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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

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Angelica Malin

Thirty women, from Megan Barton-Hanson and Shaparak Khorsandi to Shon Faye and Stephanie Yeboah write on what single womanhood in the modern age means to them. 
 
 
Have you ever worried about going on holiday alone? 
 
Felt queasy at the thought of Valentine's Day without a date? 
 
Thought to yourself, "I want what she has?" 
 
This book is the tonic you need. 
 
 
ANGELICA MALIN - MEGAN BARTON HANSON - ANNIE LORD - STEPHANIE YEBOAH - SHAPARAK KHORSANDI - POORNA BELL - CHARLIE CRAGGS - REBECCA REID - ASHLEY JAMES - CHANTÉ JOSEPH - ROSIE WILBY - SALMA EL-WARDANY - NATALIE BYRNE - SHON FAYE - VENUS LIBIDO - JESSICA MORGAN - FRANCESCA SPECTER - SHANI SILVER - RACHEL THOMPSON - BELLA DEPAULO - MIA LEVITIN - FELICITY MORSE - KETAKI CHOWKHANI - LUCIE BROWNLEE - CHLOE PIERRE - SOPHIA MONEY-COUTTS - NICOLA SLAWSON - RAHEL AKLILU - SOPHIA LEONIE - ROSE STOKES - MADELEINE SPENCER 
 
Curated by journalist and author Angelica Malin, Unattached explores the nuances of being single today through the voices of thirty women; with personal essays reflecting both the unique challenges (hello, going to a wedding alone), and the glorious benefits (goodbye, joint bank account). 
 
Unattached shines a light on brilliant women stepping into their power, owning being alone, and reveals the true depth of female potential when we choose to go against what society expects of us and revel in our own strength.

Unattached

Empowering Essays on Singlehood

Vee Kativhu

'Dynamic and transformative... a roadmap for following your dreams.' 
Malala Yousafzai 
 
'Touching, deeply inspiring and thought-provoking.' 
Jack Edwards, YouTuber and author of The Uni-Verse: The Ultimate University Survival Guide 
 
 
From experiencing grief and leaving her home country of Zimbabwe for the UK, to attending disruptive state schools and working long hours to support herself and her mother, Vee Kativhu has faced much adversity. 
 
But through personal hardship, she has triumphed, using her experience to help people from all over the world recognise their own talent and achieve their goals. From attaining a bachelor's degree from Oxford and a Master's from Harvard to spreading her message of education, equal access and opportunity and empowerment to a global audience of over 300,000, Vee's incredible journey has inspired young people around the world in need of a boost of confidence, motivation and practical life advice. 
 
In Empowered, Vee draws from her own journey to teach you how to: 
 
- Set your life goals, career aspirations and actually achieve them 
- Stay motivated in the face of rejection and hardship 
- Learn from your mistakes 
- Take chances, live your best life and don't let hardship define you 
- Cultivate feelings of self-love and self-empowerment 
 
This book will inspire you how to live a more fulfilled, motivated and empowered life in everything you do.

Empowered

Live Your Life with Passion and Purpose

Claire Eastham

"An electric, warm, comforting and funny handbook on panic and how to cope and live alongside it. Accessible, reassuring, practical and relieving." Laura Dockrill 
 
"I wish I had this book when I was 18 and having panic attacks. It's smart, witty, informative and importantly, it lets you know that if you have panic attacks too... you are not alone." Dr Sophie Mort 
 
 
An uplifting, personal account on living with panic and how to stop it defining you. 
 
'You're dying. F**k, you're having a heart attack, or is this a stroke? You're going crazy, you are right this second losing your mind. It's game over. Get out' All the work I'd put into preparing for this interview, my job, my career, money, future - it all seemed insignificant next to the burning desire to get out of the room and run. 
 
Award-winning blogger and author of We're All Mad Here, Claire Eastham is an expert on panic. She's not a doctor or an academic, but over a seven-year period, she has experienced 371 panic attacks (and counting), and learnt a thing or two along the way. 
 
Part memoir, part guide, F**k I Think I'm Dying is an intimate, honest and ultimately uplifting exploration into panic attacks. In practical thematic chapters Claire covers the crisis points where panic can hit: job interviews, social situations, attacks at night. She interviews a host of people - scientists, professors, dieticians, psychologists and people who struggle with panic - to anatomise how panic works and how it can be managed. 
 
