Search results for ""Faber Faber""

I have a voice in the University, I'm in the House of Lords, I have this lovely permanent home. Everything's hunky-dory. I just need a bit of help.'I wanted to write the final chapter about Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby, now in their eighties, discarded, ignored, watching today's world with utter bewilderment. An elegiac play about old age and loss - loss of power, loss of influence, loss of friends, loss of family. The only play I've seen on this theme is King Lear. This will be funnier.'The hit BBC television series by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, Yes, Minister, and Yes, Prime Minister, captured the political consciousness of the nation in the 1980s. Lynn's stage play I'm Sorry Prime Minister, I Can't Quite Remember . . ., set in a contemporary Hacker College, Oxford, opened at the Barn Theatre, Cirencester, in September 2023.

Read more less

"My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost. . ."Meet the hero of Hanif Kureishi's seminal debut novel, as he dreams of escape from suburban South London, desperate to experience the forbidden fruits which the 1970s seem to offer. When the unlikely opportunity of a life in the theatre announced itself, Karim starts to win the sort of attention he has been craving - albeit with some raucous results.

Read more less

'It's time,' I say. 'For ... It. Me. You. Us. The bench. The zoo. The question. Why?'The only thing that Elvis Crampton Lucas knows about where he's from is that he was found on the bench at a zoo. And that his now father took him home in a Stetson hat, and named him after the first three vinyl he picked off his shelf. But now, on his twelfth 'discovery day', it's time for Elvis to find out who left him at the zoo, and why?On an epic adventure that takes Elvis to an island off the coast of Norway, he will finally discover the truth about his past...

Read more less

In Climbing Days, Dan Richards is on the trail of his great-great-aunt, Dorothy Pilley, a prominent and pioneering mountaineer of the early twentieth century. For years, Dorothy and her husband, I. A. Richards, remained a mystery to Dan, but the chance discovery of her 1935 memoir leads him on a journey. Perhaps, in the mountains, he can meet them halfway? Climbing Days is a beautiful portrait of a trailblazing woman, previously lost to history, but also a book about that eternal question: why do people climb mountains?

Read more less

'Glorious.' Observer 'Wildly imaginative.' Independent'Intoxicating.' Financial TimesOn the windswept front of Morecambe Bay, Cy Parks spends his childhood years first in a guest house for consumptives run by his mother and then as apprentice to alcoholic tattoo-artist Eliot Riley. Thirsty for new experiences, he departs for America and finds himself in the riotous world of the Coney Island boardwalk, where he sets up his own business as 'The Electric Michelangelo'. In this carnival environment of roller-coasters and freak-shows, Cy becomes enamoured with Grace, a mysterious immigrant and circus performer who commissions him to cover her entire body in tattooed eyes.Hugely atmospheric, exotic and familiar, The Electric Michelangelo is a love story and an exquisitely rendered portrait of seaside resorts on opposite sides of the Atlantic by one of the most uniquely talented novelists of her generation.

Read more less

Slowly I learnt the ways of humans: how to ruin, how to hate, how to debase, how to humiliate. And at the feet of my master I learnt the highest of human skills, the skill no other creature owns: I finally learnt how to lie.Childlike in his innocence but grotesque in form, Frankenstein's bewildered creature is cast out into a hostile universe by his horror-struck maker. Meeting with cruelty wherever he goes, the friendless Creature, increasingly desperate and vengeful, determines to track down his creator and strike a terrifying deal.Urgent concerns of scientific responsibility, parental neglect, cognitive development and the nature of good and evil are embedded within this thrilling and deeply disturbing classic gothic tale.Frankenstein, based on the novel by Mary Shelley, premiered at the National Theatre, London, in February 2011.

Read more less

This selection, which was made by Eliot himself, is intended as an introduction to the main body of his poetry prior to Four Quartets, which is available separately in Faber Paperbacks. The selection includes the whole of The Waste Land.

