Randall Swingler (1909-67) was arguably the most significant and the best-known radical English poet of his generation. A widely published poet, playwright, novelist, editor and critic, his work was set to music by almost all the major British composers of his time. This new biography draws on extensive sources, including the security services files, to present the most detailed account yet of this influential poet, lyricist and activist. A literary entrepreneur, Swingler was founder of radical paperback publishing company Fore Publications, editor of Left Review and Our Time and literary editor of the Daily Worker; later becoming a staff reporter, until the paper was banned in 1941. In the 1930s, he contributed several plays for Unity Theatre, including the Mass Declamation Spain, the Munich play Crisis and the revues Sandbag Follies and Get Cracking. In 1936, MI5 opened a 20-year-long file on him prompted by a song he co-wrote with Alan Bush for a concert organised to mark the arrival of the 1934 Hunger March into London. During the Second World War, Swingler served in North Africa and Italy and was awarded the Military Medal for his part in the battle of Lake Comacchio. His collections The Years of Anger (1946) and The God in the Cave (1950) contain arguably some of the greatest poems of the Italian campaign. After the war, Swingler was blacklisted by the BBC. Orwell attacked him in Polemic and included him in the list of names he offered the security services in 1949. Stephen Spender vilified him in The God That Failed. The book will challenge the Cold War assumptions that have excluded Swingler's life and work from standard histories of the period and should be of great interest to activists, scholars and those with an interest in the history of the literary and radical left.

2019 National Book Award Finalist "Reading it will change you, perhaps forever." -San Francisco Chronicle "Astonishing, powerful, so important at this time." --Margaret Atwood What You Have Heard is True is a devastating, lyrical, and visionary memoir about a young woman's brave choice to engage with horror in order to help others. Written by one of the most gifted poets of her generation, this is the story of a woman's radical act of empathy, and her fateful encounter with an intriguing man who changes the course of her life. Carolyn Forche is twenty-seven when the mysterious stranger appears on her doorstep. The relative of a friend, he is a charming polymath with a mind as seemingly disordered as it is brilliant. She's heard rumors from her friend about who he might be: a lone wolf, a communist, a CIA operative, a sharpshooter, a revolutionary, a small coffee farmer, but according to her, no one seemed to know for certain. He has driven from El Salvador to invite Forche to visit and learn about his country. Captivated for reasons she doesn't fully understand, she accepts and becomes enmeshed in something beyond her comprehension. Together they meet with high-ranking military officers, impoverished farm workers, and clergy desperately trying to assist the poor and keep the peace. These encounters are a part of his plan to educate her, but also to learn for himself just how close the country is to war. As priests and farm-workers are murdered and protest marches attacked, he is determined to save his country, and Forche is swept up in his work and in the lives of his friends. Pursued by death squads and sheltering in safe houses, the two forge a rich friendship, as she attempts to make sense of what she's experiencing and establish a moral foothold amidst profound suffering. This is the powerful story of a poet's experience in a country on the verge of war, and a journey toward social conscience in a perilous time.

The story of Penguin Books, Allen Lane and how they changed the world, to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Penguin

By founding Penguin books and popularizing the paperback, Allen Lane not only changed publishing in Britain, he was also at the forefront of a social and cultural revolution that saw the millions of people given access to what had previously been the preserve of a wealthy few.

In Penguin Special, Jeremy Lewis brings this extraordinary era brilliantly to life, recounting how Allen Lane came to launch his Penguins for the price of a packet of cigarettes; how they became enormously influential in alerting the public to the threat of Nazi Germany; and how Penguin itself gradually became a national institution, like the BBC and the NHS, whilst at the same time challenging the status quo through the famous Lady Chatterley case. Above all, it is the story of how one often fallible, complex man used his vision to change the world.

American cultural historian, literary and social critic and college professor Paul Fussell (1924-2012) wrote and edited 21 books on a wide variety of topics, ranging from 18th century British literature to works on World War II to sardonic takes on American culture. This book offers a thorough introduction to his writings and thought, constructing an argument for Fussell's continued importance and relevancy. Covering Fussell's traumatic experience in World War II and the important influence it had on his life and outlook, this intellectual biography puts in context Fussell's perspectives on ethics, the human experience and literature as an evaluative and critical endeavor.

Hunter Davies' childhood lived amongst the post-war dirt and grime of Carlisle was immediately hailed as a classic memoir from one of Britain's foremost columnists of the past half century. The Co-op's Got Bananas! left our protagonist at the cusp of working for one of the world's greatest newspapers - The Sunday Times. In this much-anticipated sequel, Hunter now looks back across five decades of successful writing to reflect on his colourful memories of the living in London during the height of the Swinging Sixties, becoming editor of Britain's first colour weekend supplement The Sunday Times magazine; befriending the Beatles; and interviewing (and partying with) the biggest names in television, film and theatre of the day. Hunter brings the story full circle to reflect on his years spent with the love of his life - the bestselling writer Margaret Forster, who sadly passed away in February 2016. This will not only be a colourful and enjoyable memoir of what it was like to be at the epicentre of Britain's artistic heart, but also an emotional, heart-felt tribute to family, friends and colleagues. For those captivated by The Co-op's Got Bananas!, this sequel is a must read.

’I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream. Actually, I can’t remember us speaking at all. Maybe because we never did.’

The European eel, Anguilla anguilla, is one of the strangest creatures nature ever created. Remarkably little is known about the eel, even today. What we do know is that it’s born as a tiny willow-leaf shaped larva in the Sargasso Sea, travels on the ocean currents toward the coasts of Europe – a journey of about four thousand miles that takes at least two years. Upon arrival, it transforms itself into a glass eel and then into a yellow eel before it wanders up into fresh water. It lives a solitary life, hiding from both light and science, for ten, twenty, fifty years, before migrating back to the sea in the autumn, morphing into a silver eel and swimming all the way back to the Sargasso Sea, where it breeds and dies.

