Gyles Brandreth

For every moment in your life there is a poem. In Dancing by the Light of the Moon we have a remarkable collection of over 250 best-loved poems in the English-speaking world. Allow Gyles Brandreth to be your guide to not only the wonders of poetry - and there are many - but also its practical uses in everyday life. Whether seeking some words to reflect your mood, wanting to celebrate or mark an occasion or simply looking for lines of comfort and joy in difficult times, this collection has everything for readers of poetry both young and old, novices and old hands alike, will love and return to again and again.

Gyles Brandreth first met the Queen in 1968, when he was twenty. Over the next fifty years he met her many times, both at public and at private events. Through his friendship with the Duke of Edinburgh, he was given privileged access to Elizabeth II. He kept a record of all those encounters, and his conversations with the Queen over the years, his meetings with her family and friends, and his observations of her at close quarters are what make this very personal account of her extraordinary life uniquely fascinating.

From her childhood in the 1920s to the era of Harry and Meghan in the 2020s, from her war years at Windsor Castle to her death at Balmoral, this is both a record of a tumultuous century of royal history and a truly intimate portrait of a remarkable woman.

Police Chief Macnaghten and Oscar Wilde, in a Chelsea drawing room in the company of Arthur Conan Doyle, are gathered to discuss the case of the most notorious murderer in England. The three men set out to solve one of the world's most famous mysteries - the ultimate truth about the identity of Jack the Ripper.

There are few people Gyles Brandreth doesn't know or hasn't met - from the Queen to the Sex Pistols, Mandela and Marlene Dietrich to TS Eliot, he's the celebrities' celebrity, as familiar and welcome to us on radio and screens as biscuits are to a cup of tea.

Now a grandparent, looking back on his remarkable life, he traces his steps back to being a three-year-old tearing around 1950s London on his tricycle, to boarding school where he had an appendix removed simply to get out of football, to Bedales, where he met Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (and became intimate with a matron), to balancing his growing love of theatre with his love for educating, the 'woolly jumper years', the stint as an MP, the years of close friendship with the Queen, to becoming a septuagenarian Twitter star and stalwart fixture in British entertainment.

Throughout it all, there are lessons to be learned as Gyles derives wisdom and wit from his extraordinary encounters. Full of stories and full of heart, this is Gyles as you don't yet know him.

Set against the exotic background of fin-de-siecle London, this is a tale of corruption and intrigue in which Wilde comes across the corpse of 16-year-old Billy Wood, posed by candlelight in a dark attic room. He sets out to solve the crime with the help of Arthur Conan Doyle.

The author, having spent time with the royal couple, explores the marriage between Queen Elizabeth II and Philip.

Hosted by the least discreet man in Britain, broadcaster and national treasure Gyles Brandreth, Whispers is the panel game that celebrates all things scurrilous and salacious. Running the gauntlet of gossip are two teams of two guests, who test their wits and wit as they try to tell the difference between fact, fiction and outlandish speculation. In the opening round, they are challenged to work out whether a given allegation is true, false or a 'whisper' (a rumour that was widely circulated, but never proven). Subsequent rounds include 'Scandal of the Week', in which they must flesh out the bare bones of a celebrity biography by buzzing in with the missing information; and 'Loose Connections', where their task is to pinpoint the sensational or bizarre link between two well-known personalities.

At the end of each show, five bonus points are allocated to anyone who can identify a fib told by Gyles earlier in the game. Team captains Anthony Holden, Stella Duffy and Lucy Moore are joined by panellists including Lynne Truss, Jennie Bond, Julian Fellowes, Richard Herring, Louise Doughty and John O'Farrell to probe the follies and foibles of the famous and infamous. Did Queen Victoria take cannabis? What's the connection between Salman Rushdie and The Beatles? And was Bonaparte really attacked on his wedding night by Josephine's dog? Find out in the quiz that puts naughty before nice and dishes the dirt on the bad boys and girls of history.