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The See-Through House: My Father in Full Colour
By Shelley Klein. 2020
'A charming account of a daughter, a house and a fastidious dad' Sunday TimesShelley Klein grew up in the Scottish…
Borders, in a house designed on a modernist open-plan grid. With colourful glass panels set against a forest of trees, it was like living in a work of art. Her father, Bernat Klein, was a textile designer whose pioneering colours and textures were a major contribution to 1960s and 70s style.Thirty years on, Shelley moves back home to care for her father, now in his eighties: the house has not changed and neither has his uncompromising vision - or his distinctive way of looking at the world. Told with great tenderness and humour, this is Shelley's account of looking after an adored yet maddening parent and a piercing portrait of the grief that followed his death. 'A sad, funny, utterly fascinating book about families, home and how to say goodbye' Mark Haddon'Original, moving and bracingly honest... often hilarious' Blake Morrison, Guardian'It is strange that grief should produce such a life-affirming book, but it has. Read it for the solace it contains, or for its captivating descriptions. Either way, it's a delight' TelegraphSaved By The Angels
By Glennyce S. Eckersley. 2002
Saved by the Angels gives warm and uplifting true stories of the extraordinary things that can happen to people (or…
their friends and relatives) if they have a near-death experience. This might include seeing the Angel of Death, having clairvoyant dreams, being aware of special fragrances, strange symbols and coincidences. Glennyce Eckersley, author of the hugely successful An Angel At My Shoulder, has collected many true stories of how angels can affect people's day-to-day lives. As more of us search for greater spiritual fulfilment, they give us hope that we live, not in a purely chaotic world, but in one of harmony, meaning and order.Sarah's Diary: An unflinchingly honest account of one family's struggle with depression
By Sarah Griffin. 2007
'I was fourteen when I found my Dad trying to commit suicide in the garage. Sounds shocking doesn't it? But…
that was part of me, part of living with my Dad'Sarah's Diary is the very personal diary of Sarah Griffin - an ordinary teenage girl learning to deal with the ups and downs of family life. On the outside hers was like any other family, but behind closed doors lay a sad and lonely secret. Sarah's Dad had depression -- a condition we've all heard of but seldom discuss. Beautifully written, brutally honest, Sarah's story is compelling reading.Rosamond Lehmann: A Life
By Selina Hastings. 2002
The life of Rosamond Lehmann was as romantic and harrowing as that of any of her fictional heroines. Her first…
novel, the shocking Dusty Answer, became wildly successful launching her career as a novelist and, just as her novels depicted the tempestuous lives of her heroines, Rosamond's personal life would be full of heartbreaking affairs and lost loves. Escaping from a disastrous early marriage Rosamond moved right into the heart of Bloomsbury society with Wogan Philipps. Later on she would embark on the most important love affair of her life, with the poet Cecil Day Lewis; nine years later he abandoned her for a young actress - a betrayal from which she would never recover. Selina Hastings masterfully creates a portrait of a woman whose dramatic life, work and relationships criss-crossed the cultural, literary and political landscape of England in the middle of the twentieth century.Romain Gary: A Tall Story
By David Bellos. 1950
Airman, war hero, immigrant, law student, diplomat, novelist and celebrity spouse, Romain Gary had several lives thrust upon him by…
the history of the twentieth century, but he also aspired to lead many more. He wrote more than two dozen books and a score of short stories under several different names in two languages, English and French, neither of which was his mother tongue. Gary had a gift for narrative that endeared him to ordinary readers, but won him little respect among critics far more intellectual than he could ever be. His varied and entertaining writing career tells a different story about the making of modern literary culture from the one we are accustomed to hearing.Born Roman Kacew in Vilna (now Lithuania) in 1914 and raised by only his mother after his father left them, Gary rose to become French Consul General in Los Angeles and the only man ever to win the Goncourt Prize twice.This biography follows the many threads that lead from Gary's wartime adventures and early literary career to his years in Hollywood and his marriage to the actress Jean Seberg. It illuminates his works in all their incarnations, and culminates in the tale of his most brilliant deception: the fabrication of a complex identity for his most successful nom de plume, Émile Ajar.In his new portrait of Gary, David Bellos brings biographical research together with literary and cultural analysis to make sense of the many lives of Romain Gary - a hero fit for our times, as well as his own.Book 9 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.In Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker, Ved Mehta provides an unparalleled glimpse into the inner workings of the one of world's most famous magazines. He portrays in detail the strange, nurturing atmosphere at the New Yorker, and he recounts the earthquakes that shook the magazine as it moved into the hands of more commercial ownership. At once a tribute to William Shawn - one of the longest serving editors in the New Yorker's history - Mehta's memoir is also a joyful tribute to the intricately linked arts of editing, writing, and reading.The Red Letters: Continents of Exile: 12 (Penguin Modern Classics)
