‘A bona fide football man…Whelan should be celebrated’ The Independent

Few figures in British business or sport have enjoyed Dave Whelan’s success. As a footballer he played in all four divisions. As a businessman he created one the country’s leading high street brands. And as chairman of Wigan Athletic he’s taken his club all the way from the Third Division to the Premiership.

Dave’s story is one of ambition, enterprise and tenacity – but also of a fierce loyalty. It begins in wartime Wigan with the Whelans’ desperate struggle to survive. Dave describes the terrifying wasp-like hum of the Luftwaffe; he remembers the deathly winter of 1942, peeing on his hands to stop his fingers from freezing; admits how hunger drove ordinary families to lie, cheat and steal; and relives a remarkable reunion with the father he’d never known – a returning soldier.

In peacetime a boyhood love affair with football leads him to sign with Blackburn Rovers and when national service calls he joins the Army football team, becoming close friends with ‘Busby Babes’ Bobby Charlton and Duncan Edwards.

Then, a vicious tackle in the 1960 FA Cup final spells the twilight of his playing career – but a new dawn in business. Starting as a market trader, he breaks the mould from day one: taking on Boots single-handedly in the Appeal Court; negotiating the sale of his supermarket chain to Ken Morrison – whilst stood at a urinal; and transforming a single tackle shop in Wigan into JJB Sports, the UK’s biggest sports retailer and a £1 billion PLC.

In 1995 he used his personal fortune to buy struggling, hometown Wigan Athletic, vowing to take the Latics all the way to the Premier League. At the time he was ridiculed, but ten years later, on the final day of the Championship, Dave watched, ecstatic, as his club beat Reading 3-1 to finally secure their place.

Sometimes tragic, frequently controversial and always heartfelt, Playing to Win lifts the lid on a life lived on the pitch and in the boardroom and tells how a hungry kid from Wigan’s backstreets became a national success and a local hero. Whelan's story was a great success in hardback, turning him into a local hero and now with the new release in paperback, Playing to Win offers football fans and general readers another chance to catch this engaging read.

Dave Whelan was the founder of retailer JJB Sports and is the chairman of Wigan Athletic Football Club. All the author’s profits will go to the new Wigan Boys and Girls Club

Playing to Win is available to buy in paperback now in local bookstores and online via the following link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dave-Whelan-Playing-Win-Autobiography/dp/1845135792/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1284559060&sr=8-2

Excitement has surrounded the launch of J.W.Rinzler’s new book, The Making Of: The Empire Strikes Back. For months, fan websites and blogs have been ablaze with activity as Star Wars fans and cinephiles across the world eagerly anticipated the sequel to Rinzler’s critically acclaimed The Making Of: Star Wars. Fortunately, they have not been disappointed. With its exclusive access to the Lucasfilm archives, The Making Of: The Empire Strikes Back offers a treasure trove of never-before published photos, design sketches, paintings, production notes, interviews, anecdotes, and scripts, to offer a complete behind-the-scenes look at the production of an iconic film.

On Saturday fans celebrated the launch of The Making Of: The Empire Strikes Back at Bristol’s Forbidden Planet with an Empire Strikes Back themed extravaganza. Complete with costumes and lightsabers, fans from all generations enjoyed celebrating both the movie and the launch of this highly anticipated book. Similar celebrations have been planned at Southampton’s Forbidden Planet for this Saturday (23/10/10).




The Making of The Empire Strikes Back is available to buy online here.

• The follow up to last Christmas’ Best Seller AM I ALONE IN THINKING..?

• Another hilarious collection of letters

• Over 70,000 copies sold of its predecessor

• #1 Independent bookshops’ Christmas bestseller

'SIR – My first thought on seeing your headline, "Pupils to be taught about sex at seven" was "What, in the morning?"'

‘SIR- If anyone is unsure or not to vote for David Milliband, I would draw their attention to the photo of him in The Daily Telegraph wearing a two-buttoned suit with both buttons done up.’

'SIR – Having seen some pictures of Tiger Woods’ acquaintances, I’m thinking of taking up golf.'

In 2009 a small volume of unpublished letters to The Daily Telegraph, Am I Alone in Thinking….? captured the public imagination and became a Christmas bestseller. But to those who compile the newspaper’s daily Letters page the book’s huge appeal was no surprise. While they can publish no more than 20 letters each day, another 600 will have gone to waste and for every serious contribution there are many more that are simply very funny, and, alas, there’s never enough room to include them all.

