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Peter Ackroyd impresses us yet again with this fascinating new biography of Edgar Allan Poe. He begins the biography with Poe’s final days, when no one is certain what happened between the time when friends last saw him to his discovery six days later, dying in a tavern. This sets the mood for recounting Poe’s short, dramatic and tragic life combined with his extraordinary creative brilliance. Poe has been called one of the forerunners of modern fantasy, credited with the invention of psychological dramas, science fiction and the detective story. He influenced European romanticism and was the harbinger of both symbolism and surrealism. Ackroyd claims that Poe found his spiritual family among the writers of his time and also those of future generations, who were all influenced, likewise, by the power of imagination in narrative form.
Price: EUR 9.90
Charles Allen - Kipling Sahib, India and the Making of Rudyard Kipling Little Brown This is the story of the forgotten Kipling known as ‘Ruddy,’ the man who broke taboos, visited prostitutes, wrote compassionately about love across racial divide and supported the British underclass in India- the British tommies, the drunks and the vagabonds. But when he used his literary talent to criticise the Establishment he became too dangerous for British India’s comfort and moral conscience. At the age of twenty-three, Kipling left India to make a name for himself as a writer in London where he penned such classics as ‘Kim’ and ‘Jungle Book’. ‘This account of the first part of Kipling’s life from 1865 to 1900 reveals his gathering together the material he would later use for his work and shows how a troubled teenager, at first so frightened of Indian India with its intense heat, darkness and disease, became one of its main promoters.
Price: EUR 16.90
Faber This unusual biography of Newton illuminates aspects of the scientist’s life not normally recorded. After becoming the most famous scientist in Europe for his theories on planetary motion and gravity, Newton left his sheltered rooms at Cambridge University and accepted the job of running the royal mint. This arduous job entailed recalling the nation’s entire stock of coins and issuing new ones, a mammoth task which inevitably attracted counterfeiters, the most skilful and corrupt being William Chaloner. Not only did Chaloner get away with passing dud money, he also accused Newton of incompetence so he could take over his job! This engrossing history traces the enmity between these two masterminds, while revealing a vibrant, foggy eighteenth century London, with its busy shipping port, crime and money.
Price: EUR 16.20
In a courageous attempt to address an imbalance in history, Amis gives us a thought provoking and stimulating study of Stalin's brutality. He feels such a study is overdue as Russia, since the 1917 Revolution, has tended to idolise her past leaders without the critical, intellectual soul searching that other countries, for example, Germany after the Third Reich, have had to undergo. Amis gives us one of the best succinct accounts of the man who famously said that 'the death of one person is tragic but the death of a million a mere statistic.'
Price: EUR 12.90
‘A Woman In Berlin’ is a journal written by an anonymous author who between April 20th and June 22nd 1945, observes daily life within the crumbling city of Berlin, as it is being sacked by the Russian army. With acute detail, she records accounts of bombing, rapes, food rationing and the over-all struggle for survival and all-pervasive fear of death dispassionately, but not without a note of optimism. First published in an English translation in America in 1954 and Britain in 1955, the German edition was only published five years later and met with overwhelming controversy. Re-published in Germany in 2003 to critical acclaim and further controversy, this English version is a newly translated and deeply moving account.
Cambridge University Press In this collection of essays, Atwood explores the role of the writer and examines the metaphors which writers have used to describe their work. She draws on her own childhood and adult experiences as well as referring to a wide variety of authors, both living and dead. Atwood's descriptions of the pleasure of writing and of its seriousness of purpose are enhanced by the lightness of her touch and of her deep familiarity with the myths of western literature.
This is the remarkable, authentic story of a woman who, in post-war London, endured a marriage with a man suffering from OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. At the beginning, Gerald’s behaviour seems odd but bearable, although his symptoms are getting worse. He not only makes notes about everything and goes over something that happened again and again, but he becomes increasingly more antisocial and hostile. After their daughter’s birth, the situation deteriorates even more when Gerald has a complete breakdown and refuses to speak to his wife. Elaine Bass not only shows emotional insight into this mental illness which affects everyone involved with the afflicted person, but also gives us a brilliant account of a brave woman’s awakening to an independent sense of self in the 1950’s.
Price: EUR 11.90
Open the Door, the Life and Music of Betty Carter, William R. Bauer, University of Michigan Press In this biography, which also illuminates many behind the scenes mechanisms of the music business, Bauer effectively intertwines Carter's professional and private life. Not as commercially successful as some of the African American singers she was influenced by, such as Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, she is nevertheless portrayed as a strong, intelligent woman with an uncompromising artistic integrity. Through the Jazz Ahead program which she founded to support upcoming young jazz talents, her following remains strong. This, the first comprehensive biography of Carter, is highly recommended reading for all jazz lovers.
Price: EUR 22.00
Parallels and Paradoxes - Explorations in Music and Society by David Barenboim & Edward W. Said -- Bloomsbury This book consists of a lively series of discussions between two friends about music, literature, politics and society. Their conversation touches on many diverse themes, such as the importance of a sense of place and the difference between writing prose and music. They also discuss the power of the arts in transcending national differences, something which they both experienced in 1999 when they brought together young Arab and Israeli musicians to play in Weimar. As a profound, affectionate and impassioned exchange of ideas, this book will delight all music lovers.
This latest work from Julian Barnes is a combination of autobiography and reflection on wider issues concerning the meaning of existence, religion and death. We enter into his childhood memories of Britain in the 1950's, with his grandfather killing home grown chickens, his pedantic older brother's rather joyless logic in conversation and his parents' illnesses and deaths, particularly his father's slow deterioration which his mother kept secret from his father. As neither parent was religious, Barnes muses about whether he missed out on that particular mystical experience. What he worries about now is encroaching old age and the idea of annihilation, of not existing anymore, terrifies him. He writes: ' I don't believe in God, but I miss him! ' thus promoting an argument with and about God which he cannot satisfactorily resolve because his intellect takes first place. This is a clever, very descriptive book, both a family memoir and a guided tour into the mind of one of our most brilliant writers.