Read more less

These poems report on worlds both robust and delicate, from boisterous pub-bluff to the oxygen bubble of an exquisite underwater spider. Whether situated in the quiet lanes of his native Co Cork or amid the bustle of his adopted London, Riordan's poems exist between many states, poised at once in the grip of both activity and stillness, concerned with speaking and listening to what he hauntingly describes as 'the unwonted quiet'. There are tributes to the departed and the living, the befriended and the estranged; there are also conversations with poets, in memory and in translation, from the Spanish and from the Irish. The collection concludes with 'The Pilgrim' - that hovers eerily 'in patrol of the edges', wherever they may be located. But just as these poems can be sage, they are also mischievous, fun-loving, gregarious creatures who like nothing better than to sing or to joke at your ear. The Water Stealer is a book full of invention and delight, whose hypnotic stories remind us of the variousness and the enchantment of the world.

Read more less

In 1964, Mary Whitehouse launched a campaign to fight what she called the 'propaganda of disbelief, doubt and dirt' being poured into homes through the nation's radio and television sets. Whitehouse, senior mistress at a Shropshire secondary school, became the unlikely figurehead of a mass movement for censorship: the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, now Mediawatch-uk.For almost forty years, she kept up the fight against the programme makers, politicians, pop stars and playwrights who she felt were dragging British culture into a sewer of blasphemy and obscenity. From Doctor Who ('Teatime brutality for tots') to Dennis Potter (whose mother sued her for libel and won) to the Beatles - whose Magical Mystery Tour escaped her intervention by the skin of its psychedelic teeth - the list of Mary Whitehouse's targets will read to some like a nostalgic roll of honour.Caricatured while she lived as a figure of middle-brow reaction, Mary Whitehouse was held in contempt by the country's intellectual elite. But were some of the dangers she warned of more real than they imagined? Ben Thompson's selection of material from her extraordinary archive shows Mary Whitehouse's legacy in a startling new light. From her exquisitely testy exchanges with successive BBC Directors General, to the anguished screeds penned by her television and radio vigilantes, these letters reveal a complex and combative individual, whose anxieties about culture and morality are often eerily relevant to the age of the internet. 'A fantastic read . . . I can't recommend it highly enough.' Lauren Laverne, BBC Radio 6 Music

Read more less

From her mid-teens Sylvia Plath wrote stories, at first easily and successfully, but then with increasing difficulty as the demands of her real vision complicated her growing ambition to make a career as a conventional storywriter.When the first edition of Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams appeared, Margaret Walters said of it in the Guardian, 'the book does offer . . . new insight into her development as a writer, suggesting how even her mistakes and dead ends contributed to the formation of an original and pathfinding talent'.This second edition contains the thirteen stories included in the first edition together with five pieces of her journalism, as well as a few fragments from her journal; and a further nine stories selected from the Indiana archive.

Read more less

WINNER OF THE 2016 INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARDWINNER OF THE FOLIO PRIZE 2015For eight-year-old Ajay and his older brother Birju, life in Dehli in the late 1970s follows a comfortable, predictable routine: bathing on the roof, queuing for milk, playing cricket in the street. Yet, everything changes when their father finds a job in America - a land of carpets and elevators, swimsuits and hot water on tap. Life is exciting for the two brothers as they adjust to prosperity, girls and 24-hour TV, until one hot, sultry day when everything falls apart. Darkly comic, Family Life is a story of a boy torn between duty and survival amid the ruins of everything he once knew.

Read more less

'Meet Luca Turin, a renegade scientist and perfume critic with an extraordinary sense of smell.' NewsdayFunny, irreverent and passionate, The Secret of Scent opens the lid on two worlds - the glamorous and highly lucrative realm of the perfume makers, and the equally rivalrous domain of smell science.Smell is our forgotten sense. Long neglected by science in favour of more prestigious areas of research, it's also barely understood in general life. At the core of our sense of smell lies an enigma: why do things smell the way they do? How is smell written into the molecules? This book is the story of the quest to solve this puzzle. Luca Turin has been described in The Economist as 'a man with a powerful nose and a bizarre obsession with perfume.' Starting with a tour of the great perfumes and their gifted makers, he shows how few people have an idea of what perfume is or how it is made, let alone how smell works and what part it plays in other pleasures like food. But not everyone has ignored this powerful sense. A small band of mavericks has been trying to crack the code of smell for seventy years. Building on their work, Turin thinks he has succeeded. And like all good mysteries, the solution was all the while hidden in plain sight - in this case, right under our noses.

