Biography

One summer, Alice Maddicott was adopted by a beautiful tabby called Dylan, and together they shared six years of loving friendship. (read more)

One summer, Alice Maddicott was adopted by a beautiful tabby called Dylan, and together they shared six years of loving friendship. Alice collected second-hand photos - orphan images - and in her sadness after Dylan's death, she pored over the old photographs of women and their cats. Cats in gardens, cats on laps, cats in alleys and on steps, accompanied by women who were diffident and affectionate, fierce and whimsical, young and old.

What did these cats mean to the women who cared for them? Why have cat-owning women always been viewed with suspicion? And where did the Crazy Cat Lady stereotype emerge from, when other cultures revere rather than fear this relationship? Examining these questions and many more, Cat Women is a moving exploration of wild natures and domestic affections. (hide)

The story of a fascinating man who connected the great politicians, artists and thinkers at the height of British global power and (read more)

The story of a fascinating man who connected the great politicians, artists and thinkers at the height of British global power and influence. A famed aesthete and patron, Philip Sassoon's world was one of luxury and classic English elegance with oriental flair. He gathered a social set that would provide inspiration for Brideshead.

There you might find Winston Churchill arguing over the tea cups with George Bernard Shaw, the Prince of Wales playing tennis with Charlie Chaplin, Noel Coward mingling with flamingos and Lawrence of Arabia and Rex Whistler painting murals as the party carried on around him. But Philip Sassoon was not just a wealthy aesthete. He worked at the right hand of Douglas Haig during the First World War and then for Prime Minister Lloyd George for the settlement of the peace. (hide)

Churchill has gone down in history as one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known. From the day the Second World War was (read more)

Churchill has gone down in history as one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known. From the day the Second World War was declared he stood out as the only man wanting to take offensive action. But is this accolade deserved?The first few years of the war were nothing short of disastrous, and author Stephen Napier shows how Churchill's strategies - and his desire not to be the first British prime minister to surrender the nation - brought the war effort to the brink of ruin and back again.

Published:20 Aug 2018 (hide)

Claude Chabrol (1930-2010) was a founding member of the French New Wave, the group of filmmakers that revolutionized French filmmaking (read more)

Claude Chabrol (1930-2010) was a founding member of the French New Wave, the group of filmmakers that revolutionized French filmmaking in the late 1950s and early 1960s. One of the most prolific directors of his generation, Chabrol averaged more than one film per year from 1958 until his death in 2010. Among his most influential films, Le Beau Serge, Les Cousins, and Les Bonnes Femmes established his central place within the New Wave canon.

In contrast to other filmmakers of the New Wave such as Jean-Luc Godard and Eric Rohmer, Chabrol exhibited simultaneously a desire to create films as works of art and an impulse to produce work that would be commercially successful and accessible to a popular Audience. The seventeen interviews in this volume, most of which have been translated into English for the first time, offer new insights into Chabrol's remarkably wide-ranging filmography, providing a sense of his attitudes and ideas about a number of Subjects. (hide)

Theodor W. Adorno and Siegfried Kracauer were two of the most influential philosophers and cultural critics of the 20th century. (read more)

Theodor W. Adorno and Siegfried Kracauer were two of the most influential philosophers and cultural critics of the 20th century. While Adorno became the leading intellectual figure of the Frankfurt School, Kracauer's writings on film, photography, literature and the lifestyle of the middle classes opened up a new and distinctive approach to the study of culture and everyday life in modern societies.

This volume brings together for the first time the long-running correspondence between these two major figures of German intellectual culture. As left-wing German Jews who were forced into exile with the rise of Nazism, Adorno and Kracauer shared much in common, but their worldviews were in many ways markedly different. These differences become clear in a correspondence that ranges over a great diversity of topics, from the nature of criticism and the meaning of utopia to the work of their contemporaries, including Bloch, Brecht and Benjamin.
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Little Lien wasn't taken from her Jewish parents - she was given away in the hope that she might be saved. Hidden and raised by a (read more)

Little Lien wasn't taken from her Jewish parents - she was given away in the hope that she might be saved. Hidden and raised by a foster family in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation, she survived the war only to find that her real parents had not.

Much later, she fell out with her foster family, and Bart van Es - the grandson of Lien's foster parents - knew he needed to find out why. His account of tracing Lien and telling her story is a searing exploration of two lives and two families. It is a story about love and misunderstanding and about the ways that our most painful experiences - so crucial in defining us - can also be redefined.

*** WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018 ***' (hide)

Dan Howell and Phil Lester, avoiders of human contact and direct sunlight, actually went outside. Travelling around the world on (read more)

Dan Howell and Phil Lester, avoiders of human contact and direct sunlight, actually went outside. Travelling around the world on tour, they have collected hundreds of exclusive, intimate and funny photos, as well as revealing and captivating side notes, to show the behind-the-scenes story of their adventure. (hide)

Dan Carter's last game as an All Black culminated with him declared Man of the Match following the 2015 Rugby World Cup final at (read more)

Dan Carter's last game as an All Black culminated with him declared Man of the Match following the 2015 Rugby World Cup final at Twickenham - an unforgettable ending to the career of the greatest fly-half of all time. But along with the triumphs of his signature World Cup win, his performance against the Lions in 2005, and an unprecedented run of Bledisloe Cup successes, there was also the pain and doubt he felt during a prolonged period of injury and rehab following the 2011 World Cup. He watched that victory from the sidelines, as he had the All Blacks' defeats in two previous tournaments.

Indeed, heading into the 2015 World Cup he had never finished the competition on his own terms. His autobiography tells of that redemption, and gets you up close and personal with one of the most celebrated sportsmen of our time. Threaded throughout the book is an intimate diary of his final year as a Crusader and All Black, during which he worked tirelessly to make one last run at that elusive goal: a World Cup victory achieved on the field.

Dan Carter's autobiography is essential reading for all sports fans. (hide)

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Your Life in My Hands comes this vibrant, tender and deeply personal memoir that finds (read more)

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Your Life in My Hands comes this vibrant, tender and deeply personal memoir that finds light and love in the darkest of places. As a specialist in palliative medicine, Dr Rachel Clarke chooses to inhabit a place many people would find too tragic to contemplate. Every day she tries to bring care and comfort to those reaching the end of their lives and to help make dying more bearable.

Rachel's training was put to the test in 2017 when her beloved GP father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She learned that nothing - even the best palliative care - can sugar-coat the pain of losing someone you love. And yet, she argues, in a hospice there is more of what matters in life - more love, more strength, more kindness, more joy, more tenderness, more grace, more compassion - than you could ever imagine. (hide)

Volumes 1 and 2 of the Diary of John Quincy Adams begin the publication of the greatest diary, both in mass and substance, in American (read more)

Volumes 1 and 2 of the Diary of John Quincy Adams begin the publication of the greatest diary, both in mass and substance, in American History. Recording a span of sixty-eight years, it has been known heretofore only in partial form. When, over a hundred years ago, Charles Francis Adams edited his grandfather's diary, he chose to omit "the details of common life," reduce "the moral and religious speculations," and retain criticisms of others only if they applied to public figures "acting in the same sphere with the writer."Now the diary is being published complete for the first time.

Starting with the entries of a twelve-year-old, the present volumes cover John Quincy Adams's formative year-his schooling and travel abroad, study at Harvard, and the first months of training for the law. Adams's six years overseas with his father took him to a half dozen countries, with lengthy stays in Paris, the Netherlands, and St. Petersburg.

Published:6 Oct 2020 (hide)