Owain Mulligan was never what you'd call a career soldier. Nor even a particularly good one. At weekends he trained with the Territorial Army and dreamt of swapping the mayhem of teaching in a tough school for the adventure of service in Iraq. At least they'd let him wear a helmet in Iraq. But when the job in headquarters he's been expecting doesn'...

Born in 1957 in Deptford, south London, Danny's first job after dropping out of school at the age of 15 was in One Stop Records, a small record shop in London's West End. His career in print journalism began in 1976 when he co-founded the fanzine Sniffin' Glue leading to an offer from the New Musical Express, where his first job was as a receptioni...

Danny Baker is a national treasure with a well-documented - thanks to the recent eight-part BBC TV adaptation - and colourful life. For over a quarter of a century, he has amused and entertained audiences on both radio and television. Beginning his career at the age of 15 in a small record shop in London's West End, Danny went on to become an accla...

Danny Baker's first volume of autobiography, Going to Sea in a Sieve, was a Sunday Times best seller, acclaimed for its nonstop humour and anecdotal flourish. It told the exploits of Danny's extraordinary childhood and the wild living of his teenage years. Now he is 25, and it is 1982, and he embarks on an accidental and anxiety-induced career in t...

Joanna Lumley is one of Britain's undisputed national treasures, who has lived many lives: a single mum; a voiceover artist; a TV presenter; an author; a former model and Bond girl; a human rights activist for Survival International and the Gurkha Justice Campaign; and as an iconic, award-winning actor, best known for her roles in timeless shows li...

As a specialist in palliative medicine, Dr Rachel Clarke chooses to inhabit a place many people would find too tragic to contemplate. Rachel's training was put to the test in 2017 when her beloved GP father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She learned that nothing - even the best palliative care - can sugar-coat the pain of losing someone you lo...

Rachel is a palliative care doctor who looked after some of the most gravely unwell patients on the COVID-19 wards of her hospital. Amid the tensions, fatigue and rising death toll, she witnessed the courage of patients and NHS staff alike in conditions of unprecedented adversity. For all the bleakness and fear, she found that moments that could st...

When a travel writer is stuck on home soil in the middle of a pandemic, he meets Kris Rodgers, one of Britain's eminent metal detectorists. Dipping a toe in the hobby, Nigel quickly finds himself swept up in the world beneath the surface. Above the ground are a cast of fascinating and passionate people who open Nigel's eyes to a subterranean world...

Shortlisted for the 2018 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Today was his first climb to the top. He knew if he was there, watching, then she would never leave him. Her name was Bernadette, and he climbed the shed every day. This is a not a football book, as such. Rather, it is a memoir by someone who happened to have superior ability at the spor...

Hollywood legend and British national treasure Sir Michael Caine shares the wisdom, stories, insight and skills that life has taught him in his remarkable career. One of our best-loved actors, Sir Michael Caine has starred in some of the best and most-loved films ever made - from the classic British movies Alfie, Zulu and The Italian Job to the Hol...

Dogs have been the common link between the key moments in Nicky Campbell's life: there was Toby, the dog he never knew and who sat devotedly by his cot before his adoption, and then the adorable fox terrier Candy, who arrived soon after he was happily adopted. Nothing could replace the loss of Candy when he died suddenly, when Nicky was only 11. Ye...

When Joan Bakewell, Labour Peer, author and famous champion of the older people's right to a good and fruitful life, decided that she could no longer remain in her old home, she had to confront what she calls 'the next segment of life'. Disposing of things accumulated during a long life, saying goodbye to her home and the memories of more than 50 y...

The number one Sunday Times bestseller. Features 75 stories narrated by their authors. Curated and edited by Adam Kay (author of multi-million best seller This Is Going to Hurt), Dear NHS features household names telling their personal stories of the health service. Contributors include Paul McCartney, Emilia Clarke, Step...

Assaults. Riots. Cell fires. Medical emergencies. Understaffed wings. Suicides. Hooch. Weapons. It's all in a week's work at HMP Parkhurst. After 28 years working as a prison officer, with 22 years at HMP Parkhurst, once one of Britain's most high security prisons, David Berridge has had to deal with it all: serial killers and gangsters, terrorists...

Will She Do? is the story of a girl from a council estate in Tottenham, born in 1934 to an electric-meter reader and a seamstress, who was determined to be an actress. Candid and witty, this memoir takes her from her awkward performances in working-men's clubs at six years of age as dancing 'Baby Eileen', to her breakthrough at 32 on Broadway with...

An inspiring, witty 'East End growing up' memoir by leading Labour MP Wes Streeting. Wes Streeting might have ended up in prison rather than in parliament. His maternal grandfather Bill, an unsuccessful armed robber, spent time behind bars, as did his grandmother, who was also a political campaigner. Brought up on a Stepney council estate, the youn...

In this breathtaking memoir, acclaimed writer Alex Wheatle shows how music became his salvation through a childhood marred by abuse and his imprisonment as a young man protesting against systemic racism and police brutality. Abandoned as a baby to the British care system, Alex Wheatle grows up with no knowledge of his Jamaican parentage or family h...

For the first time, the edited journals of Alice Walker are gathered together to reflect the complex, passionate, talented and acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winner of The Color Purple. She intimately explores her thoughts and feelings as a woman, a writer, an African-American, a wife, a daughter, a mother, a lover, a sister, a friend, a citizen of the w...

When Pete's parents moved from Cyprus to Birmingham in the 1960s in the hope of a better life, they had no money and only a little bit of English. They opened a fish-and-chip shop in Acocks Green. The Great Western Fish Bar is where Pete learned about coin-operated machines, male banter and Britishness. Shy and introverted, Pete stopped speaking fr...

This is wintering. It is the courage to stare down the worst parts of our experience and commit to healing them the best we can. Wintering, the dormant periods in our lives, the dark moments we endure – which can be brought about through myriad of ways; from the death of a loved one to a sudden change in circumstances or mental health issues...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Things I Don't Want to Know by Deborah Levy, read by Juliet Stevenson.Things I Don't Want to Know is the first in Deborah Levy's essential three-part 'Living Autobiography' on writing and womanhood.Taking George Orwell's famous essay, 'Why I Write', as a jumping-off point, Deborah Levy offers her own indisp...