Showing titles in Memoirs, Diaries & Correspondence

'The real war started for me today.' So begins the diary of 18-year-old Mary Mulry, a young Irish nurse, newly arrived in London in 1940. Over the next seven years she witnesses many of the pivotal events of the war at first hand. In London during the Blitz she sees a young woman die after a botched abortion, narrowly escapes from the bombing of the Alexandra Hotel, and nurses critically ill children during bombing raids in Woolwich. In Normandy in 1944, arriving on the heels of the D-Day invasion, she nurses Allied soldiers and German prisoners of war.

I deserve all this because I did the worst thing a woman can do. The very worst. Jessica's wedding was like a fairytale. Her dress strewn with crystals. Her dad made a tearful speech. Her husband Matthew declared himself the luckiest man alive. But when their beautiful baby girl is born, Jessica is gripped by panic. She can't tell anyone how she feels. Even when her life starts to spiral out of control...

Now in the pantheon of great thinkers, Simone Weil (1909–1943) lived largely in the shadows, searching for her spiritual home while bearing witness to the violence that devastated Europe twice in her brief lifetime. The letters she wrote to her parents and brother from childhood onward chart her intellectual range as well as her itinerancy and ever-shifting preoccupations, revealing the singular personality at the heart of her brilliant essays. The first complete collection of Weil's missives to her family, A Life in Letters offers new insight into her personal relationships and experiences.

In Letters of Note: Dogs, Shaun Usher brings together a delightful collection of correspondence about our canine friends, featuring affectionate accounts of pups’ playful misdemeanours, heartfelt tributes to loyal fidos and shared tales of remarkable hounds. 

In Letters of Note: Cats, Shaun Usher collects together the most engaging missives that celebrate, eulogise, rail against and analyse the idiosyncratic ways of our feline companions. A star-studded cast of readers brings the letters to life, with contributions from Sanjeev Bhaskar, Louise Brealey, Simon Callow, Benedict Cumberbatch, Adrian Edmondson, Stephen Fry, Neil Gaiman, Danny Huston, Toby Jones, Ferdinand Kingsley, Helen McCrory, Natascha McElhone, Stephen Mangan, Miriam Margolyes, Clarke Peters, Juliet Stevenson, Mark Strong and Meera Syal.

A charming, funny, poignant collection of twenty-three letters from Marcel Proust to his upstairs neighbour 102 Boulevard Haussmann, an elegant address in Paris’s eighth arrondissement. Upstairs lives Madame Williams, with her second husband and her harp. Downstairs lives Marcel Proust, trying...

In the summer of 1956, Jack Kerouac hitchhiked from Mill Valley, California, to the North Cascades to spend two months serving as a fire lookout for the US Forest Service. Taking only the Diamond Sutra for reading material, he intended to spend his time in deep contemplation and to achieve enlightenment.

Brought to you by Penguin. This collection of letters forms a fascinating day-by-day account of Steinbeck's writing of EAST OF EDEN, his longest and most ambitious novel. The letters, ranging over many subjects - textual discussion, trial flights of workmanship, family matters - provide an...

In this moving collection, Shaun Usher gathers together some of the most powerful letters about love ever written. Whether inspired by love’s first blush or the recriminations at its ending, the regrets of unrequited feelings and the joys of passions known, Letters of Note: Love is essential listening for anyone with a heart.

Dieses dem Buch zugrunde liegende schriftliche Material ist im strengen Sinn kein Tagebuch, trotzdem wird der Begriff übernommen, weil der Soldat Engelbert selbst von einem Tagebuch spricht. Das aufgefundeneTagebuch und die Briefe sind Geschichte zum anfassen und hinterlassen nach dem Lesen meist mehr Fragen als sie Antworten geben. So ist es auch dem Herausgeber mit dem Tagebuch von Engelbert ergangen. Dabei können Tagebücher viel über einen Menschen aussagen, wenn der Tagebuchschreiber sich an die Wahrheit hält und ehrlich mit sich selbst umgeht. Und da stellt sich die Frage?

In Letters of Note: Art, Shaun Usher celebrates extraordinary correspondence about art, from missives on the agony of being overlooked, the ecstasy of producing work that excites, to surprising sources of inspiration and rousing manifestos. A star-studded cast of readers brings the letters to life, with contributions from Sanjeev Bhaskar, Louise Brealey, Simon Callow, Crystal Clarke, Benedict Cumberbatch, Stephen Fry, Neil Gaiman, Toby Jones, Ferdinand Kingsley, Jude Law, Helen McCrory, Stephen Mangan, Clarke Peters, Juliet Stevenson, Mark Strong and Meera Syal.

In Letters of Note: Music, Shaun Usher brings together a riveting collection of letters by and about some of the musicians and music that enrich our lives. Wonderfully wide-ranging and illuminating, it will delight music lovers of all stripes. A star-studded cast of readers brings the letters to life, with contributions from Sanjeev Bhaskar, Louise Brealey, Simon Callow, Nick Cave, Crystal Clarke, Benedict Cumberbatch, Adrian Edmondson, Stephen Fry, Danny Huston, Toby Jones, Jude Law, Stephen Mangan, Miriam Margolyes, Clarke Peters, Juliet Stevenson and Mark Strong. 

The unabridged, digital audiobook edition of St John Greene's heartwarming memoir, Mum's List, read by the actor Peter Kenny. 'Kiss boys two times after I have gone' 'Please teach the boys to say what they mean' 'Mummy loved orange Club biscuits, jam and jelly and lemon curd' On her deathbed...

From one of China’s most acclaimed and decorated writers comes a powerful first-person account of life in Wuhan during the COVID-19 outbreak. On January 25, 2020, after the central government imposed a lockdown in Wuhan, acclaimed Chinese writer Fang Fang began publishing an online diary. In...

Bloomsbury presents Letters for the Ages Winston Churchill by W. S. Churchill, read by Sean Barrett. Here are some of the best of Churchill’s letters, many of a more personal nature, written to a wide range of people, including his schoolmaster, his American grandmother and former President...

Sound interesting? Listen to Secret Societies and Subversive Movements and learn about the author's views on politics, history, and the occult.

Obra mais conhecida da escritora mineira Carolina Maria de Jesus, Quarto de despejo reúne entradas dos diários que a autora manteve enquanto vivia na favela do Canindé, em São Paulo. Publicado em 1960, o livro narra o cotidiano de Carolina, a criação de seus filhos, seu trabalho como catadora de papel e escritora, suas preocupações literárias, afetos e a vida com outros moradores do Canindé. Quarto de despejo serve como porta de entrada para a escrita de uma autora fundamental, traduzida para inúmeros idiomas, que arrebata leitores de todo o mundo por sua precisão e força literária.

La dulce existencia es un relato atravesado por la búsqueda de la belleza y por el peso de la memoria. Los vientos y la luz dorada de Cadaqués, las mañanas en el Casino, el magnetismo de los actores y productores, el coqueteo, los restaurantes de playa, los libros de cabecera… Todo ello en un vaivén constante entre la realidad y la invención, entre lo que se vive y lo que se recuerda. Y ese retorno es, a la vez, un vértigo y un anhelo: «Me quiero quedar aquí –confiesa–. Y que todo vuelva a empezar». Un viaje al paraíso antes de la conciencia de su pérdida.

Before email, when long distance telephone calls were difficult and expensive, people wrote letters, often several each day. Today, those letters provide an intimate and revealing look at the lives and loves of the people who wrote them. When the author is a brilliant writer who lived an...

A brand-new collection from the internationally best-selling author of Letters of Note.