A remarkable, truthful and vivid recollection of childhood, from the author of Stet, After a Funeral, Don't Look at Me Like That and Instead of a Letter. Here Athill goes back to the beginning in a sharp evocation of a childhood unfashionably filled with happiness - a Norfolk country house, servants, the pleasures of horses, the unfolding secrets of adults and sex. This is England in the 1920s seen (with a clear and unsentimental eye) from the vantage point of England in 2001. It was a privileged and loving life: but did it equip the author to be happy?
A New York Times Notable Book: This memoir of a career in book publishing “should please anyone who cares about twentieth-century literature” (The Washington Post Book World). For nearly five decades, Diana Athill edited (nursed, coerced, coaxed) some of the most celebrated writers in the English language, among them V. S. Naipaul, Philip Roth, John Updike, Jean Rhys, Mordecai Richler, Molly Keane, and Norman Mailer. A founding editor of the prestigious publishing house André Deutsch Ltd., Athill takes us on a guided tour through the corridors of literary London, offering a keenly observed, devilishly funny, and always compassionate insider’s portrait of the glories and pitfalls of making books—spiced with candid insights about the type of people who make brilliant writers and ingenious publishers, and the idiosyncrasies of both. It is both “wryly humorous” (The New York Times Book Review) and “full of history, wisdom, and dirt” (The Boston Globe). “This is not literary life as we know it today—huge advances, showbiz and vast conglomerates—but the world of small literary houses . . . An enveloping blast of nostalgia: read and marvel at what we (all of us) are missing.” —Marie Claire “A beautifully written, hard-headed, and generally insightful look back at the heyday of post-war London publishing by a woman who was at its center for nearly half a century.” —The Washington Times “Witty and astute . . . The literarily curious will find [her] portraits of leading contemporary authors irresistible.” —Publishers Weekly
The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.
In a celebration of her life and writing, this collection brings together four of Diana Athill's best-loved memoirs, spanning her very English childhood, her life and loves during World War II, her publishing career at Andre Deutsch, and her reflections on old age."
Good hair day? Bad hair day? Hair has always evoked strong emotions. In this fascinating book, Patricia Malcolmson examines how British women over the past 150 years have managed their hair, from the extravagant styles of the late nineteenth century to the ‘anything goes' attitude of today, taking in along the way the daring bobs of the 1920s, the wartime styles of women in uniform, the slavish copying of Hollywood stars, the beehive, the hippy and the Goth. In Me and My Hair you'll hear the voices of women from around Britain talking about their hair - whether it’s their longing to have ‘Shirley Temple’ curls, the visits of the nit nurse, their first home perm, roasting under hood dryers, going platinum blonde, hilarious experiments with hair extensions, or fears of going grey.
“The ultimate literary bucket list.” —THE WASHINGTON POST Celebrate the pleasure of reading and the thrill of discovering new titles in an extraordinary book that’s as compulsively readable, entertaining, surprising, and enlightening as the 1,000-plus titles it recommends. Covering fiction, poetry, science and science fiction, memoir, travel writing, biography, children’s books, history, and more, 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die ranges across cultures and through time to offer an eclectic collection of works that each deserve to come with the recommendation, You have to read this. But it’s not a proscriptive list of the “great works”—rather, it’s a celebration of the glorious mosaic that is our literary heritage. Flip it open to any page and be transfixed by a fresh take on a very favorite book. Or come across a title you always meant to read and never got around to. Or, like browsing in the best kind of bookshop, stumble on a completely unknown author and work, and feel that tingle of discovery. There are classics, of course, and unexpected treasures, too. Lists to help pick and choose, like Offbeat Escapes, or A Long Climb, but What a View. And its alphabetical arrangement by author assures that surprises await on almost every turn of the page, with Cormac McCarthy and The Road next to Robert McCloskey and Make Way for Ducklings, Alice Walker next to Izaac Walton. There are nuts and bolts, too—best editions to read, other books by the author, “if you like this, you’ll like that” recommendations , and an interesting endnote of adaptations where appropriate. Add it all up, and in fact there are more than six thousand titles by nearly four thousand authors mentioned—a life-changing list for a lifetime of reading. “948 pages later, you still want more!” —THE WASHINGTON POST
In Make Believe, Diana Athill, acclaimed author of Instead of a Letter and Stet, remembers her turbulent friendship with Hakim Jamal, a young black convert to the teachings of Malcolm X, whom she met in London in the late 1960s. Despite a desperately troubled youth, he became an eloquent spokesman for the black underclass, was Jean Seberg's lover and published a book about Malcolm X, before descending into a mania that had him believing he was God. A witness to his struggles, Diana Athill writes with her characteristic honesty about her entanglement with Jamal, Jamal's relationship with the daughter of a British MP, Gail Benson, and Jamal's, and separately Gail's, eventual murders.
Over 3,200 entries An essential guide to authors and their works that focuses on the general canon of British literature from the fifteenth century to the present. There is also some coverage of non-fiction such as biographies, memoirs, and science, as well as inclusion of major American and Commonwealth writers. This online-exclusive new edition adds 60,000 new words, including over 50 new entries dealing with authors who have risen to prominence in the last five years, as well as fully updating the entries that currently exist. Each entry provides details of a writer's nationality and birth/death dates, followed by a listing of their titles arranged chronologically by date of publication.
Scores of appeal-based reading lists cover topics you'll never find in the library catalog—from extraordinary women and overcoming adversity to sports talk, spiritual journeys, and luminous prose. With the genre of memoirs filled with so many titles and from such a variety of authors, it is hard to grasp what's available and what's worth reading. For all those who love delving into the lives of others, this Read On... volume offers help. Read On...Life Stories: Reading Lists for Every Taste offers brief descriptions of nearly 450 published memoirs, from classics like The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, to recent bestsellers like John Grogan's Marley and Me and Julie Andrews' Home. Titles are grouped together by their appeal to readers, and there is something for everyone: humorous memoirs, thrilling adventure stories, chatty celebrity reminiscences, cathartic dramas of family dysfunction, fascinating career retrospectives, and insightful stories of family and personal lives in many eras and places.
