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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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Josephine Baker

This is the iconic Josephine Baker in her own words. 
 
Funny, candid and unconventional: the wildly famous but elusive Josephine Baker tells her own story in this enchanting memoir. 
 
Baker took Paris by storm in the 1920s, dazzling audiences with her humour, beauty and effervescence on stage. She became an icon. Later, as one of the most recognisable women in the world, she became a spy for the French resistance and was awarded the Légion d’honneur for military service. After the war she became a civil rights activist, and in 1963 she spoke at the March on Washington alongside Martin Luther King. All this from a girl of mixed heritage, born in Missouri to a poor mother and a father she did not know. 
 
Formed from a series of conversations with the French journalist Marcel Sauvage over a period of more than twenty years, and now translated into English for the first time, this gorgeous book offers an insight into one of the most beguiling figures of the twentieth century. 
 
‘Translated gorgeously into English… A delightful, nourishing read’ Guardian 
 
‘She was a beacon of joy and fellowship and her smile…reaches out to us across the years’ Financial Times 
 
‘Josephine Baker certainly shook things up. This memoir demonstrates - vividly - the pleasure she took in doing it’ Washington Post 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY IJEOMA OLUO 
 
TRANSLATED BY ANAM ZAFAR AND SOPHIE LEWIS

Fearless and Free

A Memoir

Patrick Modiano

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE 
 
Missing, a young girl, Dora Bruder, age 15. 
 
One winter night in 1941, a Jewish girl runs away from her Paris boarding school. Stumbling across her disappearance listed in an old newspaper, Patrick Modiano finds himself propelled on a quest to exhume her fate. 
 
His search will go on to last a decade. Little more will be found, just fragments of a lost family history, a sense of the dark streets of occupied Paris, Dora’s name on a list of those sent to Auschwitz. And the spectre of Modiano’s own troubled past, from which he can no longer look away. 
 
‘One of France’s most important novelists’ The New York Times 
 
'[A] spokesman for the disappeared’ Guardian

The Search Warrant

Dora Bruder

Peter Matthiessen

One of the greatest pieces of travel and nature writing ever written, this is the true story of a journey to the high Himalayas in search of the snow leopard. 
 
In 1973 Matthiessen made the 250-mile trek to the dazzling Tibetan plateau of Dolpo, as part of an expedition to study wild blue sheep. It was an arduous, sometimes dangerous, physical endeavour: exertion, blisters, blizzards, endless negotiations with sherpas, quaking cold. But it was also a 'journey of the heart'. Amongst the beauty and indifference of the mountains Matthiessen was searching for solace. He was also searching for a glimpse of a snow leopard, a creature so rarely spotted as to be almost mythical. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD MABEY 
 
'A beautiful book, and worthy of the mountains he is among' Paul Theroux

The Snow Leopard

Simone de Beauvoir

In 1947 Simone de Beauvoir took a road trip across America. 
 
She travelled from coast to coast, from New York to Hollywood, taking in New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana and Washington DC. She rode a pony through the Grand Canyon, listened to jazz in New Orleans and visited the nightclubs of Chicago. And she captured the entire experience in her journal. 
 
This captivating book is that journal and an immersive portrait of postwar America. Beauvoir was disturbed by the poverty and segregation she encountered and at the same time delighted by American energy and friendliness. 
 
Intimate, warm, and compulsively readable, this is travel writing from the iconic feminist and thinker, Simone de Beauvoir. 
 
On New York: 'I walk between the steep cliffs at the bottom of a canyon where no sun penetrates: it's permeated by a salt smell. Human history is not inscribed on these carefully calibrated buildings: They are closer to prehistoric caves than to the houses of Paris or Rome.' 
 
On Los Angeles: 'I watch the Mexican dances and eat chilli con carne, which takes the roof off my mouth, I drink the tequila and I'm utterly dazed with pleasure.'

America Day by Day

Takashi Nagai

‘A book that everyone should read’ The Times 
 
A harrowing, heart-rending first-hand account of the bombing of Nagasaki – and the acts of human kindness left in its wake. 
 
On 9th August 1945, the Japanese city of Nagasaki is hit by an atomic bomb. Forty thousand people are killed instantly. Doctor Takashi Nagai is not one of them. 
 
