A collection of the late Mantel's essays and journalism spanning four decades, including her 2017 Reith Lectures. Sheis eloquent and ironic company always; her range of subjects is vast and ... read more
Several of the principal compilers of the OED have already been sung - not least the editor James Murray, who took over two decades to reach the letter 'T'. It is his newly-discovered addres... read more
No two surviving copies of the First Folio are identical; of the original 750 only 200 survive. The British Library has five copies of which only one is complete. This is its facsimile. Clot... read more
A vast array of material is expertly woven together in this illuminating look at embattled authors and their literature: Anne Frank, Orwell, Biggles...
A sharp scrutiny of the recent literary phenomenon by the emeritus Professor of Modern English at UCL makes clear the distinction between responsible warnings and censorship, as well as expo... read more
Whether in music, architecture, economics, art, mathematics, physics or philosophy - Vienna in the early C20th led the world. This astonishing vibrancy was dispersed by Nazism and WW2 to the... read more
A literary inquiry into the peculiar intimacy of infections, the slippery relationship between ourselves and foreign bodies. Who knew that something called 'the poetics of infection' could e... read more
Explores the history of the translation of classical Greek literature into Latin. Far from being inevitable, as it seems seen from the C21st, the Roman adoption of Hellenic classics was an e... read more
It's un-British to doubt the Bard these days: historical truth and myth-making catch the light in this scintillating study of our attitudes towards our unifying national treasure.
Admirably and endlessly discursive, the essayist explores Orwell's ideas of happiness and joy - 'the right to live, not just to exist' - that permeate his writing and which are exemplified b... read more
Admirably and endlessly discursive, the essayist explores Orwell's ideas of happiness and joy - 'the right to live, not just to exist' - that permeate his writing and which are exemplified b... read more
Celebrates the art of just chillin' out, man... not from laziness but for the sake of slow, screen-free reflection. Odell reclaims our time and space from the encroaching technologies of dis... read more
Celebrates the art of just chillin' out, man... not from laziness but for the sake of slow, screen-free reflection. Odell reclaims our time and space from the encroaching technologies of dis... read more
The Chinese-born novelist moved to Britain and then to the US. Her memoir glints with her fascination with the West as well as her nostalgia for the East.
Conversational, elegant and subtle essays on art, literature, urban life in war-time Shanghai and Hong Kong by the admired Chinese-born American novelist, screenwriter and cultural critic. F... 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
Two cheers because only Love deserves three... Forster - that great humanist and sublime prose stylist - advocated "curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race... 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