Price: EUR 10.80
Jonathan Bate - Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare Penguin In this magnificent new portrait of Shakespeare, Jonathan Bate argues that Shakespeare was primarily a man of his age. By weaving a complex tapestry of Elizabethan beliefs and obsessions, private and political, Bate shows us the fascinating intellectual and cultural world that shaped Shakespeare’s genius, bringing us closer to the man behind his plays. Each of Shakespeare’s famous ‘seven ages of man’ provides a thought-provoking chapter in this book, culminating with the assessment that while Shakespeare possessed obvious, unique gifts, they also reflected the brilliance of the Elizabethan age which, in turn, gave Shakespeare both his soul and substance.
John Milton is not only one of the greatest English poets, being the author of the renowned ' Paradise Lost,' he was also deeply involved in the political and religious controversies of his time. A supporter of Parliament during the Civil War in Britain during the seventeenth century, he wrote a series of challenging articles promoting free speech, the right to divorce and advocated political, religious and social rights in many other spheres. But for centuries, Milton has emerged in biographies either as a woman hating domestic tyrant or a blind, saintly figure far removed for the messiness of human discourse. Anna Behr's sympathetic, well researched account of Milton's life succeeds at long last in bringing to vivid life this misunderstood, complex and brilliant man whose writings captured the turbulence of an extraordinary epoch of change in British history. Neither an ogre or paragon of virtue, Milton was a man of intense involvement with life and with both sexes. She shows his troubled relationship with men, describes his three marriages and friendship with Margaret Ley, but, above all, colours in all aspects of his varied and fascinating inner life. Milton's far-reaching and courageous ideas about human freedom have had an enormous effect on British culture as he was one of the first writers to portray Lucifer as an anti-hero, an ambiguous, rebellious figure worthy of serious attention and a proper place in literature.
Price: EUR 19.00
Phoenix This is the diary of a high-class London prostitute which first appeared as a very successful, award-winning web diary. For about a year, she wrote down her experiences and adventures in the sex trade and although she writes very honestly and graphically about her escapades, she is surprisingly little obsessed with sex. For her it is just a job like any other. On the whole, this diary is not unlike Bridget Jones’ in many parts; we learn about her relationships (plural most of the time), her parents (they know…sort of), her insecurities, her friends and that mysterious car that is parked opposite her window. Despite all the frank, explicit details, it never becomes just printed porn, thanks to Belle’s incomparable wit and charm with which she describes everyday middle-class London caught with its trousers down! For all our liberalism, prostitution is still mired in myths and stereotypes – read this entertaining book and gain some enlightening insights!
This book, now in paperback, is a compendium of the prose of Alan Bennett, perhaps one of the best-loved of English writers today. It includes all his major autobiographical writings over the last ten years including a poignant family memoir and his much-celebrated diaries for the years 1996 to 2004 as well as essays, reviews, lectures and reminiscences ranging from childhood trips to the local cinema to his Westminster Abbey eulogy for Thora Hird. Alan Bennett combines pitiless observation with gentle understatement in this engagingly well written, wry, witty, humane and intelligent anthology which, despite its 600 pages makes you turn the last one with profound regret.
Price: EUR 18.00
Little Brown In this much anticipated autobiography, Cherie Blair takes the reader on a journey through the working class Liverpool of her childhood to the heart of the British legal system and then as wife of the Prime Minister to Number Ten Downing Street. The first in her family to attend university, Cherie became a highly successful barrister in a profession not used to working class women. Abandoned by her father at an early age, Cherie was raised by her mother and grandmother who instilled in her a fierce sense of justice and an indomitable spirit, both of which have served her well. This warm, intimate, lively and amusing self-portrait reveals an extraordinary and gifted woman, a campaigner for human rights, as well as a mother of four and wife of a former Prime Minister – a ‘must’ read.
This is an elegantly written, moving and unnerving portrait of people changed and damaged by war. On August 6th 1945, Emiko Amai was six years old when she survived Hiroshima, the first atomic bomb explosion. Her brother was horrifically injured; her parents killed. A decade later, Emiko is one of the twenty-five chosen, scarred ' Hiroshima Maidens' brought to the United States for reconstructive surgery. With clarity and perception, Bock explores what happens when Emiko confronts Anton Böll, a scientist who believes the world would be a safer place once the atom is split.
Angelhead: A Memoir, Greg Bottoms, Headline Review. The author's brother was fourteen when he became mentally ill. Obsessed with the idea that God was torturing him, he smashed things and viciously attacked his brother. His parents, too preoccupied in maintaining their newly acquired respectable image, misread Michael's behaviour as a drug problem and threw him out. It was not until he was twenty-one that he was diagnosed as an acute paranoid schizophrenic with no obvious cure. Bottoms reveals a family which is without real warmth and compassion: instead of being drawn closer together through tragedy, they become alienated from each other. The author offers no easy answers or consolation, just the hard, simple truth.
Few writers can boast the brilliant literary legacy of George Orwell, the inventor of Big Brother and Doublethink. This meticulously researched new biography does him credit and goes far beyond the familiar story of his life. Drawing on a wealth of new material, Bowker casts fascinating new light on Orwell's character, for example, his hitherto unknown dabbling in black magic. Orwell was also a man of curious contradictions - a great European with a profound sense of Englishness and a man who championed truth but was, at the same time, deeply deceptive in his own private life.
Constance Briscoe: Ugly - The True Story of a Loveless Childhood, Hodder Despite the current influx of books describing childhood misery, this particular account catches the attention. Constance Briscoe is the first black barrister in Britain to sit as a judge. She has a horrible story to tell and she tells it with a stark, angry relish which is difficult to resist. As the third unloved daughter, Constance was a chronic bed wetter. She suffered endless beatings and punishments by her mother and made to wear old clothes and shoes too small. Her other siblings were not abused in that way. But Constance was intelligent and went to the Social Services, accusing her stepfather also of abuse. She was taken into care. Later she became a barrister and a judge, bearing witness that childhood abuse can be transcended and the experience put to good use in a profession which calls for the pursuit of justice.
