Jeremy Clarkson
The World According to Clarkson

In The World According to Clarkson, Jeremy Clarkson reveals why it is that:

• too much science is bad for our health

• 70s rock music is nothing to be ashamed of

• hunting foxes while drunk and wearing night-sights is neither big nor clever

• we must work harder to get rid of cricket

• he likes the Germans (well sometimes)

With a strong dose of common sense that is rarely, if ever, found inside the M25, Clarkson hilariously attacks the pompous, the ridiculous, the absurd and the downright idiotic ideas, people and institutions that we all have to put up with at home and abroad, whilst also celebrating the eccentric, the clever and the sheer bloody brilliant. Less a manifesto for living and more a road map to modern life, The World According to Clarkson is the funniest book you'll read this year. Don't leave home without it.

Jeremy Clarkson has presented BBC's Top Gear since 1989, and is his forthright opinions. As well as contributing to most specialist car magazines over the years, Jeremy has a weekly column in The Sun and The Sunday Times, and is the author of four books: Jeremy Clarkson's Motorworld, Clarkson On Cars, Jeremy Clarkson's Hot 100 and Born To Be Riled, a collection of his Top Gear magazine and Sunday Times columns.

Monty Don
My Roots: A Decade in The Garden

I have been on holiday forthe past fortnight. I told everyone that I was going to Norway, which was a surprisingly effective means of closing the conversation down. In fact I stayed at home and gardened, blissfully, all day and every day, not leaving the curtilage for days on end. The weather, of course, was better than Norway, or Barbados for that matter. Perfect.'

Monty Don's weekly dispatches from his Herefordshire garden have been a fixture in the Observer for more than a decade now, and this book is a collection of some of his favourite pieces. By turns intimate, poetic, downto-earth, funny and charming, they express the very particular outlook of a writer for whom gardening and life are one and the same thing.

From Our Own Correspondent is one of the world's most popular programmes. Heard internationally on the BBC World Service and in Britain on BBC Radio 4, it has an audience of millions and has won a string of awards. This book, containing many of the programme's best dispatches from the last fifty years, shows why FOOC, as it is affectionately known, has become such a well-known and much-loved institution. Written by the BBC's army of correspondents and stringers around the world, it contains not only the observations of journalists covering the big news events of the day, but also their personal insights into how people around the world live their lives. As BBC senior correspondent Fergal Keane puts it: 'FOOC is a programme which promotes story-telling rather than story-processing. It is quite simply the best programme we have in news'

With conributions from John Simpson, John Peel, Martin Bell, Gavin Esler, Bridget Kendall, Matt Frei and many more..

Teresa Ransom
Prunella: The Authorised Biography of Prunella Scales

The characters Prunella Scales has played are some of the best-loved - and most diverse - on stage or screen. To some she is Sybil Fawlty, the terror of Torquay; to others a reincarnation of Queen Victoria- or any other of a host of extraordinary women. That she can assume so diverse a range of personalities and make them her own is the cornerstone of a career that has spanned more than five decades. But as Teresa Ransom discovers, it is her own story - her memories and experiences - that makes these characters so memorable and real. Interviews with Prunella's family, including her husband and son, the actors Timothy and Sam West, and collaborators across the years, such as Richard Briers, John Cleese, Geraldine McEwan and Andrew Sachs, provide sparkling anecdotes and further insights. Through this biography a portrait emerges of the intriguing and dedicated woman behind her many familiar masks.