Showing titles in Art & Literature

Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë—the first full-length biography of a woman novelist by a woman novelist—is a true classic. It transports us with a deft hand straight into 19th-century Haworth, Yorkshire and crafts an extensive account of Brontë’s life, quoting throughout from letters she sent and received. From her challenging, isolated childhood to her death shortly before the age of 39, newly married and pregnant, the enigmatic author of Jane Eyre is portrayed with enormous care.

By the acclaimed journalist and New York Times best-selling author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, this day-by-day eyewitness account of the momentous events leading up to World War II in Europe is the private, personal, utterly revealing journal of a great foreign correspondent.

A. A. Gill's memoir begins in the dark of a dormitory with six strangers. He is an alcoholic, dying in the last-chance saloon - driven to dry out, not out of a desire to change but mainly through weariness. He tells the truth - as far as he can remember it - about drinking and about what it is like to be drunk. Pour Me is about the blackouts, the collapse, the despair. Lacerating, unflinching, uplifting, it is a classic about drunken abandon. Read by Dougray Scott.

In Urdu: An autobiographical masterpiece by Intizar Hussain, reminiscing on his early life in India and then the post-partition Pakistan, transitioning into a vivid history of the formative years of the young country and its people.

Brought to you by Penguin. A moving reflection on the author's father - plus a cat! - this is a beautiful short work of family history from one of our most beloved, iconic writers. Originally published in the New Yorker in 2019, and now presented in a full, unabridged form, Abandoning a Cat is a...

During the 1930s at Oxford, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams - remarkable friends, writers, and scholars - met regularly to discuss philosophy and literature and to read aloud from their own works in progress. Calling themselves the Inklings, their circle grew. It was in this company that such classics as The Lord of the Rings, The Screwtape Letters, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe first found an audience.

Thirty years ago, Gina Chick’s mother Suzanne wrote a bestselling memoir after discovering that her birth mother was none other than iconic Australian writer Charmian Clift. That book, Searching for Charmian, is now being rereleased for Mothers’ Day 2025 with a new foreword by Gina and an...

A stunning, tragic memoir about John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and his cousin Anthony Radziwill, by Radziwill’s widow. What Remains is a vivid and haunting memoir about a girl from a working-class town who becomes an award-winning television producer and marries a...

In 1953, the bodies of three young women are found by a tenant in the walls of a Notting Hill house. He tells the police that he chanced upon them while trying to put up a shelf for his transistor radio. As a series of further horrors are discovered, the eyes of a nation turn to 10 Rillington Place. In this riveting tale of violence, misogyny and tabloid frenzy, Kate Summerscale lifts the veil on what really happened inside the house - and suggests a new solution to one of the twentieth century's most notorious crimes.

A collection of insightful and uproariously funny non-fiction by the bestselling author of INFINITE JEST - one of the most acclaimed and adventurous writers of our time. A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING... brings together Wallace's musings on a wide range of topics, from his early days as a nationally...

Through these 10 lectures, you will delve into the darkness of Poe’s most nightmarish stories, including “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, and “The Fall of the House of Usher”. You’ll also learn how he invented the detective story and explored themes of love and loss in such poems as “Ulalume” and “Annabel Lee”. And you’ll discover how Poe employed symbolism, imagery, rhythm and rhyme, irony and paradox, repetition, simile, and foreshadowing to create a unique body of work.

Roses, pleasure, and politics: a fresh take on Orwell as an avid gardener, whose political writing was grounded in his passion for the natural world. "Outside my work the thing I care most about is gardening" wrote George Orwell in 1940. Inspired by her encounter with the surviving roses that Orwell planted in his cottage in Hertfordshire, Rebecca Solnit explores how his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist, and the intertwined politics of nature and power.

Alan Bennett is one of the country's most celebrated and best-loved authors. This unmissable collection of diaries and memoirs brings together for the first time Telling Tales, Diaries: 1980-1990, the autobiographical section of Untold Stories, which covers the period 1997-2004, and Keeping On Keeping On: The Diaries 2005-2014. With wit, wisdom, sharp social commentary and perceptive impressions, Alan Bennett's memoirs and diaries are a joy to discover, and a delight to hear again.

When Paul Caruana Galizia was at work in London, his eldest brother called to say their mother Daphne had just been assassinated. That day, he returned to their native Malta and, with his two brothers and their father, began a quest to discover who was responsible for Daphne's murder and who stood to profit from ending the life of a journalist whose courage and determination threatened the powerful with the truth. Two years later, they did.

When Christine Courtenay began penning her own life story in lockdown last year, she found herself increasingly drawn into the story of her late husband and bestselling author Bryce Courtenay. The manuscript that evolved is the memoir his listeners have longed for, and is the first biographical work of one of Australia's most beloved authors. Bryce Courtenay: Storyteller is a personal memoir and tribute, featuring untold stories, original insights, extracts from his personal letters and previously unpublished photographs - from the woman who knew and loved him dearly.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Wrighty's characteristic honesty means his book is far more engrossing than most bland football memoirs' Sunday Times Ian Wright, Arsenal legend, England striker and TV pundit extraordinaire, is one of the most interesting and relevant figures in modern football. His...

What is the role of the writer? Prophet? High priest of art? Court jester? Or witness to the real world? Looking back on her own childhood and writing career, Margaret Atwood examines the metaphors which writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain - or excuse! - their activities, looking at what costumes they have assumed, what roles they have chosen to play. In her final chapter she takes up the challenge of the title: if a writer is to be seen as "gifted", who is doing the giving and what are the terms of the gift?

An appealing and lively autobiography by one of Australia's most distinguished journalists, A Passionate Life will strike a chord with working women everywhere. An updated edition, now including an epilogue. Kerry Packer described her as a ‘dedicated and brilliant journalist who has achieved...

Carr, best known for his dark one-liners and signature laugh, didn't begin life as a comedian. After studying social science and political science at Cambridge, he began working for fuel company Shell. While there, he began reading self-help books and, feeling miserable, decided to make a change - he gave up his job and learned how to write jokes, got his first gig as a stand-up and changed his life!

Charles M. Schulz, the most widely syndicated and beloved cartoonist of all time, is also one of the least understood figures in American culture. Now acclaimed biographer David Michaelis gives us an in-depth biography of the brilliant, unseen man behind Peanuts. It is the most American of...