Search results for ""epitaph""
Austin Macauley Publishers The Last Epitaph
£11.99
Titan Books Ltd Halo Epitaph
An original novel set in the Halo universe - based on the New York Times best-selling video game series
£9.99
Austin Macauley Publishers Epitaph for Brezhnev
£13.99
HarperCollins Publishers Inc Epitaph for a Peach
£15.99
Austin Macauley Publishers The Last Epitaph
£17.99
Penguin Books Ltd Epitaph for a Spy
Josef Vadassy, a Hungarian refugee and language teacher living in France, is enjoying his first break for years in a small hotel on the Riviera. But when he takes his holiday photographs to be developed at a local chemists, he suddenly finds himself mistaken for a Gestapo agent and a charge of espionage is levelled at him. To prove himself innocent to the French police, he must discover which one of his fellow guests at his pension is the real spy. As he desperately tries to uncover the true culprit's identity, Vadassy must risk his job, his safety and everything he holds dear.
£9.99
HarperCollins Publishers Epitaph for the Ash: In Search of Recovery and Renewal
The ash tree has long been an integral part of the British landscape, its familiar branches protruding from limestone scars and chalky cliff faces. But tragically ash dieback, a disease from mainland Europe, now poses a serious threat to the trees’ survival. And their grave prognosis took on a personal resonance when, while writing this book, Lisa Samson was diagnosed with a brain tumour, forcing her to contemplate her own mortality while the trees’ likely fate emerged. Taking us from the lowlands of Norfolk to the northernmost reaches of the British Isles, Epitaph for the Ash offers up a rallying cry to treasure these remarkable woodlands while we can, before it is too late.
£9.99
Vintage Publishing Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph
'Outstanding... The best short introduction I have come across' Sunday TimesWhen he died at the age of just twenty-five, few imagined John Keats would one day be considered among the greatest poets of all time.Taking nine of Keats's best-known poems, Lucasta Miller excavates their backstories and, in doing so, resurrects the real Keats: an outsider from a damaged family whose visceral love of language allowed him to change the face of English literature for ever.Combining close-up readings with the story of his brief existence, Miller shows us how Keats crafted his groundbreaking poetry and explains why it continues to speak to us across the centuries.'One never wants Keats's life to end so soon; I didn't want this book to end, either' TLS Books of the Year'Irresistible... [Miller]digs into the backstories of her subject's most famous poems to uncover aspects of his life and work that challenge well-worn romantic myths' Wall Street Journal
£12.99
Epitaph LOUD
£11.99
Epitaph Snap Flash Hustle, Vol. 1
£15.22
Epitaph Survival Fetish
£17.99
Epitaph No Angel
£13.99
Epitaph Black [AF]: Widows & Orphans
£14.99
Epitaph Breathless
£14.99
Epitaph The Forevers
£17.99
Epitaph Come Into Me
£16.07
Epitaph Gravetrancers
£14.99
Epitaph The Dregs TP Vol 01
£11.99
New Directions Publishing Corporation Nox
Nox is an epitaph in the form of a book, a facsimile of a handmade book Anne Carson wrote and created after the death of her brother. The poem describes coming to terms with his loss through the lens of her translation of Poem 101 by Catullus “for his brother who died in the Troad.” Nox is a work of poetry, but arrives as a fascinating and unique physical object. Carson pasted old letters, family photos, collages and sketches on pages. The poems, typed on a computer, were added to this illustrated “book” creating a visual and reading experience so amazing as to open up our concept of poetry.
£39.99
Christian Focus Publications Ltd Susannah Spurgeon: Lessons for a Life of Joyful Eagerness in Christ
Have you heard of Spurgeon? Preacher, evangelist and stalwart patriarch of the Modern Western Church today. If the cliché ‘behind every great man is a strong woman’, is true, then Susannah Spurgeon remains one of the matriarchs of the same tradition. Spurgeon was the bone companion of her husband. As a pastoral assistant, as Charles’ wife and support through trials, this woman’s biography has been a long time coming. Mary Mohler has gathered information on Susie from sources spanning letters, devotionals and biographies. The result is a thoughtful, sympathetic and endearing epitaph to a sister in Christ, whose voice can no longer be ignored. Mohler allows room for academics, mothers, daughters and wives to dwell on Spurgeon’s joyful eagerness in Christ.
