A memoir by the artist who had a decade-long relationship with Lucian Freud; full of insights, sometimes discomfortingly so. CP has a fine, clear voice - Freud's gestures and movements as ... read more
Two women in their mid twenties, stifled by marriage and the monotony of Hampstead society, come across an advertisement in The Times: 'To Those Who Appreciate Wisteria and Sunshine. Small m... read more
Amongst the plethora of recent books on the threats facing liberal democracy, this one stands out for the author's talent for making complex subjects comprehensible. He sees the danger comin... read more
Simms and Medd were part of the mass-release of Allied prisoners when Italy surrendered in 1943. Their escape story - and the bravery and kindness of the Italians who helped them on their ... read more
Translated from the German, this is a substantial book on the man who led Europe out of the Napoleonic chaos; the father of realpolitik, according to Kissinger.
In this magnificently madcap adventure, SR pursues rumours of old pianos into all corners of Siberia: Arctic, Altai, Kamchatka, Princess Volkonsky in Irkutsk... She writes well, has a lovely... read more
So the shortest day came, and the year died: a poem about how humans have responded to midwinter - the fading of the light and its mighty return - for millennia, by a well known children's a... read more
This gorgeous book was published to accompany an exhibition of art from the Danish Golden Age. The exhibition opened in 2019 in the Stockholm Nationalmuseum (who co-published the book) and m... read more
Dedicated to her friend Tirzah Garwood, this is a deliciously charming and funny mix of commonplace book and diary from the 1950s, illustrated with woodcuts not by Tirzah as intended (she ha... read more
A large format biography of the Bloomsbury pair, and their houses, commissioned by the National Trust. An entertaining introduction with handsome colour pics.
A neurotic Italian businessman obsessed by his own hypochondria, Zeno Cosini recounts his early years to his psychoanalyst Dr S. With a cigarette clutched permanently between his fingers, he... read more
Blaise Pascal famously said that 'all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone".
In 1790 a young French aristocrat living in Turin is confined to a ... read more
Blaise Pascal famously said that "all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone".
In 1790 a young French aristocrat living in Turin was confined to a ... read more
The story of a young girl growing up just before WW2: the late Morrison's first novel, published in 1970, still outstanding in its fiftieth anniversary year. In telling the 'how', she makes... read more
Insecure but fiercely precocious, the young Sontag devours everything that culture offers up to her. From her early teens through to late twenties, she craves not just the thrill of intellec... read more
DON'T PANIC! And console yourself that as gloomy as things seem, at least the Earth hasn't been demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. Self-isolation doesn't mean you can't trav... read more
An incisive post-mortem on the state of the Victorian union, told (with a gossipy thrill) through the lives of five couples - Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh, John Ruskin and Effie Gray, Charl... read more
One in a second trio of reprints of the adored Eva Ibbotson. A struggling opera company is hired for a single performance at an Austrian castle, but their under wardrobe mistress has somethi... read more
One in a second trio of reprints of the adored Eva Ibbotson. A young dancer escapes a stifling existance in Cambridge to join a corps de ballet en route to the Manaus Opera House, on the ba... read more
A memoir from the former Editor of British Vogue, her trademark white stilettos at the ready. Shulman has been the most significant mind in British fashion for a generation.
In PL's beguiling masterpiece, a dying historian unravels the story of her life. The result is a kaleidoscopic account of the 20th Century, centring on the horror and splendour of Cairo duri... read more
How and why does it work on us? This masterful study explores the mystery through the psychology, philosophy, mathematics, neurology and history that underlie as surrund it, in all its remar... read more
First published in 1908, the brilliance of this superb novel is undiminished. A love story, or rather two, that starts in the Pension Bertolini in Florence. Catering for English tourists, it... read more
Beautifully published in India, this shows the development of Olivia's work from watercolours of contemporary life in India to the exquisite geometric works of recent years: focussed, ordere... read more
Refracts an abusive relationship through a range of genre and fairytale tropes. A haunting work that is part-memoir and part-literary theory.
There is also a paperback edition of this boo... read more
A story about a young woman in New York, newly married and nervous. Offill has mastered the curious genre of autofiction by shattering her books into deliciously pithy paragraphs: overheard ... read more
Despite its title, this is not a self-help book but rather a beautiful exploration of a condition that is at the heart of human life - solitude. The book is a memoir of time spent in social ... read more
The names have changed and the shamelessness causes the eyes to pop even further, but the threats to the freedoms Vidal loved and fought so hard to defend were already vivid in these excoria... read more
This collection includes his commentary on the events of September 11th, 2001, and also his brave and penetrating piece on Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.