The only woman to reach London from Warsaw during WW2, she was later parachuted back into Poland where she was deeply involved in the Uprising; she then disappeared into the Soviet prison sy... read more
A vivid portrait of a complex man approached through twelve books, including his mother's diary and Lolita. Beguiling and intriguing, he did not shun controversy.
Iridescent, funny, subversive, endlessly surprising, sharp as a wind cutting in from the North Sea: many will know Barker's startlingly good writing from her only novel O Caledonia. Here are... read more
Morally complex, stunningly written and brimming with imagination and empathy, this story is set in Nazi-occupied Warsaw in 1944. Censored by the Communists after the war, the novel was firs... read more
Do the pram in the hall and other domestic tentacles make a life of intellectual fulfilment impossible? The author unravels the work of Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Elena Ferrante, Zo... read more
The history of the world through the lens of the family, from a group walking along a beach 950,000 years ago to Caesars, Medicis, Bonapartes, Krupps, Assads, etc.
The Chagos Archipelago was appropriated from Mauritius by Britain in the 1960s and its inhabitants deported (with one suitcase each) to Mauritius and the UK in 1967-1973 to make way for the ... read more