£15.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Wildlands Map Pack 2
The Dark House lies abandoned. Who knows what horrors lie within?Once the home of one of the Empire''s grandest family, the Dark House lies as an epitaph to their fall. As you fight your way across the two-storied Mansion map, you will find remnants of their wicked ways. Out back, struggle through the Hedge Maze map, sinister and long overgrown with vicious thorns. Down below, in the Crypt map, encounter the deadly curse that once cast a noble line into oblivion.This board expansion for Wildlands gives players three new maps, two of which are specifically designed for two players. Each map features new rules, new challenges, and new opportunities.Requires a copy of Wildlands to play.Number of players: 2-4 Ages: 14+Playing time: 30-60 minutesComponents: 2 boards, rule sheet
£13.49
Penguin Books Ltd Lost Japan
An enchanting and fascinating insight into Japanese landscape, culture, history and future. Originally written in Japanese, this passionate, vividly personal book draws on the author's experiences in Japan over thirty years. Alex Kerr brings to life the ritualized world of Kabuki, retraces his initiation into Tokyo's boardrooms during the heady Bubble Years, and tells the story of the hidden valley that became his home.But the book is not just a love letter. Haunted throughout by nostalgia for the Japan of old, Kerr's book is part paean to that great country and culture, part epitaph in the face of contemporary Japan's environmental and cultural destruction.Winner of Japan's Shincho Gakugei Literature Prize, and now with a new preface.Alex Kerr is an American writer, antiques collector and Japanologist. Lost Japan is his most famous work. He was the first foreigner to be awarded the Shincho Gakugei Literature Prize for the best work of non-fiction published in Japan.
£10.99
Orion Publishing Co Souvenir
'The best evocation I've read of London in the '80s' Neil Tennant'I loved Souvenir . . . it rescued some things for me - a certain aesthetic, a philosophical engagement with time and poignant beauty and lived history that I have found myself looking for, and not finding, elsewhere in recent years . . . the book gave me new hope' John Burnside'A suspended act of retrieval, a partisan recall; a sustained, subtle summary of our recent past, and an epitaph for a future we never had' Philip Hoare'Michael Bracewell proves himself to be nothing less than the poet laureate of late capitalism' Jonathan CoeA vivid eulogy for London of the late 1970s and early 80s - the last years prior to the rise of the digital city. An elliptical, wildly atmospheric remembrance of the sites and soundtrack, at once aggressively modern and strangely elegiac, that accompanied the twilight of one era and the dawn of another. Haunted bedsits, post-punk entrepreneurs in the Soho Brasserie, occultists in Fitzrovia, Docklands before Canary Wharf, frozen suburbs in the winter of 1980...
£14.99
Orion Publishing Co Lady Caroline Lamb
From the outset, Caroline Lamb had a rebellious nature. From childhood she grew increasingly troublesome, experimenting with sedatives like laudanum, and she had a special governess to control her. She also had a merciless wit and talent for mimicry. She spoke French and German fluently, knew Greek and Latin, and sketched impressive portraits. As the niece of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, she was already well connected, and her courtly skills resulted in her marriage to the Hon. William Lamb (later Lord Melbourne) at the age on nineteen. For a few years they enjoyed a happy marriage, despite Lamb''s siblings and mother-in-law detesting her and referring to her as ''the little beast''. In 1812 Caroline embarked on a well-publicised affair with the poet Lord Byron - he was 24, she 26. Her phrase ''mad, bad and dangerous to know'' became his lasting epitaph. When he broke things off, Caroline made increasingly public attempts to reunite. Her obsession came to define much o
£9.99
Everyman Poems Of Mourning
Many cultures identify mourning as the very source of poetry and music, what Elizabeth Bishop calls the art of losing. That might well be the title of this collection. Not every poem is cornered with death, but all are about loss. The poems chosen traverse a surprisingly wide range of emotions from despair to joy, resignation to anger, all articulated in language of the greatest power and beauty . All the major verse forms of mourning are represented here: epitaph, requiem and lament. Three great elergies by Milton, Whitman and Rilke are surrounded by a wide variety of shorter poems. Naturally, the pathos of death predominates, but its comedy has not been neglected, whether in the savage poems of World War I or the gentle teasing of seventeenth-century satire. Poets include: Akhmatova, Auden, Bishop, Brodsky, Browning, Carew, Cory, Cowley, Dickinson, Donne, Dryden, Dyer, Fletcher, Graves, Gurney, Hardy, Harrison, Herrick, Hopkins, Horace, King, Leopardi, Lowell, MacCaig, Mandelstam, Milosz, Philips, Propertius, Roethke, Smith, Tennyson, Dylan Thomas, Edward Thomas and Wordsworth.
£10.99
Sonicbond Publishing Elvis Costello And The Attractions: Every Album, Every Song
Whether you know him as Howard Coward, Napoleon Dynamite, or the Emotional Toothpaste, and are familiar with his work with the Attractions, the Confederates, or the Imposters, Elvis Costello's career has always been about reinvention and his vast catalogue of over 30 studio albums since 1977 is a testament to his prolificacy. However, this book focuses on his most acclaimed and accessible work, recorded mostly with The Attractions (Steve Nieve, Pete Thomas, and Bruce Thomas) between 1977 and 1986, though some other high-profile friends - Nick Lowe, Billy Sherrill, and T-Bone Burnett, among others - show up along the way. From his modest solo beginnings as a pub rocker with attitude on My Aim Is True to his cacophonous epitaph to The Attractions on Blood and Chocolate, this book follows a hectic and, at times, baffling career trajectory that often steamrolled commercial fame and fortune in favour of artistic freedom and expression. Elvis Costello and The Attractions - On Track explores every album, every song, and every non-album B-side or contemporary cast-off from their all-too-brief whirlwind decade of existence.
