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The Shadowy Third

Ebook: February 25, 2021
Hardback: February 25, 2021
Paperback: February 17, 2022

The Shadowy Third

Julia Parry

Category: Memoir & Biography,

Uncovering the hidden love triangle between novelist Elizabeth Bowen and the author’s grandparents – the critically acclaimed biography with never-before-seen letters detailing the affair.

For readers who were swept up in Laura Cumming’s On Chapel Sands, Daniel Mendelsohn’s An Odyssey and Francesca Wade’s Square Haunting.

A death in the family delivers Julia Parry a box of letters. Dusty with age, they reveal a secret love affair between the celebrated novelist Elizabeth Bowen and the academic Humphry House – Julia’s grandfather.

So begins a life-changing quest to understand the affair, which had profound repercussions for Julia’s family, not least her grandmother, Madeline. Julia traces these three very different characters through 1930s Oxford and Ireland, Texas, Calcutta in the last days of Empire, and on into World War II. With a supporting cast that includes Isaiah Berlin and Virginia Woolf, The Shadowy Third opens up a world with complex attitudes to love and sex, duty and ambition, and to writing itself.

Reviews

  • ‘It’s very epistolary and very beautiful, particularly with Bowen’s letters which are astonishingly beautiful, complex and intense. It’s like reading one of Elizabeth Bowen’s great novels' RSL Christopher Bland Prize

  • 'A fascinating and moving portrait of love, loyalty and infidelity’ Sarah Waters

  • 'Marvellous, gently elegiac, beautifully written, and fascinating' John Banville, New York Review of Books

  • 'Bowen fans will be in her debt' Peter J. Conradi

  • 'As literary discoveries go, it’s a big one' Sunday Times

  • 'An essay of rare sensitivity and intelligent reflection' Telegraph

  • 'Fascinating and poetic' Irish Times

  • ‘A judicious moment-by-moment account of these complicated characters' Spectator

Contraptions

Hardback: November 29, 2021

Contraptions

William Heath Robinson

A timely new edition featuring the brilliant work from among the most inventive minds in illustration and cartoon wizardry.

Heath Robinson was one of Britain’s most successful graphic artists. His work has had a huge influence on comic art in this country, but also on the image and self-image of the British.

As the champion of pragmatic man, Heath Robinson presented a vision of the British as an unflappable, ingenious and slightly demented breed of inventors that persists to the present day. The British are still a nation of garage-haunting amateur engineers who will recognise the inhabitants of Heath Robinson’s world, with their pot bellies and pots of tea, archaic faces and sturdily commonsensical approach to the problems of existence.

How to hunt tigers by elephant, how to get an even tan, rise with the sun or put out a chimney fire, these and many more pressing questions are answered in the pages of Contraptions.

With illustrations salvaged from the family archives and commentary by Heath Robinson expert, Geoffrey Beare, Contraptions is the best possible introduction to the work of one of Britain’s great comic talents.

Reviews

  • 'Your absurd, beautiful drawings... give me a peculiar pleasure of the mind like nothing else in the world' H. G. Wells, in a letter to Heath Robinson in 1914

A Woman in Your Own Right

Ebook: March 3, 2022
Paperback: March 3, 2022

A Woman in Your Own Right

Anne Dickson

Category: Psychology & Philosophy, Memoir & Biography,

‘The classic assertiveness bible’ GUARDIAN

Do you struggle to state what you want (or don’t want)? Do tricky conversations go wrong? Does it seem easier to suffer in silence? This book has the solutions you need.

Despite advances in gender equality in education, the workplace and the home, many women and girls still find it a challenge to speak up and be heard. Assertiveness – defined by psychologist and assertiveness trainer Anne Dickson as ‘clear, honest and direct communication’ – is an art, which can be learned. Instead of being governed by the desire to please (the Compassion Trap) assertiveness teaches us to take charge of our feelings and behaviours.

In her pioneering handbook, now fully updated, Dickson draws on her long experience of in-person training to give all women the practical skills and tools we need to assert what we feel and want, manage difficult conversations, avoid being sidetracked, say ‘No’, and find self-acceptance.

