The plays, arguably, are all about life. Which is why they remain so appealing, so rich to the observer. Who cannot be deeply touched and entangled with the emotions of the old man in a contemporary society so much at odds with age, senility and death. Shakespeare confronts our denial of mortality. But, life is really about death. We are all growing old and dying; some die before others. A rare few will die quietly in their sleep; even fewer, a sudden violent death. But for most of us, dea...

If there is a common theme here, it might be a morbid one...I leave you, the reader, to decide for yourself. For, although age and loneliness and death pervade some of these stories, they are ultimately about love, of one sort or another. Whether it be a love of a life; the love of a friend; or the love of ones self...it is there; or it is conspicuous by its absence.

A brilliant and companionable tour through all thirty-eight plays, Shakespeare After All is the perfect introduction to the bard by one of the country’s foremost authorities on his life and work.Drawing on her hugely popular lecture courses at Yale and Harvard over the past thirty years, Marjorie Garber offers passionate and revealing readings of the plays in chronological sequence, from The Two Gentlemen of Verona to The Two Noble Kinsmen. Supremely read...

A number one bestseller in Britain, Stephen Fry's astonishingly frank, funny, wise memoir is the book that his fans everywhere have been waiting for. Since his PBS television debut in the Blackadder series, the American profile of this multitalented writer, actor and comedian has grown steadily, especially in the wake of his title role in the film Wilde, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination, and his supporting role in A Civil Action.Fry has already ...

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for FictionAs every schoolboy knows, you can fit the whole of England on the Isle of Wight. Grotesque, visionary tycoon Sir Jack Pitman takes the saying literally and does exactly that. He constructs on the island 'The Project', a vast heritage centre containing everything 'English', from Big Ben to Stonehenge, from Manchester United to the white cliffs of Dover. The project is monstrous, risky, and vastly successful. In fact, i...

The Signet Classics edition of one of William Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies.Full of cruelty and betrayal, King Lear is the timeless and tragic story of a kingdom held in the thrall of an aging ruler’s descent into madness. Desperate for praise, he banishes those who would guide him with honesty and surrounds himself with sycophants—an action that leads to his ultimate downfall....This revised Signet Classics edition includes unique features such...

A delightful short story from Jane Gardam, revisting that Titan of the Hong Kong law courts, Edward Feathers (known to many as Old Filth) in the days after he loses his beloved wife, Betty.

A hilarious anthology of comic treasures written by Britain's "comic genius"—the former editor of Punch and beloved regular on BBC's Radio 4 ( The Times).Alan Coren was one of contemporary Britain's most prolific humorists. Over his forty-year career, Coren wrote comic and satirical pieces for The New Yorker, The Times, Observer, Tatler, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, and Punch, and publi...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 PEN ACKERLEY PRIZE'An intense, succulent read that's intermittently dazzling' THE TIMES'Chilling, exquisitely moving' DAILY TELEGRAPH'A superb memoir - and one of the best books on addiction I have ever read' EVENING STANDARDA. A. Gill's memoir begins in the dark of a dormitory with six strangers. He is an alcoholic, dying in the last-chance ...

The Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative texts from leading scholars in editions designed to interpret and illuminate the plays for modern readers - a new, modern-spelling text, based on the Quarto text of 1608 - on-page commentary and notes explain meaning, staging, allusions and much else - detailed introduction considers composition, sources, performances and changing critical attitudes to the play - illustrated with production photographs and related art - includes 'The Ballad of Ki...

pistache (pis-tash): a friendly spoof or parody of another's work. [Deriv uncertain. Possibly a cross between pastiche and p**stake.]From Thomas Hardy's football report to Dan Brown's visit to the cash dispenser, the work of the great and the not-so-great is here sent up with little hope of coming down.Most of these pieces began their life on Radio Four's The Write Stuff, but have been retooled for the printed page. Others, such as Martin Amis's fi...

When this volume of Shakespeare's poems first appeared in 1609, he had already written most of the great plays that made him famous. The 154 sonnets - all but two of which are addressed to a beautiful young man or a treacherous 'dark lady' - contain some of the most exquisite and haunting poetry ever written, and deal with eternal subjects such as love and infidelity, memory and mortality, and the destruction wreaked by Time. Also included is A Lover's Complaint, originally published with ...