£14.99
Sheldrake Press When Grandmama Fell Off the Boat: The Best of Harry Graham
When Grandmama Fell off the Boat is an anthology of the humorous verse of Harry Graham, one of the early 20th century’s wittiest writers. Graham made his name as the author of Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes, published in 1898 under the pseudonym Col. D. Streamer (he was a Coldstream Guard). He went on to become a successful writer of stage-show lyrics, and in 1923 had five smash-hit musicals running simultaneously in the West End of London. His work was published not only in England but also in America, where he was credited with introducing ‘sick’ verse. The Times in its 1936 obituary compared him with Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and W. S. Gilbert, an epitaph that has stood the test of time. Graham’s secret is his ability to relate common episodes with a sardonic twist. A father irritated by his crying infant finds peace and quiet by popping him in the Frigidaire and a man whose wife elopes with the chauffeur despairs of ever starting the car. His callous and quotable rhymes became the table talk of a generation, influencing emerging writers such as W. H. Auden, George Orwell and Agatha Christie.
£16.89
Oxford University Press Inc Tallis
The composer Thomas Tallis (c. 1505 - November 1585) lived and worked through much of the turbulent Tudor period in England. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not just react to radical change: he thrived on it. He helped invent new musical styles to meet the demands of the English Reformation. He revived and reimagined older musical forms for a new era. Fewer than a hundred of his works have survived, but they are incredibly diverse, from miniature settings of psalms and hymns to a monumental forty-voice motet. In this new biography, author Kerry McCarthy traces Tallis's long career from his youthful appointment at Dover Priory to his years as a senior member of the Chapel Royal, revisiting the most important documents of his life and a wide variety of his musical works. The book also takes readers on a guided journey along the River Thames to the palaces, castles, and houses where Tallis made music for the four monarchs he served. It ends with reflections on Tallis's will, his epitaph (whose complete text McCarthy has recently rediscovered), and other postmortem remembrances that give us a glimpse of his significant place in the sixteenth-century musical world. Tallis will be treasured by performers, scholars, Tudor enthusiasts, and anyone interested in English Renaissance music.
£34.50
Batsford Ltd The Illustrated letters of Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters, Writings and Wit
"I don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do anything one does. I lived on honeycomb." Oscar Wilde Although it is over 120 years since his infamous trial for indecency, Oscar Wilde has never held greater fascination for us. This packed illustrated biography tells the life of Oscar Wilde through his own words – private letters, poems, plays, stories and legendary witticisms. It includes his relationships with key artists and writers of the time, including John Ruskin, Charles Ricketts, and Lillie Langtry. It is illustrated throughout with paintings, engravings, contemporary photographs, cartoons and caricatures of Wilde and his social circle. With illustrations and paintings by Aubrey Beardsley, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, James Whistler and Max Beerbohm, it is a beautiful evocation of the glittering fin de siecle word by its most fascinating wordsmith and aesthete. The book details Wilde's ruin after the trial and its outcome. The profundity of his writing from prison and exile form an epitaph, not only to his own life, but also for the era that carelessly delighted in it.
£15.29
Little, Brown Book Group South Riding
NOW A BRITISH DRAMA FILM AND A MAJOR BBC TELEVISION ADAPTATION. A preface by Shirley Williams, an introduction by Marion Shaw and an epitaph by Vera Brittain.'Rich in humour and worldly insight' INDEPENDENT 'The novel undoubtedly remains a fascinating depiction of a time and place' GUARDIAN 'Holtby's personal masterpiece . . . I can't say enough good things about this book' SARAH WATERS When Sarah Burton returns to her hometown as headmistress she is full of ambition, determined to create a great school and to inspire her girls to take all they can from life. But in the aftermath of the First World War, the country is in depression and ideals are hard won. Lydia Holly, the scholarship girl from the shacks, is the most brilliant student Sarah has ever taught, but when her mother's health fails, her education must be sacrificed. Robert Carne of Maythorpe Hall stands for everything Sarah despises: his family has farmed the South Riding for generations, their position uncontested. Yet Sarah cannot help being drawn to this proud, haunted - and almost ruined - man.South Riding is a rich, panoramic novel, bringing vividly to life a rural community on the brink of change.
£10.99
Dalkey Archive Press Savannah
Savannah is a starkly tender and intimate recollection by French writer and journalist Jean Rolin of his friendship with British Vogue photographer Kate Barry. Both humorous and insightful, it in many ways serves as the epitaph to her life, which ended in a fall from her fourth-floor apartment in France. Barry was a very close friend of Jean Rolin, and together the two of them made a trip to the United States to retrace the footsteps of Flannery O'Connor, a Southern writer for whom Kate was deeply impassioned. In 2014, after Barry's death, Jean Rolin wanted to revisit this trip and reconstruct the memory of their journey in her absence. As he recreates his roadtrip over the course of this book, which ends, fittingly, in Savannah, Rolin evokes landscapes, characters, and a uniquely Southern atmosphere that underscores the relentless passage of time. Juxtaposed against the themes of loss and mortality, Jean Rolin evokes with light touches the figure of Kate. His incredible descriptive talent shines through in vivid descriptions of the South; he approaches his travel memoir with the accuracy of a documentary and the vibrant writing of a poet, and his memories of Kate are preserved beneath the motif of sucking the marrow out of life and keeping death at bay.
