Unbound Catalogue Autumn 2023

SPRING 2023 HIGHLIGHTS

I Could Read the

Bardskull / Martin Shaw 978-1-78965-156-0 / £18.99

The Green Hill / Sophie Pierce 978-1-80018-180-9 / £18.99

Sky / Tim O’Grady and Steve Pyke 978-1-80018-271-4 / £ 1 9 .99

Last Dance at the Discotheque for Deviants Paul David Gould / 978-1-80018-220-2 / £12.99

Accordion Books / Jackie Morris / Fox : 978-1-80018-204-2

Otter : 978-1-80018-205-9 / £12.99 each

From Far Around They Saw Us Burn / Alice Jolly 978-1-78965-162-1 / £18.99

Villager / Tom Cox 978-1-80018-237-0 / £12.99

Unbound c/o Runway East 20 St Thomas Street London SE1 9RS Tel. 020 3997 6790 www.unbound.com

@unbounders

Head of Sales

Julian Mash julian@unbound.com

Head of Rights

Ilona Chavasse ilona@unbound.com

Head of Communications

Rina Gill rina@unbound.com

To order any of the books in this catalogue please contact your PGUK rep. If you’re unsure who that is, contact Julian Mash at julian@unbound.com

Dear Reader,

Welcome to our autumn 2023 catalogue. Once again we have an incredible line up of books that we are very excited to be sharing with you.

Starting with 42: The Wildly Improbably Ideas of Douglas Adams which is hitting bookshops on 24 August and can, quite rightly, be described as a publishing event. When Douglas Adams died in 2001, he left behind 60 boxes full of notebooks, letters, scripts, jokes, speeches and even poems. In 42, compiled by Douglas’s long-time collaborator Kevin Jon Davies, hundreds of these personal artefacts appear in print for the very first time. Douglas was as much a thinker as he was a writer, and his artefacts reveal how his deep fascination with technology led to ideas which were far ahead of their time: a convention speech envisioning the modern smartphone, with all the information in the world living at our fingertips; sheets of notes predicting the advent of electronic books; journal entries from his forays into home computing, among others.

On the fiction side we have Jeremiah Bourne in Time, the first instalment of Nigel Planer’s historical fantasy trilogy releasing on 6 July. Jeremiah Bourne’s mother is a fugitive from the future, and her son, Jeremiah has inherited her ability to travel in time. In modern-day London, 18-year-old Jeremiah lives with his stepdad in a rambling house in Blackfriars. An innocent turn of an old biscuit tin propels Jeremiah into history, specifically into London Bridge in 1910 – the smoggy end of the Edwardian era. Jeremiah has two questions: how did he get there, and how can he get back? You can read an interview with Nigel on pages 6–10 where he discusses his research into Edwardian London and much more besides.

No Unbound season would be complete without a Jackie Morris title, and we are exceedingly pleased to be releasing The Unwinding Cards on 21 September. A collection of 100 postcards featuring artwork and words from Jackie’s best-selling ‘pillow book’, The Unwinding and Other Dreamings. The front of each card features one of Jackie’s paintings from the book; on the back, there is a short quote, spell or poem from the book plus space for you to write, draw or paint messages which you can send to spread peace and beauty to the people you love and care about.

6 July sees the publication of Under the Knife by Dr Liz O’Riordan, a breast cancer surgeon who has battled against social, physical

and mental challenges to practise at the top of her field. Under the Knife charts Liz’s incredible highs: performing like a couture dressmaker as she moulded and reshaped women’s breasts, while saving their lives; to the heart-breaking lows of telling ten women a day that they had cancer. In addition to this high-powered, high-pressured role, Liz faced her own breast cancer diagnosis and by revealing how she coped when her life crashed around her, she demonstrates that there is always hope.

On 7 September we will publish Women Who Won, a celebration of 70 women from the last 100 years: politicians from around the globe who fought for election in a man’s world… and won. Beautifully illustrated by artist Emmy Lupin, it features well-known figures, including Kamala Harris, Benazir Bhutto, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Jacinda Ardern and Julia Gillard, alongside lesser-known women whose stories are ready to be heard.

Graham Harvey’s Underneath The Archers: My Life as an Undercover Agent for Nature hits bookshops on 24 August. Described as ‘hilarious, charming, eccentric, informative, addictive and delightful as the show itself’ by long-time Archers fan Stephen Fry, this is not to be missed. For more than three decades, scriptwriter Graham Harvey wrote over 600 episodes and crafted some of its most memorable moments such as the Great Flood and the trashing of Brian’s GM crop. In this book Graham interweaves personal memories of these moments with extracts from the scripts he created, offering behind-the-scenes details of how key characters and plot lines were developed.

Robert Elms Live! Why We Go Out is published on 19 October: a memoir of a life lived through live music from pub rock to jazz funk, punk to country and a musing on why music really matters. A truly special read that will have you scanning the live listings, inspired to get out and experience some live music as soon as you can!

These are just some of the highlights of one of our strongest seasons yet. It goes without saying that all of these titles and more are available to order from GBS or via your PGUK rep.

If you would like to put on an event or get a hold of a reading copy, please do drop me a line on julian@unbound.com and I will be happy to help.

Until next time, happy reading!

Julian Mash, Head of Sales

JEREMIAH BOURNE IN TIME: AN INTERVIEW WITH NIGEL PLANER

‘Witty, charming and extremely clever. It makes you laugh, it makes you think and of course, you can’t put it down’

Tim McInnerny

‘Dazzling and very funny. I loved it’ Miriam Margolyes

Nigel Planer is a writer and actor and an original member of the 1980s alternative comedy scene. He famously played Neil in the BBC’s The Young Ones.

Jeremiah Bourne in Time is Nigel’s ninth book, and the first instalment in his new fantasy trilogy, The Time Shard Chronicles. Read on as Unbound’s co-founder and publisher, John Mitchinson, asks Nigel about the inspiration for this resourceful, young hero, the research into Edwardian London and his love of London cabs.

© Harvey Planer

John Mitchinson: This is your first novel in twenty years – what led you back to writing fiction?

Nigel Planer: Have to follow the idea, really. This just seemed the best way to realise the idea and it was fun. I’d been writing plays for a few years and working on shows for the theatre, which didn’t leave the time needed to draft a book.

Jeremiah is a very likeable and resourceful modern teenager. Did he spring into being fully formed or has he been stalking you for some time?

I have two sons who are no longer teenagers, I’ve been a stepfather twice to teenage boys now grown-up, and I have four step-grandsons who I’ve known through their teenage years. So you could say I’ve been living with Jeremiah for decades. The original spark for his story was wondering what it would be like for a teenage boy to be visited by a woman from 1910, Phyllis Stokes, and that despite their obvious disagreements he might find they had more in common than he has with his contemporaries from school.

Which books, films or TV shows acted as inspiration for the timetravel element of the novel?

I’ve tried to make the time-travel aspects of the book more Shutter Island or The Sixth Sense than, say, Doctor Who or Blake’s 7. I like the disorientating and psychological. Having said that, I think I’ve ended up with something more Blackadder than Game of Thrones.

The Edwardian London Jeremiah visits seems to be based on detailed research, is that authenticity important to you – and why that period in particular?

For twenty years, I’ve lived in the area where the book is set –south-east London from Blackfriars to London Bridge. I love the feeling of the past of London being ever present all around you. Generally, I do find the unusual corners of history more interesting and exciting than made-up stuff. Truth is not only stranger than fiction but also tends to be more bizarre and funnier. I have a sort of nostalgia for this era because I think we (European society/ culture) were really getting somewhere just before the First World

War, which sent us back into a dark age and ruined the twentieth century, when I was born.

Can you explain what’s distinctive about your vision of the London of the future?

About fifty years from now there have been two massive digital meltdowns. We’ve lost all our data. All of It. Society has had to be rebuilt from scratch and people who can remember things – stories, maps, how things work, how to make things, how to grow things – have become very important again. Some of them have developed super-memories. And then they start experimenting with inherited genetic memory…

You have become known as the ‘voice of Discworld’ for your readings of Terry Pratchett’s work. Did his version of comic fantasy have an influence on Jeremiah Bourne?

I love the Discworld books; for their humour and characters, obviously, but also for Pratchett’s underlying humanity and philosophical wisdom. I’ve been very influenced by him when writing Jeremiah Bourne in Time. And I’ve also learned the joys of a pointless footnote…

The contemporary genre of speculative fiction seems to hark back to the golden age of science fiction in the fifties and sixties. Did you read a lot of sci fi and if so, what were your favourite books and who were your favourite writers?

When I was a child I read all the main stuff; Orwell, Huxley, Bradbury and, in fact, I seem to remember doing John Wyndham and H. G. Wells for GCSE. I loved the C. S. Lewis sci-fi trilogy too. Then in my late teens, it got freakier with Philip K. Dick, and Kurt Vonnegut. Brian Aldiss and Arthur C. Clarke may have got a look-in along the way, but I was not a sci-fi junkie.

There seems to be a fondness for London cabs that runs through the novel – are you a fan?

Yes. I know they are allowed to use SatNav like everyone else now, but you can’t beat the Knowledge. Four years of learning every street in London – their hippocampi must be massive. And I like a good moan too, another great London cab driver skill. And they can turn the vehicle

round on a sixpence. I get a bit carried away with cabs. Perhaps I’ll be reincarnated as one.

The ending of the novel is left very open – can you say what adventures you have planned next for Jeremiah or where he might travel to?

Well, time travel in Jeremiah’s world is not so much a physical journey through space, because you stay exactly where you are but go backwards (or forwards) in time. So he’ll still be in south-east London, but he’s going to stumble into another era of great scientific progress and invention; the late-seventeenth century, after the Royal Society was formed. A time when everything was on the table, no concept was off limits – from Newton’s theory of gravity to microscopic men and women swimming around inside our bodily fluids. Daisy will have had her baby during the lockdown and Jeremiah has become baby literate.

If there was an historical period or event you could travel back to witness, what would it be?

