The Bookshop, the Draper, the Candlestick MakerThe modern day cry is that the high street is dying. But are our present concerns so different from those of the past? Historian Annie Gray takes us down the street and through the ages, from medieval marketplaces to the purpose built concrete precincts still standing today. Peeping inside the windows of tailors, tearooms and grocers, we explore everything from the toyshops of yesteryear places where curiosities were sold for adults rather than

Most famous for playing Neil the hippy in The Young Ones and a pillar of the 80s alternative comedy (the Comic Strip Presents and Bad News) and inspired by a recent sold-out tour where the audiences lapped up his witty and self-depreciating stories

As a Bolton teenager with a paper round Clive Myrie read all the newspapers he delivered from cover to cover

in dinosaur times sitting down hadn't been invented

Caithleen is a romantic

forages on the grounds

but all of them set against spectacular backdrops

who is running a struggling boarding school for girls

This text explains how the disaster happened and why nobody was held responsible

In this series of electrifying essays

but Jennifer

an English history of the Metro for the general reader

much worse