Mike Read

This book is the second of a series documenting a thousand years of selected London streets and their respective histories. Some of the streets have their roots and foundations in places of worship, locations for trading or because of their geographical location or particular topography. With St Paul's at its western end and St Mary-le-Bow as its centrepiece, Cheapside goes back further than a thousand years, all the way to the Romans and beyond. Its colourful history includes kings, queens, poets, playwrights, murderers, criminals, broadcasters, inventors, politicians, pioneers, philanthropists, religious fanatics, revolutionaries, diarists and architects who all played their part in making Cheapside what Charles Dickens Jnr called the greatest thoroughfare in the City of London. With London's streets harbouring a multitude of long lost stories ripe for the recounting, Mike Read's A Thousand Years of a London Street series is one with endless potential. The only question that remains is which street will pique the interest of this broadcaster turned historical supersleuth next?

This book is intended to be the first of a series documenting London Streets and a thousand years of their respective histories. Clearly some routes were only trackways, pathways or even fields but where Londoners have existed, worked, fought, traded, played, lived and died on the site it’s fascinating to mark the journey, growth, sights and sounds of these iconic London thoroughfares. Denmark Street wasn’t built until the 1680s, but fascinating characters from all walks of life have been active on the site since the 1000s at least. Royalty, singers, musicians, highwaymen, murderers, thieves, arsonists, inventors, pioneers, regicides, politicians, revolutionaries, songwriters, poets and artists are all part of the colourful past of the street that became known as Tin Pan Alley. Denmark Street, and the site on which it was built, has witnessed a millennium of mass murderers, rock stars, inventors, serial killers, queens, rebels, rogues, lepers, poets, explorers, arsonists, swordsmen, activists, criminals, anarchists, racing drivers, reformers, schemers, dreamers, pirates, plague victims, great lovers, pioneers, regicides and songwriters. The Beatles, Queen Matilda, Jimi Hendrix, The Kray Twins, David Bowie, Karl Marx, General Tom Thumb, Elton John, Tom Jones, Casanova, Claud Duvall, The Rolling Stones, Denis Nilson, The Sex Pistols, Paul Simon, Charlie Chaplin, Johan Zoffany and hundreds of other familiar names, all walked, worked, or wrote in this site. The New Musical Express and the Melody Maker were born here, and it was, for a century, the home of our great songwriters and the British music publishing industry.

Mike Read's knowledge of the world's greatest pop music is brought together in this cornucopia of anecdotes, amazing tales and extraordinary facts. He looks at the strange, unexpected and sometimes alarming side of the music business.

Classic FM One Hundred Favourite Poems is a rich and varied treasury which includes not only the famous, best-loved poems you would expect to find - and all the famous poets - but also some wonderful, less well-known works. This is a selection that will enthrall, move and delight, whether the poems are familiar or being read for the first time.