£11.24
Oxford University Press Selected Poetry
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was one of the most versatile minds in European intellectual history, and a shaping influence in the development of English poetry. As a radical young poet in the years following the French Revolution, Coleridge collaborated with Wordsworth in "Lyrical Ballads" (1798) and was by turns dramatist, political journalist, lecturer and religious thinker. This edition includes his two most famous poems, "Kubla Khan" and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", as well as such blank-verse `conversation' poems as "The Eolian Harp", "This Lime Tree Bower My Prison" and "Frost at Midnight". Not least of the attractions of Heather Jackson's selection is the earlier version of the "Rime" which she presents in full, along with the later, better-known version. Demonstrating the diversity characteristic of Coleridge's work, from early politically-inspired sonnets, to an epitaph he composed for himself shortly before his death, this substantial collection is supplemented by an introduction and notes. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
£7.78
Penguin Books Ltd Notes from Walnut Tree Farm
Calming, thought-provoking, poetic and honest, Notes from Walnut Tree Farm is a collection of writing and musing by documentary-maker, environmentalist and author of Waterlog, Roger Deakin. 'Gentle, straight, honest, inquisitive, funny, melancholic' Spectator'A lovely book that is a poignant epitaph to a remarkable individual' Amazon Review________________For the last six years of his life, Roger Deakin kept notebooks. In them, he wrote his daily thoughts, impressions, feelings and observations about and around his Suffolk home, Walnut Tree Farm. Collected here are the very best of these writings, capturing his extraordinary, restless curiosity about nature as well as his impressions of our changing world.Perfect for fans of Robert Macfarlane and Colin Tudge, this is a book that fills readers with a desire to explore the world around them.________________'A secular saint' The Times'Marvellous, wonderful, lovely, remarkable . . . to be read and reread and treasured' Elizabeth Jane Howard, Daily Mail'Very funny, sharp-eyed. To look at the world through Deakin's eyes was to see somewhere that was more wonderful than it often appears' Sunday Telegraph'Thoughtful and invigorating, full of humour, timeless . . . will take its place among the classics of Nature diaries . . . to be read alongside Frances Kilvert, Gilbert White, and Dorothy Wordsworth' Mail on Sunday'So busy and bustling with life' Observer
£10.99
Penguin Books Ltd The Big Sleep and Other Novels
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World''Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since' Paul Auster, author of The New York TrilogyRaymond Chandler was America's preeminent writer of detective fiction, and this edition of The Big Sleep and Other Novels collects three of the best novels to feature his hard-drinking, philosophising PI, Philip Marlowe.Raymond Chandler created the fast talking, trouble seeking Californian private eye Philip Marlowe for his first great novel The Big Sleep in 1939. Often imitated but never bettered, it is in Marlowe's long shadow that every fictional detective must stand - and under the influence of Raymond Chandler's addictive prose that every crime author must write. Marlowe's entanglement with the Sternwood family - and an attendant cast of colourful underworld figures - is the background to a story reflecting all the tarnished glitter of the great American Dream. The hard-boiled detective's iconic image burns just as brightly in Farewell My Lovely, on the trail of a missing nightclub crooner. And the inimitable Marlowe is able to prove that trouble really is his business in Raymond Chandler's brilliant epitaph, The Long Goodbye.'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards that others still try to attain' Sunday Times'Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angelos with a romantic presence' Ross Macdonald, author of The Drowning Pool
£12.99
Wave Books No Real Light
"Joe Wenderoth is a brilliant writer, original and subversive, sensitive and strange. I read his work with awe and admiration."-Ben Marcus "Joe Wenderoth's brave new poetic talent is like nothing so much as a live wire writing its own epitaph in sparks. [His poems] throb brilliantly with a sense of the 'too much.' ...But in Wenderoth's case the too much is the too little or the too ordinary-a very remarkable discovery to have made so late in the history of poetry. Philip Larkin and a few American poets have approached it, but Wenderoth's instrument is sharper than theirs; he makes quick cuts in the meat of the ordinary, which is the meat of the impossible."-Cal Bedient This clear-eyed new work from a favorite young poet is searching and solemn, dissatisfied with artificial condolences and pat maxims. Joe Wenderoth's determination in the face of harsh realities is what rescues us, and him, from hopelessness. "Luck" So a screaming woke you just in time An animal's scream, or animals'. What kind of animal it was doesn't matter, and cannot, in any case, be determined. The point is you are saved. Your mouth has been opened. Joe Wenderoth grew up near Baltimore and is the author of five books of prose and poetry. He teaches at the University of California, Davis.
