The title is part of her 1947 New Year's Eve toast. Openly gay, Highsmith was famously beastly to lovers and friends. This new biography traces connections between her complex character and ... 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.
The story of the son of a Parsi-convert vicar near Birmingham who, convicted for mutilating horses and writing threatening letters to the vicar, contacted Conan Doyle to unravel the mystery ... read more
Ronald Knox, in his sermon at GKC's funeral, said "All of this generation has grown up under Chesterton's influence so completely that we do not even know when we are thinking Chesterton", y... read more
Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Iris Murdoch & Philippa Foot: they got to know one another as Oxford students during WW2, and went on to have huge influence on subsequent decades.
Captures the spirit of the late C18th by looking at JJ’s dinner parties. He was a publisher, bookseller, and a friend of Blake, Wordsworth, Fuseli, Coleridge, Wollstonecraft etc...
Today's pre-eminent author for children is a Fellow of All Souls. Now she turns her scholarly attention to the religious outsider, social disaster, celebrity preacher, establishment darling,... read more
A vivid novel about Edith Somerville, co-author of the Irish R.M., set against the backdrop of burnings, politics and lawlessness of Ireland in the early 1920s.
A marvellous biography of this clever, brilliant, opportunistic, amoral, inquisitive man - Damrosch's erudition serves his notorious subject very well.
Follows up his Young Eliot (2015, pbk £14.99). Draws on all correspondence including the archive with his lover Emily Hale, which remained sealed until 2020.
Written during lockdown, this is a book by a writer on top of his game. The ostensible subject is endings, last things, work produced in 'late style'... But, this being Geoff Dyer, it's abou... read more
Marius is the distinguished antiquarian bookseller who features in the work of Javier Marias and worked for Bernard Stone and Peter Ellis; also a wide-ranging writer, most recently on Naples... read more