Books published by Faber & Faber

'This is a fan's eye-view of Paul Gascoigne - and fans, as we know, are expert at reassembling dashed hopes...'In 1987 Ian Hamilton - acclaimed poet, biographer and Tottenham fan - was smitten from afar by the impish skills of Newcastle United's Paul Gascoigne. When 'Gazza' duly signed for Spurs, Hamilton was sure that he and English football had found their new hero. But Gascoigne was destined to be brought low by tragic flaws, and Hamilton was ideally positioned to tell the tale in this, a peerless piece of football literature.'By the final whistle Hamilton has sketched a compelling figure: reckless, cocky, twitchy, hyperactive and half bonkers... but with flashes of implausible grace that connect with the dreams of his audience.' Independent

'You can't imagine what it's like when your youth comes back - and beauty, and more... I found out that if I took the pills I could turn - just like that - into the person I had been. Yes, into me! Eliza! Where had I gone? Who had I been?'Emma Tennant's brilliant re-imagining of Robert Louis Stevenson tells of an impoverished single mother at the bitter end of her tether, who finds dark pharmaceutical means to revive her looks and career ambitions. This splitting of personality, however, leads to disintegration and murder.'Fascinating.' Financial Times'Brilliant... Wittily worked out, perceptive of modern mores and values.' Times Literary Supplement'Reminiscent of Muriel Spark at her very darkest and very best.' Scotland on Sunday

'...I met the sad menopausee and offered her, at the flick of a switch, a return of beauty, youth, and desire. And - after all, I'm no stinge-merchant - power and money as well. Why not? If a man, such as Dr Faustus, was offered such commodities by myself... why not a woman, in this age of equality?'Emma Tennant's ingenious modern-day reworking of the Faust legend describes a young woman's dark discovery of just what befell her kindly long-lost grandmother.'Brilliant'. Penelope Fitzgerald, Evening Standard'An elegant and bitter story... an angry diagnosis of consumerism, pollution, wealth, poverty and war...' Times Literary Supplement'It is a masterpiece. Or, as the Devil himself might say, one hell of a book.' Daily Mail

The third volume of the annotated selected letters of composer Benjamin Britten covers the years 1946-51, during which he wrote many of his best-known works, founded and developed the English Opera Group and the Aldeburgh Festival, and toured widely in Europe and the United States as a pianist and conductor.Correspondents include librettists Ronald Duncan (The Rape of Lucretia), Eric Crozier (Albert Herring, Saint Nicolas, The Little Sweep) and E. M. Forster (Billy Budd); conductor Ernest Ansermet and composer Lennox Berkeley; publishers Ralph Hawkes and Erwin Stein of Boosey & Hawkes; and the celebrated tenor Peter Pears, Britten's partner. Among friends in the United States are Christopher Isherwood, Elizabeth Mayer and Aaron Copland, and there is a significant meeting with Igor Stravinsky.This often startling and innovative period is vividly evoked by the comprehensive and scholarly annotations, which offer a wide range of detailed information fascinating for both the Britten specialist and the general reader.Donald Mitchell contributes a challenging introduction exploring the interaction of life and work in Britten's creativity, and an essay examining for the first time, through their correspondence, the complex relationship between the composer and the writer Edward Sackville-West.

'The Calder valley, west of Halifax, was the last ditch of Elmet, the last British Celtic kingdom to fall tothe Angles. For centuries it was considered a more or less uninhabitable wilderness, a notorious refuge forcriminals, a hide-out for refugees. Then in the early 1800s it became the cradle for the Industrial Revolution intextiles, and the upper Calder became "e;the hardest-worked river in England"e;. Throughout my lifetime, since1930, I have watched the mills of the region and their attendant chapels die. Within the last fifteen years the endhas come. They are now virtually dead, and the population of the valley and the hillsides, so rooted for so long,is changing rapidly.' Ted Hughes, Preface to Remains of Elmet (1979)Ted Hughes's remarkable 'pennine sequence' celebrates the area where he spent his early childhood. It mixessocial, political, religious and historical matter - a tapestry rich in the personal and poetic investment of alandscape that both creates and is inured to its people, whose moors 'Are a stage for the performance of heaven./ Any audience is incidental.' Remains of Elmet is one of Hughes's most personal and enduring achievements.