Read more less

Alan Ayckbourn's play is about a very ordinary teenager called Lucy. With her father glued to the cowboys on the telly, her mother preoccupied with neighbourly gossip and her brother enclosed in his ear-phones, no one wants to know about her place in the school swimming team. So Lucy revives her childhood fantasy friend, Zara, setting a place for her at the very ordinary tea table. This time Zara materializes, bringing with her an idealized father and brother, and showing Lucy how to make her real family vanish. The moral of this cautionary tale is carefully spelt out - that when you get what you want it's not what you wanted - as Lucy's dream family turns out to be a nightmare. The play is supposedly for children of seven upwards, but there's a message here for parents, too, about listening to kids.

Read more less

40th anniversary edition of the bestselling modern classic: Milan Kundera's iconic novel of love and politics in communist Czechoslovakia.'Shamelessly clever ... Exhilaratingly subversive and funny.' Independent'A modern classic ... As relevant now as when it was first published. ' John BanvilleA young woman is in love with a successful surgeon: a man torn between his love for her and his womanising. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals, while her other lover stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by choices and events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance and weight - and we feel 'the unbearable lightness of being'.Kundera's classic provoked a whole generation, encompassing passion and philosophy, body and soul, infidelity and ideas, the Prague Spring and modern America, political acts and private desires, comedy and tragedy - in fact, all of human existence.What readers are saying:'Some books change your mind, some change your heart, the very best change your whole world ... A mighty piece of work, that will shape your life forever.''One of the best books I've ever read ... A book about love and life, full of surprises. Beautiful.''This book is going to change your life ... It definitely leaves you with a hangover after you're done reading.''Kundera writes about love as if in a trance so the beauty of it is enchanting and dreamy ... Will stay with you.'

Read more less

Set in the mysterious landscape of the bogs of rural Ireland, Carr's lyrical and timeless play tells the story of Hester Swane, an Irish traveller with a deep and unearthly connection to her land. Tormented by the memory of a mother who deserted her, Hester is once again betrayed, this time by the father of her child, the man she loves. On the brink of despair, she embarks on a terrible journey of vengeance as the secrets of her tangled history are revealed.'A piece of poetic realism steeped in the past . . . Carr has an extraordinary ability to move between the mythic and the real.' Guardian'A great play . . . a great work of poetry.' IndependentBy the Bog of Cats premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 1998. It was revived at Wyndham's Theatre, London, in November 2004.

Read more less

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our literature.

Read more less

Almond Brown has no friends in real life . . . but 3.5 million followers online. A heart-felt, whip-smart deep dive into what it would really be like to be internet famous at 17: a cautionary tale for our time from a writer who has grown up with social media.Almond is forced into the spotlight when she was just a perfectly filtered bump: her mum has been documenting their family through social media since before she was born. And her family enjoy all the rewards that come from that level of influence. Only, it's not the life Almond would have chosen for herself, and being on a platform all the time has made her anxious and insecure. When the darkest side of the internet begins to haunt her, Almond feels like she's going to lose everything . . . If only she could see that she has a real-life, too, full of friends and family who love her, and that it could save her.

Read more less

Writing with refreshing passion, and with her own personal story at its heart, Alice Farnham sets out to explore what it means to be a conductor in modern times. Uniquely, she draws on a wealth of insights from fellow conductors, each with their own perspectives and specialisms - from luminaries such as Antonio Pappano and Jane Glover, to a new generation making their own distinctive mark on the profession.This is not a guide on how to conduct: for music lovers and music makers, not least aspiring conductors, it's a frank, fascinating portrait of what conducting really entails today. Beyond that, it's a book about leadership, full of timely sentiment on who gets to lead, and what it takes to unite and inspire people.'A book that will fascinate and enthral anyone interested in music. Alice Farnham's enchanting blend of insight, experience, musical understanding, sparkling good sense and intelligence brings alive and demystifies what it is to be a conductor.'Stephen Fry