Pulling himself, broken and bloodied, from the wreckage that was once the city’s university hospital, Takashi bundles together a tattered group of survivors. Doctors, nurses, students, each with their own losses, their own fears for the future: they work tirelessly at the impossible task of aiding the countless wounded and easing the deaths of those they cannot save. They remain determined to heal their fallen city, to find solace and hope among the rubble, even as a strange and growing sickness begins to claim them. 
 
Eyewitness to one of the most fatal events in human history, this is Takashi’s record, written from his sickbed – a chilling historical document, and undeniable evidence of the capacity for human kindness. 
 
Published now in the UK to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION FROM RICHARD LLOYD PARRY

The Bells of Nagasaki

Werner Herzog

A poetic meditation on life and death, by one of the most renowned and respected film-makers and intellectuals of our time. 
 
In November 1974, when Werner Herzog was told that his mentor Lotte Eisner, the film historian and critic, was dying in Paris, he set off to walk there from Munich, ‘in full faith, believing that she would stay alive if I came on foot’. Along the way he recorded what he saw, how he felt, and what he experienced, from the physical discomfort of the journey to moments of rapture. It is a remarkable narrative – part pilgrimage, part meditation, and a confrontation between a great German Romantic imagination and the contemporary world. 
 
‘Surely the strangest, strongest walking book I know’ Robert Macfarlane 
 
?????'It hits you with the force of dreams and leaves you with the taste of snow-filled air’ Helen Macdonald

Of Walking In Ice

Munich - Paris: 23 November - 14 December, 1974

George Orwell

'You can live on a shilling a day in Paris if you know how. But it is a complicated business' 
 
As a struggling writer in his twenties, Orwell lived as a down-and-out among the poorest members of society. In this, his early memoir, Orwell recalls with vivid clarity his time working as a penniless dishwasher in Paris, pawning clothes to buy a day's worth of bread and wine, sleeping in bug-infested bunks, trading survival skills and cigarette butts with fellow tramps, and trudging between London's workhouse spikes for a few hours' sleep and tea. With all of the sensitivity and compassion that Orwell is known and loved for, he exposed the hardships of poverty and gave readers an unprecedented look at life lived on the fringes of society. 
 
This vivid account is an enduring call to support the world's most vulnerable people and exemplifies his belief that 'The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.' 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY KERRY HUDSON

Down and Out in Paris and London

This is Orwell's memoir of his experiences during the Spanish Civil War - a groundbreaking work of dissident literature drawn from vivid personal experience. 
 
There are occasions where it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all... 
 
This is dissident literature drawn from vivid personal experience. Orwell volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War, was near-fatally wounded and survived to write this book about the experience. Written with all the deep human understanding that defines Orwell’s writing, he vividly recounts the battles that were faced by ordinary working people as they fought for both their lives and their ideologies. Using first-hand experience, his capacity for observation and the clarity and conviction of his writing, Orwell reveals the real-world effects of totalitarianism. 
 
'The finest model of how to write about a foreign conflict, a war or a revolution... Brilliant reportage' Timothy Garten-Ash 
 
'[Orwell] describes what is happening in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War in such a way that we are able to see why he’s so upset about Soviet power. His argument is not one of category and concept but of irresistible observation' Timothy Snyder 
 
'When he went to Spain, [Orwell] was an unknown. He wasn’t Hemingway. He wasn’t a well-connected intellectual. He just had this amazing eye for detail. He was an amazing observer, and he could write so powerfully. This book, to me, is just one of the classics of foreign reporting' Guy Raz

Homage to Catalonia

József Debreczeni

This lost classic, a crystal clear eyewitness account of the Holocaust, has been translated into English for the first time, 70 years after it was first published. 
 
'A literary diamond... A holocaust memoir worthy of Primo Levi' The Times 
 
'A masterpiece' New Statesman 
 
**SELECTED AS ONE OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2024 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES** 
 
For many years this powerful classic of Holocaust literature was forgotten. József Debreczeni was a journalist and poet who arrived in Auschwitz in 1944. He survived the initial selection and endured twelve months of incarceration and slave labour in a series of camps. He ended up in the ‘Cold Crematorium’, the so-called hospital of the forced labour camp Dörnhau, where prisoners too weak to work were left to die. Debreczeni beat the odds and survived. This is his story, written in haunting, lyrical prose, compelling us to imagine the unimaginable. 
 