Harper Press Shakespeare, the most celebrated playwright and poet of the English language, left behind him a biography arranged around rather scant facts. Bill Bryson sets himself the honorary task of sorting out ‘reality’ from the colourful muddle of suppositions concerning Shakespeare’s life. He also celebrates Shakespeare as a writer of unimaginable talent and enormous inventiveness giving us also the benefit of his own engaging scepticism and wit. He cuts through any wild speculation and conspiracy theory surrounding Shakespeare’s authenticity and gets to what matters most, the writer, himself. In doing that, Bryson summarises the playwright as ‘a kind of literary equivalent of an electron, forever there and not there’, but never, fortunately, underestimates his genius nor longevity.
Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kid, Black Swan, Bill Bryson’s latest book is partly personal memoir and partly social history of America in the 1950’s. He looks back at his childhood in America’s rural Midwest with great affection but also a good dose of humour: ‘I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.’ Meet his loving but eccentric family: his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and a dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and his mother, challenging the family with her awkward experiments with cooking. Bryson recounts the world of his former self, when he dreamt of being a superhero. He evokes a vivid image of an America where cars, TVs and any kind of appliances were growing ever larger and more numerous and smoking and other forms of health hazards were even supposed to be good for you. This hilarious, witty and nostalgic account is easily Bryson’s most personal book and a great read!
Price: EUR 11.95
In the beginning was the Word, (b) A bunch of Words, (c) Not a single damned Word so begins Carole Burns’ most intriguing book about the fascinating world of writing. Burns has interviewed over forty authors for the Washington Post’s website from Pulitzer Prize winners to first-time authors about all aspects of their profession. So we learn how some of today’s best writers such as Martin Amis, Paul Auster, Richard Ford and A.S. Byatt as well as newcomers, for example, Marisha Pessl, find their sources of inspiration. Do they think good sex scenes can be written? Amis thinks not. Can characters be based on people the authors know? R. Ford says not. Last but not least, we get a few ‘words of wisdom’, advice which the authors wished someone had given them before they started writing. The tone of these conversations is delightfully informal and the authors do not only reveal a great deal about their professional methods but also about themselves. The fact that all these authors disagree so fundamentally about quite a lot of issues makes this book such an entertaining and highly surprising read!
Price: EUR 13.90
Penguin In this well documented book, eighty year old Castro examines, for the first time, his long life in the form of an interview with Ignacio Ramonet, a specialist on geopolitics and professor of communications theory at the University Denis Diderot in Paris. Beginning with his earliest influences, Castro describes his parents, the beginnings of the revolution, his relationship with Che Guevara, the Bay of Pigs and the missile crisis, the Carter years and the Cuban migration to the U.S. Ramonet also persuades Castro to give his views on such controversial topics as human rights, freedom of the press, repression of homosexuality and the death penalty. Added to this, Castro expands his opinion on such political leaders as George W. Bush and Tony Blair in this frank expose. Indeed, this book is an unique opportunity for both supporters and opponents alike to read about Castro, as arguably one of the most charismatic and controversial political figures of the twentieth century, in his own words from his own perspective.
Price: EUR 24.00
With "Living History" Hillary Rodham Clinton has succeeded in combining two highly intriguing topics: a detailed insight into a substantial part of 20th century American and, therefore, world politics and her own extraordinary personal development and relationship with the 42nd president of the United States of America. "Bill Clinton and I started a conversation in the spring of 1971, and more than thirty years later we're still talking." This best explains the Clintons' working relationship and how it survived even the hardest trials, always under public scrutiny. The reader becomes acquainted with a highly intelligent and powerful personality, also revealing Hillary's more vulnerable and sensitive nature. This is an absolute "must-read" for everyone interested in the life of a fascinating and courageous woman who has the potential to become the first female president of the world's most powerful nation.
The author, herself a writer, broadcaster and geographer, sets out to write a biography about Cook who has fascinated her since childhood, only to find that her work develops into a personal odyssey as she discovers, through a past relative, a historical connection to Cook. This more intimate perspective brings alive the power of Cook's legacy and the complexity of the times in which he lived.
Harper Agatha Christie died in 1976, aged eighty-five, as arguably one of the world’s most popular authors with sales of over two billion books world wide. With the death of her daughter in 2004, seventy-three almost illegible handwritten volumes of private notebooks came to light which the author, John Curran, has successfully deciphered and revealed in this book. He shows how Agatha Christie’s pencilled notes, lists and drafts led to so many of her successful books, plays and stories. The notes, themselves, highlight alternative plots, characterisations and deleted scenes from her books as well as revealing her plans about new ones. Curran’s investigation also reveals a wealth of new information about this formidable and prolific author, including two previously unpublished Hercule Poirot short stories. Brilliant!
Price: EUR 24.30
Kathi Diamant brings to light the amazing, independent Dora Diamant, a Polish Hasidic woman who captured Kafka's heart and kept his literary flame alive for decades. It also covers her life after Kafka, from her days as a struggling agitprop actress in Berlin to her sojourn in Moscow in the 1930's; from her wartime escape to Great Britain, to her first emotional visit to the new nation of Israel. Based on original sources and interviews, including never-before-seen material from the Comintern and Gestapo archives and Dora's newly discovered notebook, diary and letters, this book illuminates the life of a literary "wife", who, like Vera Nabokov and Nora Joyce, is a remarkable woman in her own right.
The immediacy and colloquial energy of Browning's poetry has ensured his enduring appeal in the literary world, although he has been primarily seen as the other half of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the story of their romance often taking precedence over his own poetic genius. This study of Browning looks primarily at the man himself, exploring his early influences, education, relationships and the transitions which shaped his unique poetry. Despite being a product of his time, Browning proved to be no ordinary, conventional Victorian but very much his own man. This inspired and detailed biography does him justice.
