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Regrets of the Dying: Stories and Wisdom That Remind Us How to Live
By Georgina Scull. 2022
'A beautiful and moving reminder to appreciate life' Roxie Nafousi, author of Manifest'This book may on first glance appear to…
be about death and regrets, but is in reality about life and choices. It is warmly life-affirming ... A magnificent read that will inspire. I loved it' Sue Black 'So beautiful ... Perfectly written and judged ... A wonderful book that made me grasp life a little more firmly' Dr Chris van Tulleken A powerful, moving and hopeful book exploring what people regret most when they are dying and how this can help us lead a better life. If you were told you were going to die tomorrow, what would you regret?Ten years ago, without time to think or prepare, Georgina Scull ruptured internally. The doctors told her she could have died and, as Georgina recovered, she began to consider the life she had led and what she would have left behind.Paralysed by a fear of wasting what seemed like precious time but also fully ready to learn how to spend her second chance, Georgina set out to meet others who had faced their own mortality or had the end in sight.Sontag: Her Life and Work
By Benjamin Moser. 2019
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZEFinalist for the Lambda Literary AwardFinalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for BiographyNamed one of…
the Best Books of the Year by: O Magazine, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Seattle TimesThe definitive portrait of one of the American Century’s most towering intellectuals: her writing and her radical thought, her public activism and her hidden private faceNo writer is as emblematic of the American twentieth century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture. She was there when the Cuban Revolution began, and when the Berlin Wall came down; in Vietnam under American bombardment, in wartime Israel, in besieged Sarajevo. She was in New York when artists tried to resist the tug of money—and when many gave in. No writer negotiated as many worlds; no serious writer had as many glamorous lovers. Sontag tells these stories and examines the work upon which her reputation was based. It explores the agonizing insecurity behind the formidable public face: the broken relationships, the struggles with her sexuality, that animated—and undermined—her writing. And it shows her attempts to respond to the cruelties and absurdities of a country that had lost its way, and her conviction that fidelity to high culture was an activism of its own. Utilizing hundreds of interviews conducted from Maui to Stockholm and from London to Sarajevo—and featuring nearly one hundred images—Sontag is the first book based on the writer’s restricted archives, and on access to many people who have never before spoken about Sontag, including Annie Leibovitz. It is a definitive portrait—a great American novel in the form of a biography.Yet Being Someone Other
By Sir Laurens Van Der Post. 1982
Yet Being Someone Other is the most revealing book that Laurens van der Post wrote about his extraordinary and eventful…
life, and the most far-reaching; it is a distillation of the experiences that have moved him at the deepest level of the imagination and made him the exceptional person and writer he was.The Wolf Pit
By Will Cohu. 2012
In 1966 Will Cohu's grandparents moved to Bramble Carr, a remote cottage on the Yorkshire moors. The summers and winters…
he spent there were full of freedom and light; only after childhood ended was he aware of the price the adults had paid for life in this most romantic of settings.Navigating family tensions and the trials of growing up, Will describes the close-knit community of North Yorkshire and his family's place within it: the shepherd probing the head-high snowdrifts for his flock; the pub landlord obsessed with military uniforms; the village doctor lost in his love for the purple moorland; Will's glamorous RAF parents; and, at the centre of the story, his beloved but enigmatic grandparents.The Wolf Pit is an enquiring love letter from Will Cohu to his family, and to a changing rural England that is passionate, frightening and funny.Wilfred Owen
By Jon Stallworthy. 1959
Of all the poets of the First World War, Wilfred Owen most fires the imagination today – this is the…
comprehensive literary biography of the greatest WW1 poetWilfred Owen tragically died in battle just a few days before the Armistice. Now, during the centenary year of his death, this biography honours Owen’s brief yet remarkable life, and the enduring legacy he left. Stallworthy covers his life from the childhood spent in the backstreets of Shrewsbury to the appalling final months in the trenches. More than a simple account of his life, it is also a poet's enquiry into the workings of a poet's mind. This revised edition contains the beautiful illustrations of the original edition, including the drawings by Owen and facsimile manuscripts of his greatest poems, as well as a new preface by the author.‘One of the finest biographies of our time.’ Graham Greene‘An outstanding book, a worthy memorial to its subject.’ Kingsley Amis ‘As lovingly detailed as the records of Owen's short life permit, but it is always fascinatingly readable, in fact engrossing.’ Sunday TelegraphVedi: Continents of Exile: 3 (Penguin Modern Classics)
