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Jaroslav Hasek is best known for his satirical masterpiece The Good Soldier Svejk. That has been described as 'Perhaps the funniest novel ever written.' Although his life was short and chaotic, Hasek did however write more as this volume tellingly reveals. In his preface, Cecil Parrott, translator and biographer of Hasek, crisply defines its purpose.. 'All the world has heard of Svejk, but few are familiar with the countless other characters Hasek created in his stories and sketches, which together with his feuilletons and articles are though to number some twelve hundred. The best of these deserve to be made available to the Western public and are included in this volume.' The range is wide. There is a selection from his Bugulma stories (Hasek as Bolshevik and Red Commissar), some early Svejk stories, reminiscences of Hasek's apprenticeship days, and the hilariously funny speeches made by Hasek when promoting his political 'Party of Moderate Progress within the bounds of the Law'.

A Test to Destruction (1960) was the eighth entry in Henry Williamson's fifteen-volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight spanning the years from the late Victorian period to the Second World War. It begins in the final year of the Great War. After the harsh winter of 1917 everyone is nearing the limits of their endurance. Hetty, temporarily relieved to have Phillip safely home, hopes desperately that her son will not be posted to France again. Phillip, however, is determined to go back, and adds his name to a list of those available for service. After returning to the Front, however, he is injured and sent on convalescent leave in the West Country, where his post-war civilian life begins.'Williamson's style is romantic, though rarely sentimental, and his sensuous response to nature is fresh and surprising.' Anthony Burgess, Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939

Love and the Loveless (1958) was the seventh entry in Henry Williamson's fifteen-volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight spanning the years from the late Victorian period to the Second World War. The year covered by this novel, 1917, was perhaps the darkest of the Great War, with widespread mutinies in the French Army after the disastrous Nivelle offensive. Phillip Maddison is now a young transport officer, tending pack animals, surviving amid devastation and death. His courage, sustained by poetry, by comradeship, by the comfort of whisky and water, is perhaps unnatural; but amid the charnel house of battle he endures, in a way of life so alien to those at home that it might be the dark side of the moon. 'Williamson's style is romantic, though rarely sentimental, and his sensuous response to nature is fresh and surprising.' Anthony Burgess, Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939

The Golden Virgin (1957) was the sixth entry in Henry Williamson's fifteen-volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight spanning the years from the late Victorian period to the Second World War. Its action unfolds in 1916, the year of the Somme. As war destroys the countryside Phillip Maddison loves, turning it into an inferno of mud and terror, the damaged figure of the Mother of God with her Babe on a ruined church inspires the legend that war will end only when she, the Golden Virgin, topples into the ruins below. Invalided home once again Phillip re-crosses the narrow waters of the Channel to find life continuing as before, albeit with an ever-widening gulf between those at home and those who have 'returned.''Williamson's style is romantic, though rarely sentimental, and his sensuous response to nature is fresh and surprising.' Anthony Burgess, Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939

Horace Walpole, famous for his novel The Castle of Otranto and his gothick castle-villa, Strawberry Hill, has been oddly shielded by his previous admirers. The most famous of these was W. S. Lewis, a rich American scholar, who collected virtually all of Walpole's surviving letters and papers and edited them in forty-eight impressive volumes. He was however a conventional man of his times and could not bring himself to acknowledge Walpole's homosexuality and its implications. R. W. Ketton-Cremer, who wrote what was otherwise a very good biography of Walpole, was similarly evasive. Timothy Mowl's study of Horace Walpole is the first to give a complete and convincing picture of the whole man. It is the first to show that, despite his aristocratic connections (he was the youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, Britain's first Prime Minister) Horace Walpole was a sexual and social outsider whose talents as a publicist were used to serve his own agenda. Also revealed for the first time is Walpole's passionate affair with the 9th Earl of Lincoln. The ending of that relationship, and Walpole's subsequent resentment of Lincoln's relatives, affected his judgment, friendships and emotions for the rest of his life.This book provides an honest and radical reassessment of one of the most influential men of taste of the eighteenth-century, and is reissued to coincide with a major Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition dedicated to Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill.'This is a lively, provocative and hugely entertaining book. Whatever one makes of Dr Mowl's interpretation of Walpole's career, it is always intelligently argued, and presented with a polemical vigour and sense of style which are worthy of his subject's own.' John Adamson, Sunday Review'. . . he is lively and convincing on the gradual accretions to Strawberry Hill, and often shrewd on the character of his subject . . .' Pat Rogers, Times Literary Supplement'In general, Mowl writes delightfully, and there are witticisms that Horry (Horace Walpole) himself would relish.' Bevis Hillier, The Spectator'In this vivid and entertaining biography, Horace Walpole is properly outed.' Duncan Sprott, Gay Times'. . .he presents the most credible picture of the man and his achievement to date.' Martin Postle, Apollo'This wicked, enjoyable book should provoke wide debate.' David Watkin, Evening Standard

