A huge work of scholarship that brings the late C5th/early C6th world to life. Theoderic stabilised Italy and extended his kingdom to include parts of France, the Iberian peninsula and the w... read more
Our former Prime Minister considers Hillsborough, Grenfell and many parliamentary scandals, arguing that time and again those in power have served their own interests or those of the organi... read more
Stewart's decade in Westminster. This will undoubtedly be the political memoir of the year: rational, intelligent, candid, passionate, angry, open-eyed, honourable.
The author's investigation of her family's history and her own identity was sparked by the arrival of an anonymous postcard bearing four names that arrived over forty years after those four ... read more
A compelling personal introduction to the life and work of the Nobel Prize-winning Polish writer Czeslaw Milosz by his compatriot and fellow exile Eva Hoffman. The predominant themes here ar... read more
Mozart was taken to Italy three times by his father in his early and mid-teens; already astonishingly accomplished as a thirteen-year-old, he drank in Italian opera like a thirsty man findin... read more
A Pulitzer Prize-winner's essays on musical greats who flourished again later in life: Leonard Cohen, Aretha Franklin, Patti Smith and many more. These are judicious and vivid portraits, som... read more
Though Royal Gardener to both Georges I and II and designer of gardens at Kensington Palace, Houghton and many other illustrious estates, Bridgeman's geometric taste and works were mostly ob... read more
Ortolans ahoy! A new edition of AJL's memoir of year spent feasting in Paris in the 1920s. His grande bouffe was determined and purposeful; the quantities of dishes eaten at a sitting bring ... read more
A joyous and detailed biography of this extraordinary man, whose house in Cambridge is still a sanctuary for the artistically-inclined. His circle included Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Henry... read more
Witty, tangential, self-deprecating, Amis's autobiography is not a chronological procession of memories but a frenzy of footnotes, asides, literary zigzags through time and space. It's funny... read more
A memoir set in rural Wyoming where Ehrlich moved in 1978 after the unexpected death of her partner. There is grief, of course, but there are also cowboys and beautiful descriptions of the A... read more
This montage weaves together memories from Bergman's childhood and adulthood with all their subtle parallels. Film-like, dream-like and beautifully crafted, this self-portrait is startlingly... read more
Painter, explorer, writer, archaeologist and theosophist, Roerich was a key figure for Diaghilev and Stravinsky for whom he designed sets and costumes (including The Rite of Spring). He was ... read more
The great historian of late antiquity mixes the personal with the scholarly in telling the story of his life and work. Engagement with the non-European world has been intrinsic to his work.
Erudition and curiosity impel this vivid, detailed portrait by the world's foremost expert on Linnaeus: this biography won several prizes when it was first published in Sweden in 2019.
Enayat al-Zayyat was a young Egyptian woman whose only novel was published posthumously in 1967. Here, one of Egypt's foremost poets creates a portrait not only of Enayat but of literary an... read more
Not Sonia but his first wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy, who was with him during the Spanish Civil War and WW2. A wonderful portrayal of this remarkable literary marriage by the author of Stasila... read more
Born an Austrian, Schulz lived as a Pole and died as a Jew, shot while carrying home a loaf of bread. 60 years after his death, the discovery of his murals generated controversy.
The subject is the author's grandmother, an editor at the Hogarth Press who was close to Yeats, dallied on the fringes of Bloomsbury and left her husband the Duke of Wellington for Vita Sack... read more
A new edition in 5 vols, with introductions by Virginia Nicholson, Adam Phillips, Olivia Laing, Margo Jefferson and Siri Hustvedt. £150 or £30 per vol:
Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Vol... read more
His last book Time of the Magicians was a group biography of Benjamin, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Cassirer. Here, he looks at four women who created new ways of thinking in the aftermath of... read more
Published last year in the US, this account of the rich in mid-C20th New York, and Capote's multiple betrayals of friendships, is both fascinating and shocking.