By Ved Mehta. 2005
The last volume of 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.During the clamour of a New York dinner party, Mehta is startled to find his father crying on his mother's shoulders. This episode begins a painful and revealing voyage into his father's personal history. In stark prose, Mehta unravels a passionate, clandestine affair that bore quiet yet extraordinary consequences for himself and his family. Red Letters also serves as a brilliant exploration and a recreation of British India: its sights and sounds, its injustices and its secrecy.The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography (Penguin Modern Classics)
By A. J. Symons. 1955
'What had happened to the lost manuscripts, what train of chances took Rolfe to his death in Venice? The Quest…
continued'One summer afternoon A.J.A. Symons is handed a peculiar, eccentric novel that he cannot forget and, captivated by this unknown masterpiece, determines to learn everything he can about its mysterious author. The object of his search is Frederick Rolfe, self-titled Baron Corvo - artist, rejected candidate for priesthood and author of serially autobiographical fictions - and its story is told in this 'experiment in biography': a beguiling portrait of an insoluble tangle of talents, frustrated ambitions and self-destruction.The Poetry Of Edward Thomas
By Andrew Motion. 1936
When Edward Thomas died at Arras in 1917 few people thought of him as a poet. Yet in the two…
years before his death, after a lifetime writing prose, Thomas wrote some of the most enduring poems of his day: poems of war, nature, friendship, despair and exultation. Andrew Motion's pioneering study of Thomas' life and achievement is scholarly yet utterly absorbing, combining an account of his struggles as a writer with perceptive readings of individual poems.Andrew Motion's books include a biography, The Lamberts, George, Constant and Kil, and several prize-winning collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Love in a Life. He is currently writing the authorized biography of Philip Larkin.Please Don't Cry: A family torn apart by grief. An incredible act of love.
By Jane Plume. 2014
'I’m glad I could do her this one last favour. If it had been the other way round, I know…
Gina would have done the same for me.’Jane and Gina were the best of friends. When Gina’s husband Shaun was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2009, Jane vowed to do everything she could to help her best mate and her two small sons through the awful time to come. But things were about to take a tragic turn for the worse. In 2010, Gina was killed in a shock car crash. Though devastated by her own grief, Jane knew that Gina needed her now more than ever – to help with the boys she had left behind. And after cancer claimed Shaun's life, Jane stepped in to care for the two orphans, becoming the mother her best friend could no longer be.This is the moving true story behind an incredible act of love.Over Hill and Dale
By Gervase Phinn. 2000
Over Hill and Dale is the second volume in Gervase Phinn's bestselling Dales series.'Miss, who's that funny man at the…
back of the classroom?So begins school-inspector Gervase Phinn's second year among the frankly spoken pupils and teachers of North Yorkshire - the sight of Gervase with his notebook and pen provokes unexpected reactions from the children and adults alike.But Gervase is far from daunted - he is ready to brave the steely glare of the officious Mrs Savage, and even feels up to helping Dr Gore organize a gathering of the Feofees - just as soon as someone tells him what they are! He is still in pursuit of the lovely headteacher Christine Bentley, but will she feel the same?This is a delectable second helping of hilarious tales from the man who has been dubbed 'the James Herriot of schools'. In Over Hill and Dale, Gervase Phinn will have you laughing out loud.'Gervase Phinn's memoirs have made him a hero in school staff-rooms' Daily TelegraphGervase Phinn is an author and educator from Rotherham who, after teaching for fourteen years in a variety of schools, moved to North Yorkshire to be a school inspector. He has written autobiographies, novels, plays, collections of poetry and stories, as well as a number of books about education. He holds five fellowships, honorary doctorates from Hull, Leicester and Sheffield Hallam universities, and is a patron of a number of children's charities and organizations. He is married with four adult children. His books include The Other Side of the Dale, Over Hill and Dale, Head Over Heels in the Dales,The Heart of the Dales, Up and Down in the Dales and Trouble at the Little Village School.Our Billie
By Ian Clayton. 2010
'An astonishing work' - Joanne HarrisEvery parent's worst nightmare became a reality for Ian Clayton. On a short holiday break…
in Hay-on-Wye he took his nine-year-old twins canoeing, and in a freak accident his daughter Billie was drowned. In a remarkably frank and vivid way Clayton describes what happened on that spring day, his desperate attempts to save his two children, and then what it felt like two years later to come face to face with the men who hired out the canoe.But Our Billie is not a story of bitterness and recrimination. Instead it's the story of how a family attempts to come to terms with something which makes no sense at all. Through his memories of Billie and his wonderfully affectionate portrait of the small town in Yorkshire where the family has lived for generations, he weaves a story of loss and remembering, of gratitude and forgiveness.Openhearted: Eighty Years of Love, Loss, Laughter and Letting Go
