“I shall begin well before the beginning. And end after the end. That is how it should be. And most of it will be lies, fabrications, inexactitudes, approximations, near misses, botched hits...”Ralph Cusack published only one novel in his lifetime: Cadenza, a meandering, autofictional journey through one man’s memory often compared to the work of Joyce and Beckett. A Hyphenated Childhood, Cusack’s previously unpublished and unfinished memoir, pain...

A pioneering work of autofiction, Ralph Cusack’s Cadenza tackles time and memory, life and death “with an Anglo-Irish arrogance worthy of Beckett.” (Gilbert Sorrentino)‘It’s just like this: I don’t want to go home and I can’t stand Dublin nor any place between the two of them either or at all...’After a harrowing trip to the dentist, Desmond, the narrator of Ralph Cusack’s Cadenza, boards a train, locks himself in cabin 304D, and decides t...

This coming of age memoir offers an intimate portrait of 1920 life in a Scottish castle—"like stepping through the looking glass into another world" ( Glasgow World, UK)."When I was a little girl, the ghosts were more real to me than the people…" So begins Christian Miller's fascinating autobiography of girlhood in 1920s Scotland. Privileged and yet in many ways deprived, Miller grew up the younger daughter and "substitute boy" of her upper-class parents. ...

In the summer of 1849, cholera threatens the city and the people of London. The authorities send millions of gallons of sewage cascading into the Thames - for many Londoners the only source of drinking water.Joshua Jeavons, a young and idealistic engineer, embarks on an obsessive quest to find the cause of the epidemic. As he labours in a fog of incomprehension, his domestic life is troubled by the baffling coldness of his beautiful bride, Isobella. But when she suddenly disappears...

These striking short stories from the 1940s and 50s depict women and men caught between the pull of personal desires and profound social change. From a remote peninsula in Cornwall to the ornate drawing rooms of the British Raj, domestic arrangements are rewritten, social customs are revoked and new freedoms are embraced.Expertly chosen and introduced by writer and critic Lucy Scholes, this collection reacquaints readers with mesmerising stories by acclaimed favourites such as Daph...

At the centre of this collection, which includes groups of elegies and love poems, there is a short sonnet sequence which concentrates themes apparent elsewhere in the book: the individual's responsibility for his own choices, the artist's commitment to his vocation, the vulnerability of all in the face of circumstance and death.'Throughout the volume Heaney's outstanding gifts, his eye, his ear, his understanding of the poetic language are on display - this is a book we cannot do ...

'This book is heaven. Elspeth Barker writes like no one else'OLIVIA LAING'Deserves to be permanently on the bedside table - to cheer, reassure and inspire'OBSERVER'Gothic, poetic and exuberantly funny. What a pleasure it was to read'ESTHER FREUD'Joyous, startling, funny, lush, dark and complex'THE TIMESIn Notes from the Henho...

'William Sansom [1912-1976] was once described as London's closest equivalent to Franz Kafka. He wrote in hallucinatory detail, bringing every image into pin-sharp focus... Sansom writes of head-aching hatreds and hopeless ecstasies, of malevolent objects and wasted lives... Sansom's publisher described his work as "modern fables", but what makes them so ripe for rediscovery is their freshness and currency.'Christopher Fowler, Independent'The worlds William Sansom s...

Fleur Adcock is one of Britain's most accomplished poets. Her poised, ironic poems are tense and tightly controlled as well as shrewdly laconic, and often chilling as she unmasks the deceptions of love or unravels family lives. Disarmingly conversational in style, they are remarkable for their psychological insight and their unsentimental, mischievously casual view of personal relationships. Born in New Zealand, she has explored questions of identity and rootedness throughout her work, bot...

______________'Desperately moving' - The Daily TelegraphFirst published in 1986, Backcloth is volume four of Dirk Bogarde's best-selling memoirsFilling the gaps left between his previous memoirs, as well as highlighting new episodes, Backcloth explores the patterns of pleasure and pain that have made up Bogarde's extraordinary life.Based on personal letters, notebooks and diaries a...

Love, angels, addiction and death; they're all here in My First Colouring Book, a collection of short stories from award-winning novelist Lloyd Jones. Themed on all the colours of the rainbow - and a few extra - these stories and essays paint a picture of criss-crossing lives. They are spoken by an unexpected variety of voices: a young girl has adventures in the night, a surgeion becomes a shepherd; a middle-aged man seeks love for the last time. And his travel essays, sent from the compas...

The iconic memoir from the beloved Irish author of the legendary The Country Girls trilogy.'Get ready to applaud, ladies and gentlemen, because there is no one like her.' Anne Enright'One of the last great lights of the golden age of Irish literature.' Eimear McBride'Glittering energy.' Colm TóibínI thought of life's many bounties, to have known the extremities of joy and sorrow, ...