This breezy escapist tale chronicles the misadventures of a motley crew of college professors who abandon their landlocked lives (and wives) for one week every year and go sailing. Author Tom Watkins vividly recounts a decade's worth of these annual escapes, as the adventurous academics fish, dive, drink, and dream together, all the while coming to a better understanding of themselves and each other. Their travels take them to such exotic locales as the Virgin Islands, Guadeloupe, and the Grenadines, and along the way they encounter a colorful array of salty characters, including famed sailor and author John Caldwell and Undine, the jolly German manager of a tropical restaurant hidden by lush vegetation. Overflowing with rum, cigars, and poker chips, this is a hilarious and insightful glimpse into the secret lives of men.

LONGLISTED FOR THE PENDERYN MUSIC PRIZE 2017 The coke-fuelled mania behind pop's greatest successes Tom Watkins is the famously entertaining pop Svengali with killer commercial instincts and prodigious talent for design. He propelled the Pet Shop Boys, Bros and East 17, among others, to global stardom, all whilst maintaining a savage hedonistic lifestyle and a stellar art collection. His fingerprints are all over British pop, and he's decided the time has come for a tell-all autobiography about the business behind the stars that shaped your life in the 80s and 90s. Follow Tom's journey from his humble boyhood in post-war South-East London, to his teenage misdeeds and the birth of Rock and Roll; his days as a design student under the tutelage of Terence Conran and Rodney Fitch, to the excesses of the 80s and 90s where he became one of the original boy band innovators - the driving force behind the pop icons plastered on the walls of teenage girls' bedrooms. Funny, unstoppable and outspoken, a razor-sharp and greatly respected businessman, marketing visionary, designer and art collector, Tom takes us through his extraordinary and colourful life into the inner-circle of 80s pop-culture. From hobnobbing with Bruce Sprinsteen to bust-ups with Bros, Tom has seen it all. Expect a gripping, gossipy, meticulously researched memoir of the drug-addled 80s and 90s, layered on top of an insightful and intelligent portrait of a recent but very different age, from the singular perspective of a man who played a huge role in defining the era and paved the way for industry moguls like Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh.