Literary Figures

WINNER OF THE 2023 LOCUS AWARD FOR NON-FICTIONWINNER OF THE BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION ASSOCIATION AWARD FOR BEST NON-FICTIONFINALIST FOR THE HUGO AWARD FOR BEST RELATED WORKSHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH FANTASY AWARD FOR BEST NON-FICTION'Always readable,...

Alan Bennett's A Life Like Other People's is a poignant family memoir offering a portrait of his parents' marriage and recalling his Leeds childhood, Christmases with Grandma Peel, and the lives, loves and deaths of his unforgettable aunties Kathleen and...

We all have our moments of brilliance and glory, and this was mine.This beautiful edition of Boy, part of The Roald Dahl Classic Collection, features official archive material from the Roald Dahl Museum and is perfect for Dahl fans old and new.So, enter...

'Like Lorna Sage's Bad Blood ... A masterpiece.' Rachel Cusk Giving Up the Ghost is the shocking and beautiful memoir, from the author of Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror & the Light ...

____________________ 'A superbly edited and evocatively illustrated collection that brings together everything that Scott wrote to his wife' - Sunday Telegraph 'Heartbreaking ... Love has seldom seemed more poignant' - Sunday Times 'Excellent .....

*A Times, Telegraph, TLS and Prospect Book of the Year*'The best book I've read on George Eliot' John Carey, Sunday TimesAn exceptional new biography that shows how George Eliot wrestled with the question of marriage, in art and lifeWhen she was in her...

_______________ 'A brutal, moving memoir ... Anyone who emerges from America's black working-class youth with words as fine as Ward's deserves a hearing' - Guardian 'Raw, beautiful and dangerous' - New York Times Book Review 'Lavishly endowed...

'Utterly, agonisingly compulsive ... a masterpiece' Liz Jensen, GuardianFollowing one woman's journey from a troubled girlhood in working-class Copenhagen through her struggle to live on her own terms, The Copenhagen Trilogy is a searingly honest,...

'A sensational saga' Mail on Sunday'A cracking read' Lynn Barber, Observer'Engrossing from beginning to end' Vogue'Fascinating, the way all great family stories are fascinating' New York Times Book ReviewEven if the six daughters, born between 1904 and...

Slipstream brilliantly illuminates the literary world of the latter half of the 20th century, as well as giving a highly personal insight into the life of Elizabeth Jane Howard, one of our most beloved British writers.'This is a brave, absorbing and...

Slipstream brilliantly illuminates the literary world of the latter half of the 20th century, as well as giving a highly personal insight into the life of Elizabeth Jane Howard, one of our most beloved British writers.'This is a brave, absorbing and...

Charles Dickens is the acclaimed definitive biography by bestselling author Claire Tomalin Charles Dickens was a phenomenon: a demonicly hardworking journalist, the father of ten children, a tireless walker and traveller, a supporter of liberal social...

Charles Dickens is the acclaimed definitive biography by bestselling author Claire Tomalin Charles Dickens was a phenomenon: a demonicly hardworking journalist, the father of ten children, a tireless walker and traveller, a supporter of liberal social...

'Fluent and witty . . . confident . . . highly readable'Kathryn Hughes, GUARDIAN'Brilliant - so vivid and so sharp, fantastically clever and consistently fascinating'KATHERINE RUNDELL, author of Super-InfiniteWas Shakespeare gay? The answer is both...

From the very first book publication in 1920 to the recent film release of Death on the Nile, this investigation into Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot celebrates a century of probably the world's favourite fictional detective. ...

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning is the moving follow-up to Laurie Lee's acclaimed Cider with RosieAbandoning the Cotswolds village that raised him, the young Laurie Lee walks to London. There he makes a living labouring and playing the violin. But,...

This vivid biography, written by John Dickson Carr, a giant in the field of mystery fiction, benefits from his full access to the archives of the eminent Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,to his notebooks, diaries, press clippings, and voluminous correspondence...

Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-FictionLonglisted for the Orwell Prize for Political WritingThe Ministry of Truth charts the life of George Orwell's 1984, one of the most influential books of the twentieth century and a work that is ever...