Reverend Septimus Treloar, retired as Chief Inspector of the CID after thirty years service, is now country parson of the seemingly sleepy St. Mary's Danedyke. But the rural calm of his and the villagers' lives are thrown into chaos when mysterious happenings cause them to suspect the haunting of a fabled ghost within the dark recesses of their church. But can this really be a case of supernatural spirits? Or are Septimus's suspicions of thieving mischief closer to the truth? If so, what could be the object of all this criminal plotting? Septimus must use his detective know-how to find the answers on a mission that will lead him to the secret of The Danedyke Cup, a silver gilt relic supposedly once belonging to Our Lady...The first in Stephen Chance's classic series about Reverend Septimus, 'the one and only beatified bobby,' Septimus and the Danedyke Mystery (1971) has everything: treasure hunts, ancient clues, rollicking humour and quick-witted suspense. It has been described by Philip Ardagh in the Guardian as 'truly marvellous.'

Money is our global language. Yet so few of us can speak it. The language of the economic elite can be complex, jargon-filled and completely baffling. Above all, the language of money is the language of power - power in the hands of the same economic elite.Now John Lanchester, bestselling author of Capital and Whoops! sets out to decode the world of finance for all of us, explaining everything from high-frequency trading and the World Bank to the difference between bullshit and nonsense.As funny as it is devastating, How To Speak Money is a primer and a polemic. It's a reference book you'll find yourself reading in one sitting. And it gives you everything you need to demystify the world of high finance - the world that dominates how we all live now.

Correlli Barnett described his Audit or War as an 'operational study' to 'uncover the causes of Britain's protracted decline as an industrial country since the Second World War.' First published in 1986, the book swiftly became one of the most controversial and influential historical works of its time.'[The Audit of War] argued that British industry during the Second World War was scandalously inefficient, a situation Barnett blamed on an establishment more concerned with welfare than with industry, technology or the capacity of the nation to fight a war... Alan Clark records approvingly that Mrs Thatcher herself read it...' David Edgerton, London Review of Books'A stimulating polemic.' Times Literary Supplement'A formidable book, essential reading.' Asa Briggs, Financial Times

A. E. Housman, romantic poet and classical scholar, is best-known as the author of A Shropshire Lad and the meticulous editor of Manilius, the Latin poet of astronomy.In this first full biography, Richard Perceval Graves convincingly reconciles the two apparently conflicting sides of Housman's personality, and reassesses the reputation of a man who was something of a mystery even to his closest friends.'This is bound to become the standard life.' John Carey, Sunday Times'Dispassionate and well-researched.' Philip Larkin, Guardian

'I have tried to write my life as if I were confessing to a priest, a philosopher, and a wise old woman. I have tried to write as if I were going to be executed when it was finished. I have tried to write it as if I were both God and Devil.' One is tempted to say only John Cowper Powys could have written that, and, beyond doubt, only John Cowper Powys could have written the idiosyncratic and spellbinding work we have here. Yes, he was influenced by Yeats and Rousseau, especially the latter's Confessions, but there is no other work quite like this. It seems almost too pedestrian to say it covers the first sixty years of his life (he lived for another thirty years) and to say anything about them, as J. B. Priestley memorably put it, 'would be like turning on a tap before introducing people to Niagara Falls.' J. B. Priestley also said 'It is a book which can be read, with pleasure and profit, over and over again. It is in fact one of the greatest autobiographies in the English language. Even if Powys had never written any novels, this one book alone would have proved him to be a writer of genius.'