Matthew Bourne and His Adventures in Dance is an intimate and in-depth conversation between the prize-winning pioneer of ballet and contemporary dance Matthew Bourne and the New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay.In 1987, a small, aspirant dance group with a striking name made its debut on the London fringe. In 1996, Adventures in Motion Pictures made history as the first modern dance company to open a production in London's West End. From this achievement, AMP sailed triumphantly to Broadway - winning three Tony Awards - guided by Artistic Director Matthew Bourne.Even before the inception of AMP, Bourne was fascinated by theatre, by characterization, and by the history of dance. In his early works - Spitfire, Town & Country and Deadly Serious - Bourne brought a novel approach to dance. And in his reworkings of the classics of the ballet canon - Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Cinderella - Bourne created witty, vivid, poignant productions that received great acclaim.In the first decade of the new millennium, the company name was changed to New Adventures, and Bourne's 'classics', as well as Bourne's new works - The Car Man, Play Without Words, Edward Scissorhands and Dorian Gray - achieved levels of box-office popularity that have seldom, if ever, been matched in dance. In addition, his choreography for various musicals - My Fair Lady, Mary Poppins and Oliver! - have run for years in the West End and on Broadway.The detail in which Bourne discusses his work with Alastair Macaulay is unprecedented. The two explore Bourne's upbringing, his training and influences, and his distinctive creative methods. Bourne's notebooks, his sources and his collaboration with dancers all form part of the discussion in this book.

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our literature.Music, when soft voices die,Vibrates in the memory --Odours, when sweet violets sicken,Live within the sense they quicken.-- To

Following his hugely acclaimed TV come-back Comedy Vehicle, Lee finds himself in search of ideas for a new Edinburgh show. On a long walk across London, he endures a coffee shop humiliation involving a loyalty card which suggests itself as a framing device. Later that month, thanks to Jeremy Clarkson's casual slur against Gordon Brown and the appearance of a well-meaning young comedian in an advert, a show is born. Featuring a transcript of the show fully annotated with footnotes, the If You Prefer A Milder Comedian EP confirms Stewart Lee as the most original, daring and brilliant comedian of his generation.

By mid-nineteenth century, Meyer Amschel Rothschild's five sons controlled one of the most massive fortunes in Europe. The Rothschild name had become synonymous with the enormous political and social power that often accompanied that wealth, the amassing of which is remarkable considering the painfully modest beginnings of its founder.Born in the unimaginable squalor of Frankfurt's Jewish ghetto (where he chose to spend his entire life), Meyer Rothschild established a small trading and banking business that - despite political, legal, and social constrictions segregating Jews from the outside world -evolved into an empire that included the financial centers of the world.Founder is the story of Meyer Rothschild's times, of the condition of the Jews, of the city-states before they were overrun by Napoleon's troops. It is about the threshold of the modern era, when the world of aristocrats and gentlemen was profoundly influenced by a shrewd, dedicated, loyal father and his family. Amos Elon's rich and evocative depiction of life in mid-eighteenth-century Europe provides a vivid background against which we come to understand and marvel at the strength and perseverance driving this obviously extraordinary, humble man. 'Elon... has written a terrifically readable biography that does more than illuminate the formerly shadowy figure who served princes in what is now Germany. Through the prism of Mayer Rothschild's life, Mr. Elon gives us a fascinating glimpse into how Europe - and by implication, the New World - made the journey from mercantilism to modern entrepreneurship....Mr. Elon's feat is in chronicling all this with clarity and drama. Founder skillfully weaves history into this story of human endeavour to create a memorable narrative of Mayer Rothschild's time.'Deborah Stead, New York Times Book Review