Read more less

'Mesmerising.' The Herald, Best Books to read this summer'A glorious novel, as lyrical as it is suspenseful - breathless, tense, and shimmering.' STEPH CHA'My daddy always told me, if it looks too good to be true - then it probably is.'Bart, Teddy and Cole have been best friends since childhood. Having founded their own small-town construction company, they yearn to build a legacy, something to leave behind to their families. So when Gretchen Connors, a mysterious millionaire lawyer from California, approaches them with a stunning, almost formidable project in the mountains above their town, the three friends convince themselves it's the job which will secure their future.But what is Gretchen hiding from them? And why does the build have to be complete by Christmas, a near-impossible deadline? With the lines between ambition and greed more slippery and dangerous than the three friends ever imagined, how far will they push themselves and what will be the cost of their dream?From the author of the international bestseller Shotgun Lovesongs, Godspeed is an unforgettable tale of family, friendship and temptation.

Read more less

DR FIRENZE SHARPTOOTHcordially invitesST IMMACULATE'S SCHOOL FOR THE GIFTEDto Draconis Hallfor the Great Fossil HuntJack is very excited when he learns that this year's school trip is a visit to the seaside to hunt for fossils. And even better - there's going to be a prize for the best find, which is he desperate to win! Unfortunately, his best friend Picklewitch is not impressed, until she discovers the local Sea Wizard, whose secret lair is hiding the biggest treasure of all . . .

Read more less

Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer were a very notorious couple of cats.As knockabout clowns, quick-change comedians, tight-rope walkers and acrobats.And when you heard a dining-room smashThen the family would say: 'It's that horrible cat!It was Mungojerrie! and Rumpelteazer!' - And there's nothing at all to be done about that!Join the cat-burglars Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer in the fifth picture-book pairing from Arthur Robins and T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's cats, as they steal meat from the oven and pearls from the drawers.

Read more less

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA IAN FLEMING STEEL DAGGER'Spine-chilling' ERIN KELLY'Enthralling.' MEGAN ABBOTT'I was utterly hooked' Stylist'Keeps you guessing until the very last chapter.' Sunday TimesFROM THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHORYears ago Gerry Anderson wrote a novel about his dream girl, Aubrey, and for years people speculated about who she must have been based on.Now, with Gerry unwell and bed bound, he thinks someone is trying to contact him, someone claiming to be the real Aubrey.As Gerry's about to find out, dreams can quickly turn to nightmares. . .What readers are saying:***** 'A very clever crime novel that should keep your thoughts spinning for quite. Highly recommended!***** 'It's going to be stitched up in the end, you may not actually see it coming. I didn't, and I'm glad Ms. Lippman kept me guessing.'***** 'A Dream Read! hould definitely go on everyone's 'must read' list.'***** 'Many twists that I did not see coming! I highly recommend! I could not put this down once I started!'

Read more less

THE KIND WORTH SAVING, THE UN-PUT-DOWNABLE SEQUEL TO BESTSELLER THE KIND WORTH KILLING, AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOWFrom the author of the Richard and Judy Book Club picks The Kind Worth Killing and Rules for Perfect Murders'Another top-notch thriller . . . it proves the adage: marry for money and you'll earn every penny.' Alice O'Keefe, The Bookseller, Editor's Pick'Hitchcockian chills and thrills abound . . . a twisty tale of survival and deception.' O, The Oprah MagazineAfter a whirlwind, fairytale romance, Abigail Baskin marries freshly-minted Silicon Valley millionaire Bruce Lamb.For their honeymoon, he whisks her away to an exclusive retreat at a friend's resort off the Maine coast on Heart Pond Island. But once there, Abigail's perfect new life threatens to crash down around her as she recognises one of their fellow guests as the good looking, charismatic stranger who weeks earlier had seduced her at her own Bachelorette party...'Peter Swanson is in the ranks of the killer elite alongside Tana French and Gillian Flynn. He's the real deal.' Joe HillWhat readers are saying'A terrifying thriller . . . you are in for a treat.''Please do yourself a favor and go into this one blind.''It starts at a nice, steady, honeymoon pace . . . until all hell breaks lose and your heart is pounding along with the characters'. Another great one!''A truly bonkers page turner. Definitely recommend.''Prepare to read it in one sitting.'

