Showing 37–48 of 208 resultsSorted by latest
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£20.00
Roger Deakin, author of the immortal ‘Waterlog’ and ‘Wildwood,’ was a man of unusually many parts. A born writer who nonetheless took decades to write his first book, Roger was also variously – and sometimes simultaneously – maverick ad-man, seller of stripped pine furniture on the Portobello Road, cider-maker, teacher, environmentalist, music promoter, and filmmaker. But above all he was the restorer of ancient Walnut Tree Farm in Suffolk, the heartland which he shared with a host of visitors, both animal and human, and wrote about – as he wrote about all natural life – with rare attention, intimacy, precision and poetry. Roger Deakin was unique, and so too is this joyful work of creative biography, told primarily in the words of the subject himself, with support from a chorus of friends, family, colleagues, lovers and neighbours.
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£10.99
Richard Owen’s book begins in London, where the poet dealt with Italian merchants in his role as court diplomat and customs official. Next Owen takes us, via Chaucer’s capture at the siege of Rheims, to his involvement in arranging the marriage of King Edward III’s son Lionel in Milan and his missions to Genoa and Florence. By scrutinising his encounters with Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the mercenary knight Sir John Hawkwood – and with vividly evocative descriptions of the Arezzo, Padua, Florence, Certaldo, and Milan Chaucer would have encountered – Owen reveals the deep influence of Italy’s people and towns on Chaucer’s poems and stories. Much writing on Chaucer depicts a misleadingly parochial figure, but as Owen’s enlightening, short study of Chaucer’s Italian years makes clear, the poet’s life was internationally eventful. The consequences have made the English canon what it is today.
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£9.99
Bill Bryson’s biography of William Shakespeare unravels the superstitions, academic discoveries and myths surrounding the life of our greatest poet and playwright.
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£30.00
The voice, the dressing-gown, the cigarette in its holder, remain unmistakable. There is rarely a week when one of ‘Private Lives’, ‘Hay Fever’, and ‘Blithe Spirit’ is not in production somewhere in the world. Phrases from Noël Coward’s songs – ‘Mad About The Boy’, ‘Mad Dogs and Englishman’ – are forever lodged in the public consciousness. He was at one point the most highly paid author in the world. Yet some of his most striking and daring writing remains unfamiliar. As T.S. Eliot said, in 1954, ‘there are things you can learn from Noël Coward that you won’t learn from Shakespeare’. In Oliver Soden’s story-packed book, the master finally gets his due.
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£12.99
Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing. In his myriad lives he was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, a priest, an MP – and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. Along the way he converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a sixteen-year old girl without her father’s consent; struggled to feed a family of ten children; and was often ill and in pain. He was a man who suffered from black surges of misery, yet expressed in his verse many breathtaking impressions of electric joy and love.
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£16.99
An epic exploration of who writes about the past and how the biases of certain storytellers – whether Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare or Simon Schama – continue to influence our ideas about history (and about who we are) today. Richard Cohen reveals how professional historians and other equally significant witnesses (such as the writers of the Bible, major novelists, dramatists, journalists and political propagandists) influence what become the accepted records of human experience. Is there, he asks, even such a thing as ‘objective’ history?
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£25.00
What four 20th c. novelists have made of their respective holidays in France.
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£10.99
Surprisingly little has been written about second-generation Bloomsbury who tantalised the original ‘Bloomsburies’ at Gordon Square parties with their captivating looks and provocative ideas. ‘Young Bloomsbury’ introduces us to an extraordinarily colourful cast of characters, including novelist and music critic Eddy Sackville-West, ‘who wore elaborate make-up and dressed in satin and black velvet’; sculptor Stephen Tomlin; and writer Julia Strachey. Talented and productive, these larger-than-life figures had high-achieving professional lives and extremely complicated emotional lives.
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£18.99
From bestselling books to blockbusting Hollywood movies, the myths of the Scandinavian gods and heroes are part of the modern day landscape. For over a millennium before the arrival of Christianity, the legends permeated everyday life in Iceland and the northern reaches of Europe. Since that time, they have been perpetuated in literature and the arts in forms as diverse as Tolkien and Wagner, graphic novels to the world of Marvel. This book covers the entire cast of supernatural beings, from gods to trolls, heroes to monsters, and deals with the social and historical background to the myths, topics such as burial rites, sacrificial practices and runes.
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£9.99
Charles Dickens and Prince. Two wildly different artists who caught fire and lit up the world in ways no others could. Where did their magic come from? How did they work so hard and produce so much? How did they manage or give in to the restlessness and intensity of their creativity? How did they use it, and did it kill them? With wit, curiosity and deep admiration Nick Hornby traces their extraordinary lives – from their difficult beginnings to the women they fell for to their limitless energy for work, to their money and the movies – and brilliantly illuminates their very particular kind of genius.
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£25.00
The astonishing new portrait of the master of spy fiction, by the woman he kept secret for almost half his life
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£20.00
The Writer’s Journey invites you to follow in the footsteps of some of the world’s most famous authors on the travels that inspired their greatest works.
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