Elizabeth David was born into a upper-class family and pursued a rebellious and bohemian life as a student of art and then an actress in Paris, before running off with a married man to Greece and then settling in Cairo, where she worked for the British government. After the Second World War, she returned to England, where she was shocked by poor food into writing first articles, then books on Meditteranean cooking. A Book of Mediterranean Food was published in 1950, inspiring a cookery revolution, bringing new flavours and ingredients to the drab, post-war British diet. Over the next few years, David was to become a major influence on British cooking, yet her classic cookery books show little of the colourful personality behind the public persona. Artermis Cooper, in this refreshing biography, reveals an adventurous and uncompromising personality - a woman with a passion for food, life and men. This is the whole story: of her strong friendships, her failed marriage, tempestuous affairs and the greatest love of her life, told with extensive refererence to David's private papers and letters.'In this wonderful and creative book, Cooper has brought David to life... she not only writes like an angel, but has done her research with great skill and obvious enjoyment.' Derek Cooper, Sunday Times'Engagingly well-written, thoroughly researched and documented. One of the delights of Artemis Cooper's book is that it makes you go back, time and again, to the source. And suddenly I will find that I have whiled away the afternoon re-reading, for the sheer pleasure of it, half of Spices or An Omlette and a Glass of Wine.' Frances Bissell, The Times'Fluent, engaging and astonishingly readable.' Clarissa Dickson Wright, Mail on Sunday'Artemis Cooper is skilled and wise enough to handle the contradictory sides of David's character without being either censorious or sensational.' Arabella Boxer, The Times Literary Supplement

Writer of The Times Diary, Michael Leapman, became a tenant of an allotment next to Brixton Prison for 35p a year in 1974 when food and energy shortages inspired many people to attempt self-sufficiency. This book tells the story of the plot and the author's first year of cultivating it, written with humour and wit while providing a wealth of information for the would-be urban horticulturalist."e;It is splendid stuff and if your husband is a gardening bore and you want to shut him up for an hour or three, this is the answer.' The Guardian'It makes fine bedside reading, laced with plenty of anecdotes, good gardening information, plus an Idle Gardener's Almanac.' Good Housekeeping

Politician, poet and diplomat, Lord Norwich - better known as Duff Cooper - compiled his autobiography with the aid of his detailed and frank diaries. The many entries he quotes in these pages lend immediacy and humour to some of the most important events for twentieth-century Britain. During his twenty years in the House of Commons, Cooper held the offices of Financial Secretary to the War Office and Treasury, Secretary of State for War, First Lord of the Admiralty (famously resigning in protest at Chamberlain's disastrous Munich Agreement with Hitler, and only returning to government after Churchill became Prime Minister), Minister of Information, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and was the British Ambassador in Paris between 1944 and 1947. Old Men Forget was first published in 1953, the year before his death.

Lady Diana Cooper was in her prime widely regarded as the most beautiful woman in England and the idol of her generation. She was witty, outrageous, generous and loyal. Famous as a member of the aristocratic and intellectual group 'The Cotorie', she later edited the magazine Femina before starting a career as an actress on the stage and then in films during the 1920s. Her husband, Duff Cooper, was parliament in 1924 and Diana continued as a society hostess until his retirement in 1947. Diana wrote three volumes of memoirs in the 1950s which are also published by Faber Finds, and she died in 1986 aged 93. Philip Ziegler's biography is a compulsive read, telling the story of a remarkable woman and her passionate life.'For nine decades a symbol of all that is dashing and daring, a synonym for courage and wit and inspired friendship.' Sunday Telegraph'Combines total honesty with total affection... A portrait which you can laugh over, cry over and think over as well.' Punch'No wonder Evelyn Waugh loved her.' Scotsman