Frank, funny and blazing, Claire's story will speak to all those seeking to reclaim their power. With a little work and understanding, panic attacks do not have to control you.

F**k, I think I'm Dying

How I Learned to Live With Panic

Caroline Eaton Tracey

RUNNER-UP OF THE 2020 BODLEY HEAD / FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZE 
 
'Just before the COVID-19 quarantine, I moved into my girlfriend's apartment, a renovated garage in a forgotten triangle of blocks where three Mexico City neighbourhoods come together.' 
 
A River Passes By Here is a story about Mexico City, its climate, its history and the life and love that flourishes within it. It describes efforts over more than a century to tame a unique natural environment, and explores what nature means to us when we are forcibly separated from it. 
 
It is a deeply evocative and enchanting portrait of a very particular time in an exceptional place.

A River Passes By Here

Kingsley Amis

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
'Endlessly entertaining... Good, rollicking stuff, and a delight to read... Sir Kingsley Amis is surely one of the funniest men alive' Auberon Waugh, Sunday Telegraph 
 
Elegant, provocative and hugely entertaining, Kingsley Amis's memoirs are filled with anecdotes, experiences and portraits of famous friends, family, acquaintances (and a few eminent foes). From his childhood days to Oxford and army life, his travels abroad and his years as a successful novelist, Memoirs offers extraordinary insights into a unique literary life. 
 
© Kingsley Amis 1991 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Memoirs

Saranya Subramanian

RUNNER-UP OF THE 2020 BODLEY HEAD / FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZE 
 
'It's an exhausting, futile battle, really. Every night, the same smug cockroach squeezes herself out of my bathroom drain's grilled lid, scuttles into the toilet and shower area, and waltzes around like she owns the place.' 
 
The Cockroach and I is an astonishingly vivid, funny, trenchant portrait of life in Bombay in 2020 during the pandemic. It is alive to the nameless and the numberless of the city, alive to history, and alive to the special strangeness of a year of living surrounded by death and uncertainty. 
 
Here are innumerable human beings pushed inside their homes while insects and animals roam freely, each playing their roles.

The Cockroach and I

A remarkable collection of 'Covid Chronicles' -- stories from lockdown sent in from listeners to BBC Radio 4 -- making a deeply moving people's history of the pandemic. 
 
 
On 23 March 2020, as the deadly virus spread around the world, the UK went into lockdown. In the following weeks and months, it became clear that in many ways we were all in this together, but the illness and the long period of isolation would hit people in entirely different ways. 
 
When BBC Radio 4's PM Programme launched the 'Covid Chronicles' series, listeners from across the country - and beyond - began sending in their lockdown stories to be aired on the show. The results are astonishing: moving, profound, funny, powerful and an invaluable record of our collective experiences. Ranging from the everyday (the thrill of booking a food delivery) to the momentous (a wedding on Zoom), we hear about birth and death, loneliness and loss, community and kindness, as well as remarkable stories from those working in the NHS on the front line. 
 
This book is a collection of some of these Chronicles, written in the midst of one of the most unexpected and intense moments in our history. Together they give us an unforgettable portrait of ordinary people caught in extraordinary times, with all the humour and tragedy and uncertainty we've been through. 
 
 'It's inspiring that so many people have shared their stories - some everyday, some life-changing, but all very human. This is a wonderful collection of experiences, to record and remember this devastating year' Christie Watson, bestselling author of The Language of Kindness

Letters from Lockdown

A Selection of Covid Chronicles from BBC Radio 4’s PM Programme

Cecil Beaton

At the beginning of the Second World War the Ministry of Information, through the advice of Kenneth Clark, commissioned Cecil Beaton to photograph the Home Front. Beaton set to work recording the destruction of the Wren churches in the City and the heroism of Londoners under attack. He conducted a survey of Bomber and Fighter Commands for the RAF, which was published with Beaton's own astute commentary. Beaton was an effective propagandist, but his voice, like his photographs, was touchingly elegant. Whatever his subject, Beaton was always a stylist. 
 