Well, firstly I’d like to know that I can take some modern medicines with me, and money of course, because I don’t think any period in history would be that much fun to arrive in without either of them. But assuming that was all in the deal, I’d like to be in Paris in the late 1880s. The smell of paint from the Impressionists, discussions with writers at soirées, big bicycles, moustaches, smoking in cafés, sitting by lakes in fantastic outfits or even in nothing at all…

Find Jeremiah Bourne in Time on page 65

42: THE WILDLY IMPROBABLE IDEAS OF DOUGLAS ADAMS

‘Douglas was something that we don’t have a word for yet –a futurologist or an explainer. One day we will realise that the most important job out there is someone that can explain the world to itself in ways the world won’t forget’

Neil Gaiman

‘It’s dreadful to think that you never pinched and zoomed on a smartphone or tablet, never engaged with an AI chatbot… Of course, you wouldn’t have been surprised by a single one of these developments, the intrusions on our lives that have so transformed the world since you so precipitately left it. You saw them all coming’ Stephen Fry, in a letter to Douglas Adams

When Douglas Adams died in 2001, he left behind 60 boxes full of notebooks, letters, scripts, jokes, speeches and even poems. In 42, compiled by Douglas’s long-time collaborator Kevin Jon Davies, hundreds of these personal artefacts appear in print for the very first time.

From his school days through Cambridge, Footlights and life as a struggling writer, to his early collaborations with Graham Chapman, his work on Doctor Who and the development of The Hitchhiker’s Guide and Dirk Gently, Douglas’s personal papers prove that the greatest ideas come from the fleeting thoughts that collide in our own imagination.

But Douglas was as much a thinker as he was a writer, and his artefacts reveal how his deep fascination with technology led to ideas which were far ahead of their time. Though Douglas would not live to see many of his predictions come to life, his archives offer a captivating insight into the mind of one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers and most enduring storytellers.

Douglas’s fertile imagination for science fiction was evident during school and university. He wanted to write for the BBC’s long-running science fiction series Doctor Who. In the mid-1970s, after years of dreaming, he was invited to contribute four episodes to the series – and even to apply for a job on the team.

EARLY IDEAS

As far back as prep school at Brentford, Douglas had written stories about Daleks being powered by Rice Krispies, for himself and his friends to perform on a tape recorder. Later, in 1972, while on holiday with friends from university, he was still dabbling with ideas for the series. HIs notebook from the holiday provides a permanent record of some of the notions he dreamed up (below), as well as his doodles of the Tardis.

Dr Who

–Travel forward.

Caught in ‘time pocket’

Land again on Earth.

Everything – slow motion – (20 yard area round Tardis

Find barrier – where? London?

Home spherical – mirror – force field.

– beings inside turn out to be projections of each observer – i.e.

Doctor Who 114

whoever looks at them simply sees images of himself – Why?

[margin] Communicate telepathically

Because humans are a race of individuals – self-centred. These people Zolons are a community – each individual is a cell and sees each other cell as an image of the community.

[margin] Attempt to show image of community – mindblowing!

Come from a different space-time continuum to study this life form which seems only to exist in this particular STC.

Having for the Pirate populations,

SCOPING ‘THE PIRATE PLANET’

Having spent years toying with the idea of working on Dr Who, in summer 1977 Douglas was finally commissioned to write for the series a four-part story that became known as The Pirate Planet. In Douglas’s vision, the story saw a half-robotic Pirate Captain piloting his hollow planet to surround other planets, plundering their rich mineral deposits and destroying their populations, all to appease his Queen Ixoxaxox (later simplified to Xanxia).

The people of his own planet (‘The Mourners’, later changed to ‘Mentiads’) were becoming aware of the toll. The Doctor and an apprentice Time Lord called Gravity (eventually known as Lady Romana) arrive to investigate. The story eventually aired on BBC One in September/October 1978. The many notes in Douglas’s archive (opposite, above and over the following two pages) show the thought he put into the complexities of the plot, before setting it out scene by scene (see pages xx–xx).

THE PIRATE PLANET – SCENE BY SCENE

Once Douglas had sketched out the initial scope of his story, he created a detailed outline of each episode – all by hand, in numbered scene-by-scene breakdown. His notes for Episode 1 of The Pirate Planet are above and over the following pages.

Doctor Who 119

The first glimpse of the Doctor (at the time played by Tom Baker) in the episode comes in Douglas’s Frame 7 – he’s on his way to collect a ‘Sacred Jewel’ from the planet Calufrax when ‘all hell breaks loose and the Tardis bucks about uncontrollably’.

JOB OFFER

Douglas’s four episodes were noted for their witty dialogue and clever ideas, which is probably why script editor Anthony Read recommended Douglas as his replacement. This was to be some (much-needed at the time) full-time employment for just over a year. In his notebook, Douglas appears to have written a draft paragraph (below) for the formal BBC job application. The cleaned-up text, once the crossings out have been taken into account, reads: “Though I do have a lot of writing work on my plate at the moment, and quite clearly would like to continue to write, I really need the challenge of a practical job of work to do working with other people and helping to develop other people’s ideas as well as my own.”

Of course, he landed the job successfully and took up the reins in October 1978. However, once he was immersed in the practicality of writing for Dr Who, Hitchhiker’s Guide was also taking off – and the two weren’t compatible. Douglas left the BBC’s permanent role in late 1979 to focus on his own endeavours.

Years later Douglas grew weary of answering fans’ esoteric questions about his time on Doctor Who. ‘The whole point of Doctor Who,’ he joked, ‘is that if you take the second letter of all the episodes over the last twenty years of broadcast and run them together backwards, the original lost city of Atlantis is revealed.’ But Douglas reserved a lot of affection for Tom Baker, the actor playing the role of The Doctor back in his day. They worked together again in 1990 on Douglas’s fantasy documentary about the future of interactive media, Hyperland. In 1995 he said of Baker, ‘He’s one of the world’s great madmen and I thoroughly enjoyed his company, I must say.’

UNDER THE KNIFE

After spending twenty years fighting to get to the top of her field as a consultant breast surgeon, Liz O’Riordan’s life changed overnight when she herself was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was only then that she realised how little she really knew about what it is like to live with the disease and its effects. Under the Knife is an account of Liz’s own journey with breast cancer, and the new perspective it gave her. But it also tells the story of how a desire to help people inspired her to pursue a medical career; how she found ways to thrive in the heavily male-dominated field of surgery; and how she discovered there is always hope, even when your life feels like it is crashing down around you.

As a trainee surgeon, it’s all about the hernia. The inguinal hernia, to be precise. The operation starts when I shave a man’s groin with a scalpel, and it always feels like a little bit of history. The original surgeons were barbers, and the red and white pole outside today’s high-street barbers represents the bloody bandages used after the operation. I too am a barber surgeon.

After carefully removing any pubic hair, I become an artist. I paint his groin with a sponge soaked in Hibiscrub, a brown antiseptic solution, to sterilise his skin. I let it dry and then do it again before isolating the area with green cotton drapes.

But how did that man end up on my operating table? He came to see me with a lump in his groin. An inguinal hernia. They were the bane of my life as a medical student. The anatomy is complex and there are many terms that had to be memorised parrot-fashion for oral exams. A hernia happens when something inside the body, like fat or a loop of

small bowel, pushes through a weakness in the muscle or surrounding tissue.

There’s a natural weakness in the groin called the inguinal canal. It’s a series of openings in the lower abdominal wall that the testicles travel down to reach the scrotum while a baby boy is still inside the womb. Trying to get my head around this three-dimensional canal from the flat pages of a book was hard. I just couldn’t picture how everything fitted together. Instead, I practised by getting men to cough while I fumbled around in their groin trying to find a lump.

But there’s an art to groin-fumbling. Although most hernias travel down the canal, called indirect hernias, sometimes the fat can push through a weakness in the back of the canal, causing a direct hernia. If I put my finger exactly halfway between their hip bone and the edge of their pubic bone and get a man to cough, I can tell which type of hernia they have. Either my finger controls the bulge, or the hernia pops out.

BECAUSE THE PATIENT WAS AWAKE, I HAD TO WATCH WHAT I SAID. NO MORE ASKING THE SCRUB NURSE FOR A KNIFE OR A NEEDLE. WE DEVELOPED OUR OWN SIGN LANGUAGE

One of my bosses was a hernia expert. He would make me write down in the notes what kind of hernia I thought each man had. And then we would take him to theatre and see if I was right. To make things easier for the patient, I was taught to fix them using local anaesthetic. The patient was awake but didn’t feel pain, only pressure. They could walk out of theatre and go home shortly afterwards instead of the longer recovery needed after a general anaesthetic. As great as it is for the patient, it is technically challenging for the surgeon. The first time I infiltrated the canal with anaesthetic, the tissues bulged with the fluid and the anatomy was distorted. And because the patient was awake, I had to watch what I said. No more asking the scrub nurse for a knife or a needle. We developed our own sign language instead.

In a few months I had done over fifty of them and was left to crack on by myself. Back to the man on my table. After hanging a drape like a curtain in front of him to hide my handiwork, I pick up the blade and start to cut, gently dissecting through each individual layer, infiltrating with anaesthetic as I go.

Two of the other consultants wander into theatre to see what I’m up to. If it was any other operation, sweat would start to drip down the back of my legs at the pressure of being watched, but this is a hernia repair.

They are teasing me, trying to put me off my game, but this is my field. They can’t rile me. Not here. Not in my place.

I open up the inguinal canal and everyone peers into the wound.

‘Yes!’ I whisper to myself.

I was right. It’s a direct hernia.

I smile under my mask as I carry on gently teasing out the hernia, pushing it back inside the abdomen where it belonged. The consultants leave to find other trainees to tease.

I ASK THE MAN TO COUGH TO TEST MY REPAIR JOB. NOT EVEN A GLIMMER OF A BULGE. GOD, I’M GOOD

The nurse hands me a sterile mesh that I carefully cut to size, taking care to round the edges of the rectangle so there are no spiky corners, cutting a curve to match the patient’s body, happy in my work. Like dressmaking, I tailor it to fit his groin. After a quick check on the patient to make sure he’s OK, I suture in the mesh with a Prolene thread. It’s bright blue and has a memory. It wants to curl up like it did in the suture packet, so I run it through my hand a few times to straighten it out. To coax it to behave. And then I tack the mesh to the underlying tissue with a simple running stitch, to keep it in place, before burying the knot.

