A new, updated edition of Christopher Sandford's classic biography of the band, The Rolling Stones is a gripping account of the band's remarkable 60 years at the top of the rock industry. In 1962 Mick Jagger was a bright, well-scrubbed boy (planning a career in the civil service), while Keith Richards was learning how to smoke and to swivel a six-shooter. Add the mercurial Brian Jones (who'd been effectively run out of Cheltenham for theft, multiple impregnations and playing blues guitar), the wryly opinionated Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts, and the potential was obvious. During the 1960s and 70s the Rolling Stones were the polarising figures in Britain, admired in some quarters for their flamboyance, creativity and salacious lifestyles, and reviled elsewhere for the same reasons. Confidently expected never to reach 30, the band is now celebrating 60 years together with a European tour, Sixty, to mark the occasion. Of the original line-up, only Jagger and Richards remain, along with 'new boy' Ronnie Wood, who joined the band in 1975. In The Rolling Stones, Christopher Sandford tells the human drama at the centre of the Rolling Stones story. Sandford has carried out interviews with those close to the Stones, family members (including Mick's parents), the group's fans and contemporaries - even examined their previously unreleased FBI files. Like no other book before The Rolling Stones makes sense of the rich brew of clever invention and opportunism, of talent, good fortune, insecurity, self-destructiveness, and of drugs, sex and other excess, that made the Stones who they are.

John F. Kennedy carried on a lifelong love affair with England and the English. From his speaking style to his tastes in art, architecture, theatre, music and clothes, his personality reflected his deep affinity for a certain kind of idealised Englishness. Setting his work against a backdrop of some of the twentieth century’s most profound events – the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Cold War and its arms race – noted biographer Christopher Sandford tracks Kennedy’s exploits in Great Britain between 1935 and 1963, and looks in depth at the unique way Britain shaped JFK throughout his adult life and how he in turn charmed British society.

Laker and Lock is the first dual biography of Surrey and England 'spin twins' Jim Laker and Tony Lock, who helped their county and Test teams to an unparalleled run of dominance in the 1950s. Besides their peerless achievements on the field, the two men had little in common. Laker, the elder by seven years, was Yorkshire born, cool, phlegmatic, known to sulk, and not greatly enamoured with the class distinctions then inherent in English cricket and society as a whole. Lock, a southerner, was dynamic, ebullient, indefatigable both on and off the field, and tended to wear his heart on his sleeve, an attitude no less at odds with the prevailing social order. Both men courted controversy. Laker's post-retirement autobiography caused such a furore that he was made unwelcome at Lord's and the Oval for years afterwards. Lock suffered the stigma of being labelled a 'chucker' and ultimately moved to Australia, where his retirement was clouded by allegations of sexual abuse. This is the full story of the pair's uneasy partnership.

When Arthur Conan Doyle was a lonely 7-year-old schoolboy at pre-prep Newington Academy in Edinburgh, a French emigre named Eugene Chantrelle was engaged there to teach Modern Languages. A few years later, Chantrelle would be hanged for the particularly grisly murder of his wife, marking the beginning of Conan Doyle's own association with some of the bloodiest crimes of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. This early link between actual crime and the greatest detective story writer of all time is one of many. Conan Doyle would also go on to play a leading role in the notorious case of the young Anglo-Indian lawyer George Edalji, convicted and imprisoned as the 'mad ripper' who supposedly prowled the fields around his Staffordshire home by night looking for animals to mutilate; and the equally chilling story of Oscar Slater and his alleged murder of an elderly spinster as she sat in her Glasgow home one winter's night in 1908, a crime with a spectacular denouement 18 years later. Using freshly available evidence and eyewitness testimony, Christopher Sandford follows these links and draws out the connections between Conan Doyle's literary output and factual criminality, a pattern that will enthral and surprise the legions of Sherlock Holmes fans. In a sense, Conan Doyle wanted to be Sherlock - to be a man who could bring order and justice to a terrible world.

An Austro-Hungarian with a dark streak, Victor Lustig was a man of athletic good looks, with a taste for larceny and foreign intrigue. He spoke six languages and went under nearly as many aliases in the course of a continent-hopping life that also saw him act as a double (or possibly triple) agent. Along the way, he found time to dupe an impressive variety of banks and hotels on both sides of the Atlantic; to escape from no fewer than three supposedly impregnable prisons; and to swindle Al Capone out of thousands of dollars, while living to tell the tale. Undoubtedly the greatest of his hoaxes was the sale, to a wealthy but gullible Parisian scrap-metal dealer, of the Eiffel Tower in 1925. In a narrative that thrills like a crime caper, best-selling biographer Christopher Sandford tells the whole story of the greatest conman of the twentieth century.

