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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

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Vee Kativhu

'Dynamic and transformative... a roadmap for following your dreams.' 
Malala Yousafzai 
 
'Touching, deeply inspiring and thought-provoking.' 
Jack Edwards, YouTuber and author of The Uni-Verse: The Ultimate University Survival Guide 
 
 
From experiencing grief and leaving her home country of Zimbabwe for the UK, to attending disruptive state schools and working long hours to support herself and her mother, Vee Kativhu has faced much adversity. 
 
But through personal hardship, she has triumphed, using her experience to help people from all over the world recognise their own talent and achieve their goals. From attaining a bachelor's degree from Oxford and a Master's from Harvard to spreading her message of education, equal access and opportunity and empowerment to a global audience of over 300,000, Vee's incredible journey has inspired young people around the world in need of a boost of confidence, motivation and practical life advice. 
 
In Empowered, Vee draws from her own journey to teach you how to: 
 
- Set your life goals, career aspirations and actually achieve them 
- Stay motivated in the face of rejection and hardship 
- Learn from your mistakes 
- Take chances, live your best life and don't let hardship define you 
- Cultivate feelings of self-love and self-empowerment 
 
This book will inspire you how to live a more fulfilled, motivated and empowered life in everything you do.

Empowered

Live Your Life with Passion and Purpose

Claire Eastham

"An electric, warm, comforting and funny handbook on panic and how to cope and live alongside it. Accessible, reassuring, practical and relieving." Laura Dockrill 
 
"I wish I had this book when I was 18 and having panic attacks. It's smart, witty, informative and importantly, it lets you know that if you have panic attacks too... you are not alone." Dr Sophie Mort 
 
 
An uplifting, personal account on living with panic and how to stop it defining you. 
 
'You're dying. F**k, you're having a heart attack, or is this a stroke? You're going crazy, you are right this second losing your mind. It's game over. Get out' All the work I'd put into preparing for this interview, my job, my career, money, future - it all seemed insignificant next to the burning desire to get out of the room and run. 
 
Award-winning blogger and author of We're All Mad Here, Claire Eastham is an expert on panic. She's not a doctor or an academic, but over a seven-year period, she has experienced 371 panic attacks (and counting), and learnt a thing or two along the way. 
 
Part memoir, part guide, F**k I Think I'm Dying is an intimate, honest and ultimately uplifting exploration into panic attacks. In practical thematic chapters Claire covers the crisis points where panic can hit: job interviews, social situations, attacks at night. She interviews a host of people - scientists, professors, dieticians, psychologists and people who struggle with panic - to anatomise how panic works and how it can be managed. 
 
Frank, funny and blazing, Claire's story will speak to all those seeking to reclaim their power. With a little work and understanding, panic attacks do not have to control you.

F**k, I think I'm Dying

How I Learned to Live With Panic

Kingsley Amis

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
'Endlessly entertaining... Good, rollicking stuff, and a delight to read... Sir Kingsley Amis is surely one of the funniest men alive' Auberon Waugh, Sunday Telegraph 
 
Elegant, provocative and hugely entertaining, Kingsley Amis's memoirs are filled with anecdotes, experiences and portraits of famous friends, family, acquaintances (and a few eminent foes). From his childhood days to Oxford and army life, his travels abroad and his years as a successful novelist, Memoirs offers extraordinary insights into a unique literary life. 
 
© Kingsley Amis 1991 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Memoirs

A remarkable collection of 'Covid Chronicles' -- stories from lockdown sent in from listeners to BBC Radio 4 -- making a deeply moving people's history of the pandemic. 
 
 
On 23 March 2020, as the deadly virus spread around the world, the UK went into lockdown. In the following weeks and months, it became clear that in many ways we were all in this together, but the illness and the long period of isolation would hit people in entirely different ways. 
 
When BBC Radio 4's PM Programme launched the 'Covid Chronicles' series, listeners from across the country - and beyond - began sending in their lockdown stories to be aired on the show. The results are astonishing: moving, profound, funny, powerful and an invaluable record of our collective experiences. Ranging from the everyday (the thrill of booking a food delivery) to the momentous (a wedding on Zoom), we hear about birth and death, loneliness and loss, community and kindness, as well as remarkable stories from those working in the NHS on the front line. 
 
