*** Accompanies BBC2's major new TV series and The Story of Music in 50 Pieces on Radio 3 *** Music is an intrinsic part of everyday life, and yet the history of its development from single notes to multi-layered orchestration can seem bewilderingly specialised and complex.
The hottest sprinter in the world - Telegraph Mark Cavendish is the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France's green jersey, the first to wear the iconic rainbow jersey in almost 50 years and our only ever rider to capture the Giro d'Italia points title.
In An Appetite for Wonder Richard Dawkins brought us his engaging memoir of the first 35 years of his life from early childhood in Africa to publication of The Selfish Gene in 1976, when he shot to fame as one of the most exciting new scientists of his generation.
Born to parents who were enthusiastic naturalists, and linked through his wider family to a clutch of accomplished scientists, Richard Dawkins was bound to have biology in his genes.
At seventy-five, Terry and Monica Darlington had done everything they could think of doing, including starting a business and becoming athletes and running a literary society.
Jean Russo was a single mother in the 1950s, badly paid and living with her parents in Gloversville, New York, a dead-end town whose heyday as the hub of the leather-goods industry was just a distant memory.
Exploding pressure cookers, a thwarted wife's deadly revenge and transvestites in distress - manning an ambulance in the seventies kept you on your toes.
Christopher Fowler's memoir captures life in suburban London as it has rarely been seen: through the eyes of a lonely boy who spends his days between the library and the cinema, devouring novels, comics, cereal packets - anything that might reveal a story.
'I had not lived in the former pit village of Lynemouth since 1961 but the winding road north from Newcastle will always be the same nostalgic highway, each twist charged with vivid memories and powerful emotions.
'All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why'Rick Stein's childhood in 1950s rural Oxfordshire and North Cornwall was idyllic.
Possibly the only drawback about the bestselling How To Be A Woman was that its author, Caitlin Moran, was limited to pretty much one subject: being a woman.
In 1999 His Holiness The Dalai Lama published the bestselling Ancient Wisdom: Modern World, which addressed the question of ethics for the new millennium.
As a young schoolboy, David Essex dreamed of becoming a professional footballer, and was signed up by his beloved West Ham United, but as a teenager he developed a passion for music which set him on a very different path, and ultimately led to superstardom.
Business advice from the best in the businessLooking for advice in setting up your own company, improving your career prospects, or developing your leadership skills?
Joe Simpson, with just his partner Simon Yates, tackled the unclimbed West Face of the remote 21,000 foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in June 1995.
In his 14 years as CEO of Tesco, Sir Terry Leahy not only turned the company into the largest supermarket chain in the UK but also transformed it into a global enterprise.
Adolf Hitler was an unlikely leader - fuelled by hate, incapable of forming normal human relationships, unwilling to debate political issues - and yet he commanded enormous support.
A Spectator Best Book of the YearTrawling through a vast family archive and arcane sources in half a dozen languages, Adam Zamoyski has revealed the dramatic life of his great-great-great grandmother, an uneducated, vulnerable girl cast into a man's world.