Beaton's wartime work for the Ministry amounted to seven thousand photographs, which are now housed with their negatives at the Imperial War Museums. They form a great document both of the landscape of war and of the passing of the Empire. He travelled through the Western Desert and on to Iraq, Palestine, Transjordan and Syria. In 1943 he left for India where he photographed the final days of the Raj in New Delhi and Calcutta before joining the Burma campaign. He ended the war deep in Chinese territory where he witnessed the Nationalist resistance to the Japanese. 
 
Beaton's inherent sense of theatre extended from palatial drawing rooms to the jungle and the desert. Whatever the circumstances he never departed from his radical aesthetic. Theatre of War is published in conjunction with the Imperial War Museums on the occasion of a major exhibition.

Cecil Beaton: Theatre of War

Nick Bunker

16 SEPTEMBER 1620: 400 YEARS SINCE THE MAYFLOWER SET SAIL 
 
On a blustery day in September 1620 a small ship, the Mayflower, set sail from the English port of Plymouth. Known to history as the Pilgrims, the passengers on board were beginning an adventure to find religious freedom, undeterred by the daunting prospect of establishing a colony in uncharted territory thousands of miles from home. They were successful. At least 10 million US citizens are their descendants. 
 
 This short edition is the essential guide to the fascinating story of the Mayflower – a project that changed history on both sides of the Atlantic. It is taken from the longer work, Making Haste from Babylon by renowned historian Nick Bunker.

The Mayflower Pilgrims

Philippa Rice

Baby: A Soppy Story is a collection of comics by New York Times bestselling graphic novelist Philippa Rice, based on real-life moments with her baby. 
 
It is a collection about the small, intimate, heart-warming experiences of a couple expecting their first baby. From planning and pregnancy to childbirth and raising a newborn, Baby focuses on the everyday moments of parenthood. 
 
Easily read between naps, it is the perfect gift for new or expectant parents.

Baby

A Soppy Story

E. S. Batchelor

2019 RUNNER-UP OF THE BODLEY HEAD | FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZE 
 
‘Where are you going? 
 
The voice came again, and two figures appeared … It was clear that these men were not working for the government. They wore green uniforms, with the small red logo of the Ta’ang National Liberation Army. As they walked, their rifles flopped from side to side.’ 
 
In Myanmar, E. S. Batchelor travels the highland road leading out of Burma to China. Encounters with other travellers unveil political tensions and military history, posing questions about the borderlands between past and present, peace and conflict, person and state.

Highway Three

On the road through Burma’s opium fields

Thomas Graham

2019 RUNNER-UP OF THE BODLEY HEAD | FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZE 
 
‘In the Andean cultural context, the mouth of the mine is a portal between worlds. Outside, the miners are Catholic. Inside, the human soul has escaped the jurisdiction of God.’ 
 
In this searing investigation, Thomas Graham crosses the Bolivian altiplano and ventures into Siglo XX, once the world’s richest tin mine. Describing the historical and political landscape of this near post-apocalyptic world, he is invited into the local mining community where he uncovers the true costs it has exacted on their lives.

The Sacrifice

How Bolivian miners extract their wealth

Dur e Aziz Amna

2019 WINNER OF THE BODLEY HEAD | FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZE 
 
'Surkh gulaaban day mausam vich, 
Phulaan de rang kaalay. 
 
(In the season of red roses, 
These flowers are turning black.)' 
 
Your Tongue Is Still Yours is a poetic meditation on language, regional cultures and how identity exists in the many layers between the two. Punjabi. Urdu. English. Arabic. Balti. Shina. Khowar. Wakhi. 
 
Dur e Aziz Amna goes back to Pakistan, traversing its different regions before returning to New York, considering how language has shaped her past and how it might do the same for her children’s future.

Your Tongue Is Still Yours

Reflections On Language

Marc Hamer

Longlisted for the Wainwright Book Prize 2019 
 
A calming, life-affirming book about the British countryside, the cycle of nature, solitude and contentment, by a brilliant new nature writer who spent time homeless as a young man, sleeping in the hedgerows he now knows so well. 
 
Although common, moles are mysterious: their habits are inscrutable, they are anatomically bizarre, and they live completely alone. Marc Hamer has come closer to them than most, both through his long working life out in the Welsh countryside, and his experiences of rural homelessness as a boy. 
 