Price: EUR 29.90
Harper Perennial Now a major film, ‘The Duchess’ depicts the fascinating life and times of the beautiful and charismatic Georgian, Duchess of Devonshire. In a world of decadence and excess, of great houses, extravagant parties and sexual intrigue, Georgiana, like her descendant Diana, Princess of Wales, was publicly adored but privately troubled. Trapped in a loveless marriage to produce an heir, Georgiana turned to gambling, drugs and adultery to assuage her painful feelings of loneliness and inner emptiness. But she was also an influential political figure in her own right and a loving, selfless mother, showing that despite the tragic restrictions placed on her, even then, a woman of calibre could still make a difference.
Elizabeth Gilbert - Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace with Marriage, Bloomsbury Elizabeth Gilbert’s word-of-mouth bestseller ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ is the story of her journey to Italy, India and Bali in search of herself. Her odyssey began with the traumatic break-up of her marriage and concluded with her falling in love with Felipe, a Brazilian with an Australian passport. In ‘Committed’ we discover what happened next. Felipe encounters visa problems re-entering the U.S. and it seems the couple must marry before they can set up home together. Having been hurt before, both are fearful of wedlock and the necessity of marrying Felipe presents Elizabeth with the structure for this book: a memoir, but framed by an examination of marriage at a time in its history when the institution has never been less popular. The result is neither a comprehensive nor a sociological or academic study of marriage, although it does provide us with some interesting and unusual facts about how the ritual has changed through history. It is more a study of intimacy, partnership and romantic love, and the possibility (or impossibility) of finding it in the twenty-first century, told in the effortlessly analytical, wittily self-deprecating, wise voice that so enchanted readers in her first equally tender, funny autobiography.
Price: EUR 14.95
Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything, Bloomsbury Elizabeth Gilbert, a writer in her thirties, has a husband, a house, they’re trying for a baby and she is in crisis. An acrimonious divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered, realizing it is time to discover what is missing from her life. This book is the story of her quest. She travels first to Rome to learn Italian (simply because it is something she has always wanted to do) and eats a lot of delicious food. She then moves to an ashram in India seeking enlightenment and finally to Bali where a toothless medicine man of indeterminate age offers a new path to peace. Elizabeth Gilbert’s earnest search for meaning and happiness is lightened by her engaging prose which is, at times, laugh-out loud funny and always intelligent, informed and honest - remarkably enjoyable.
In this fascinating reinterpretation of the life of eighteenth-century writer Mary Wollstonecraft, Lyndall Gordon re-evaluates her life in relation to Woolstonecraft's own values rather than through the reputation history has given her. She explores the genius of this remarkable woman, challenging the criticisms of biographers, historians and feminists alike. Woolstonecraft's relationship with Gilbert Imlay and William Godwin are explored, as are her ideas about the problems of communication between the sexes and parenthood. Gordon also masterfully illuminates the legacy which Woolstonecraft left her daughters and heirs and the way this has carried her influence into subsequent generations.
Price: EUR 39.00
In this first full biography of Arthur Miller, Martin Gottfried reveals many relationships between Miller's life and his work, from the early autobiographical plays to his personal and political references in "After the Fall". There are single chapters devoted to his major works, and these materials are then utilized in conjunction with notebooks, scripts and correspondence, as well as interviews with those who knew Miller. Gottfried crafts the complete life and work of a true man of his century, a nations's conscience, an international legend and a theatre giant in his own lifetime.
Stewart, Tabori & Chang This book is an intimate compilation of hitherto unpublished photographs which coincides with the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death and the 65th anniversary of his birth. Bob Gruen, Lennon's personal photographer and close friend since the early 70's, has photographed him extensively right up to his last moments. Here discloses the most revealing of his collection, along with Gruen's own reflection on the circumstances surrounding his pictures, such as Lennon's relationship with Yoko Ono, how he dealt with fame and Lennon's experiences as a father. A very personal, behind-the-scenes view of John Lennon in his last decade by someone with an astounding access to and insight into his private life!
Price: EUR 32.00
William Hague, William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Campaigner, Harper Press, €29,00 A formidable orator, campaigner and tactician, Yorkshire born Wilberforce spearheaded a twenty year old campaign in Parliament to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire in the eighteenth century. Taking on the most powerful vested interests in the land and some formidable opponents, he eventually triumphed in 1833. William Hague brilliantly illuminates Wilberforce’s turbulent life and career offering a politician’s insight into the parliamentary machinations of the time. He shows how Wilberforce’s conviction and faith allowed him to hold fast to his independence and beliefs, placing principles above politics, mankind above economics and results above personal ambition. An inspiring read.
Penguin This heart-stopping memoir is written by a native Darfur tribesman who escaped the massacre of his village by the genocidal Janjaweed. Out of necessity, he found a new occupation working as a translator for reporters and UN investigators where he exposed himself to some extremely risky situations. In this narrative, Daoud Hari takes us far beyond our comfort zone, as he charts the horrific landscape of genocide in the stories of refugee camp survivors. Comforting facts about the loyalty of camels, the pecking order in villages and vast family networks bring respite from more shocking tales which include his own, long imprisonment with a U.S. journalist and their Chadian driver. Through it all, Hari demonstrates an almost incomprehensible decency and humanity. This harrowing tale of selfless courage in terrifying conditions is both a testament of hope and survival.
Price: EUR 10.90
John Murray Through newly discovered tapes made by Maugham’s daughter, Liza, before her death in 1998, Hastings allows us fascinating new insights into one of the world’s most famous writers of the early twentieth century. Orphaned at the age of ten, Maugham craved affection and acceptance. While training to become a doctor, he discovered a passion for writing and rose to fame through his work for the stage. As a talented linguist, he also later worked for British Intelligence during both World Wars. But his private life was a disaster; forced by the times to conceal his ‘three quarters’ homosexuality, he agreed to marry Syrie Wellcome after he made her pregnant and when she threatened to reveal the names of his male lovers. It was partly to escape from Syrie that Maugham travelled to the Far East which inspired many of his memorable short stories. In her tapes, Liza portrays her vivid childhood, tormented first by her parents’ relationship and then by the cruel jokes of her father’s lovers. Ms Hastings creates a wonderfully full picture of this complex and extraordinary writer.
Price: EUR 29.00
Penguin With ‘God’s Architect’, Rosemary Hill has written a superb study of a true romantic but tragic Victorian original, Welby Pugin. Born in 1812, Pugin certainly did not waste time. He began his study of medieval buildings at the age of six; at age nine, he was travelling France with his father’s drawing school, sketching and measuring. At age twelve, he started dealing in and collecting high-class antiques. By age fifteen, Pugin had designed furniture for George IV at Windsor Castle. At age nineteen, he wrote his autobiography and married; at twenty, he became a father and, a week later, a widower. One could say, Pugin raced through the only forty years of his life, dying insane, probably through contracting syphilis, as if he had known about its short duration! He had little formal education, no architectural training and was more of designer than an architect. Nevertheless, Pugin’s designs and decorations left an endurable imprint on Britain’s architectural heritage. His most famous work included sketching designs for Big Ben. In this absorbing book, Hill vividly recreates the energy and intensity of Pugin’s short life, his eccentricity and overflowing creativity against the backdrop of Victorian taste, politics and culture.
Continuum This book concentrates on Milton’s religious vision and is more concerned with his prose than his poetry. Despite, for some, the toxic label of Puritan, Milton insisted that Protestantism was compatible with political liberty and treated all ecclesiastical authority form the Pope to the ‘divine right of Kings’ with active suspicion. Milton’s vision helped to establish the modern idea of secularism built on democratic and humanistic ideals, free from authoritarian coercion. ‘Milton’s Vision’ is a vital and timely contribution to the ever current debate about the place of religion in public life. It should appeal to all those interested in the history of political thought as well as religion and literature. It is a shame that Milton is not around today to witness and, perhaps, comment on the present ‘divine’ rights of some political and religious groups.
Price: EUR 25.00
'On Writing' by Stephen King is an all-in-one work: biography, good-writing instruction, a vivid description of his accident, the winning short story from his 'On Writing' competition and a comprehensive list of King's favourite books. This book is a great bargain for any King fan. King shares many of his childhood memories - the terrifying doctor episodes, life with his mother and brother and his steadily growing love for writing. The middle part of the book reveals some of King's best kept writing secrets. In the final chapter, King vividly recounts his near fatal accident and the insights it brought him during the long recovery process, about himself and life in general. It is up to you to decide why King chose the short story 'Jumper' as the winner of the 'On Writing' competition.
Over a century after his death, Nietzsche still remains a seminal figure in European intellectual life. In this groundbreaking biography, Köhler seeks to understand, for the first time, Nietzsche's philosophy through a reconstruction of his inner life. Köhler argues that Nietzsche's repressed homosexuality and recurring nightmares after the death of his much-loved father led to a profoundly disturbed conscience. He disguised his torments behind the persona of Zarathustra. This figure, Köhler believes, reveals Nietzsche's secret yearnings for a superman who, in his naked beauty, resembles the gods of classical Greece.
Yehuda Koren & Eilat Negev - A Lover of Unreason: The Life and Tragic Death of Assia Wevill, Ted Hughes’ Doomed Love Portico This is the first complete biography of Assia Wevill, one of literature’s most shadowy figures, known as ‘the other woman’ in the marriage of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. Plath’s suicide cast a huge shadow over Wevill’s relationship with Hughes, and when she realized he was involved with other women and would never give her a home, she killed herself in the same manner as Sylvia Plath, only taking their young daughter Shura with her. The authors present interviews with contemporaries such as Fay Weldon and William Trevor and also draws on previously unseen Wevill letters and diaries, which give a well-rounded account of Wevill in her own right in a heartfelt and matter-of-fact way. Assiduously researched and compulsively readable, Wevill comes through in this book as a suffering human being who deserves our compassion and respect.
This short, lyrical book is beyond easy categorisation. It is biography and autobiography, social history and meditation, complex literary contrivance and simultaneously a flowing stream of consciousness. Setting out to write 'this pot into which I am stirring almost anything that occurs to me', Kureishi has produced something fresh in form and memorable for the light it sheds. Kureishi hovers on the brink of fifty, looking back as well as forward. He discovers an unpublished novel by his late, generally unpublished father. It is called 'The Age of Adolescence' and takes his upper-middle-class Poona family,lightly disguised, through the birth of India, the flight to Pakistan and the diaspora that followed. This book is a voyage into, rather than around, his father, into the past and a lost world. Kureishi toys with uncertainty as he weaves between paternal introspection and his own experience, a writer talking about and almost to himself. Throughout most of the book, Kureishi relaxes the reader with effortless fluidity, the effect being hypnotic and revelatory. The result is a beguiling and complex tale of fact, fiction and family tensions.
Abacus Isadora: The Sensational Life of Isadora Duncan, Peter Kurth, Little Brown. Known to many as the mother of modern dance, Isadora Duncan invented her own creative, physical language to express the spirit and hope of American democracy. Instead of conforming to traditional choreography, she chose to respond directly to music, thereby igniting stormy debate about art, sexuality and propriety. Peter Kurth presents Ms Duncan with careful attention to detail and unravels many of the mysteries surrounding this passionate and controversial artist.
