Edward Brooke-Hitching's delightful book is a collection of the curiosities, absurdities and downright filth that can arise when two (or more) human beings become attracted to each other. Historian Daniel Cowling looks at the successes and the failures that the four-year British occupation brought, delving deep into Foreign Office documents, private diaries, newspaper reports and interviews. Charlie Taverner's book about the history of street food in London began life gives a fascinating picture of what Londoners used to eat while on the move, where that food came from and who sold it to them. Those who gladly left Shakespeare behind at school, believing the plays to be dusty and unintelligible, will now definitely need to think again. She's 'very much enjoying being swept along by this wonderful lover, having a nice bit of rumpy-pumpy' with Claudius, her brother-in-law, the usurping new Danish king.

All that glitters is not gold' is an accusation that can't be levelled at Yves Saint Laurent, as this companion to the GOLD by YSL exhibition in Paris proves.It's all here, and you could think of much of it yourself: have a vision (Arnie's is America, its Cadillacs and skyscrapers which make the tallest building in Austria look like a toolshed), think big and work hard, because, as Arnie puts it, 'working your ass off is the only thing that works 100 per cent of the time for 100 per cent of the things worth achieving'. Arnold Schwarzenegger's new book Be Useful is not an autobiography but a guide to better living, told with humour, characteristic self-deprecating charm, honesty and endearing profanity. According to Dame Judi Dench in her new book, which swirls and dances with brilliance and mischief, the Bard wasn't cerebral or academic - he was saucier than Confessions Of A Window Cleaner. The perfect pairing of Barnett and Klassen delivers a sublime festive gift in this testing question of how Father Christmas brings presents. After 'a lifetime of visits', Annie Worsley and her husband Rob gave up well-paid jobs for a simpler life, taking on Red River Croft in the tiny settlement of South Erradale in the Highlands of Scotland.

Of Falstaff and the History Plays, Judi says: 'All sorts were going on in the dark corners of the Boar's Head Tavern'. So much so, the wind has a dedicated Gaelic vernacular (see: gaoth feadalaich 'the whistling wind') and its own deities: Beira, the bringer of winds, and Cailleach, who rides through storm clouds on the back of a wolf. It's been 12 years since Cole wowed critics with his debut Open City, in which a psychiatrist wanders Brussels and New York. The 'celestial bed', for instance, was a facility offered by James Graham's 18th-century 'Temple of Health' on London's Pall Mall.