The Biscuit Girls

True stories of love and labour, hard times and good times told by six biscuit girls of Carr’s of Carlisle

Hunter Davies was brought up in Carlisle, educated at Durham University, and now lives half the year in London and half in the Lake District. 
 
As a journalist he worked on the Sunday Times, where he was chief features writer, and later editor of the magazine. He wrote regular columns for Punch and currently writes for the New Statesman, The Sunday Times, the Mail on Sunday and Cumbrian Life. For three years he presented Bookshelf on BBC Radio 4. 
 
He is the author of over forty books, including biographies, novels, children's novels (Flossie Teacake) and several books about the Lakes. He is the author of the only official biography of the Beatles.

Ivy, Dulcie, Barbara, Ann, Dorothy and Jean all had different reasons for applying to work at Carr’s biscuits, but once they had put on their overalls and walked through the factory gates they discovered a community full of life, laughter and friendship. 
 
To those who didn’t know, the biscuit factory that towered over Carlisle might look like just another slice of the industrial North, a noisy and chaotic place with workers trooping in and out at all hours. For the biscuit girls it was a place where they worked hard, but also where they gossiped, got into scrapes and made lifelong friends. Outside the factory walls there might be difficult husbands or demanding kids, and sometimes even heartbreak and tragedy, but they knew there would always be an escape from their troubles at Carr's. 
 
Some, like Barbara, only applied because she needed the extra cash, until things got a bit easier at home. Her supervisor cross examined her about who would be looking after the kids while she was at work, but let her have the job. Like many of the women who joined up ‘temporary’ Barbara went on to stay at Carrs for 32 years. 
 
Beginning in the 1940s, these heartwarming and vividly-remembered stories have all been told by the women themselves to Hunter Davies.

Thirty Years of Interviews with the Famous

Hunting People

Hunter Davies interviews George Best, Yoko Ono, Paul McCartney, John  Cleese, John le Carre, Jack Nicholson and others in this engrossing  anthology that spans the decades from the sixties to the nineties

HUNTER DAVIES is the author of the only ever authorised biography of The Beatles, still in print in almost every country in the world. In 2012 he edited The Lennon Letters, published in 20 different foreign countries, and in 2014 The Beatles Lyrics. He wrote the first book about the Quarrymen. Plus forty other non-Beatly books, including novels, biographies, travel and children’s books. As a journalist, he has a column in The Sunday Times about money and in the New Statesman about football. 
 
SPENCER LEIGH is the author of 25 books, most of them connected with The Beatles or popular music. He writes music obituaries for the Independent and for 25 years has had his own music programme on BBC Radio Merseyside. 
 
KEITH BADMAN is an author, journalist and film and video archives researcher. He has written or contributed to ten books about popular music, including four on The Beatles, and been a columnist for Record Collector magazine for 20 years. . He assisted with the archive film and video research on The Beatles Anthology series. 
 
DAVID BEDFORD is the author of two books about the beginnings and history of The Beatles in Liverpool. He is currently Chairman of the Governors at Dovedale Juniors, the Liverpool school attended by John Lennon and George Harrison.

Hunter Davies's first major interview was with John Masefield for The Sunday Times in 1963. In the years since, he has interviewed many of the most famous people that the late twentieth century has to offer, from James Baldwin and Orson Welles to Jack Nicholson and Salman Rushdie. in an eclectic and highly readable selection, we learn that Noel Coward enjoyed watching operations and considered himself 'about as decadent as a suet pudding', David Hockney dyed his hair because 'blonds have more fun', and Anthony Burgess had yet to touch the body of an Englishwoman. Christy Brown concedes 'I'm just a run-of-the-mill genius', while Alan Sugar admits 'I'm a miserable sod'. The book opens with a specially written introduction in which Hunter Davies explores the art of the Celebrity Interview, and turns the tables to interview fellow practitioners, such as Lynn Barber and Angela Lambert.

My Search for Britain's Maddest Museums

Behind the Scenes at the Museum of Baked Beans

Witty and eccentric Behind the Scenes at the Museum of Baked Beans traces Hunter Davies' search for the strangest collections in the UK

Affable, curious, unpretentious, never dull, Hunter is one of the most agreeable egomaniacs I know

I love Hunter to bits, and he cannot write a boring line

Only Hunter Davies, the sage of the Lake District, could have come up with the worst idea yet for a book - Behind the Scenes at the Museum of Baked Beans. Only Hunter Davies could have made it irresistible and have publishers all over Britain asking themselves why they didn't think of it. Stand by for a rash of clones. Meanwhile, buy it and read it

Only Hunter Davies could write a book called Behind the Scenes at the Museum of Baked Beans and only Hunter Davies could make it as entertaining, informative and whimsical as this

This is "show and tell" on a grand scale. The bizarre world of weird and wonderful collections and hoardings laid bare by our own national treasure, Hunter Davies. Delicious

Hunter Davies is a master collector and prolific writer. From his biography of The Beatles, reissued by Ebury in 2009, to his classic football book The Glory Game his publishing history is as diverse as it is successful; he has also ghosted everyone from Wayne Rooney to John Prescott. Hunter Davies also writes for The Sunday Times, Guardian, Daily Mail and The New Statesman and presented Bookshelf on BBC Radio 4 for three years.