Although Beatrix Potter is loved around the world for her Peter Rabbit books, her other significant achievements remain largely unknown. This definitive biography displays the full complexity of her life. After her teens had been mostly lost to her through ill-health, Beatrix became a shy young woman into whose life no man had intruded. She directed her energies towards art and science, becoming a scientific illustrator who was particularly dedicated to drawing fungi. In 1902, at the age of thirty-six, she sold the first of her ‘little books’. The immediate success of her animal stories provided financial independence from her parents and soon love, in the shape of Norman Warne, her editor. Unfortunately, Norman died of leukaemia before they could marry but her purchase of Hill Top Farm in the Lake District, just after Warne’s death, led to her reinvention as a successful landowner and country farmer, and eventually to a happy marriage to William Heelis. She became a conservationist and in collaboration with the National Trust contributed towards the preservation of large parts of the Lake District. ‘A Life in Nature’ reveals a strong, humorous and independent woman, whose art was timeless, and whose generosity left an indelible imprint on the English countryside.
Price: EUR 14.90
Penguin At twenty-four, Ellen became the youngest and fastest woman to circumnavigate the globe. This is her story, full of emotional insights into her remarkable success and determination. She recounts how her extraordinary passion for sailing developed and the sacrifices it has demanded. This intimate autobiography makes inspiring reading for all those who enjoy pushing themselves beyond the limits of endurance.
Harper Perennial Stuart Shorter and Alexander Masters both live in Cambridge but lead disparate lives, only finding common ground while protesting the imprisonment of two local social workers. Alexander, the well-educated son of two writers, tries to make sense of the life of Stuart, an ex-con who has lived on the streets and used virtually every drug on the market. This remarkable and touching biography traces Stuart’s life from the present day back to his childhood in order to discover who murdered the boy he once was. This engaging, unique book records the collision of two utterly different social worlds while chronicling how members of a chaotic subculture spend their troubled days.
Aurum Press As a revolutionary artist who broke down the barriers between fact and fiction, Hunter S. Thompson changed the way we think about journalism. His Gonzo style continues to entertain and inspire subsequent journalism as no-one better has been able to capture America and its citizens from the presidential campaign trail to the Hell’s Angels’ lair. McKeen befriended Thompson while writing a monograph on his journalism. Since the writer’s death in 2005, he has interviewed many of Hunter S. Thompson’s associates who have never spoken about him before. The result is a hugely entertaining portrait of an American icon that penetrates behind the drink and drugs to reveal a charismatic complex figure, someone who considered himself both an outlaw and a serious journalist with real vocation.
Price: EUR 15.90
4th Estate Less inhibited than their memoirs and more intimate than the biographies written about them, this selection of hitherto unpublished letters between the six legendary, very individual sisters is full of wit, hilarity, passion and heartache. They constitute a revealing, first hand chronicle of twentieth century history, seen through the distinctive eye of each sister: Nancy, the scolding wit who wrote novels about her family; Pamela, the more peaceful country girl; Diana, the fascist jailed along with her husband, Oswald Mosley, during the Second World War; Unity, inexplicably obsessed with Hitler and who attempted suicide; Jessica, the communist and social reformer and finally, Deborah, the socialite who became the Duchess of Devonshire. Writing to commiserate, confide, rage and gossip with each other, the sister set out, above all, to amuse themselves with their astute observations and never lost their ability, in the process to laugh at themselves!
John Mullan - Anonymity: A Secret History of English Literature, Faber This fascinating, original study shows why so many of the greatest authors in English literature chose to publish their work anonymously. Female authors in the eighteenth and nineteenth century had little chance of publication if their sponsors and readers knew they were women. Some authors such as Sir Walter Scott, Bryon and Thackery liked the secrecy surrounding their genius as it added something special to their craft. Trollope explained his self disguise in terms of testing the justice of critical verdicts. Others, such as Sylvia Plath, unduly worried about their works' acceptance and reception by the critics and preferred to hide first behind a false name. For some writers, for example James Patterson and Ruth Rendell, another name as author for a different type of novel enhances and expands the creative repertoire without impinging on their original readership fan base. Whatever the motive, Mullan offers a unique glimpse into the secretive, sensitive minds of writers in their attempt to offer their work to the public and have it accepted.
Now a major film, 'A Beautiful Mind' tells the story of mathematical genius, economist and Nobel Laureate, John Nash. A one time diagnosed schizophrenic who believed he was receiving encrypted messages from aliens, Nash has been responsible for the most important breakthroughs in the increasingly important game theory. The 'Nash equilibrium' and his bargaining solution, in which one player's gains are not at the expense of another, represent a huge breakthrough in economics, mathematics and psychology. His 'win-win' approach has gained enormous respect over time and illustrates how a perceived handicap can be the source of inspiration and guidance.
Mariane Pearl, wife of the Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, who was murdered in Pakistan, tells an emotionally arresting account of this unforgettable and horrible story. She explores questions such as why her husband was in Karachi; how he saw his role as an international journalist; why he was singled out for kidnapping and where the incredible search effort led. Marianne is, as was her husband, profoundly committed to the idea that a more informed public makes for a better world and to the idea that risks have to be taken to uncover the truth. She is a superb writer and presents a truly illuminating tale, which includes her own crucial role in the investigation where she negotiated unprecedented cooperation between the FBI and Pakistani Intelligence.
An international best seller for many weeks, this is the heart wrenching, true story of young Dave Pelzer. Showing great courage and the will to survive, Dave takes us through his dark and incomprehensible childhood. At first, he lives a normal, healthy life with his parents and brothers. Then Dave tells us of the transformation from being accepted by his family to becoming an outcast. He is emotionally, mentally and physically abused by his alcoholic mother. His negligent father is unwilling to intervene and his three brothers, having themselves escaped their mother's cruelty, do not want to become involved and help him. So Dave is left alone to endure often near death experiences as his mother's abuse becomes more extreme and unpredictable. Only his dreams of finding a family to love him keep him alive. This is a really shocking but inspirational account of the courage of a child, one among many, who suffers abuse at the hands of his family.