When Arthur Conan Doyle was a lonely 7-year-old schoolboy at pre-prep Newington Academy in Edinburgh, a French emigre named Eugene Chantrelle was engaged there to teach Modern Languages. A few years later, Chantrelle would be hanged for the particularly grisly murder of his wife, marking the beginning of Conan Doyle's own association with some of the bloodiest crimes of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. This early link between actual crime and the greatest detective story writer of all time is one of many. Conan Doyle would also go on to play a leading role in the notorious case of the young Anglo-Indian lawyer George Edalji, convicted and imprisoned as the 'mad ripper' who supposedly prowled the fields around his Staffordshire home by night looking for animals to mutilate; and the equally chilling story of Oscar Slater and his alleged murder of an elderly spinster as she sat in her Glasgow home one winter's night in 1908, a crime with a spectacular denouement 18 years later. Using freshly available evidence and eyewitness testimony, Christopher Sandford follows these links and draws out the connections between Conan Doyle's literary output and factual criminality, a pattern that will enthral and surprise the legions of Sherlock Holmes fans. In a sense, Conan Doyle wanted to be Sherlock - to be a man who could bring order and justice to a terrible world.

The declaration of war against Germany on 3 September 1939 brought an end to the second (and as yet, final) Golden Age of English cricket. Over 200 first-class English players signed up to fight in that first year; 52 never came back. In many ways, the summer of 1939 was the end of innocence. Using unpublished letters, diaries and memoirs, Christopher Sandford recreates that last summer, looking at men like George Macaulay, who took a wicket with his first ball in Test cricket but was struck down while serving with the RAF in 1940; Maurice Turnbull, the England all-rounder who fell during the Normandy landings; and Hedley Verity, who still holds cricketing records, but who died in the invasion of Sicily. Few English cricket teams began their first post-war season without holding memorial ceremonies for the men they had lost: The Final Innings pays homage not only to these men, but to the lost innocence, heroism and human endurance of the age.

The life and times of Middlesex and England wicketkeeper-batsman John 'JT' Murray, one of the acknowledged greats of English post-war cricket. Irresistibly cool, glamorous and apparently unapproachable, Murray was Christopher Sandford's consuming hero at the time the author was confined in an English seaside boarding school in the 60s. Twenty or more years later, the two became friends. In 2017 Murray eventually succumbed to a decade-long campaign and agreed to share in full his lifetime's reminiscences, recounting his experiences of a quarter of a century as a professional English sportsman. Murray proved unfailingly generous and humorous (if by no means uncritical) in his accounts of the great Tests, the tours and the parade of celebrities, sporting and otherwise, he encountered. This treasure trove of stories - described not just in the dry accountancy of scores and averages, but in droll anecdotal detail - lies at the heart of a unique cricket book illustrated by photographs, letters and notes from Murray's own collection.

In 1962 Mick Jagger was a bright, well-scrubbed boy (planning a career in the civil service), while Keith Richards was learning how to smoke and to swivel a six-shooter. Add the mercurial Brian Jones (who'd been effectively run out of Cheltenham for theft, multiple impregnations and playing blues guitar) and the wryly opinionated Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, and the potential was obvious. During the 1960s and 70s the Rolling Stones were the polarising figures in Britain, admired in some quarters for their flamboyance, creativity and salacious lifestyles, and reviled elsewhere for the same reasons. Confidently expected never to reach 30 they are now approaching their seventies and, in 2012, will have been together for 50 years. In The Rolling Stones, Christopher Sandford tells thehuman drama at the centre of the Rolling Stones story. Sandford has carried out interviews with those close to the Stones, family members (including Mick's parents), the group's fans and contemporaries - even examined their previously unreleased FBI files. Like no other book before The Rolling Stoneswill make sense of the rich brew of clever invention and opportunism, of talent, good fortune, insecurity, self-destructiveness, and of drugs, sex and other excess, that made the Stones who they are.

August 1914 brought an end to the 'Golden Age' of English cricket. At least 210 professional cricketers (out of a total of 278 registered) signed up to fight, of whom thirty-four were killed. However, that period and those men were far more than merely statistics: here we follow in intimate detail not only the cricketers of that fateful last summer before the war, but also the simple pleasures and daily struggles of their family lives and the whole fabric of English social life as it existed on the eve of that cataclysm: the First World War. With unprecedented access to personal and war diaries, and other papers, Sandford expertly recounts the stories of such greats as Hon. Lionel Tennyson, as he moves virtually overnight from the round of Chelsea and Mayfair parties into the front line at the Marne; the violin-playing bowler Colin Blythe, who asked to be moved up to a front-line unit at Passchendaele, following the death in action of his brother, with tragic consequences; and the widely popular Hampshire amateur player Robert Jesson, whose sometimes comic, frequently horrific and always enthralling experiences of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign are vividly brought to life. The Final Over is undoubtedly a gripping, moving and fully human account of this most poignant summer of the twentieth century, both on and off the field of play.

In this compelling biography, Christopher Sandford explores the full, inside story of Kurt Cobain. From the disruptive childhood which had such a crucial impact on Cobain's personality to the ambitious career musician who, as a friend said, "lunged for success", and the worldwide breakthrough of Nirvana's Nevermind, Sandford also writes about Cobain's stormy marriage to Courtney Love, his heroin addiction, and how he became more and more of a recluse. Finally, he writes of the crisis when, in April 1994, Cobain turned a shotgun on himself and became a martyr for disaffected youth. The result is a saga of success and corruption which John Peel has called "the ultimate rock and roll morality story".