'Will surely rank as one of the foremost literary biographies of our time.'John Carey, Sunday Times In his lifetime Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) published just a single poem - only a few close friends were aware he wrote. Much of his work was burnt by fellow Jesuits on his death. And yet Hopkins is today a huge figure in English literature. Homosexual but terribly repressed, he channeled his emotions toward nature and God, with profound results. Princeton emeritus professor Martin, the only biographer to have unrestricted use of Hopkins' private papers, tells this extraordinary story from Hopkins' early life and studies at Oxford, through his tortuous conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism, to his struggle in later years to retain his very sanity. 'In Martin, the unhappy and tormented genius has found the most sympathetic and intelligent interpreter... [The book] goes to the heart of Hopkins, and plants him firmly before us as a Victorian, and a great one.' Allan Massie, Sunday Telegraph 'Martin follows Hopkins through his toils with sympathy and a great unshowy command of the facts. In this magnificently solicitous biography he has re-established the contours of the story definitively and made the homosexual drama integral to the better-known drama of conversion and poetics.' Seamus Heaney, Independent on Sunday 'The triumph of this learned, scrupulously detailed and persuasive biography is that it brings the reader as near as it is perhaps possible to come to living Hopkins' life, to sensing the mysterious crushing pressures that were for him intimately bound up with the richness and complexity of his writing.'Hilary Spurling, Daily Telegraph

'William Sansom [1912-1976] was once described as London's closest equivalent to Franz Kafka. He wrote in hallucinatory detail, bringing every image into pin-sharp focus... Sansom writes of head-aching hatreds and hopeless ecstasies, of malevolent objects and wasted lives... Sansom's publisher described his work as "e;modern fables"e;, but what makes them so ripe for rediscovery is their freshness and currency.' Christopher Fowler, Independent 'The worlds William Sansom surprises into life are populated with gentle stranglers and murderous lovers, with beasts that think like men and men who dream themselves into beasts. Their environs are often menacing and unfailingly strange...'Time This stunning collection, introduced by Elizabeth Bowen, offers a gleaming array of Sansom's finest fables, among them 'The Wall', 'A Contest of Ladies', 'Displaced Persons', 'Various Temptations', 'A Saving Grace', 'A Woman Seldom Found', and 'The Vertical Ladder.' ''The Vertical Ladder'... a short story about a man climbing a very high ladder and becoming more and more afraid... is a masterpiece, at once pure thought and pure action, [one] of the best short stories of the twentieth century.'B.R. Myers, Atlantic 'A Sansom story is a tour de force... Here is a writer whose faculties not only suit the short story but are suited by it - suited and, one may feel, enhanced... In the narration there must be an element of conjury, and of that William Sansom is an evident master.'Elizabeth Bowen (from her 'Introduction')

Volume thirteen of A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. In September 1939, war with Germany casts its long shadow over the town and countryside. Phillip Maddison, now farming in East Anglia, still stubbornly believes that Hitler's chief aim is the defence of Europe against Stalin; but he is engaged in a personal war on the 'bad lands' where his farm is situated, trying to subdue mounting debts and to create a fertile yeoman holding for his family. The portrayal of his struggles, both with himself and with the land, carry total conviction, as does the picture of his life in England until the ending of the Battle of Britain.'This astonishing sequence. It is a major mark he is making on the modern novel.' Daily Express

Volume fourteen of A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. Beginning in the winter of 1940/1 and ending with the uneasy 'sunrise' of peace in 1945, this volume sees Phillip Maddison striving idealistically to hold a balance while lamenting the division and possible total ruin of Europe, as he copes with the day-to-day problems of running the East Anglian farm he has wrested from virtual wilderness. The pattern of everyday living in those years is lovingly evoked: the bomber-haunted nights, the petty profiteering and gossip of country life - all essential, but often unrecorded, elements of the wartime scene.'The sequence will stand, at the end, as a massive emotional record.' Guardian

The final volume, volume fifteen, of A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. Phillip Maddison is living apart from his wife, Lucy, in the year immediately following the Second World War. He has sold his farm and handed over the proceeds in trust for the family excluding himself. Now living alone on Exmoor he is as ever haunted by the past, and his pro-German views bring him under constant fear of attack. A love affair, the death of his father, and tender relationship with his cousin's two daughters are particularly outstanding in a novel full of incident; and this final novel in A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight completes the history of Phillip Maddison while at the same time rounding off an unsurpassed picture of fifty swiftly-changing years.