Read more less

Meet the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece in this transporting tale of the classical world by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies, introduced by Bettany Hughes.Did I believe in what I was doing? Or rather, since I was doing nothing, did I believe in what someone, something was doing to me? It begins with the half-burnt fish, miraculously restored to life, and the healing of the ill child.Young Arieka is an unloved misfit, but as rumours of her spiritual powers reach the High Priest of Apollo, her life is transformed. She is taken to Delphi to become a Pythia: a mouthpiece for the god Apollo, an oracle uttering riddling prophecies from a smoky cave to frenzied crowds.But when this role is dramatically thrust upon her, the priestess must navigate political conspiracy and the threat of the Romans to preserve her belief - and sanity.'A remarkable work ... A compelling storyteller as well as a clear-eyed philosopher of the dangerous puzzles of being human.' The Timesx'A marvellously apt surprise ... Will excite, tantalize and enthral Golding devotees.' Sunday Times'Most brilliantly and hair-raisingly evoked.' Sunday Telegraph'A wonderful central character. The story stretches out as clean and dry and clear as the beach in Lord of the Flies.' Independent

Read more less

Jump into Busy Town and learn your ABCs with Richard Scarry and his friends!Each double page spread is packed with words starting or finishing or including a specific letter of the alphabet. The letters are highlighted in bright pink to emphasise the learning point. It's busy and it's bright and it makes learning your alphabet fun.

Read more less

In The Call of the Tribe, Mario Vargas Llosa surveys the readings that have shaped the way he thinks and has viewed the world over the past fifty years. The Nobel Laureate maps out the liberal thinkers who helped him develop a new body of ideas after the great ideological traumas of his disenchantment with the Cuban Revolution and departure from the ideas of Jean-Paul Sartre, the author who most inspired Vargas Llosa in his youth.Writers like Adam Smith, Friedrich A. Hayek, Karl Popper and Isaiah Berlin helped the author navigate through these uneasy years of intellectual formation. They showed him another school of thought that placed the individual before the tribe, nation, class or party, and defended freedom of expression as a fundamental value for the exercise of democracy. The Call of the Tribe documents Vargas Llosa's engagement with their work and charts the evolution of his personal and philosophical ideology.Mario Vargas Llosa is one of the world's greatest living novelists, but, as Clive James wrote in Cultural Amnesia, his 'true strength' is 'undoubtedly in the essay'.

Read more less

Aphorisms have been described as 'the obscure hinterland between poetry and prose' (New Yorker) - short pithy statements that capture the essence of the human condition in all its shades. In this New and Selected, master of the form Don Paterson brings the best examples from his two previous volumes together with ingenious new material relevant to today's world. Moving and mischievous, canny and profound - these wide-ranging observations of no more than one or two lines demonstrate that the aphorism is the perfect form for our times. Consciousness is the turn the universe makes to hasten its own end. * Agnosticism is indulged only by those who have never suffered belief. * Poet: someone in the aphorism business for the money.

Read more less

It's hard being the normal one in such a crazy family.Bluebell's life is chaotic: Mum and Dad are always away, the new babysitter has no idea what he's doing, and the whole family is trying to get used to life without Iris.There are tears and tantrums. Pregnant pets and broken windows. Boys next door and friends turned enemies. But there is also laughter and most importantly, there is love - and that's what being a family is all about.

Read more less

One night in 1974, a young Frenchman secretly - and illegally - rigged a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. At daybreak, he gave the high-wire performance of all time, making eight crossings over the course of an hour, 110 floors up above the earth, as a hundred thousand people gathered on the ground to watch.In To Reach the Clouds, now filmed as The Walk, Philippe Petit re-creates a six-year quest to realise his dream, an adventure as thrilling as the walk itself. In an unforgettable memoir he tells the story of how he conspired, connived, improvised, and insisted his way to this 'coup', abetted by a motley crew of accomplices, the occasional miracle, and his own unflagging passion. He reveals himself to be not only a virtuoso of the air but also a bold and inspired performer on the page. Animated by never-seen photographs and Petit's ingenious sketches, To Reach the Clouds is a tour de force of the imagination and a serenade to his beloved towers.

