Search results for ""Renard Press Ltd""

House clearances, charity shops, jumble sales and skipsThe significance of everyday possessions, heightened by absenceIf objects could talk of the dead, what would they say?Taking in its sights the significance of everyday possessions',All that Remainsis a powerful and poignant collection resulting from a collaboration between disciplines of art.Featuring ten beautiful full-page paintings, interwoven with poems, it forces us to consider what we leave behind in the everyday items we have amassed.

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If you want to get back to the beginningyou must fast forward to the end. I press play, drop into the solarsystem à la Holst, somewherebeyond the asteroid belt,rocketing ever further out. The poems in There's No Pluto in this Suite take the reader to the edges of ordinary experiences, places and narratives and ask them to leap from that ordinariness into the unexpected. The collection is broken into three parts, and the reader is taken on a ride through verse concerned with the experiences of immigration, travel and transience; then on to a gathering around the hearth, telling stories about what drives humans to live: vocations, love and journeys of discovery; and finally into a mythic realm, encountering holy fools, witchy saints and places of overlap between silly and sacred. There's No Pluto in this Suite is a playful collection that blends formal and free verse, lyric and narrative, and in which the profound rubs shoulders with the messy and the patently mysterious.

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These so-called Stupid Stories for Tough Times are a tonic for our times a search for sense in the strange and baffling times we live in, shot through, as all good stories should be, with humour and observational wit, with purpose, fate and dogs. 'Brilliant deadpan dystopia' (on Down to Earth)' Mike Leigh

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Women and Love is a thought-provoking collection of seventeen tightly woven tales about the power of love, all its trials and complications, and the shattered lives it can leave in its wake. The stories explore a huge variety of sorts of love surrounding women in wildly differing settings, and features an unforgettable cast including GPs, burglars, inmates, emigrant cleaners, carers, young professionals, and many more. Navigating heavy themes, with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ experiences, including gender dysphoria and searching for a sperm donor, the stories leave the reader burning with indignation, full of empathy and wonder. ‘I couldn’t sleep that night; our conversation was like a trapped bird flying around inside my head. The next morning, I texted to say I wouldn’t be coming back. I lied about having to return to my country to nurse a sick relative. I couldn’t bear to see my story mirrored in his eyes, and to see what we never had. I knew he’d understand.’

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In 2020, for the first time in centuries, heavy red curtains swept closed on stages across the West End; all theatres were closed. Two actors, keenly feeling the loss of their theatre homes, turned to a form of art that could still thrive over the following months, and set about photographing the stage doors of the deserted city. An extraordinary collaborative project almost two years in the making, Exeunt - The Stage Door Project collects together these moving images, alongside anecdotes from some of the world's leading luminaries who have trodden the boards of the pictured theatres. A tribute to the magical nature of the stage door and the tales lurking behind it, Exeunt is a celebration of the legendary theatres of the city, the extraordinary figures behind the curtain - and the faithful audiences who have flocked back after the storm. Proceeds from sales of this book go to the Actors' Benevolent Fund, ArtsMinds and Theatre Artists Fund Featuring the words of Dame Judi Dench, Emma Rice, Ned Seago, Simon Callow, John McCrea, Diane Page, Reece Shearsmith, Anita Dobson, Macy Nyman, David Bedella, Kwong Loke, Luke Giles, Stephanie Street, Dame Harriet Walter, Rebecca Frecknall, David Jonsson, Jackie Clune, Ben Cracknell, Richard Sutton, Adeyinka Akinrinade, Le Gateau Chocolat, Paule Constable, Lucian Msamati, Adrian Scarborough, David Acton, Natalie Law, Gordon Millar, Leanne Robinson, Thomas Aldridge, Katrina Lindsay, Eben Figueiredo, Andy Taylor, Aimie Atkinson, Jack Holden, Laura Donnelly, Laurie Kynaston, Abraham Popoola, Oengus MacNamara, Louis Maskell, Valda Aviks, Garry Cooper, Mark Dugdale, Lyn Paul, James Graham, Emma Sheppard, Paul Bazely, Preston Nyman, Lauren Ward, Jessica Hung Han Yun, Natalie McQueen, Gavin Spokes, Niamh Cusack, Paterson Joseph, Anna Fleischle, Daniel Monks, Michael Sheen, Lia Williams, Ruthie Henshall, Simon Lipkin, Tom Brooke, Ian Rickson, Rufus Hound, Zoe Tapper, Patsy Ferran, Joshua McGuire, Sharon D Clarke, Mark Gatiss, Taz Skylar, Marianne Benedict, Ferdinand Kingsley, Lez Brotherston, Tamsin Withers, Hadley Fraser, Karl Queensborough, Neil Salvage, Jessie Hart, Kathy Peacock, Howard Hudson, Jonathan Andrew Hume, Andy Nyman, Andrew McDonald, Claire Roberts, Michael Jibson, Jason Pennycooke, Christopher Tendai, Laura Baldwin, Matt Henry, Robert Lindsay, Simon Evans, Fisayo Akinade, Irvine Iqbal and Zoe Wanamaker.