By Ann Ingle. 2021
SHORTLISTED FOR TWO IRISH BOOK AWARDS'Something they don't tell you about getting older is that you fall. Oh, you hear…
about it in passing, of course, "She had a fall, poor thing". Falling is not something you ever think about as a younger woman. You think about falling in love . . .'At 20 Londoner Ann Ingle fell madly in love with an Irish fellow she met on holiday in Cornwall. At the church to arrange their shotgun wedding she discovered that he hadn't even told her his real name.Sixty-odd years later Ann looks back on that first glorious fall and in a series of essays considers what she has learned from the life that followed - bringing eight children into the world, their father's years of mental illness and tragic death at 40, being a cash-strapped single mother in 1980s Dublin, coming into her own in her middle years - going to college, working and writing, and continuing to evolve and learn into her ninth decade, even as she accepts the realities of being 'old'.Candid about everything that matters - love, sex, heartbreak, money, class, religion, mental health, rearing children (and letting them go), reading and writing, ageing - Open-Hearted is a compelling story about living life in a spirit of curiosity and delight and with a willingness to look for good in others._________________________________'By some distance the most courageous, most poignant, most life-affirming memoir I've read in the last twenty years and more' Paul Howard'Genuinely inspirational. I LOVE ANN INGLE' Marian Keyes'What a beautiful openhearted, at times broken-hearted memoir ... honest, funny, searingly direct, a wonderful voice ... remarkable' Joe Duffy'Really beautiful. Searingly honest, astonishingly frank and very, very funny' Maia DunphyOne Last Goodbye: Sometimes only a mother's love can help end the pain
By Kay Gilderdale. 2011
Watching her child die is the hardest thing a mother can ever do. But for Kay Gilderdale, saying a final…
goodbye to her only daughter Lynn was exceptionally painful: she'd played a part in her death.Lynn was just 14 when she was struck down by the crippling disease ME, leaving her paralysed and in constant agony. Over the next 17 years, she became desperate to escape her miserable existence, even begging her mum to help her die. So, one night, when Kay found Lynn attempting suicide, she was forced to make an impossible decision. Continue watching her child suffer or help her end the pain?Eventually, fighting her every instinct, Kay helped her precious daughter take a fatal overdose. But while Lynn was finally free, her mother faced a fresh agony - a possible lifetime behind bars. The highly controversial trial that followed opened a fierce public debate on assisted suicide. Is it murder or mercy?Here, in her heartbreaking story, Kay reveals the harrowing truth behind the headlines and the desperate lengths a mother will go to for the love of a child.One Day at a Time: A Memoir
By Susan Lewis. 2011
She was only nine when her world fell apart. The struggle to understand took a lifetime.In 1960s Bristol, Susan's family…
was like any other with its joys and frustrations, and fierce loyalties. Then tragedy struck and left a legacy that was to last a lifetime.Susan was only nine when her mother died. A year later she was sent away to school. She didn't want to go, and didn't understand why she had to. In her struggle to cope with an uncertain world - a world where nothing seemed to make sense any more - she pushed away the one person she loved best, her father. It wasn't until adulthood beckoned that she realised that, in order to turn their relationship around, she had to learn to love - and trust - again.The Olivetti Chronicles
By John Peel. 2008
John Peel is best known for his four decades of radio broadcasting. His Radio 1 shows shaped the taste of…
successive generations of music lovers. His Radio 4 show, Home Truths, became required listening for millions. But all the while, Peel was also tapping away on his beloved Olivetti typewriter, creating copy for an array of patient editors. He wrote articles, columns and reviews for newspapers and magazines as diverse as The Listener, Oz, Gandalf's Garden, Sounds, the Observer, the Independent and Radio Times.Now for the first time, the best of these writings have been brought together - selected by his wife, Sheila, and his four children. Music, of course, is a central and recurring theme, and he writes on music in all its forms, from Tubular Bells to Berlin punk to Madonna. Here you can read John Peel on everything from the perils of shaving to the embarrassments of virginity, and from the strange joy of Eurovision to the horror of being sick in trains. At every stage, the writing is laced with John's brilliantly acute observations on the minutiae of everyday life.This endlessly entertaining book is essential reading for Peel fans and a reminder of just why he remains a truly great Briton.Odd Boy Out: The ‘hilarious, eye-popping, unforgettable’ Sunday Times bestseller 2021
By Gyles Brandreth. 2021
The compelling, witty and remarkably honest autobiography from beloved star of Just a Minute, QI, Have I Got News For…