£9.99
BOA Editions, Limited Peeping Tom's Cabin: Comic Verse 1928-2008
"X. J. Kennedy's well-known travels between the realms of the comic and the serious qualify him for dual citizenship in the world of poetry. Here, the playful is on full display in verse not just 'light' but bright and delightful."-Billy Collins Peeping Tom's Cabin is the first full-length collection of light verse for adults composed by one of America's most celebrated poets. An uncompromising formalist, Kennedy uses a broad range of longstanding poetic forms, including limerick, nursery rhyme, ballad, rhymed epitaph, and clerihew. This collection includes many poems previously published in poetry and popular journals, including The Sewanee Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and Poetry. These poems honor and skewer all classes of citizen, regardless of their revered place in society. Parents, lovers, poetry critics, students, and especially notable literary figures receive Kennedy's astute comic attention. "To Someone Who Insisted I Look Up Someone" I rang them up while touring Timbuktu, Those bosom chums to whom you're known as "Who?" X. J. Kennedy has published six collections of verse, including Nude Descending a Staircase, which received the Lamont Award from the Academy of American Poets. His newest collection, The Lords of Misrule, received the 2004 Poets' Prize. Kennedy has also authored eighteen children's books and several textbooks on fiction and poetry. Other recognitions include the Los Angeles Book Award for Poetry, the Aiken-Taylor Award, and Guggenheim and National Arts Council fellowships. Kennedy was also given the first Michael Braude Award for light verse by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
£12.99
Hachette Books Do What You Want: The Story of Bad Religion
DO WHAT YOU WANT: The Story of Bad Religion reveals the ups and downs of the band's 40-year career. From their beginnings as teenagers jamming in a San Fernando Valley garage dubbed "The Hell Hole" to headlining major music festivals around the world, DO WANT YOU WANT tells the whole story in irreverent style.While DO WHAT YOU WANT tracks down nearly all of Bad Religion's members past and present, the chief storytellers are the four voices that define Bad Religion: Greg Graffin, a Wisconsin kid who sang in the choir and became an L.A. punk rock icon while he was still a teenager; Brett Gurewitz, a high school dropout who founded the independent punk label Epitaph Records and went on to become a record mogul; Jay Bentley, a surfer and skater who gained recognition as much for his bass skills as for his onstage antics; and Brian Baker, a founding member of Minor Threat who joined the band in 1994 and brings a fresh perspective as an intimate outsider.With a unique blend of melodic hardcore and thought-provoking lyrics, Bad Religion paved the way for the punk rock explosion of the 1990s, opening the door for bands like NOFX, The Offspring, Rancid, Green Day, and Blink-182 to reach wider audiences. They showed the world what punk could be, and they continue to spread their message one song, one show, one tour at a time-with no signs of stopping.
£14.99
Transworld Publishers Ltd Gweilo: Memories Of A Hong Kong Childhood
Martin Booth died in February 2004, shortly after finishing the book that would be his epitaph - this wonderfully remembered, beautifully told memoir of a childhood lived to the full in a far-flung outpost of the British Empire...An inquisitive seven-year-old, Martin Booth found himself with the whole of Hong Kong at his feet when his father was posted there in the early 1950s. Unrestricted by parental control and blessed with bright blond hair that signified good luck to the Chinese, he had free access to hidden corners of the colony normally closed to a Gweilo, a 'pale fellow' like him. Befriending rickshaw coolies and local stallholders, he learnt Cantonese, sampled delicacies such as boiled water beetles and one-hundred-year-old eggs, and participated in colourful festivals. He even entered the forbidden Kowloon Walled City, wandered into the secret lair of the Triads and visited an opium den. Along the way he encountered a colourful array of people, from the plink plonk man with his dancing monkey to Nagasaki Jim, a drunken child molester, and the Queen of Kowloon, the crazed tramp who may have been a member of the Romanov family.Shadowed by the unhappiness of his warring parents, a broad-minded mother who, like her son, was keen to embrace all things Chinese, and a bigoted father who was enraged by his family's interest in 'going native', Martin Booth's compelling memoir is a journey into Chinese culture and an extinct colonial way of life that glows with infectious curiosity and humour.
£10.99
The Self-Publishing Partnership Ltd The BRAVE SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH: A personal account of battles against the Japanese and then dacoits in Burma between 1944 & 1947
The Brave Shall Inherit the Earth is the motto of the Rajputana Rifles, the oldest rifle regiment in the pre-World-War-Two Indian Army. It is a fitting epitaph to this remarkable young officer who commanded the mortar platoon in 3/6th Rajputana Rifles during the 14th Army’s invasion of Burma in 1944. Denis O’Leary came from a family of soldiers; his father was also RajRif. Just out of officer training, a practicing Catholic, handsome, athletic, twenty years old, Denis joined 3/6th Rajputana Rifles on the eve of Field Marshal Slim’s invasion of Burma in 1944. This book is the story of his Regiment in that Homeric engagement. It is also about the close friendships formed in war between a British officer and his Rajput and Punjabi ‘Mussalman’ soldiers. The Regiment ‘had been fortunate in our introduction to war. It had been a gradual process.’ Luckily Denis learnt quickly and by the time he came to his Kurukshetra – a decisive battle to hold Pear Hill against suicidal Japanese attacks during the Irrawaddy crossings – his mettle had been tested and forged. During this battle, in which he won his first Military Cross, he was badly wounded by shrapnel and evacuated back to India for the rest of the war, only re-joining his beloved battalion in pre-Independence Burma, which this account also covers. Denis O’Leary was a life-long soldier, he is a modest historian, he writes simply but eloquently. There are few books so hauntingly beautiful about something so savage as war.
