It was supposed to be “the war that will end war” – according to the misplaced optimism of British author H.G. Wells, and countless others like him who cheerfully expected “our boys” to be home by Christmas 1914.   Involving all the world’s great powers, more than 70 million combatants, and ...read more →

Join us for our biggest, wildest, craziest and funniest virtual office party ever… featuring the prodigious talents of Professor Elemental and Brian Clegg, together with Ian Winn, Ali Gardner & the combined talents of the chatroom, Dave Bartram, and ringmaster Peter Cox. “What I don’t like about office Christmas parties”, ...read more →

“I wanted to know what went on -what really went on – inside Viacom/CBS… about the collaboration between very big business and very big government.”  So says television legend Dan Rather in this special edition of The Debriefer.   ”I knew that a lot had gone on behind the scenes [in ...read more →

In the week that Microsoft bought a fifth of Barnes & Noble’s digital businesses, and we learned that e-books sales grew 360% in the UK last year, we thought at The Naked Book we’d ignore all that – and focus on ‘mummy porn’. Why?  Well, it was the public wot ...read more →

Once every generation or two, a book comes along that incarnates our collective experience of war.  Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front was one such: Heller’s Catch-22 was another, and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five was one more.  To this distinguished list must be added Ben Fountain‘s first novel, Billy Lynn’s Long ...read more →

It was an iconic murder – pre-dating the mysterious death of British biological warfare expert David Kelly, but bearing uncanny similarities, too.  Rose grower, naturalist, diarist and campaigner against nuclear energy and weapons, Hilda Murrell was truly a Miss Marple character, and her murder in 1984 entered the national consciousness ...read more →

British Prime Minister David Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne  are currently enforcing “savage” spending cuts that, in Cameron’s own words, “will change our whole way of life”. Why? What have the British people done to deserve this punishment? Tonight’s guest, Professor L. Randall Wray, has got some very revealing ...read more →