One day this would come back to haunt her. She would be on the floor with blood in her mouth and her eyes too swollen to see through, and she would remember: he asked and I said yes. I chose this life. At fourteen, Jen makes her own choices. She is in charge of everything that matters in her life, meaning her hopeless dad Terry. When his dream woman Marian moves in, it seems happiness is within reach, but Marian soon moves on, taking her young son James with her. Jen can't help but follow, determined to protect James from his mother's toxic temper, even if it means abandoning herself to the chaos of Marian's life. A novel about love, nakedness and vodka.

The classic serial, invented by BBC Radio Drama sixty years ago, survived and adapted itself to television, the arrival of colour and the global market in what has become a flood of classics with all channels competing for ratings and overseas sales. This richly detailed book traces these developments and analyses the genre's response to social, economic, technical and cultural changes, which have re-shaped it into the form we recognise today. The book contains considerable interview material with performers and media professionals.

The television handbook offers students an introduction to the techniques of producing material for television from the logistics to transmission. The author covers the history of broadcasting and an overview of the latest digital trends.

The New Television Handbook provides an exploration of the theory and practice of television at a time when the medium is undergoing radical changes. The book looks at television from the perspective of someone new to the industry, and explores the place of the medium within a constantly changing digital landscape. This title discusses key skills involved in television production, including: producing, production management, directing, camera, sound, editing and visual effects. Each of these activities is placed within a wider context as it traces the production process from commissioning to post-production. The book outlines the broad political and economic context of the television industry. It gives an account of television genres, in particular narrative, factual programmes and news, and it considers the academic discipline of media studies and the ways in which theorists have analysed and tried to understand the medium. It points to the interplay of theory and practice as it draws on the history of the medium and observes the ways in which the past continues to influence and invigorate the present. The New Television Handbook includes: contributions from practitioners ranging from established producers to new entrants; a comprehensive list of key texts and television programmes; a revised glossary of specialist terms; a section on training and ways of getting into the industry. By combining theory, real-world advice and a detailed overview of the industry and its history, The New Television Handbook is an ideal guide for students of media and television studies and young professionals entering the television industry.

Acclaimed Belfast novelist Glenn Patterson's classic novel of a day in the life in that city: a funny, brilliantly observed, bittersweet snapshot of a moment in 1967 just before everything changed. "If I had known history was to be written that Sunday in the International Hotel I might have made an effort to get out of bed before teatime." So begins The International. Danny Hamilton takes us back over three troubled decades to one wonderfully ordinary Saturday, in January 1967, when his 18-year-old self had no idea — most people had no idea — that ordinary days in Belfast would soon become tragically rare. Ordinary, but packed with extraordinarily observed characters; and extraordinary enough for Danny to fall in love twice (and think about sex a few more times than that). Ordinary, but when someone calls out "Be careful" in parting, no one takes it lightly and for good reason. First published in the UK in 1999, and reissued by Blackstaff in 2008, The International is a timeless novel: funny, bawdy, deftly crafted, and heartwrenchingly humane. Featuring an essay “On Reading The International” by Man Booker-Prize winner Anne Enright

Throughout its history, British television has found a place, if only in its margins, for programmes that consciously worked to expand the boundaries of television aesthetics. Even in the present climate of increased academic interest in television history, its experimental tradition has generally either been approached generically or been lost within the assumption that television is simply a mass medium. Avaible for the first time in paperback, Experimental British television uncovers the history of experimental television, bringing back forgotten programmes in addition to looking at relatively more privileged artists or programme strands from fresh perspectives. The book therefore goes against the grain of dominant television studies, which tends to place the medium within the flow of the ‘everyday’, in order to scrutinise those productions that attempted to make more serious interventions within the medium.

Booklist Top of the List Reference Source The heir and successor to Eric Partridge's brilliant magnum opus, The Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, this two-volume New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is the definitive record of post WWII slang. Containing over 60,000 entries, this new edition of the authoritative work on slang details the slang and unconventional English of the English-speaking world since 1945, and through the first decade of the new millennium, with the same thorough, intense, and lively scholarship that characterized Partridge's own work. Unique, exciting and, at times, hilariously shocking, key features include: unprecedented coverage of World English, with equal prominence given to American and British English slang, and entries included from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, South Africa, Ireland, and the Caribbean emphasis on post-World War II slang and unconventional English published sources given for each entry, often including an early or significant example of the term’s use in print. hundreds of thousands of citations from popular literature, newspapers, magazines, movies, and songs illustrating usage of the headwords dating information for each headword in the tradition of Partridge, commentary on the term’s origins and meaning New to this edition: A new preface noting slang trends of the last five years Over 1,000 new entries from the US, UK and Australia New terms from the language of social networking Many entries now revised to include new dating, new citations from written sources and new glosses The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is a spectacular resource infused with humour and learning – it’s rude, it’s delightful, and it’s a prize for anyone with a love of language.