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In 1881, three writers and rights activists, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage, came together to publish the first volume in their groundbreaking History of Woman Suffrage series – a series that eventually went on to fill 5700 pages and lend weight to a movement that changed the course of history for ever. Taking its dedication from the first volume of the History – to the memory of pioneering women whose ‘earnest lives and fearless words… have been, in the preparation of these pages, a constant inspiration’ – this volume collects together four essays that give an insight into the work as a whole, and provide a rounded introduction to the history of women’s suffrage on both sides of the Atlantic.

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New Beginnings is a poetry collection with a difference – resulting from an international competition seeking to find those whose voices were silenced in 2020, the resulting anthology forms a celebration of the end of the toxic aspects of 2020 and the pandemic, a glimmer of hope for the future and a manifesto for change. Featuring poetry by: Sora Li Anders, Lucy Beckley, Heinrich Beindorf, Martin Bennett, Nisha Bhakoo, David Bottomley, Allie Bullivant, Priyanka Kelly Burns, Laura Chouette, Rose Cook, Anna Dallaire, Ella Dane-Liebesny, Ieva Dapkevicius, Catherine Edmunds, Molly J. Evans, Voirrey Faragher, William Foster, John Gallas, Rosie Gliddon, Martha Grogan, David Hensley, Ellie Herda-Grimwood, Peter Hill, Simon Jackson, J.L. James, Jessica Johnson, Jasmine Kaur, Kathryn Louise Knight, Lizzy Lister, Karin Molde, Charlotte Murray, Ngoi Hui Chien, Jenna Pashley Smith, Elisabeth-Rae Reynolds, Heather Rodgers, C.M. Rosier, Hannah Ross, Kay Saunders, Melissa Sia, Aly Lou Smith, Sophie Sparham, Lynne Taylor, Christian Ward and Oyinmiebi Youdeowei.

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Alice hasn’t been home for a while – for seven years, in fact. But when her little sister Lo tries to take her own life, she has to return to the life she left behind. The change of scenery from London to Norfolk proves quite the culture shock, however, and Alice has to confront what she left behind all those years ago. The sisters’ relationship hasn’t evolved in Alice’s absence, and when she steps through the door she’s plunged back into the same world she escaped from. Set against Norfolk’s bleak landscapes, but masquerading as childhood nostalgia, Fridge is an all-too-familiar exploration of the broken promises of youth, and a bitter exposition of a generation left behind.

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In this short essay, Hill sets out a clear, concise argument for public access to parks, and argues for the rights we now take for granted. Our Common Land is a forgotten part of our cultural history, and demonstrates exactly why the founders of the National Trust thought it was so important to preserve ancient buildings and estates for the public.

