From a trunk of diaries and letters, the author constructs the lively story of her mother, Celia Paget, and her sister. Lovers and friends included Orwell, Koestler, Camus, Sartre and de Bea... read more
On his death in 2014, George Lucas left his diaries - spanning 60 years and pertaining not to his career as a civil servant but to his after-hours pursuits - to their editor.
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.
Acute, sensitive novel about a writer's psychic collapse. (The US edition has a different title - Dartmouth Park, which is far more Jane Austen than the contents.)
A dizzying tale of social collapse, generational impasse and mid-life crisis; a Bonfire of the Vanities set in London. Brilliantly observed, lean, slick, clever and gripping.
A new edition of this splendid book, in a smaller format and illustrated with a few drawings rather than photographs. Roddy writes wonderfully about Testaccio (where she has lived for over a... read more