Deeply unhappy at the recent divorce of her parents, Mary is sent away to live by the sea with her distant grandfather and the detestable Aunt Alice. Feeling abandoned, without even the company of her beloved pet cat Noakes, the summer looks set to become one long stretch of unendurable loneliness. But suddenly she is dragged, half unwittingly, into a situation that will force her to come to the aid of others more vulnerable than herself. So begins her runaway summer, as she sets about helping Simon, the son of a local policeman, and a young illegal immigrant boy arrived from Kenya, frightened and all alone.The Runaway Summer was first published in 1969 to typically universal acclaim. It is, in the words of the Times Educational Supplement, an 'unputdownable gem of a book. The tale is beautifully constructed in diamond-hard language.'

Erik Tawaststjerna embarked on his monumental and acclaimed study of Jean Sibelius's life and music in 1960 and it occupied him for over a quarter of a century. His study differs from other work on the composer in one important respect: he had unrestricted access to the composer's papers, diaries and letters as well as the advantage of numerous conversations with the composer's widow and other members of the family. Thus his researches can justifiably claim to have thrown entirely fresh light on the great Finnish composer. Far from the remote personality of the Sibelius legend, Sibelius emerges as a highly colourful figure. This second volume covers the crucial period from 1904 and the beginning of the Third Symphony through to the outbreak of the First World War ten years later. During this period Sibelius began keeping a diary which, together with his letters to his wife, Aino, and to his friend, Axel Carpelan, helped the author give us a day-by-day, intimate account of the turbulent years that saw the gestation and completion of many of his finest works, culminating in the Fourth Symphony. Translated by Robert Layton, himself a Sibelius specialist, this is a compelling and insightful account of the music of one of the twentieth century's greatest composers.

Norman Del Mar (1919-1994) was universally recognised as a leading authority on the music of Richard Strauss, and his masterly three-volume study of his life and works remains a classic.Volume I deals with the years from the composer's birth (1864) to Der Rosenkavalier (1912), discussing the early orchestral and chamber music, the tone poems and the operas Guntram, Feuersnot, Salome and Elektra.'Deploying a well-nigh encyclopaedic knowledge, Mr Del Mar acquits himself brilliantly of his task of disentangling and reassembling the numerous strands that make up the backcloth of poetry and philosophy which Strauss, while not always understanding every intricacy, yet needed as a constant reference map for his composing. The three volumes of this magnificent book should be studied by all lovers of the late-romantic music, amateurs and professionals alike...a monumental achievement.' Times Literary Supplement'A brilliant and copiously analytical study ... a constant fascination.' Guardian

R. F. Christian's editions of Tolstoy's Diaries and Letters, both in two volumes, are definitive. Volume 1 of the Diaries covers the years 1847-1894, and Volume 2 the years 1895-1910. Passages have been chosen to reflect Tolstoy's preoccupations as a writer - his views on his own work and that of others - and his development as a person and as a thinker. The passages also show his attitude to contemporary social problems, rural life, industrialisation, education, and later, to religious and spiritual questions.R. F. Christian has grouped the diary entries chronologically, introducing each period with a brief and informative summary of the main biographical details of Tolstoy's life. The result is something much more than source material for Tolstoy's life and thought, though it could hardly be richer in that respect, it is a unique, direct and unhindered portrait of a great man and a very great writer in the variegation of his everyday existence.'As a picture of the turbulent Russian world which Tolstoy inhabited these diaries are incomparable - the raw stuff not yet processed into art.' Anthony Burgess'Professor Christian's work, a fitting companion to his two-volume edition of the Letters, is an important and long-overdue contribution to our knowledge of Tolstoy.' D. M. Thomas, Sunday Times'What Professor R. F. Christian has done is to provide us with a huge two-volume digest, punctiliously edited and translated . . . It is a model of scholarship, one of the most important books to be published in recent years.' A. N. Wilson, The Spectator 'R. F. Christian's engagement for some fifteen years with (Tolstoy's) letters and diaries has been a notable service to the English-speaking public.' Henry Gifford, Times Literary Supplement

In Humphrey Carpenter's own words, 'This is the story of the longest-ever literary party, which went on in Montparnasse, on the Left Bank, throughout the 1920s.''This book', to continue to quote Carpenter himself, 'is chiefly a collage of Left-Bank expatriate life as it was experienced by the Hemingway generation - "e;The Lost Generation"e;, as Gertrude Stein named it in a famous remark to Hemingway.'There are brief portraits of Gertrude Stein, Natalie Clifford Barney and Sylvia Beach, who moved to Paris before the First World War and provided vital introductions for the exiles of the 1920s. The main narrative, however, concerns the years 1921 to 1928 because these saw the arrival and departure of Hemingway and most of his Paris associates.'He is a compelling guide, catching the kind of idiosyncratic detail or incident that holds the readers' attention and maintains a cracking pace. Anyone wanting an introduction to the constellation of talent that made the Left Bank in Paris during the Twenties a second Greenwich Village would find this a useful and inspiring book.' Times Educational Supplement