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One of the most famous novelists in the English literary canon, the likes of Middlemarch and Silas Marner are household names, but Eliot’s essays are often overlooked. This collection brings together some of her most important essays and seeks to celebrate her non-fiction writing. In ‘Silly Novels by Lady Novelists’ Eliot states a desire – some few years before her best-known works – to turn her hand to novel-writing, and decries the trivial nature of contemporary writers, setting out a manifesto for good writing. In ‘Woman in France’ she considers the history of women’s writing, and the complications women face in order to write – something Eliot knew much about herself, adopting a male name to publish the work she did not publish anonymously. Taken together, this collection gives a rare and valuable insight into the author’s writing, and shines a light on her pioneering subtle form of feminism.

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'If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.' One of the most prolific and respected playwrights of the twentieth century, Bernard Shaw's legacy shows no signs of waning, and his beautifully written plays, laced with wry wit and invective alike, have seen countless performances over the years, their finest lines paraded in literary conversation and review. Meticulously selected by Simon Mundy, the Wit and Acid series collects the sharpest lines from Shaw’s oeuvre in small neat volumes, allowing the reader to sample some of the very best barbs and one-liners the twentieth century has to offer, and this, the first volume, covers lines from the great writer’s works published before 1911.

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Alice is becoming more and more forgetful. Her daughter Mandy is always on hand to help out, but is starting to feel the strain. One day a long-forgotten photograph stirs a memory and lures Alice back to the Crown Hotel in Blackpool, where she hopes for the chance to dance in the tower ballroom one last time. But when mother and daughter reach Blackpool, nothing is quite how Alice remembers, and she finds herself getting lost in the past. One Last Waltz is a beautifully written portrayal of a family coming to terms with complications caused by Alzheimer's disease. By turns sparkling with wit and heart-wrenching in its honesty, it's filled with vital and compassionate insight into the sufferings accompanying a disease that has blighted the landscape for so many.

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'Eventually, she spoke. If you don't laugh, you'll cry, she said, as she did neither.' The fifth poetry collection from an award-winning poet, As if it Meant Something is a startlingly beautiful, wide-ranging selection that lays the tapestry of life beautifully bare. Dealing with the mundane and profound, everyday experiences sit alongside the devastating decay caused by domestic violence and terminal illness, the soaring beauty of the Irish coastline and love, art, thought.

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A café in Brussels that puts people at their ease – artists with European politicians, their assistants and tousled intellectuals with bar staff, twenty-somethings in need of a job with thirty-somethings who have one. Flagey is a comedy of manners that smiles refreshingly at Europe’s capital, relaxed and true to its context. Love and politics raise their heads and generally get smacked for the trouble. The Place Flagey is really there. So perhaps are some of those you will meet inside.

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We inherit the lineage we're all born into, with its history and its contradictions, with the very beautiful and the very ugly, neither of which we can have a hand in being able to change.'The family of Nisar Chowdhury moves from Dhaka to Chicago when he is just thirteen, and he grows up feeling estranged from both lands. Thirty years on, he returns to the city of his birth, only to find it changed beyond recognition. Rekindling old relationships and trying to get to grips with his father's decision to sell off their remaining properties in the city, Nisar must navigate the labyrinth of a society that has moved on without him. The Inheritors is a vivid portrait of a city giddy with the march of change.

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First published in 1923, The Prophet is a collection of twenty-six poetic fables that centre around the prophet Al Mustafa, who, boarding a boat in the city of Orphalese, where he has lived for many years, prepares to sail home. On the voyage Al Mustafa is approached by a group of travellers, with whom he discusses deep topics - love, friendship, passion, pain, religion - and The Prophet becomes a manual and spiritual guide. This edition features the original illustrations prepared by the author, as well as an introduction by Dr Daniele Nunziata, which introduces the great work for a new generation.