This book is a collection of some of these Chronicles, written in the midst of one of the most unexpected and intense moments in our history. Together they give us an unforgettable portrait of ordinary people caught in extraordinary times, with all the humour and tragedy and uncertainty we've been through. 
 
 'It's inspiring that so many people have shared their stories - some everyday, some life-changing, but all very human. This is a wonderful collection of experiences, to record and remember this devastating year' Christie Watson, bestselling author of The Language of Kindness

Letters from Lockdown

A Selection of Covid Chronicles from BBC Radio 4’s PM Programme

Cecil Beaton

At the beginning of the Second World War the Ministry of Information, through the advice of Kenneth Clark, commissioned Cecil Beaton to photograph the Home Front. Beaton set to work recording the destruction of the Wren churches in the City and the heroism of Londoners under attack. He conducted a survey of Bomber and Fighter Commands for the RAF, which was published with Beaton's own astute commentary. Beaton was an effective propagandist, but his voice, like his photographs, was touchingly elegant. Whatever his subject, Beaton was always a stylist. 
 
Beaton's wartime work for the Ministry amounted to seven thousand photographs, which are now housed with their negatives at the Imperial War Museums. They form a great document both of the landscape of war and of the passing of the Empire. He travelled through the Western Desert and on to Iraq, Palestine, Transjordan and Syria. In 1943 he left for India where he photographed the final days of the Raj in New Delhi and Calcutta before joining the Burma campaign. He ended the war deep in Chinese territory where he witnessed the Nationalist resistance to the Japanese. 
 
Beaton's inherent sense of theatre extended from palatial drawing rooms to the jungle and the desert. Whatever the circumstances he never departed from his radical aesthetic. Theatre of War is published in conjunction with the Imperial War Museums on the occasion of a major exhibition.

Cecil Beaton: Theatre of War

Nick Bunker

16 SEPTEMBER 1620: 400 YEARS SINCE THE MAYFLOWER SET SAIL 
 
On a blustery day in September 1620 a small ship, the Mayflower, set sail from the English port of Plymouth. Known to history as the Pilgrims, the passengers on board were beginning an adventure to find religious freedom, undeterred by the daunting prospect of establishing a colony in uncharted territory thousands of miles from home. They were successful. At least 10 million US citizens are their descendants. 
 
 This short edition is the essential guide to the fascinating story of the Mayflower – a project that changed history on both sides of the Atlantic. It is taken from the longer work, Making Haste from Babylon by renowned historian Nick Bunker.

The Mayflower Pilgrims

Philippa Rice

Baby: A Soppy Story is a collection of comics by New York Times bestselling graphic novelist Philippa Rice, based on real-life moments with her baby. 
 
It is a collection about the small, intimate, heart-warming experiences of a couple expecting their first baby. From planning and pregnancy to childbirth and raising a newborn, Baby focuses on the everyday moments of parenthood. 
 
Easily read between naps, it is the perfect gift for new or expectant parents.

Baby

A Soppy Story

Marc Hamer

Longlisted for the Wainwright Book Prize 2019 
 
A calming, life-affirming book about the British countryside, the cycle of nature, solitude and contentment, by a brilliant new nature writer who spent time homeless as a young man, sleeping in the hedgerows he now knows so well. 
 
Although common, moles are mysterious: their habits are inscrutable, they are anatomically bizarre, and they live completely alone. Marc Hamer has come closer to them than most, both through his long working life out in the Welsh countryside, and his experiences of rural homelessness as a boy. 
 
Over the years, Marc has learned a great deal about these small, velvet creatures who live in the dark beneath us, and the myths that surround them, and his work has also led him to a wise and uplifting acceptance of the inevitable changes that we all face. In this beautiful and meditative book, Marc tells his story and explores what moles, and a life in nature, can tell us about our own humanity and our search for contentment. 
 
How to Catch a Mole is a gem of nature writing, beautifully illustrated by Joe McLaren, which celebrates living peacefully and finding wonder in the world around us.

How to Catch a Mole

And Find Yourself in Nature

D. J. Enright

The distinguished poet, essayist and critic D. J. Enright died on the last day of December 2002. He had just put the finishing touches to Injury Time, a memoir and his third commonplace book in which the dying writer muses upon his own condition and that of the world he knows he is leaving. 
 