Mary Shelley's own life was as dramatic as her fiction. Even had she not (at the age of 19) authored Frankenstein, one of the greatest horror fables in literature, she would be crucial to the study of Romanticism, as the daughter of two of the great radical thinkers of the day, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft (who died following Mary's birth); and as the second Mrs Percy Bysshe Shelley, her companion for that stormy stay at Byron's Geneva villa in 1816 - the 'haunted summer' that begat Frankenstein. Drawing on unexplored sources, Miranda Seymour's hugely acclaimed biography penetrates the myth to offer the fullest, richest portrait of this extraordinary woman. 'Mary Shelley is the most dazzling biography of a female writer to have come my way for an entire decade.' Financial Times 'Brilliant and enthralling, this portrait illuminates Mary's life in many unexpected ways.' Independent on Sunday'Miranda Seymour has vivid narrative gifts and a perceptive understanding of the main personalities.' New York Times Book Review 'A thoughtfully considered and exceptionally lifelike portrait of a complex and often misunderstood character.' Los Angeles Times'A harrowing life, wonderfully retold.' Washington Post Book World 'A splendid biography.' New Yorker

Norman Gash's magnificent two-volume life of Sir Robert Peel - Mr Secretary Peel (1961) and Sir Robert Peel (1972) - is the standard work on the great statesman, and is widely considered one of the great biographies of nineteenth-century prime ministers. Faber Finds is delighted to return both to print. In this second volume, Gash focuses on the years between 1830 and 1850, the height of Peel's political career, which included his two terms as prime minister, the controversial repeal of the Corn Laws, and his reform of the Conservative Party. 'In ... his masterly biography, covering Peel's career from the Reform Crisis to his untimely death in 1850, Professor Gash shows himself not merely an admirer but an emulator - brilliant intellect, master of detail, man of conservative but humane conscience.' Harold Perkin, Guardian 'Norman Gash's Sir Robert Peel shows how high and austere academic writing about a major figure is compatible with an outstanding general biography.' Roy Jenkins, Observer 'In Mr Secretary Peel, the first volume of this biography, he provided a rich and perceptive portrait of a statesman in the making. Now at last he has completed one of the great biographies of our time.' Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph 'Sir Robert Peel by Norman Gash ranks with the great political biographies of the past, a classic work in both scholarship and presentation.' A. J. P. Taylor, New Statesman

Isn't she gorgeous? Hardly been ridden. She's been in the garage just gathering dust.Becky's pregnant and frustrated. But her husband is more interested in the baby manual than her new underwear, so she turns to the porn stash under the bed. As the summer heats up, a brief encounter sends her speeding downhill towards reckless abandon.A provocative and darkly comic look at fantasy and romance, The Village Bike by Penelope Skinner premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in June 2011.Penelope Skinner won the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright 2011.

In Love and War weaves fact and fiction to create a sweeping portrait of a city at war. The novel is told through the eyes, letters and journals of Esmond Lowndes, who comes to Italy a lost and lonely young man in the shadow of his politician father. Through his friendships with a striking cast of contemporary characters, from the poet Ezra Pound to Alice Keppel, a former royal mistress, Esmond begins to leave his early disappointments behind him. On the cobbles of Florence's many-storied streets, he deepens his appreciation of art and literature, and falls in love.With the coming of war, Esmond finds himself stranded in a city of enemies, hunted by the malevolent Mario Carita, head of the Fascist secret police. He retreats into the hills above Florence, taking with him a painting that has come to assert a profound hold over him. When the Nazis arrive, Esmond is drawn into Giustizia e Liberta, the Resistance movement, and is soon helping to spirit refugees to safety, to hide the city's Jews. With his lover, Ada, at his side, he is at the centre of assassination plots, shoot-outs and car chases, culminating in a final mission of extraordinary daring.In Love and War is a novel that will take you deep into the secret heart of history, meticulously researched and full of period detail. It is a novel of art and letters, of bawdy raconteurs and dashing spies. With Esmond Lowndes you will see the beauty of Florence as never before, and feel the horror of war as it sweeps over the city's terracotta rooftops. Inspired by a host of real-life stories, In Love and War is both epic and intimate, harrowing and heartwarming.