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'There's only control, control of ourselves and others. And you have to decide what part you play in that control.' Cast your eye over the comfortable north London home of a family of high ideals, radical politics and compassionate feelings. Julia, Paul and their two daughters, Olivia and Sophie, look to a better society, one they can effect through ORGAN:EYES, the campaigning group they fundraise for and march with, supporting various good causes. But is it all too good to be true? When the surface has been scratched and Paul's identity comes under the scrutiny of the press, a journey into the heart of the family begins. Who are these characters really? Are any of them the 'real' them at all? Every Trick in the Book is a genre-deconstructing novel that explodes the police procedural and undercover-cop story with nouveau romanish glee. Hood overturns the stone of our surveillance society to show what really lies beneath.

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‘Take care. The consequences of an act are often much more numerous and important than people have any idea of.’ Today W.S. Gilbert is best known for the comic operas he produced in collaboration with Arthur Sullivan, a creative partnership that diverged over the supernatural. Unlike Sullivan, Gilbert was a great fan of fairy tales, and Foggerty’s Fairy, one of his most unjustly neglected plays, is a brilliant farcical comedy that hinges on the wish-granting of a fairy. Loosely based on his short story ‘The Story of a Twelfth Cake’, Foggerty’s Fairy considers the dangers of playing with the past. Trying to shore up his relationship, a man enlists a fairy’s help to make a few tweaks in his past – he soon realises, however, these small changes have made great waves through time, and his present becomes unbearable.

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The undisputed master of the short story, Saki's name is synonymous with brilliant writing that satirises Edwardian Society, and his plays were no exception. In his only full-length play, 'The Watched Pot', Trevor Bavvel, sole heir to a country estate, is in want of a wife, but must operate under the strict attention of his miserly mother Hortensia. Although wildly neglected today, Saki's plays met with widespread acclaim in his day, and he was even compared favourably with the great Oscar Wilde. This complete edition of Saki's plays - the first complete edition ever published - demonstrates the great writer's prowess as a playwright, and sparkles with the same wit as the short stories that have enchanted generations of readers.

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'The glow of my cigarette picks out a dark shape lying on the ground. I bend down to take a closer look. It's a dead sparrow. I wondered if I had become that bird, disoriented and lost.' Young, handsome and contemptuous of his father's traditional ways, PK Malik leaves Bombay to start a new life in America. Stopping in Manchester to visit an old friend, he thinks he sees a business opportunity, and decides to stay on. Now fifty-five, PK has fallen out of love with life. His business is struggling and his wife Geeta is lonely, pining for the India she's left behind. One day PK crosses the path of Esther, the wife of his business competitor, and they launch into an affair conducted in shabby hotel rooms, with the fear of discovery forever hanging in the air. Still Lives is a tightly woven, haunting work that pulls apart the threads of a family and plays with notions of identity. Shortlisted for the SI Leeds Literary Prize, Winner of the Reader's Choice Award at the Diverse Book Awards 2023

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In 1878 Gustave Flaubert looked on in horror as his publisher picked up a manuscript from the mysterious stage actress Sarah Bernhardt and published it in place of a new edition of his latest work, and watched it go on to become an instant bestseller, achieving international fame. Narrated by a chair in a hot-air balloon, In the Clouds is a light-hearted, humorous tale that follows a character reminiscent of Bernhardt through the skies above Paris. Sadly the story sunk into obscurity, lying out of print in the English language for much of the twentieth century. Featuring the original illustrations by Georges Clairin, and in a fresh edit of the first English translation, this edition seeks to bring the tale to a new generation of readers.

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'He drew a long sigh of rich content. The old life, with all its bitterness and useless antagonism and flimsy sophistries, its brief delights that were always tinged with fear and distrust and unfaith, that whole miserable, futile, swindled world of Bohemia seemed immeasurably distant and far away, like a dream that is over and done.' First published in 1896, The Burglar’s Christmas is a short story by the great American writer Willa Cather. Set in Chicago on a cold Christmas Eve, the down-and-out Crawford learns the value of forgiveness. (Part of Renard’s Christmas Card Classics series, 25% of the RRP of each book sold goes to Three Peas, a small refugee charity. This year, instead of a Christmas card, why not send a book?)