Over the years, Marc has learned a great deal about these small, velvet creatures who live in the dark beneath us, and the myths that surround them, and his work has also led him to a wise and uplifting acceptance of the inevitable changes that we all face. In this beautiful and meditative book, Marc tells his story and explores what moles, and a life in nature, can tell us about our own humanity and our search for contentment. 
 
How to Catch a Mole is a gem of nature writing, beautifully illustrated by Joe McLaren, which celebrates living peacefully and finding wonder in the world around us.

How to Catch a Mole

And Find Yourself in Nature

D. J. Enright

The distinguished poet, essayist and critic D. J. Enright died on the last day of December 2002. He had just put the finishing touches to Injury Time, a memoir and his third commonplace book in which the dying writer muses upon his own condition and that of the world he knows he is leaving. 
 
Comparing himself to the Chinese scholar Sima Qian, who chose an 'ignoble punishment' (in Dennis Enright's case, treatment for his cancer; in Qian's, castration) over respectable death in order to finish a book, he contemplates literature, manners, morals, people and, especially, the English language in all its glories and eccentricities - while recording his battle against cancer and his hospital experiences. 
 
Moving, and at times deeply poignant, imbued with its author's legendary humanity and wit, Injury Time is, nevertheless, funny, bracing and, above all, positive.

Injury Time

A Memoir

Mark Clemens

2018 WINNER OF THE BODLEY HEAD | FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZE 
 
With honesty and humour, Mark Clemens describes lessons he learned from a honeymoon spent recovering from terrible sickness in a Manhattan hotel room. Years later he considers the complex history of the building in which he and his new bride spent their convalescence. A carpentry shop, a brothel, a butcher's. As Mark reflects on the impermanence of New York and the impermanence of his marriage, he offers insights on history and personal growth.

In Sickness and In Health

Historical Notes from an Attempted Honeymoon

Stephen Groves

2018 RUNNER-UP OF THE BODLEY HEAD | FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZE 
 
A timely exploration of art on the boundary of Northern Ireland’s fragile peace. Stephen Groves follows a famed Protestant artist and his Catholic accomplice as they paint the walls of Belfast’s no man’s land. Through their lives, we see a glimpse of the deep social issues which plague Northern Ireland today. Epidemics of drugs and suicide – the symptoms of internalised trauma. Is peace simply the absence of violence?

The Painters of Belfast’s No Man’s Land

How Northern Ireland is Grappling with a Hollow Peace

Miriam Driessen

2018 RUNNER-UP OF THE BODLEY HEAD | FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZE 
 
The Restless Earth explores the lives of communities who remain sceptical of China’s big city allure. As the traditions of the New Year bring urban dwellers back to rural Qinghe, Miriam Driessen interrogates the tensions between the proud stoicism of rural family members and the ambitions of their returning relatives. Thoughtful and immersive, it is a portrait of a community whose existence is much more than a hurdle on the way to urbanization.

The Restless Earth

Rural China in Transition

Richard Beard

'Feeling the way I do now, it's not a feeling I ever want to have again.' Andrew Flintoff speaks for a nation. 
 
The Ashes, 2006/07: Australia 5 England 0. The nightmare returns. 
 
For twenty years, Australia has produced competitors so gritty they order sandwiches with sand in, and not just at cricket. Fourth in the medals table at the Athens Olympics, Tour de France contenders, Davis Cup champions, and the Socceroos 3--1 winners over England. For Richard Beard, the football was the last straw. 
 
So, on the well-established principle that if you want something doing ..., he travelled down to Australia for seven rounds of hand-to-hand sporting combat, to find out just what makes the Australians so good, and how to beat them.

How to Beat the Australians

George Orwell

With an introduction by Kamila Shamsie 
 
‘Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.’ 
 
GEORGE ORWELL is one of the world’s most famous writers and social commentators. Through his writing he exposed the unjust sufferings of the poor and unemployed, warned against totalitarianism and defended freedom of speech. 
 
This selection, from both his novels and non-fiction, charts his prescient and clear-eyed thinking on the subject of FREEDOM. It ranges from pieces on individual liberty, society and technology, to political liberty, revolution and the importance of free speech. Orwell's ambition to create a fairer and more egalitarian society is essential inspiration as we strive for freedom and equality in today's world. 
 