Read more less

WINNER OF THE eDUNNIT AARD'Intriguing premise, stunning reveal, irresistible read.' VAL McDERMID 'A satisfying mystery' ALEX MARWOOD'Engrossing, suspenseful and substantial.' SCOTT TUROW In an acclaimed modern twist on To Kill a Mockingbird, Laura Lippman once again proves herself to be one of crime writing's most thrilling reads.Luisa Brant has just been elected State's Attorney, a job her revered father once held, and is prosecuting her first murder, by a homeless man on a woman to whom he had seemingly no connection. However, as Luisa investigates, she is startled to learn that this murder might have its roots in a violent event in the past involving her own family. And that maybe no one - her precious father, her brother, her late mother - is quite who she thought. .

Read more less

Bampton, Derbyshire, January 1978. Two girls go missing: Rachel Jones returns, Sophie Jenkins is never found. Thirty years later: Sophie Jenkins's mother commits suicide. Rachel Jones has tried to put the past behind her and move on with her life. But news of the suicide re-opens old wounds and Rachel realises that the only way she can have a future is to finally discover what really happened all those years ago. This is a story about loss and family secrets, and how often the very darkest secrets are those that are closest to you.

Read more less

Shot through with Stoppard's voice, and illuminating all his plays, Lee's gripping narrative draws on unprecedented access to archive material, interviews and long conversations with Stoppard himself. She traces the dramatic story of his family's flight from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, his sudden leap to fame, his personal life and his dazzling successes. A riveting account of a very public and very private man.

Read more less

A Daily Telegraph, Times, Evening Standard, TLS and Spectator Book of the Year.Winner of the Hawthornden Prize.Edward Lear is well-loved for his 'nonsenses', from joyous limericks to great love songs, and for his wonderful natural history paintings, landscapes and travel writing. But although Lear belongs to the age of Darwin and Dickens, his genius for the absurd and his dazzling word-play make him a very modern spirit. He was also a man of great simplicity and charm - children loved him - yet his humour masked epilepsy, depression and loneliness. Jenny Uglow's beautifully illustrated biography brings us his swooping moods, passionate friendships and restless travels. Above all it shows how this uniquely gifted man lived all his life on the boundaries of disciplines and desires - an exile of the heart.

Read more less

Sir John Betjeman (1906-84) was born in Highgate, the son of a manufacturer of Dutch descent. His poetry enjoyed immense popularity, as did his personality, and his knighthood in 1969 and appointment as Poet Laureate in 1972 were universally welcomed.Other volumes in this series: Auden, Eliot, Plath, Hughes and Yeats.

Read more less

The Lives and Recordings of Delia Derbyshire, Margery Kempe and Cosey Fanni Tutti. 'Re-sisters' is the story of three women consumed by their passion for life, a passion they expressed through music, art and lifestyle - their recordings. In 2018, boundary-breaking visual and sonic artist Cosey Fanni Tutti received a commission to write the soundtrack to a film about Delia Derbyshire, the pioneering electronic composer who influenced the likes of Aphex Twin and The Chemical Brothers. At the same time, Tutti began reading about Margery Kempe, the 15th-century mystic visionary who wrote the first English-language autobiography.

Read more less

John McConnell's list of collaborators includes many household names - Boots, Faber & Faber, Halfords, Clarks, John Lewis. The man behind the Biba logo (for which he won the D&AD Silver in 1969), the logo of the National Grid and the covers of a Penguin student textbook series from the early '70s has exerted a quiet influence over British design since the sixties. His awards alone speak to his prowess: the Prince Philip Designers' Prize (2002) and the title of RDI (Royal Designer of Industry, 1987) among them. Part biography, part showcase for some of McConnell's most celebrated designs, this book gathers McConnell's exclusive redesign for Faber & Faber - a revolutionary new approach to book covers from the early 1980s.

Read more less

Dr Shahed Yousaf is a GP who works in prisons, substance misuse and with the homeless community. He was shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Prize 2016 and commended for the Faber & Faber FAB Prize 2017. Shahed won a place on to the Writing West Midlands Room 204 Mentoring scheme and the Middle Way Mentoring Project in 2019.