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Saki’s Cats rounds up the tales about cats, big and small, by the undisputed master of the short story. ‘Tobermory’, one of Saki’s most famous pieces, demonstrates the danger that would ensue from granting cats the power of speech – animals have long lurked unseen, eavesdropping, in the background. The tom in ‘The Philanthropist and the Happy Cat’ is the only one to enjoy his meal, as is the leopard in ‘The Guests’. In ‘The Penance’ and ‘Mrs Packletide’s Tiger’, hunters who put cats in their sights are humiliated and blackmailed. ‘The Achievement of the Cat’ considers how cats have come to be served by the human race. In addition to the short stories about cats, Saki’s Cats also collects Saki’s juvenile letters to his sister Ethel about the tiger cub he adopted while living in Burma. The feisty felines of these tales are the only clear winners, and, with a characteristic smirk and dash of his pen, it is Edwardian Society that Saki sends slinking off, tail between its legs.

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Dated the 14th of December 1908, A Letter to a Hindu was a letter written by Leo Tolstoy to Tarak Nath Das, a Bengali revolutionary and scholar, in response to a request for support for India’s separation from British rule, which argued that the Indian people should seek to free themselves from British rule through non-violent protests and strikes, and other forms of peaceful resistance. The letter soon gained international attention after it was published in the Free Hindustan, and it came to the attention of the young Mahatma Gandhi. Drawing on a variety of sources, cultures and teachings, Tolstoy’s letter was instrumental in forming Gandhi’s views on non-violent resistance – as Gandhi himself acknowledges in his introduction: ‘To me, as a humble follower of that great teacher whom I have long looked upon as one of my guides, it is a matter of honour to be connected with the publication of his letter’.

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In October 1928 Virginia Woolf was asked to deliver speeches at Newnham and Girton Colleges on the subject of 'Women and Fiction'; she spoke about her conviction that 'a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction'. The following year, the two speeches were published as A Room of One's Own, and became one of the foremost feminist texts. Knitted into a polished argument are several threads of great importance - women and learning, writing and poverty - which helped to establish much of feminist thought on the importance of education and money for women's independence. In the same breath, Woolf brushes aside critics and sends out a call for solidarity and independence - a call which sent ripples well into the next century.

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The countdown to the millennium has begun, and people are losing their heads. A so-called Y2K expert gives a presentation to Scotland's eccentric Tech Laird T.S. Mole's entourage in Edinburgh, and soon long hours, days, weeks and months fill with seemingly chaotic and frantic work on the 'bug problem'. Soon enough it'll be just minutes and seconds to go to midnight. Is the world about to end, or will everyone just wake up the next day with the same old New Year's Day hangover? A book about what we know and don't know, about how we communicate and fail to, My Book of Revelations moves from historical revelations to the personal, and climaxes in the bang and flare of fireworks, exploding myths and offering a glimpse of a scandal that will rock Scotland into the twenty-first century. As embers fall silently to earth, all that is left to say is: Are we working in the early days of a better nation?

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Exploring his colourful, rich and often dramatic life in London and summers spent in southern Italy among his large extended family, Do I Bark Like a Dog? considers the roots of Volpe's identity. Delving into family secrets and lies, he discovers how extraordinary events filtered through time to propel his unlikely but successful career in opera.

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First published in 1923, Exile and Other Poems is an important, poignant collection from one of the foremost Imagist war poets. Penned after witnessing the horrors of the frontline during the First World War, Aldington’s brutal, honest verse lays bare unimaginable experiences. The first part of the collection, ‘Exile’, explores the poet’s survivor’s guilt, post-traumatic stress and sense of alienation. The collection continues with a ‘Songs for Puritans’ and ‘Songs for Sensualists’, pastiches of seventeenth and eighteenth-century love poetry, and a series of more personal poems exploring the natural world, from which Aldington drew reassurance. Enriched with a fascinating introduction and explanatory notes by leading Aldington scholars Elizabeth Vandiver and Vivien Whelpton, this centenary edition seeks to place Exile firmly back on the map of war poetry, from which it has been missing for too long.

