Music for Middlebrows, by Des Keogh (Ashfield Press, £9.99)

Des Keogh's genial presence has ensured that a radio show which began as a thirteen-week series in 1968 has been a permanent fixture on the airwaves for the past thirty years; this compendium of composers adopts the show's familiar, resolutely "middlebrow" stance, dipping in and out of periods and styles in whimsical fashion and combining a mix of anecdote, quotation, basic information and suggested listening, written - as might be expected - in a chatty, easygoing manner. Like the show, it doesn't rock any musical boats or push the listener into any unexpected or challenging directions; it is, as Keogh himself says, strictly for "people who like to sit back and let themselves be engulfed by melody".