I ask the man to cough to test my repair job. Not even a glimmer of a bulge. God, I’m good.

And then, my favourite bit. Closing up the wound. I carefully sew the layers of the canal back together. I start at either end, moving my way towards the middle so they are perfectly aligned.

I finish with the skin, pushing the needle just under the surface with a clear suture, taking little bites that can’t be seen. The skin comes together with the smallest of humps in the middle which I know will heal as a beautiful, flat scar. My craftsmanship will soon be hidden by his pubic hair, but that’s not the point. I remove the drapes. The scrub nurse hands me a large wet swab to clean the skin before applying a surgical dressing. It must be parallel to the wound. Nothing else is acceptable. I lower my mask, approach the end of the bed, and tell him it’s all over.

He gives me a grin and says, ‘Thank you, nurse.’

THE UNWINDING CARDS

A collection of 100 postcards, taken from Jackie Morris’s enchanting collection, The Unwinding and Other Dreamings which was longlisted for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal 2019. The front of each postcard features a painting from the book, or a story, with a spell, quote or charm on the back. Including new words and paintings, these cards can be used to spread beauty and peace among the people you love and care about.

POSTCARDS ARE CURIOUS OBJECTS. THEIR LIVES CAN BE LONG OR SHORT AND THEIR BREVITY IS A PART OF THEIR CHARM

No one knew where they came from, these fish who, with smooth movements, filled the sky

Drawn by the moon’s light, they came

She stole the colour from the land, the brighter for his coat to glow

Rest, safe in the arms of the one who loves. Dream, while the moth flies

She whispered into the ear of the dreaming bear. If I said that my love for you was like the spaces between the notes of a wren’s song, would you understand?

Would you perceive my love to be, therefore, hardly present, almost nothing?

Or would you feel how my love is wrapped around by the richest, the wildest song? And, if I said my love for you is like the time when the nightingale is absent from our twilight world, would you hear it as silence? Nothing? No love? Or as anticipation of that rich current of music, which fills heart, soul, body, mind?

And, if I said my love for you is like the hare’s breath, would you feel it to be transient? So slight a thing? Or would you see it as life-giving? Wild?

A thing that fills the blood, and sets the hare running?

Truth: The Dreams of Bears

Owls kept watch over the calm sea

S N O W M O O N

ide by side beneath the full moon

orthward they moved ver the skin of snow here the white bear walked, ade music as their feet touched n the crisp, frozen surface n the skin of the ice, otes crystal clear in the sharpness of cold.

Snowmoon

Badger loved his red teapot

Find The Unwinding Cards on page 73

© Jay Armstrong

LIVE!

In 1972, when Robert Elms was thirteen years old, he saw The Jackson 5 play live at a gig that changed his life. As a result of the ‘divine delirium’ he experienced, Robert has spent the best part of 40 years attending music events in an endless pursuit for that same height of pleasure. Live! is the memoir of a life lived through live music, a musing on why music matters and how there can never be anything quite like the live experience.

It all began with ABC.

Because everything is now recorded in the know-it-all ether, I can tell you that this event took place on Sunday 12th November 1972, which makes me thirteen, a year younger than Michael. He was part of the coolest collection of singing siblings on earth (please don’t dare mention the Osmonds). I was a pupil in form 3B at Orange Hill Grammar School for boys in Burnt Oak, which happened to be a twentyminute bus ride away from Wembley, where The Jackson 5 were appearing at the still pompously, pre-woke Empire Pool.

Somebody, probably Danny Stern who had an older brother with a bass guitar, went along to Wembley, as was the way in those days, and bought four tickets from the Box Office to see The Jackson 5’s first ever British tour and my first ever live gig. Four third form herberts let loose on a Sabbath night.

I came from a Tamla household. My two elder brothers had a pretty good collection of singles, usually inscribed with the name Reg on the labels so that they could be reclaimed at parties, and they were almost all either soul or reggae. Detroit’s finest dominated and pale skinned pop music didn’t get a look in. As far as albums went it was compilations; This Is Soul, the deep Atlantic one with the jigsaw sleeve, Tighten Ups for the latest ska and rocksteady from Jamaica and of course Motown Chartbusters Volumes 1-6 inclusive, including The Jackson 5 and Junior

Walker and The All Stars, who were the support act at the Wembley show.

I immediately started telling people I was really going to see Junior Walker, whose ‘Roadrunner’ was a particular favourite of mine, which proves that I was a pretentious poseur from a very early age. Saying you prefer the support act has always been a hipster’s trick. But of course, truth be told, I was super-excited to see some cartoon characters come alive.

The idea that famous musicians are real flesh and blood human beings was still hard to comprehend. In the way that school kids find it difficult to imagine their teachers with lives away from the classroom or the staff room, until they see them drinking and smoking in the pub on the last day of term, so pop stars existed only on Top of the Pops. And given that The Jackson 5 were also animations, it made their sudden appearance just up the road from the Blackbirds pub where my parents would occasionally stop for a pint and a port and lemon, even more miraculous.

WEARING THE CORRECT ATTIRE FOR A CONCERT HAS BEEN A PARAMOUNT CONCERN EVER SINCE, TARTAN FOR ROD, BONDAGE FOR THE PISTOLS, ALWAYS A WHISTLE AT RONNIE’S

Yet here I was putting on my best clobber, including my maroon shirt with the lollipop lapels, my new stripy tank-top and my channel seam trousers with the French flare, to go and see them. In person, in real life. Live.

Wearing the correct attire for a concert has been a paramount concern ever since, tartan for Rod, bondage for the Pistols, always a whistle at Ronnie’s. Getting dressed up to party down is a big part of the build-up to an event, a statement of intent, but on this night, it seemed even more important because of course there would be girls present. Going to an all-boys’ school, with only brothers at home, meant that the proximity of females of a similar age was a rare and terrifying treat and they had to be treated to my most fashionable garms. Going to gigs was already sexy.

Quite why I thought anybody would notice me, a skinny ginger kid in a crowd of thousands I have no idea, but I can still feel the visceral rush, the tsunami of sound ricocheting around that big echoing hangar as the audience whipped themselves into a frenzy. I don’t think anybody noticed Junior Walker either, including me, because it was all about

those five funky Jackson boys. There was an MC helping to foment the fervour, but it didn’t take much to get this particular crowd going, an excitable cross section of north-west London’s first truly multi-cultural generation. Black and white unite and scream.

The loudest crowd noise ever recorded in the UK came from just over the road at Wembley Stadium, for a women’s international hockey match in the 1970s, with a higher decibel count than Concorde in full flight. The girls can certainly make some noise. We used to go as a gang of local lads and stand outside the stadium for those hockey matches, just to hear the hormones at work and get a glimpse of the young ladies in a state of high excitement. But to be in amongst this maelstrom of teenage pandemonium was somewhere between exhilarating and terrifying.

I was used to the crush and rush of football; I’d been going to games with mates from about the age of ten or eleven and could navigate my way round the often unruly and occasionally downright dangerous terraces of London’s ramshackle grounds. If you’ve been to Cold Blow Lane and lived to tell the tale you already feel battle-hardened. But this was different, suddenly I was deep in the independent republic of Teenlandia, where grown-ups played no part and juvenile rules applied.

THREE MINUTES OF DIVINE OR MAYBE DIABOLICAL DELIRIUM. THAT WAS THE MOMENT IT ALL BEGAN

The girls were vocally ferocious, singing, chanting, screaming, some waving banners, many professing undying love for Michael, Marlon or Jermaine. But it was the boys present, although outnumbered and certainly out shouted, who were throwing the funky shapes, doing their best Soul Train impressions, flares flapping furiously, legs spinning, arms weaving as the DJ played Motown classics between sets. Boys at gigs like to get physical, from mosh pits to pogoing, they make their presence known with movement and motion. Me, I stood and watched, transfixed by the carnival of the crowd.

Michael, already the star, was somewhere between a phenomenon and an automaton, a marvel, and in retrospect perhaps a tragedy. I actually remember very little of the concert, it was a beautiful musical blur, but I distinctly recall the moment. I have no idea where it came in the set, but it was one of those frozen in time fragments, which I can still summon at will. That brief pause between numbers, when a sharp, expectant silence reigns and the five up on stage were all potential kinetic energy, the audience all ‘what comes next’ anticipation.

And then it happens; Jermain’s bass swoops and Michael’s afro bobs down in perfect time to the opening chord and that introductory boom boom boom boom b-boom and immediately everybody present can name that tune in one. A roar fills the air and a whoosh of unfettered pleasure sweeps through the mass of people present. A collective outpouring, a communal exaltation, orgasmic and fantastic. ABC, as easy as do-re-mi, as perfect as anything I’ve ever witnessed up until that point in my tiny little life. Three minutes of divine or maybe diabolical delirium. That was the moment it all began.

PLAYING TO LOSE

In this intimate memoir Ariel Anderssen charts her journey from a strict religious upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness to her current position as one of the most widely recognised BDSM performers in the world. Her route between the two includes a period as a wretchedly miserable, teenage political activist, in ashamed denial about her inconveniently submissive sexuality, a phase touring with a Christian theatre group, and accidentally discovering a talent for posing for art nude photography as she tries to drum up some cash.

This surprising and unconventional career path led her to a life-altering introduction to BDSM-themed erotic artwork and a whole world she never imagined existing.

On this second visit to Camden, I was spending the afternoon with a painter who’d had the idea to do some designs on my body with UV paint, and then to film me, wearing the completed design, dancing under UV light so that all that would be visible would be his artwork. That sounded great to me, and Malcolm, the painter, a round, jovial man in his fifties, made me feel immediately comfortable. He chatted companionably as he began painting colour onto my body. We discovered that we lived within walking distance of each other’s flats; although his, as I later discovered, had the luxury of multiple rooms.

He took some lovely images and experimental video footage. It was tremendous to be dancing again, even though it was only the improvised movement that my injured back could cope with. And before I could quite believe it, our two hours were over. I was sorry; it had been fun and I liked Malcolm.

