When Paul Nichols took a job as a hotel night manager in a top London hotel, he was hoping to advance his career and meet a few A-list celebrities along the way. He wasn’t disappointed, thanks to encounters with Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Rihanna, Puff Daddy, Kanye West, Kimberly Stewart, Noel Gallagher and Peter Kay, among others. He had no idea that he would also have to play detective, deal with cases of theft, cover up several potential sex and drugs scandals, rescue a starlet from the paparazzi and do his frantic best to save the life of a severely-injured guest. He also didn’t expect to be finding concealed cameras in celebrities’ bedrooms. A shocking, entertaining and sometimes hilarious account of life behind the scenes at a millionaires’ hotel – and these are just the stories that can be printed…

In Volume 1 of his autobiography Brian Iddon wrote of his early years on the West Lancashire Plain, his school and university education and his career researching and teaching chemistry at the universities of Durham and Salford; his demonstration lecture ‘The Magic of Chemistry’ was presented in Britain and elsewhere in Europe for 29 years. In Volume 2 he describes how he became involved in politics and was elected to Bolton Council, serving from 1977 until 1998, with a spell as chairman of the Housing Committee. He was persuaded to stand for Parliament in 1997 in Bolton South East, which he represented until his retirement in 2010. Brian helped to steer through three Acts of Parliament and was a Member of the Science and Technology Select Committee. Woven through both volumes are reminders that MPs have private lives too. In his retirement Brian has turned to writing; he has written a biography of the Wigan artist Lawrence James Isherwood and an important timeline of Bolton’s political and social history, as well as serving on four boards in London and holding voluntary posts in education and with a local charity.Brian hopes this book, probably one of the most detailed accounts of a Parliamentary career written in modern times by a back-bench MP, will help to dispel the myth that MPs have an easy life.

As a small boy in the 1920s, David Ronald Johnston was blinded when a dental procedure went horribly wrong. That did not stop him living a remarkably full life, qualifying as a top-level shorthand typist, becoming a personal secretary and then going on to take increasingly senior positions in the charity Oxfam, eventually beating 500 other candidates to win the post of Regional Organiser and become a driving force for the organisation. His daughter Linda has written this book as a tribute to her father’s remarkable love, courage, determination and strength.

As a little girl Gladys Lunn was thrilled at the prospect of moving to the seaside resort of Skegness, but when she ran down to the beach she found her way blocked by a barricade of barbed wire. That was when she realised that her country was at war. This book is her memoir of those long-ago years when she and her sister, the daughters of a fireman who worked long hours to deal with bombs and explosions, were often uncomfortably close to the action – on one occasion Gladys found herself running for home with bullets from a dogfight overhead hitting the pavement beside her.