Although published in Hungarian in 1950, the book was then lost for the next seventy years. Now, finally, this important eyewitness account takes its place among the great works of Holocaust literature. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JONATHAN FREEDLAND

Cold Crematorium

Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz

Len Howard

Enter the secret lives of Britain's ordinary garden birds and the brilliant, unconventional woman who opened her doors to them. 
 
In the late 1930s, Len Howard packed up her life in London, bought a plot of land in Sussex and built herself a little house there. This was to be Bird Cottage, a place where the doors of the house were open to the birds of the garden – great tits, blue tits, robins, blackbirds, willow warblers and many others. Len lived the rest of her life alongside her bird neighbours, with some sleeping in her bedroom and many flitting in and out all day long. 
 
This is the book she wrote about the birds – a study not just of their behaviour but their individual personalities. We learn about their intelligence, emotional lives, and characters, their capacity for play and humour, the range of their song, their likes and dislikes, and their bond with Len. 
 
Enchanting, life-enriching, revelatory and completely original, this is a gorgeous evocation of a life lived in intimate contact with nature and a book about birds unlike any other. 
 
‘A unique, engaging and elegant insight into the lives of our precious and magical songbirds’ Arthur Parkinson 
 
‘A quiet revelation of attentiveness and sympathy. It impressed and moved me very much’ Steven Lovatt, author of Birdsong in a Time of Silence

Birds as Individuals

Christy Brown

My Left Foot is Christy Brown's inspirational story of his early life, his battle against the restraints of cerebral palsy and his determination to learn to read, write, and paint, all with the aid of his left foot. 
 
This autobiography, published in 1954 when he was twenty-two, recounts his early life in Dublin &ndash; the poverty of his childhood, the support of his mother and his hope for a better life. Above all it describes his struggle to learn to read, write, paint and finally type, all with the toe of his left foot. Warm, honest and inspiring, this is a unique and captivating story of disability told by an extraordinary man. 
 
'Riveting, funny and inspiring' Irish Times 
 
'His book, over and above the extraordinary achievement it reveals, is a testament to one man&rsquo;s courage, a hope for others' Kirkus Reviews

My Left Foot

Marjane Satrapi

The brilliant graphic memoir of growing up in Iran during and after the Islamic revolution. 
 
Marjane Satrapi lived through the Iranian Revolution as a little girl. This is her classic memoir-in-comic-strips, the story of a child entangled in the history and politics of her country. It paints an unforgettable portrait of growing up in revolutionary and war-torn Iran, in a family that was both outrageous and ordinary, beset by tragedy and yet buffered by love. Funny, wise, ultimately heartbreaking and told with unforgettable pictures. 
 
&lsquo;A revelation...you will remember it for a very long time&rsquo; Mark Haddon 
 
&lsquo;The magic of Marjane Satrapi&rsquo;s work is that it can condense a whole country&rsquo;s tragedy into one poignant, funny scene after another&rsquo; Independent on Sunday 
 
THE COMPLETE PERSEPOLIS VOLUMES I &amp; II: Includes The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return 
 
TRANSLATED BY ANJALI SINGH 
 
**ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY**

Persepolis I & II

Robert Pirsig

An odyssey into life's challenging philosophical questions during an unforgettable summer motorcycle trip, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance transformed a generation and continues to inspire millions. 
 
One of the most influential books written in the past half-century, Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a powerful examination of how we live and a breathtaking meditation on how to live better. Following a father and his young son on a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest, to complete the Chautauqua spiritual journey, it is a story of love, fear, growth, discovery and acceptance. Both personal and philosophical, it is a compelling study of relationships, values, and eventually, enlightenment and meaning - resonant with the confusions and wonders of existence. 
 
Acclaimed as one of the most exciting books in the history of American letters, this modern epic became an instant bestseller upon publication in 1974. 
 
