The Film Director's Wife

We all love a good autobiography, especially if it can shed light on the lives of the rich and famous from the perspective of someone who was there and who was a part of the clan, so to speak.

The Film Director's Wife is one such book.

It is written by Mo Enfield, who was married to famed International film director, Cy Enfield.

Born into an isolated community in Yorkshire, Mo was then whisked away to the famed Roedean lady's college where she studied for five years before she became a successful catwalk model, including working with Dior in London and Paris.

At the same time as she was carving out a successful career as a model, London was becoming home to a fairly large number of Hollywood writers, refugees from the McCarthy era witch hunt, fleeing from the risk of being hauled up before the Un-American Activities Committee.

Amongst these motion pictured luminaries were the likes of Carl Foreman, Joseph Losey, Sam Wanamaker (incidentally the father of British actress Zoe Wanamaker) Jack Berry and, of course, Cy Enfield, future husband of Mo.

They became a couple and decided to marry at Caxton Hall. Her parents steadfastly and cruelly refused to attend the wedding. Apparently they felt that he husband to be was too old for their daughter, a divorcee, a communist and a Jew.

Despite this somewhat inauspicious beginning to their married life, they spent 40 very happy years and man, wife and parents to their brood of children.

Mo tells their story -pretty much all of it, one gathers from reading the book!- which includes stories of many of the film/movie industry and high celebrity life of the last four decades such as fellow models including Jean Shrimpton, Michael Cane, Terrence Stamp, Joe Levine, Stanley Baker, Germaine Greer and many others including Burton and Taylor. Yes. That Burton and Taylor!

As well as being a leading film director, Cy was also an extremely talented inventor. Read about his genuinely revolutionary invention of the Microwriter.

The book is also copiously illustrated with a wide range of photographs, some publicity stills and some truly charming photographs culled from family albums and, in my opinion, all the better for that!

The Film Director's Wife is an ideal Christmas gift for the film/movie buff, people who love autobiographies and those of you who were moving in those circles. Are you in the book? For the remarkably reasonable price of £8.99 you can buy this Book Guild publication to find out!

You can buy it from our own retail establishment which you can find here >>> https://goo.gl/qPctIy.

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Arcanum

Arcanum is a stunning psychic novel that is set in Ireland, in the past and the present.

It is written by author Ann Mann.

A troupe of Irish dancers vanish. This mysterious event leaves the police absolutely baffled and the entire world mystified. After all, a while troupe of Irish dancers cannot just disappear? Can it?

But if the police cannot do something, anything, to find and rescue the Irish dancers, their colleagues and friends will not let them down!

Silas Murphy and Clodagh Trevor decide that if the police can't find them, then they will!

But what can they do? Where can they start? The two friends commence their investigation and soon find themselves embarking on a, frankly, bizarre, convoluted and labyrinthian investigation that transcends both space and time.

They find it necessary to use techniques that no modern police officer would even dare to contemplate, but as they say, desperate times call for desperate measures and they duo employ ancient divination techniques to help them in the quest for their missing friends.

But where or when had they gone?

Who, or what, had taken them?

And would they be rescued?

This is a mysterious story and very well told.

It will make a excellent Christmas present for those who like their fiction of a more mystical nature.

It is published by Matador at £7.99 and is available for purchase here >>> https://goo.gl/WNNZUm.

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The A to Z of Stuff The Indispensable compendium of wisdom

The A to Z of Stuff, The Indispensable compendium of wisdom, as it is subtitled is one of those "must buy" Christmas presents that we see every so-often.

It is compiled and written by prolific author and travel writer David Fletcher.

Like many of us, David became more than a little bit irked and frustrated with the large volume of knolwedge that we are flooded with every single day of every single week.

And what makes it worse is that this knowledge is, for the most part, utterly and completely useless and pointless.

"Life," points out David, "is filled with trivia. More and more, it seems, every waking minute of our lives is accounted for by the inconsequential, the irrelevant, the incidental, the positively wasteful and by a whole host of other stuff that serves no purpose whatsoever, other than to distract us from what is really important."

David Fletcher set out to look for a remedy for this ill, something to act as a counterblast to all of the stuff that we are constantly bombarded with, 24/7, 7 days a week.

Eventually he hit upon the antidote which became his latest book, The A to Z of Stuff!

The book covers many, many different and diverse subjects. Anarchy, education and how dire it is compared to the good old days, the BBC -referred to as the Bloated Bureaucracy Corporation, democracy and how it works, or rather doesn't work, the European Union and how it operate or rather how it fails to operate. Did you know that the European Union has an official with the job title of: "The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy?"

Nor did I, but after reading The A to Z of Stuff, I now know this and, as they say, once the bell is rung, it cannot be unrung.

David coins a monumentally superb name to describe a certain type of EU tax haven, deluxembourg.

He will probably gain few friends in Luxembourg by accurately, though perhaps somewhat harshly, as being "parasitical."

Other subjects such as the United Kingdom, Quaggas (it's on the page after a poem, do check both out) the actual and mysterious continued existence of dinosaurs (see NHS), drones, young people, religion and lots more, receive the keen eye and laser-like probing of the dry with and machine-gun like delivery of David Fletcher.

It's published by Matador at £10.99 and is, as has been pointed out, a must buy Christmas present. No stocking should be without it, this year!

You can purchase it from the comfort of your own armchair or Smartphone when you visit our gift buying emporium, which is filled with enough Christmas food and drink to satiate an army and thousands of books and gifts. You'll find the portal just this way >>> https://goo.gl/WNNZUm.

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Love is Small Talk

Love is Small Talk is a delightfully drawn and very amusing book of cartoons by Fred Jefferies.

It's a large format book and it is, says Fred, "inspired by heaven's 'little angels'".

Fred provides his readers with a peep into the magical and make believe world of little kids which, points out Fred, he is providing for the delight of bigger kids.

It's a "must buy" Christmas gift for Christmas 2016.

It's charmingly and very colourfully illustrated with a whole array of very well drawn and oh-so-believable little characters. And they are little characters in more ways than a little!

Meet children by themselves, with dogs, with prams, with dogs in prams, at the seaside, in the park, in the dark, having a lark,  having a party in fact just about everything is illustrated within  these magical pages.

Why is this book of cartoons so popular? The cartoons are funny, yes, that's true. But there's more to it than that.

This book of cartoons is so popular because it takes the reader back to a time when they were the kids taking part in apparently bizarre conversations.

It is published by The Book Guild at a very reasonable £7.99 and will make an ideal book to flip through during and long after the Christmas period.

The book is available to purchase at our own book and gift shop, along with thousands of other great gift ideas, please do check it out:-  https://goo.gl/WNNZUm.