Showing titles in Letters & Correspondence

In 1969, John Julius Norwich, the legendary popular historian, gathered together the favourite things he'd come across in the last 365 days into one short charming pamphlet. Initially just a treat for his friends, it rapidly turned into a huge word-of-mouth success. And soon the arrival of John Julius Norwich's latest 'Christmas Cracker' became as essential a part of the English Christmas experience as holly and mistletoe. Norwich had a brilliant eye for a story and telling detail, and his Crackers are full of jokes, warmth and wit.

The way we communicate has changed. Today many of our interactions are digital, but until recently writing letters was the norm. Drawing from over 100 miles of records held at the UK's official government archive, The National Archives at Kew, this collection of letters, postcards and telegrams will shine a spotlight on a range of significant historical moments and occurrences, recapturing a lost world in which correspondence was king.

Each working day from January 29 to November 1, 1951, John Steinbeck warmed up to the work of writing East of Eden with a letter to the late Pascal Covici, his friend and editor at The Viking Press. It was his way, he said, of "getting my mental arm in shape to pitch a good game." Steinbeck's...

From the private papers of Mark Twain and Mozart to those of Robert Browning and Nelson, Love Letters of Great Men collects together some of the most romantic letters in history. For some of these great men, love is a ‘delicious poison’ (William Congreve); for others, ‘a nice soft wife on...

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.

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.

An inspirational collection of letters, notes, and conversations among friends, celebrities, experts, and the September Letters community. A guide to help us clearly see that we are not alone, and that sharing your story is powerful and healing. When actress and activist Brittany Snow was a...

Step inside the mind of one of history’s greatest writers with The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens, a fascinating collection of personal correspondence that reveals the character behind the novels. These letters offer an intimate glimpse into Dickens’ life, thoughts, and creative process, from his early days as a struggling writer to his rise as a global literary icon.

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.

In Letters of Note: War, Shaun Usher brings together some of the most remarkable letters that encapsulate the human experience of war, from unimaginable feats of courage and compassion, to unthinkable episodes of violence and horror. 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, Jude Law, Natascha McElhone, Clarke Peters, Juliet Stevenson and Mark Strong.

A bewitchingly brilliant collection of never-before-published letters from the renowned author of “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House i must stop writing letters and get to writing a novel. Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American authors of the last hundred years and...

In Letters of Note: Fathers, Shaun Usher collects letters celebrating weird and wonderful dads.

If you like to use your drive time for education by audiobook, consider this book for widening and deepening your view of an event you studied briefly in school - the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Conquistador Voices, which relies more heavily than most works of this kind on first-person accounts, neither glamorizes nor condemns the conquistadors. Somewhat in the manner of a modern film documentary, it treats the so-called conquest as an historical event that’s worth learning about for its own sake, with most of the moralizing left to the listener.

In Letters of Note: Mothers, Shaun Usher gathers together exceptional missives by and to mothers, celebrating the joy and grief, humour and frustration, wisdom and sacrifice the role brings to both parent and child. A star-studded cast of readers brings the letters to life, with contributions from Louise Brealey, Simon Callow, Crystal Clarke, Benedict Cumberbatch, Adrian Edmondson, Neil Gaiman, Toby Jones, Ferdinand Kingsley, Jude Law, Helen McCrory, Natascha McElhone, Miriam Margolyes, Clarke Peters, Juliet Stevenson and Meera Syal.

When her mother Celia Paget died, Ariane Bankes inherited a battered trunk stuffed with letters and diaries belonging to Celia and her twin Mamaine. This correspondence charted the remarkable lives of the Paget sisters and their friends and lovers, including Arthur Koestler, Albert Camus, Sartre and de Beauvoir, Edmund Wilson and George Orwell.

John Clellon Holmes met Jack Kerouac on a hot New York City weekend in 1948, and until the end of Kerouac's life they were—in Holmes's words—"Brother Souls." Late one night as they sat talking, Kerouac spontaneously created the term "Beat Generation" to describe this new attitude they felt stirring around them. Brother-Souls: John Clellon Holmes, Jack Kerouac, and the Beat Generation is the remarkable chronicle of this cornerstone friendship and the life of John Clellon Holmes.

Over 10 years ago, The Big Issue began to ask some of the best known, most interesting and most successful figures in entertainment, politics, food, sport and business to give advice, offer hope and share a few jokes with their younger selves. They opened up, in ways they never had, to interviewer Jane Graham, reflecting on their lives and themselves with affection, sympathy and sometimes disbelief.

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.

The deepest currents of passion seldom break the surface of literature. Romantic classics abound; but however skilled a writer may be in verbalising an emotional experience, he cannot publicly evoke the heat of blood, the yearning of soul, bared in perfect intimacy between two beings. But letters can do this, and songs never meant to be sung by any but the lover, or the beloved.

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