The Garden of Eros brings to life some of last century’s leading cultural figures, who shaped our modern thinking and defined the tastes of an entire generation, changing for ever the way we look at literature and the world around us. Drawing from the accounts of two fellow publishers Maurice Girodias and Barney Rosset, who were also active in the heady days of 1950s and 1960s Paris, London and New York and from his own personal recollections, John Calder talks about the challenges of bein...

“Publish and be damned”, Wellington’s famous adage, runs like a leitmotiv through John Calder’s memoirs. He has been damned by a censorious press, by politicians, by other publishers and by organs of the state for publishing books on sensitive issues. Damned also for publishing such authors as Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Alexander Trocchi and Hubert Selby Jr, as well as for bringing to public notice the abuses of the armies and security forces of colonial countries. He took on America...

Increasingly Samuel Beckett’s writing is seen as the culmination of the great literature of the twentieth century succeeding the work of Proust, Joyce and Kafka. Beckett is a writer whose relevance to his time and use of poetic imagery can be compared to Shakespeare’s in the late Renaissance. John Calder has examined the work of Beckett principally for what it has to say about our time in terms of philosophy, theology and ethics, and he points to aspects of his subject’s thinking that othe...

Like all the greatest writers, Samuel Beckett was primarily interested in discovering the meaning and purpose of life and of the world into which we are born. Knowledgeable about the religion his family and education instilled in him, which as an adult he could neither accept nor reject, he used it extensively in his novels, plays and poetry. Beckett's works also explored philosophy and the imaginative world of Dante and Milton, as well as the theories of Darwin and scientific speculation,...

John Calder's new poetry collection, 'Solo', avoids strict poetic forms in favour of a casual and natural expression of thought. Honest in its pessimism, the tone is often questioning, and some of the biggest issues, such as politics and war, are not shirked.

101 chance meetings, juxtaposing the famous and the infamous, the artistic and the philistine, the pompous and the comical, the snobbish and the vulgar, each 1,001 words long, and with a time span stretching from the 19th century to the 21st.Life is made up of individuals meeting one another. They speak, or don’t speak. They get on, or don’t get on. They make agreements, which they either hold to or ignore. They laugh, they cry, they are excited, they are indifferent, they share se...

**The definitive biography of the renowned spy novelist —a "highly readable portrait of a writer . . . as elusive and enigmatic as his fictional heroes" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times).In this authorized biography, Adam Sisman reveals the man behind John le Carré's bestselling persona. Looking behind the pseudonym, Sisman shines a spotlight on David Cornwell, an expert at hiding in plain sight—"born to lying," he wrote in 2002, "bred to it, trained to ...

What do we mean by 'culture'? This word, purloined by journalists to denote every kind of collective habit, lies at the centre of contemporary debates about the past and future of society.In this thought-provoking book, Roger Scruton argues for the religious origin of culture in all its forms, and mounts a defence of the 'high culture' of our civilization against its radical and 'deconstructionist' critics.He offers a theory of pop culture, a panegyric to B...

Sir Frank Kermode is acknowledged as one of the greatest critics of our time, renowned for the wit humanity and good sense of his writing. Pleasing Myself brings together the very best of his shorter pieces, on topics ranging from Donne and Yeats to modern art and money.

Religion and the Rebel, Colin Wilson's second volume from his internationally acclaimed Outsider Cycle, is a casebook about and for rebels. With inspirational wisdom and engaging clarity, Wilson shows us that the purpose of religion, of our personal relationship with the sacred and the all-pervading mystery of existence, is to expand our consciousness and intensify our sense of life. Wilson heroically claims that the power to create meaning resides in our mental and spiritual discipline.

Waiting for Godot has been acclaimed as the greatest play of the twentieth century. It is also the most elusive: two lifelong friends sing, dance, laugh, weep, and question their fate on a road that descends from and goes nowhere. Throughout, they repeat their intention Let’s go,” but this is inevitably followed by the direction (They do not move.).” This is Beckett’s poetic construct of the human condition.Lois Gordon, author of The World of Samuel Becket...

Unlock the more straightforward side of Waiting for Godot with this concise and insightful summary and analysis!This engaging summary presents an analysis of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, a play which follows a pair of tramps over two days of their lives as they wait for a mysterious man called Godot. Nothing else really happens, and that is exactly the point of play: through the somewhat ridiculous protagonists and the complete lack of act...