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£9.99
Aged 19, Alison McKelvie was a self-confessed romantic, immersed in books and poetry, and dreaming of beauty, truth and love. In 1940, whilst working as a secretary at MI6, Alison met Alexander Wilson. 30 years her senior, Alexander was worldly and charismatic. An intense affair quickly led to marriage and two children. But the Wilsons’ lives then spiralled into the depths of poverty. Alexander was sacked, imprisoned twice, and then declared bankrupt. His lack of reliability was a hefty emotional burden for Alison to bear. Nevertheless, she loved her husband unreservedly and stuck by him through thick and thin. In 1963, Alexander died suddenly of a heart attack. Alison’s world imploded when she discovered that their life together had been built upon layer after layer of deception. Who was Alexander Wilson? How well had Alison really known him? Slowly the lies were unravelled.
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£11.99
Dublin’s turbulent history, its intensely literary and theatrical character of long literary lineage, its revolutionary ideals and heroes, and its ordinary life are all brought to life in this collection of letters, diaries and memoirs of travellers to the city and by Dubliners themselves. The extracts, from medieval times onwards, include Red Hugh O’Donnell’s escape from Dublin Castle, James Joyce’s plans for a novel while staying at the Martello Tower, and the seizure of the GPO by Irish volunteers during the Easter Rising. The book also includes gossip and story-telling in the humorous sketches of many famous Dubliners.
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£20.00
This short volume has turned out to be merely a handful of recollections of well-remembered times and stories – some probably misremembered, too – and a few people who have played a crucial part in my life. And some confessions: I have never before tried to write about my doll phobia, for instance, or about the effect synaesthesia has had over the years. I can only hope that this collection of stories from times past might give some idea of a mostly happy life that has gone, and is going, much too fast.
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£16.99
Not since Marie Antoinette said ‘Let them eat cake’ have the peasants been so revolting. Western capitalism’s elites are bemused: Brexit, Trump, and maybe more eruptions to follow. But their rulers were so good to them! Hillary Clinton called the ingrates ‘a basket of deplorables’, Bob Geldof flicked them a V sign, Tony Blair thought voters too thick to understand the question. These people who know best, these snooterati with their faux-liberal ways, are the ‘Patronising Bastards’. Their downfall is largely of their own making – their Sybaritic excesses, an obsession with political correctness, the prolonged rape of reason and rite. Political columnist and bestselling author Quentin Letts identifies these condescending creeps and their networks, their methods and their dubious morals.
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£8.99
Based on Charlie Mortimer’s life with HIV/Aids during the early years (1984-1996), when there was neither treatment nor cure, this is a poignant yet light-hearted memoir from the bestselling author of ‘Dear Lupin’. Using a combination of good luck, gallows humour, Fray Bentos pies and copious quantities of Solpadeine, Charlie survived not only the illness but also the hysteria that accompanied the so-called ‘gay plague’.
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£9.99
The character of the last Tsar, Nicholas II (1868-1918) is crucial to understanding the overthrow of tsarist Russia, the most significant event in Russian history. Nicholas became Tsar at the age of 26. Though a conscientious man who was passionate in his devotion to his country, he was weak, sentimental, dogmatic and indecisive. Ironically he could have made an effective constitutional monarch, but these flaws rendered him fatally unsuited to be the sole ruler of a nation that was in the throes of painful modernisation. That he failed is not surprising, for many abler monarchs could not have succeeded. Rather to be wondered at is that he managed, for 23 years, to hold on to power despite the overwhelming force of circumstances.
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£8.99
My ways are the ways of the mountains. Hard, implacable, steeled over the anvil of an unrelenting wilderness in which only one thing matters: the fight to stay alive. On 12th October 1972, a Uruguayan Air Force plane carrying members of the ‘Old Christians’ rugby team (and many of their friends and family members) crashed into the Andes mountains. This book offers a gripping and heartrending recollection of the harrowing brink-of-death experience that propelled survivor Roberto Canessa to become one of the world’s leading paediatric cardiologists.
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£20.00
Sir Ludovic Kennedy was a British journalist, television personality, humanist and author. Following a brief naval career, he devoted his life to what he referred to as his ‘lifelong obsession with miscarriages of justice’ and he fought this cause tirelessly, until he died in 2009. Richard Ingrams first met Ludovic Kennedy in 1963 and the pair quickly bonded. Ingrams interweaves this biography with detailed analysis of the cases to which Ludo dedicated his life, vividly recapturing the spirit of his friend and colleague.
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£9.99
Carly Simon has had a career that has spanned four decades, resulting in 13 Top 40 hits, including the Number 1 song ‘You’re So Vain’, numerous Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. She was also the first artist in history to win a Grammy Award, an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for her song ‘Let the River Run’ (from the film ‘Working Girl’). ‘Boys in the Trees’ is a rhapsodic memoir of a young woman’s coming of age amongst the glamorous literati and intelligentsia of Manhattan, a reflection on a life begun amidst secrets and shame, and a powerful story of the strength to leave that all behind and forge a path of art, music and love in the golden age of folk and rock.
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£20.00
Based on Charlie Mortimer’s life with HIV/Aids during the early years (1984-1996), when there was neither treatment nor cure, this is a poignant yet light-hearted memoir from the bestselling author of ‘Dear Lupin’. Using a combination of good luck, gallows humour, Fray Bentos pies and copious quantities of Solpadeine, Charlie survived not only the illness but also the hysteria that accompanied the so-called ‘gay plague’.
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£16.99
‘Portland Place’ is the diary of Sarah Shaw for the year of 1971, which she recently uncovered whilst clearing out her loft. Working as a secretary for the BBC at the time, Sarah’s diary describes the life of a suburban girl who certainly wasn’t ‘swinging’ but who was, ironically, not only working on a cutting edge BBC survey on sex education but also in the throes of an unlikely affair with middle-aged, working-class, Irish lift attendant, Frank.
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£10.99
It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong. ‘The Sympathizer’ is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause.
