Robert Amiss, still in the Civil Service, is seconded to the wasteland of the newly privatised British Conservation Society. Exchanging the weighty bureaucracy of Whitehall for the dismal...

When the BBC conducted their Greatest Briton poll, Alfred the Great was the only king to make it into the top twenty. One can be sure that the story of the cakes left to burn by a disguised...

London, 1889. Oscar Wilde, celebrated poet, wit, playwright and raconteur is the literary sensation of his age. All Europe lies at his feet. Yet when he chances across the naked corpse of...

When Tiro, the confidential secretary of a Roman senator, opens the door to a terrified stranger on a cold November morning, he sets in motion a chain of events which will eventually propel his...

When Twinklestar bolts, the mischievous reindeer leaves Niklas, his Santa Claus, to fall from the sky. Luckily, Niklas crash-lands his caravan in a neighbourhood where he makes friends with two...

HMS Truculent is a nuclear-powered, hunter-killer submarine, and one of the most deadly weapon systems in the world. Phil Hitchens is its distinguished British commander - who has broken away from...

Having delivered a particularly stirring speech at his recently deceased colleague’s funeral, Monsieur Pamplemousse is more than a little disturbed when the coffin explodes during the ceremony....

The year is 1931. The new and luxurious transatlantic liner Empress of Britain is on her eastward passage. Among the first-class passengers on board are two English confidence tricksters, making a...

Dear Father Christmas, I’m very sorry that you couldn’t come last year because the chimney was bricked up. We asked Pa to unblock it, so you could get down this time, but he said he couldn’t...

The outrageous and irrepressible Baroness (Ida 'Jack') Troutbeck, Mistress of St Martha's, has another cultural battle to win against the British Establishment: this time, against the horror of...

Foolishly, the British and Irish governments have chosen the tactless and impatient Baroness Troutbeck to chair a conference on Anglo-Irish cultural sensitivities. She instantly press-gangs her...

Meet Balthazar Jones, Beefeater at the Tower of London. Married to Hebe, he lives and works in the Tower, as he struggles to cope with the tragic death of his son Milo. The Tower of London is its...

Filth - 'Failed In London Try Hong Kong' - is a successful lawyer when he marries Elisabeth in Hong Kong soon after the War. Reserved, immaculate and courteous, Filth finds it hard to demonstrate...

The Galactic Coliseum is in crisis. Audiences all over the universe are bored with its acts. What’s needed is something new, something shocking—and Julian, the theatre’s owner, has got it: a...

Following the bestselling Summer of a Dormouse, Sir John Mortimer - playwright, novelist, octogenarian and erstwhile QC - offered up more lessons in living and growing old disgracefully. What...