“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 A Hyphenated Childhood, Cusack’s previously unpublished and unfinished memoir, pain...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. ...

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...

'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...

"Country Girl is Edna O'Brien's exquisite account of her dashing, barrier-busting, up-and-down life."-National Public RadioWhen Edna O'Brien's first novel, The Country Girls, was published in 1960, it so scandalized the O'Briens' local parish that the book was burned by its priest. O'Brien was undeterred and has since created a body of work that bears comparison with the best writing of the twentieth century. Country Girl brings us face-to-face with a life of high drama and...

'Genuine escapism - I couldn't put it down!' Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'Best read on a cold winter night with hot chocolate' Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'An instant favourite' Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐The rambling house called Thornyhold is like something out of a fairy tale.Left to Gilly Ramsey by the cousin whose occasional visits brightened her childhood, the cottage, set deep i...

The Notebook of a Nature-lover recalls Devon as it was some eighty years ago. This enchanting anthology was originally written as a regular column for the Sunday Referee, and reflects Henry Williamson's unique ability to communicate his understanding of and his passion for the English countryside, whether it be observing salmon and sea-trout leaping in the River Bray (his classic tale of Salar the Salmon was written during this same period), watching partridges in his field and a spider in...

The most loved and celebrated poems—from "The Cure at Troy" to "Death of a Naturalist"—by the Nobel Prize–winning poet.Seamus Heaney had the idea to make a personal selection of poems from across the entire arc of his writing life, a collection small yet comprehensive enough to serve as an introduction for all comers. He never managed to do this himself, but now, finally, the project has been returned to, resulting in an intimate gathering of poems chosen and intro...