Comparing himself to the Chinese scholar Sima Qian, who chose an 'ignoble punishment' (in Dennis Enright's case, treatment for his cancer; in Qian's, castration) over respectable death in order to finish a book, he contemplates literature, manners, morals, people and, especially, the English language in all its glories and eccentricities - while recording his battle against cancer and his hospital experiences. 
 
Moving, and at times deeply poignant, imbued with its author's legendary humanity and wit, Injury Time is, nevertheless, funny, bracing and, above all, positive.

Injury Time

A Memoir

Richard Beard

'Feeling the way I do now, it's not a feeling I ever want to have again.' Andrew Flintoff speaks for a nation. 
 
The Ashes, 2006/07: Australia 5 England 0. The nightmare returns. 
 
For twenty years, Australia has produced competitors so gritty they order sandwiches with sand in, and not just at cricket. Fourth in the medals table at the Athens Olympics, Tour de France contenders, Davis Cup champions, and the Socceroos 3--1 winners over England. For Richard Beard, the football was the last straw. 
 
So, on the well-established principle that if you want something doing ..., he travelled down to Australia for seven rounds of hand-to-hand sporting combat, to find out just what makes the Australians so good, and how to beat them.

How to Beat the Australians

Virginia Woolf

A Passionate Apprentice comprises the first years of Virginia Woolf's Journal - from 1879 to 1909.  Beginning in early January, when Woolf was almost fifteen, the pages open at a time when she was slowly recovering from a period of madness following her mother's death in May 1895.  Between this January and the autumn of 1904, Woolf would suffer the deaths of her half-sister and of her father, and survive a summer of madness and suicidal depression. Behind the loss and confusion, however, and always near the surface of her writing is a constructive force at work - a powerful impulse towards health.  It was an urge, through writing, to bring order and continuity out of chaos.  Putting things into words and giving them deliberate expression had the effect of restoring reality to much that might otherwise have remained insubstantial.  This early chronicle represents the beginning of the future Virginia Woolf's apprenticeship as a novelist. These pages show that rare instance when a writer of great importance leaves behind not only the actual documents of an apprenticeship, but also a biographical record of that momentous period as well.  In Woolf's words, 'Here is a volume of fairly acute life (the first really lived year of my life).'

A Passionate Apprentice

The Early Journals 1897-1909

Margaret Forster

23 February 
Results rolling in! Algebra, 6th = 74%. Not bad. Latin = 55% Thrilled! History top = 85% smashing! Geography, disgusting, 2nd = 67%. 
 
In 1954 in Carlisle lived an ordinary 15-year-old schoolgirl called Margaret. She would go on to become an acclaimed writer, the author of the novels Georgy Girl and Diary of an Ordinary Woman as well as biographies and memoirs. But this is her diary from that year; her life. Hers might be a lost world, but her daily observations bring it back in vivid, irresistible detail. 
 
7 May 
Wonderful feat accomplished yesterday by Roger Bannister! At last, the 4 minute mile. Glad an Englishman got it before anyone else. 
 
24 July 
Bought a pair of shorts – white, very short with two pockets. Super but rather daring! 
 
2 September 
Mum’s coming back on Saturday. Miss her every minute! I'll never marry and have a family -- housekeeping for two for a week is bad enough -- but for life!

Diary of an Ordinary Schoolgirl

With this sixth volume The Hogarth Press completes a major literary undertaking - the publication of the complete essays of Virginia Woolf. In this, the last decade of her life, Woolf wrote distinguished literary essays on Turgenev, Goldsmith, Congreve, Gibbon and Horace Walpole. In addition, there are a number of more political essays, such as 'Why Art To-Day Follows Politics', 'Women Must Weep' (a cut-down version of Three Guineas and never before reprinted), 'Royalty' (rejected by Picture Post in 1939 as 'an attack on the Royal family, and on the institution of kingship in this country'), 'Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid', and even 'America, which I Have Never Seen...' ('['Americans are] the most interesting people in the world - they face the future, not the past'). In 'The Leaning Tower' (1940), Virginia Woolf faced the future and looked forward to a more democratic post-war age: 'will there be no more towers and no more classes and shall we stand, without hedges between us, on the common ground?' Woolf stimulates her readers to think for themselves, so she 'never forges manifestos, issues guidelines, or gives instructions that must be followed to the letter' (Maria DiBattista). 
 
