Showing titles in Art & Literature

Bloomsbury presents The Illuminated Man by Christopher Priest and Nina Allan, read by Roger May and Hilary Maclean, with Nina Allan. This book is about J. G. Ballard. This book is also about death, love and time travel. J. G. Ballard possessed one of the most astonishing imaginations of our age...

It’s the 1990s: Britpop is dominating the charts, Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell stare out from the cover of every glossy magazine and British fashion is ripe for reinvention. Leading the charge is a twenty-something Mary Portas who has been brought in to revitalise the department store Harvey Nichols, at the time more likely to be associated with dowagers than daring designers.

Brought to you by Penguin. Our estate was built on land claimed from fields – we were at the foot of those rolling Kilpatrick hills, but over the roof of the school you could see more green fields and woods. I felt grateful to be on the edge of all that countryside – there was a magnetic...

The Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was forty-four years old when she broke with the academic tradition in which she had been trained to produce a body of radical, abstract works the likes of which had never been seen before. Today, it is widely accepted that af Klint was one of the earliest abstract academic painters in Europe. But this is only part of her story. Not only was she a working female artist, she was also an avowed clairvoyant and mystic. 

Between 1994 and 1997, James Brown's loaded magazine became the the must-buy and must-be-in publication of the decade. It won every award going, year after year, and came to define not only its audience but also a generation. Bright, loud, funny, provocative, ambitious and careless, loaded was read from the barracks of Afghanistan to the England dressing room at Euro '96. It captured a hedonistic lifestyle of alcohol, cocaine and more. The last great hurrah before the end of the century. 

In London during the interwar years, five women's lives intertwined around one address. Mecklenburgh Square, on the radical fringes of Bloomsbury, was home to activists, experimenters and revolutionaries; among them were the modernist poet H. D., detective novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, classicist Jane Harrison, economic historian Eileen Power, and author and publisher Virginia Woolf.  

When poet Amy Key was growing up, she looked forward to a life shaped by romance, fuelled by desire, longing and the conventional markers of success that come when you share a life with another person. But that didn't happen for her. Now in her forties, she sets out to explore the realities of a life lived in the absence of romantic love. Using Joni Mitchell's seminal album Blue - an album that shaped Key's expectations of love - as her guide, she examines the unexpected life she has created for herself.

Brought to you by Penguin. Artists have learnt to pay attention. The rest of us spend most of our time on auto-pilot, rushing from place to place, our overfamiliarity blinding us to the marvellous, life-affirming phenomena of our world. But that doesn't have to be the case. In his typical...

The definitive critical study of Tolkien’s greatest works by the respected and world renowned Tolkien scholar Professor T.A. Shippey. Following the unprecedented and universal acclaim for The Lord of the Rings, the respected academic and world-renowned Tolkien scholar, Professor Tom Shippey...

Acerbic, wisecracking and hilarious, this is the definitive essay collection from New York legend and satirist, Fran Lebowitz, star of Martin Scorsese's hit Netflix series, Pretend It's a City. 'The gold standard for intelligence, efficiency and humour. Now and forever' DAVID SEDARIS 'She's...

Visionary Teachings to Explore the Landscape of the Heart Beloved poet and philosopher John O'Donohue created a remarkable body of work on the subjects of spirituality and Celtic mysticism. His gift was evoking hope, solace, and clarity—offering ancient wisdom that could provide desperately...

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.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2017 SHORTLISTED FOR THE LONDON HELLENIC PRIZE 2017 WINNER OF THE PRIX MÉDITERRANÉE 2018 From the award-winning, best-selling writer: a deeply moving tale of a father and son’s transformative journey in reading – and reliving – Homer’s epic...

In 1845 Henry David Thoreau, one of the principal New England Transcendentalists, left the small town of Concord for the country. Beside the lake of Walden he built himself a log cabin and returned to nature, to observe and reflect – while surviving on eight dollars a year. From this experience emerged Walden, one of the great classics of American literature.

Following the death of her beloved mother Jennifer Worth in 2011, Suzannah Worth discovered amongst her manuscripts a folder simply labelled 'Fifth Book'. Imagine her excitement when she sat down to read and her mother's distinctive voice came flooding back. This enchanting new collection from...

Bloomsbury presents Speak, Silence by Carole Angier, read by Kristin Atherton. A SPECTATOR, NEW STATESMAN AND THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR ‘The best biography I have read in years' Philippe Sands ‘Spectacular’ Observer ‘A remarkable portrait’ Guardian W. G. Sebald was one of the most...

A. A. Gill's memoir begins in the dark of a dormitory with six strangers. He is an alcoholic, dying in the last-chance saloon - driven to dry out, not out of a desire to change but mainly through weariness. He tells the truth - as far as he can remember it - about drinking and about what it is like to be drunk. Pour Me is about the blackouts, the collapse, the despair. Lacerating, unflinching, uplifting, it is a classic about drunken abandon. Read by Dougray Scott.

Murdoch is an innovator who has re-shaped a media industry across continents, from Australia to the UK to the US. He is a disruptor who has changed the nature of our politics with a steadfast focus on giving the people what he believes they want. But to what extent has Murdoch shaped our modern world? Has he created new audiences, or given existing, under-served audiences a voice? And what motivates the media mogul? Money or power?

In Traversal, Maria Popova traverses the border between life and death, chance and choice, chemistry and consciousness: what makes a body a person? What makes a planet a world? How do we safeguard our love of truth from our lust for power? What slakes our longings and what redeems our losses?...

In honor of the 50th anniversary of C. S. Lewis' death, celebrated Oxford don Dr. Alister McGrath presents us with a compelling and definitive portrait of the life of C. S. Lewis, the author of the well-known Narnia series. For more than half a century, C. S. Lewis’ Narnia series has captured the imaginations of millions. In C. S. Lewis - A Life, Dr. Alister McGrath recounts the unlikely path of this Oxford don, who spent his days teaching English literature to the brightest students in the world and his spare time writing.