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First published in 1844, The Fir Tree is a moving short story about a tree that is so desperate to grow up that it cannot appreciate the present. Following the tree from its early years until it is big enough to be cut down and used as a Christmas tree, it highlights the importance of living in the moment, and offers a topical and bleak outlook on our use of nature. Part of Renard’s successful Christmas Card Classics series, 25% of the RRP of each book sold goes to the Three Peas, a small charity supporting refugees.

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When Maggie Byrne attends the retirement dinner of her old music teacher at the convent school she attended, she discovers she has more in common with the founding nun, Cornelia Connelly, than she previously realised. As events in Maggie’s world progress and relationships break down, Cornelia’s remarkable life waltzes and weaves through Maggie’s, bringing them together through their shared love for music. Inspired by true stories of the nineteenth-century educational pioneer and reverend mother Cornelia Connelly and an ex-student of one of the schools she founded, Waltz With Me paints a moving picture of the challenges of marriage and motherhood, the calling of vocation, the nature of personal sacrifice for a greater cause and the impact of faith, infusing live waltz, sacred and folk music through the unfolding drama.

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Stories surrounding the legendary King Arthur have been told since time immemorial, and every generation has a new take on the tale. The Fragile Land approaches the legend from a radical angle, setting it firmly in the post-Roman world of late fifth-century Europe, when the language of Britannia was still Brythonic and the Saxons had not yet superimposed their own place names. The Fragile Land chronicles the crucial years of Arthur’s life, from the age of fifteen into his early thirties, as he comes to the fore as elected Overlord, empowered to confront the Barbarian threat and to keep the factious leaders of the island’s kingdoms in some sort of political alliance. Enhanced by a beautifully illustrated map by the artist Kate Milsom, Simon Mundy’s cunningly woven tale of an island in unrest draws subtle parallels with contemporary cultural disputes and casts the legend in a whole new light.

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Against the backdrop of brutal invasion, it is much easier for right-wing figures to target marginalised groups, and during wartime the queer community is exceedingly vulnerable to persecution, scapegoating and censorship. Being visibly queer in Ukraine is an act of rebellion in itself, but LGBTQI+ people find ways to express themselves against all odds, to create beyond all constraints. And what is queerness without defiance - the linking of arms, the echo of a hundred voices? Every voice tells a story, and this anthology is a platform for these voices, an archive of their existence. It is time for them to tell their stories on their own terms - and for the rest of the world to stand in solidarity with them. Proceeds from the sales of this book go to a selection of charities supporting LGBTQI+ people in Ukraine. The list is periodically reviewed so that funds go to where they're most sorely needed, but includes: TU Platform Mariupol (Supporting queer youth), Queers For Ukraine (Supporting people with HIV in Ukraine and delivering much-needed hormones for the trans community) and Insight NGO (Humanitarian Aid for the LGBTQI+ community in Ukraine).

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A mysterious suicide pandemic sweeps the world, leaving nations reeling, pointing fingers. Losing her parents to the tragedy as a child, Laura makes a failed attempt to take her own life, and suffers at the hands of those cast as her protectors. Fourteen years later, still trying to escape her pain, she meets a powerful entrepreneur whose groundbreaking technology offers the ultimate freedom - a soul-flight. Tempted by the promise, she strikes a deal that will change her life for ever. Laura soon discovers that the soul-flight is not quite what it seems, and she is no longer in control of her mind, the confines of her body and the outside world starting to blur. To regain control of herself, Laura must travel into dimensions previously inaccessible and uncover a past she never knew she had. A powerful, thought-provoking tale set in a world transformed by technology, Never Laura is a startling work in which the dance between humanity and artificial intelligence challenges the very essence of who we are.