Why are there two sexes? How different are they and why? Why can't a woman be more like a man? Or should the question be: why can't a man be more like a woman?Controversy rages around sex and gender, but just what are the differences and how are they determined? Lewis Wolpert, distinguished scientist, broadcaster and author, has tackled depression, religion and old age from a developmental biologist's perspective. Now he enters the gender debate, starting with his argument that men are fundamentally modified females - if the genes present at fertilisation did not do their job properly, we would all be women - and journeying through MRI techniques, the nature of sexual attraction, 'neurosexism' and whether men are really better at maths. With fresh and persuasive research and with his customary intelligence and curiosity, Lewis Wolpert sets out to make his mark on this controversial topic - and makes some surprising discoveries along the way.

Kate Moore is an expat mum, newly transplanted from Washington D.C. In the cobblestoned streets of Luxembourg, her days are filled with play dates and coffee mornings, her weekends spent in Paris or skiing in the Alps. Kate is also guarding a secret - one so momentous it could destroy her neat little expat life - and she suspects that another American couple are not who they claim to be; plus her husband is acting suspiciously. As she travels around Europe, she finds herself looking over her shoulder, terrified her past is catching up with her. As Kate begins to dig, to uncover the secrets of those around her, she finds herself buried in layers of deceit so thick they threaten her family, her marriage and her life.A thrilling debut-to-remember, Chris Pavone's The Expats will keep you guessing until the very end.

'It is not our struggle to be happy that is mistaken; it is our false idea that we can find happiness anywhere but in ourselves... happiness does not depend on outward things. It is born of the mind, it is nourished by the mind, it is what rises, like breath in a frosty air, from the mind's wrestling with its fate...'The Art of Happiness (first published in 1935) belongs to John Cowper Powys's sequence of philosophical writings, and finds him exploring the problem of how man lives with his fellow man, and also with woman - that is to say, here, as opposed to the abstract arguments concerning Man in the universe, Powys is concerned with the practical arguments such as arise between man and his neighbour, his wife, his lover - and also with man's arguments against himself, all in the pursuit of happiness. The careful reader will find herein hints, clues, intimations, as to how we all might become a little happier - an invitation few of us would feel so fortunate as to refuse.

Thousands of British women lived in India during Victorian times. They first went out as wives, mothers, sisters; others followed as teachers, doctors, missionaries. What they did and how they responded to their strange environment were seldom thought worthy of record, and writers have handed down to us a fictional image of the typical 'memsahib' as a frivolous, snobbish and selfish creature flitting from bridge to tennis parties 'in the hills'. For the most part, these clich,s bear little resemblance to the truth; many women loyally and stoically accepted their share of the responsibility with endurance, courage and resilience.This story is developed around a number of women who wrote in an entertaining and intelligent fashion about their Indian experiences, starting with the arrival on the scene of one of the wittiest and cleverest of them all - Emily Eden, sister of Lord Auckland who was Governor-General from 1836 to 1842. It ends with Maud Diver, who maintained that the random assertion made by Kipling about the 'lower tone of social morality' in India was unjust and untrue. The dramatis personae of the book include Vicereines, wives of Civil Servants and missionaries struggling to break down the subservience of women throughout the vast sub-continent. Through women's eyes we witness the principal historic events at the time - the Afghan conflicts, the Mutiny - as well as the daily routines in very different cantonments and some of the British personalities who made their mark on nineteenth-century India - Honoria Lawrence, Flora Steel, Lady Sale. In this vivid account, Pat Barr evokes the sights and smells of Victorian India, its teeming masses, its problems so impossible, it seemed, for Englishwomen to solve.

