A gripping and revealing new biography of one of the greatest of modern poets, the queer, Greek-Egyptian Constantine Cavafy, whose admirers have ranged from E.M. Forster, T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf to Jackie Onassis, Leonard Cohen and Stephen Fry.Shortlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award'A deeply researched and engaging biography… Jeffreys and Jusdanis brilliantly recreate Cavafy’s world’ - Guardian

A long-awaited and much-anticipated biography of one of the great modern poets.In 1933, on his seventieth birthday, the poet Constantine Cavafy died in an Alexandrian hospital, surrounded by friends. He left behind a small, curated oeuvre of 154 poems, along with fragments and drafts of incomplete works. Throughout his life, Constantine had kept a tight grip on the distribution of his poetry, but after his death his reputation grew and Constantine became the august...

Known as a preeminent poet of queer male desire, C. P. Cavafy lived most of his life as part of the Greek minority community in Alexandria, Egypt. He was inspired by the possibilities offered by peripheries, whether sexual, geographic, or historical. Volumes of his poems, widely translated into English, give anglophone readers access to his distinctive mixture of irony and tenderness, directness and subtlety.This volume will help instructors introduce students to Cavafy's works and...

Hamlet, which dates from 1600-1601, is the first in Shakespeare’s great series of four tragedies, the others being Othello (1603), King Lear (1605) and Macbeth (1606). In writing this extraordinary play Shakespeare effectively reinvented tragedy after an interval of roughly two thousand years we have to go back to the Greek dramatists of fifth-century Athens to find anything of comparable depth and maturity.

Christmas brings out the best and the worst in us, as can be seen in this evocative anthology. Among what Thomas Love Peacock calls the ‘many poetical charms in the heraldings of Christmas’ there are eulogies by saints and diatribes from curmudgeons. Here, Christmas is expounded by divines, sung by rustics, deplored by philosophers and made mystical in stories. This collection includes complete versions of old favourites and new discoveries: a sermon by Lancelot Andrewes, an account of Chr...

Hera, wife of Almighty Zeus, king of the Gods, determines that Heracles must suffer and die, so he is condemned to face the twelve labours she imposes upon him. The challenges are many. Some take him through great danger to strange and distant lands but Heracles is no ordinary man and will face the worst. His own words, lost to us through centuries of confusion and fantasy, can at last be heard.

Deep beneath the frigid land of Mars they discovered a presence that did not belong. A form that could not be natural. It was excavated and taken away for examination. When it hatched to reveal the entity within, there came death and the perils that followed. So began the race against time and the fatal desires of one man.

Three BBC radio adaptations of famous novels by the prolific 19th-century author Mrs Oliphant – plus an episode of Reading Aloud, with extracts from her autobiographySometimes called ‘the feminist Trollope’, Margaret Oliphant wrote over 100 works of fiction in a wide variety of genres, ranging from novels of small-town life to historical tales and supernatural stories. Included here are three of her best-loved works, brimming with dry wit, perceptive irony...

The lure of Planet X drew them into deep space, far beyond the light and warmth of our sun, to discover what secrets lay concealed beneath the perpetual darkness and frozen desolation of this seemingly long abandoned world.And what embers of deceit stirred within the thoughts of one among those who, on entering the forbidden depths, were to face unforeseen dangers?

Karen and Richard met by chance, strangers in an unfamiliar town. They were used to the good life and each saw fit to take advantage of the other.A weekend of pleasure was their aim as they set off over the Pennines that rainy night. But they took a wrong turning down a confusing, deserted lane. Bogged down in a remote area with no phone signals, they could not call for help.Perhaps there was help to be found when they saw a distant light and to this they were drawn as moth...

A full-cast three-part adaptation of the Medieval Mystery Plays, introduced by David BuckDuring medieval religious holidays in certain English towns and cities, members of the various guilds would gather in the streets to re-enact Bible stories, from the Creation to the Last Judgment. Often staged from dawn to dusk on a single day, they were performed on a procession of pageant wagons, and the actors created all the music and effects themselves. In The Image of...

The first five volumes from the landmark BBC radio series This Sceptred Isle. Christopher Lee's epic history tells the story of Britain from the Romans to the death of Victoria. This collection includes the original first five volumes:55BC-1087: Julius Caesar to William the Conqueror From Britannia under the Romans to the Dark Ages and the invasions of Angles, Saxons, Danes, and Norwegians.1087-1327: The Making of the Nation The Crusades, Welsh and Scottish rebellions and t...