Read more less

Helen’s expectations were far from starry-eyed, but married life with Frank in the late 1960s seemed bewilderingly joyless; from the honeymoon in a seedy Paddington hotel complete with dirty linen and a nosy landlady, her new husband drinking until all hours with a shady ‘friend’, their first home in his parents’ Irish pub, in a provincial backwater town. Frank’s father was his own best customer, his mother a shrill and censorious presence in the background, with the local priest as her only friend. Would she allow a sense of hopefulness to creep upon her when she finds out that a baby is on the way? The Sinners’ Bell is Kevin Casey’s first novel, published in 1968 by Faber & Faber. He reveals a striking capacity to convey with sympathy and unsentimental understanding the feelings of the inarticulate, and his portrayal of Helen’s struggle to come to terms with her own unhappiness is profoundly moving. Atmospheric and finely written, this exposé of a shotgun wedding and subsequent marriage is a jewel of narration, and a reissue that is long overdue.

Read more less

A week-to-view diary, this elegant and practical publication gathers extracts from twenty years of outstanding writing from Irish Pages (the island’s premier literary journal) and The Irish Pages Press (“British Book Award Small Press of the Year 2022, Island of Ireland”).With an array of distinguished Irish and international authors, The Irish Pages Diary 2024 is an essential holiday gift for readers, writers, and anyone interested in the life of the mind and the state of the world. The Diary features classic texts by celebrated authors such as Seamus Heaney, Kathleen Jamie, Susan Sontag, Patricia Craig, Slavenka Drakulić, Julia Kristeva and Chinua Achebe, as well as the remarkable work of emerging writers living in Ireland. The Diary includes quotations in English, Scots, Scots Gaelic and Irish, highlighting the linguistic range across Ireland and Britain. Offering illuminating insights throughout the year, the Diary pairs literary passages with corresponding holidays, historical anniversaries and elegant illustrations. Irish Pages and its authors inhabit “the space outside” the Pale of the Received – business-as-usual in all its (especially Western) forms: literary, intellectual, cultural, social, political. The Diary celebrates this emphasis on original imaginative engagement with the world and its dilemmas, and is intended especially for all those readers for whom ethical issues count. Similar to the Faber & Faber Poetry Diary, The LRB Diary or The Redstone Diary, The Irish Pages Diary offers a unique combination of Irish and international literary perspectives.

Read more less

Brought back into print in 2017 to mark the 50th anniversary of Vernon Watkins' death. Vernon Watkins (1906-1967) was called by Kathleen Raine: 'the greatest lyric poet of my generation.' Dylan Thomas referred to him as: 'the most profound and greatly accomplished Welshman writing poems in English', or, in a letter, as 'the only other poet except me whose poetry I really like today.' Philip Larkin wrote: 'In Vernon's presence poetry seemed like a living stream, in which one had only to dip the vessel of one's devotion. He made it clear how one could, in fact, 'live by poetry'; it was a vocation, at once difficult as sainthood and easy as breathing.' All Watkins's poetry was published by Faber & Faber in his lifetime, and he was friends with such widely differing poets as: W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, David Jones, Dylan Thomas, Marianne Moore, Philip Larkin, R.S. Thomas and Kathleen Raine. When he died, in 1967, he was being considered for poet laureate, after the death of John Masefield. Since that time, however, although a few have continued to praise his poetry very highly, public awareness of it has ceased almost completely, creating a bizarre gap in the perception of 20th Century poetry.100 years after Watkins's birth (June 27th, 1906), "New Selected Poems of Vernon Watkins" offers the first widely available selection of his poetry since his death, with a new introduction and notes, outlining the literary and biographical context of his work, and a foreword by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is a rare joy thus to be reintroducing the work of a major poet to a new generation of readers.

