Showing titles in Art & Literature

Sir Terry Pratchett was a much-loved writer who gained international fame for his Discworld fantasy series. In this recording we hear—in his own words—about science-fantasy and comedy writing. He discusses his fans and followers, how he enjoys writing and the importance of the Discworld characters. We hear his thoughts on fame and isolation, his attitude to money and about his reaction to diagnosis with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

Part memoir, part manifesto, and including chapters on dating, work, sport, babies, families, anger and friendship, it is based on the simple premise that understanding why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. It's an audiobook about learning from our mistakes and about not being afraid. Uplifting, inspiring and rich in stories from Elizabeth’s own life, How to Fail reveals that failure is not what defines us; rather it is how we respond to it that shapes us as individuals.

What could be a more tempting Christmas gift than a compendium of David Sedaris' best stories, selected by the author himself? From a spectacular career spanning almost three decades, these stories have become modern classics and are now for the first time collected in one volume. The collection will also feature an introduction by the author; two never-before-collected stories, 'Unbuttoned' and 'Undecided'; and a new interview with David Sedaris.

In this passionate and revealing book about loving clothes but despairing of a broken global system Patrick Grant considers the crisis of consumption and quality in fashion, and how we might make ourselves happier by rediscovering the joy of living with fewer, better-quality things. Weaving in his personal journey through fashion, clothing and the other everyday objects in his life, this is a book that celebrates craftsmanship, making things with care, buying things with thought and valuing everything we own.

Amy Tan has touched millions of people with haunting and sympathetic novels of cultural complexity and profound empathy. With the same spirit and humor that characterize her acclaimed novels, she now shares her insight into her own life and how she escaped the curses of her past to make a future of her own. She takes us on a journey from her childhood of tragedy and comedy to the present day and her arrival as one of the world's best-loved novelists.

In Gotta Get Theroux This, Louis takes the reader on a joyous journey from his anxiety-prone childhood to his unexpectedly successful career. Nervously accepting the BBC’s offer of his own series, he went on to create an award-winning documentary style that has seen him immersed in the weird worlds of paranoid US militias and secretive pro-wrestlers, get under the skin of celebrities like Max Clifford and Chris Eubank and tackle gang culture in San Quentin prison, all the time wondering whether the same qualities that make him good at documentaries might also make him bad at life.

The Vanity Fair Diaries is the story of an Englishwoman barely out of her 20s who arrives in New York City with a dream. Summoned from London in hopes that she can save Condé Nast's troubled new flagship Vanity Fair, Tina Brown is immediately plunged into the maelstrom of the competitive New York media world and the backstabbing rivalries at the court of the planet's slickest, most glamour-focused magazine company.

Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë—the first full-length biography of a woman novelist by a woman novelist—is a true classic. It transports us with a deft hand straight into 19th-century Haworth, Yorkshire and crafts an extensive account of Brontë’s life, quoting throughout from letters she sent and received. From her challenging, isolated childhood to her death shortly before the age of 39, newly married and pregnant, the enigmatic author of Jane Eyre is portrayed with enormous care.

First published in 1986 and updated several times since, Don’t Panic is in an in-depth exploration of Douglas Adams’s cultural phenomenon The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - from its beginnings as a UK radio series, to its expansion into a wildly popular book trilogy, and onto incarnations in various media including stage, records, film, computer games, and even, um, tea towels.

May Sarton's parrot chatters away as Sarton looks out the window at the rain and contemplates returning to her "real" life - not friends, not even love, but writing. In her bravest and most revealing memoir, Sarton casts her keenly observant eye on both the interior and exterior worlds. She shares insights about everyday life in the quiet New Hampshire village of Nelson, the desire for friends, and need for solitude - both an exhilarating and terrifying state.

From her unique childhood to her all-consuming fascination with Thomas Cromwell that grew into the Wolf Hall Trilogy, Hilary Mantel had a celebrated career as a novelist. Alongside this, she long contributed to newspapers and journals, unspooling stories from her own life and illuminating the world as she found it. This strand of Hilary's writing was an integral part of how she thought of herself. 'Ink is a generative fluid,' she explains. 'If you don't mean your words to breed consequences, don't write at all.' A Memoir of My Former Self collects the finest of this writing over four decades.

Alongside her academic position at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL, where her research into the patterns of human behaviour can apply to a huge range of social problems, Fry’s expertise has also led to the development of several BBC documentaries including City in the Sky and her long-running BBC Radio 4 show, The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry. Her latest book, Hello World, was published in September 2018.

Beloved by children and adults worldwide, the writings of C. S. Lewis have a broad and enduring appeal. Although he is best known for the iconic Chronicles of Narnia series, C. S. Lewis was actually a man of many literary parts.

Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923-2014) wrote brilliant novels about what love can do to people, but in her own life the lasting relationship she sought so ardently always eluded her. She grew up yearning to be an actress, but when that ambition was thwarted by marriage and the war, she turned to fiction. Her first novel, The Beautiful Visit, won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize - she went on to write 14 more, of which the best-loved were the five volumes of The Cazalet Chronicle.

Over the course of his distinguished entertainment career, Alan Bennett has received multiple awards and honours, including two BAFTAs, four Laurence Olivier Awards, two Tony Awards, an Academy Award nomination for his film The Madness of King George, and a British Book Award for Author of the Year in 2006. In this four-part collection of his remarkable Untold Stories, the acclaimed writer considers his childhood, career, and the current state of the world with his customary blend of wit and poignancy.

Goethe was the inventor of the psychological novel, a pioneer scientist, great man of the theatre and a leading politician. As A. N. Wilson argues in this groundbreaking biography, it was his genius and insatiable curiosity that helped catapult the Western world into the modern era. A N. Wilson tackles the life of Goethe with characteristic wit and verve. From his youth as a wild literary prodigy to his later years as Germany’s most respected elder statesman, Wilson hones in on Goethe’s undying obsession with the work he would spend his entire life writing – Faust.

From an early age, Grace Dent was hungry. As a little girl growing up in Currock, Carlisle, she yearned to be something bigger, to go somewhere better. Hungry traces Grace’s story from growing up eating beige food to becoming one of the much-loved voices on the British food scene. It’s also everyone’s story—from treats with your nan, to cheese and pineapple hedgehogs, to the exquisite joy of cheaply made apple crumble with custard.

Founded in 1916, British Vogue has forged its own path from the very start. From the trauma and austerity of two world wars through to the freedom of the swinging Sixties, the rise of the supermodel to the groundbreaking editorial direction of Edward Enninful: the magazine's chameleonic ability to move with the times has ensured its perennial status at the vanguard of British cool. The book draws on hitherto unseen archives and behind-the-scenes interviews with Vogue insiders including stylist Grace Coddington, editor Alexandra Shulman and fashion editor Lucinda Chambers.

Having suffered the unimaginable loss of her first husband and child, Lindsay Nicholson worked her way up to become the most successful lifestyle magazine editor in Britain. But when a would-be suicide ran in front of her car, the pages of her picture-perfect life fell apart once more. In just one year, Lindsay lost her marriage, job and home, and was even arrested. Suicidal and suffering from profound PTSD, she tried medication, therapy and New Age courses – until she found the answers she was looking for in the pages of her former magazine.

Agatha Christie’s ‘most absorbing mystery’ – her own autobiography. Over the three decades since her death on 12 January 1976, many of Agatha Christie’s readers and reviewers have maintained that her most compelling book is probably still her least well-known. Her candid Autobiography, written mainly in the 1960s, modestly ignores the fact that Agatha had become the best-selling novelist in history and concentrates on her fascinating private life.