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
A magnificent book by Chaucer's biographer: the forthright, funny, dynamic character from the Canterbury Tales is compared with some real medieval women, and is also traced in the work of la... read more
A brilliant journey through a particular vein of literary history, from the C17th onwards. The Golden Treasury, General Wavell, Arthur Quiller-Couch, The Mersey Sound... rich pickings indee... read more
The literary fl?neur wanders amongst places and objects, images, film and ideas: a series of short, discursive essays that are the more brilliant for being unassuming.
Scholarly but accessible approach to Thor, Odin et alia, the green myth of Yggdrasil and the darker one of Ragnarok, and the way these have been recast repeatedly. Some illustrations. A comp... read more
A new translation of the fundamental text of Daoism, much more dynamic than the comfortably gnomic ones of the past. Ziporyn restores its strangeness and philosophical challenges.
Looks at the lives of Ryle, Austin, Anscombe and Murdoch and how they transformed moral philosophy in C20th Britain. No rose-tinted specs here, just the plainest tortoise-shell frames...
Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies was published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death. This is the story of John Heminges, Henry Cordell and others who comp... read more
Any book from SB is always eagerly awaited, this one no less than its marvellous predecessors How to Live: A Life of Montaigne and At The Existentialist Caf?.
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
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.
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
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
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
The Firebird, Baba Yaga and their cohorts of human, divine and supernatural beings: an enjoyable mix of stories from the Carpathians with analysis of their traditional context. Illustrated ... read more
To celebrate the 25th birthday of this eccentric institution: a second volume of interviews drawn from the FT's archives of the last five years. What's on the menu is always just as enthrall... 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