In providing an authoritative text, introduction and annotations to Virginia Woolf's essays, Stuart N. Clarke has prepared a common ground - for students, common readers and scholars alike - so that all can come to Woolf without specialised knowledge.

Essays Virginia Woolf Vol.6

Fiction was the core of Virginia Woolf's work. But she took her essay writing very seriously, spending a great deal of time on each essay and finding they provided a refreshing diversion from fiction. Her essays informed her fiction, and vice versa; this volume shows her thinking about the possibility of poeticising the novel (The Waves was the result) and in some of these pieces ('Women and Fiction', 'Women and Leisure') she considers the relationship between women, writing and society - the preoccupation that would become such a large part of her legacy. 
 
The Common Reader: Second Series comprises a significant part of this volume - it was first published in 1932 to excellent reviews. ('They are wholly delightful. They are sensitive, acute, picturesque, humorous, and yet severe.' Vita Sackville-West; 'Is there anybody writing anywhere in the world at this moment who could surpass the essay...so beautifully moulded into a form appropriate to its content that what is an authentic critical masterpiece seems as light on the mind as a song?' Rebecca West) This collection shows Woolf's genius as a critic and essayist: as well as displaying her perceptive understanding of writers and their work, it also offers us an important insight into her creative mind. 
 
Continuing the work of former editor Andrew McNeillie, Stuart N. Clarke brings fresh light to Woolf's essays and enriches them with variations. This penultimate volume forms part of an indispensable, unique collection from one of our greatest writers.

The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Volume 5

1929 - 1932

Thomas Dilworth

The first full biography of a neglected genius and one of the great Modernists, lavishly illustrated in colour throughout 
 
‘I would like to have done anything as good as David Jones has done’ Dylan Thomas 
 
As a poet, visual artist and essayist, David Jones is one of the great Modernists. The variety of his gifts reminds us of Blake – though he is a better poet and a greater all-round artist. Jones was an extraordinary engraver, painter and creator of painted inscriptions, but he also belongs in the first rank of twentieth-century poets. 
 
Though he was admired by some of the finest cultural figures of the twentieth century, David Jones is not known or celebrated in the way that Eliot, Beckett or Joyce have been. His work was occasionally as difficult as theirs, but it is just as rewarding – and more various. He is overlooked because his best writing is imbedded in two book-length prose-poems – In Parenthesis and The Anathemata, making it difficult to anthologise; the work is informed by his Catholic faith and so may feel unfashionable in this secular age; he was a shy, reclusive man, psychologically damaged by his time in the trenches, and loathed any kind of self-promotion. Mostly, though, he was a complete and original poet-artist – sui generis, impossible to pigeon-hole – and that has led to the neglect of David Jones: a true genius and the great lost Modernist.

David Jones

Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet

Norman Sherry

The years from 1939 to 1955 proved to be the most prolific of Graham Greene's life.  In The Life of Graham Greene, Volume II, Norman Sherry continues his engrossing account, delving deeply and emerging with a portrait of the author at the height of both his spying and literary careers. Greene produced some of his best novels during this time - The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair, The Quiet American - and saw the filming of The Fallen Idol and The Third Man.  The same period encompasses his passionate affair with the beautiful American Catherine Watson, who was married to a British peer, the disintegration of his marriage, his long relationship with Dorothy Glover, his activities as a secret agent and his forays into the conflicts in Kenya, Malaya, and French Indo-China.  As with The Life of Graham Greene Volume I:  1904-1939, Norman Sherry succeeds in unlocking the mystery of Greene's character and the alchemic nature of his creative genius.

The Life of Graham Greene Volume 2

1939-1955

Farida Khalaf

Andrea C. Hoffmann

In August 2014, Farida, like any ordinary teenage girl, was enjoying the summer holidays before her last year at school. But Farida lived in the mountains of northern Iraq — and what happened next was unimaginable. Her village was an ISIS target. 
 
ISIS jihadists murdered the men and boys, including her father and brother, before taking Farida and the other women prisoner. This is the story of what happened to Farida after she was captured: the beatings, the rapes, the markets where ISIS sold women like cattle, and Farida's realisation that the more resistant she became, the harder it was for her captors to continue their atrocities against her. So she struggled, she bit, she kicked, she accused her captors of going against their religion, until, one day, the door to her room was left unlocked. She took her chance and, with five younger girls in her charge, fled into the Syrian desert. 
 
