Bob Mortimer is a reluctant comedy hero | Books | Entertainment
Bob’s exuberantly surreal true stories of his younger days give the impression of a popular chap enjoying mischief and mayhem with a gang of loyal friends but, as he explains in his fascinating and often poignant memoir, Vic Reeves rescued him from a life of crushing loneliness when Bob was 25. His father had died in a car accident when More...
Undercover on the trail of the real Villanelles | Books | Entertainment
DRAMA: Jodie Comer as TV assassin Villanelle (Image: ) The phone in my hand buzzed like an angry wasp. I was sitting in an unmarked police car in a north London side street, across from a bustling café. More...
30 years of understanding the famous from Lauren Bacall to Ronnie Corbett | Books | Entertainment
Lauren Bacall insisted on reminiscing about long departed husband Humphrey Bogart (Image: Silver Screen Collection/Getty) Stardom is a fragile and possibly preposterous state of being. “Not a profession,” More...
James Dyson reveals how he gambled his house on revolutionary vacuum cleaner design | Books | Entertainment
James Dyson with one of his handheld vacuums (Image: Franziska Krug/Getty ) The country was mired in a deep and ugly recession in early 1992 when I began looking for money to start manufacturing what would More...
Ian Rankin: How the frustrations of being a special needs parent fuel his writing | Books | Entertainment
Crime author Ian Rankin (Image: PA Images) Though he tends to stay out of politics, Ian, 61, joined broadcaster Jo Whiley, whose sister Frances has a learning disability, in raising fears that vulnerable More...
Kevin Webber: Life is a gift and it’s rude to leave it unwrapped in a dark corner | Books | Entertainment
Kevin Webber (Image: nc) The bitter wind seared the skin on Kevin Webber’s face as he dragged his sledge towards the Arctic circle. In temperatures of minus 50, he had to keep scanning the horizon for More...
Sally Rooney’s return… This time, dreaming of a better world | Books | Entertainment
Alice is a feted novelist whose success drove her to a nervous breakdown so she has abandoned Dublin for a quiet seaside town. Two worlds collide when she embarks upon a tentative and often fraught relationship More...
Unlocking the secrets of the real-life silent witnesses | Books | Entertainment
Sharp end: Richard says his work has made him appreciate life (Image: Getty) As one of the country’s top forensic pathologists, he has investigated more than 23,000 deaths, including those of Princess More...
Has Wallis Simpson been cruelly misjudged by history? | Books | Entertainment
The Duchess of Windsor… Royal love and crisis (Image: Getty) Wallis Simpson has always fascinated me. As a child, I pored over images of her in my granny’s Coronation book from 1937, the year More...
Hitler’s First Hundred Days – How the National Socialists took over Germany | Books | Entertainment
In the 1920s Germany was struggling still over their calamitous (for them) defeat in the First World War. The economy was not booming and there were deep splits between left and right. On January 30, 1933 in More...
