From wartime to peacetime, Parts of Speech is a frank memoir telling the story of three generations of stammerers all from one family. Based primarily around the impact of the author's lifelong stammer on his career and private life, with unsuccessful speech therapy and unexpected attempts at treatment (including hypnosis), it exposes the everyday hurdles and glass ceilings a stammerer faces. It records the challenges his father overcame as a successful professional soldier with a stammer....

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERA life in and out of politics – from the despatch box to the stage on Strictly – by one of Britain’s most influential and well-loved political figures.'Full of anecdote, insight and authenticity’ Evening Standard BOOKS OF THE YEAR'Witty, reflective and engaging' Nick Robinson'Honest and revealing' Michael Palin'Fas...

‘Delightfully different’ – Delia SmithEd Balls was just three weeks old when he tried his first meal: pureed roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. While perhaps ill-advised by modern weaning standards, it worked for him in 1967, and from that moment on he was hooked on food.Appetite is a memoir with a twist: part autobiography, part cookbook, each chapter is a recipe that tells a story. Ed was taught to cook by his mother, and now he’s passing these re...

‘Delightfully different’ – Delia SmithEd Balls was just three weeks old when he tried his first meal: pureed roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. While perhaps ill-advised by modern weaning standards, it worked for him in 1967, and from that moment on he was hooked on food.Appetite is a memoir with a twist: part autobiography, part cookbook, each chapter is a recipe that tells a story. Ed was taught to cook by his mother, and now he’s passing these re...

'Witty, reflective and engaging' Nick Robinson'Honest and revealing' Michael Palin'Fascinating, heartfelt' Kay Burley'Insightful, funny, unexpectedly moving' Jonathan FreedlandOn the night of 7 May 2015, Ed Balls thought there was a chance he would wake up the next morning as the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. Instead, he woke up without a job.Twenty-one years earl...

From the condemned slums of Southam Street in West London to the corridors of power in Westminster, Alan Johnson’s multi-award-winning autobiography charts an extraordinary journey, almost unimaginable in today’s Britain. This third volume tells of Alan’s early political skirmishes as a trades union leader, where his negotiating skills and charismatic style soon came to the notice of Tony Blair and other senior members of the Labour Party.As a result, Alan was chosen to stand in the...

Ken Clarke needs no introduction. One of the genuine 'Big Beasts' of the political scene, during his forty-six years as the Member of Parliament for Rushcliffe in Nottinghamshire he has been at the very heart of government under three prime ministers. He is a political obsessive with a personal hinterland, as well known as a Tory Wet with Europhile views as for his love of cricket, Nottingham Forest Football Club and jazz.In Kind of Blue, Clarke charts his remarkable progr...

'Utterly fascinating...I suspect that every historian of the period will regard it as indispensable to appreciating this extraordinary phase in our history.' John Simpson'The compelling insider's account of the man who was at the centre of the Downing Street web' Nick Robinson'This is one of the most vivid, frank and exciting inside accounts to have been written for years.' Anthony Seldon

Random House presents the unabridged, downloadable audio edition of M: Maxwell Knight, MI5's Greatest Spymaster by Henry Hemming, read by the author.Maxwell Knight was a paradox. A jazz obsessive and nature enthusiast (he is the author of the definitive work on how to look after a gorilla), he is seen today as one of MI5's greatest spymasters, a man who did more than any other to break up British fascism during the Second World War – in spite of having once belonged to the...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Things Can Only Get Worse?: Twenty confusing years in the life of a Labour supporter written and read by John O'Farrell.'…as the Labour candidate I prepared for every possible question on the local radio Election Phone-In. What I had not prepared for was my mum ringing up to say that she agreed with John O’Farrell. On EVERYTHING.'Things Can Only Get Worse is the personal story of one political activis...

As a small boy in Epping Forest, Jack Straw could never have imagined that one day he would become Britain's Lord Chancellor. As one of five children of divorced parents, he was bright enough to get a scholarship to a direct-grant school, but spent his holidays as a plumbers' mate for his uncles to bring in some much-needed extra income. Yet he spent 13 years and 11 days in government, including long and influential spells as Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary. This is the story of how h...

Brought to you by Penguin.Why was Marx so successful as a thinker? Did he have a system and if so, what does it consist of? How did Marxism develop in the twentieth century and what does it mean today?Karl Marx remains the most influential and controversial political thinker in history. The movements associated with his name have lent hope to many victims of tyranny and aggression but have also proven disastrous in practice and resulted in the unnecessary d...