Vera Lynn
Some Sunny Day

Vera Lynn, ‘The Forces’ Sweetheart’, reveals in her new autobiography how the hardships of her upbringing in London’s East End and her early singing career in working men’s clubs prepared her for gruelling visits to the front line. She is best known for the popular songs We’ll Meet Again and The White Cliffs of Dover, whose nostalgic lyrics had a great appeal to the many people separated from loved ones during the war. In Some Sunny Day, Vera describes her efforts to appear glamorous for the soldiers in the jungles of Burma, despite having to sleep in a grass hut and wash in a bucket. Putting on an evening gown, she would appear covered in mosquito bites to sing for the soldiers. Lynn was appointed an OBE in 1969 and a DBE in 1975. In 2002, at the age of 85, she became the president of the cerebral palsy charity SOS, and earlier this year she made history as the oldest living artist to reach number one in the charts with The Very Best of Vera Lynn. Her autobiography describes her later years as well as the war years. Now 92, Vera Lynn is one of the last surviving major wartime entertainers.

Philippa Gregory
The White Queen

Focusing on one of the most scandalous and intriguing times in British history, The White Queen centres around Elizabeth Woodville, the mother of the Princes in the Tower. Elizabeth Woodville ascended to royalty by virtue of her beauty and rose to the demands of her position. Her two sons become the central figures in a mystery that has confounded historians for centuries: the Princes in the Tower, whose fate remains unknown to this day. The author explores the most famous of unsolved mysteries.

‘Of [Elizabeth] Woodville herself, Gregory makes a fascinating heroine; strong, ambitious, vengeful, beautiful and tinged with more than a hint of witchcraft. Popular history at its best’ – Daily Mail

Salley Vickers
Dancing Backwards

Violet Hetherington has taken the rash step of joining a transatlantic cruise ship to New York to visit Edwin, an old friend. As she makes the six day crossing, she relives the traumatic events that led to her losing Edwin’s friendship, and abandoning her career as a poet, for the safety of marriage and domesticity. Despite her natural reserve, she meets a rich variety of passengers travelling with her who affect her understanding of her own past. Most significantly she meets Dino, the dance host, whose motives in befriending Vi are shady but who teaches her to ballroom dance– and inadvertently helps her to recover from her past.