Renowned mystery author Arthur Conan Doyle and famous illusionist Harry Houdini first met in 1920, during the magician's tour of England. At the time, Conan Doyle had given up his lucrative writing career, killing off Sherlock Holmes in the process, in order to concentrate on his increasingly manic interest in Spiritualism. Houdini, who regularly conducted seances in an attempt to reach his late mother, was also infatuated with the idea of what he called a "living afterlife," though his enthusiasm came to be tempered by his ability to expose fraudulent mediums, many of whom employed crude variations of his own well-known illusions. Using previously unpublished material on the murky relationship between Houdini and Conan Doyle, this sometimes macabre, sometimes comic tale tells the fascinating story of the relationship between two of the most loved figures of the twentieth century and their pursuit of magic and lost loved ones.

This dramatic account weaves together the rich and complex life of the celebrated and controversial film director, Holocaust survivor, and exile, based on a wealth of sources and new material. New revelations about Polanski's life include: -- The connection between his mother's death in Auschwitz and wife Sharon Tate's murder by the Manson family--both women were pregnant -- His radical transition from childhood poverty in a Krakow ghetto to a glamorous Hollywood life among socialites -- The psychological complexity and central thread of sexuality that runs throughout his films and his relationships with younger women -- A culmination of tragedies in Polanski's life, from the Holocaust to the Manson murders to his sexual assault charges and subsequent exile from the U.S. The unique humor of the rascal genius that keeps the world watching and awaiting his new projects Acclaimed biographer Sandford draws on dozens of interviews with actors who have worked with Polanski, as well as previously sealed transcripts of his criminal hearings, testimony before the California grand jury following the accusations that led to his exile, and personal reflections on the murders of Sharon Tate and other friends of the couple. Polanski's films from 1962 to 2005 are contextualized within his life, including such highlights as Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, and the Oscar-winning The Pianist. Sandford's fascinating biography illuminates the life and work of one of the most important careers in modern cinema.

Here is the first biography to explore, with shocking detail, the drama that formed this troubled, tragic rock star. Neither an apology nor a condemnation, Kurt Cobain presents a vivid insider's view of the life and death of a man who galvanized a generation and gave birth to the "grunge" revolution with his band Nirvana. Sandford portrays the provocative, small-town rebel with the talent of John Lennon, and then shows him at work on concert stages in Seattle, New York, and London. Readers follow the struggles of Cobain's emotional life-his tumultuous relationships with family and his fellow band members, his drug addiction and sexual appetite, his stormy marriage to Courtney Love, and the birth of his daughter, who, as Cobain wrote in his suicide note, "reminds me too much of who I used to be." During his research, Sandford has had access to Cobain's family, his colleagues, his former friends and lovers, and even author William S. Burroughs, whom Cobain considered to be his "greatest influence." The result is a graphic account of the life that led to the day in April 1994 when Cobain turned a shotgun on himself and became a martyr to disaffected youth around the world.

The biography of the original Mr. Cool, Steve McQueen. The actor who perhaps, first epitomised the Action Hero; a complex man, prone to casual affairs and violence, yet capable of helping those more unfortunate than him.

Based on interviews with family members, colleagues, lovers, and the previously silent William Burroughs, this unsparing yet even-handed biography guides the reader through the many personas, crises, and musical metamorphoses of David Bowie - also known as Davy Jones, the Laughing Gnome, Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke, a drug-addled grandfather of punk, actor, art aficionado, political activist, one of rock's most resonant icons, and a totem of modern pop culture. Nowhere else is the man and musician so convincingly deconstructed and so compellingly humanized.

The combined forces invasion of the Belgian port of Zeebrugge on 23 April 1918 remains one of Britain's most glorious military undertakings; not quite as epic a failure as the charge of the Light Brigade, or as well publicised as the Dam Busters raid, but with many of the same basic ingredients. A force drawn from the Royal Navy and Royal Marines set out on ships and submarines to try to block the key strategic port, in a bold attempt to stem the catastrophic losses being inflicted on British shipping by German submarines. It meant attacking a heavily fortified German naval base. The tide, calm weather and the right wind direction for a smoke screen were crucial to the plan. Judged purely on results, it can only be considered a partial strategic success. Casualties were high and the base only partially blocked. Nonetheless, it came to represent the embodiment of the bulldog spirit, the peculiarly British fighting elan, the belief that anything was possible with enough dash and daring. The essential story of the Zeebrugge mission has been told before, but never through the direct, first-hand accounts of its survivors - including that of Lieutenant Richard Sandford, VC, the acknowledged hero of the day, and the author's great uncle. The fire and bloodshed of the occasion is the book's centrepiece, but there is also room for the family and private lives of the men who volunteered in their hundreds for what they knew effectively to be a suicide mission. Zeebrugge gives a very real sense of the existence of the ordinary British men and women of 100 years ago - made extraordinary by their role in what Winston Churchill called the 'most intrepid and heroic single armed adventure of the Great War.'