£10.45
Penguin Books Ltd The Emperor
The Penguin Modern Classics edition of Ryszard Kapuscinski's The Emperor is translated by William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand, with an introduction by Neal Ascherton.After the deposition of Haile Selassie in 1974, which ended the ancient rule of the Abyssinian monarchy, Ryszard Kapuscinski travelled to Ethiopia and sought out surviving courtiers to tell their stories. Here, their eloquent and ironic voices depict the lavish, corrupt world they had known - from the rituals, hierarchies and intrigues at court to the vagaries of a ruler who maintained absolute power over his impoverished people. They describe his inexorable downfall as the Ethiopian military approach, strange omens appear in the sky and courtiers vanish, until only the Emperor and his valet remain in the deserted palace, awaiting their fate. Dramatic and mesmerising, The Emperor is one of the great works of reportage and a haunting epitaph on the last moments of a dying regime.Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932-2007) was born in Pinsk, now in Belarus. Kapuscinski was the pre-eminent writer among Polish reporters. His best-known book is a reportage-novel of the decline of Haile Selassie's anachronistic regime in Ethiopia - The Emperor, which has been translated into many languages. Shah of Shahs, about the last Shah of Iran, and Imperium, about the last days of the Soviet Union, have enjoyed similar success. If you enjoyed The Emperor, you might like Norman Mailer's The Fight, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'Stunning ... a magical eloquence'John Updike, New Yorker'[The Emperor] transcends reportage, becoming a nightmare of power ... An unforgettable, fiercely comic, and finally compassionate book'Salman Rushdie'Kapuscinski trascends the limitations of journalism and writes with the narrative power of a Conrad or Kipling or Orwell'Blake Morrison
£9.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Reported Missing in the Great War: 100 Years of Searching for the Truth
Of the one million British and Empire military personnel who were killed in action, died of wounds, disease or injury or were missing presumed dead during the First World War, over half a million have no known grave. Of these, nearly 188,000 are buried anonymously in Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries, with a stone bearing the epitaph 'Known Unto God'. The remains of a further 339,000 lie scattered across the wartime battlefields, having been buried in marked graves that were subsequently obliterated as front lines moved backwards and forwards, or destroyed forever in the carnage mechanised warfare wrought upon the human body. For the families of those who were reported missing, months of agonising uncertainty could await, as searches were made to establish the precise fate of their loved ones. Sometimes rumours that an individual was recovering from wounds in a hospital, unable to contact his family, or had been taken prisoner by the enemy could circulate, causing a toxic admixture of hope, tinged with anxiety then dashed by the despair of the confirmation of death. This book traces the history of the searching services that were established to assist families in eliciting definitive news of their missing loved ones. Then, using previously unpublished material, most of it lovingly preserved in family archives for over a century, the lives of eight soldiers, whose families had no known resting place to visit after the conclusion of the war, are recounted. These young men, their lives full of promise, vanished from the face of the earth. The circumstances of their deaths and the painstaking efforts undertaken, both by family members and public and voluntary organisations, to piece together what information could be found are described. The eventual acceptance of the reality of death and the need to properly commemorate the lives of those who would have no marked grave are examined. For three of the eight men, recent discoveries have meant that over a century since they were given up as missing, their remains have been identified and allowed families some degree of closure.
£22.50
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Cambridge in the Great War
Cambridge is one of the most famous universities in the world and its library is one of only five copyright libraries in the UK. At the start of the twentieth century it was a privileged life for some, but many in Cambridge knew that war was becoming truly inevitable. What the proverbial 'gown' feared communicated itself to the surrounding 'town'. Terrible rumours were rife, that the Germans would burn the university library and raise King's College chapel to the ground, before firing shells along the tranquil 'Backs' of the River Cam until the weeping willows were just blackened stumps. Frightened but determined, age-old 'town and gown' rivalries were put aside as the city united against the common enemy. This book tells Cambridge's fascinating story in the grim years of the Great War. Thousands of university students, graduates and lecturers alike enlisted, along with the patriotic townsfolk. The First Eastern General Military Hospital was subsequently established in Trinity College and treated more than 80,000 casualties from the Western Front.Though the university had been the longtime hub of life and employment in the town, many people suffered great losses and were parted from loved ones, decimating traditional breadwinners and livelihoods, from the rationing of food, drink and fuel, to hundreds of restrictions imposed by DORA. As a result, feelings ran high and eventually led to riots beneath the raiding zeppelins and ever-present threat of death. The poet, Rupert Brooke, a graduate of King's College, died on his way to the Dardanelles in 1915, but his most famous poem The Soldier became a preemptive memorial and the epitaph of millions. If I should die Think only this of me That there's some corner of a foreign field That is forever England.