Farida showed incredible courage in the face of the unthinkable, and now with The Girl Who Beat ISIS she bravely relives her story to bear witness. Searing and immediate, this is the first memoir by a young woman that shows first-hand what life is like for innocents caught up in the maelstrom of day-to-day life with ISIS.

The Girl Who Beat ISIS

Farida's Story

The much-anticipated third and final volume of Norman Sherry's biography follows the tireless wanderings of Graham Greene, the writer's final forays into the fulminating trouble spots of the world which beckoned as sirens all his days. From the perils of Batista's Cuba, the privations of the Belgian Congo and the tumult of Haiti, Nicaragua and Panama, to his confrontation with the French mafia, his travels in Spain and, finally, his quiet death in Switzerland at the age of eighty-six. The rigour and attention to detail that gained praise for the first two volumes remains undiminished as Sherry retraces Greene's footsteps, criss-crossing the globe to visit the places that inspired Greene's novels and meeting the people who provided the models for some of literature's most memorable characters: the whiskey priest; the honorary consul; the zany aunt. Never losing sight of the very real religious, emotional and political struggles that made up Greene's complicated personality - his constantly questioned but never abandoned Catholicism, his two long-term affairs with married women, his determination to stand up for the victims of injustice - Sherry illuminates Greene's mind, methods and motivation with an unswervingly critical, yet always compassionate eye. With exclusive access to Greene's letters, journals and dream-diaries, Norman Sherry has written a monumental tribute to one of the greatest of English writers. The three volumes of The Life of Graham Greene will remain the standard work on Greene for decades to come.

The Life of Graham Greene Volume Three

1955 - 1991

Steve Williams

One of the most successful caddies of the modern era, having amassed 150 wins, Kiwi Steve Williams has worked with some of the golfing world's best, including 13 years on the bag of Tiger Woods. Together, Woods and Williams won more than 80 tournaments – with 13 major championships among them. 
 
In this candid reflection on his years caddying for Tiger Woods, Greg Norman, Raymond Floyd, Terry Gale, Ian Baker-Finch and Adam Scott, Williams shares the highs and lows of their careers, explains the critical role of a caddy and offers a rare insider's view of the professional golfing world.

Out of the Rough

The Caddy's Story

Iris Murdoch

EDITED BY AVRIL HORNER AND ANNE ROWE 
 
‘Destroy this and all letters. And keep your mouth shut’ 
 
This collection of Iris Murdoch’s most interesting and revealing letters gives us a living portrait of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers and thinkers. The letters show a great mind at work – we see the young Murdoch grappling with philosophical questions, as well as feeling her anguish when a novel obstinately refuses to come together. 
 
They uncover Murdoch’s famed personal life, the subject of much speculation, in all its intriguing complexity, and her penchant for living beyond the bounds of social acceptability. We also begin to see the 'real life material' that fed into her fiction, despite her claims that her fiction never drew on reality. Above all we see the accumulation of life – intimate, irreverent, fiercely engaged with the world – in this extraordinary collection of letters.

Living on Paper

Letters from Iris Murdoch 1934-1995

William Fotheringham

Bernard Hinault is one of the greatest cyclists of all time. He is a five-time winner of the Tour de France and the only man to have won each of the Grand Tours on more than one occasion. 
 
Hinault is the last ‘old-school’ champion: a larger-than-life character from a working-class background, capable of winning on all terrains, in major Tours and one-day Classics. Nicknamed the ‘Badger’ for his combative style, he led a cyclists’ strike in his first Tour and instigated a legendary punch-up with demonstrators in 1982 while in the middle of a race. His battles with teammates Laurent Fignon and Greg LeMond in the 1986 Tour resulted in one of the greatest races of all time. 
 
Three decades on from his retirement, Hinault remains the last French winner of the Tour de France. Here, William Fotheringham shows that while France may one day find a new champion, there will never be another Bernard Hinault.

