Keith Waterhouse – författare

Now it can be told. The biggest majority of the Debra Chase by Herself series in the Sunday Shocker, which I am sposed to of written, was a load of rubbish, a virago of lies from start to finish.''Thus does Page Three celebrity Debra Chase set out to put the record straight about her life in the tabloid fast-lane and the early years when she was still known as Marjory Linda Chase, growing up in Seathorpe with her Dad and Step-Mum Babs, ''in those far-off days of the forgotten Seventies''.Debra tells the story of her climb to stardom from the Donna Bella Rosa School of Fashion and how she met "The Sir", Sir Monty Pratt, the ''bonking baronet'' who so adored her and who was so compromised by that story in the Shocker. She reveals the Debra Chase Diet Muffin Scandal and her part in it, as well as her on-off affair with hunky goal-ace, Brian Boffe. By turns outrageously funny and uncannily affecting, BIMBO is a masterpiece of entertainment and virtuoso characterisation from one of our finest novelists.

''Among the few great writers of our time'' Independent''An exceptionally talented novelist'' Sunday Times''Remarkable for the deep and unwavering insight it gives into child behaviour'' The TimesSeen through the eyes of a young boy living on a council estate in a northern town, a pre-war childhood emerges that is universal in its everyday adventures, shifting allegiances, mysteries and occasional tragedy. Yet it is also one that is rooted firmly in a bygone era of innocence. Acclaimed on its first publication, There is a Happy Land marked the debut of a brilliant new talent and is now seen as a much-loved classic.

As editor of the local newspaper in the small, pleasant town of Badgers Heath, Oliver Kettle is expected to join in the locals'' constant efforts to raise money for good causes, from karaoke marathons to sponsored funerals. But with Bananaskin Week, the biggest fund-raising drive of them all, the hapless Kettle finds himself drawn into a spiralling nightmare of adultery, blackmail and intrigue. Too late, he realises that charity is the last consideration of his fellow citizens.

''The work of a master'' Sunday Times''Effortlessly brilliant...a comedy of London life'' Sunday TelegraphNo London neighbourhood more resmbles the restless downstream tide of the Thames than the ragged square mile of Soho. Ask the people who live there, like Christine Yardley, drag queen by night and grey-suited accountant by day; or Len Gates, self-appointed Soho historian and bore; or Jenny Wise, former starlet and now resident lush in the New Kismet club; or even Ellis Hugo Bell, wannabe film producer who dreams of moving to L.A. Daily, nightly, shift by shift, their numbers are swelled by immigrants flocking to work, eat, drink and loiter, from kitchen staff to dress designers, hookers to pushers to punters. Down into this human rabbit warren one evening slips Alex Singer, a student from Leeds in pursuit of his errant girlfriend, whose search takes him from club to pub and into contact with a rich cross-section of Soho life. Twenty-four hours, three deaths, one fire and one mugging later, seduced, traduced and befriended, Alex is on his way to the Soho Ball. In this fast, funny and superbly crafted novel, Keith Waterhouse draws a vibrant portrait of London''s liveliest quarter and it''s eccentric inhabitants.

Returning from the memorial service, June Pepper, middle-aged widow of a tough tabloid editor cut down in his prime, sets about following her late husband''s instructions to keep a journal of her bereavement, as therapy. But he did not say anything about writing it down. It is therefore in the form of a stream-of-consciousness monologue to the departed Sam the June records her reflections on her new status of widowhood. She is to find that this business of grieving is not the straightforward process she had imagined. For one thing, day-to-day existence with all its little preoccupations persists in carrying on almost as usual. There are comings and goings and encounters - some of them unwelcome, such as the intrusion of a problem stepdaughter, Pauline; others more promising, like the relationship she forms with someone she dubs The Suit - a man she finds herself attracted towards because he is wearing one of her husband''s suits bought from Oxfam. There are shocks, too - skeletons in cupboards, unpleasant truths to come to terms with. Imagining at first that the state of bereavement gently recedes over the months like a boat slowly disappearing across the horizon, June discovers that it is more in the nature of a shipwreck. Things will not stop happening. she is forced to re-think her marriage, her own life, her attitude to death itself. As she brings her journal to a close she is not at all sure that Sam has been wise in his advice. Neither are we.