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Revolution has torn through the land, leaving society teetering on a knife edge. A young artist finds himself holed up at the City Hotel with his mother, where he must sing for his supper. In the face of ruin, with a pile of unpaid hotel bills growing out of control, the artist has just three days to produce one hundred artworks before he and his mother are turned out onto the street. Forced to face his demons, the artist struggles to stay on course, and soon finds he has to consider the very nature of art and capitalism if he is to succeed in his task. 'A stunning debut… a profound examination of the value and meaning of being an artist… a series of hilarious tirades hide a deeper exploration of artistry and the ideal conditions for art to be made.' — Broadway World, 'Set in a disturbingly familiar future, this play makes us ponder the true value of art.' — London Pub Theatres Magazine

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For many years the victim of smear campaigns by notable male writers, and dismissed as being merely ‘the mother of Mary Shelley’, Mary Wollstonecraft has claimed her rightful title as one of the founders of feminist thought, a movement anchored in her Vindications. Outraged by Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, its use of gendered language and defence of monarchy and hereditary privilege, A Vindication of the Rights of Men turned the tables on philosophy. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman swiftly followed, taking the conversation further, and arguing the case for women’s education. Together, these two seminal works went on to change the course of history, and her arguments continue to hold water today. This edition contains explanatory notes and an introduction by Bee Rowlatt, Chair of the Wollstonecraft Society.

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'We were ushered into this banqueting scene with the sound of minstrelsy, the old harper being seated on a stool beside the fireplace and twanging his instrument with a vast deal more power than melody. Never did Christmas board display a more goodly and gracious assemblage of countenances.' First published in 1820 in Irving’s masterpiece, The Sketch Book, The Christmas Dinner is a charming tale by the great American writer behind such timeless classics as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. Painting the scene of a Christmas dinner spent at the table of Bracebridge Hall, a countryside manor, the merry songs and stories of the dinner table echo with jollity of Christmases long past. (Part of Renard’s Christmas Card Classics series, 25% of the RRP of each book sold goes to Three Peas, a small refugee charity. This year, instead of a Christmas card, why not send a book?)

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George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In The Prevention of Literature, the third in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell considers the freedom of thought and expression. He discusses the effect of the ownership of the press on the accuracy of reports of events, and takes aim at political language, which ‘consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together.’ The Prevention of Literature is a stirring cry for freedom from censorship, which Orwell says must start with the writer themselves: ‘To write in plain vigorous language one has to think fearlessly.’

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George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. Politics vs. Literature, the fourth in the Orwell’s Essays series, is, at heart, a review of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Having been given a copy of the book on his eighth birthday, Orwell knows it inside out, and thinks highly of it; it is ‘pessimistic’, though, he says – ‘it descends into political partisanship of a narrow kind,’ designed to ‘humiliate man by reminding him that he is weak and ridiculous.’ Using the book as an example of enjoying a book whose author one cannot stand, Orwell goes on to say that he considers Gulliver’s Travels a work of art, leaving the reader to reconsider the books on their own shelves.

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First published in 1921 as part of her ground-breaking short-story collection Monday or Tuesday, Kew Gardens follows the thoughts of a set of characters walking past a flower bed in the royal botanic garden on a hot July day. Interweaving the thoughts of the characters with depictions of the natural world surrounding them, the narrative flows from mind to mind, from the tranquil flower bed to the bustling city outside. Written in Woolf’s trademark style, brimming with keen observation and rich language, Kew Gardens is both a paean to the natural world and an empathetic exploration of human experience. 'The light fell either upon the smooth, grey back of a pebble or the shell of a snail with its brown, circular veins, or, falling into a raindrop, it expanded with such intensity of red, blue and yellow the thin walls of water that one expected them to burst and disappear… Then the breeze stirred rather more briskly overhead and the colour was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of the men and women who walk in Kew Gardens in July.'