Peter Riddell, The Unfulfilled Prime Minister: Tony Blair's Quest for a Legacy Politico's Is Blair a warmonger or radical reformer? What will his political legacy be? Seldom has a British prime minister come to power with so much expectation. In 1997, voters were disillusioned with years of Conservative wrangling and looked to Blair to revive their public services and restore trust in government. Eight years later, these hopes have been largely dashed. It can be argued that Blair's handling of the Iraq war, above all, has highlighted the flaws in his rather too autocratic and presidential style of government, which above all, has left him defensive. Riddel provides a succinct and well informed account of Blair's time in office, analysing what he and his government have achieved so far. He also explores why Blair has not done better to fulfil his personal goals as prime minister.
,Virago Michèle Roberts, one of Britain’s most acclaimed novelists, examines her life in this vibrant and powerful portrait. Beginning with her departure from Oxford University to London in the early 1970’s, she gives a consistently fascinating account of her own life as she hones her skills as a writer and depicts life in London at that time. She takes the reader on a kaleidoscopic journey through what she calls ‘a fantastical city’, where she oscillates between the rarefied academic atmosphere of the British Museum, communes, a bewildering change of lovers, revolutionary politics and radical feminism. This vivid and intelligent memoir of Michèle Roberts is a reminiscence of her more fragile and temporary ‘houses’. Today, her writing career has become a more solid dwelling!
Faber Best known as a novelist and author of ‘Darkness of Noon’, Koestler is one of the most fascinating and controversial intellectuals today, involved in and commenting on many seminal events of the twentieth century. Born in Budapest and educated in Vienna, he moved to Palestine in the 1920’s and in the 1930’s he joined the German Communist Party and travelled to the Soviet Union. Imprisoned and sentenced to death in Franco’s Spain, he escaped occupied France by joining the French Foreign Legion. Drawing on over a hundred interviews and new sources, award-winning biographer, Michael Scammell, gives a nuanced and unsentimental account of Koestler’s turbulent public and private life cementing Koestler’s importance as a major autobiographer, essayist and novelist. Scammell creates a complex and indelible portrait of Koestler, memorably described by one M15 interrogator as ‘one-third blackguard, one-third lunatic, and one-third genius.’
Cornell University Press For all his distance from formal philosophy, Fyodor Dostoevsky is one of the most philosophical of writers. In works from fictional masterpieces to little-known nonfiction prose, he grappled with the ultimate questions about the nature of humankind, especially those that preoccupied Russian intelligentsia during the second half of the nineteenth century. Drawing on the writer's novels and essays, James P. Scanlan presents us with the first comprehensive account of Dostoevsky's philosophical outlook, which, as Scanlan explains, was shaped above all by its anthropocentrism. The author demonstrates conclusively that Dostoevsky's philosophical views were more solidly grounded and systematic than have been imagined and cannot be dismissed as the notions of an irrationalist.
Alice Schroeder - The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life Bloomsbury Warren Buffett is one of the most respected men in the world. ‘The Snowball’ examines his fascinating financial success story. Never having written a memoir himself, the legendary Omaha investor has allowed Alice Schroeder, a former All-American-Research-Analyst now turned full-time writer, the unprecedented opportunity to explore directly with him and those closest to him, his work, opinions, struggles, triumphs, follies and wisdom. The result is this personally revealing and complete biography of the man known across the world as ‘The Oracle of Omaha.’ The book provides never previously published insights into his life and character and explains the principles and philosophies that have guided him on a path to extraordinary success and recognition. Candid, authoritative and extremely informative, ‘The Snowball’ is indispensable reading for those who wish to know the man behind his outstanding achievements, leadership and philanthropy.
Price: EUR 36.00
Emma's War, Love, Betrayal and Death in the Sudan by Deborah Scroggins -- Harper Collins Emma McCune's passion for Africa, her unstinting commitment to the impoverished children of the Sudan, plus her striking beauty often set her apart from other aid workers in southern Sudan. Still, nobody was prepared for her decision to marry a local warlord and commit herself to his quest to take over southern Sudan's rebel movement. This compelling biography charts the descent of Emma's romantic delusions into the hell of Africa's longest running civil war. At once a disturbing love story, the book is also a penetrating examination of the Sudan. The author vividly describes a world where international aid fuels armies as well as feeds the starving population and discusses why the northern based government, backed by Osama bin Laden, is locked in a civil war with the south over religion, oil and slavery.
Little, Brown ‘It sometimes helps to remind myself that not everyone is like me,’ Sedaris writes, ‘Not everyone writes things down in a notebook and transcribes them into a diary. Fewer still take that diary, clean it up a bit, and read it in front of an audience.’ That is exactly what Sedaris does: he rummages through his daily experiences and those of his friends and wildly eccentric family (already familiar from his former collections of essays) and transforms them into shiny anecdotes, presenting them to his audience with a performer’s flourish. He covers all facets of life, from his fascination with death, sausage ingredients for the Frankfurter, his hitchhiking adventures, his experiences in a doctor’s waiting room to episodes about air-travel. A particularly funny and entertaining anecdote is an account of his quest to quit smoking. Sedaris, known for his dark humour and reluctant charm, fascinates us with his talent for observing every inch of the human condition which also makes this book a perfect read for Sedaris-newcomers!
Atlantic Books Fish have always been a life-long obsession for Richard Shelton. As a boy in the 1940's he was fascinated by what he found in the streams near his Buckinghamshire home. But it is the sea and the creatures living in it and by it that have become his passion. This book is a profoundly sensitive study of man's changing relationship with fish, taking us from stream to river, pond to lake or loch, shore to deep sea. At the same time, the author elucidates a life spent on boats in all weathers and combines autobiography with natural history, impassioned argument and a wonderful study of oceanography. A "must read"!
Harper Press William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge co-operated to produce ‘Lyrical Ballads’, a work which set the Romantic Movement in England in motion. Rarely have such gifted writers collaborated so closely. Coleridge, who acknowledged Wordsworth as the greatest poet since Milton, was himself a poet of unique talents and widely recognised to be the greatest genius of his age. In the euphoria of mutual discovery, the two brilliant and idealistic young men planned a poem that would succeed where the French Revolution had failed: a poem that would, quite literally, change the world. However, rivalry bred tension, erupting in a violent quarrel between them. The great poem they had dreamed of was never written. Though much has been written about this extraordinary duo, no previous biographer has considered them together, as Adam Sisman does in this revealing study of art, reputation and friendship.