Bernard Hinault and the Fall and Rise of French Cycling

Anthony Bailey

Vermeer has always been considered the most elusive of great artists, but this book tracks him down in his home town.  It takes the reader back to seventeenth-century Delft, in a piece of historical writing that does justice to its now timeless subject. Anthony Bailey makes use of the scholarly research that has accumulated in the last century, as well as recent findings, and then reaches beyond these facts to expose the hidden Vermeer.  The result is a vivid, convincing portrait of the Protestant innkeeper's son who married a prosperous Catholic girl and had 15 children of whom 11 survived.  Vermeer died relatively young and left fewer than 40 pictures. Many of these pictures are indeed masterpieces, and Anthony Bailey examines the scientific expertise which lies behind their calm mystery.  He introduces us to Vermeer's colleagues and fellow-citizens, and charts his celebrity as it slowly spread out of Holland and encompassed the world.  He examines Vermeer's effect on many creative and destructive people, including Proust and Hitler. A View of Delft is a highly original attempt to get at Vermeer's life and personality, by setting him imaginatively in the context of Delft, its culture and history.

A View Of Delft

Evan S Connell

Evan S. Connell explores the quixotic obsession with the new, the hidden, the unattainable that burns in an individual's soul. 
 
Each essay is an extraordinary account of passionate pursuit by legendary explorers, visionaries, and seekers compelled by a singular desire. Here we find Marco Polo, El Dorado, Paracelsus, Columbus, the thousands of children in the Innocents' Crusade, Magellan, Mary Kingsley (a Victorian naturalist, ethnologist, sailor, scholar, and guest of cannibals, and Ibn Batuta (an indefatigable explorer of the fourteenth century whose travels in the Arab world and beyond made 'the journey of Marco Polo look like a stroll around the block'). 
 
'There's no end to the list, of course,' Connell adds, 'because gradually it descends from such legendary individuals to ourselves when, as children, obsessed by that same urge, we got permission to sleep in the backyard.'

El Dorado And Other Pursuits

Richard Hoggart

Richard Hoggart's book, The Uses of Literary, established his reputation as a uniquely sensitive and observant chronicler of English working-class life. In this vivid first volume of autobiography he describes his origins in that milieu. Orphaned at an early age, Hoggart grew up in a working-class district of Leeds, in an intimate world of terraced back-to-backs, visits from the local Board of Guardians, clothing checks and potted-meat sandwiches. With affectionate insight he recreates the family circle - a loving grandmother, one domineering and on gentle aunt, and a bibulous, melancholy uncle - and recalls his early schooling, the friends he made and the mentors he admired. Hard-working and articulate, Hoggart did well enough at grammar school to go on to Leeds University. This volume ends as, having earned a higher degree and travelled in Nazi Germany, he prepares to leave Yorkshire, via the Army, for the world beyond. Wry, compassionate, exact, A Local Habitation is a classic recreation of working-class England between the wars.

A Local Habitation

Life and Times, Volume One 1918-40

Peter France

Peter France looks at the various stages of his own spiritual odyssey and talks intimately of his long search for knowledge and enlightenment. Warm, lucid, humorous, Journey is grounded in France's own life and experience. He takes us from the beginning of his journey in a small Methodist chapel in Yorkshire, and his first perception of Christianity, through Oxford where he rejected Christianity and became a humanist and a career as a colonial administrative officer in Fiji, to his later position as an investigative reporter for BBC religious television. Finally-and movingly-he writes about his conversion to the Greek Orthodox Church, and describes his baptism at the age of 57 on the Greek island of Patmos by total immersion in a 44 gallon oil drum of lukewarm water. Illuminated by personal anecdote and information by a broad knowledge of different religions and religious experiences, Journey is both immensely engaging, and studded with powerful spiritual insight.

Journey

A Spiritual Odyssey

Sarvepalli Gopal

Among the few great statesmen to emerge in Asia, Jawaharal Nehru achieved a national metamorphosis in some ways even more astonishing than that of another towering patriarch, Mao Tse-tung. Not only did he wrest from the British their most prized and dearly loved Imperial possession and give his people independence, he brought his culturally rich yet economically improvised nation into the twentieth century as a force to be reasoned with. The first volume of Sarvepalli Gopal’s remarkable biographic, covering Nehru’s youth and ending with Independence in 1947, is written from first-hand knowledge of the man who served for ten years in the Ministry for External Affairs and from the unlimited access granted him by the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to her father’s private papers.

