Clubs Drugs Canapes

Armed with a bottle of Milk Thistle and unshakeable optimism, Nick Valentine has spent most of his adult life in fifth gear, betting on a Royal Flush while covertly holding a pair of deuces. This is his story, the odyssey of a suburban bloke who has blagged, lucked and laughed his way into just about every party, club, stage and hot-tub imaginable. Following his first brush with celebrity at an impressionable age, and spending his teens and twenties as, amongst other things, a journalist, publicist, club promoter, musician and DJ, Nick eventually banked in the shallows of party central. He spent 15 years as a social editor on London’s celebrity canapé circuit, while co-founding the Entertainment News press agency. An enterprising period acting as a social PR to the super-rich led to him co-founding three London nightclubs in quick succession, including the much lauded Cuckoo Club. With the West End as his nocturnal playground, he then bid sleep a final fond farewell. Nick professes to have attended well over 5,000 parties in his time, drunk enough champagne to test the Thames barrier and occasionally made it home in time for Countdown. 'I'm a night person,' he says. 'The trouble is I'm a morning and afternoon person as well.' This account is a surprisingly touching, light-hearted look at the daily mechanics of enjoying life to the max and then some.

Cannabis consumption, commerce, and control in global history, from the nineteenth century to the present day. This book gathers together authors from the new wave of cannabis histories that has emerged in recent decades. It offers case studies from Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. It does so to trace a global history of the plant and its preparations, arguing that Western colonialism shaped and disseminated ideas in the nineteenth century that came to drive the international control regimes of the twentieth. More recently, the emergence of commercial interests in cannabis has been central to the challenges that have undermined that cannabis consensus. Throughout, the determination of people around the world to consume substances made from the plant has defied efforts to stamp them out and often transformed the politics and cultures of using them. These texts also suggest that globalization might have a cannabis history. The migration of consumers, the clandestine networks established to supply them, and international cooperation on control may have driven much of the interconnectedness that is a key feature of the contemporary world.

He becomes funnier the more you read him.' Independent It has always been John Omally's secret ambition to become a rock star. In his youth he mastered air guitar and wardrobe-mirror posing, but he lacked that certain something. Talent. But at last an opportunity has arisen for John to get into 'The Industry'. A band called Gandhi's Hairdryer are looking for a manager, so all John has to do is persuade them that he is the new Brian Epstein. It should be a piece of cake. But - and there's always a but - there is something rather odd about this band. Something other-worldly. It might be the lead singer, whose voice has the power to heal. Might she be an angel, perhaps? Or could she be the Devil in disguise? Because, after all, the Devil does have all the best tunes. And this is Brentford. In this, his final offering of the twentieth century, Robert Rankin returns to the town of his birth, the friends of his youth and one of the loves of his life: Rock Music. 'Everybody should read at least one Robert Rankin in their life.' Daily Express

In this magnificent guide to England's cuisine, the inimitable Clarissa Dickson Wright takes us from a medieval feast to a modern-day farmers' market, visiting the Tudor working man's table and a Georgian kitchen along the way. Peppered with surprises and seasoned with wit, A History of England Food is a classic for any food lover.

An epic saga of hubris , cruelty, and redemption, Now the Hell Will Start tells the remarkable tale of the greatest manhunt of World War II. Herman Perry, besieged by the hardships of the Indo-Burmese jungle and the racism meted out by his white commanding officers, found solace in opium and marijuana. But on one fateful day, Perry shot his unarmed white lieutenant in the throes of an emotional collapse and fled into the jungle. Brendan I. Koerner spent nearly five years chasing Perry's ghost to the most remote corners of India and Burma. Along the way, he uncovered the forgotten story of the Ledo Road's GIs, for whom Jim Crow was as powerful an enemy as the Japanese-and for whom Herman Perry, dubbed the jungle king, became an unlikely folk hero.