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A WINTER ON THE NILE
by ANTHONY SATTIN
In the winter of 1849, an unknown 29-year-old Florence Nightingale took a boat journey along the Nile to escape parental pressure to marry. An unpublished French writer, Gustave Flaubert, was on the same trip. They had very different experiences of Egypt: while Florence sought out temples, Gustave visited harems. Yet, as Anthony Sattin's magnificent evocation of time and place reveals, both found the inspiration they needed to fulfil their extraordinary ambitions.
£ 20 Hardback 9780091926069 Available Now
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BURYING THE BONES: PEARL BUCK IN CHINA
by HILARY SPURLING
Pearl Buck grew up as a child in Imperial China with her American missionary parents. She thought of herself as Chinese, that is until the Boxer Rebellion - the first stirring of revolution. Eventually forced to migrate to the U.S. Pearl Buck wrote The Good Earth - a pioneering and bestselling novel of everyday China - and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. A nuanced picture of 20th-century China complements Hilary Spurling's perceptive biography.
£ 15 Hardback 9781861978288 Available Now
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DID YOU REALLY SHOOT THE TELEVISION?: A FAMILY FABLE
by MAX HASTINGS
His father, Macdonald Hastings, worked throughout the world as a journalist and BBC presenter; his mother, Anne Scott-James, edited Harper's Bazaar and wrote best-selling gardening books. Hastings describes his parents as coming from 'a tribe of eccentrics' and so grew up in a house of sometimes fabulous, often fraught, chaos. Guests included Thomas Hardy, John Betjeman and Osbert Lancaster, and the death of a television set is but one of the many dramas in this poignant, picaresque memoir.
£ 20 Hardback 9780007271719 Available Now
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E. M. FORSTER: A NEW LIFE
by WENDY MOFFAT
At the end of A Passage to India, the reader watches friends Aziz and Fielding go their separate ways. It was the final scene to be published by E.M. Forster as a novelist. Maurice delivered a posthumous reason for this silence: in his lifetime, Forster was unable to give fictional voice to his homosexuality. With access to previously restricted diaries, Wendy Moffat presents a bold, sensitive portrait of Forster's life as essayist and intellectual and his enduring philosophy of freedom and tolerance.
£ 25 Hardback 9780747598435 Available Now
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HUGH TREVOR-ROPER: THE BIOGRAPHY
by ADAM SISMAN
High farce and Greek tragedy are key ingredients in Adam Sisman's biography of historian Hugh Trevor-Roper. Behind his academic reputation at Oxford, the wealth, connections and aristocratic marriage, we learn of Trevor-Roper's malice, his feuds with other historians and a secret affair with a married woman. His authentication of the fake 'Hitler Diaries' served as his ultimate downfall. A portrait of brilliant successes and unalloyed failures.
£ 25 Hardback 9780297852148 Available Now
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INHERITANCE: THE STORY OF KNOLE AND THE SACKVILLES
by ROBERT SACKVILLE-WEST
Thirteen generations of the Sackville family - "a rotten lot, nearly all stark staring mad" according to Vita Sackville-West - have lived at Knole. Some were hedonistic in their revelry, others rebellious and cast out. Their portraits look down on the furniture, objects, letters and diaries that have accumulated over 400 years. Each room tells a story as Knole's present incumbent paints a vivid and intimate history of the house and its colourful residents.
£ 20 Hardback 9781408803387 Available Now
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IRIS MURDOCH, A WRITER AT WAR: LETTERS & DIARIES 1938-1946
edited by PETER J. CONRADI
Iris Murdoch's private diary and her letters to poet Frank Thompson and diplomat David Hicks (suitors both) reveal the intellect, creativity and emotions of her brilliant mind. Reading poetry, learning Russian and Turkish, gaining a first-class Oxford degree, working in the Treasury and experiencing the thrilling, bohemian side of wartime London: life is filled with possibilities as Murdoch takes her first steps on the road to becoming a novelist.
£ 16.99 Hardback 9781906021221 Available Now
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MANHOOD FOR AMATEURS
by MICHAEL CHABON
A comic edge underpins this autobiographical collection of interlinked essays in which Michael Chabon questions what it means to be a man in the 21st century. Reflecting his position as son, husband and father, Chabon traces memories of childhood, his parents' divorce and the joys and agonies of adolescence. With its warm, lyrical style, this "life made of parts and pieces" is a moving and dazzling venture into non-fiction for the author of The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
£ 16.99 Hardback 9780007150403 Available Now
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MUST YOU GO? MY LIFE WITH HAROLD PINTER
by ANTONIA FRASER
Please see VIPs for details.
£ 20 Hardback 9780297859710 Available Now
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THE SOUTH BANK SHOW: FINAL CUT
by MELVYN BRAGG
Broadcast on ITV from 1978 to 2009, The South Bank Show was Britain's longest running television arts programme. Hosted by Melvyn Bragg, it combined both high- and popular-culture in a format that appealed to a wide-ranging audience. Classic moments have included interviews with Rudolf Nureyev, Francis Bacon and Beryl Bainbridge. In these recollections, Bragg presents his unique personal insight into the characters that made the show so distinctive.
£ 20 Hardback 9781444705492 Available Now
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THE SULTAN OF ZANZIBAR: THE BIZARRE WORLD AND SPECTACULAR HOAXES OF HORACE de VERE COLE
by MARTIN DOWNER
2010 is the centenary year of the Dreadnought Hoax when Horace de Vere Cole and friends - including Virginia Woolf - dressed as the Abyssinian Emperor and his Imperial entourage. The 'delegation' then talked their way onto the Royal Navy flagship, fooling captain and crew. The press, of course, had a field day. More pranks followed, but Cole was not simply a joker, as Martin Downer's riveting biography testifies.
£ 16.99 Hardback 9780948238437 Available Now
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WILDFLOWER: THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE AND MYSTERIOUS MURDER OF JOAN ROOT
by MARK SEAL
The tragedy of her brutal murder in 2005 cannot detract from Joan Root's extraordinary and inspiring life. Kenyan-born, her passion for the country's wildlife led her to create radically innovative natural history films with her husband and fight successfully to save the beautiful Lake Naivasha. Set against the wondrous landscape of the savannah and the backdrop of Kenyan society, Mark Seal presents a powerful biography of passion, determination and tragedy.
£ 14.99 Hardback 9780297860150 Available Now
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YOUNG MANDELA
by DAVID JAMES SMITH
Twenty seven years in prison and his re-emergence as a hero recognised across the world for his role in bringing down Apartheid in South Africa is only one portrait of Nelson Mandela. In Young Mandela, David James Smith reveals quite a different man: the committed revolutionary who adopted false names, slept in safe houses and planned a campaign of violence against the state. This is the Nelson Mandela of fervent belief and extremist courage fighting against the oppression of racism.
£ 18.99 Hardback 9780297855248 Available Now
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YOUNG ROMANTICS: THE SHELLEYS, BYRON AND OTHER TANGLED LIVES
by DAISY HAY
Forget the myth of the solitary poet! The Romantics, led by the radical journalist Leigh Hunt, were a close-knit band: poets Shelley and Byron, author Mary Shelley, her step-sister Claire Clairmont and Hunt's sister-in-law Elizabeth Kent. It was a bond forged in passionate friendship, shaped by art, left smouldering by love and wracked by tragedy: a cauldron of creativity from which came the drama of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the idealism of her husband's poetry and the infamous persona of Byron.
£ 20 Hardback 9780747586272 Available Now
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