OUR BOOK OF THE MONTH FOR SEPTEMBER

This month we are offering Max Hastings’ wonderful new book at the very special price of £5 (RRP £9.99). it has been receiving fabulous reviews and we really want you to read it!

‘One of the best books ever written about Churchill … Hastings’s efficient, soldierly prose marches along at a brisk pace and carries the reader with it. He has drawn on copious original sources and consulted experts familiar with them, enabling him to cast fresh light on familiar episodes … a magnificent performance.’ Sunday Times

‘The book’s portrait of Churchill is scrupulously fair and often deeply moving … in fact Hastings excels with all his character portraits, especially with Roosevelt and Stalin. Hastings is truly a master of strategy and high command.’ Antony Beevor, Mail on Sunday

Pre-eminent military historian Max Hastings presents Winston Churchill as he has never been seen before. Winston Churchill was the greatest war leader Britain ever had. In 1940, the nation rallied behind him in an extraordinary fashion.

But thereafter, argues Max Hastings, there was a deep divide between what Churchill wanted from the British people and their army, and what they were capable of delivering. Himself a hero, he expected others to show themselves heroes also, and was often disappointed. It is little understood how low his popularity fell in 1942, amid an unbroken succession of battlefield defeats.

Some of his closest colleagues joined a clamour for him to abandon his role directing the war machine. Hastings paints a wonderfully vivid image of the Prime Minister in triumph and tragedy. He describes the ’second Dunkirk’ in 1940, when Churchill’s impulsiveness threatened to lose Britain almost as many troops in north-west France as had been saved from the beaches; his wooing of the Americans, and struggles with the Russians.

British wartime unity was increasingly tarnished by workers’ unrest, with many strikes in mines and key industries. By looking at Churchill from the outside in, through the eyes of British soldiers, civilians and newspapers — and also those of Russians and Americans — Hastings provides new perspectives on the greatest Englishman. He condemns as folly Churchill’s attempt to promote mass uprisings in occupied Europe, and details ‘Unthinkable’ — his amazing 1945 plan for an Allied offensive against the Russians to liberate Poland.

Here is an intimate and affectionate portrait of Churchill as Britain’s saviour, but also an unsparing examination of the wartime nation which he led and the performance of its armed forces.

Why can’t you light a candle in a spaceship? What books are bad for you? Is nature natural? Every year the Oxford and Cambridge’s learned academics pose such curious conundrums to potential students to separate the wheat from the chaff, and the clever from both of them. Deftly exploring the twisting paths your mind can take when you’re really made to think , “Do You Think You’re Clever?” provides dazzling answers to over 60 of these infamously perplexing problems. John Farndon takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride from philosophy to physics, literature to logarithms – considering why the pole vaulting world record will never exceed 6.5m, whether there are too many people in the world, how to reduce crime through architecture, and much more. How would you stand up against Oxbridge’s sharpist minds? “Do You Think You’re Clever” is a sparkling tour amid the heights of intellectual abstract thought. Imbibe slowly and give your neural networks the workout they crave.

A Review By Keith Smith

Suicide bombers are easy to spot. They give out all kinds of tell-tale signs. Mostly because they’re nervous. By definition they’re all first-timers.

There are twelve things to look for. No one who has worked in law enforcement will ever forget them.

New York City. The subway, two ‘o’ clock in the morning. Jack Reacher studies his fellow passengers. Four are OK. The fifth isn’t.

Well, the jacket blurb got my attention. I had never read any Lee Childs before. I wanted some easy bed-time reading, so despite its more than 500 pages I gave it a go. And was I pleased! It was dark, fast-moving, up-beat, and very ‘Raymond Chandler’ish. The hero Jack Reacher is a larger than life character in the Mens Action Story style, quick on the uptake and full of one-liners. Here’s a quick sample…..

FBI, I thought, closer to cops than paramilitaries. They didn’t show me ID. They just assumed  I knew what they were.

‘We need to talk to you’ the left-hand guy said.

‘I know’ I said.

‘How?’

‘Because you just ran through traffic to get here.’

‘Do you know why?’

‘No idea. Unless it’s to offer me counselling because of my traumatic experience.’

The guy’s mouth set in an impatient scowl, like he was ready to bawl me out for my sarcasm. Then his expression changed a little to a wry smile and he said ‘OK, here’s my counsel. Answer some questions and then forget you were ever on that train.’

‘What train?’

When I said larger than life, I meant sometimes unbelievable. But then that’s all part of the fun, just as it is in James Bond. For the duration of this adventure, you can suspend disbelief, and really go with the flow..the fast, very fast plot, the archetypal American characters, the dark streets, the violence, and the underlying humour. Is it tongue-in-cheek? Possibly, possibly not. But then Lee Childs is, I found, and was astonished, from Coventry. A local writing American cop novels, up with the very best of them. Amazing!

When the battered body of a young woman is discovered on a remote Greek island, the local police are quick to dismiss her death as an accident. Then a stranger arrives, uninvited, from Athens, announcing his intention to investigate further. His methods are unorthodox, and he brings his own mystery into the web of dark secrets and lies.

Who has sent him, on whose authority is he acting, and how does he know of dramas played out decades ago?  This is the first in the wonderful and atmospheric ‘Fat Greek Detective’ series, and to promote the collection we are promoting this title with the help of Bloomsbury at the extra special price of 99p. Unbelievable or what? The promotion is not available on the High Street