£9.99
Harvard University Press Greek Lyric, Volume III: Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and Others
Precious snippets of ancient song.The most important poets writing in Greek in the sixth century BC came from Sicily and southern Italy. Stesichorus was called by ancient writers “most Homeric”—a recognition of his epic themes and noble style. He composed verses about the Trojan War and its aftermath, the Argonauts, the adventures of Heracles. He may have been a solo singer, performing these poems to his own cithara accompaniment. Ibycus probably belonged to the colony of Rhegium in southwestern Italy. Like Stesichorus he wrote lyrical narratives on mythological themes, but he also composed erotic poems. Simonides is said to have spent his later years in Sicily. He was in Athens at the time of the Persian Wars, though, and was acclaimed for his epitaph on the Athenians who died at Marathon. He was a successful poet in various genres, including victory odes, dirges, and dithyrambic poetry. The power of his pathos emerges in the fragments we have.All the extant verse of these poets is given in this third volume of David Campbell’s edition of Greek lyric poetry, along with the ancients’ accounts of their lives and works. Ten contemporary poets are also included, among them Arion, Lasus, and Pratinas.The LCL edition of Greek Lyric is in five volumes. Sappho and Alcaeus—the illustrious singers of sixth-century Lesbos—are in the first volume. Volume II contains the work of Anacreon, composer of solo song; the Anacreontea; and the earliest writers of choral poetry, notably the seventh-century Spartans Alcman and Terpander. Bacchylides and other fifth-century poets are in Volume IV along with Corinna (although some argue that she belongs to the third century). The last volume includes the new school of dithyrambic poets (mid-fifth to mid-fourth century), together with the anonymous poems: drinking songs, children’s songs, cult hymns, and others.
£24.95
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Trim, The Cartographer's Cat: The ship's cat who helped Flinders map Australia
Not many ships’ cats have even one memorial statue, let alone six. But Trim does, including one outside Euston Station in London, proudly unveiled by Prince William on the bicentenary of Matthew Flinders’s death – 19 July 2014. Trim was the ship’s cat who accompanied Matthew Flinders on his voyages to circumnavigate and map the coastline of Australia from 1801 to 1803. He lived quite the adventurous life. As a small kitten he fell overboard while at sea but managed to swim back to the vessel and climb back on board by scaling a rope. This cemented his position as Flinders’s beloved companion, and together they survived a voyage around the world, the circumnavigation of Australia and a shipwreck. When Flinders was imprisoned by the French in Mauritius in 1803 Trim shared his captivity until one day he mysteriously disappeared – which heartbreakingly Flinders attributed to his being stolen and eaten by a hungry slave. Trim, The Cartographer’s Cat is an ode to this much-loved ship’s cat, which will warm the heart of any cat lover. The first part of the book reproduces Flinders’ own whimsical tribute to Trim, written while in captivity in the early 1800s, with added ‘friendly footnotes’ to provide some background to Flinders’s numerous literary allusions and nautical terms. Next the book discusses where Flinders was when he wrote his tribute and why, and what his letters and journals from that time tell us about his ‘sporting, affectionate and useful companion’. Finally, we learn what Trim’s views on all of this might have been, in a fun and fanciful observation on his premature epitaph. Accompanying all of this are beautiful maps, historical artworks, quirky original illustrations by Ad Long and excerpts from Flinders’ original script, showing his beautiful handwriting. This book will make a unique and treasured gift for Flinders fans, Trim fans and cat lovers around the world.
£15.99
Princeton University Press Economy of the Unlost: (Reading Simonides of Keos with Paul Celan)
The ancient Greek lyric poet Simonides of Keos was the first poet in the Western tradition to take money for poetic composition. From this starting point, Anne Carson launches an exploration, poetic in its own right, of the idea of poetic economy. She offers a reading of certain of Simonides' texts and aligns these with writings of the modern Romanian poet Paul Celan, a Jew and survivor of the Holocaust, whose "economies" of language are notorious. Asking such questions as, What is lost when words are wasted? and Who profits when words are saved? Carson reveals the two poets' striking commonalities. In Carson's view Simonides and Celan share a similar mentality or disposition toward the world, language and the work of the poet. Economy of the Unlost begins by showing how each of the two poets stands in a state of alienation between two worlds. In Simonides' case, the gift economy of fifth-century b.c. Greece was giving way to one based on money and commodities, while Celan's life spanned pre- and post-Holocaust worlds, and he himself, writing in German, became estranged from his native language. Carson goes on to consider various aspects of the two poets' techniques for coming to grips with the invisible through the visible world. A focus on the genre of the epitaph grants insights into the kinds of exchange the poets envision between the living and the dead. Assessing the impact on Simonidean composition of the material fact of inscription on stone, Carson suggests that a need for brevity influenced the exactitude and clarity of Simonides' style, and proposes a comparison with Celan's interest in the "negative design" of printmaking: both poets, though in different ways, employ a kind of negative image making, cutting away all that is superfluous. This book's juxtaposition of the two poets illuminates their differences--Simonides' fundamental faith in the power of the word, Celan's ultimate despair--as well as their similarities; it provides fertile ground for the virtuosic interplay of Carson's scholarship and her poetic sensibility.
