Alan Bennett has delighted audiences worldwide with his gentle humour and wry observations about life. This sequel to his classic Writing Home includes a poignant memoir of his family and of growing up in Leeds, together with his much celebrated diary for the years 1996 - 2004, and numerous other essays, reviews and comic pieces. One of Britain's most distinguished wordsmiths at the height of his powers.
WHAT GOOD ARE THE ARTS?
by John Carey
Do the arts make us better people? Are they a sign of civilization? Why should 'high' art be thought higher than 'low'? In this provocative and entertaining book, John Carey – one of Britain’s most respected literary critics - offers a delightfully skeptical look at the nature of art. In lucid and elegant prose, he cuts through the cant surrounding the fine arts, debunking claims that the arts make us better people or that judgements about art are anything more than personal opinion.
DR JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY
by Samuel Johnson & David Crystal
Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, first published in 1755, was the dictionary used by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde. This new edition, edited by language expert David Crystal, contains an entertaining selection of some of the quirkiest and funniest entries from the original.
DIPLOMATIC INCIDENTS
by CHERRY DENMAN
January 2010
HOW ARE THINGS
by Roger-Pol Droit
In a year-long philosophical experiment, Roger-Pol Droit hoped to find illumination by keeping a record of his daily encounters with the world of things. How Are Things is the diary of his quest to learn from the objects that surround us - a book of short meditations on everyday objects. Here, taking one thing at a time, are fifty close encounters.
THE ART OF EATING
by M.F.K. FISHER
As the American counterpart to Elizabeth David, M.F.K. Fisher is equally hard to beat. Hardly new, but timeless, "The Art of Eating" remains the definitive anthology, comprising "Serve it Forth", "How to Cook a Wolf", "Gastronomical Me", "An Alphabet for Gourmets" and the immortal "Consider the Oyster", alone worth the price of admission. Not to be mistaken for a cookbook, but peppered throughout with recipes, this splendid collection represents all that is good about gastronomic essays and fine cuisine in general. Bedtime reading par excellence. A dabbler's delight.
January 2010
THE ODE LESS TRAVELLED
by Stephen Fry
A witty and entertaining guide to the mysteries of writing poetry. While covering the full spectrum of the different poetic forms, structures and techniques, Stephen Fry reveals his own secret passion for poetry and shows that writing poetry can be fun, easy and fulfilling.
WE ARE WHAT WE THINK
by James Geary
When a saying has the power to reach out and change one's life it is no longer a platitude or proverb but an aphorism. Self-confessed aphorism addict James Geary takes a humorous tour through the history of this remarkable art form and provides a thought-provoking look at the world's wisest sayings from a kaleidoscopic array of prophets, thinkers and poets.
Winter 2006
THE HEART OF THINGS
by A.C. Grayling
A new collection of essays by one of Britain's pre-eminent philosophers. In his lucid, accessible prose, Grayling returns to questions of personal ethics and the problems of the contemporary world, while also looking at the lives and ideas of great thinkers, the role of the arts in civilization, and the need for reason everywhere.
OXFORD BOOK OF PARODIES
by JOHN GROSS, ed.
Summer 2010
MURRAY'S DAILY COMPANION
by Roger Hudson
A literary and historical almanac of readings and anniversaries drawn from nine centuries of writings. Each day of the year has its page, revealing what some of our greatest writers have been doing, thinking or writing on that particular day, as well as anniversaries of curious and arresting events connected with it. Quirky, entertaining and enlightening historical moments.
THE MILK OF PARADISE
by James Lees-Milne
The final volume of James Lees-Milne's diary covers the last five years of his life, until a few weeks before his death at the age of eighty-nine. Old age and infirmity have not diminished his interest in life, and he displays the same mixture of candour, waspish wit, eloquent exasperation and human understanding which has delighted his readers since the first of these volumes appeared in 1975.
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THE LETTERS OF LYTTON STRACHEY
by Paul Levy
One of the key figures in the cultural life of 20th century Britain, Lytton Strachey's letters are a literary treasure-trove of the man and his world. This collection ranges from precocious childhood letters, to those written when he was a member of the secret Cambridge Apostles; from letters to Virginia Woolf and other members of the Bloomsbury Group, to love letters to Duncan Grant and Carrington.
SIX IMPOSSIBLE THINGS BEFORE BREAKFAST
by Lewis Wolpert
Why does every society around the world have a religious tradition of some sort? What makes people believe in things when all the evidence points to the contrary? Lewis Wolpert investigates the nature of belief and its causes. He looks at belief's psychological basis, and its possible evolutionary origins in physical cause and effect.
CONVERSATION
by Stephen Miller
Essayist Stephen Miller pursues a lifelong interest in conversation by chronicling the art of conversation in Western civilization from its beginnings in ancient Greece to its apex in 18th century Britain to its current endangered state in America. Miller now brings the art of conversation into the light, revealing why good conversation matters and why it is in decline.
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FRANCES PARTRIDGE DIARIES 1939-1972
by Frances Partridge
Beautiful, well read and educated at Cambridge, Frances Partridge was a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the last survivor of the group's most famous love quadrangle. Her diaries, written without thought of publication, chronicle her remarkable life during the years 1939-1972. Here, for the first time, they have been collected together in this definitive volume.
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THE DIARIES OF A.L. ROWSE
by A.L. Rowse
A. L. Rowse, historian and autobiographer, was a prolific and opinionated diarist. He counted amongst his close friends and enemies some of the brightest and most influential of his Oxford contemporaries. A man who struggled from an impoverished Cornish childhood to a glittering literary career, his fascinating and gossipy diaries reveal his many sides and are by turns mercurial and scandalously indiscreet, warm-hearted and generous, candid and compelling.
CAMPO SANTO
by W. G. Sebald
W.G. Sebald's final collection of essays provides a powerful insight into the themes that came to dominate his life. Four pieces pay tribute to Corsica, weaving elegiacally between past and present. Sebald also examines the works of writers such as Gunter Grass, Bruce Chatwin and Kafka, showing how such literature came to have so great an influence on him.
IDEAS A History from Fire to Freud
by Peter Watson
Peter Watson, investigates how the ideas of philosophers, writers, artists and scientists have shaped our lives and thinking. From prehistory to the present day, he examines the activities and achievements of the world’s greatest thinkers. A lucid and encyclopedic look at our intellectual heritage.