'I am fascinated by people turning their daft dreams into a reality. How did they do it and why?' 
 
Driven by his own passion for collecting Hunter Davies has packed his notepad and set off in search of Britain's maddest museums. As he explores these hidden gems he soon discovers that they are everywhere and that they celebrate just about everything, from lawnmowers in Southport to pencils in Keswick. 
 
But as Hunter travels up and down the country he comes to realise that it isn't only the collections that are fascinating, it's also the people who have put them together. Whether they're a man who loves his Heinz so much he's changed his name to Captain Beany or a kleptomaniac Vintage Radio buff, these eccentric collectors are Britain's finest and could live in no other country in the world. 
 
Once you discover these museums and get to know their curators, Great Britain won't look quite the same again...

The Authorised Biography

The Beatles

Utterly classic (and only authorised) biography of the Fab Four

HUNTER DAVIES is the author of the only ever authorised biography of The Beatles, still in print in almost every country in the world. In 2012 he edited The Lennon Letters, published in 20 different foreign countries, and in 2014 The Beatles Lyrics. He wrote the first book about the Quarrymen. Plus forty other non-Beatly books, including novels, biographies, travel and children’s books. As a journalist, he has a column in the Sunday Times about money and in the New Statesman about football. 
 
SPENCER LEIGH is the author of 25 books, most of them connected with The Beatles or popular music. He writes music obituaries for the Independent and for 25 years has had his own music programme on BBC Radio Merseyside. 
 
KEITH BADMAN is an author, journalist and film and video archives researcher. He has written or contributed to ten books about popular music, including four on The Beatles, and been a columnist for Record Collector magazine for 20 years. He assisted with the archive film and video research on The Beatles Anthology series. 
 
DAVID BEDFORD is the author of two books about the beginnings and history of The Beatles in Liverpool. He is currently Chairman of the Governors at Dovedale Juniors, the Liverpool school attended by John Lennon and George Harrison.

There's only one book that ever truly got inside the Beatles and this is it. The landmark, worldwide bestseller that has grown with the Beatles ever since. 
 
During 1967 and 1968 Hunter Davies spent eighteen months with the Beatles at the peak of their powers as they defined a generation and rewrote popular music. As their only ever authorised biographer he had unparalleled access - not just to John, Paul, George and Ringo but to friends, family and colleagues. There when it mattered, he collected a wealth of intimate and revealing material that still makes this the classic Beatles book - the one all other biographers look to. 
 
Hunter Davies remained close with the band and as such has had access to more information over the years. This 40th anniversary edition contains new material which has never been revealed before, from the author's archives and from the Beatles themselves, that will bring new insights to their legend.

The Glory Game

The most insightful book about the life of a football club ever published.

Still the definitive football text . . . this book is indispensable

The Glory Game engages the mind while revealing the soul of the beautiful game

Brilliant, anthropological account of life with Tottenham in 1973, before there were press officers and brand managers

David Goldblatt, author of the World Football Yearbook

When the first edition of The Glory Game was published in 1972, it was instantly hailed as the most insightful book about the life of a football club ever published. Hunter Davies was, and still is, the only author ever to be allowed into the inner sanctum of a top-level football team (Tottenham Hotspur) and his pen spared nothing and no one. 'His accuracy is sufficiently uncanny to be embarrassing,' wrote Bob Wilson in the New Statesman. 'Brilliant, vicious, unmerciful,' wrote The Sun. 
 
 Davies spent a whole season with the team, training with them, visiting the players' homes and witnessing the dressing-room confrontations. In the modern era of painstaking media management and tight security, no sportswriter will ever again be granted such unprecedented access. While some features of the game have changed beyond all recognition - notably the all-consuming role that money now plays - inside every club the dramas and tensions revealed by Davies remain, making the book a timeless classic and securing its position as one of the best books about football ever written.

Hunter Davies

The ultimate, definitive, nothing-more-to-be-said Beatles encyclopaedia. I love it.

Four years in the making, it is the definitive guide to everything and everyone associated with The Beatles

‘Extensive, comprehensive…it’s brilliant’

‘A wonderful treasure and compendium…a very beautiful thing’

Hunter Davies, the only ever authorised biographer of the group, has produced the essential Beatles guide. Divided into four sections – People, Songs, Places and Broadcast and Cinema – it covers all elements of the band’s history and vividly brings to live every influence that shaped them. 
 
Illustrated with material from Hunter's remarkable private collection of artefacts and memorabilia, this is the definitive Beatles treasure.

The Beatles Book

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Praise for The Beatles Book

The ultimate, definitive, nothing-more-to-be-said Beatles encyclopaedia. I love it.

Four years in the making, it is the definitive guide to everything and everyone associated with The Beatles

‘Extensive, comprehensive…it’s brilliant’

The ultimate, definitive, nothing-more-to-be-said Beatles encyclopaedia. I love it.

Four years in the making, it is the definitive guide to everything and everyone associated with The Beatles

‘Extensive, comprehensive…it’s brilliant’

The ultimate, definitive, nothing-more-to-be-said Beatles encyclopaedia. I love it.

Four years in the making, it is the definitive guide to everything and everyone associated with The Beatles

‘Extensive, comprehensive…it’s brilliant’

Books by Hunter Davies

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