A gardener's control is illusory - thanks to a myriad of other - "often argumentative" - organisms that have their own ideas about how things should be run.
Recounts the author's quest for Adele Hugo, who followed the object of her (unrequited) love, a British soldier, to the Caribbean, and then returned to live out the rest of her days in a Fre... read more
The story of one of the most tumultuous moments in British history, which analyses how James I's rule was haunted by Elizabethan political norms and values.
The distinguished historian uses neglected sources to present CdeM as a much-traduced campaigner for the peaceful coexistence of Catholics and Protestants, and as a patroness of the arts.
In 1942, aged 24, the great and defiant Canetti began to write notes, aphorisms and meditations about death - he was dead against it - and, by extension, about and for life; he only stopped... read more
The story of a girl who grows up in China during the 1970s and 1980s, and takes part in the demonstration. An international bestseller, whose author - not surprisingly - uses a pseudonym.
A love hotel on Japan's Inland Sea, H.G. Wells, Rebecca West, 1930s' physics: a mesmerising memoir of his parents by the author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
Duff and Diana Cooper, Philip Sassoon, Henry 'Chips' Channon, Cecil Beaton, Maud Russell and the Mountbattens were amongst his patrons, for whom RW created everything from delightful book pl... read more
Roads not taken, not thought about for twenty years, until bad news turns the protagonist's head for her Irish home. The humane and introspective sequel to Brooklyn.