Here then is the eagerly-awaited sequel chronicling yet another year through the whimsical preoccupations and hobbyhorses of the Telegraph’s wonderfully waggish readers. Chris Evans’ supplanting of Sir Terry Wogan on Radio 2; Tiger Woods’ peccadilloes; Gordon Brown’s long farewell – such are among the issues that exercised 2010 epistolarians.

Iain Hollingshead was deputy Letters editor of the Daily Telegraph and is now one of the paper's feature writers. He lives in London.

I Could Go On... is available to purchase online here.

Fifth Avenue, 5.A.M.
Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s

by Sam Wasson

‘A brilliant chronicle of the creation of Breakfast at Tiffany's… This is a memorable achievement’
Peter Bogdanovich

‘A sparkling time capsule of old Hollywood magic and mythmaking… as infectious as Mancini’s score’
Kirkus

Before Breakfast at Tiffany’s Audrey Hepburn was still a little-known actress with few film roles to speak of; after it – indeed, because of it - she was one of the world’s most famous fashion, style and screen icons. Truman Capote’s original novel is itself a modern classic, its high-living author of perennial interest.

Now, this little book - the first about Audrey Hepburn’s greatest screen role - tells the story of how it all happened: how Audrey got the role (for which at first she wasn't considered, and which she at first didn’t want); how long it took to get the script right; how she came to wear the little black dress; and how Henry Mancini’s soundtrack with its memorable signature tune ‘Moon River’ completed the irresistible package.

Sam Wasson is also the author of a biography of Blake Edwards.

Fifth Avenue, 5.A.M. Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's is available to purchase here.

BBC VFX
The History of the BBC Visual Effects Department

By Mat Irvine and Mike Tucker

• The definitive history of the world’s first, largest and longest-running dedicated TV effects department.

• Covers fifty classic BBC shows in every genre.

• Series featured include Doctor Who, Blake's 7, Monty Python, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Goodies, Are You Being Served and many more.

• Filled with anecdotes and insights into how the effects were created.

• Illustrated throughout with fascinating production photos and sketches, most of which have never been published.

The BBC Visual Effects Department closed its doors in 2003. For almost fifty years it had been responsible for some of television’s most iconic images – from exploding newsreaders on Monty Python’s Flying Circus to Blake’s 7’s majestic Liberator sailing through outer space.

Using interviews with the effects designers, together with concept drawings, production photographs and stills from completed programmes, this book tells the story of the VFX Department and celebrates the work of a group of craftsmen who lived by the mantra, ‘If it can be imagined, it can be made…’

Working largely before the age of CGI, the Department was responsible for every kind of visual effect, from physical effects such as rain and explosions, to miniatures and models, to sculpture and animatronics.

Filled with fascinating insights, wonderful stories and numerous photographs and artworks which have never been published, this is an essential book for FX fans and anyone who loves television

Mat Irvine and Mike Tucker worked for many years in the BBC Visual Effects Department. Mat left the BBC in 1993 and has been pursuing other projects as writer, producer and director. Mike now runs The Model Unit at Ealing Studios. Both, individually, are writers, Mat having written twelve books on scientific and hobby subjects while Mike is the author of several original novels and Doctor Who novelisations.

BBC VFX: The History of the BBC Visual Effects Department is available to purchase here

Lost Victorian Britain
A Vanished World of Nineteenth-Century Architecture
Gavin Stamp

"This is a book which no member of the Victorian Society should be without" The Victorian

"This is an important book. It tells the story of the loss of so much grace and beauty in the English architectural landscape. It should be on the desk of every architect and every town planner.” The Northern Echo

Aurum’s series of large-format, lavishly-illustrated architecture titles has in recent years hit a rich seam with its chronicles of lost architecture. The books cover the magnificent and grand buildings from previous centuries that for a variety of reasons – but above all cavalier demolition by twentieth-century planners devoted to the cause of modernism – are now no more, and exist only in heartbreakingly poignant photographs. Gavin Stamp’s own Britain’s Lost Cities was the most recent.

Now, Stamp follows with another superb book, chronicling an astonishing and depressing array of the finest Victorian architecture – all sacrificed to the wrecking ball. From public baths to hotels, town houses, factories and banks; photographs are all we have left. Gavin Stamp’s indignant and scholarly text looks back at the circumstances of their loss, and analyses the twentieth-century mindset that could hold so many magnificent buildings in such little regard.

