Salman Rushdie   Before Salman Rushdie had that problem with a certain religious-political figure with a serious need to chill out, he'd already shown he was an important literary force....

Henry JamesAfter her parents' bitter divorce, young Maisie Farange finds herself turned into a 'little feathered shuttlecock' to be swatted back and forth by her selfish mother, Ida, and her...

Edmund De Waal   264 wood and ivory carvings none of them larger than a matchbox: potter Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in the...

Emma TennantSince the early 1970s, when she was in her mid-thirties, Emma Tennant has been a prolific novelist and has established herself as one of the leading British exponents of...

Edward WagenknechtA collection of critical and analytical essays which examine the enduring works of the English classical poet

Harper LeeFrom Harper Lee comes a landmark new novel set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird. Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch—"Scout"—returns home from...

André GideOriginally published in 1925, this book became known for the frank sexuality of its contents and its account of middle class French morality. The themes of the book explore...

Jane Carruthers and Marion ArnoldThomas Baines, an intrepid Victorian adventurer travelled extensively in South Africa and was selected to accompany David Livingstone in exploring the upper reaches of the Zambezi...

Angela CarterI know nothing. I am a tabula rasa, a blank sheet of paper, an unhatched egg. I have not yet become a woman, although I possess a woman's shape....

George Bernard ShawOne of Bernard Shaw’s most glittering comedies, Arms and the Man is a burlesque of Victorian attitudes to heroism, war and empire. In the contrast between Bluntschli, the...

Clem SunterThis of all the statements made day after day in the conversations and newspapers and on television and radio which are accepted at face value.Think of all the implicit...

Malcolm PryceTo the girls who came to make it big in the town's 'What the Butler Saw' movie industry, Aberystwyth was the town of broken dreams. To Dean Morgan who...