A History of France in 21 Women
£18.99The brilliant and sometimes scandalous lives of twenty-one women who made French history.
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A Spy Amongst Us
£25.00The true story of Daniel Defoe and the dirty tricks which helped bring Scotland into union with England In 1706, Edinburgh was on the brink of a popular uprising. Men and women took to the streets to protest the planned union with England, fearing the end of Scottish sovereignty. But unbeknownst to the mob, a spy was in their midst?the English writer Daniel Defoe, now bankrupt and thrice pilloried, had turned a government agent. Marc Mierowsky tells the dramatic story of Defoe and his fellow spies as they sabotaged the Scottish independence movement from the inside. Together they disseminated propaganda and built a network of operatives from London to the upper Highlands, providing the English government with up-to-the-minute intelligence and monitoring its adversaries’ every move. Through the lives of Defoe and his ring, their handlers, and opponents, Mierowsky guides us through this shadowy underworld of espionage and pro
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The Illustrated Letters of Virginia Woolf
£18.99The moving story of the life and work of novelist Virginia Woolf, revealed through her own letters to those closest to her.
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Gertrude Stein
£20.00From the author of ‘Square Haunting’ comes a biography as unconventional and surprising as the life it tells. ‘Think of the Bible and Homer, think of Shakespeare and think of me,’ wrote Gertrude Stein in 1936. Admirers called her a genius, sceptics a charlatan: she remains one of the most confounding – and contested – writers of the twentieth century. In this literary detective story, Francesca Wade delves into the creation of the Stein myth. We see her posing for Picasso’s portrait; at the centre of Bohemian Parisian life hosting the likes of Matisse and Hemingway; racing through the French countryside with her enigmatic companion Alice B. Toklas; dazzling American crowds on her sell-out tour for her sensational autobiography – a veritable celebrity.
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The novel life of Jane Austen
£20.00Through vivid artwork and compelling narrative, readers are invited to journey alongside Jane Austen as she navigates the challenges and triumphs that shaped her works. Told in three parts, the gritty circumstances of Austen’s own genteel poverty and the small daily injustices so often borne by creative women at this time, are shown against the backdrop of Georgian England and reflect many of the plots and characters woven into Austen’s greatest works. All the settings and scenarios presented are based upon the historical record, including the clothing, architecture, decor and Regency locations. Sprinkled throughout, the Easter eggs and witty references to popular screen adaptations of Austen’s novels will satisfy the casual and avid Austen fan alike.
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Writers revealed
£24.95‘Writers Revealed’ tells the stories of the best-loved writers in English literature, investigating their enduring appeal from the sixteenth century to today through the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and the British Library. Intimate handwritten manuscripts, letters and notebooks as well as rare first editions of books from the British Library are paired with the National Portrait Gallery’s collection of author portraits. From William Shakespeare to Zadie Smith, ‘Writers Revealed’ features over 70 poets, novelists and academics. Each short profile – which provides insight into the writers’ inspirations, struggles, and working practices – is illustrated with a portrait and manuscript.
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A Jane Austen Year
£25.00This beautifully illustrated book charts the life of one of the world’s most beloved authors through the letters, objects, and manuscripts that shaped her life.Published in partnership with the curators of Jane Austen’s House, the enchanting Hampshire cottage where Jane Austen’s genius flourished that now attracts thousands of visitors every year.Arranged over the course of a calendar year, from snowy scenes in January to festive recipes in December, specially commissioned photography of Austen’s home and possessions are brought together with extracts from her books, reproductions of her letters, and stories of her life throughout the seasons. Highlights include the first time Austen read a published copy of Pride and Prejudice to an enraptured audience in her drawing room, affectionate letters to her sister Cassandra reproduced in full and an exquisite miniature portrait of Tom Lefroy, the man she nearly married.Read this book for a un
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Hardy women
£12.99A Book of the Year in The Times, Guardian, Independent, New Statesman, Bookseller and at Waterstones
‘He understands only the women he invents – the others not at all’
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Ian Fleming
£14.99Here is a fresh portrait of the man behind James Bond, and his enduring impact, by an award-winning biographer with unprecedented access to the Fleming family papers. Ian Fleming’s greatest creation, James Bond, has had an enormous and ongoing impact on our culture. What Bond represents about ideas of masculinity, the British national psyche and global politics has shifted over time, as has the interpretation of the life of his author. But Fleming himself was more mysterious and subtle than anything he wrote.Ian’s childhood with his gifted brother Peter and his extraordinary mother set the pattern for his ambition to be ‘the complete man’, and he would strive for the means to achieve this ‘completeness’ all his life.
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Pure wit
£10.99A biography of the remarkable, and in her time scandalous, seventeenth-century writer Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle.
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Not far from Brideshead
£10.99After the horrors of the First World War, Oxford looked like an Arcadia – a dreamworld – from which pain could be shut out. Soldiers arrived with pictures of the university fully formed in their heads, and women finally won the right to earn degrees. Freedom meant reading beneath the spires and punting down the river with champagne picnics. But all was not quite as it seemed. Boys fresh from school settled into lecture rooms alongside men who had returned from the trenches with the beginnings of shellshock. It was displacing to be surrounded by aristocrats who liked nothing better than to burn furniture from each other’s rooms on the college quads for kicks. The women of Oxford still faced a battle to emerge from their shadows. This is a true and often funny story of the thriving of knowledge and spirit of fun and foreboding that characterised Oxford between the two world wars.
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Christopher Isherwood inside out
£35.00Here is an engrossing biography of the man whose writings about 1930s Berlin made him famous. Christopher Isherwood rejected the life he was born to and set out to make a different one. Heir to an English estate, he flunked out of university, moved to Berlin, was driven through Europe by the Nazis, and circled the globe before finally settling in Hollywood. There he adopted a new religion and continued to form the friendships – including an astounding number of romantic and sexual ones, often with other celebrated artists – through which he discovered himself. Isherwood repeatedly fictionalised his friends and himself – from the detached ‘Christopher Isherwood’ of Goodbye to Berlin to George, the unapologetic middle-aged lover of men, in ‘A Single Man’, and the boldly out narrator of ‘Christopher and His Kind’.