'If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.'

Orwell on Freedom

A. S. Byatt

In Passions of the Mind, A.S. Byatt writes as an artist and scholar taking the reader on a journey of discovery as she explores the ideas, images and attitudes to language underpinning some of her own fiction, and also the work of Great Victorians and a varied range of twentieth-century women writers. 
 
Fascinated by the coincidence of the symbolic and real which she finds in her favourite writers – Robert Browning, George Eliot and Wallace Stevens – A.S. Byatt also celebrates this quality in the sun and shadows of Van Gogh's painting.

Passions Of The Mind

Selected Writings

Kristen Radtke

Imagine Wanting Only This is a haunting graphic memoir about leaving, and those left behind. 
 
After the sudden death of a beloved uncle, Kristen becomes obsessed with abandoned places – derelict Midwestern mining towns, an Icelandic village preserved in volcanic ash, Cambodian temples reclaimed by jungle. At the same time, she examines what it means to be an artist, to be hungry for the next experience, to be always in transit. 
 
Beautifully illustrated in black and white, Imagine Wanting Only This confirms Kristen Radtke as an important new voice in the comics world.

Imagine Wanting Only This

Margaret Forster

23 February 
Results rolling in! Algebra, 6th = 74%. Not bad. Latin = 55% Thrilled! History top = 85% smashing! Geography, disgusting, 2nd = 67%. 
 
In 1954 in Carlisle lived an ordinary 15-year-old schoolgirl called Margaret. She would go on to become an acclaimed writer, the author of the novels Georgy Girl and Diary of an Ordinary Woman as well as biographies and memoirs. But this is her diary from that year; her life. Hers might be a lost world, but her daily observations bring it back in vivid, irresistible detail. 
 
7 May 
Wonderful feat accomplished yesterday by Roger Bannister! At last, the 4 minute mile. Glad an Englishman got it before anyone else. 
 
24 July 
Bought a pair of shorts – white, very short with two pockets. Super but rather daring! 
 
2 September 
Mum’s coming back on Saturday. Miss her every minute! I'll never marry and have a family -- housekeeping for two for a week is bad enough -- but for life!

Diary of an Ordinary Schoolgirl

Virginia Woolf

With this sixth volume The Hogarth Press completes a major literary undertaking - the publication of the complete essays of Virginia Woolf. In this, the last decade of her life, Woolf wrote distinguished literary essays on Turgenev, Goldsmith, Congreve, Gibbon and Horace Walpole. In addition, there are a number of more political essays, such as 'Why Art To-Day Follows Politics', 'Women Must Weep' (a cut-down version of Three Guineas and never before reprinted), 'Royalty' (rejected by Picture Post in 1939 as 'an attack on the Royal family, and on the institution of kingship in this country'), 'Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid', and even 'America, which I Have Never Seen...' ('['Americans are] the most interesting people in the world - they face the future, not the past'). In 'The Leaning Tower' (1940), Virginia Woolf faced the future and looked forward to a more democratic post-war age: 'will there be no more towers and no more classes and shall we stand, without hedges between us, on the common ground?' Woolf stimulates her readers to think for themselves, so she 'never forges manifestos, issues guidelines, or gives instructions that must be followed to the letter' (Maria DiBattista). 
 
In providing an authoritative text, introduction and annotations to Virginia Woolf's essays, Stuart N. Clarke has prepared a common ground - for students, common readers and scholars alike - so that all can come to Woolf without specialised knowledge.

Essays Virginia Woolf Vol.6

Fiction was the core of Virginia Woolf's work. But she took her essay writing very seriously, spending a great deal of time on each essay and finding they provided a refreshing diversion from fiction. Her essays informed her fiction, and vice versa; this volume shows her thinking about the possibility of poeticising the novel (The Waves was the result) and in some of these pieces ('Women and Fiction', 'Women and Leisure') she considers the relationship between women, writing and society - the preoccupation that would become such a large part of her legacy. 
 