You and Celebrity GoggleboxTHE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Hilarious, ribald, eye-popping, unforgettable, will make you laugh out loud' DAILY MAIL'Warm, witty, charming. A moving and very affectionate family history. An enthusiast for life' THE TIMES________Enter the world of Gyles Brandreth - broadcaster, actor, writer, former politician - as he takes us on an extraordinary journey into his past.From growing up in an apparently well-to-do but strapped-for-cash middle-class English family to his adventures in swinging London, Gyles encounters princes, presidents, pop stars and prime ministers, gets involved in everything from setting up Scrabble championships to examining Danish sex shops, and thrills us with countless tales of family, friends and acquaintances, both famous and infamous.Filled with incredible and sometimes shocking stories, Odd Boy Out is the story of Gyles Brandreth's fascinating life told with his unique wit and charm.________'Staggeringly brilliant, funny and touching, I loved it' JOANNA LUMLEY 'Light-hearted and dark events alike are described with his customary jaunty style, making them funny, moving an sometimes deeply shocking ' Sheila HancockNikolaus Pevsner: The Life
By Susie Harries. 2011
Born Nikolai Pewsner into a Russian-Jewish family in Leipzig in 1902, Nikolaus Pevsner was a dedicated scholar who pursued a…
promising career as an academic in Dresden and Göttingen. When, in 1933 Jews were no longer permitted to teach in German universities, he lost his job and looked for employment in England. Here, over a long and amazingly industrious career, he made himself an authority on the exploration and enjoyment of English art and architecture, so much so that his magisterial county-by-county series of 46 books on The Buildings of England (first published 1951 - 74) is usually referred to simply as 'Pevsner'. As a critic, academic and champion of Modernism, Pevsner became a central figure in the architectural consensus that accompanied post-war reconstruction; as a 'general practitioner' of architectural history, he covered an astonishing range, from Gothic cathedrals and Georgian coffee houses to the Festival of Britain and Brutalist tower blocks.Susie Harries explores the truth about Nikolaus Pevsner's reported sympathies with elements of Nazi ideology, his internment in England as an enemy alien and his sometimes painful assimilation into his country of exile. His Heftchen - secret diaries he kept from the age of 14 for another sixty years - reveal hidden aspirations and anxieties, as do his numerous letters (he wrote to his wife, Lola, every day that they were apart).Harries is the first biographer to have read Pevsner's private papers and, through them, to have seen into the workings of his mind.Her definitive biography is not only rich in context and far-ranging, but is also brought to life by quotations from Pevsner himself. He was born a Jew but converted to Lutheranism; trained in the rigour of German scholarship, he became an Everyman in his copious commissions, publications, broadcasts and lectures on art, architecture, design, education, town planning, social housing, conservation, Mannerism, the Bauhaus, the Victorians, Zeitgeist, Englishness and how a nation's character may, or must, be reflected in its art. His life - as an outsider yet an insider at the heart of English art history - illuminates both the predicament and the prowess of the continental émigrés who did so much to shape British culture after 1945.Newspapermen: Hugh Cudlipp, Cecil Harmsworth King and the Glory Days of Fleet Street
By Ruth Dudley Edwards. 2003
They were 'Cudlipp' and 'Mr King' when they met in 1935. At 21, gregarious, extrovert and irreverent Hugh Cudlipp had…
many years of journalistic experience: at 34, shy, introspective and solemn Cecil Harmsworth King, haunted by the ghost of Uncle Alfred, Lord Northcliffe, the great press magnate, and bitter towards Uncle Harold, Lord Rothermere of the Daily Mail, was fighting his way up in the family business. Opposites in most respects, they were complementary in talents and had in common a deep concern for the underdog. Cudlipp, the journalistic genius, and King, the formidable intellect, were to become, in Cudlipp's words, 'the Barnum and Bailey' of Fleet Street. Together, on the foundation of the populist Daily Mirror, they created the biggest publishing empire in the world. Yet their relationship foundered sensationally in 1968, when - as King tried to topple the Prime Minister - Cudlipp toppled King. Through the story of two extraordinary men, Ruth Dudley Edwards gives us a riveting portrait of Fleet Street in its heyday.My Sister Milly
By Gemma Dowler. 2017
You've seen Manhunt, now read this powerful and personal account from Milly Dowler's sister Gemma . . . 'My name…
is Gemma Dowler. On 21 March 2002, a serial killer named Levi Bellfield stole my sister and sent our family to hell . . .'In My Sister Milly, Gemma Dowler recounts the terrible day of Milly's disappearance, the suspicions that fell on the family, the torture of encountering the murderer in court, the fatal errors made by the police, how it very nearly destroyed her family and how love and hope helped the family survive.Everyone thinks they know the story of Milly Dowler, but only one person knows the true pain of having lost her sister, and how a family can rediscover hope to survive.________________'Compelling. An amazing book'Jeremy Vine, BBC Radio 2'Heartbreaking' Daily Mail'Tragic, poignant, full of emotional memories'Daily Mirror