Viper's Bugloss

That seems like a pretty good selection. I use the Francis Rose book primarily, searching with the images first and then double checking with the key (less long winded). There's a nice pocket photographic guide that I'll buy someday: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Collins-Complete-Guide-British-photographic/dp/0007236840/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318883955&sr=1-1 and the old Roger Phillips 'Wildflowers of Britain' is useful as it lays out things month by month. Whether or not you'd find Echium vulgare under October I doubt. The plants are picked and shot in a studio so it's a bit like a herbarium pressing before drying. Some of the plants are already a little wilted (!) but it's a classic of a kind that you can probably pick up really cheap 2nd hand. One of my favourites, (but next to useless for ID!) is Flora Britannica by Richard Mabey. It tells the stories related to a good proportion of UK flora, from the myriad local common names for some things to peoples recollections of folk uses. A great read.

definitely Echium vulgare

I can't think of anything else in the UK flora that it could be with those characteristics. You can see it's been flowering for a long time and maybe the leaf rosette has shrivelled away, leaving the inflorescences looking like they're growing straight out of the ground? It's a plant that will flower as happily on a small plant as a stonking great many branched affair (It can be very handsome) Which book are you using?

Why don't you think it's Viper's Bugloss? It looks like it to me.