BG Archives - Duckworth Books

In Ordinary Time

In 1993, aged twenty, Carmel Mc Mahon left Ireland for New York, carrying two suitcases and a ton of unseen baggage. It took years, and a bitter struggle with alcohol addiction, to unpick the intricate traumas of her past and present.

Candid yet lyrical, In Ordinary Time mines the ways that trauma reverberates through time and through individual lives, drawing connections to the events and rhythms of Ireland’s long Celtic, early Christian and Catholic history. From tragically lost siblings to the broader social scars of the Famine and the Magdalene Laundries, Mc Mahon sketches the evolution of a consciousness – from her conservative 1970s upbringing to 1990s New York, and back to the much-changed Ireland of today.

Great Minds on Small Things

Three centuries ago, Voltaire published his Dictionnaire philosophique, taking in such idiosyncratic topics as adultery, mountains, nakedness, and others besides. In 1957, another French philosopher of more recent vintage, Roland Barthes, mused in his Mythologies on the masculine pursuits of wrestling, striptease and the Citroën DS. Since the dawn of philosophy, the world’s great thinkers have been unable to resist the lure of applying their formidable brains not only to the meaning of life, but also to the meaning of coffee, trapped wind or efficient boiler installation.

Now, from Wollstonecraft to Wittgenstein, Laozi to Locke, Aristotle to Arendt, Great Minds on Small Things brings together their varied observations, alongside delightful black and white illustrations, in a highly entertaining and eye-opening miscellany that is guaranteed to make life’s mundanities suddenly seem a lot more highbrow.

Rest in Pieces

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.

The Importance of Living

A tremendous bestseller when it was first published in 1937, The Importance of Living has been a classic for over sixty years. Intended as an antidote to the dizzying pace of the modern world, Lin Yutang’s prescription is the classic distillation of ancient Chinese wisdom: revere inaction as much as action, invoke humour to maintain a healthy attitude, and never forget that there will always be plenty of fools around who are willing – indeed eager – to be busy, to make themselves useful, and to exercise power while you bask in the simple joy of existence.

Now, more than six decades later, with our lives accelerated to unbelievable levels, this wise and timeless book is more pertinent than ever before. In an era when we’re overwhelmed with wake-up calls, it’s an entertaining innovation to savour life’s beauty, its endless fascination and its slow, sure, simple pleasures.

Traversa

A fascinating account of the hardships and hilarity Fran Sandham experienced during his epic solo journey on foot across Africa, from the Skeleton Coast to the Indian Ocean through Namibia, Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania.

Inspired by the legendary crossings of the great explorers, Sandham left the daily grind of London to undertake an extraordinary adventure. Traversa describes his brushes with danger in the form of lions and snakes, land mines and bandits, his 2-month battle with a syphilitic donkey, malaria and the everyday troubles that arise when walking across Africa.

Underpinned with stories of the great explorers themselves – Livingstone, Stanley and Galton among others – Traversa is written proof of Sandham’s grit, determination and sheer obsession with Africa.

Wilde’s Women

‘A remarkable book… the breadth and depth of research is astonishing’ Emma Thompson

‘An illuminating study… fascinating’ Independent

Hailed as a gay icon and pioneer of individualism, Oscar Wilde’s insistence that ‘there should be no law for anybody’ made him a staunch defender of gender equality. Throughout his life from his relationship to his extraordinary mother Jane and the tragedy of his sister Isola’s early death to his accomplished wife Constance and a coterie of other free-thinking writers, actors and artists, women were a central aspect of his life and career. Wilde’s Women is the first book to tell the story of his female friends and colleagues who traded witticisms with Wilde but also give him access to vital publicity and whose ideas he gave expression through his social comedies.

Author Eleanor Fitzsimons reframes Wilde’s story and his legacy through the women in his life including such fascinating figures as Florence Balcombe who left him for Bram Stoker, actress Lillie Langtry (for a while an inseparable friend) and his tragic and witty niece Dolly who bore a strong resemblance to the writer and loved fast cars, cocaine and foreign women.

Full of fascinating detail and anecdotes Wilde’s Women relates the untold story of how the writer played a vitally sympathetic role on behalf of many women and how they supported him in the midst of a Victorian society in the process of changing forever.

Eat, Pray Love in Rome

Experience the Rome that changed and inspired Elizabeth Gilbert to write the international bestseller Eat, Pray, Love. When Luca Spaghetti (yes, that’s really his name) was asked to show Elizabeth around Rome he had no idea how his life was about to change. She embraced his Roman zest for life and Luca in-turn became her guardian angel, determined that his city would get her out of her funk.

Filled with colourful anecdotes about food, language, soccer, life in Rome, and culminating with the episodes in Liz’s bestselling memoir told from Luca’s side of the table, this is a book that every traveller to Rome will find enriching and readers of Eat, Pray, Love will not want to miss.

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