Reviews

  • 'The classic assertiveness bible... You might be better off with A Woman in Your Own Right than any of the modern girlboss manuals that claim to be able to transform you wholesale into a kickass corporate woman' Rhiannon Lucy Cosslet, Guardian

  • 'We’ve made giant strides towards equality over the decades, but... this advice is even more pertinent today' Linda Kelsey, Daily Mail

  • 'As important as it ever was’ Angela Neustatter

  • 'The bible for anyone who wants to get their voice heard… invaluable' Lesley Garner

Rest in Pieces

Ebook: October 6, 2016
Hardback: September 25, 2014
Paperback: October 28, 2021

Rest in Pieces

Bess Lovejoy

Category: History,

In the long run, we’re all dead. But for some of the most influential figures in history, death marked the start of a new adventure. The famous deceased have been stolen, burned, sold, pickled, frozen, stuffed, impersonated and even filed away in a lawyer’s office. Their fingers, teeth, toes, arms, legs, skulls, hearts, lungs and nether regions have embarked on voyages that criss-cross the globe and stretch the imagination.

Counterfeiters tried to steal Lincoln’s corpse. Einstein’s brain went on a cross-country road trip. And after Lord Horatio Nelson perished at Trafalgar, his sailors submerged him in brandy – which they drank. From Mozart to Hitler, Rest in Pieces connects the lives of the famous dead to the hilarious and horrifying adventures of their corpses and traces the evolution of cultural attitudes towards death.

Reviews

  • 'A historically beguiling, stranger-than-fiction compendium' Elle

  • 'Deliciously morbid and delightfully macabre... required reading for those of us who intend, one day, to die' Ben Schott, author of Schott's Original Miscellany

  • 'If really, we're all sitting in the undertaker's waiting room, then Rest in Pieces is the perfect easy read, preparation for the moment when the nurse steps out of the shadows and quietly calls your name' Simon Winchester, bestselling author of Skulls and The Professor and the Madman

  • 'There is something here to dismay everyone' Times Literary Supplement

  • 'A tasty, sharp, wonderfully unusual book. I enjoyed it like a jar of perfect dill pickles: when the mood strikes, nothing else will satisfy' Mary Roach, author of Gulp and Stiff

  • 'The world is awash with legendary body parts, from Einstein's brain to Napoleon's most intimate organ, and this wildly entertaining account proves that the fate of the grisly relics tells us a huge amount about history - and ourselves' Tony Perrottet, author of Napoleon's Privates

  • 'Marvelously macabre... A fascinating foray into the way of all flesh' Kirkus Reviews

How the Chicken Crossed the World

Ebook: June 16, 2016
Hardback: May 7, 2015
Paperback: June 16, 2016

How the Chicken Crossed the World

Andrew Lawler

Category: Popular Science,

Queen Victoria was obsessed with them. Socrates’ last words were about them. Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur made their scientific breakthroughs using them. Hailed as a messenger of the gods, powerful sex symbol, gambling aid, all-purpose medicine and handy research tool, the humble chicken has been also cast as the epitome of evil, and the star of the world’s most famous joke.

Beginning with the discovery that the chicken’s unlikely ancestor is the T. Rex, How the Chicken Crossed the World tracks the chicken from its original domestication in the jungles of Southeast Asia some 10,000 years ago to today’s Western societies where it became the most engineered of animals, to the uncertain future of what is now humanity’s single most important source of protein. In a masterful combination of historical sleuthing and journalistic exploration on four continents, Lawler reframes the way we feel and think about all domesticated animals and even nature itself.

Reviews

  • 'Setting the record straight, Lawler's latest tome recasts the chicken as a "feathered Swiss Army knife" - a bird that has fuelled cultural, economic and scientific growth for several thousand years' Guardian

  • 'Lawler's book goes a long way toward restoring chickens to their respected position within human history and our modern world. Both chickens and people will benefit as a result' Science

  • 'Science journalist Adrian Lawler explores the chicken's multipronged place in human civilization in his rip-roaring, erudite How the Chicken Crossed the World' Nature

Everyman’s England

Ebook: September 24, 2020
Paperback: September 24, 2020

Everyman’s England

Victor Canning

Category: History,

A classic travelogue that brilliantly conjures 1930s Britain.

In this series of pen-portraits of England from the 1930s, Victor Canning ‘evocatively captures the pattern and colour of English life’ (The Bookseller), from Cumbria to Cornwall. Canning’s heart-warming and humorous observations of sleepy villages, pastoral scenes and busy industries are a delightful time capsule into life in England during the interwar years.  

