Western Daily Press

Autumnwatch 2010 8.30pm, Bbc2 Chris [...]

Apocalypse: The Second World War [...]

This Week's Big Earner

Contemporary artists including David Hockney and Elisabeth Frink were pipped to the post by an unknown Spanish beauty at Moore Allen and Innocent's selected picture sale at Norcote this month. This 19th-century portrait of her, wearing a red coral necklace, a white sheet across her lap and not much more, was snapped up for Pounds 5,800 - a surprise to the auctioneers, since it was unsigned.

The Lord has No Regrets ; This Week's Big Read What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography Alan Sugar Macmillan, Pounds 20

H e doesn't like liars, can't stand lightweights and when he's got a "gut feeling" about someone, you'll never change his mind. He's also well known for his blunt comments and testy put-downs - which is why I'm more than a little anxious about meeting Lord Sugar.

Non-Fiction

GRIMOIRES: A HISTORY OF MAGIC BOOKS Owen Davies Oxford University Press, Pounds 9.99 Halloween just wouldn't be complete without some magic spells to cast. And this intriguing volume - the first ever history of grimoires, or books of spells - tells you where the magic came from, and what can be done with it. Grimoires first appeared in the ancient Middle East and then developed and spread to the West, at their most benign containing charms and remedies, but at their darkest describing how to ...

Adam Postans

There are pointless programmes, and then there's Russell and Katy Get Married, on Five last Monday, "a light-hearted documentary examining the forthcoming marriage of comedian Russell Brand and Katy Perry". The forthcoming marriage which, of course, took place two days earlier.

Antiques World's Picks for the Weeks Ahead

Ships of the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company looked like mini- Cunarders in their post-war heyday, and they certainly cut a dash in this 1954 British Railways poster of Douglas Bay. The work of Frank Wootton, it's on offer at Dreweatts 1759 Bristol's collectors' sale at Apsley Road, Clifton on November 9, when an estimate of Pounds 200 to Pounds 250 seems by no means optimistic. Vessels in the fleet all had determinedly Manx names, some of them harking back to the Roman name for the island -...

House of Horrors ; Don't Be Scared by the Ghosts and Witches On October 31 - Be Inspired by Halloween and Turn Your Home Into a Gothic Sanctuary

Ferry Back Beers ; Island Life the Way to Go Forget Alcatraz, Chris Rundle has Found an Island He's Happy to Stay On a Booze Cruise Doesn't Just Have to Be a Trip to a Mall, As Chris Rundle Found Out

When it comes to the urge to get away from it all no one had it worse than the unfortunates incarcerated on Alcatraz. But, short of seeing out their sentence, there was nothing they could do to satisfy it. The waterfront of San Francisco may have looked almost close enough to touch, but to attempt to swim to freedom across the narrow channel with its vicious tides was to take the short route to an early death.

Your Weekly Stars

You have had an awful lot of stress in your life of late, but the events that transpire over the coming days should prove to you how worthwhile the sacrifices and efforts that you have made really were. Call now for a preview of the great things to come. Certain family members have made it theirs business to tell you what to do recently and some of you Taureans have even allowed yourself to be bullied. Not any more, not with this week's line up. Call my starline now to grasp this independence...

Birthdays Oct 30-Nov 5 Michael [...]

The Apprentice 9pm, Bbc1 Alan [...]

Plot Lines

Supermarkets have been lining their entrances with big orange pumpkins all month; the celebrity representative of the squash family. But it seems that celebrity is as arbitrary in the pumpkin world as it is in real life; so many of the orange globe's siblings are actually much better flavoured and better looking, they just didn't have a face that fitted.

Animal Madhouse 8pm, Channel 4 [...]

Strictly Come Dancing -- It [...]

Emmerdale 7pm, Itv1 Eve Comes [...]

Wine of the Week

Sieur d'Arques Terroir de Vigne et de Truffe Limoux 2008 (Pounds 9.99 at Oddbins or Pounds 7.99 if you're buying a dozen bottles) is a white wine of which I had never heard until tasting it last week. Sieur d'Arques is a co-operative winery with nearly 500 vine- growing members in the Limoux region of France's Languedoc. The main business of the co-op since its foundation in 1946 has been the sparkling wines known as Blanquette de Limoux and Cremant de Limoux. Lately, they have added Chardonn...

Pumpkin Delights

I was determined to grow a giant pumpkin one year. I don't really remember why, but I was probably seduced yet again by the illustration on a seed packet during a springtime visit to the garden centre. So I found a fairly secluded bit of the garden and got to it, water and feeding, feeing and watering until I had a specimen which rapidly assumed the proportions of a football, then of a large beach ball, and finally of a slightly misshapen barrage balloon.

Film the Detonator 10.10pm, Channel [...]

Film Rambo Iii 10.35pm, Itv1 [...]