Zelda Fitzgerald, along with her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald, is remembered above all else as a personification of the style and glamour of the roaring twenties - an age of carefree affluence such as the world has not seen since. But along with the wealth and parties came a troubled mind, at a time when a woman exploiting her freedom of expression was likely to attract accusations of insanity. After 1934 Zelda spent most of her life in a mental institution; outliving her husband by few years, she died in a fire as she was awaiting electroconvulsive therapy in a sanatorium. Zelda's story has often been told by detractors, who would cast her as a parasite in the marriage - most famously, Ernest Hemingway accused her of taking pleasure in blunting her husband's genius; when she wrote her autobiographical novel, Fitzgerald himself complained she had used his material. But was this fair, when Fitzgerald's novels were based on their life together? Sally Cline's biography, first published in 2003, makes use of letters, journals, and doctor's records to detail the development of their marriage, and to show the collusion between husband and doctors in a misdirected attempt to 'cure' Zelda's illness. Their prescription - no dancing, no painting, and above all, no writing - left her creative urges with no outlet, and was bound to make matters worse for a woman who thrived on the expression of allure and wealth.

The description 'definitive' is too easily used, but Donald Rayfield's biography of Chekhov merits it unhesitatingly. To quote no less an authority than Michael Frayn:'With question the definitive biography of Chekhov, and likely to remain so for a very long time to come. Donald Rayfield starts with the huge advantage of much new material that was prudishly suppressed under the Soviet regime, or tactfully ignored by scholars. But his mastery of all the evidence, both old and new - a massive archive - is magisterial, his background knowledge of the period is huge; his Russian is sensitive to every colloquial nuance of the day, and his tone is sure. He captures a likeness of the notoriously elusive Chekhov which at last begins to seem recognisably human - and even more extraordinary.'Chekhov's life was short, he was only forty-four when he died, and dogged with ill-health but his plays and short stories assure him of his place in the literary pantheon. Here is a biography that does him full justice, in short, unapologetically to repeat that word 'definitive'.'I don't remember any monograph by a Western scholar on a Russian author having such success. . . Nikita Mikhalkov said that before this book came out we didn't know Chekhov. . . The author doesn't invent, add or embellish anything . . . Rayfield is motivated by the Westerner's urge not ot hold information back, however grim it may be.' Anatoli Smelianski, Director of Moscow Arts Theatre School 'It is hard to imagine another book about Chekhov after this one by Donald Rayfield.' Arthur Miller, Sunday Times 'Donald Rayfield's exemplary biography draws on a daunting array of material inacessible or ignored by his predecessors.' Nikolai Tolstoy, The Literary Review'Donald Rayfield, Chekhov's best and definitive biographer.' William Boyd, Guardian

'I am an outside child. That is what Plato Jones calls me.'Jane Tucker is thirteen years old when she discovers she has a half-brother and sister, a revelation which promises to bring both excitement and succour to her ordinary life.But obstacles lie in her path when, for unknown reasons, she is prevented from meeting them. Aided by her friend Plato, Jane tracks down her brother and sister to their home in the East End of London. There she finds still more surprises lie in store for her.Can Jane at last be part of a 'proper' family, or must she always remain the outside child?This is the story of a girl and her family and the secrets they keep from one another. Both funny and poignant, The Outside Child is a beautifully drawn study of adolescence from one of Britain's most skilled writers for children.