'The book is inspired, original...the analogies with Moby-Dick are patent' New Yorker 
 
'Mr Pirsig has written a work of great, perhaps urgent, importance... Read this book' Observer

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

An Inquiry into Values

Russell Page

A fabulous book about designing gardens great and small, packed with wisdom on the abiding principles of gorgeous garden design. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALAN TITCHMARSH 
 
Russell Page was one of the most legendary gardeners and landscapers of the last century. He designed gardens great and small for clients around the world. A rare combination of born plantsman and garden architect, he was a master of colour, form and structure. Page also understood that most tricky dimension of garden design: the passage of time. From Longleat to the Frick Collection, his gardens can be enjoyed to this day. 
 
Packed with wisdom and beautiful writing, this book offers a unique perspective on great garden design and is essential reading for every gardener. 
 
'One of the most thoughtful and civilized gardening books ever written, by a master designer' Daily Telegraph

The Education of a Gardener

Konstantin Paustovsky

Discover one of Twentieth-Century Russia's most lauded lost classics, now in a remarkable new translation. 
 
'Outstanding... A sparkling, supremely precious literary achievement' Telegraph 
 
'One of the great Russian autobiographies, as fresh now as the day it was written - and the day it was lived' Julian Barnes 
 
In 1943, Konstantin Paustovsky, the Soviet Union's most revered author, started out on his masterwork - The Story of a Life; a grand, novelistic memoir of a life lived on the fast-unfurling frontiers of Russian history. Eventually published over six volumes, it would cement Paustovsky's reputation as the voice of Russia around the world, and see him nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. 
 
Taking its reader from Paustovsky's Ukrainian youth, struggling with a family on the verge of collapse and the first flourishes of creative ambition, to his experiences working as a paramedic on Russia's frontlines and then as a journalist covering the country's violent spiral into revolution, The Story of a Life offers a portrait of an artistic journey like no other.

The Story of a Life

Volumes 1–3

Ernest Hemingway

This is Hemingway's East African safari journal. 
 
'All I wanted to do was get back to Africa' 
 
Green Hills of Africa is Ernest Hemingway's lyrical journal of a month on safari in the great game country of East Africa, where he and his wife Pauline journeyed in December 1933. Hemingway's well-known interest in - and fascination with - big-game hunting is magnificently captured in this evocative account of his trip. It is an examination of the lure of the hunt and an impassioned portrait of the glory of the African landscape and of the beauty of a wilderness that was, even then, being threatened by the incursions of man. 
 
'In a class by itself - the country at all hours shines bright and clear in these pages' Daily Telegraph 
 
'The best-written story of big-game hunting anywhere' New York Times

Green Hills of Africa

Michael Ondaatje

'During certain hours, at certain years in our lives, we see ourselves as remnants from the earlier generations that were destroyed... I think all of our lives have been terribly shaped by what went on before us.' 
 
Twenty-five years after leaving his native Sri Lanka for the cool winters of Ontario, a chaotic dream of tropical heat and barking dogs pushes Michael Ondaatje to travel back home and revisit a childhood and a family he never fully understood. Along with his siblings and children, Ondaatje gathers rumours, anecdotes, poems, records and memories to piece together this fragmented portrayal of his family's past, his father's destructive alcoholism and the colourful stories and secrets of ancestors both disgraced and adored throughout centuries of Sri Lankan society. 
 
In an exotic, evocative portrait of the heat, wildlife, sounds and silences of the Sri Lankan landscape, Ondaatje combines vivid recreations of a privileged, eccentric older generation with a deeply personal reconciliatory journey in which he explores his own ghosts, and how his family's extraordinary history continues to influence his life.

Running in the Family

Hemingway's captivating memoir of living in Paris during the twenties. 
 
'If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast' 
 
Hemingway's memories of his life as an unknown writer living in Paris in the twenties are deeply personal, warmly affectionate and full of wit. Looking back not only at his own much younger self, but also at the other writers who shared Paris with him - James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald - he recalls the time when, poor, happy and writing in cafes, he discovered his vocation. Written during the last years of Hemingway's life, his memoir is a lively and powerful reflection of his genius that scintillates with the romance of the city. 
 
'A short, perfect book... Exquisite' Independent 
 
'Here is Hemingway at his best' New York Times

A Moveable Feast

Mark Doty

Why do dogs speak so profoundly to our inner lives? 
 
