Alan Titchmarsh was busy promoting When I Was a Nipper last Friday 12th November, starting with radio interviews with BBC Radio Berkshire and R4 You and Yours, before attending a packed signing event at Chapter One bookshop in Woodley. There were queues out the door for the full hour and a half that Alan was there, including a visit from the local primary school’s gardening club who interviewed him!

He then stopped off to sign stock at Waterstones and One Tree Books in Petersfield, before doing interviews for Candis Magazine and the PA and finally attending his sell-out event at Chichester Festivities in the evening. This Friday (19th) will see Alan returning to his home town of Ilkley for further promotional activity, including BBC Radio Leeds, a signing at The Grove Bookshop, Ilkley followed by interviews with The Dalesman, Yorkshire Life and Look North. Alan then has another huge event, this time in conjunction with The Yorkshire Post at 7pm at the Majestic Hotel in Harrogate.

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Jenny - Press Officer

Members of the Ebury team graced the red carpet at BBC TV Centre last night for the book trade’s own Oscars, the Galaxy Book Awards. We were there to support our very own Yotam Ottolenghi whose book Plenty had been shortlisted for the Food & Drink Book of the Year. And, beating off competition that included Nigella, Jamie and Nigel Slater, Plenty was named as the best food book of 2010. Congratulations Yotam!

The awards will be shown in full on More4 this Saturday, 13th November, at 7.30pm, so tune in then to see Yotam’s speech.

The public are now invited to vote online for the Galaxy Book of the Year, the nominees of which comprise winners of all eight categories. So please log on to www.galaxynationalbookawards.com to support Yotam - the final result will be announced on 13th December.

Caroline - Deputy Publicity Director

Earlier this week, Christopher Winn (author of I Never Knew That About the River Thames) took some of the Ebury team on a tour of our own backyard. We walked across Vauxhall Bridge Road, along the Albert Embankment, back across Lambeth Bridge and along Millbank back to the office. It’s an area we are all in every single day for work, and yet there was SO much to learn just in this small space. Just some of the things we learned were:

• Vauxhall is possibly the site of the earliest crossing on the Thames. Wooden stumps were found near Vauxhall Bridge Road dating back to 1500 BC!
• Vauxhall was named after a person called Faulkes de Braute- his house was based on the site and was falled Faulkes Hall. His family crest was a griffin, which later became the symbol for Vauxhall cars, who were later based there (apparently on the land where the enormous Sainsburys is now).
• The reason why there is a pineapple in the middle of the roundabout south of Lambeth Road is because pineapples were introduced to England by Charles I’s gardener, John Tradescant the Younger, who is buried at St Mary’s church, right next to the roundabout
• Lambeth Bridge is painted red to match the seats in the House of Lords (and Westminister Bridge is painted green to match the seats in the House of Commons)
• The world’s first modern penetentiary was built on Millbank and had a central tower that could see into all the prison cells. The idea was to ‘induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power’ (similar to how CCTV is meant to make us feel!)
• And lots, lots more.

It was an absolutely fascinating walk and well worth braving the wind to do it (although the photos are slightly windswept!). Thanks very much, Christopher, for sharing some of your encyclopaedic knowledge with us!

Katie - Digital Marketing Manager

Find out more about I Never Knew That About the River Thames

Immodesty Blaize’s second book, Ambition, was published in October and to celebrate we sent some spectacular showgirls out into central London. Did you catch a glimpse of them? If not, we’ve got some great pictures of the activity below…

Read an extract from Ambition

Watch Immodesty read from Ambition