Showing 13–24 of 208 resultsSorted by latest
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£35.00
Here 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’.
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£25.00
An Independent Best Non-Fiction Book for 2024
Celebrated music critic Ann Powers explores the life and career of the legendary Joni Mitchell
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£25.00
1917. Virginia Woolf arrives at Asheham, on the Sussex Downs, immobilized by nervous exhaustion and creative block. 1930. Feeling jittery about her writing career, Sylvia Townsend Warner spots a modest workman’s cottage for sale on the Dorset coast. 1941. Rosamond Lehmann settles in a Berkshire village, seeking a lovers’ retreat, a refuge from war, and a means of becoming ‘a writer again’. ‘Rural Hours’ tells the story of three very different women, each of whom moved to the country and were forever changed by it.
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£10.99
Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember her own – when she uncovers his forgotten wife, it’s a revelation. Eileen O’Shaughnessy’s literary brilliance shaped Orwell’s work and her practical nous saved his life. But why – and how – was she written out of the story? Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder recreates the Orwells’ marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and WWII in London. As she rolls up the screen concealing Orwell’s private life she is led to question what it takes to be a writer – and what it is to be a wife.
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£25.00
A TOP BOOK FOR 2024 IN: THE OBSERVER, INDEPENDENT, SUNDAY TIMES AND BOOKSELLER
‘He understands only the women he invents – the others not at all’
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£12.99
Following the chronology of Virginia Woolf’s life, this text considers each of the novels in context, gives due prominence to her dazzlingly inventive essays, traces the contentious course of her afterlife and shows why, 70 years after her death, Woolf continues to haunt and inspire us.
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£16.99
In the winter of 2020, Annabel Abbs experienced a series of bereavements. As she grieved, she kept busy by day, but at night sleep eluded her. And yet her sleeplessness led to a profound and unexpected discovery: her Night Self. As the night transformed into a place of creativity and liberation, Annabel found she wasn’t alone. Drawing on the latest science, which shows we are more imaginative, open-minded and reflective at night, Annabel set out to discover the potential of her Night Self. ‘Sleepless’ follows her journey, from midnight hikes to starlit swims, from Singapore, the brightest city on Earth, to the darkest corner of the Arctic Circle, and finally to that most elusive of places – sleep.
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£10.99
In this probing series of exclusive interviews, Alistair Owen talks to William Boyd about his works and the life which has inspired them. The conversations which emerge are a deep-dive into film, art, theatre, literature and the life of a writer. This is one of Britain’s most beloved authors on what it is to write in a variety of forms.
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£16.99
A beautifully illustrated travelogue, chronicling the life and work of one of the world greatest poets.
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£12.99
An account of a truly remarkable life. When Jan Morris passed away in 2020, she was considered one of Britain’s best-loved writers. The author of Venice, Pax Britannica, Conundrum, and more than fifty other books, her work was known for its observational genius, lyricism, and humour, and had earned her a passionate readership around the world. Morris’s life was no less fascinating than her oeuvre. Born in 1926, she spent her childhood amidst Oxford’s Gothic beauty and later participated in military service in Italy and the Middle East, before embarking on a career as an internationally fêted foreign correspondent.
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£30.00
Here 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.