Malcolm then did a surprising, and very welcome thing. He was heading to an exhibition that evening, near to Waterloo. He asked if I’d like to go along; he had friends who were exhibiting their work there, and I might enjoy it. I’d never been to an art exhibition, other than the Tate Gallery with my parents. It sounded like exactly the sort of thing a professional, city-dwelling model would do – I agreed immediately. It was only 6 p.m., and the gallery wouldn’t be opening until 8, so Malcolm suggested going to get dinner somewhere nearby. My share of the meal would probably cancel out a lot of what I’d earned that day, but since moving to London I’d rarely gone out for dinner and it seemed like the most glamorous possible way to wrap up an afternoon of modelling.

We went for pizza, where we continued to talk happily throughout the meal. And at the end, he surprised and delighted me by insisting on paying the bill. This is not, by the way, and in case you were wondering, a preamble for my announcing that he suddenly turned into a murderer, sex pest or similar. He just paid for my meal. Almost no one outside my family had ever done that for me before. And it struck me that I’d just spent some entirely pleasant social time with a man who was the age of my parents. This seemed incredibly unlikely and remarkable to me. These days, because of my job, I’m used to having close friends in their fifties, sixties, seventies and even eighties. But at the time it was new, and felt extraordinary. So off we went, my generous employer and I, to the exhibition, which was being held in a hip, undercroft area beneath Waterloo station. Malcolm guided me through the door into the gallery. And quite unexpectedly, my world changed, irrevocably and forever.

ALL MY FANTASIES WERE LAID OUT BEFORE ME IN THIS GALLERY. IT WAS OVERWHELMING

The first thing I saw was a bronze statue of a woman. She was nude, kneeling, and her hands were tied behind her. Seeing it felt like an electric shock. I was stunned. And I immediately felt horribly visible, as though everyone in the crowded gallery would be able to see the effect it had had on me. And as the first of the shock wore off, I realised that it wasn’t the only statue. There was a series of them, and every single one included some kind of bondage. One figure was bent at the waist, secured in a set of stocks. One was on all fours, with a collar around her neck and cuffs on her wrists and ankles. What on earth, I wondered, frozen, was I looking at? It was like a mirror, reflecting the inside of my mind back at me. All my fantasies were laid out before me in this gallery. It was overwhelming.

Malcolm had noticed nothing of this, having spotted a friend of his. He introduced me to Ray, another artist who’d also organised the event. He was polite and friendly, but I was wildly distracted. Who’d made these sculptures? Were there any more in here? I excused myself, and walked further into the gallery. And there, on a wall, was a collection of framed sepia-toned photographs, hanging all together and clearly the work of the same artist. And just like the sculptures, they all depicted women. One picture was a back view of a woman bent over what looked like a church pew. In the foreground was a whip, lying menacingly on a table. Dear God. Another depicted a woman caught in the act of lowering her Victorianstyle bloomers. In another, a woman knelt in profile, glancing up anxiously towards the camera. It was like seeing my dreams brought to life in front of me, in artistic form. I felt hot, and giddy, and utterly transfixed. If there was art like this, I wasn’t alone, I realised. It’s hard to explain how much that meant to me. Someone had made these images, and these figurines. And whoever they were, they must, at least on some level, be like me.

I’ve heard some Christians talk about their experience of meeting God, of having a conversion experience. I never related to it, though I didn’t doubt their sincerity. But, in recalling what it was like for me that night in the gallery under Waterloo station – the sense of peace; the hope of not being alone and strange after all, in the way that I’d feared all these years – I realise that what they describe doesn’t sound dissimilar. Once, as a confused sixteen-year-old, I’d had a sexual experience when I thought I was looking for a spiritual one. And looking at this work that was designed to be sexual, I had what felt like a spiritual awakening. I was part of something. And whatever that was, it was here in this room with me.

THE WONDERFUL, ARRESTING DARKNESS OF THE WORLD HE’D CREATED IN HIS SEPIA-TONED PRINTS

The people who’d made it were in the room too, though I didn’t know it. Ray, the organiser, suddenly appeared next to me. I hoped he hadn’t read my facial expression. I don’t know what it would have told him.

‘Do you like this work?’ he asked, indicating the sepia prints. ‘The photographer is sitting at a table over there; he’d like to meet you.’

He was here? And I could meet him? We’d only been in the gallery twenty minutes. I was going from having no idea that art like this existed to meeting the artist who’d created the most electrifying work that I’d seen in my entire life, all in a dizzyingly short period of time. Giddily, I followed Ray over to where a tall man in his sixties, wearing purple-

tinted glasses and black nail polish, was sitting. He stood up to greet me. And just like that, I met China Hamilton, one of the best-established and most loved creators of BDSM-themed, erotic artwork in the UK.

‘What did you think of my work?’ he enquired courteously once I was sitting opposite him at his table, and Ray had absented himself again.

‘I liked it very much!’ I exclaimed, redundantly. I think that my feelings about his work were written all over my face. I’d never felt so young and ill-equipped to deal with a situation in my life. I didn’t know how to talk about photography. I certainly didn’t know how to talk about the wonderful, arresting darkness of the world he’d created in his sepiatoned prints. I literally did not have the vocabulary. I had never heard the term ‘BDSM’. I’d never had my own private computer, so I’d never tried to search out anything relating to my interests. I’d been sure that I was alone. There hadn’t seemed any point.

‘You’re very beautiful. Would you like to model for me?’ asked China, blessedly far more comfortable in this arena than I, and not, as far as I could tell, in the grip of an overwhelming cocktail of unexpected emotions.

Of course, I said yes. So we chose a date in a couple of weeks’ time, and he invited me to stay at his house in Suffolk overnight, since he preferred to shoot after dark. Like a vampire, I thought later that evening, looking over his work at the gallery again, but this time, imagining myself in the pictures, in place of the models I was looking at. My conversation with China had only been brief, but he’d made mention of a ‘BDSM scene’ in London; from the sound of things there was a whole network of people who knew each other, were into similar things to China, and who organised social events.

MY FIRST EXPERIENCE OF BEING TIED UP WAS NOT AT ALL WHAT I’D EXPECTED

It seemed quite unbelievable, but as Malcolm and I shared a taxi back to our respective flats later that night, he corroborated the story. In fact, there was an erotic life-drawing class that ran every week, within walking distance of my home, and they did bondage-themed classes. I could work with them if I liked. And, as I confided with excitement that I was going to work with China Hamilton, Malcolm asked if I’d like to come over to his flat the following week for dinner, and to do a short shoot to try out some bondage so that I wouldn’t be a complete beginner when I got to Suffolk. Thank goodness I said yes. Because my first experience of being tied up was not at all what I’d expected.

Find Playing to Lose on page 69

CAIN’S JAWBONE by Torquemada

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WOMEN WHO WON

Do you know who was the first woman elected to run a country? The youngest woman to become head of government? The first Black female candidate to seek nomination for the US presidency? Author and former political journalist Ros Ball thinks it’s high time for these women who helped shape our world to become household names.

Women Who Won features 70 extraordinary women from the last 100 years: politicians from around the globe who fought for election in a man’s world – and won. It includes well-known figures such as Kamala Harris, Jacinda Ardern and Golda Meir, as well as lesser-known women including Georgina Beyer, the first trans woman to be elected to parliament; Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, former president of Iceland and the first woman democratically elected to be president; and Yulia Tymoshenko, the first woman to become prime minister of Ukraine. This book, illustrated throughout with original, full-colour portraits by artist Emmy Lupin, brings them at last to the fore.

Georgina Beyer n e W Ze ALA nd

Georgina Beyer was the first trans woman in the world elected to be a member of parliament in 1999

When Georgina Beyer won her seat in the New Zealand parliament it was reported as a surprising result because her constituency of Wairarapa is a conservative rural electorate, but she modestly said of her constituents, ‘It’s less of a reflection on me but a wonderful reflection on them.’

Born in 1957 in Wellington, Georgina is of Māori descent and was assigned male at birth. She left school at sixteen to pursue acting and in her twenties became a part of the Wellington gay nightclub scene as a singer and drag-queen performer.

Georgina was forced out of mainstream society and said of her community, ‘Many of us ended up down in the street sex industry scene, on the fringes of society, utterly marginalised. I’ve been brutalised and exploited; I’ve been pack raped. I’ve had to endure that kind of thing and it either kills you or it doesn’t.’

Georgina described her sex reassignment surgery in 1984 as a liberating experience. After that she forged a successful career as an actress, earning a nomination for the New Zealand film and television awards for best actress in 1987.

Georgina moved to Carterton, a farming area in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand, where she worked as a radio host and social worker aiming to improve the lives of rural children. Her activism put her on the path to politics and she was elected to the district council for the Labour Party in 1993. She was the first Māori to

serve on that council and consulted with local Iwi (people) on behalf of the government for the first time in nearly 100 years. She was elected Carterton mayor in 1995, making her the first trans woman mayor in the world. She went on to win a seat in parliament and was sworn in on 10 December 1999.

In her maiden speech Georgina acknowledged her status as the first trans MP, and New Zealand’s role as a world leader, saying, ‘We need to acknowledge that this country of ours leads the way in so many aspects. We have led the way for women getting the vote. We have led the way in the past, and I hope we will do so again in the future in social policy and certainly in human rights.’

Georgina spent eight years in government. She was integral in passing the Prostitution Reform Bill in 2003, which decriminalised prostitution and promoted the welfare and safety of sex workers. Her speech citing her own experience of sex work was met by thunderous applause and is said to have changed three MPs’ minds, securing the majority needed to pass the bill.

During her political tenure, Georgina championed LGBT+ causes, including legalising same-sex civil unions. Outside of politics Georgina and partner Michael Hoggard danced the foxtrot on the popular New Zealand TV show Dancing with the Stars in 2005. After a period of serious ill health Georgina stepped back from politics, declaring, ‘My faith now lies with this younger generation to stand on my shoulders, just as I stood on the shoulders of those who went before me. I’ve done my bit to move the needle, now it’s your turn.’