When Mark Doty decides to adopt a dog as a companion for his dying partner, he finds himself bringing home Beau, a large golden retriever, malnourished and in need of loving care, to join Arden, the black retriever. As Beau bounds back to life, the two dogs become Mark Doty's companions, his solace, and eventually the very life force that keeps him from abandoning all hope during the darkest days - their tenacity, loyalty and love inspiring him when all else fails.

Dog Years

Richard P Feynman

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY BILL GATES 
 
In this warm, insightful portrait of the Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965, we see the wisdom, humour and curiosity of Richard Feynman through a series of conversations with his friend Ralph Leighton. 
 
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965, Richard Feynman was one of the world's greatest theoretical physicists, but he was also a man who fell, often jumped, into adventure. An artist, safecracker, practical joker and storyteller, Feynman's life was a series of combustible combinations made possible by his unique mixture of high intelligence, unquenchable curiosity and eternal scepticism. 
 
Over a period of years, Feynman's conversations with his friend Ralph Leighton were first taped and then set down as they appear here, little changed from their spoken form, giving a wise, funny, passionate and totally honest self-portrait of one of the greatest men of our age.

Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman

Adventures of a Curious Character

Apsley Cherry-Garrard

One of the world's greatest works of travel and adventure writing, reissued on its 100th birthday. 
 
This is a gripping account of an expedition gone disastrously wrong. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the youngest members of Scott's team, recorded the experience of his adventure and in doing so created a masterpiece of travel writing. Despite the horrors that Scott and his men faced, Cherry's account is filled with details of scientific discovery, unforgettable descriptions of landscape and a belief in the spirit of human beings. A celebrated and compelling book on Antarctic exploration. 
 
INTRODUCED BY SARA WHEELER 
 
'The Worst Journey in the World is to travel what War and Peace is to the novel... a masterpiece' New York Review of Books 
 
* Voted Number 1 in National Geographic's 100 Best Adventure Books of All Time *

The Worst Journey in the World

Ranked number 1 in National Geographic’s 100 Best Adventure Books of All Time

Derek Jarman

'I planted a dog rose. Then I found a curious piece of driftwood and used this, and one of the necklaces of holey stones on the wall, to stake the rose. The garden had begun. I saw it as a therapy and a pharmacopoeia.' 
 
 In 1986 artist and filmmaker, Derek Jarman, bought Prospect Cottage, a Victorian fisherman's hut on the desert sands of Dungeness. It was to be a home and refuge for Jarman throughout his HIV diagnosis, and it would provide the stage for one of his most enduring, if transitory projects - his garden. Conceived of as a 'pharmacopoeia' - an ever-evolving circle of stones, plants and flotsam sculptures all built and grown in spite of the bracing winds and arid shingle - it remains today a site of fascination and wonder. 
 
Pharmacopoeia brings together the best of Derek Jarman's writing on nature, gardening and Prospect Cottage. Told through journal entries, poems and fragments of prose, it paints a portrait of Jarman's personal and artistic reliance on the space Dungeness offered him, and shows the cycle of the years spent there in one moving collage. 
 
'[Derek] made of this wee house, his wooden tent pitched in the wilderness, an artwork - and out of its shingle skirts, an ingenious garden - now internationally recognised. But, first and foremost, the cottage was always a living thing, a practical toolbox for his work' Tilda Swinton, from her Foreword

Pharmacopoeia

A Dungeness Notebook

Richard Wright

Richard Wright's memoir of his childhood as a young black boy in the American south of the 1920s and 30s is a stark depiction of African-American life and a powerful exploration of racial tension. 
 
‘A compelling indictment of life in the Deep South between the wars’ Daily Telegraph 
 
 At four years old, Richard Wright set fire to his home in a moment of boredom; at five his father deserted the family; by six Richard was - temporarily - an alcoholic. It was in saloons, railroad yards and streets that he learned the facts about life, about fear, hunger and hatred, while his mother's long illness taught him about suffering. In a world of white hostility and subjugation it would be his love of books and pursuit of knowledge that would propel him to follow his dream of justice and opportunity in the north. 
 
A chronicle of coming of age under the racial prejudices of the American south, as much the story of a writer finding his voice, Black Boy remains one of the great, impassioned memoirs of the twentieth century.

Black Boy

Roland Barthes

The only autobiography by the great Roland Barthes, philosopher, literary theorist and semiotician. 
 
