Thirteen essays by the Northcliffe Professor of English at UCL. An entertaining guide that looks at Dickens's choice of names, use of outrageous coincidence, and why he works best when read ... read more
SK's father was Bernat Klein, a Yugoslav Jew who came to Britain after WW2 and became a successful textile designer - Chanel, Dior & Balenciaga were amongst his clients. He lived in a moder... read more
A remarkable work of research and skill, which brings to life Tsunemo, a country priest's daughter who defied conventions when her world was radically changing.
Revisits the circumstances surrounding the death of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjoeld in 1961, who was found dead in the smoking wreckage of his plane on the way to Leopoldville in the ... read more
Four generations, from Ukrainian shtetls via the Holocaust to influence in Washington DC. The author is the mother of Jonathan S F, whose first novel 'Everything Is Illuminated' (2002) also ... read more
The contents of a shoebox in America led the author to discover her grandmmother's family, from Picasso in Paris, Dior and Chagall to a farmhouse in the Auvergne, Auschwitz and Long Island. ... read more
In this inspired recreation of her parents' hopes and lives, MW has created a vivid memoir of post-war childhood and adventure in Cairo, Italy and London.
A marvellous debut from a young man of complex literary and musical parentage: birds of a feather, sins of the father, on and off the rails (the cenotaph too, memorably) - and a magpie calle... read more
The fascinating story of a language known as 'Rotwelsch', associated with vagabonds - linked to Yiddish and Romani - that the author learned from his father and uncle. His grandfather, a Naz... read more
Those who read Clare's Something of His Art, about J S Bach, or The Light in the Dark: A Winter Journal (or others) will know that Clare is a writer of exquisite sensibility and nuance. He i... read more
Tall, red-haired, green-eyed, Enid Lindeman caused havoc in pursuit of love and wealth. No less than five lovers killed themselves, her husbands died at regular intervals (one was known as C... read more
In 1600 Adams was the first English man to step on Japanese shores - one of only nine survivors of a Dutch trading expedition. He became the shogun's advisor and ship builder, and a samurai.... read more
A strange and magical memoir of growing up in prosaic England with Anglo-Burmese parentage. Teak trees interweave oaks; myth and imagery chase each other through the author's odyssey through... read more
A memoir by the half-Italian, half-Latvian writer about returning to Riga, to her childhood there and to her murdered Jewish father, told through the careful piecing-together of memory, docu... read more