'A kind of blissography, teeming with bon mots' Sunday Times A celebrated modern classic that has revolutionised our understanding of the Bloomsbury group and remains the definitive biography of the group's gloriously...

On childhood holidays to the western coast, Tim Winton's days followed a joyous rhythm. In the mornings, the sun and surf kept him outside, in the water. In the afternoons, as the horizon wobbled with mirages and the wind came in from the ocean, he was...

Learn about the greatest works of literature, and the lives of those who wrote them in The Literature Book.Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about Literature...

Words have power. Yet that power must be rooted in truth and justice. Words must never stand apart from those principles.'You end this collection...vowing to never let life, or writing, get so complicated again' GuardianReaders who have long wondered...

Twelve early pieces never before collected that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of Joan Didion. Mostly drawn from the earliest part of her astonishing five-decade career, the wide-ranging...

With an introduction by Virginia Nicholson Saturday 2 February 1918. The first walk we've had for ever so long. Damp, mild vaporous day. Funeral bells tolling as we went out, & marriage as we came in. The streets lined with people waiting their meat...

With a new introduction by the authorPeter Jackson's film version of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy - and the accompanying Rings-related paraphernalia and publicity - has played a unique role in the disemmination of Tolkien's imaginative...

'Amusing, charming, stimulating, urbane' - THE TIMES 'Revelatory' - GUARDIAN 'Restores Clive Bell vividly to life' - Lucasta Miller ______________ Clive Bell is perhaps better known today for being a Bloomsbury socialite and the husband of...

A love letter to the joys of childhood reading from Wonderland to Narnia.When Lucy Mangan was little, stories were everything. They opened up new worlds and cast light on all the complexities she encountered in this one.She was whisked away to Narnia -...

This is a memoir as wry, funny, moving and vivid as its inimitable subject himself. A joy for both lifelong fans and for a whole new generation.'One of Britain's outstanding poets' - Sir Paul McCartney'Riveting' - Observer'An exuberant account of a...

The Girl from Hockley is a new, revised edition bringing together in one new volume this remarkable story. Born into the industrial slums of Birmingham in 1903, Kathleen Dayus became a legend in her own time. She vividly recalls her Edwardian childhood...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781590173657Author Gillian RoseFormat PaperbackPage Count 176Imprint NYRB ClassicsPublisher The New York Review of Books, IncWeight(grams)...

Peeling the Onion is a searingly honest account of Grass' modest upbringing in Danzig, his time as a boy soldier fighting the Russians, and the writing of his masterpiece, The Tin Drum, in Paris.It is a remarkable autobiography and, without question, one...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781524731977Author Guy TrebayFormat HardbackPage Count 256Imprint Alfred A. KnopfPublisher Alfred A. Knopf

One of Ireland's greatest contemporary writers turns her attention to one of the country's greatest novelists: James Joyce - in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the iconic classic ULYSSES.'As skilful, stylish and pacy as one would expect from so...

From the bestselling author of The Dutch House, Commonwealth and Bel Canto, Winner of The Women's Prize for Fiction and the Pen/Faulkner Award. When Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy met in college they began a friendship that would define their...

The comprehensive collection of letters spanning the adult life of one of the world's greatest storytellers, now revised and expanded to include more than 150 previously unseen letters, with revealing new insights into The Hobbit, The Lord...

'This is the biography - truthful, sympathetic and thorough - that Coward deserves'DAILY TELEGRAPHThe 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...

Andrew Motion has been close to the centres of British poetry for over fifty years.Sleeping on Islands is his clear-sighted and open-hearted account of this remarkable career. It takes us from scenes of a teenage home-life coloured by tragedy and silence...

*BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week* Benjamin Zephaniah, who has travelled the world for his art and his humanitarianism, now tells the one story that encompasses it all: the story of his life. In the early 1980s when punks and Rastas were on the streets...

Warned by a fortune-teller not to risk flying, the author - a seasoned correspondent - took to travelling by rail, road and sea. Consulting fortune-tellers and shamans wherever he went, he learnt to understand and respect older ways of life and beliefs...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARDThis is the secret history of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.Wonderland is part of our cultural heritage. But beneath the fairy tale lies the complex history of the author and his subject. Charles Dodgson...