Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2024, Irish Book AwardsShortlisted for the TLS Ackerley Prize 2025Shortlisted for the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Prize 2025How far would you go for the missing?Blending private and public history, cultural analysis, family memoir and autobiography, Clair Wills explores profound questions about memory, loss, motherhood and emigration. She traces a history of ...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2018**TLS BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017'Generous and empathetic ... opens up postwar migration in all its richness' Sukhdev Sandhu, Guardian'Groundbreaking, sophisticated, original, open-minded ... essential reading for anyone who wants to understand not only the transformation of British society after the war but also its character today' Piers Brendon, Literary Review'Lyrical, full of wi...

Of the countries that remained neutral during the Second World War, none was more controversial than Ireland, with accusations of betrayal and hypocrisy poisoning the media. Whereas previous histories of Ireland in the war years have focused on high politics, That Neutral Island brings to life the atmosphere of a country forced to live under rationing, heavy censorship and the threat of invasion. It unearths the motivations of those thousands who left Ireland to fight in the British forces...

How far would you go for the missing?Blending private and public history, cultural analysis, family memoir, and autobiography, Clair Wills explores profound questions about memory, loss, motherhood, and emigration. She traces a history of sexual secrecy through four generations of unplanned pregnancies in her own family, stretching from the 1890s to the 1980s and from the West of Ireland to Massachusetts, London, and the English countryside, dramatizing the power o...

Clair Wills's The Best Are Leaving is an important and wide-ranging study of post-war Irish emigrant culture. Wills analyses representations of emigrants from Ireland and of Irish immigrants in Britain across a range of discourses, including official documents, sociological texts, clerical literature, journalism, drama, literary fiction, and popular literature and film. This book, written by a leading critic of Irish literature and culture, discusses topics such as the loss of the finest p...

Brought to you by Penguin.Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2024, Irish Book AwardsShortlisted for the TLS Ackerley Prize 2025How far would you go for the missing?Blending private and public history, cultural analysis, family memoir and autobiography, Clair Wills explores profound questions about memory, loss, motherhood and emigration. She traces a history of sexual secrecy through four generatio...

Brought to you by Penguin.In a hyper-competitive world obsessed with rankings, super-wealth and greatness, how can we live up to democratic ideals of equality?Erica Benner has spent a lifetime thinking about these questions from different angles in different countries - from post-war Japan, where democracy was imposed on a defeated country, to post-communist Poland, with sudden gaps of wealth and security, and the US and South Africa with their legacies of ...

Brought to you by Penguin.This rich and enjoyable book by the acclaimed author of Japan Story explores the many ways in which Asia has influenced Europe and North America over centuries of tangled, dynamic encountersFrom the time of the ancient Greeks onwards the West's relationship with Asia consisted for the most part of outrageous tales of strange beasts and monsters, of silk and spices shipped over vast distances and an uneasy ...

Brought to you by Penguin.The story of the last generation of British miners: fathers and sons, brothers and comrades, big hitters and broken men, strikers and scabs.Mining Men explores how these men felt when the pits were closed and what happened next, including former miners who became factory workers, detectives, driving instructors, counsellors, the local mayor and one who even ended up working on Fleet Street. Featuring accou...

Brought to you by Penguin.A way of life that once encompassed most of humanity is vanishing in one of the greatest transformations of our time: the eclipse of the rural world by the urban.In this new history of peasantry, Patrick Joyce tells the story of this lost world and its people. In contrast to the usual insulting stereotypes, we discover a rich and complex culture: traditions, songs, celebrations, and revolts, across Europe from the plains of Poland ...

Sharply observed and painfully relatable, Breaststrokes is a novel that seems to emerge from the haze of our current time. This story of unexpected encounters and intimacies is perfect for fans of Cleopatra and Frankenstein and Beautiful World, Where Are You.Cloe and Gertrude and the Jenkins-Bell sisters, Mathilde and Sarah, have never met. They are strangers who share a city.It is Sunday morning. Cloe has woken-up in someone else...

Brought to you by Penguin.Birdsong in a Time of Silence is the story of a man rediscovering his passion for birdsong and nature. Narrated against the backdrop of the current pandemic, the book opens by acknowledging the new awareness of birds and birdsong that was made possible by the coincidence of spring and the experience of lockdown. Starting with a portrait of the blackbird - most prominent and articulate of the early spring singers - the book proceed...