‘What does the word England mean to you? To all of us England means something different, and yet I think there is for every man and woman some little corner which is more England than anywhere else…’

Reviews

  • 'Wonderful... elegant, humorous, exuberant essays' Guardian

  • 'Evocatively captures the pattern and colour of English life’ The Bookseller

Queen of Heaven

Ebook: November 25, 2021
Paperback: November 25, 2021

Queen of Heaven

Catherine Clover

Category: Historical Fiction,

The White Tower. A terrible vision. Her home invaded and precious documents stolen.

Lady Isabelle must flee her pursuers, posing as a young male scholar in the New College of St Mary in Oxford. But when she learns she is with child it won’t be long until she is discovered amongst their ranks. Can she bring herself to love an infant conceived in evil? And will she ever be reunited with her beloved Richard, or will Sir Henry Lormont’s dagger find him first?

This deftly plotted 15th century novel traverses the well-trodden pilgrimage routes from Oxford to Rome encountering lepers, assassins, sea rovers and historical figures Lady Margaret Beaufort and Edmund Tudor along the way. Superbly researched by a scholar of the period, Clover blends history with the riveting story of a woman who overcomes the restrictions placed on her sex to create a page-turning novel.

When In Doubt Be Nice

Ebook: June 30, 2020

When In Doubt Be Nice

Peter Mead

Peter Mead’s spectacular career in advertising began when he joined the despatch department of a large agency straight from school at the age of 16.

He fell in love with the business and his ambition and drive led him in 1977 to co-found Abbott Mead Vickers, which grew into one of the industry’s most respected and highly awarded agencies. In 1995 AMV BBDO became the largest advertising agency in the UK, a position it has held ever since.

When in Doubt Be Nice begins with the most important business lessons Peter has learnt from his years at the cutting edge of advertising, and tells how he became one of the legends of the industry. It reveals the secrets of his success, his beliefs about the right way to do business and the values on which he built his remarkable career, including the benefits of behaving not simply as a leader to those who work closely with him, but also as a guide and mentor.

Written with modesty and wit, it is an inspiring insight into the mind of a great businessman who used intuitive flair and an understanding of how those around him think to build and run an extraordinarily successful advertising agency.

Reviews

  • 'Wise words.' – FINANCIAL TIMES

  • 'The best and wisest book on advertising I've ever read.' – BERNARD BARNETT, former editor of Campaign

Beyond the Secret Garden

Ebook: August 6, 2020
Paperback: August 6, 2020

Beyond the Secret Garden

Ann Thwaite

Category: Memoir & Biography,

The definitive and revealing biography of the author of The Secret Garden.

Frances Hodgson Burnett’s favourite theme in her fiction was the reversal of fortune, and she herself knew extremes of poverty and wealth. Born in Manchester in 1849, she emigrated with her family to Tennessee because of the financial problems caused by the cotton famine. From a young age she published her stories to help the family make ends meet. Only after she married did she publish Little Lord Fauntleroy that shot her into literary stardom.

On the surface, Frances’ life was extremely successful: hosting regular literary salons in her home and travelling frequently between properties in the UK and America. But behind the colourful personal and social life, she was a complex and contradictory character. She lost both parents by her twenty-first birthday, Henry James called her "the most heavenly of women" although avoided her; prominent people admired her and there were many friendships as well as an ill-advised marriage to a much younger man that ended in heartache. Her success was punctuated by periods of depression, in one instance brought on by the tragic loss of her eldest son to consumption.

Ann Thwaite creates a sympathetic but balanced and eye-opening biography of the woman who has enchanted numerous generations of children.

Reviews

  • ‘A fascinating and valuable book’ Sunday Times

  • 'Ann Thwaite has admirably mapped out the complex and peripatetic story, attacking its problems with insight and diligence' Times Literary Supplement

  • 'Intelligent, moderate, thoughtful, well documented, well organised, and well written… a model of a literary biography' New York Review of Books

Youniverse

Ebook: September 9, 2021
Hardback: September 9, 2021

Youniverse

Elsie Burch Donald

Category: Popular Science,

Your guide to science, from the Big Bang to AI

Whether you wish to discover the basics of science or catch up on its latest developments, this short accessible guide is for you.

YOUNIVERSE describes in simple terms the world you are inseparably a part of: what it is, how it works and your place in it – insofar as these things are known. The text has been vetted by 13 distinguished scientists.

Journey now through time and space, a world of the unimaginably big and the inconceivably small – though the marvels of science.

Reviews

  • ‘This is a fine piece of work... very entertaining and informative... It should appeal and be useful to the generalist who wants an overview of science’ Sir Peter Ratcliffe, 2019 Nobel Prize winner and head of clinical research at the Francis Crick Institute

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