A compelling, and important social and literary document about ten British writers of note: - Brian Aldiss - Paul Bailey - John Berger - Malcolm Bradbury - Dick Davis - John Fowles - Barry Hines, - Donall Mac Amhlaigh - Roger McGough - Peter Vansittart Why do authors write? What fuels their passion to create? And how do background, childhood, and early experiences shape the way they see the world? Reading this book is like spending time in the company of these authors, and each section is ...

First Published in 2017. This book was created as a result of the anger the author when he first encountered the arguments of a school of economic historians who claim that there was no Great Depression in Britain between the wars. Broadly, they suggest that while some traditional industries were badly affected, new ones like man-made fibres and electricity supply rose to prosperity. The gross national product increased over the period, and many people became steadily more affluent. Radio ...

Nigel Gray has breathed new life into an almost extinct literary form, the epistolatory novel. The time is 1988/1989. Adrian is trapped in Thatcher's Britain. Harri has flown to a new life in Australia. The contrast between the old world and the new is sharply drawn. The protagonists come alive in a very contemporary way, warts, muddle, desires, anxieties, jokes, differences and all. Full of contradictions, they show at times great insight and intelligence as well as revealing an immense c...

The sequel to Jennifer Worth's New York Times bestselling memoir and the basis for the PBS series Call the MidwifeWhen twenty-two-year-old Jennifer Worth, from a comfortable middle-class upbringing, went to work as a midwife in the direst section of postwar London, she not only delivered hundreds of babies and touched many lives, she also became the neighborhood's most vivid chronicler. Woven into the ongoing tales of her life in the East End are ...

A powerful account of how one family, grieving for the loss of their daughter, is hounded then haunted by gross media intrusion.When teenager Cassie Mallion goes missing one hot summer's day in the Lake District her family find themselves in the midst of a media feeding frenzy. Years later as the extent of illegal media activity emerges they must face fresh grief.This ebook short also includes an extended extract from Cath Staincliffe's acclaimed novel, The Kindest Thing.

**INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • From the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement, an “effortlessly seductive” novel (The New York Times) that masterfully entwines espionage and desire in an unforgettable story of intrigue, betrayal and love.One of the Best Books of the Year: San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times**Cambridge student Serena Frome's beauty and intelligence make her the ideal recru...

"A mystery that touches the heart, with characters caught in a world that's harsh but trembles with tender emotions. A beautiful story."JAMES NAUGHTIE, BBC Radio 4When the door opened and he came out, there came with him the stench of a dead thing, the sweet, sulphurous, warm, rotten chicken smell that only ever comes from unburied flesh.A dead body is found in a locked house. It has been stabbed in a frenzy, the hands and feet bound, the skull smashed, fals...

Separated from her true love at the age of 18, Liz dreamt of the day he would return to marry her, but fate had other plans. Thirty-seven years later, Liz answers the telephone to hear a voice from the past that still has the power to stop her in her tracks. A true story of love lost and found, this personal memoir journeys across continents and decades to relate the details of the couple's original love affair and their reunion years later. Poignant and romantic, this story is a testament...

I was born in a tenement flat in the East End of London in the year in which Queen Victoria died.'FOUR MEALS FOR FOURPENCE is Grace Foakes's memories of her girlhood in Wapping in the early 1900s. With a child's uncluttered eye, she describes the small details - shopping in the market, men waiting for work at the dock gates, the rituals of washday, the sights, sounds and smells of the old East End of London. She also describes the fear - of illness, of unemployment, of the workhous...

Mr Edgar Finchley, unmarried clerk, aged 45, is told to take a holiday for the first time in his life. He decides to go to the seaside. But Fate has other plans in store…From his abduction by a cheerful crook, to his smuggling escapade off the south coast, the timid but plucky Mr Finchley is plunged into a series of the most astonishing and extraordinary adventures.His rural adventure takes him gradually westward through the English country...

Queen Victoria was the ultimate Victorian, and she was not amused. Luckily YOU will be splitting your sides - because the prim and proper Victorians were actually a jolly naughty bunch!

The heart-wrenching but triumphant story of rebuilding a life and a family.'My body, suddenly, carries two stories of loss ... One is easy for people to recognise. My mother died of cancer. I watched her age twenty-five years in eight weeks ... My other story marks me as different. It is more silent and more savage, it is not pure and no one knows how to approach it. Somewhere I lost my husband.'When Maggie Mackellar's vibrant young husband, father to a fiv...