More than ten years after his death, Miles Davis is as popular as ever. He has played with the best that jazz had to offer and his recording of "Kind of Blue" is considered a classic, yet the man himself remains an enigma and myths proliferate about his life. In this, the first new biography since Davis' death, John Szwed has examined his life and music, which he finds inseparable. Szwed has collected information from many people who knew Miles at different stages of his life, including some who have never been interviewed before, and has examined many archives. This is the most authoritative biography of Miles Davis to date, and the most persuasive interpretation of the life of a musical genius and cultural icon whose influence remains undiminished.
..Life Fourth Estate Lynn Truss, celebrated author or ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’, had been a columnist and television critic for ‘The Times’ for five years when she was propositioned by the paper’s sports editors. Having established that she had routinely binned the sports section of her paper out of disinterest at that point, would she like to write about a variety of sports fixtures from a blissfully innocent point of view? So began a personal journey of four years from ‘footie’ virgin to sports bore. In this gem of a memoir, she recalls those years which took her on some difficult journeys and introduced her to some great sportsmen. Like a travel writer, she negotiated a foreign country and brought to bear the outsider's clear eye. Her account of her first day at Wimbledon, for example, when befuddled and brought to tears by the Kafkaesque intricacies of the media centre becomes an outstanding profile of Andre Agassi, which itself expands to a probing essay on the paradox between competition and entertainment. This hilarious book is the perfect gift for rabid sports fans, but also vital for those who have no idea what all the fuss is about!
Price: EUR 17.50
This fascinating book is a record of Norah Vincent’s year spent living as ‘Ned’ her invented male persona. Protected by a convincing disguise, she infiltrates various bastions of the male species including a monastery, a testosterone-fuelled office and a bowling league as well as going on dates and visiting strip clubs. Passing as a man proved to be easy, trying to ‘be’ a man causes her more difficulty. Far from relishing the perceived freedoms of the male, she often found herself constricted by the masculine gender role. Norah Vincent’s preconceptions are changed by her experience in this captivating account which explores what it means to be a man from an unusual perspective: the outside in.
This sharp-witted, introspective and at times laugh-out-loud funny collection of mini-memoirs is Kurt Vonnegut’s first book since 1999. He contemplates on art: ‘Practicing an art…is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake’, politics: ‘Only nut cases want to be president’, the state of America’s soul and life in general: ‘Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power’. The book is also illustrated throughout with his quirky artwork. Vonnegut speaks with indignation, but also with intimacy, tenderness and humanity to his fellow Americans and the rest of the world.
Price: EUR 13.95
Whistler and His Mother - An Unexpected Relationship, Sarah Walden, Gibson Square James McNeill Whistler was one of the most flamboyant, controversial painters of his time. A contemporary of Oscar Wilde, Monet, and Manet, he led a rather chaotic life, surrounded by a quick succession of mistresses. But when his mother arrived from America, all that stopped and from their unusual cohabitation a touching portrait of her appeared. Alongside Leonard da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa' and Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus', Whistler's 'Portrait of His Mother' ranks as one of the best known female portraits ever painted. Sarah Walden restored this painting for the Louvre and has managed to capture, in this beautifully illustrated book, its delightful story and that of its sitter. Whistler was obsessively secretive about his mother but she obviously had an enormous impact on his creative life. So it is somehow fitting to have her portrait acknowledged.
Vintage In this remarkable and very honest memoir, Gabriel Weston, a female surgeon, gives us insight into a world both brutal and tender at the same time. At her side, we learn what it is like to stand in an operating theatre for seven hours holding someone’s neck open or seeing someone bleed to death, because even modern medicine has its limits. What is most affecting, however, is the emotional journey Weston has travelled, being forced to control, even dislodge any empathy in order to be ‘safe’ and ‘professional’ for patients. One night, exhausted by lack of sleep, Weston is called to see a distressed and lonely ten-year-old boy. She wants to leave him again, as soon as possible, because she feels so discomforted by his tears. She then realises too late, that all he would have needed from her was the human warmth that she denied him. A few days later, he died unexpectedly. Weston confronts life, death and the difficulty of being a female surgeon in a male-dominated profession where ‘professional’ is equated with distance. Read it.
Marx's impact can only be compared with that of religious figures such as Jesus or Muhammad. For much of the second half of the twentieth century, nearly four out of every ten people on earth lived under governments that considered themselves Marxist and claimed, however implausibly, to use Marxist principles. In his entertaining biography, Wheen presents Karl Marx as a man of both brilliance and frailty. He approaches Marx rather as an enthusiastic naturalist might view a virile alligator; the beast is magnificent, but some of its habits frankly disappointing! We learn that the 19th Century's most original political theorist also lived a life rich in Victorian melodrama. He was a serious drinker, an inveterate sponger with a passionate energy and commitment to his ideas. Stripping away both the piety and the demonology, Wheen capture's Marx's humanity, revealing the contradictory man behind the forbidding, bearded mask.
Price: EUR 18.50
In this extraordinary and intelligent biography, Ms Wise experiments with her subject in a way Shelley, himself, would have approved of. She attempts to write his life as a poet from the inside out; that is from the perspective of the creative spirit struggling to discover its true nature. Shelley, the man, is not forgotten, however, merely seen in perspective to the poet in his internal struggle to find meaning. Ms Wroe divides her work into four sections to reflect Shelley’s own search for truth which he felt revealed itself through the four elements of earth, water, fire and air. His eternal questioning and devotion to metaphysics and poetry linked him more closely, not less, to his friends, lovers and fellow men and, perhaps more importantly, to his own creative inner source.
