A ship sails to a fictitious Ottoman island in 1901, bearing three passengers: the daughter of the deposed sultan, her doctor husband, and the royal chemist. They are met with rumours of pl... read more
Stoppard's libretto for André Previn's Penelope - a monodrama by Odysseus's wife - first performed in 2019 by Renée Fleming, Uma Thurman and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
The biographer and poet (who is also an editor at Faber & Faber) explores the context of Eliot's poem through historical fragments, diaries and new research. Hollis' biography of Edward Thom... read more
Heaney's translations from Old and Middle Irish, Italian (both medieval and modern), classical Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Romanian, German - and this is not a complete list. A staggerin... read more
The first violinist of the Takacs Quartet ruminates on the work of Bartók, Britten, Dvořák and Elgar in relation to ideas of home, exile, nostalgia and place, the hope and even dread of r... read more
Out of the mouths of actors, directors, writers, set designers, producers... from the end of silent films and the dawn of Talkies to the present. A hefty tome that presents itself as a compe... read more
This book of seven essays describes the Nobel laureate's intellectual journey from the "Marxism and Sartrean existentialism of my youth to the liberalism of my mature years." Adam Smith, Hay... read more
An entertaining and affecting memoir of the great pianist's youth and early training, which began in a suburb of post-war Liverpool. Told with candour and simplicity.
A group biography of four magnificent and prodigiously talented women composers who, though famous in their lifetimes for their works, are now ghosts in the canon. All were born between 1858... read more