David Stafford: 8 books

Most pop stars' fame used to end with their 25th birthday, but Adam Faith just kept on being interesting until the day he died aged 62. Born in working-class Acton, Adam Faith defined the post-war aspiration for stardom. Enjoying an unprecedented run of seven top five hits, his chiselled features...

“There’s only ever been two English rock’n’roll singers, Johnny Rotten and Billy Fury.” Ian Dury If he’d merely stood like a statue on stage, he would have flooded theatres with hormonal longings, but he was incapable of standing still. He pulsed. He writhed. He invalidated the...

To end a history of World War II at VE Day is to leave the tale half told. While the war may have seemed all but over by Hitler's final birthday (April 20), Stafford's chronicle of the three months that followed tells a different, and much richer, story. ENDGAME 1945 highlights the gripping...

On paper, Kenny Everett's qualifications did not look promising with little in the way of education, physique or social skills. What he had was a gift for funny voices, an oblique imagination and a way with a tape recorder. Yet, the British radio revolution in the ‘60s and ‘70s needed these exact...

Lionel Bart was a writer and composer of British pop music and musicals, best known for creating the book, music and lyrics for Oliver! He also wrote the famous songs Living Doll (Cliff Richard) and From Russia With Love (Matt Munroe). He was unable to read music. He was a millionaire...

What Freud Really Said offers the most lucid overview available of Sigmund Freud, his legacy, and his place in our world. As the person responsible for the birth of psychoanalysis and one of the sharpest clinical minds of the twentieth century, Freud continues to be one of the most influential thinkers...

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to housing policy and finance in Britain. It describes changes in the condition and tenure of housing in the post-war period, and contrasts the massive investment in house building and improvement with allegations that housing conditions are deteriorating....

Software architecture—the conceptual glue that holds every phase of a project together for its many stakeholders—is widely recognized as a critical element in modern software development. Practitioners have increasingly discovered that close attention to a software system’s architecture pays valuable...