Like Charles II, the sick man of Europe was 'an unconscionable time dying.' Time and time again from the seventeenth century observers predicted the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, yet it outlived all its rivals. As late as 1910 it straddled three continents. Unlike the Romanovs, Hohenzollerns or Habsburgs, the House of Osman was still recognised as an imperial dynasty during the peacemaking which followed the First World War.This book offers a fascinating overview of the Ottoman Empire's decline from the failure to take Vienna in 1683 to the abolition of the Sultanate in 1922 by Mustafa Kemal, after a revolutionary upsurge of Turkish national pride. It deals with constantly recurring problems: competing secular and religious authority; acceptance or rejection of Western ideas; greedy neighbours; population movements; and the strength or weakness of successive Sultans. The book also emphasises the challenges of the early twentieth century, when railways and oilfields gave new importance to Ottoman lands in the Middle East. Recent events have put the problems that faced the later Sultans back upon the world agenda. Names like Basra and Mosul again make the headlines. So, too, do the old empire's outposts in Albania and Macedonia in the west and the mountainous Caucasus in the east. Alan Palmer's narrative reminds us of the long, sad continuity of conflict in the Lebanon. We read of the Kurdish struggle for survival, of Armenian aspirations for independence, of the lingering interests of the Ottomans in their Libyan provinces, and of the Muslim character of Sarajevo in the troubled country that was once Yugoslavia. The Ottoman past has great relevance to the changing patterns of eastern Europe and western Asia in the twentieth century.

Volume eleven of The Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. Twelve hundred acres of downland valley with a trout stream await an heir and Sir Hilary Maddison wants his only nephew Phillip to learn farming the hard way, beginning as a labourer and rising to a tenancy-for-life. But Phillip has other ideas. Unable to forget the early death of his wife Barley as well as his friends who died in the Great War, he needs to recreate his past in his writing. Trying to combine both worlds Phillip is bound to fail in one of them; and literary success only intensifies the dilemma. 'The finest yet in Mr Williamson's long series' Kenneth Allsop

Volume twelve of A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. In this novel of the troubled and decadent years before the Second World War, Phillip Maddison sees the survivors of the Western Front as a phoenix generation impelled to reject the past in order to make a country 'fit for heroes'. Yet he remains aloof from any direct action, preferring to plan his own history of the Great War and its aftermath while becoming deeply involved in his own problems. Looking meanwhile over the international scene, as the storm clouds of war gather inexorably, the Faust-like figure of Hitler is preaching the advent of a new Europe, based on a thousand years of peace.'He commands, and is able to turn to artistic ends, a powerful and mournful sense of the near past which has shaped and distorted us into what we are.' Normal Shrapnel, Guardian

Mockery Gap is the story of a tiny village on the coast of England, and a series of events arising out of the complex currents set flowing in this simple community by the chance remarks of a chance visitor. This is Mr James Tarr, a gentleman of ethnological pursuits with a desire to impress himself firmly upon people. He exercises this passion on the inhabitants of Mockery Gap, and the effect of carefully-weighted suggestion upon minds given to credulity and superstition makes for far-reaching and devastating consequences."e;By all conventional standards, T F Powys is the least modern of writers. His novels and short stories are set in a landscape as far removed as possible from anything smart or urban - a fantastical version of English village life, in which human emotions work themselves out against a backdrop of brooding countryside... Writing as an allegorist or fabulist rather than any sort of conventional realist, Theodore Powys looks not to the present or the future, but to the past. He sets his tales in a grotesquely exaggerated rural landscape, not because he has any nostalgia for the way of life it may once have contained, but because, by doing so, he is free to strip human beings down to their barest elements - their lust, greed, cruelty and stupidity, and the mixture of dread and yearning with which they respond to the prospect of death."e; John Gray, New Statesman