Iriaka Rātana

n e W Ze ALA nd

Iriaka Rātana was the first Māori woman to be elected to the New Zealand parliament in 1949

Iriaka Te Rio was born in 1905 on the Whanganui River, a sacred place to the Māori people. In her teens Iriaka’s family moved to the Rātana community, the home of the Christian and political ‘Rātana movement’. Its leader was Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana, a visionary who was challenging the New Zealand prime minister and the British crown. The community was made up of members of Māori tribes who felt dispossessed and came to support the organisation which sought redress for land confiscations and breaches of a treaty which guaranteed Māori rights.

Iriaka was a talented musician and performer and played in the band that accompanied Rātana on his tours around the country. In 1925 she married him, becoming his second wife, and had two children, losing one to tuberculosis. After the death of her husband in 1939 she married Matiu Rātana, his son by his first marriage. By then, she was one of the most influential women in the Rātana movement, which had become ever more political, allying itself with the country’s Labour Party.

Together with her second husband she farmed a dairy unit under a Māori land development scheme, and they had six children. When her husband was chosen by the Labour Party to stand as MP for Western Maori in 1945, Iriaka took charge of the farm, milking sixty or more cows and caring for her family of young children.

In 1949 Matiu suffered a serious car accident and died, still only

in his thirties. Despite her grief, her farming responsibilities and being heavily pregnant, Iriaka announced her intention to stand in her husband’s seat. Her decision met with opposition from some Māori who felt it was wrong for a woman to take the role representing the Western Maori electorate. Te Puea Hērangi, a leader of the Tainui people, criticised Iriaka at a large public meeting, condemning the idea that any woman should ‘captain the Tainui canoe’. But Iriaka was selected as the Labour candidate and won the election with a comfortable majority. She gave birth in the weeks after and then entered parliament. She said, ‘As the first woman to represent Māori in Parliament, I aim to represent Māori around the country and their varying needs… I aim to end hopelessness for Māori trapped in a descending spiral of poverty, unemployment and lack of education. I believe that these issues can be solved by a caring department of Māori affairs with Māori welfare officers, and other more specialised organisations such as the Māori Women’s Welfare League.’

Once in parliament she focused on social issues, such as housing for the elderly and recently urbanised Māori youth, education and training for Māori, and redevelopment of the Rātana community. In the 1957 election Iriaka had the highest majority in the country and became an advisor to Prime Minister Walter Nash. Iriaka served in the House of Representatives for twenty years. She had a reputation for being polite and positive, and was respected by both sides of the House. It wasn’t until 1967 that another Māori woman joined her in parliament.

She retired from parliament in 1969, returning to her farm, wearing her gumboots, going to the races and weaving korowai (Māori cloaks). She died in 1981, survived by nine children and many grandchildren.

POWYS MATHERS: AN IMPRESSION

Before Edward Powys Mathers wrote the world’s most difficult literary puzzle Cain’s Jawbone, he was a cryptic crossword creator. Under his pseudonym ‘Torquemada’, his puzzles taunted readers of the Observer for over 15 years. His true identity was only revealed when he died in 1939. As well as earning the reputation for setting the world’s toughest crosswords, Torquemada was also delightfully creative: with many puzzles written in perfectly constructed verse or delivered as mininarratives to their solvers.

Unbound will be re-issuing Torquemada’s best crosswords, originally published in 1942, along with tributes to his life and achievements, one of which is this thoughtful testimonial by his friend and author John Dickson Carr.

One evening only a year ago, I met a man and made a friend. That is my only justification for writing these lines. If it were not so, to write even the briefest memoir of Powys Mathers would be presumptuous in one who knew him for so short a time. Of the poet and the scholar others can speak. But the wit, the punster, the good host and good friend, even the merest acquaintance could testify to the full; for we shall not see his like again.

Nor should any account of him be weighed down by too heavy words. No man was ever so quick to laugh at solemnities or puncture the high flown. I shall always remember Bill Mathers sitting by the open windows giving on the garden, his sleeves rolled to the elbows, a grin on his face and a pun in his head, preparing his own remedy for anyone who pulled a long face even at his own funeral.

It all began, then, with a detective story. This at least can be said with certainty: there has never lived a man with such a wide knowledge

of sensational fiction. Torquemada of the Observer read everything that was being written. Bill Mathers was already familiar with everything that had been written. And he never forgot any of it.

He once said that in his youth he had two great ambitions: to make a perfect epigram, and to be a great detective. The first ambition he achieved a dozen times in an evening, and thought nothing of it; he was usually two jokes ahead of our slower wits. The second ambition he achieved by detecting, with such delight that you could almost hear him think, the crimes in the books, the crimes that were as easy-going as himself.

This mimic world was very real to him. It was not alone that he could tell you offhand the name of Sherlock Holmes’s tobacconist, or why Father Brown did not like hat-pegs. Every exploit of even obscure and halfforgotten detectives was known and docketed, ready to be discussed, with chucking analysis, as though these people lived next door.

THERE HAS NEVER LIVED A MAN WITH SUCH A WIDE KNOWLEDGE OF SENSATIONAL FICTION

Cleek, Ashton Kirk, Martin Hewitt, Gryce, Van Dusen, Thornley Colton, Violet Strange, Sergeant Cuff… how many of those dim detectives can you identify? There were only a few to Torquemada. He sat like a kind of Commissioner in the Scotland Yard of this cloudcuckoo land, gravely shaking his head over mistakes, and uttering words of praise for a bit of smart work. Do you remember that singular affair of the flaming phantom, now? And young Joseph Rouletabille, there: he did a good piece of work by noting the significance of the walking stick in the affair at the Chateau Glandier. So, because I happen myself to be fond of this ghostly Scotland Yard, we would talk on far into the night; until a kind of nostalgia came over us, and we would agree that the golden years of detection were past, and that they produce no such mental giants now as they did in the good old days.

Equally wide was his knowledge of ghost stories, of any tales of the supernatural and the horrific. He could quote page after page of the late M. R. James, that greatest master of the ghost story, who never cracked the whip or goaded the adjective. But his greatest liking, I think, was for the ‘semi-supernatural’ story – the spectral presence induced in all its terrors, only to be explained in a few words at the end. For the more mystic kind of ghost stories, the fog of words and the esoteric dreaminess, he had little use. He had (be it repeated) that strong sceptical intelligence which will have no truck with high-fallutin’. So he

much preferred even his bogles to have their origin in a creaky shutter or a skilful trick. He was fond of those little-known tales of William Hope Hodgson, the Adventures of Carnacki the Ghost-Finder; the earlier stories of L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace; anything of what may be called a supernatural wangle. This attitude, I believe, is held by some connoisseurs of ghost stories to be rank blasphemy. Torquemada had read so much that he knew better.

These two things, the love of epigrams and the love of puzzles formed the essential texture of his mind. They always went together. He could turn a joke into a problem and a problem into a joke. The effect of his death can be measured by the floods of letters which poured into the Observer from those who were accustomed to solve his crossword puzzles. But one point in particular strikes out of them at anyone who has heard Bill Mathers talk at ease by the fireside. Every writer, however gropingly, expresses the same thing. He was Torquemada. They knew him. There was personal loss in this. And so they did know him; for even in a printed page, infusing life into it always, was the essential man.

THE

CROSSWORD PUZZLES

He constructed his puzzles exactly as he talked. A pun or a play on words lurked always round the corner. The construction of those puzzles was with him a word-patience, a sort of game, at which his nimble intelligence was always playing; and one of his great enthusiasms, as all of us will remember, was for games of all kinds. The game might be so complicated that nobody could understand it: in fact, it frequently was. But, whether little cardboard figures were pushed about a board, doing heaven knows what, or whether we ourselves floundered through intricate manoeuvres of pencil and paper, he infused into it a gusto and richness of wit which made even the cardboard figures come alive. There was one of these figures, called Aunt Cora, of whom he was particularly fond – full biographical details supplied – and another named Snitkin. If there were no games he would invent them. And he invented them with the ease with which he created that fine old firm of publishers, Messrs. Crippen and Wainewright.

These are trifles. Possibly they should not be included here. But they are the essential parts of memory, the pictures that remain, of that vast, complex, gentle personality. His friends see familiar rooms:

EFFECT OF HIS DEATH CAN BE MEASURED BY THE FLOODS OF LETTERS WHICH POURED INTO THE OBSERVER FROM THOSE WHO WERE ACCUSTOMED TO SOLVE HIS

Torquemada reading aloud a duel scene (‘Kirby or devil!’); Torquemada, in carpet slippers, looking for a place to hand a picture of Edgar Allen Poe; Torquemada brewing Christmas punch and commenting, about a detective story in which the victim is killed in a falling lift, that the real title should have been, ‘A Drop too Much’.

The chuckle is always there. He loved reading aloud, and hearing others read aloud. It might be serious – he had a fine voice for verse – but more frequently it was parody, and his tastes ranged from Ben Travers’s broad slapstick to the poisoned darts of Max Beerbohm. Savanarola Brown, so barbed and edged that only the intelligence laughed, was not more welcome to him than an account of Romeo and Juliet delivered in broad East Side Americanese.

It began, then, with a detective story. I went one evening to Park Hill Road to talk of such things, and made a friendship which it would only be ironical to describe as lifelong. Other of his friends, perhaps, are more fitted than I to describe the character of which I knew only one side. But that one side would have sufficed twenty men. It glowed and was alive with unforgettable kindliness. It was, and is, enough.

JOHN DICKSON CARR London, 1939

Find The Cain’s Jawbone Book of Crosswords on page 72

Edward Powys Mathers

UNDERNEATH THE ARCHERS

‘As hilarious, charming, eccentric, informative, addictive and delightful as the show itself’ Stephen

Fry

Much-loved radio drama The Archers has been at the heart of British life for over seventy years, and for more than three decades, scriptwriter Graham Harvey was the man behind the show’s farming storylines, writing over 600 episodes and crafting some of its most memorable moments: the Great Flood, the trashing of Brian’s GM crop, the loss of the Grundy family farm.

In Underneath The Archers, Graham interweaves personal memories of these moments with extracts from the scripts he created, offering behind-the-scenes details of how key characters and plotlines were developed, keeping pace with the real changes taking place in village and farm life. Read on below for an extract from the book.

I’d been writing scripts for the show for more than twelve years when Tony Parkin decided to retire as Farm Minister for Ambridge, or ‘agricultural story editor’ as the BBC liked to call him. Though there were tedious parts to the job, I reckoned this would be an opportunity to influence the direction of the show.

