At Bagley Hall, a notoriously wild, but increasingly academic, independent, crammed with the children of the famous, trouble is afoot. The ambitious and fatally attractive headmaster, Hengist Brett-Taylor, hatches a plan to share the facilities of his school with Larkminster Comprehensive - known locally, as 'Larks'. His reasons for doing so are purely financial, but he is encouraged by the opportunities the scheme gives him for frequent meetings with Janna Curtis, the dynamic new head of Larks, who has been drafted in to save, what is a fast-sinking school from closure. Janna is young, pretty, enthusiastic and vastly brave - and she will do anything to rescue her demoralized, run-down and cash-strapped school. Neither parents nor staff of either school, are too keen on this radical move, although some can see the possible financial advantages. For the students, however, it offers great opportunities to get up to even more mayhem than usual

At Bagley Hall, a notoriously wild, but increasingly academic, independent, crammed with the children of the famous, trouble is afoot. The ambitious and fatally attractive headmaster, Hengist Brett-Taylor, hatches a plan to share the facilities of his school with Larkminster Comprehensive - known locally, as 'Larks'. His reasons for doing so are purely financial, but he is encouraged by the opportunities the scheme gives him for frequent meetings with Janna Curtis, the dynamic new head of Larks, who has been drafted in to save, what is a fast-sinking school from closure. Janna is young, pretty, enthusiastic and vastly brave - and she will do anything to rescue her demoralized, run-down and cash-strapped school. Neither parents nor staff of either school, are too keen on this radical move, although some can see the possible financial advantages. For the students, however, it offers great opportunities to get up to even more mayhem than usual

No picture ever came more beautiful than Raphael’s Pandora. Discovered by a dashing young lieutenant, Raymond Belvedon, in a Normandy Chateau in 1944, she had cast her spell over his family – all artists and dealers – for fifty years. Hanging in a turret of their lovely Cotswold house, Pandora witnessed Raymond’s tempestuous wife Galena both entertaining a string of lovers, and giving birth to her four children: Jupiter, Alizarin, Jonathan and superbrat Sienna. Then an exquisite stranger rolls up, claiming to be a long-lost daughter of the family, setting the three Belvedon brothers at each other’s throats. Accompanying her is her fatally glamorous boyfriend, whose very different agenda includes an unhealthy interest in the Raphael.

During a fireworks party, the painting is stolen. The hunt to retrieve it takes the reader on a thrilling journey to Vienna, Geneva, Paris, New York and London. After a nail-biting court case and a record-smashing Old Masters sale at Sotheby’s, passionate love triumphs and Pandora is restored to her rightful home.

The Sunday Times - ‘Triumphantly good’

Pigeons carrying vital messages to and from the beleaguered city during the Siege of Paris; horses and mules struggling through miles of fetid mud to bring ammunition to the front in the Great War; dogs sniffing out mines for the British invasion force in the Second World War – countless brave animals have played their part in the long, cruel history of war. Some have won medals for gallantry - like G.I. Joe, the American pigeon who saved 100 British lives in Italy, and Rob, the black and white mongrel who made over twenty parachute jumps with the SAS. Too many others have died abandoned, in agony and alone, after serving their country with distinction.

Jilly Cooper has here written a tribute to the role of animals in wartime. It is a tragic and horrifying story - yet it has its lighter moments too: a hilarious game of musical chairs played on camels during the Desert Campaign; and the budgie who remarked, when carried from a bombed-out East End tenement, ‘This is my night out’.

Re-published to coincide with the launch of The Animals in War Memorial Fund, this is a vivid and unforgettable record of man’s inhumanity to animals, but also an astonishing story of courage, intelligence, devotion and resilience.

This is a long awaited memoir from leading military publisher Leo Cooper. Yorkshire born, he was educated at Radley and by National Service in Kenya, before returning to London to join the publishing firm Longmans. He later worked for Andre Deutsch and Hamish Hamilton, who both decided that he was unemployable, a decision with which he thoroughly concurred. They both sacked him. There was only one thing to do and that was 'if you can't join them, beat them' and this was what Leo did. Aided and abetted by business partner Tom Hartman, who played Sancho Panzer [sic] to his Don Quixote, the imprint immediately attracted a number of distinguished authors. Many others followed. This book is a vivid account of the efforts made to keep a small publishing company going whilst being permanently short of capital and experience. Readers will very quickly discover that this is a very unusual book for indeed Leo Cooper himself is a somewhat unusual man.