenly alarming how different they all are from the college girls we met at the beginning. 

This witty, heartfelt work of fiction resonates more than most autobiographies as well as being both clever and readable.

London The Autobiography - Jon. E. Lewis

Events of the past few weeks have cemented London’s reputation as one of the greatest cities on earth but our first-class hospitality, multi-million pound fireworks and Olympic medal collection shouldn’t overshadow the many hundreds of years of history and people that has seen our capital city reign supreme among its global counterparts since Boudicca sacked it in AD 60.

This isn’t the author’s dissertation-length creation, but a collection of completely original texts, including letters, diary entries and poems, written by real people who lived through these historical events. For this reason the language is, understandably, archaic and makes for a laborious read in places.

The entire first half of the book, from Boudicca up to the 1800’s feels particularly slow given the fashion for comprehensive record-keeping (there’s more than one painfully comprehensive list of household items) and the fact that Roman, Tudor and Shakespearean London are well-visited periods in history and while these original texts offer a more personal angle to events, they reveal nothing new that wouldn’t have been covered in history class.

Our more recent history is brought alive however with expertly selected entries from infamous historical figures documenting life-altering events. A 19 year old Queen Victoria walks us through her own coronation, The Sex Pistols tell of their first ever gig in 1975 and eye-witness accounts of Princess Diana’s funeral procession and the 7/7 bombings remind us of the darker side of London’s history. 

More of a research text, masquerading as a novel, that should be dipped into at whatever historical period takes your fancy.