by Justin Lewis (2013)
Great Britain's national treasure, Gary Barlow has achieved unrivalled success with boyband Take That, as a solo artist and songwriter, and as a judge on The X Factor. However, the path to fame is rarely easy and Gary's journey has been full of inspiring highs and distinct lows. From happy beginnings growing up in Frodshaw, Cheshire, as the second son to Marge and Colin Barlow, Gary spent his youth immersing himself in music, writing songs and learning how to play the piano. By the age of 15, Gary was struggling to break into the music industry and doing a string of gigs around the UK, before landing what was to be the job that propelled him into the limelight. After hiring Barry Wooley as his manager, Gary was soon in talks with casting agent Nigel Martin-Smith. Realising Gary's potential, and admiring an early demo of ' A Million Love Songs', Nigel signed him up as the front man for new boy bad Take That, and the rest, as they say, is history. Between 1990 and 1996, Take That sold millions of records, packed out area tours and created an army of fans, who were subsequently devastated when Take That announced their split in 1996. Gary made an attempt at a solo career, but it wasn't to be, and he slipped out of the public consciousness before finding the confidence to begin songwriting and collaborating with other artists to make his records. In 2005, Gary's life was to take another unexpected turn when Take That announced they were getting back together. With a new lease of life, they went onto have continued, record- breaking, success. Gary was soon offered a slot as head judge on ITV's hit TV show The X Factor, and in 2012 he was awarded an OBE - providing that there was more to him than Take That.
Barbara Sinatra
Thirty years after she first heard his voice singing to her from a jukebox at her local drive-in, Barbara began her love affair with Frank Sinatra. After a tempestuous courtship, she finally heard him say the wedding vows that began his fourth, final, and most enduring marriage; one that would last more than two decades until the end of his life.
Brenda Ashford
Brenda Ashford is the quintessential British nanny. Prim and proper, gentle and kind, she seems to have stepped straight out of Mary Poppins. For more than six decades, Nanny Brenda swaddled, diapered, dressed, played with, sang to, cooked for, and looked after more than one hundred children. From the pampered sons and daughters of lords ensconced in their grand estates, to tough East End evacuees during the war, Brenda taught countless little ones to be happy, healthy, and thoroughly well-bred. Knowing a career caring for children was her only calling in life, Brenda attended London's prestigious Norland Institute, famous for producing top-class nannies. It was a sign of privilege and taste for the children of the well-to-do to be seen being pushed in their Silver Cross prams by a Norland nanny -- recognizable by their crisp, starched black uniforms with white bib collars, and their flowing black capes lined with red silk. Sprinkled throughout with pearls of wisdom (children can never have too much love, and learn how to sew a button, for goodness' sake) this delightful memoir from Britain's oldest living nanny is practically perfect in every way.
Jane Shilling
'I looked in the mirror one morning, and saw the face of a stranger. Who was she, this haggard, bun-faced woman with the softening jawline, the downturned mouth, the world-weary air of a woman who hasn't had what she wanted from life, and knows she isn't going to get it now? Why, it was no one else but me, myself and I'. Middle age took Jane Shilling by surprise. She hadn't seen it coming, and she certainly wasn't ready for it. Living a flawed, bittersweet version of the idyll she dreamed of in her twenties, in a tumbledown urban cottage by the Thames, with a son, a cat and a horse in a livery fifty miles away, she wondered whether middle age was the beginning of the end. Or was there one last great adventure to be had? "The Stranger in the Mirror" is one woman's attempt to understand what middle age means for her and whether, as a new generation of women turns fifty, a revolution is under way. It definitely won't reverse the signs of ageing - but it will make you laugh, it will make you think and it could just make you look in the mirror in a slightly different way...
Duncan Fairhurst
From the age of four, Duncan carried a terrible secret - his father was molesting him. Raised in a household where secrets and sick rituals were part of daily life, Duncan was manipulated, bullied and raped from the age of four for over a decade. This is his story. Desperate to escape his father's tyranny, he tried to kill himself.