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First published in 1928, The Tower was Yeats's first collection published after receiving the Nobel Prize in 1923, and it is perhaps the major work that most cemented his reputation as one of the foremost literary figures of the twentieth century. The titular poem, 'The Tower', refers to Thoor Ballylee Castle, a Norman tower that Yeats purchased in 1917, and which formed the basis of the original cover design - evoked in the cover of this edition. The collection also includes some of his most inventive and profound work, and develops deep themes regarding life, love and myth. With explanatory notes, this edition seeks to bring the collection to a greater readership and to offer a more profound understanding of the great poet’s work.

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Working men of all countries, unite! First published in 1848, The Communist Manifesto is one of the most influential pieces of writing of all time. Written by two leading German philosophers whose names are now universally known, The Communist Manifesto is a documentation of class struggle and the plight of workers under capitalism, and a call for redress. In it, Marx and Engels lay out a searing account of the damage wrought by capitalism, and set out a route towards an alternative: a society without class, private property or a state. Beating a path for revolution and the overthrow of capitalism, The Communist Manifesto is a stirring call to arms that resounds with truth and power today.

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Edie finds the world around her increasingly difficult to comprehend. Words are no longer at her beck and call, old friends won't mind their own business and workmen have appeared in the neighbouring fields, preparing to obliterate the landscape she has known all her life. Rattling around in an old farmhouse on the cliffs, she's beginning to run out of excuses to stop do-gooders interfering when one day she finds an uninvited guest in the barn and is thrown back into the past. Jonah has finally made it to England - where everything, he's been told, will be better. But the journey was fraught with danger, and many of his fellow travellers didn't make it. Sights firmly set on London, but unsure which way to turn, he is unprepared for what happens when he breaks into Edie's barn. Haunted by the prospect of being locked away and unable to trust anyone else, the elderly woman stubbornly battling dementia and the traumatised illegal immigrant find solace in an unlikely companionship that helps them make sense of their worlds even as they struggle to understand each other. Crossing Over is a delicately spun tale that celebrates compassion and considers the transcendent language of humanity.

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François the Waif, considered by many to be Sand's masterpiece, tells the tale of a young orphan who is placed in rural foster care. Presented in a fresh edit of the original English translation, and with helpful annotations, this edition presents the text for a new generation of readers.

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When Lia lays an egg she doesn't know what to do. At her age, it's impossible to escape the baby question. She feels her heart's not in it but the egg is impossible to ignore Fledging is a riveting tale and resounding call for a woman's right to make her own choices, whether that means embracing motherhood or living child-free.

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Simon Mundy's Selected Poems is a monumental collection that brings together work published in five collections, across five decades, including the critically acclaimed By Fax to Alice Springs and More for Helen of Troy, as well as the more recent Waiting for Music, which included many of his collaborations with composers.

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What was it that got you through the Covid-19 pandemic? For some it was long walks; others turned to home baking. For millions it was video games, a booming industry which exploded in popularity over the pandemic years. Confined to our homes and with the lines of reality becoming blurred as everyday life shifted to screens, perhaps it was no wonder that so many of us were desperate to be transported to different worlds. In Playing with Reality: Gaming in a Pandemic, journalist and presenter Alex Humphreys, a passionate gamer herself, investigates this extraordinary boom in the gaming industry. Charting its rise, Alex interviews players and developers, sharing a glimpse of what was going on behind closed doors as studios closed and games were finished from home. Playing with Reality explores exactly what it was that made gaming a lifeline for so many, and what the future holds as we look to the metaverse.

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First published in 1925, set 'one Wednesday in mid-June', Mrs Dalloway charts the lives of several characters across a day in London. While Clarissa Dalloway goes about preparing for a high-society party she is to host that evening, pondering on her childhood and marriage, nearby Septimus Warren Smith, a First World War veteran, is plagued with memories of the war and of his friend who never returned. Weaving a multitude of voices and eras into one, dressed in the most beautiful of language, Mrs Dalloway has earned its reputation as one of the most iconic novels of the twentieth century and great successes of Modernist fiction. This edition also contains ‘Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street’, the short story upon which the novel is modelled.

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