The Common Reader: Second Series comprises a significant part of this volume - it was first published in 1932 to excellent reviews. ('They are wholly delightful. They are sensitive, acute, picturesque, humorous, and yet severe.' Vita Sackville-West; 'Is there anybody writing anywhere in the world at this moment who could surpass the essay...so beautifully moulded into a form appropriate to its content that what is an authentic critical masterpiece seems as light on the mind as a song?' Rebecca West) This collection shows Woolf's genius as a critic and essayist: as well as displaying her perceptive understanding of writers and their work, it also offers us an important insight into her creative mind. 
 
Continuing the work of former editor Andrew McNeillie, Stuart N. Clarke brings fresh light to Woolf's essays and enriches them with variations. This penultimate volume forms part of an indispensable, unique collection from one of our greatest writers.

The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Volume 5

1929 - 1932

Thomas Dilworth

The first full biography of a neglected genius and one of the great Modernists, lavishly illustrated in colour throughout 
 
‘I would like to have done anything as good as David Jones has done’ Dylan Thomas 
 
As a poet, visual artist and essayist, David Jones is one of the great Modernists. The variety of his gifts reminds us of Blake – though he is a better poet and a greater all-round artist. Jones was an extraordinary engraver, painter and creator of painted inscriptions, but he also belongs in the first rank of twentieth-century poets. 
 
Though he was admired by some of the finest cultural figures of the twentieth century, David Jones is not known or celebrated in the way that Eliot, Beckett or Joyce have been. His work was occasionally as difficult as theirs, but it is just as rewarding – and more various. He is overlooked because his best writing is imbedded in two book-length prose-poems – In Parenthesis and The Anathemata, making it difficult to anthologise; the work is informed by his Catholic faith and so may feel unfashionable in this secular age; he was a shy, reclusive man, psychologically damaged by his time in the trenches, and loathed any kind of self-promotion. Mostly, though, he was a complete and original poet-artist – sui generis, impossible to pigeon-hole – and that has led to the neglect of David Jones: a true genius and the great lost Modernist.

David Jones

Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet

Chris Newens

2017 WINNER OF THE BODLEY HEAD | FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZE 
 
In this quest across India during the recent cash crisis, Chris Newens follows in the footsteps of TV chef Rick Stein in search of divine truth and the perfect curry. Steeped in the smells and colours of south India, Cash and Curry is a brilliantly funny and intelligent journey of discovery that muses on the love of food, various incarnations of godliness, the power of belief and the true meaning of value.

Cash and Curry

An Unlikely Pilgrimage

Daniel Rey

2017 RUNNER-UP OF THE BODLEY HEAD | FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZE 
 
Cuba is on the brink of seismic change – but in the age of post-Fidel, post-Obama and post-truth, the country’s future hangs in the balance as it finds itself facing a decisive endgame moment with the new US president. In this lucid reflection on Cuba’s decades-long stalemate with the US, Rey maps out the playing field and shows how Trump and Castro’s next moves will reverberate globally.

Checkmate or Top Trumps

Cuba’s Geopolitical Game of the Century

Abhishek Mukherjee

2017 RUNNER-UP OF THE BODLEY HEAD | FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZE 
 
In this sharp, witty essay, written from inside the Indian banking system, we witness the absurdities and mundanities of corruption and bureaucracy, set against a backdrop of modern urban India. In a personal battle with his moustachioed boss, Mukherjee illuminates a Kafkaesque system of compliance inherited from the British Raj and shows us how to walk away from it laughing.

Stranger in a Strange Land

100 Days in the Credit Analysis Department of an Indian Bank

Norman Sherry

The years from 1939 to 1955 proved to be the most prolific of Graham Greene's life.  In The Life of Graham Greene, Volume II, Norman Sherry continues his engrossing account, delving deeply and emerging with a portrait of the author at the height of both his spying and literary careers. Greene produced some of his best novels during this time - The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair, The Quiet American - and saw the filming of The Fallen Idol and The Third Man.  The same period encompasses his passionate affair with the beautiful American Catherine Watson, who was married to a British peer, the disintegration of his marriage, his long relationship with Dorothy Glover, his activities as a secret agent and his forays into the conflicts in Kenya, Malaya, and French Indo-China.  As with The Life of Graham Greene Volume I:  1904-1939, Norman Sherry succeeds in unlocking the mystery of Greene's character and the alchemic nature of his creative genius.

The Life of Graham Greene Volume 2

1939-1955

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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