As a scriptwriter I’d been devising a lot of my own farming stories, though most had to start and finish in my own week of episodes. If I took on the agriculture job, there’d be the chance to develop bigger stories across all four Ambridge farms. The other writers

would be feeding in story ideas too, but for the four farming families at least, my stories were likely to get priority.

By this time, Vanessa Whitburn was running the programme. I’d worked with her during her earlier time on the show when she’d been an assistant producer. Since then, she’d spent a year as producer of the TV series Brookside before returning to Ambridge as editor. I knew she’d enjoyed the farming stories in my scripts. I assured her that if I were agricultural editor, there’d be a lot more stories like that in the show.

She had one reservation. I’d made no secret of my support for organic farming so, not unreasonably, she wanted my word I wouldn’t try to use the show as a propaganda vehicle. As she reminded me, there were BBC impartiality rules to be considered.

I’ll be honest, this always seemed like a nonsense to me. Political impartiality, of course, but in a drama about farming? The Archers’ success had been built on creating a fictional community of small, family farms. It was the BBC itself that helped undermine this structure by using the programme to promote the government’s rural agenda, which was to encourage the spread of large, mechanised farms, where human skills were replaced by machines and chemicals. Where was BBC impartiality when characters were reciting Ministry of Agriculture press releases?

I didn’t actually say this to Vanessa, though. I assured her that of course there’d be no bias for or against any particular farming system. We already had an organic farm in the series, Bridge Farm, run by Pat and Tony Archer. Obviously, they’d stick up for organics, but I’d make sure there were equally robust arguments on the other side from farmers like Brian Aldridge, who practised what he liked to call ‘scientific farming’.

To be honest, I was perfectly happy with these rules. Technical arguments on organic versus conventional agriculture didn’t make great drama. Hopefully I’d find rather more interesting ways of challenging the farming status quo.

Brookfield Farm was the key to everything. Godfrey Baseley had set up Dan and Doris at the centre of the drama, the very heart of the community. Two generations on, Ruth and David Archer were now running the place. While there might be other dramas happening in their lives, given the opportunity, I was determined to evoke the spirit of that 1950s fireside whenever we went to Brookfield.

Here’s an early attempt. It’s a sunny Sunday morning in June and Ruth’s having a lazy breakfast. It’s her thirty-fourth birthday and later, in the field, there’s hay to be made.

INT. BROOKFIELD KITCHEN. SUNDAY 10AM

DAVID You’ve got butter on your chin.

RUTH Oh have I? Look I don’t want to rush you, but it’s ten o’clock.

DAVID So?

RUTH Should you go and see what the troops are up to?

DAVID I know what they’ll be up to.

RUTH Yeah?

DAVID Eddie’ll be swearing at the baler because he can’t get it set up right. It’ll take him at least an hour.

RUTH Tricky job though.

DAVID And all the time Bert’ll be telling him what he ought to be doing. Which’ll slow up the process even more.

RUTH Isn’t it about time we gave up small bales?

DAVID We don’t make that many.

RUTH Even so is it worth all the hassle?

At this point nine-year-old Pip enters with a birthday card she’s made for her mum. It’s a picture of her daddy feeding hay to the farm’s Hereford bull. Her picture includes a small hay bale. Following parental compliments on her artistic skills, Pip exits the scene.

DAVID Pip’s got it right about small bales too. Sometimes they’re more convenient.

RUTH You sure it’s not just nostalgia?

DAVID As if.

RUTH Golden days of childhood. Tea out in the hay field. All that stuff.

DAVID Listen, all I remember is the damn stuff getting down my pants and itching like billy-o.

RUTH Big event, wasn’t it? In those days. Hay-making.

DAVID Even more so in Dad’s time. You want to hear him going on about it when he was a lad. Pre-silage that was. In those days it was massive.

RUTH I suppose.

DAVID Like getting ready for the D-Day landings. Gran used to bake for over a week beforehand.

RUTH For all the casual workers?

DAVID On a Sunday afternoon they’d have had half the village up here. Anyone capable of lifting a bale.

RUTH And now it’s all gone.

DAVID It won’t come back either. We’re an urban culture these days.

RUTH Never mind, we’ve still got the old team. Bert, Eddie and Tom.

Later in the same episode there’ll be a scene in the hay field. Bert and Eddie will be arguing about how to fix the broken-down baler. The talk will be about obscure baler parts like knotters, tensioners and guide rings. Young Tom Archer will wonder why they’re relying on such an antique machine. David will be trying to stack bales in case of a sudden shower, even though there’s not a cloud in the sky.

At this point Ruth will drive the Land Rover into the field, bringing lunch. Everything will stop and there’ll be pasties, pizza slices, sandwiches and cans of beer among the sweet-smelling hay bales. Chatter and laughter will spill across the meadow. Community spirit will break out again in Ambridge and 5 million listeners will know that all’s well in the other England, just as 15 million did in the 1950s.

I loved days like this in Ambridge. A birthday, a family event, a moment aside from the unending engagement with nature that is life on the land. To me it seemed the perfect existence. Firstly, to belong, to be part of a close community, and at the same time to join in the great, all-encompassing adventure that is farming. In reality I don’t suppose it’s ever quite like this, but it was the life I imagined through my surrogate family at Brookfield.

While the writers and producers were constantly dreaming up momentous new stories, fresh tribulations to heap on the family, I was content, for the most part, to tell small tales of laughter and sorrow. It seemed to me the daily events this family encountered added up to a big enough drama in their own right.

Find Underneath The Archers on page 70

IN PURSUIT OF A MAN

Rosemary Mac Cabe was always a serial monogamist – never happier than when she was in a relationship or, at the very least, on the way to being in one. But in her desperate search for ‘the one’ – from first love to first lust, through a series of disappointments and the searing sting of heartbreak – she learned that finding love might mean losing herself along the way. Her memoir, This Is Not About You, is a life story in a series of love stories, and through humorous anecdotes imbued with her brilliant signature wit, she explores just how much she was willing to sacrifice for her happy ending.

Below, Rosemary shares the top eight lessons she’s learned from two decades of desperately, determinedly and doggedly pursuing the love of a man.

This much I’ve learned…

1. This is not the best use of your time

Love, connection, affection, physical touch – they are all, arguably, vital, essential, affirming parts of human existence. But they are not all that there is, and they are not exclusively available in the arms of a romantic partner. There are myriad ways to explore and enjoy this one wild and precious life we’re given, a wisdom I would give anything to be able to impart on my younger self. Just think of all the things I could have done with all that time I wasted on ungrateful – and frankly, undeserving – men.

2. Give unto others…

Sure, as you would like them to give unto you, but also: no more than they are willing to give to you. Don’t bestow a single blow job upon the partner who ‘just can’t seem to enjoy’ giving head in return. A relationship is about an equal give and take; it’s not about one partner giving while the other one takes.

3. Generosity is not always about money

There are plenty of ‘rules’ about who pays for what, and why – but forget about money, because the worst person in the world is the person who is miserly not with their wallet but with their time, affection and kindness. The least you can expect from someone you love, and who purports to love you in return, is that they will fill, rather than empty, your cup; that, after you spend time with them, you feel more, rather than less. These things may be free, but they are more valuable than a lifetime of free dinners.

4. A puppy is an excellent prop to bring to a negotiation

Everyone loves puppies! And if they don’t love puppies, they’re not worth your time.

5. Pay attention to your partner’s priorities

If, for example, they never have enough money to go to the cinema, or to take you for lunch, but decide to take up sky-diving (an objectively expensive hobby), there is a clear message being relayed, and it is not ‘I love you the way you deserve to be loved’.

6. You deserve to be loved

Yes, you – you. You deserve to be loved. You deserve to be loved when you are depressed and you deserve to be loved when you are angry and you deserve to be loved in your pyjamas, eating ice cream straight from the tub, and you deserve to be loved in whatever way you are able to show up, on any given day. On every given day. You deserve to be loved.

7. Do not take the blame for someone else’s mistakes

After all, the only person whose actions we can control is ourselves –and maybe a tiny baby, for a very short period of their lives, and even then there’s an unpredictability about it all that is quite unrelaxing.

Seriously, though: don’t apologise if someone stands you up, then asks why you didn’t call to make sure they were on their way; don’t accept it if you are told that your behaviour drove their jealousy, or their aggression (or both); don’t allow yourself to feel guilt or shame for someone else’s choices.

8. Sex doesn’t end with the male orgasm

Share this one with all your friends. Tell your daughters and your little sisters and your friends’ daughters and their little sisters, too. But before you do any of that, tell your sons. They’ll thank you when they’re older.

THE DECADE IN TORY

RUSSELL JONES

A Sunday Times Bestseller

‘Substantial, meticulous, depressing, hilarious, rude … like flipping through a grotesque highlights album of the country’s downfall’

Dominic Minghella

‘A wickedly funny, furious, fast-paced romp through a decade of governmental failures’

Rosie Holt

‘Buy it for relatives who read the Daily Mail. It might work as an antidote’

Jemma Forte

A scathing, hilarious, comprehensive and absolutely true account of the last ten years of Tory rule

Available in paperback from all good bookshops from 21 September 2023

978-1-80018-281-3

£14.99

Autumn T i tles

July to December 2023

JEREMIAH BOURNE IN TIME

NIGEL PLANER

The first book in a new time-travel fantasy trilogy by the comedy legend and voice of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, Nigel Planer

In modern-day London, Jeremiah lives with his stepdad in a crumbling house in Blackfriars. While working on the building’s restoration, he opens the lid of an old biscuit tin and is immediately propelled back in history: he’s still at home, but suddenly it’s 1910. How did he get here, and how can he get back to his own time? His activities have alerted a community of time-travellers from the future who set out to capture and investigate him. But who can Jeremiah trust?

This electrifying first instalment of Nigel Planer’s Time Shard Chronicles trilogy will catapult you into a thrilling journey across London and through time.