By Ved Mehta. 1981
Book 3 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one…
of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta.Ved continues the story of Ved Mehta's two earlier memoirs, Daddyji, a biographical portrait of his father, and Mamaji, an exploration of his mother and her history. The focus here turns toward Mehta's childhood, his education in an Indian orphanage for the blind, and the general experience of blind people in India.Urne-Burial (Penguin Great Ideas #Vol. 32)
By Thomas Browne. 2005
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other.…
They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.Written after the discovery of over forty Bronze Age burial urns in seventeenth-century Norfolk, Sir Thomas Browne's profound consideration of the inevitability of death remains one of the most fascinating and poignant of all reflections upon the vanity of mankind's lust for immortality.Whatever It Takes: A Story of Family Survival
By Elaine Lordan. 2007
Elaine Lordan is well-known to millions as EastEnders' Lynne Slater. Yet the real-life heartache and loss she came to suffer…
eclipsed even the rollercoaster troubles of her TV character. After leaving the show, Elaine lost her beloved mother when she took her life under a train. Then later that same year, just two days after her wedding, Elaine lost James, her one-year-old son and only child, to a rare condition. Whatever It Takes is the story of a no-nonsense working-class girl who hit the big time and enjoyed several happy years as one of the nation's favourite soap stars. Things took a downward turn as her heavy drinking and affair with a married man led to her being hounded by the press. Yet Pete would become the love of her life and together they would experience the unfathomable joy of having a child. This flush of happiness was short-lived, though, as Elaine felt the full impact of her mother's death, while her son James battled for life. It wasn't long before family life revolved around the hospital - hoping for the best, but fearing the worst.Full of larger-than-life characters from her boisterous Irish family and close circle of north London friends, Elaine tells her story with heart-wrenching candour. In this life-affirming memoir of overcoming tragedy, we see how Elaine's indomitable spirit and innate humour have carried her through even the bleakest moments, and how one woman's 'sink or swim' approach has ensured her survival.Up at Oxford: Continents of Exile: 7 (Penguin Modern Classics)
By Ved Mehta. 1993
Book 2 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one…
of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta.After studying in the United States, Mehta - blind since childhood - achieves his dream of enrolling at the University of Oxford: a place that has consumed his imagination ever since he was a small boy growing up under the British Raj. In Up at Oxford, Mehta recalls the nuances of his conversations, the range of his youthful emotions, and the sounds, smells, and tastes of university life. Along the way he draws memorable portraits of, among others, novelists, poets, scholars, and peers.Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in Their Time
By A S Byatt. 1970
Unruly Times is a superlative portrait of the relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge, and a fascinating exploration of the Romantic…
Movement and the dramatic events that shaped it. With a novelist's insight and eye for detail, A. S. Byatt brings alive this tumultuous period and shows a deep understanding of the effects upon the minds of Wordsworth, Coleridge and their contemporaries - de Quincey, Lamb, Hazlitt, Byron and Keats.Tynan Letters
By Kathleen Tynan. 1994
The Letters of Kenneth Tynan- drama critic, talent snob, intellectual dandy, inveterate campaigner - provide a record of a soul:…
written between the ages of 11 and 53, they not only chart the extraordinary parabola of his career but show the constancy of his quest for grace, style and effortless wit.Twelve Words for Moss: Love, Loss And Moss
By Elizabeth-Jane Burnett. 2023
LONGLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2024A SUNDAY TIMES AND BBC COUNTRYFILE BEST NATURE BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Exquisite, luminous and…
quietly radical . . . I loved it' Lucy Jones'A fascinating, subtle and risk-taking book' Robert MacfarlaneGlowflake, Rocket, Small Skies, Kind Spears, Marilyn . . . Moss is known as the living carpet but if you look really closely, it contains its own irrepressible light.In Twelve Words for Moss, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett celebrates the unsung hero of the plant world with a unique blend of poetry, nature writing and memoir.Making her way through wetlands from Somerset to County Tyrone, Burnett discovers the hidden vibrancy and luminous beauty of these overlooked places. She also takes strength from them as she recovers from her grief at her father's death. As she meditates on and renames her favourite species of moss, she finds a healing power in language, and draws inspiration from the resilience and tenacity of her plant - and human - friends.'Burnett stretches the limits of prose, infusing it with poetic intensity to create a powerful, original voice' GuardianTrollope (The complete Novels Of Anthony Trollope Ser.)