'[The Brideshead Generation] has both style and substance, and is above all an enjoyable companion. It has a wildly amusing cast, here controlled by a skilful director.' Evening Standard'Jovial and entertaining, full of the sort of stories that your friends will tell you if you don't read it before them.' Independent'Carpenter has read widely and has collected an enormous fund of entertaining stories and facts.' Sunday Telegraph'Hauntingly sad and wonderfully funny and by far the best thing Humphrey Carpenter has done.' Fiona MacCarthy, The Times

A Classical Education was first published in 1985. It followed immediately after Still Life and is again autobiographical though of a somewhat more macabre hue. At the centre is a murder committed by a school friend of Richard Cobb's.'What gives A Classical Education its fascination is the author's description of how he himself, a shy and introverted schoolboy from Tunbridge Wells, is drawn into a nightmarish melodrama from which it seems he was lucky to escape... this book is beautifully written'. Richard Ingrams, The Times

On the face of it, bracketing Harold Nicolson and Vladimir Nabokov seems unexpected but the latter paid a remarkable tribute to Some People. When speaking to Harold Nicolson's son, Nigel, he confessed that all his life he had been fighting against the influence of Some People.' The style of that book is like a drug', he said. The critic and biographer, Stacy Schiff, has also admitted 'Some People has exerted more influence than I care to admit. I would reread it any day of the week.'Ever since first publication in 1927 it has been attracting this sort of praise. It is an unusual book comprising nine chapters each one being a sort of character sketch: Miss Plimsoll; J. D. Marstock; Lambert Orme; The Marquis de Chaumont; Jeanne de Henaut; Titty; Professor Malone; Arketall; Miriam Codd. The author himself writes, a little disingenuously, 'Many of the following sketches are purely imaginary. Such truths as they may contain are only half-truths.' In fact, it would be difficult to point to one, other than Miriam Codd, that was 'purely imaginary', some were composite portraits, others skilful amalgams of divers traits from a variety of different people, and others much more overtly drawn from one real-life figure, for example Lambert Orme clearly represents Ronald Firbank, and Arketall Lord Curzon's bibulous valet. There is nothing else quite like Some People and in its own playful way is beyond category. To be tedious for a moment, we have to call it fiction but are then immediately thrown by Virginia Woolf's deft summary, 'He lies in wait for his own absurdities as artfully as theirs. Indeed by the end of the book we realize that the figure which has been most completely and most subtly displayed is that of the author . . . It is thus, he would seem to say, in the mirrors of our friends that we chiefly live.' Fiction? Biography? Autobiography? - the category doesn't matter, the result is spellbinding however you choose to read it.

'Of all branches of human endeavour, diplomacy is the most protean.' That is how Harold Nicolson begins this book. It is an apt opening. The Paris Conference of 1919, attended by thirty-two nations, had the supremely challenging task of attempting to bring about a lasting peace after the global catastrophe of the Great War. Harold Nicolson was a member of the British delegation. His book is in two parts. In the first he provides an account of the conference, in the second his diary covering his six month stint. There is a piquant counterpoise between the two. Of his diary he writes, 'I should wish it to be read as people read the reminiscences of a subaltern in the trenches. There is the same distrust of headquarters; the same irritation against the staff-officer who interrupts; the same belief that one's own sector is the centre of the battle-front; the same conviction that one is, with great nobility of soul, winning the war quite single-handed.' The diary ends with prophetic disillusionment, 'To bed, sick of life.'As a first-hand account of one of the most important events shaping the modern world this book remains a classic.

R. F. Christian's editions of Tolstoy's Diaries and Letters, both in two volumes, are definitive. Volume 1 of the Diaries covers the years 1847-1894, and Volume 2 the years 1895-1910. Passages have been chosen to reflect Tolstoy's preoccupations as a writer - his views on his own work and that of others - and his development as a person and as a thinker. The passages also show his attitude to contemporary social problems, rural life, industrialisation, education, and later, to religious and spiritual questions.R. F. Christian has grouped the diary entries chronologically, introducing each period with a brief and informative summary of the main biographical details of Tolstoy's life. The result is something much more than source material for Tolstoy's life and thought, though it could hardly be richer in that respect, it is a unique, direct and unhindered portrait of a great man and a very great writer in the variegation of his everyday existence.'As a picture of the turbulent Russian world which Tolstoy inhabited these diaries are incomparable - the raw stuff not yet processed into art.' Anthony Burgess'Professor Christian's work, a fitting companion to his two-volume edition of the Letters, is an important and long-overdue contribution to our knowledge of Tolstoy.' D. M. Thomas, Sunday Times'What Professor R. F. Christian has done is to provide us with a huge two-volume digest, punctiliously edited and translated . . . It is a model of scholarship, one of the most important books to be published in recent years.' A. N. Wilson, The Spectator 'R. F. Christian's engagement for some fifteen years with (Tolstoy's) letters and diaries has been a notable service to the English-speaking public.' Henry Gifford, Times Literary Supplement

