Albert Neilson Hornby (1847-1925) was a sporting legend, captaining England and Lancashire at cricket and England at rugby union. He was also a useful footballer, appearing for Blackburn Rovers, and was a keen boxer and hurdler. He regularly rode to hounds and was a decent shot. He went to Oxford University but lasted only a few weeks, preferring scorebooks to text books and neither did he fancy joining his father’s lucrative milling business, which was based in his home town of Blackburn. But academia and the commercial world’s losses were very much cricket’s gains and the man known as ‘Monkey’ for his diminutive size as a youngster and his hyper-active demeanour carved out one of the most durable careers in the game. For five decades he ruled the roost at Lancashire as player, captain, chairman and president – a long service record that will almost certainly never be replicated. In his heyday it was said that only the great W.G. Grace was his superior as a batsman and his captaincy skills were admired by friend and foe alike – even by the Australians! He was also a brilliant fielder. But he will probably be best remembered as the captain who lost to the Australians in the famous Oval Test of 1882; a defeat which gave birth to the Ashes. He also went down in cricketing folklore as one of the central figures in Francis Thompson’s poem ‘At Lord’s’. As a captain, he demanded the utmost loyalty from those who played under him and, in return, defended his players to the hilt, most notably when a number of Lancashire bowlers were accused of throwing. He was one of the central figures when a disputed umpiring decision led to the Sydney riot of 1879, and there were other occasions when he was not afraid to wade into a crowd of unruly spectators. Had he been alive today Hornby would have been the darling of the tabloids and in his lifetime in and around what was a Golden Age of cricket he was never far away from controversy and confrontation.

EU security governance assesses the effectiveness of the EU as a security actor. The book has two distinct features. Firstly, it is the first systematic study of the different economic, political and military instruments employed by the EU in the performance of four different security functions. The book demonstrates that the EU has emerged as an important security actor, not only in the non-traditional areas of security, but increasingly as an entity with force projection capabilities. Secondly, the book represents an important step towards redressing conceptual gaps in the study of security governance, particularly as it pertains to the European Union. The book links the challenges of governing Europe's security to the changing nature of the state, the evolutionary expansion of the security agenda, and the growing obsolescence of the traditional forms and concepts of security cooperation.

Growing up in a hurry is the second book of the Meccano Apprentice trilogy and the next stage in the adolescent race to reach adulthood - that glorious, magical world of love, fun, freedom and ... responsibility and National Service.

In 1995 Bank of Scotland celebrated 300 years as Britain's oldest commercial bank. Voted 'most admired bank', respected by competitors, applauded by investors and trusted by customers, it looked forward to the next three hundred. Less than 15 years later it was bust, reviled as part of the spectacular collapse of HBOS, the conglomerate it had joined. One of the high-profile victims of the credit crunch, its spectacular fall caused seismic shock waves throughout the financial world. What went wrong? Ray Perman, who has followed the Bank since the 1970s when he was a Financial Times journalist, uncovered the story from documents and dozens of interviews with people at the top in Bank of Scotland and HBOS - from being the bank of choice for the highrolling Monte Carlo mega-rich to losing GBP10 billion. It is a cautionary tale for our times. In the complex world of modern global finance, the brilliant men who ran the company ignored the simple banking rules that their predecessors learned the hard way three centuries before.

A brilliant novel about a woman determined to make a name for herself as a sitcom star in 1960's London from the bestselling author of Dickens and Prince, High Fidelity and About a Boy Funny Girl is a lively account of the adventures of the intrepid young Sophie Straw as she navigates her transformation from provincial ingénue to television starlet amid a constellation of delightful characters. Insightful and humorous, Funny Girl does what Nick Hornby does best: endears us to a cast of characters who are funny if flawed, and forces us to examine ourselves in the process.