Judith Cook

This is a biography of J.B. Priestley, covering his relationships with his three wives, children and other women and friendships with figures such as H.G. Wells, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson, Charlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx.

First published in 1984, Close to the Earth is a record of a vanishing age in Britain, of working communities and working individuals who made their living from the land, the rivers and the sea. It is based on conversations and personal memories collected for over twenty years and is illustrated with many contemporary photographs of the times remembered. The people Judith Cook talked to—who among other things mined, fished, worked the land and brewed ale, and worked in stone and slate—lived through an era which spanned man’s first flight and the first landing on the moon. Their way of life, which in many parts of the country had remained unchanged over the centuries, is fast passing from sight and memory. What Judith Cook succeeded brilliantly in doing is to record the stories of some extraordinary ordinary people, how they worked and how they felt, before it was too late.

First published in 1984, Close to the Earth is a record of a vanishing age in Britain, of working communities and working individuals who made their living from the land, the rivers and the sea. It is based on conversations and personal memories collected for over twenty years and is illustrated with many contemporary photographs of the times remembered. The people Judith Cook talked to—who among other things mined, fished, worked the land and brewed ale, and worked in stone and slate—lived through an era which spanned man’s first flight and the first landing on the moon. Their way of life, which in many parts of the country had remained unchanged over the centuries, is fast passing from sight and memory. What Judith Cook succeeded brilliantly in doing is to record the stories of some extraordinary ordinary people, how they worked and how they felt, before it was too late.

With the help of anecdotes, this book aims to recreate the lives and times of the playwrights and actors such as, Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Jonson, as well as the world in which they lived from 1578 when Burbage built the first 'purpose built' theatre to 1620 when the great age came to its end.

With the help of anecdotes, this book aims to recreate the lives and times of the playwrights and actors such as, Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Jonson, as well as the world in which they lived from 1578 when Burbage built the first 'purpose built' theatre to 1620 when the great age came to its end.

Simon Forman was one of the extraordinary personalities of Elizabethan and Jacobean London. Like most doctors, he was also an astrologer, reading the stars for all and sundry. This book uncovers Forman's private world, that of a compulsive womaniser who kept a coded diary, a record of promiscuity as colourful as the journals of Pepys and Boswell.