In 2002 Vernon Scannell wrote the following: 'It has been my firm belief since I first began to attempt the art of poetry that the making of a poem should be, as Yeats asserted, a difficult business. However, I have always felt reservations about what seems to me the only partially true belief , stated by both Eliot and Hopkins in their different ways, that the meaning of a poem is of less significance than its structure and texture, Eliot's 'nice bit of meat for the house-dog.' Ideally the poem should be the perfection of expression of meaning inseparable from the methods by which that expression is achieved. As Paul Valery has said, 'A man is a poet if the difficulties inherent in his art provide him with ideas; he is not a poet if they deprive him if ideas.'That was an important statement, his credo. It can accurately be said that almost every poem in this collected volume bears testimony to it. Although not covering the full span of his career - Scannell didn't die until 2007 and was writing almost literally until the very end - the body of his work is here and how impressive it is. On immaculate display is a conspectus of poems embracing the narrative, lyrical, satirical and contemplative. There are poems of pathos and comedy, intelligence and passion: whatever their form, free verse or rhyming, tenor or subject, they are executed with unfailing craftsmanship.In his obituary of Vernon Scannell, Alan Brownjohn wrote, 'What might have been considered unusual given a colourful, even swashbuckling, personality that spawned innumerable anecdotes, was his fastidious procedure as a poet, his unflinching focus on the age-old themes of love, war and death, his concern for ''a real involvement with living experience''. Craft and care, and for that matter clarity and accessibility, were unquestionable necessities if you were serious about the art; students on Scannell's creative writing courses were liable to be sat down, hangover or not, to write a sonnet after breakfast.'''Scannell is one of what appears to be a vanishing breed, a poet of technical accomplishment who understands that poetry, like the other arts, is a craft as well.' Charles Osborne, Sunday Telegraph'You actually want to go back and revisit the poems many times. Their shrewd structures hold their elements firmly in place and they resonate also with the kind of humanity time is generous to . . . Scannell has earned a place in the tradition of English poetry.' Paul Fussell, Poetry Review '. . . accurate, humane, humorous, often eloquent and always well-made poems.' Anthony Thwaite, Sunday Telegraph

Conversations with Igor Stravinsky is the first of the celebrated series of conversation books in which Stravinsky, prompted by Robert Craft, reviewed his long and remarkable life. The composer brings the Imperial Russia of his childhood vividly into focus, at the same time scanning what were at the time the brave new horizons of Boulez and Stockhausen with extraordinary acuity.Stravinsky answers searching questions about his musical development and recalls his association with Diaghilev and the Russian Ballet. There are sympathetic and extraordinarily illuminating reminiscences of such composers as Debussy and Ravel ('the only musicians who immediately understood Le Sacre du Printemps'), while mischievous squibs are directed at others, most notably perhaps against Richard Strauss, all of whose operas Stravinsky wished 'to admit ... to whichever purgatory punishes triumphant banality'.The conversations are by no means confined to musical subjects, ranging uninhibitedly across all the arts: Stravinsky gives unforgettable sketches of Ibsen, Rodin, Proust, Giacometti, Dylan Thomas and T S Eliot.'The conversations between Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft are unique in musical history. The penetration of Craft's questions and the patience and detail of Stravinsky's answers combine to produce an intimate picture of a man who has sometimes puzzled, often delighted, and always intrigued ...' The Sunday Times

Roman towns and their history are generally regarded as being the preserve of the archaeologist or the economic historian. In this famous, unusual and radical book which touches on such disparate themes as psychology and urban architecture, Joseph Rykwert has considered them as works of art. His starting point is the mythical, historical and ritual texts in which their foundation is recounted rather than the excavated remains, such texts having parallels not merely in ancient Greece but also further afield Mesopotamia, India and China. To achieve his reading of the Roman town, he has invoked the comparative method of the anthropologists, and he examines first of all the 'Etruscan rite', a group of ceremonies by which all, or practically all, Roman towns were founded. The basic institutions of the town, its walls and gates, its central shrines and its forum are all of them part of a pattern to which the rituals and the myths that accompanied them provide clues. Like in other 'closed' societies, these rituals and myths served to create a secure home for the citizen of Rome and to make him feel part of his city and place it firmly in a knowable universe. 'It is refreshing to look at standard themes of the history of urban design from a nonrational point of view, to see surveyors as quasi priests and orthogonal planning as a sophisticated technique touched by divine mystery . . .. Rykwert's lasting worth will be to wrench us away from rationalist simplicities, and to make us face the fundamental disquietof the human spirit in its claim to a permanent place on the land.' Spiro Kostoff, Journal of the Society Architectural Historians

