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In 1956, fresh from Eton and Oxford, the 23-year-old Colin Clark (son of ‘Lord Clark of Civilisation’, brother of maverick Tory MP and diarist Alan) worked as a humble ‘gofer’ on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl, the film that disastrously united Laurence Olivier with Marilyn Monroe.Forty years on, his account of this was chosen as book of the year by Jilly Cooper, Joan Collins and others. This is the story of when Clark escorted a Monroe desperate to escape from the pressures of stardom. Her new husband Arthur Miller was away, and the coast was clear for Colin to introduce her to the pleasures of British life. How he ended up sharing her bed is a tale too rich to summarise!Clark’s extraordinary experiences on and off set have now been turned into a major film starring Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Judi Dench, Emma Watson, Kenneth Branagh and Dominic Cooper, due for release in November 2011.• Includes an exclusive introduction from Simon Curtis, director of ‘My Week with Marilyn’.• Includes an exclusive interview with screenplay writer, Adrian Hodges.

I don't think anyone can have written an autobiography without at some point thinking «Why would anyone want to know this shit?» I've always read them thinking «I don't want to know where Steve Tyler grew up, just tell me how many groupies he f**ked!»'So begins Frankie's outrageous, laugh-out loud, cynical rant on life as he knows it. From growing up in Pollokshaws, Glasgow (‘it was an aching cement void, a slap in the face to Childhood, and for the family it was a step up'), to his rampant teenage sex drive (‘in those days if you glimpsed a nipple on T.V. it was like porn Christmas'), and first job working in a mental hospital ('where most evenings were spent persuading an old man in his pants not to eat a family sized block of cheese'), nothing is out of bounds.Outspoken, outrageous and brilliantly inappropriate, Frankie Boyle says the unsayable as only he can. From the TV programmes he would like to see made ('Celebrities On Acid On Ice: just like Celebrity Dancing On Ice, but with an opening sequence where Graham Norton hoses the celebrities down with liquid LSD'), to his native Scotland and the Mayor of London ('voting for Boris Johnson wasn't that different to voting for a Labrador wearing a Wonder Woman costume'), nothing and no one is safe from Frankie's fearless, sharp-tongued assault.Sharply observed and full of taboo-busting, we-really-shouldn't-be-laughing-at-this humour, My Shit Life So Far shows why Frankie Boyle really is the blackest man in show business.In 2010, MY SHIT LIFE SO FAR won the title of Scotland's favourite summer read, coming top of a list of 20 other books from the likes of Ian Rankin, Iain Banks and Carol Ann Duffy.

Seasoned adventurer Alastair Humphreys pushes himself to his very limits – busking his way across Spain with a violin he can barely play.In 1935 a young Englishman named Laurie Lee arrived in Spain. He had never been overseas; had hardly even left the quiet village he grew up in. His idea was to walk through the country, earning money for food by playing his violin in bars and plazas.The book Laurie Lee wrote – As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning – inspired Alastair Humphreys. It made him fall in love with Spain – the landscapes and the spirit – and with Laurie's style of travel. He travelled slow, lived simply, slept on hilltops, relished spontaneity, and loved conversations with the different people he met along the hot and dusty road.For 15 years, Alastair dreamed of retracing Laurie Lee’s footsteps, but could never get past the hurdle of being distinctly unmusical. This year, he decided to go anyway. The journey was his most terrifying yet, risking failure and humiliation every day, and finding himself truly vulnerable to the rhythms of the road and of his own life. But along the way, he found humility, redemption and triumph. It was a very good adventure.