William Woodruff had the sort of childhood satirised in the famous Monty Python Yorkshireman sketch. The son of a weaver, he was born on a pallet of straw at th

The second volume of Woodruff's memoirs starts with his arrival in the East End of London in the early 1930s. He finds lodgings with a Cockney family in Stratfo

Italy, 1944 - this is the setting of one of the most convincing and quietly magnificent stories about man and war that has ever been written. Here, (distilled f

All she wanted was to skate, but when her dreams come true, what happens when she's thrown into the cutthroat world of figure skating competition? For Claire Bo