Memoirs

Showing 65–80 of 108 resultsSorted by latest

  • Generation Desperation

    £20.00

    In 2020, Alexander Hurst was 29 years old and broke, living as a writer in a cramped Paris flat-share. There were murmurs that a global pandemic was coming. Financial stability seemed unattainable, so far removed from his reality – the reality of the generation who came of age during the 2008 financial crisis. On a whim, he poured his meagre savings into highly risky options trading. Within a year this small set of stocks was worth $1.2 million. It was more money than Alexander – and his family – could ever have conceived of, set to turn his life on its head. And then, soon after, it was gone. He had lost it all. In exploring Alexander’s remarkable rise and fall from wealth, ‘Generation Desperation’ grapples with the vital questions of our age: what do class and status mean in a late-stage capitalist society?

  • Testament of Youth

    £14.99

    With a new introduction by Mark Bostridge, this is a unique record of one woman’s experience of twenty-five of the most cataclysmic years in modern history, and a Virago Classic bestseller.

  • Strangers

    £18.99

    On a chilly day in March of 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, Belle Burden’s husband of 20 years announced that he was leaving her. His decision shocked Belle to her core: she believed he was a happy man, a committed partner, & a devoted father to their three children. She thought he was a man who had settled into the life he had always wanted: a successful career, summers spent at their beloved home on Martha’s Vineyard, lots of tennis. Overnight, he transformed from her steady companion into a stranger. As she pieces her life together in the wake of a loss she had never imagined coming, she finds she is much stronger than she ever expected. Exploring the transformation of a shy, quiet girl, nicknamed ‘Belle the Good’ to a powerful, brave, determined woman who has learned to use her voice to expose the patriarchal structures that have forced women to be discreet & compliant for far too long.

  • Some of Our Parts

    £9.99

    In a culture of personal branding and the elevation of wellness jargon as a substitute for meaning, we seek out individuality in tribes. We want to be different, but we don’t want to do it alone. This book opens with an exploration of the role of labels in our culture – the stigma they bring and the doors they open. The way that they can both lubricate our understanding and confine our potential. Comfort and unsettle us. Laura Kennedy explores her own changing relationship with labels – the ones applied from childhood through to adulthood and how they shaped her thinking and experience; how and whether we choose to live outside the limitations of labels that help define our identity and our role in society.

  • Eight Million Ways to Happiness

    £16.99

    A wise and joyful journey through Japan’s spiritual traditions, and how they can help bring us comfort and happiness today – perfect for readers of Ikigai and Abroad in Japan.

  • Manners and Mischief

    £18.99

    An A-Z of Royal Tales and Surprising Wisdom from Princess Margaret's Lady in Waiting

  • Book of Lives

    £30.00

    Raised by scientifically minded parents, Atwood spent most of each year in the wild forest of northern Quebec: a vast playground for her entomologist father and independent, resourceful mother. It was an unfettered and nomadic childhood, sometimes isolated but also thrilling and beautiful. From this unconventional start, Atwood unfolds the story of her life, linking key moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel school year that would become ‘Cat’s Eye’ to the unease of 1980s Berlin, where she began ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. In pages alive with the natural world, reading and books, major political turning points and her lifelong love for the charismatic writer Graeme Gibson, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood stars and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel.

  • I Deliver Parcels in Beijing

    £20.00

    In the twenty years following Hu AnYan’s high school graduation, he has held nineteen different jobs. He’s been a convenience store clerk, a bicycle salesman, a security guard and a delivery driver (among many other things). He moves from city to city in China, slipping away any time the work gets too punishing or the bosses too bossy, carrying with him nothing but his copies of Chekhov and Carver. ‘I Deliver Parcels in Beijing’ is Hu’s account of his life as a low-wage labourer working to live, not living to work.

  • Without Reservation

    £25.00

    In this brilliant new book, one of the world’s leading restaurateurs shares wit and wisdom from a distinguished 40-year career and offers deep insight into some of life’s most intriguing issues.

    ‘Wildly, warmly and wonderfully readable and revealing’ Stephen Fry

    ‘A true masterpiece that leaves you hungry for more’ Jamie Oliver

  • Mother Mary Comes to Me

    £20.00

    Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, this is a soaring account, both intimate and inspiring, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as ‘my shelter and my storm’.

  • Fires Which Burned Brightly

    £20.00

    In ‘Fires Which Burned Brightly’, Faulks, a reluctant memoirist, offers readers a series of detailed snapshots from a life in progress. They include a post-war rural childhood – ‘cold mutton and wet washing on a rack over the range’ – the booze-sodden heyday of Fleet Street and a career as one of the country’s most acclaimed novelists. There are not one, but two daring escapes from boarding school; the delirium of a jetlagged American book tour; the writing of ‘Birdsong’ in his brother’s house in 1992; and memorable trips across the channel to France. Politics, psychiatry and frustrated ventures into the world of entertainment are analysed with patience and rueful humour.

  • The Money Trap

    £10.99

    The former President & CFO of SoftBank Group International takes us inside the elite, high-stakes world of tech investment.

  • What I Ate in One Year

    £10.99

    Sharing food is one of the purest human acts. Food has always been an integral part of Stanley Tucci’s life: from stracciatella soup served in the shadow of the Pantheon, to marinara sauce cooked between scene rehearsals and costume fittings, to home-made pizza eaten with his children before bedtime. Now, in ‘What I Ate In One Year’, Tucci records 12 months of eating, in restaurants, kitchens, film sets, press junkets, at home and abroad, with friends, with family, with strangers, and occasionally just by himself. Ranging from the mouth-wateringly memorable, to the comfortingly domestic, to the infuriatingly inedible, the meals memorialised in this diary are a prism for him to reflect on the ways his life, and his family, are constantly evolving. Through food he marks – and mourns – the passing of time, the loss of loved ones, and steels himself for what is to come.

  • Good Woman

    £12.99

    Across time and location, women were raised to be agreeable and ‘good’. Hyper-visible as sexual objects but invisible as full people. Living in a physical world created by men for men. Taking on the ultimate role of birth-giver and caretaker, yet seeing it remain an unsung act, even as it’s a God-like creation. Only in midlife did Nolan begin to realise she was capable of living outside these cages of conditioning so insidious that they’re nearly invisible. This book elegantly probes the knotty conditions themselves, the costs of adhering to them, and what happens when one refuses to comply. The 12 stunning and unforgettable essays blend memoir, reportage, and history to create a collection that is alternately bold, brash, and explosive, and ravishingly tender, sensual, and joyous. Nolan takes aim at big and old ideas, and she does not miss. Hers is a testimony to witness and to savour.

  • Kitchen Confidential

    £12.99

    The classic bestseller from the star of Parts Unknown and No Reservations: twenty-fifth anniversary edition. Before there was The Bear, there was Bourdain.

  • Stone Lands

    £25.00

    Journeying across Britain, from West Penwith and Avebury to the Lake District and Orkney, ‘Stone Lands’ uncovers the magic and rich history of our incredible prehistoric standing stones. It conveys the delight that lies in tracking them down, as well as the solace these ancient places offer in times of darkness.A few months after discovering that her beloved husband, Stephen, had incurable cancer, Fiona Robertson began to write this book. A long-time megalith enthusiast, she found the ancient stones resonated with her more profoundly than ever as she faced the prospect of losing him.