By Victoria Glendinning. 1995
Victoria Glendinning provides a woman's view of Anthony Trollope, placing emphasis on family, particularly on his relationship with his mother.…
But it is Anthony as a husband and lover that intrigues her most. She looks at the nature of his love for his wife, Rose and at his love for Kate Field.Tove Jansson: Work and Love
By Dr Tuula Karjalainen. 2013
The definitive illustrated biography of one of the most unique and beloved children's authors of the 20th century, the creator…
of the Moomins. Tove Jansson (1914-2001) led a long, colourful and productive life, impacting significantly the political, social and cultural history of 20th-century Finland. And while millions of children have grown up with Little My, Snufkin, Moomintroll and the many creatures of Moominvalley, the life of Jansson - daughter, friend and companion - is more touching still. This book weaves together the myriad qualities of a painter, author, illustrator, scriptwriter and lyricist from fraught beginnings through fame, war and heartbreak and ultimately to a peaceful end.The Wars of the Roosevelts: The Ruthless Rise of America's Greatest Political Family
By William J. Mann. 2017
The award-winning author presents a provocative, thoroughly modern revisionist biographical history of one of America’s greatest and most influential families—the…
Roosevelts—exposing heretofore unknown family secrets and detailing complex family rivalries with his signature cinematic flair.Drawing on previously hidden historical documents and interviews with the long-silent "illegitimate" branch of the family, William J. Mann paints an elegant, meticulously researched, and groundbreaking group portrait of this legendary family. Mann argues that the Roosevelts’ rise to power and prestige was actually driven by a series of intense personal contest that at times devolved into blood sport. His compelling and eye-opening masterwork is the story of a family at war with itself, of social Darwinism at its most ruthless—in which the strong devoured the weak and repudiated the inconvenient. Mann focuses on Eleanor Roosevelt, who, he argues, experienced this brutality firsthand, witnessing her Uncle Theodore cruelly destroy her father, Elliott—his brother and bitter rival—for political expediency. Mann presents a fascinating alternate picture of Eleanor, contending that this "worshipful niece" in fact bore a grudge against TR for the rest of her life, and dares to tell the truth about her intimate relationships without obfuscations, explanations, or labels.Mann also brings into focus Eleanor’s cousins, TR’s children, whose stories propelled the family rivalry but have never before been fully chronicled, as well as her illegitimate half-brother, Elliott Roosevelt Mann, who inherited his family’s ambition and skill without their name and privilege. Growing up in poverty just miles from his wealthy relatives, Elliott Mann embodied the American Dream, rising to middle-class prosperity and enjoying one of the very few happy, long-term marriages in the Roosevelt saga. For the first time, The Wars of the Roosevelts also includes the stories of Elliott’s daughter and grandchildren, and never-before-seen photographs from their archives.Deeply psychological and finely rendered, illustrated with sixteen pages of black-and-white photographs, The Wars of the Roosevelts illuminates not only the enviable strengths but also the profound shame of this remarkable and influential family.The Bridge Ladies: A Memoir
By Betsy Lerner. 2016
A fifty-year-old Bridge game provides an unexpected way to cross the generational divide between a daughter and her mother. Betsy…
Lerner takes us on a powerfully personal literary journey, where we learn a little about Bridge and a lot about life.After a lifetime defining herself in contrast to her mother’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” generation, Lerner finds herself back in her childhood home, not five miles from the mother she spent decades avoiding. When Roz needs help after surgery, it falls to Betsy to take care of her. She expected a week of tense civility; what she got instead were the Bridge Ladies. Impressed by their loyalty, she saw something her generation lacked. Facebook was great, but it wouldn’t deliver a pot roast.Tentatively at first, Betsy becomes a regular at her mother’s Monday Bridge club. Through her friendships with the ladies, she is finally able to face years of misunderstandings and family tragedy, the Bridge table becoming the common ground she and Roz never had.By turns darkly funny and deeply moving, The Bridge Ladies is the unforgettable story of a hard-won—but never-too-late—bond between mother and daughter.Good Mourning: Moving Through Everyday Losses with Wisdom from the Other Side