Jawaharlal Nehru;a Biography Volume 1 1889-1947

Philippa Rice's relatable comic strips that prove true love isn't always about the big romantic gestures make the perfect gift this Valentine's day. 
 
 Sometimes it's about sympathising with someone whose tea has gone cold, watching TV and sharing a quilt, or allowing your partner to order take-away pizza again. When two people move in together, it soon becomes apparent that the little things mean an awful lot. The throwaway moments in life become meaningful when you spend them in the company of someone you love. 
 
 Soppy is Philippa Rice's collection of comics based on real-life moments with her boyfriend. From grocery shopping to silly arguments and snuggling in front of the television, Soppy captures the universal experience of sharing a life together. 
 
 'Intimate, sweet, and oh so relatable' Metro

Soppy

Derek Wilson

The image of Charles II as a randy monarch who dragged the crown through the moral mire and irredeemably weakened its position has persisted throughout the three centuries since John Evelyn gave his judgement.  That judgement, Derek Wilson argues, is okay as far as it goes.  The Restoration court did set an example of cynical libertinism that provoked opposition not only from outraged preachers, but also satirical journalists and angry mobs who pelted royal mistresses and burned down brothels.  But Charles' bedroom antics are symptoms and not causes of social decadence.  Why did Pepys complain 'there is nothing almost but bawdry at court from top to bottom' or Bishop Burnet observe that throughout the three kingdoms people were 'throwing off the very professions of virtue and piety'? The answers must be sought in the traumatic upheaval of the Civil War and its aftermath in the life of Charles Stuart and his people.  In a society that was shaken loose by violent conflict the position of women changed radically.  Many experienced a new freedom and an enhanced power to influence men and events.  Charles grew up with and actually enjoyed the company of strong women.  Ministers complained of his 'effeminate conversation'.  As well as the notorious, grasping mistresses - the leach-like Lady Castlemaine, 'dearest Fubs' K-roualle, the outrageous Nell Gwynn - Charles was influenced by his domineering mother, Henrietta Maria, his 'pushy' nurse, Christabella Wyndham, his much-loved sisters, Mary and 'Minette', his only great love, Lucy Walter, his long-suffering wife, Catherine of Braganza and a cavalcade of devoted royalist ladies, actresses, whores, and ambitious gold-diggers who surrounded him throughout his exile and after his restoration.  It is this miscellany of relationships that Derek Wilson explores and helps us to understand in All the King's Women. These relationships helped to form Charles II's character, shape the course of political events and, ultimately, seal the fate of the dynasty.

All The King's Women

Derek Wilson examines a set of relationships which illustrate just how dangerous life was in the court of the Tudor lion.  He tells the interlocking stories of six men - all, curiously, called Thomas - whose ambitions and principles brought them face to face with violent death. Thomas Wolsey was an accused traitor on his way to the block when a kinder death intervened.  Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, whose convictions and policies could scarcely have been more different, both perished beneath the headman's axe.  Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, would have met the same end had the king's own death not brought him an eleventh-hour reprieve.  Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, and Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, though outliving the monarch, perished as a result of that war of ambitions and ideologies which rumbled on after 1547.  Wriothesley succumbed to poison of either body or mind in the aftermath of a failed coup.  Cranmer went to the stake as a heretic at the insistence of Mary Tudor, who was very much the daughter of the father she hated. In the Lion's Court is an illuminating examination of the careers of the six Thomases, whose lives are described in parallel - their family and social origins, their pathways to the royal Council chamber, their occupancy of the siege perilous, and the tragedies which, one by one, overwhelmed them.  By showing how events shaped and were shaped by relationships and personal destinies, Derek Wilson offers a fresh approach to the political narrative of a tumultuous reign.

In The Lion's Court

Power, Ambition and Sudden Death in the Reign of Henry VIII

The third and final volume of Sarvepalli Gopal’s biography of Jawaharlal Nehru covers the last eight years of his life and Prime Ministership. It deals with his efforts to sustain economic and social advance of the Indian people and not to lose hold of the principles of his foreign policy even while relations with China deteriorated, culminating the large scale aggression in both the western and eastern sections of the long boundary between the two countries.

Jawaharlal Nehru

A Biography Volume 3 1956-1964

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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