'Tennyson and Holman Hunt, Carlyles, Rossettis and any number of celebrated Trevelyans people these pages; and Mr Trevelyan's handling of their comings and goings is masterly.' Hilary SpurlingPauline Trevelyan, friend and patroness of so many in the Pre-Raphaelite circle, has long been an intriguing figure to scholars of that period. The daughter of a poor parson, she was married to Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan, a landowner-cum-scientist twenty years her senior and her opposite in character. Herself an artist, writer and critic, she spotted Swinburne's talents when he was still a schoolboy, and commissioned important works from Rossetti, Woolner and others. From her immense correspondence we learn much about John Ruskin.A Pre-Raphaelite Circle reproduces a late-unearthed letter from Ruskin that is revelatory in respect of his marriage. For this and many other reasons it is a crucial work of reference for students of Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites.

John Grigg's four volume life of Lloyd George is one of the great political biographies. This, the final volume, opens with Lloyd George's succession to the Premiership in December 1916, when Britain faced starvation and defeat through the German U-boat campaign, its allies France, Russia and Italy were tottering, the Liberal Party was bitterly divided and unrest in Ireland was growing. Worst of all, military chiefs regarded themselves as at least the equals of the government. To resolve these crises required ruthlessness, political genius and leadership of the highest order. In this thrilling book we see one of Britain's most resourceful Prime Ministers in brilliant action, steering his country to victory.It is a tragedy John Grigg didn't live to complete his magnum opus but what exists is a masterpiece. Faber Finds is reissuing the four volumes: The Young Lloyd George, Lloyd George: The People's Champion 1902-1911, Lloyd George: From Peace to War 1912-1916, Lloyd George: War Leader 1916-1918.'With the volume, Grigg crowns the edifice of one of the great biographies of our time.'Anthony Howard - Sunday Times'A fitting climax to a path-breaking study.'John Campbell, Independent, Books of the Year'Superb... the fullest account we shall ever have of Lloyd George's career as a wartime Prime Minister. It is a fascinating story and is told with panache, vigour, clarity and impartiality by a great biographer... brings out as never before the brilliance of Lloyd George's finest hour.'Robert Blake, Evening Standard'A major publishing event... Grigg mingles factual precision, high-interest value and judgements which are mostly as wise as they are forthright.'Roy Jenkins, Sunday Telegraph, Books of the Year'Gripping... essential... This wonderful biography, clear and authoritative, every page a lesson in how to write narrative history, well up to its preceding volumes, recreates both a time of acute national danger and an extraordinary man.'Max Egremont, Financial Times

A young man decides to visit Nigeria after years of absence. Ahead lies the difficult journey back to the family house and all its memories; meetings with childhood friends and above all, facing up to the paradox of Nigeria, whose present is as burdened by the past as it is facing a new future.Along the way, our narrator encounters life in Lagos. He is captivated by a woman reading on a danfo; attempts to check his email are frustrated by Yahoo boys; he is charmingly duped buying fuel. He admires the grace of an aunty, bereaved by armed robbers and is inspired by the new malls and cultural venues. The question is: should he stay or should he leave?But before the story can even begin, he has to queue for his visa..Every Day is for the Thiefis a striking portrait of Nigeria in change. Through a series of cinematic portraits of everyday life in Lagos, Teju Cole provides a fresh approach to the returnee experience.- See more at: http://www.cassavarepublic.biz/products/every-day-is-for-the-thief#sthash.qe7r4oNv.dpuf

The Vaughans are all set to enjoy Christmas. Thomas has been promoted and Nora is delighted. Everything at last seems to be going right, until a visitor arrives uninvited and causes them to question just how perfect their marriage is.Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House caused outrage both in its style and subject matter when first staged in 1879. Zinnie Harris's retelling is played against the backdrop of British politics at the turn of the last century - to revel a world where duty, power and hypocrisy rule.Zinnie Harris's version of A Doll's House premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in May 2009.