‘Dazzling and very funny’

Miriam Margolyes

Title: Jeremiah Bourne in Time

Pub date: 06/07/2023

Format: Hardback

Price: £16.99

ISBN: 978-1-80018-248-6

Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

FICTION

Nigel Planer is a British writer and actor. He famously played Neil in the BBC’s The Young Ones, winning a BRIT award for Neil’s hit single ‘Hole in My Shoe’. Nigel is the voice of many Terry Pratchett audiobooks and Discworld games, and in 2010, he hosted the touring arena show of Doctor Who Live. He is the author of eight books and six plays.

@NigelPlaner1

THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU A Menmoir ROSEMARY MAC CABE

A memoir of first love, first lust, first heartbreak – and the many disappointments in between

Rosemary Mac Cabe was always a serial monogamist – never happier than when she was in a relationship. But in her desperate search for ‘the one’ she learned that finding love might mean losing herself along the way.

This Is Not About You is a life story in a series of love stories. About Dan, with the goatee. About Luke, who gave her a split condom. About Francis, who was married… But mostly, it’s about Rosemary, figuring out just how much she was willing to sacrifice for her happy ending.

Title: This Is Not About You

Pub date: 06/07/2023

Format: Paperback

Price: £12.99

ISBN: 978-1-80018-243-1

Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION

Rosemary Mac Cabe is a journalist and writer from Dublin, Ireland. She has written for publications including the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Irish Tatler, IMAGE, Irish Country Magazine, STELLAR and more. Her work was featured in the mental health anthology You, Me & Everyone We Know, published by Inspire Ireland. This Is Not About You is her first book. @RosemaryMacCabe

UNDER THE KNIFE

Life Lessons from the Operating Theatre

LIZ O’RIORDAN

A unique medical memoir: the inspiring story of a woman who experienced breast cancer both as a surgeon and as a patient

Dr Liz O’Riordan is a breast cancer surgeon who has battled against social, physical and mental challenges to practise at the top of her field.

But this memoir is more than just an eye-opening look at the realities of training to be a female surgeon in a man’s world. In addition to this highpowered, high-pressured role, Liz faced her own breast cancer diagnosis, severe depression and suicidal thoughts, in tandem with commonplace sexual harassment and bullying. By revealing how she coped when her life crashed around her, she demonstrates there is always hope.

‘Gave me a real insight into what it takes to become a surgeon, and how hard it is to be a breast cancer patient when you know far too much about it’ Jane

Garvey

NON-FICTION

Title: Under the Knife

Pub date: 06/07/2023

Format: Paperback

Price: £12.99

ISBN: 978-1-80018-241-7

Rights: World English, Audio

Liz O’Riordan trained for twenty years until she made it as a consultant breast surgeon in 2013. After being diagnosed with breast cancer, she had to retire in 2018. She went on to write The Complete Guide to Breast Cancer: How to Feel Empowered and Take Control to give women answers to all the questions she had as a patient. She also hosts the podcast Don’t Ignore the Elephant. @Liz_ORiordan

42

The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams

KEVIN JON DAVIES (ED.)

A publishing event: hundreds of artefacts from the archive of Douglas Adams, printed for the first time

When Douglas Adams died in 2001, he left behind 60 boxes full of notebooks, letters, scripts, jokes, speeches and even poems. Douglas was as much a thinker as he was a writer, and these artefacts reveal how his deep fascination with technology led to ideas which were far ahead of their time, including the modern smartphone and ebooks.

42 also features archival material of his most celebrated works –including early scribbles from the development of Doctor Who, Hitchhiker’s and Dirk Gently – as well as projects that never came to fruition.

Douglas’s personal papers, published here for the first time, offer a captivating insight into the mind of one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers and most enduring storytellers.

NON-FICTION

Title: 42

Pub date: 24/08/2023

Format: Hardback

Price: £30.00

ISBN: 978-1-80018-268-4

Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

Following a career in film and television, Kevin Jon Davies directed The Making of Hitchhiker, the 1993 documentary for BBC Video. Adams then invited Davies to art-direct The Illustrated Hitchhiker. Since then, Davies has contributed to a number of Adams-related projects, including as researcher into Adams’ archives for The Hexagonal Phase (2018), the final radio series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. @kevinjondavies

PLAYING TO LOSE

How a Jehovah’s Witness Became a Submissive BDSM Model

ARIEL ANDERSSEN

Belle du Jour meets The Ethical Stripper, with spanking scenes and an Aga

In this bold and intimate memoir, Ariel Anderssen charts her journey from a strict religious upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness to her current position as one of the most widely recognised BDSM performers in the world. Her route between the two includes a period as a teenage political activist, in ashamed denial about her inconveniently submissive sexuality, a phase touring with a Christian theatre group, and accidentally discovering a talent for posing for art nude photography as she tries to drum up some cash.

This unconventional career path led her to a life-altering introduction to BDSM-themed erotic artwork and a whole world she never imagined existing.

Title: Playing To Lose

Pub date: 24/08/2023

Format: Paperback

Price: £14.99

ISBN: 978-1-80018-260-8

Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION

Ariel Anderssen is a BDSM model with a lifetime’s interest in submission and masochism. Ariel was brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness by her devoutly religious mother. She has a YouTube channel (@ArielsTwilightYears) about ‘how to be a really old model’, and tweets daily about her kinky life. Playing to Lose is her first book.

@ArielAnderssen

UNDERNEATH THE ARCHERS

My Life as an Undercover Agent for Nature

GRAHAM HARVEY

A charming memoir by the environmental campaigner and former agricultural story editor of The Archers – the world’s longest-running drama with over 5 million weekly listeners

Beloved radio drama The Archers has been at the centre of British national life for over seventy years. For more than three decades, Graham Harvey was the man behind its agricultural storylines, writing over 600 episodes and crafting some of the most memorable moments in the show’s history: the Great Flood, the death of Nigel Pargetter, the loss of the Grundy’s farm.

Among the behind-the-scenes details of how key characters and plotlines were developed, and how the show kept up with the rapid pace of change in village life and farming practices, is an exploration of the legacy Harvey hoped to leave behind: could the show play a role in guiding Britain back to planet-saving practices?

NON-FICTION

Title: Underneath The Archers

Pub date: 24/08/2023

Format: Hardback

Price: £18.99

ISBN: 978-1-80018-265-3

Rights: UK & Com ex Canada / Audio

Graham Harvey is best known as being a scriptwriter and agricultural story editor for The Archers for over 34 years. He has worked as a feature writer at Farmers Weekly and a freelance journalist for publications including the Sunday Times and the Guardian. Graham’s first book, The Killing of the Countryside, won the BP Natural World Book Prize for environmental writing. @supercarbon

WOMEN WHO WON

70 Extraordinary Women Who Reshaped Politics

ROS BALL

A beautifully illustrated international collection of women who fought for election in a man’s world... and WON

Did you know that Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka was the first woman in the world to become a democratically elected prime minister? Or that Sylvie Kinigi of Burundi was the first woman to serve as a prime minister in Africa? It is high time these extraordinary women became household names, and this book brings them at last to the fore.

Beautifully illustrated by artist Emmy Lupin, it features wellknown figures, including Kamala Harris, Benazir Bhutto, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Jacinda Ardern and Julia Gillard, alongside lesserknown women who smashed the political glass ceiling, and whose stories are ready to be heard.

Title: Women Who Won

Pub date: 07/09/2023

Format: Hardback

Price: £18.99

ISBN: 978-1-80018-252-3

Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION

Ros Ball is an author and former BBC broadcast journalist who worked for many years on politics in Westminster. In 2017 she published The Gender Agenda, a first-hand account of how boys and girls are treated differently. @rosball

Emmy Lupin is a freelance illustrator from Nottingham, based in London. Her work is often female-focused, with a powerful and positive stance. @emmylupinstudio

THE CAIN’S JAWBONE BOOK OF CROSSWORDS TORQUEMADA

112 vintage crosswords from the ‘Father of the Crossword’ and mastermind behind the viral sensation Cain’s Jawbone

Before Edward Powys Mathers wrote Cain’s Jawbone, the world’s most fiendishly difficult literary puzzle, he was a cryptic crossword creator. Published under his pseudonym ‘Torquemada’, his puzzles would taunt readers for days, and he went on to set cryptic crosswords for the Saturday Westminster and the Observer for 15 years.

As well as earning the reputation for setting the world’s toughest crosswords, Torquemada was also delightfully creative: with many puzzles written in perfectly constructed verse or delivered as mini-narratives. This book contains a selection of Torquemada’s best crosswords and their solutions, as well as two tributes to his life and achievements, including one by his widow, R.C. Mathers.

NON-FICTION

Title: The Cain’s Jawbone Book of Crosswords

Pub date: 21/09/2023

Format: Paperback

Price: £12.99

ISBN: 978-1-78965-166-9

Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

Edward Powys Mathers, also known as Torquemada, introduced the cryptic crossword to the UK in 1924 through the pages of the Observer. His true identity was only revealed when he died in 1939, and this selection of Torquemada’s best crosswords was originally published in 1942.

THE UNWINDING CARDS

JACKIE MORRIS

A collection of 100 postcards featuring artwork and words from Jackie’s best-selling The Unwinding and Other Dreamings

Postcards are curious objects. Their lives can be short, or long, and their brevity is part of their charm.

This box houses 100 beautiful postcards, each featuring a painting, a story or a blessing, all designed with space for you to write, draw or paint a message. Spread beauty and peace among the people you love and care about by sharing these exquisite cards.

‘A quiet masterpiece . . . a love story, a hope story, a story out of time, out of stricture, out of the narrow artificial bounds by which we try to contain the wild wonderland of reality because we are too frightened to live wonderstricken’ Maria Popova, Brain Pickings on The Unwinding

Title: The Unwinding Cards

Pub date: 21/09/2023

Format: Postcard Box

Price: £20.00 + VAT

ISBN: 978-1-80018-267-7

Rights: World English Language

FICTION

Jackie Morris is a writer and artist. She studied illustration at Hereford College of Arts and Bath Academy and has written and illustrated more than fifteen books. The Lost Words, co-authored with Robert Macfarlane, won the Kate Greenaway Medal 2019, and Morris was nominated again for The Unwinding in 2021. She lives in Pembrokeshire. @JackieMorrisArt

THE DECADE IN TORY

The Sunday Times Bestseller: An Inventory of Idiocy from the Coalition to Covid RUSSELL JONES

A scathing, hilarious, comprehensive and absolutely true account of the last ten years of Tory rule

The Decade in Tory is an inglorious and entirely true account of ten years of demonstrable lies, relentless incompetence, serial corruption, abuse of power, dereliction of duty and hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths.

