Showing titles in Art & Literature

Marc Bennetts, foreign correspondent for The Times and The Sunday Times, moved to Russia in the chaotic yet free final years of President Yeltsin's rule. Twenty-five years later, The Times pulled him out of Russia over concerns for his security following his arrest in Moscow at a protest against the war in Ukraine. From the "wild" 1990s in Moscow to narrowly escaping death under fire in Ukraine, The Descent is a unique and personal diary of how Russia spiraled into violent insanity.

‘This is a funny and beautiful book. What a little bastard.’ RUSSELL BRAND ‘A millennial's answer to David Sedaris. No writer is funnier than Joel Golby.’ DOLLY ALDERTON A collection of full-throated appreciations, withering assessments, and hard-won lessons by the popular journalist...

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.

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post “A definitive and ideal biography—pound for pound, one of the sleekest and most judicious I’ve ever read.” —The New York Times A critical darling, Crumb is the first biography of Robert Crumb—one of the most profound and...

Ernest Hemingway’s classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, now available in a restored edition, includes the original manuscript along with insightful recollections and unfinished sketches. Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway’s most enduring works...

Brought to you by Penguin. From twice Booker-shortlisted author Deborah Levy, a moving and revelatory collection exploring the muses that have shaped her life and work as a writer In The Position of Spoons, Deborah Levy invites the reader into the interiors of her world, sharing her most...

A masterful work by Pulitzer Prize–winning author David Herbert Donald, Lincoln is a stunning portrait of Abraham Lincoln’s life and presidency. Donald brilliantly depicts Lincoln’s gradual ascent from humble beginnings in rural Kentucky to the ever-expanding political circles in Illinois...

Some say that the first hint that Bill Bryson was not of Planet Earth came when his mother sent him to school in lime-green Capri pants. Others think it all started with his discovery, at the age of six, of a woollen jersey of rare fineness. Across the moth-holed chest was a golden thunderbolt...

Agatha Christie’s personal memoirs about her travels to Syria and Iraq in the 1930s with her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan, where she worked on the digs and wrote some of her most evocative novels. Think you know Agatha Christie? Think again! To the world she was Agatha Christie...

This audiobook includes unabridged recordings of all George Orwell's greatest non-fiction: three full-length books, a collection of his most well-renowned essays and the complete collection of his poetry.

On frosty nights, as he sits by a flickering fire, Michael Harding withdraws into the stillness of winter and begins to reckon with age and death. As stories emerge from the shadows, we meet a young boy whose arrival brings hope, but whose journey will know winter's path. November is a rainstorm...

‘The way Robert Peal describes Georgian England, you’d be mad not to want to live there yourself’ GUARDIAN Anne Bonny and Mary Read, pirate queens of the Caribbean Tipu Sultan, the Indian ruler who kept the British at bay Olaudah Equiano, the former slave whose story shocked the world Mary...

Brought to you by Penguin. One of the world’s bestselling storytellers, Lesley Pearse writes brilliantly about survivors. Why? Because she is one herself . . . Born during the Second World War, Lesley’s innocence came to an abrupt end when a neighbour found her, aged 3, coatless in the snow...

In the cultural ferment of late nineteenth-century London, three fascinating but often overlooked figures navigated the world in the shadow of their celebrated brothers. Willie Wilde, the hapless yet charming older sibling of Oscar, never quite matched his brother's literary genius. Mabel Beardsley, the striking and ambitious sister of Aubrey, played a crucial role in his artistic ascent before forging her own path on the stage. And Howard Sturgis, a minor novelist with a sharp wit, watched as his brother Julian achieved the success he himself never quite grasped.

‘A lively picture of multiple operators scrambling to steal a march on the competition . . . Lavishly detailed’ FINANCIAL TIMES ‘This is Shakespearean scholarship at its best, brilliantly researched yet compulsively readable. It's a book for our times, enduringly fascinating and appealing...

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2015 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE A magisterial life of Ted Hughes – identified recently as the only English poet since the First World War with a claim to true greatness and one of Britain’s most important writers – to be published on National Poetry Day by prize-winning...

A best-selling novelist since 1921, Georgette Heyer is known across the world for her historical romances set in Regency England. This is the ultimate, definitive guide to Georgette Heyer's novels, her heroines, her villains and dashing heroes, the shops, clubs and towns they frequented, the parties and seasons they celebrated, how they ate, drank and dressed, socialised, shopped and drove. An utterly delightful and fun read, compelling in its historical detail, this is a must-hear for any Georgette Heyer fan.

In The Wife of Bath, Marion Turner tells the fascinating story of where Chaucer’s favourite character came from, how she related to real medieval women, and where her many travels have taken her since the fourteenth century, from Falstaff and Molly Bloom to #MeToo and Black Lives Matter.

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.

Unpublished for 90 years, Agatha Christie’s extensive and evocative letters from her year-long round-the-world trip to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and America as part of the British trade mission for the famous 1924 Empire Exhibition. In 1922 Agatha Christie set sail on a...