£27.00
University Press of Kansas Shiloh: Conquer or Perish
Winner of the Richard B. Harwell Award, Tennessee History Book Award and the Doughlas Southall Freeman AwardA critical moment in the Civil War, the Battle of Shiloh has been the subject of many books. However, none has told the story of Shiloh as Timothy Smith does in this volume, the first comprehensive history of the two-day battle in April 1862-a battle so fluid and confusing that its true nature has eluded a clear narrative telling until now.Unfolding over April 6th and 7th, the Battle of Shiloh produced the most sprawling and bloody field of combat since the Napoleonic wars, with an outcome that set the Confederacy on the road to defeat. Contrary to previous histories, Smith tells us, the battle was not won or lost on the first day, but rather in the decision-making of the night that followed and in the next day's fighting. Devoting unprecedented attention to the details of that second day, his book shows how the Union's triumph was far less assured, and much harder to achieve, than has been acknowledged. Smith also employs a new organization strategy to clarify the action. By breaking his analysis of both days' fighting into separate phases and sectors, he makes it much easier to grasp what was happening in each combat zone, why it unfolded as it did, and how it related to the broader tactical and operational context of the entire battle.The battlefield's diverse and challenging terrain also comes in for new scrutiny. Through detailed attention to the terrain's major features-most still visible at the Shiloh National Military Park-Smith is able to track their specific and considerable influence on the actions, and their consequences, over those forty-eight hours. The experience of the soldiers finally finds its place here too, as Smith lets us hear, as never before, the voices of the common man, whether combatant or local civilian, caught up in a historic battle for their lives, their land, their honor, and their homes.""We must this day conquer or perish,"" Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston declared on the morning of April 6, 1862. His words proved prophetic, and might serve as an epitaph for the larger war, as we see fully for the first time in this unparalleled and surely definitive history of the Battle of Shiloh.
£32.36
Little, Brown Book Group Panic as Man Burns Crumpets: The Vanishing World of the Local Journalist
WINNER OF THE LAKELAND BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2022You dreamed of being a journalist and the dream has come true. You love working for your local paper . . . although not everything is as you imagined.You embarrass yourself with a range of celebrities, from John Hurt to Jordan. Your best story is 'The Man With the Pigeon Tattoo'.A former colleague interviews President Trump. You urinate in the president of the Mothers' Union's garden. Your appearance as a hard-hitting columnist on a BBC talk show does not go well. And being photographed naked is only the second most humiliating thing to happen one infamous afternoon. There are serious stories, such as a mass shooting, a devastating flood, and the search for Madeleine McCann.Meanwhile local papers are dying. Your building is crumbling and your readership is dwindling. Your carefully crafted features are read by fewer people than a story about fancy dress for dogs. Panic as Man Burns Crumpets is the inside story of local newspapers during the past twenty-five years, told in a way that's funny, poignant and revealing.'For those who know about provincial newspapers, this will be a classic and a gem. Those who don't know will envy what they have missed'MELVYN BRAGG'Brisk and entertaining. A very readable love letter to a disappearing world, told with verve and tenderness'STUART MACONIE, author of Pies and Prejudice'Gut-bustingly funny, poignant and packed with astonishing insider information'M. W. CRAVEN, author of the award-winning The Puppet Show'Local journalism has never seemed more exotic than in this part-memoir, part-ode to that disappearing art, which is as funny as it is endearing . . . Told with a tender fondness, the bonkers, baffling but vital world of local press is paraded with the style that it deserves'JONATHAN WHITELAW, Sun'Refreshingly honest, engagingly self-deprecating, tremendously funny and more than a little heartbreaking. By far my favourite read of the year so far'MIKE WARD, TV critic, Daily Express/Daily Star'Local publishers . . . need to hold on to thoughtful, dedicated writers such as Roger Lytollis, or his book will be an epitaph to a centuries-old industry'IAN BURRELL, i paper'Anyone who has ever worked at a local newspaper, or wondered what it is like, should read this book. Equally hilarious and heartbreaking'DOMINIC PONSFORD, media editor at New Statesman Media Group/editor-in-chief at Press Gazette'[Lytollis] writes with clarity, comically self-effacing honesty and surprising poignancy . . . [this is] the story of what it is like to love what you do, and be great at it, and to watch it collapse around you in slow motion'ROBYN VINTER, Guardian'For anyone wondering where their local press went, this is as clear an account of how it was pickpocketed, drained of blood, and left to die as you'll find'ED NEEDHAM, Strong Words magazine'Panic as Man Burns Crumpets gives a powerful, if not to say dismaying, overview of an industry in terminal decline'NAT SEGNIT, Times Literary Supplement'The best book I've read this year, by some margin. Brilliantly written, frequently laugh-out-loud funny, but also reflective, candid, poignant and passionate about the importance of journalism. Superb'CHRIS MASON, BBC political correspondent/presenter of Radio 4's Any Questions'Many books written by journalists have come across my desk over the course of my time as publisher of Hold the Front Page, but I would say without any hesitation that this one is the best. Not only is it the funniest, and the best-written, it is also the most honest in terms of what it reveals about its author, and more importantly about our craft'PAUL LINFORD, Hold the Front Page
£16.99