With his signature scathing wit, Russell Jones breaks down the government’s interminable failures year by year. It will leave you wondering: can things get any worse?

‘Substantial, meticulous, depressing, hilarious, rude … like flipping through a grotesque highlights album of the country’s downfall’ Dominic Minghella

Title: The Decade in Tory

Pub date: 21/09/2023

Format: Paperback

Price: £14.99

ISBN: 978-1-80018-281-3

Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION

Russell Jones is a designer, project manager and programmer living in Cheshire. He published a regular breakdown of the government’s regular breakdowns under the hashtag #TheWeekInTory, which was read by around half a million people per week. His sequel, Four Chancellors and a Funeral, will be published by Unbound in 2024. @RussInCheshire

DARK

An A to Z of the Cosmos

JAMES WILKINS

A stylish, full-colour beginner’s guide to key concepts from astronomy

Ever wanted to know more about the Big Bang but didn’t have Brian Cox’s email address? Ever wanted to cry out, ‘What on Earth is a black hole?’ but been afraid you’d be shouting into the abyss? Ever wanted to know how gravity works but never found the book to pull you in?

Well, have no fear: DARK is an easily digestible beginner’s guide to the Universe in a handy A to Z format. What’s more, it is presented in a beautifully designed package – with illustrations and typography by Andreas Brooks – so you’ll want to keep it out on display, dipping in to check exactly when it is that Earth is likely to be engulfed by the furnace of the Sun.

Title: DARK

Pub date: 05/10/2023

Format: Hardback

Price: £25.00

ISBN: 978-1-80018-229-5

Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION

Hailing from Essex but now living in north London with his wife and two daughters, James Wilkins is Executive Creative Director at Manchester City FC, having previously been Creative Director at the award-winning social media publisher JOE.co.uk.

CAIN’S JAWBONE

Deluxe Box Set TORQUEMADA

A limited-edition Deluxe Box Set of Cain’s Jawbone: a viral sensation and the world’s most fiendishly difficult literary puzzle

In 1934, the Observer’s cryptic crossword compiler, Edward Powys Mathers (aka Torquemada), released a novel that was simultaneously a murder mystery and the most fiendishly difficult literary puzzle ever written. The pages have been printed in an entirely haphazard order, but it is possible – through logic and intelligent reading – to sort the pages into the only correct order, revealing six murder victims and their respective murderers.

Cain’s Jawbone has now sold more than half a million copies and been published in twelve languages so far. This Deluxe Box Set is a limited edition which will be hand-numbered and cased in a beautiful, newly designed box.

Title: Cain’s Jawbone: Deluxe Box Set

Pub date: 05/10/2023

Format: Hardback

Price: £25.00

ISBN: 978-1-80018-291-2

Rights: World

FICTION

Edward Powys Mathers (1892-1939) introduced the cryptic crossword to the UK in 1924 through the pages of the Observer. Known as Torquemada, he was acknowledged as a brilliant translator and a critic specialising in crime fiction. In 1934 he published a selection of his puzzles under the title The Torquemada Puzzle Book – the final hundred pages of which contained the novel-cum-puzzle Cain’s Jawbone.

BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW

Or, The Devil’s Skin

ROBERT WYNNE-SIMMONS

An illustrated novelisation of the cult folk horror film, penned by its original screenwriter

Fifty years after the release of the cult folk horror film Blood on Satan’s Claw comes the first official novelisation: a compelling and frightening retelling of the fate of unfortunate villagers sacrificed by their own children as devil worship infiltrates their rural existence.

Written by the film’s original screenwriter, Robert WynneSimmons, and featuring haunting new illustrations by Richard Wells, it is an atmospheric and defining cult classic in the making.

Title: Blood on Satan’s Claw

Pub date: 05/10/2023

Format: Paperback

Price: £12.99

ISBN: 978-1-80018-276-9

Rights: World/Audio

FICTION

Robert Wynne-Simmons is an award-winning British composer, film director and screenwriter whose credits include Blood on Satan’s Claw, Double Piquet, The Outcasts, The Book Tower, Scherzo, The Deluge and Kurtz. Robert’s art, whether it be in music, film direction, writing or theatre, is intended to give to its audience the inspiration to think in new ways.

20 GOTO 10

10101001 Facts About Retro Computers STEVEN GOODWIN

An interactive book of numbers that explores the many facets of retro computers

20 GOTO 10 is the ultimate numerical guide to retro computing, full of forgotten geek lore and incredible facts, including the mysterious numbers which disabled the break key and why a single digit might require seven bytes of memory.

Focusing on the golden age of old computers and the retro games and consoles of the 1908s and 90s, it dives deep into the hardware, software and social history of the era – showing how they’re all linked through numbers.

Title: 20 GOTO 10

Pub date: 19/10/2023

Format: Paperback

Price: £12.99

ISBN: 978-1-80018-274-5

Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION

Steven Goodwin has been involved in computing, science and technology from an early age. He has been a developer, CTO and system architect for companies large and small. As an industry thoughtleader he has written articles for a wide range of publications as well as five books, and has worked as a start-up consultant, keynote speaker and mentor.

LIVE! Why We Go Out ROBERT ELMS

A ringside seat celebration of gig culture and live music by BBC Radio London’s Robert Elms

In 1972 when Robert Elms was 13 years old, he saw The Jackson 5 play live. At some point during the performance, he describes experiencing three minutes of ‘divine delirium’. Unbeknown to him then, this would set him off on a life-long pursuit for that same height of pleasure.

Live! is a memoir of a life lived through live music from pub rock to jazz funk, punk to country. Whether it’s a swooping bass or an unexpected cacophony midset, his anecdotes are immersive and fused with a nostalgia that proves why music really matters, and that there can never be anything quite like the live experience.

Title: Live!

Pub date: 19/10/2023

Format: Hardback

Price: £18.99

ISBN: 978-1-80018-282-0

Rights: World/Audio

NON-FICTION

Robert Elms is an English writer and broadcaster. He was a writer for The Face magazine in the 1980s and is currently known for his longrunning radio show on BBC Radio London which covers everything you need to know about London, from architecture to accents and great music. @RobertElms

YESENI AND THE DAUGHTER OF PEACE

Unbound Firsts Title 2023

SOLANGE BURRELL

Elewa learns that she has Yeseni, a powerful gift. Can she use it to save her kingdom, or the world?

The year is 1748. Elewa lives in a small West African coastal village. Her tribe has been at war for most of her life. She is described as ‘The Daughter of Peace’, and the reconciliation of the kingdom rests on her shoulders.

When she finds out that she has Yeseni – a powerful gift that allows her to see events from any point in time – horrific visions of life on barbaric slave ships begin to come to her. Her oracle encourages her to travel through time but also warns that if she goes, she may never be able to return. Will she choose the past or the present, the greater good of humankind or the peace of her kingdom?

Title: Yeseni and the Daughter of Peace

Pub date: 2 November 2023

Format: Paperback

Price: £12.99

ISBN: 978-1-80018-221-9

Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

FICTION

Solange Burrell grew up in Bristol and then moved to London to study journalism at university. She has worked in HR and as a building surveyor. She currently lives in Canada with her husband. Yeseni and the Daughter of Peace is her first novel. @Journalish

SOUR MOUTH, SWEET BOTTOM

Lessons from a Dissolute Life SIMON NAPIER-BELL

The legendary music impresario tells his life story in a series of mesmerisingly candid vignettes

Sour Mouth, Sweet Bottom is the book Simon Napier-Bell’s fans have always hoped he’d write. His previous bestsellers lifted the lid on the music industry, combining meticulous analysis with unforgettable stories of fame and wild excess, but now, at long last, he’s turned the spotlight on himself.

From a brief spell playing trumpet in the clubs of 1950s Montreal, to co-writing a hit single for Dusty Springfield and managing artists such as the Yardbirds, Marc Bolan, Japan and Wham!, Simon’s memoir is a kaleidoscopic sequence of more than sixty episodes drawn from a truly extraordinary life.

‘Never has anybody had so much fun, remembered it so precisely and made so much sense of it all’

Mark Ellen

NON-FICTION

Title: Sour Mouth, Sweet Bottom

Pub date: 2 November 2023

Format: Paperback

Price: £12.99

ISBN: 978-1-80018-264-6

Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

Simon Napier-Bell has been a film composer, songwriter, record producer and author, but he is best known for having managed various artists including Wham!, who – under his management – the first Western pop group ever to play in communist China. He is the author of four acclaimed books about the music industry, most notably the bestselling Black Vinyl White Powder. @SimonNapierBell

BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW

ROBERT WYNNE-SIMMONS

he first official novelisation of cult classic folk horror film

Written by the film’s original screenwriter Robert Wynne-Simmons and featuring haunting new illustrations by Richard Wells

Also illustrated by Richard Wells…

Blood on Satan’s Claw paperback available from all good bookshops from 5 October 2023

978-1-80018-276-9

£12.99

Also

‘Never

Mark Ellen

Featuring: 42

A publishing event: hundreds of artefacts from the archive of one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers and most enduring storytellers, Douglas Adams, printed for the first time.

Jeremiah Bourne in Time

An electrifying first instalment of Nigel Planer’s Time Shard Chronicles trilogy, a new time-travel fantasy trilogy by the comedy legend and voice of Pratchett’s Discworld.

Under the Knife

A unique medical memoir: the inspiring story of a woman who experienced breast cancer both as a surgeon and a patient.

The Cain’s Jawbone Book of Crosswords

A collection of fiendishly difficult vintage crosswords by the author of the viral sensation Cain’s Jawbone: A Novel Problem.

The Unwinding Cards

A stunning set of 100 postcards featuring artwork and words from Jackie Morris’s best-selling The Unwinding and Other Dreamings.

Live!

A riveting, ringside seat celebration of gig culture and live music by BBC Radio London’s Robert Elms.

www.unbound.com