Read more less

Basil Bunting (1900-85) was one of the most important British poets of the 20th century. Acknowledged since the 1930s as a major figure in Modernist poetry, first by Pound and Zukofsky and later by younger writers, the Northumbrian master poet had to wait over 30 years before his genius was finally recognised in Britain - in 1966, with the publication of Briggflatts, which Cyril Connolly called 'the finest long poem to have been published in England since T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets'. As well as Briggflatts, this new Complete Poems includes Bunting's other great Sonatas, most notably Villon (1925) and The Spoils (1951), along with his two books of Odes, his vividly realised 'Overdrafts' (as he called his free translations of Horace, Rudaki and others), and his brilliantly condensed Japanese adaptation, Chomei at Toyama (1932). Like the earlier Oxford edition, it presents in its entirety Bunting's own Collected Poems, with addition of the posthumous Uncollected Poems; but this centenary edition from Bloodaxe also has a new introduction by the late Richard Caddel. Bunting wrote that 'Poetry, like music, is to be heard.' His own readings of his own work are essential listening for a full appreciation of his highly musical poetry. The new separate Bloodaxe edition of Briggflatts (2009) includes a CD with an audio recording Bunting made of Briggflatts in 1967 and a DVD of Peter Bell’s 1982 film portrait of Bunting. Bloodaxe has sublicensed a critical edition of Bunting’s complete poetry, The Poems, edited by Don Share (2016), to Faber & Faber. This has three poems not included in the Bloodaxe edition, together with a number of variants, anomalies, fragments and "false starts": apart from those additions, Bloodaxe's Complete Poems is complete (but has no critical apparatus).

Read more less

In its far-ranging and comprehensive scope, Crafting: Transforming Materials & the Maker is at once both a manual and a manifesto for crafters and craft enthusiasts the world over. A must-have for any craft and educational library, it is a volume that draws together an unparalleled range of craftspeople, practitioners and educationalists from a mix of backgrounds so eclectic that the overall feel of this volume is one of refreshing new perspectives on age-old issues. It is underpinned throughout by critical thinking on a range of social, economic, cultural and ecological debates, and is committed on the seriousness with which we must engage hands-on and outdoor learning as part of a curriculum that values the individual and celebrates the human position within the planet. This is a book that causes us to rethink what constitutes wisdom and knowledge in an age that has detached us from that which defines us as both thinkers and makers. The context of craft, an overview of craft history and the development of a tradition, along with the spiritual underpinning and deep origins of craft production, are all given a thorough review before chapters that embark on an exploration of fabrics, leather, baskets, green wood, pottery, and metal - and glass-working. This timely contribution to the world of contemporary craft revival is a book that is to be applauded for the manner in which it will engage a wide and diverse audience. From master craftsperson to novice beginner, from enthusiast to critic, Crafting: Transforming Materials & the Maker will be an inevitable source of inspiration and an invocation for social change. I certainly envisage it won't be long before my own copy is well-thumbed as a consequence of repeated visits to its passionately written chapters. Alexander Landland, author of Craft: How Traditional Crafts Are About More Than Just Making Faber & Faber 2017

Read more less

Two orphaned sisters in a house of secrets...On a foggy evening in 1947, seventeen-year-old Eliza and her troubled little sister Rebecca are banished by their aunt and sent to work at an isolated Welsh mansion. But there are rumours of missing maidservants and a ghost that stalks the deserted halls... Wandering through the mansion's dusty rooms, Eliza finds blood-spattered books, crumpled photographs and portraits of a mysterious woman - clues to a terrible past that might just become Eliza's future.As Eliza unravels a mystery that has endured for decades, Rebecca falls under the spell of cruel housekeeper Mrs Pollard, who will stop at nothing to keep the house's secrets. But can the sisters uncover the truth and escape back to London before they meet a dreadful fate?"Lauren A. Forry was PA to Zooey Deschanel on The Happening - that being an M. Night Shyamalan movie, she's obviously well versed in nightmares... This debut novel of the Faber & Faber Creative Writing MA prize winner, touted as Daphne Du Maurier meets hitchcock, is one to watch."THE SKINNY"Lauren Forry has created a brilliant debut novel, one that creeped me out, kept me hooked and will have me recommending Abigale Hall to everyone."READING WITH A VIEW"Abigale Hall hooks you in... Death hangs on the edge of the pages."HEATHER WRITES (4 Stars)"The mansionis something out of a gothic horror in its own right, and there's even a sinister housekeeper something along the lines of the terrifying Mrs Danvers from... what was that book... Ah yes, Rebecca!"CRIME FICTION LOVER"A beautifully written novel full of rumours, intrigue, love and loss."THE WELSH LIBRARIAN"Forry ratches up the tension expertly, until we don't know if it's madness, ghosts, someone toying with Eliza, or her own imagination that makes the mansion such a place of fear. Whatever it is, it works - keep the lights on when reading!"CRIME WORM

Read more less