Mark Radcliffe Knihy

A personal reflection on the crucial turning points in the history of music, from BBC broadcaster and musician Mark Radcliffe

Approaching 50, Mark Radcliffe decided to write about his life, most importantly, his time in music. But crucially, he only wanted to write about the most interesting days and not the dull ones in between. With predictable good taste, Mark takes his title from the Kinks' song and has written an entertaining, funny book worthy of such a pedigree. Mark's family life is covered by "The Day My Mother Hit Me With a Golf Club," his school life by "The Day I Ruined a Perfectly Good Suit" and "The Day I Got My First Guitar;" through his epiphany of the power of music in "The Day I Met the Band Who Changed My Life" and his starstruck meeting with childhood hero, David Bowie. Many other stars are covered too, for example in "The Day I Went to Kate Bush's House for Cheese Flan," and "The Day Mick Jagger Was Taller Than Me." He's very funny when recounting his days working at the BBC in 1980s and 1990s (how, when bored, he and colleagues invented a fictional department), winning Stars in Their Eyes as Shane MacGowan, and so on. Yet, among the laughter are more sober days, such as the one when he learned John Peel had died. A brief history of both one man's life and his love affair with music, this uniquely entertaining memoir will appeal not just to music fans but to connoisseurs of British popular culture.

Combining his trademark humour with his eye for the ridiculous, Radio 1's Mark Radcliffe recalls his less-than-glittering rock career in a succession of bands. Interwoven with the musical disasters is the rites-of passage story of a grammar school boy.

A collection of frequently absurd and surprisingly moving short stories, featuring ordinary people with superpowers that none of them would have chosen. A woman who can speak with cats, a boy who can bring dead spiders back to life, a healer hiding with charlatans (and drummers) in a hippie commune, a man who retreats into invisibility, a man struggling with the pressure of being born of immaculate conception... Superpowers is a collection of stories about people who find themselves burdened with remarkable gifts that they neither chose nor know what to do with. With a cast of characters from the margins that are at once ordinary, hidden, lonely and somehow heroic, these stories are about playing the hand you are dealt even if you don't know what game it is you are playing.

If you could save the life of a loved one by trading in years of your own life, how many years would you give? How many lives could you save? Would you know when to stop?