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Claire Manumission

The Motel : High Times In 90s Ibiza

    The deliciously hedonistic autobiography of Claire Manumission - the club promoter, performer and mastermind behind Ibiza’s most iconic club nights. The most intriguing part of Manumission, Ibiza’s most notorious club night, is that if anyone else told you the story, you would scarcely believe them. Claire Manumission however, one half of the boundary-pushing duo behind the scenes, remembers it all.

    In all of its decadent glory. This is the story – her story - of the club that changed the scene forever. The Motel: High Times in 90s Ibiza expertly navigates the cast of 1.5 million guests – from supermodels and superstar DJs, rock royalty and Hollywood A-listers - that passed through its doors and delivers a story through raucous, jaw-dropping anecdotes that capture an incredibly unique point in time, place and culture.

    It is only right that Manumission gets to tell this story; With her partner Mike, she re-wrote party history by creating a brand new space for it to happen in. And, for once, it is a corner of cultural history seen from the perspective of a woman who tilted club life on its axis. The afterglow of “Brat Summer” demonstrates that people yearn for either the nostalgia or the lifestyle that Manumission helped curate during her career.

    Youth culture today is a high-execution homage to the 90s club scene - only, of course, more Insta-friendly. This book will be the catalyst that relaunches Manumission back into the public conscious whilst evolving their legacy for future generations. Nearly two decades after the club’s last party, interest has never been higher as to just what shocking acts happened behind its doors.

    It can’t all be true. Can it? Submit to Claire Manumission as she unleashes a candid, shocking and empowered tell-all from the epicentre of global youth culture. Strap yourself in.

    Alexander Larman

    Lazarus: The Second Coming Of David Bowie

      A major new biography of David Bowie on the 10th anniversary of his death, exploring the second half of his career from commerical failures to critical rebirth in the 21st century. When David Bowie died on 10 January 2016, aged 69, his death was greeted with the greatest display of public mourning since Princess Diana three decades before. Twenty-five years before, Bowie appeared to be washed up.

      His Eighties career had been a slow descent into self-parody, his attempts to diversify into hard rock with the had been disastrous, and the art-rock music with which he had made his name was badly out of fashion. The Thin White Duke needed a miracle if he was not only going to be able to assume his rightful place at the top of the rock music firmament, but even to continue his career. And a miracle – a resurrection from the dead – is precisely what happened.

      Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie is the first biography of Bowie that tells the full and candid story of what happened in between those two apparently unbridgeable points. With new and exclusive interviews with the musicians, filmmakers and cultural figures who worked with and befriended Bowie throughout this period, Lazarus is the definitive account of the previously overlooked and fascinating latter half of a great and distinguished career. A career that climaxed with his final masterpiece, Blackstar, and the unprecedented theatrical flourish of his departure from the stage as he passed into legend.

      Mike Joyce

      The Drums

        The long-awaited memoir from the legendary Smiths drummer.

        Throughout his honest and witty reflections, Joyce answers the question he and bassist Andy Rourke used to often ask each other: “Where did it all go right?”

        Joyce articulates humour, honesty and genuine humility, whilst retaining an acute awareness of how much people already know about his career. This focused his intention of conveying what it felt like to be in one of the most influential groups of all time. He tells us what it meant for that boy from the parochial suburbs of Fallowfield to be told he had a number one record.

        ‘Mike Joyce – The Drums’ (a credit that all Smiths fans will recognise) finally gives us the perspective from the self-confessed biggest Smiths fan in the world: some lad who plays the drums.


        Paul Vallely

        Live Aid - The Definitive Inside Story

          The authoritative, official inside story of 40 years of Live Aid, from Band Aid to todayIn 1985, with £100+ million in his back pocket from Live Aid – the greatest rock concert the world had ever seen – Bob Geldof took a trip across Africa to decide how the money should be spent. He asked Paul Vallely to accompany him. Over the next four decades Vallely became one of Geldof’s closest advisers – travelling with him to meet the world’s top rock stars and politicians.

          Here, for the first time, Vallely gives his full eye-witness account of what happened backstage at Live Aid – and Live 8, the biggest collective event in human history. Both of them, watched by more people than saw the moon landing. Vallely reveals for the first time exactly how Geldof reunited the Pink Floyd, drank late night whisky with Margaret Thatcher, witnessed Bob Dylan take singing lessons from Stevie Wonder and met Vladimir Putin on a boat in the Mediterranean.