By Theresa Caputo. 2020
Theresa Caputo, TLC’s Long Island Medium and the three-time New York Times bestselling author, teaches us how to ritualize and…
recover from the daily losses in our lives.Life on earth comes with losses that often go unrecognized, unacknowledged, and un-mourned. This invisible pain causes deeper emotional damage— devastation that Theresa Caputo has witnessed in many of her clients. Though they are suffering, they rarely understand where the anguish is coming from—or how to deal with it. Theresa’s clients often confuse their emotional distress with depression or anxiety. But it’s more than that. It’s grief, deep and profound, and it consumes the soul. The only relief, according to Theresa’s special gift she calls Spirit, is to pay more attention to how we experience, ritualize, and recover from the hurt in our lives.Once we name these feelings of grief, recognize the losses for what they are, and create mourning rituals around them, we can move through the pain and begin to heal. It isn’t just a good idea to mourn these types of upsets; it’s essential, so that we can then enjoy a fresh beginning.Regrets of the Dying: Stories and Wisdom That Remind Us How to Live
By Georgina Scull. 2022
'A beautiful and moving reminder to appreciate life' Roxie Nafousi, author of Manifest'This book may on first glance appear to…
be about death and regrets, but is in reality about life and choices. It is warmly life-affirming ... A magnificent read that will inspire. I loved it' Sue Black 'So beautiful ... Perfectly written and judged ... A wonderful book that made me grasp life a little more firmly' Dr Chris van Tulleken A powerful, moving and hopeful book exploring what people regret most when they are dying and how this can help us lead a better life. If you were told you were going to die tomorrow, what would you regret?Ten years ago, without time to think or prepare, Georgina Scull ruptured internally. The doctors told her she could have died and, as Georgina recovered, she began to consider the life she had led and what she would have left behind.Paralysed by a fear of wasting what seemed like precious time but also fully ready to learn how to spend her second chance, Georgina set out to meet others who had faced their own mortality or had the end in sight.The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things
By Paula Byrne. 2013
“A vivacious portrait. . . . Byrne’s Austen emerges as a worldly woman, profoundly enmeshed in a wider world than…
she’s often acknowledged to occupy. This is an Austen with a sense for the political as well as for the finer points of sensibility—and one who will be unfamiliar (though never unrecognizable) to many readers.” — Publishers WeeklyIn The Real Jane Austen, acclaimed literary biographer Paula Byrne provides the most intimate and revealing portrait yet of a beloved but complex novelist.Just as letters and tokens in Jane Austen’s novels often signal key turning points in the narrative, Byrne explores the small things – a scrap of paper, a gold chain, an ivory miniature – that held significance in Austen’s personal and creative life.Byrne transports us to different worlds, from the East Indies to revolutionary Paris, and to different events, from a high society scandal to a case of petty shoplifting. In this ground-breaking biography, Austen is set on a wider stage than ever before, revealing a well-traveled and politically aware writer – important aspects of her artistic development that have long been overlooked.The Real Jane Austen is a fresh, compelling, and surprising biography of the author of some of our most enduring classic books – from Pride and Prejudice to Sense and Sensibility, Emma to Persuasion – and a vivid evocation of the world that shaped her.Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself
By Michael J. Rosen. 1989
“Thurber is. . . a landmark in American humor. . . he is the funniest artist who ever lived.” — New…
RepublicJames Thurber spent most of his career at the New Yorker magazine, drawing cartoons and writing essays and stories. Collecting Himself is a one-of-a-kind compilation of James Thurber's vintage writings, featuring previously unanthologized articles, essays, interviews, reviews, cartoons, parodies, as well as Thurber's reflections on his work in theater and at the New Yorker. An eclectic body of work that offers a glimpse into Thurber the man, the philosopher, and the critic.