Gavin Stamp is one of Britain’s most eminent architectural historians and writers. His other books for Aurum are Lutyens Houses and the acclaimed Britain’s Lost Cities. For many years he was Chairman of the Twentieth Century Society.

Lost Victorian Britain is available to purchase here.

Bon Voyage!
The Telegraph Book of River and Sea Journeys
Edited by Michael Kerr

In this follow- up to the highly successful Last Call for the Dining Car, The Telegraph’s Michael Kerr has amassed the very best of the paper’s writing on journeys by water – from ocean liners, cruise ships, tramp and African river steamers, all the way to single-handed yachtsmen and canoeists tackling the Missouri.

Bon Voyage! details the last voyage of the QE2 and the first of the biggest cruise liner ever built. There is an account of the 1936 launching of the Queen Mary in front of 150,000 onlookers on the Clyde. It features no less than Henry Stanley, writing exclusively for the Telegraph in the nineteenth century about his epic African journey down the Congo.

Also included are pieces about Bombay’s insanely crowded commuter ferries, Francis Chichester rounding Cape Horn, and a couple who tried to sail their amphibious Volkswagen Beetle around the world but only got as far as the North Sea. Anyone who enjoys reading Gavin Young, Eric Newby or Jonathan Raban’s travel writing will love this book.

Michael Kerr is Deputy Travel Editor of the Daily Telegraph. He lives in Surrey.

Bon Voyage! The Telegraph Book of River and Sea Journeys is avaiable to purchase here.

Ray Harryhausen's Fantasy Scrapbook by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton

November saw the release of Ray Harryhausen's Fantasy Scrapbook, a compendium of models, storyboards and concept drawings from the legendary pioneer of stop-motion animation. This new book is compiled from a wide range of never-before-seen artefacts from Ray's life and career, many of them only recently discovered in a Los Angeles garage. Through his original sketches, scripts and letters, it offers fascinating insights into the mind of one of Hollywood's great animators.

With informative introductions to each film and detailed captions for every image, this illuminating volume is a must for all film fans. Harryhausen's seminal work on Jason and the Argonauts, The 7th Joyage of Sinbad and Clash of the Titans remains hugely influential and Ray Harryhausen's Fantasy Scrapbook does his creativity and imagination justice.

"Thoroughly engrossing, whether you’re a Harryhausen fan or just a film fan in general. It’s an absolute delight to browse through and, crucially, captures the character of the man behind the monsters" sfx.co.uk

"This collection truly is a thing of beauty ... A must buy for Ray's fans" Starburst Magazine

Ray Harryhausen's Fantasy Scrapbook is available to buy here.


If the Fantasy Scrapbook has animated your interest and you're looking for more stop-motion history, then look no further. Aurum have published three more books by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton:

The Art of Ray Harryhausen by Ray Harryhuasen and Tony Dalton, with a foreword by Peter Jackson

"A splendid volume... fabulous illustrations" Jonathan Ross

Available in paperback here.






Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton, with an foreword by Ray Bradbury

"A sumptuous account of the veteran animator's life on celluloid" The Independent

Available in paperback here.




A Century of Model Animation: From Méliès to Aardman by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton

"A work full of love for the subject" SFX Magazine

Available in hardback here.

Despite numerous logistical challenges due to the lockdown, BLR Airport, backed with cutting-edge tech-assets for cargo processing, ensured that products reach their destination, while still offering the same freshness, quality and appeal.

For all flights between India and the USA under the Vande Bharat mission, Air India is charging a fixed fare of Rs 1 lakh per passenger. For flights between India and Singapore, the charge is Rs 18,000-20,000 per passenger, and it is Rs 50,000 per person for India-UK flights.

Puri suggested that airlines should encourage contact-less checkin and customers should take precautions like wearing masks and protective gear while they travel. He said the Indian airlines have a short-term problem of paying loans to their debtors but could revive quickly as India has a wide customer base.

Air India's pilot unions IPG and ICPA has urged Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri to "urgently" provide financial support to the national carrier amid private airlines' cry for a bailout package in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The flight was part of the Vande Bharat mission which started on Thursday to bring back stranded Indian nationals home amid the novel coronavirus-induced lockdown.

Air India employee unions have moved the Bombay High Court against the airline's decision to slash allowances, which form a major part of salary, by ten per cent because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Quality of forecasts as meteorological information from aeroplanes has fallen up to 90%.