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
As a young man in Germany, AW's grandfather published Kafka and several other depraved authors whose work the Nazis were keen to burn. He fled in 1933, eventually settling in New York where ... read more
My theory and practice is to say yes to life and then I'll see how I manage along the way. Part memoir, part manifesto of a fiercely independent spirit; intelligent and lyrical.
The second volume of a beautifully published pair of LL's famous memoirs, in which the young man leaves his beloved village of Slad for London and then walks and busks his way around Spain.... read more
Uncovers the illicit affair between the novelist and the author's grandfather, Humphry House, which Parry discovered on being delivered a box of letters.
Joan Leigh Fermor's biographer turns to Eddy Sackville-West, Desmon Shawe-Taylor and Eardley Knollys and the unusual salon they created at Long Crichel in Dorset, where Nancy Mitford, Benjam... read more
MS is an outstanding literary voice in contemporary Russia: here she creates a portrait of three Russian-Jewish generations sifted from the detritus in a late aunt's flat. This book is diff... read more
Looks closely at nine of his best known poems to see how this lower-middle-class outsider from a dysfunctional family became one of posterity's darlings.
From being America's most significant ally in the region, Iran suddenly became its greatest adversary: this account, from 1941 onwards, explains how the Shah himself contrived to lose suppor... read more
A panoramic account by the distinguished Harvard historian of five generations of a French provincial family originally from Angouleme, crammed with stories and archival research. ER has a d... read more