          Why was Bob forced to write a grovelling apology to Bill Clinton? What did Maria Carey say when Geldof told her that her dress was too short? Why did the prime minister of Italy once hide from Bob in a bathroom? Is Bob Geldof a bully or a charmer, saint or a ‘white saviour’, or simply a force of nature? This book reveals all. With a foreword by Sir Bob Geldof this is the authoritative behind-the-scenes guide to four decades which rocked the world.


          Tom Doyle

          Ringo : A Fab Life

            Ringo Starr’s eventful and remarkable life laid bare in a first-of-its-kind mosaic biography of one of the greatest musicians of all time. Often overshadowed by his former bandmates, Starr’s remarkable story is no less compelling. ‘Ringo: A Fab Life’ highlights a life so jaw-droppingly eventful that one is left wondering how he also had time to become one of the best musicians on the planet.

            Through an episodic, mosaic format critically acclaimed author Tom Doyle takes readers through the ride of a lifetime, from Starr’s brushes with death as a child bought up in poverty, through to dizzying heights of fame and success with The Beatles and beyond. By examining pivotal moments, anecdotes and cautionary tales, we see Starr soar as part of the biggest band in the world - and then try and cope with life outside of it: a film career, misadventures with friends, children’s TV narrator, furniture designer, marriage to a Bond girl, before eventually finding peace and sobriety as one of the elder statesmen of rock. So much more than another Beatles related biography, we follow Starr’s career far beyond the rose-tinted sixties, through the various addictions and career left turns in the seventies and eighties, before reaching the 1990’s, his legacy and reputation intact.

            The life of Richard Starkey is long overdue a proper inspection and this book - with exclusive new interviews conducted by Doyle with, amongst others, Starr himself - provides a never-before-seen level of detail that will delight hardcore fans and curious readers alike. Ringo: A Fab Life - hilarious, moving, insightful and constantly surprising - is the definitive account of one of the greatest living musicians and the uncontested best drummer in The Beatles.

            Mark Blake

            Pink Floyd Shine On : The Definitive Oral History

              The definitive oral history of Pink Floyd as told by friends, associates, family members and the band themselves through exclusive, never before published interviews. Bestselling music author Mark Blake has been an associate and collaborator of Pink Floyd for over thirty years. Shine On takes on the behemoth task of capturing the most comprehensive history of the band ever compiled, drawing on huge amounts of new, archive and unpublished interview material with Gilmour, Waters, Mason and Wright.

              No other writer has interviewed the members of Pink Floyd as often nor as thoroughly, which is candidly apparent in this textured, gripping and consistently surprising biography. For the first time, the band's story is told as an oral history with each chapter presented through the words of the band, their friends, contemporaries and supporting musicians. The accessible structure and high level of detail means that the narrative is both approachable to casual readers and magnetic to the committed.

              Shine On is comprised of a significant amount of previously unpublished material, including a rare interview with Rosemary Breen lamenting that her younger brother Roger, aka Syd Barrett, should have never become a musician as well as exclusive new interviews with Pink Floyd's Nick Mason and Guy Pratt, reflecting on their enduring legacy and rather more complicated recent twists and turns in the bands story. Shine on is a forensic retelling of one of the most turbulent and enduring groups in rock music history, a complex history that only someone as skilled and insightful as Blake can navigate.

              Debsey Wykes

              Teenage Daydream : We Are The Girls Who Play In A Band

                An evocative coming of age story from one of the UK’s first ever female post-punk musicians. Debsey Wykes was the bass playing singer in the first all girl punk group Dolly Mixture. Thrown into the musky, misogynistic, male dominated world of the UK music industry in the late 1970s, they enjoyed unlikely #1 success alongside Captain Sensible of The Damned on1982’s even unlikelier cover version of ‘Happy Talk’, whilst fame and success on their own individual terms alluded them.

                Debsey went onto greater prominence with Saint Etienne with who she has performed since 1992, whilst in 2025, desirable Dolly Mixture reissues sell out around the world as quickly as they are printed. Featuring a cast of contemporary post-punk heroes – rom Paul Weller and the Jam (their first record label boss) to Madness and the Pogues – Teenage Daydream is a unique coming of age story of youthful ambition, enterprising DIY musical ethics and how an unlikely bunch of school-girl friends ended up on Top of the Pops in home made hula skirts.


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