This is the autobiography of one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century. As idiosyncratic as its author, Barthes plays both commentator and subject to reveal his tastes, habits, passions and regrets. No event, relationship or thought is given priority over any other; no attempt to construct a narrative is made. And yet, via a series of vignettes, Barthes's life and views on a multitude of subjects emerge - from money and love to language and truth. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ADAM PHILLIPS

Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes

Arthur Koestler

The second volume of the remarkable autobiography of Arthur Koestler, author of Darkness at Noon. 
 
Taken together, Arthur Koestler's volumes of autobiography constitute an unrivalled study of a twentieth-century life. The Invisible Writing picks up where the first volume, Arrow in the Blue, ended, with Koestler joining the Communist Party. This second volume goes on to detail some of the most important, gruelling and electrifying experiences in his life. 
 
This book tells of Koestler's travels through Russia and remote parts of Soviet Central Asia and of his life as an exile. It tells of how he survived in Franco's prisons under sentence of death and in concentration camps in Occupied France and ends with his escape in 1940 to England, where he found stability and a new home.

The Invisible Writing

José Saramago

A delightful insight into the formation of an artist who would become one of the world's most respected writers. 
 
Born in 1922 in the tiny Portuguese village of Azinhaga, José Saramago was only a baby when his family moved to a series of cramped lodgings in a working-class neighbourhood of Lisbon. Nevertheless, he would return to the village throughout his early life, its river and olive groves seeping deep into his memory. 
 
 Shifting between Azinhaga and Lisbon, this touching book is a mosaic of memories. Written with characteristic wit and honesty, Small Memories traces the formation of an artist always fascinated by language and who emerged, against all odds, as one of the world's most respected writers.

Small Memories

Helen Macdonald

The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life. 
 
 How do we carry on when someone close to us dies? Is it simply a case of putting one foot in front of the other in a bleak new world or do we need something more? Reeling with grief after the sudden death of her father, Helen Macdonald found herself turning to the wild for comfort. With breathtaking honesty and insight, she recounts her months spent taming a goshawk and how, finally, this strange kinship led her to the first tentative steps to recovery. 
 
 Selected from H is for Hawk 
 
 VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. 
 
 A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human. 
 
 Discover the Vintage Minis ‘Head Space’ series: 
 
 Therapy by Stephen Grosz 
 Family by Mark Haddon

Recovery

Vintage Minis

Edmund Gosse

'The classic of memoir of inter-generational strife, with an afterword from author of The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry and an introduction from Anthony Quinn. 
 
Subtitled ‘a study of two temperaments’ Edmund Gosse's childhood memoir tells the often fractious, often comic story of Gosse’s relationship with his authoritarian father. A pioneering naturalist and marine biologist, Philip Henry Gosse's strictly religious worldview is brought into crisis by the discoveries of Charles Darwin and the death of his wife - and Edmund’s mother - Emily. As Edmund breaks away from his father's influence, the evolution from one epoch to the next is described in all of its struggle, humour and glory.

Father and Son

Emmeline Pankhurst

Vintage Feminism: classic feminist texts in short form 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JESS PHILLIPS 
 
Soldier, criminal, militant, hooligan, revolutionary: these labels Emmeline Pankhurst took up and wore proudly in her long struggle for women’s suffrage. This shortened edition of her autobiography tells the inside story of this struggle: the tireless campaigning, the betrayals by men in power, the relentless round of arrests and hunger strikes, the horror of force-feeding. It is a reminder of the controversial means, the indomitable spirit and the sacrifices of life and liberty by which women won their political freedom. 
 
ALSO IN THE VINTAGE FEMINIST SHORTS SERIES: 
 
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir 
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft 
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf 
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

My Own Story (Vintage Feminism Short Edition)

Diana Cooper

Lady Diana Cooper had been famous from her earliest youth, the subject of gossip and adoration as the queen of the 'Coterie', an exclusive high society set. Her marriage to Duff Cooper, a rising political star, and her career on the stage and in early silent films only increased her notoriety. Her second volume of autobiography chronicles these years in the run-up to the Second World War, and her adventures as an unconventional hostess, actress, wife and mother are told in typically fast-paced, witty and brilliant style.

The Light of Common Day

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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