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AT HOME: A SHORT HISTORY OF PRIVATE LIFE
by BILL BRYSON
From school to bookshop, History means warfare (eg. the Wars of the Roses), revolution (the Russian Bolsheviks in 1917) and monarchs or presidents (Queen Victoria, President Obama). Yet from another perspective, history is the accumulation of everyday people doing mundane things - and most of the action takes place not on the battlefields or in palaces but in ordinary homes. It was this realisation that induced Bill Bryson - prize-winning author of the global A Short History of Nearly Everything - to look inwards, at his immediate surroundings. Journeying from room to room he explores the domestic detail: from invention through to production and everyday use. Digressions lead from the discovery of electricity to food preservation techniques, the installation of toilets to the accommodation of crinolines. Eating, sleeping and amusements each have their own histories, as do childhood illnesses. With his transformative vision, Bryson is as enlightening and engaging as ever: one thing is for sure, we will never look at our homes in the same way again.
£ 20 Hardback 9780385608275 Available Now
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CHRISTOPHER LLOYD: HIS LIFE AT GREAT DIXTER
by STEPHEN ANDERTON
Known as Christo, Christopher Lloyd had an inspired gardening vision which he brought to fruition in the garden of Great Dixter in East Sussex. The medieval manor was bought by Christo's father, who asked Sir Edward Lutyens to rebuild the house and lay out the gardens. In the meadows, his mother created the first wild garden. Christo, educated at horticultural college, continued their work: constantly replanting and enriching the estate whilst writing landmark books and opinionated journalism. English gardening was renewed by his focus on the meadow, sown and planted for a dazzling array of colour. Indeed, after his death in 2006, the Heritage Lottery Fund made a grant of £4 million to save Dixter for the nation. Whilst revelling in Christo's work, Stephen Anderton presents a biographic portrait - drawn from a chaotic 100-year archive - of the man himself (argumentative and gloriously eccentric) and his relationships with his like-minded head gardener Fergus Garrett, as well as friends and fellow-gardeners Anna Pavord and Beth Chatto. Christo was, like his gardens, vivid and vital.
£ 20 Hardback 9780701181130 Available Now
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MUST YOU GO? MY LIFE WITH HAROLD PINTER
by ANTONIA FRASER
Drawn from Antonia Fraser's private diaries, this is so much more than a portrait of her marriage to Harold Pinter: it is a biography of love. "Must you go?" asked Pinter at the end of a party in 1975. It was late, most guests had already left, Fraser thought of her tiredness, her home, the children and replied: "No, it's not absolutely essential." And so the door to thirty-three years of close friendship and deep love opened: Pinter believed it was destiny. The diaries unveil a picture of their lives together: friends, holidays, opening nights, the difficulties and pleasures of writing. Interspersed are numerous treasured and personal photographs. Fraser's generosity welcomes us in as readers, as family guests, intimates. And it is in this privileged position that we share the agonising sadness of Pinter's death. As an acclaimed biographer of subjects ranging from Cromwell to Marie-Antoinette, Antonia Fraser writes with acute sensitivity and artistry: Must You Go? is a beautiful testimony of love and respect to Harold Pinter, one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century.
£ 20 Hardback 9780297859710 Available Now
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PARISIANS: AN ADVENTURE HISTORY OF PARIS
by GRAHAM ROBB
For Charles Baudelaire, it was the practice of the flaneur - the half-distracted voyeur of street-life - that brought to life the magical poetry of Paris. For Walter Benjamin it was the archaeology of architecture, such as the Arcades, that roused the ghost of history to suffuse the city. In turn, Graham Robb combines the social and the material: making Paris manifest through the voices and tales of Parisians past and present. His cast of characters include alchemists, philosophers, police commissioners, scientists and spies as we witness political and sexual intrigues, revolutions and executions. We look out over the city from the heights of the Eiffel Tower, sit beside Hitler on a flying visit, celebrate the opening of the first Metro station and explore underground catacombs. Robb's exhilarating prose, familiar from his bestselling Discovery of France, not only illuminates history, but makes it feisty, drawing the reader into the thrilling adventure-story that is the history of Paris.
£ 18.99 Hardback 9780330452441 Available Now
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PARROT AND OLIVIER IN AMERICA
by PETER CAREY
With irrepressible wit and dazzling inventiveness, Peter Carey returns to historical fiction in this daring improvisation on the life of 19th-century historian and political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville. Olivier, a French aristocrat who remains terrified by the events of the Revolution during his childhood, sets sail for the New World to study its prison systems (and escape any further flash of the guillotine). Parrot, the artistic son of an itinerant English printer, has had a more chequered career, and is sent with Olivier as his protector. Master and servant make a comic and unlikely couple. Yet, as they journey through America witnessing democracy in action (or otherwise) and the world of art, a friendship of sorts blossoms out of the adventure. But Parrot is also entrusted to spy on the aristocrat-in-exile, extending a hazardous undercurrent of the Terror. This is a sparkling and ingenious tale from the Booker Prize-winning author of Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang.
£ 18.99 Hardback 9780571253296 Available Now
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SOLAR
by IAN McEWAN
Humanity or Nature: which is the more powerful? On the side of humanity we have Michael Beard, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him: a cipher rather than an activist, despite his half-hearted support of a government initiative against global warming. His emotional life is equally estranged. A serial womaniser himself, this time it is his fifth wife (who he still loves) having the affair. But when these public and private worlds collide, the opportunity to both resolve his marital situation and reinvigorate his career opens up, as does the possibility to save the world from environmental disaster. And so the frail human, full of ambition and self-deception, faces the most demanding challenge of our time. Ian McEwan has never written shy of the complexities and quandaries of human nature – whether situational or emotional. His renown stands atop novels such as Atonement, Enduring Love and most recently On Chesil Beach. Global in scope, intimate in characterisation, Solar's darkly satirical perspective engenders a profound drama riven with comedy, revealing again McEwan's storytelling mastery.
£ 18.99 Hardback 9780224090490 Available Now
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