Jeremy Lewis

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Few newspaper editors are remembered beyond their lifetimes, but David Astor of the Observer is a great exception to the rule. George Orwell had urged Astor to champion the decolonisation of Africa, and Nelson Mandela always acknowledged how much he owed to the Observer’s long-standing support. Meer

Talks about the era in which the masses were given access to what had previously been the preserve of a wealthy few - books. This title recounts how Allen Lane came to launch his Penguins for the price of a packet of cigarettes; how they became enormously influential in alerting the public to the threat of Nazi Germany; and more. Meer

Tobias Smollett was a prodigious wordsmith. Grub Street was his habitat and hack work his staple. This biography reveals that there was much more to Smollett than that. Meer