And yet . . . There is still so much we don’t know about eels. No human has ever seen eels reproduce; no one can give a complete account of the eel’s metamorphoses or say why they are born and die in the Sargasso Sea; no human has even seen a mature eel in the Sargasso Sea. Ever. And now the eel is disappearing, and we don’t know exactly why.

What we do know is that eels and their mysterious lives captivate us.

This is the basis for The Gospel of the Eels, Patrik Svensson’s quite unique natural science memoir; his ongoing fascination with this secretive fish, but also the equally perplexing and often murky relationship he shared with his father, whose only passion in life was fishing for this obscure creature.

Through the exploration of eels in literature (Günter Grass and Graham Swift feature, amongst others) and the history of science (we learn about Aristotle’s and Sigmund Freud’s complicated relationships with eels) as well as modern marine biology (Rachel Carson and others) we get to know this peculiar animal. In this exploration, we also learn about the human condition, life and death, through natural science and nature writing at its very best.

As Patrik Svensson concludes: 'by writing about eels, I have in some ways found my way home again.'

A formally audacious and deeply moving memoir in three timeframes that confronts the defining trauma of the twentieth century, and its effects on a father and son. In 1939, Jonathan Lichtenstein's father Hans escaped Nazi-occupied Berlin as a child refugee on the Kindertransport. Almost every member of his family died after Kristallnacht, and, arriving in England to make his way in the world alone, Hans turned his back on his German Jewish culture. Growing up in post-war rural Wales where the conflict was never spoken of, Jonathan and his siblings were at a loss to understand their father's relentless drive and sometimes eccentric behaviour. As Hans enters old age, he and Jonathan set out to retrace his journey back to Berlin. Published to coincide with the eightieth anniversary, this is a highly compelling account of a father and son's attempt to emerge from the shadows of history. For readers who enjoyed East West Street, The Berlin Shadow is a beautiful memoir about time, trauma and family. Praise for Jonathan Lichtenstein's work: 'The writing is keenly observed and emotionally resonant. . . an impressive achievement given the breadth of its reach, from Berlin in the 1930s to Bethlehem today' New York Times on Memory

More than three decades after his death, John Steinbeck remains one of the nation's most beloved authors. Yet few know of his career as a journalist who covered world events from the Great Depression to Vietnam. Now, this original collection offers a portrait of the artist as citizen, deeply engaged in the world around him. In addition to the complete text of Steinbeck's last published book, America and Americans, this volume brings together for the first time more than fifty of Steinbeck's finest essays and jouralistic pieces.

A woman of enormous talent and remarkable drive, Zora Neale Hurston published seven books, many short stories, and several articles and plays over a career that spanned more than thirty years. Today, nearly every black woman writer of significance -- including Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker -- acknowledges Hurston as a literary foremother, and her 1937 masterpiece "Their Eyes Were Watching God" has become a crucial part of the modern literary canon.
"Wrapped in Rainbows, " the first biography of Zora Neale Hurston in more than twenty-five years, illuminates the adventures, complexities, and sorrows of an extraordinary life. Acclaimed journalist Valerie Boyd delves into Hurston's history -- her youth in the country's first incorporated all-black town, her friendships with luminaries such as Langston Hughes, her sexuality and short-lived marriages, and her mysterious relationship with vodou. With the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, and World War II as historical backdrops, "Wrapped in Rainbows" not only positions Hurston's work in her time but also offers riveting implications for our own.

Down and Out in Paris and London was George Orwell’s first published book. It is at once a very personal account, and a vivid exposé of hard lives weighed down by poverty in France and England between the wars.

Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is introduced by writer Lara Feigel.

Towards the end of the 1920s, whilst living in Paris, George Orwell’s few remaining funds are stolen and he quickly falls into a life of severe poverty. Living hand to mouth, he shares squalid lodgings with Russian-born Boris and finds tedious and back-breaking work washing up in the bowels of Paris restaurant kitchens. On his return to England, he lives as a tramp, finding occasional shelter in often dangerous doss houses.

"Tell Me A Story is breathtakingly tender, heartbreakingly true...The best memoir I've read." -- Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times bestselling author of The Beach House Reunion Bestselling author Cassandra King Conroy considers her life and the man she shared it with, paying tribute to her husband, Pat Conroy, the legendary figure of modern Southern literature. Cassandra King was leading a quiet life as a professor, divorced "Sunday wife" of a preacher, and debut novelist when she met Pat Conroy. Their friendship bloomed into a tentative, long-distance relationship. Pat and Cassandra ultimately married, ending Pat's long commutes from coastal South Carolina to her native Alabama. It was a union that would last eighteen years, until the beloved literary icon's death from pancreatic cancer in 2016. In this poignant, intimate memoir, the woman he called King Ray looks back at her love affair with a natural-born storyteller whose lust for life was fueled by a passion for literature, food, and the Carolina Lowcountry that was his home. As she reflects on their relationship and the eighteen years they spent together, cut short by Pat's passing at seventy, Cassandra reveals how the marshlands of the South Carolina Lowcountry ultimately cast their spell on her, too, and how she came to understand the convivial, generous, funny, and wounded flesh-and-blood man beneath the legend--her husband, the original Prince of Tides.

A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week 'This is such a great idea for a book, and Michelle Dean carries it off, showing us the complexities of her fascinating, extraordinary subjects, in print and out in the world. Dean writes with vigor, depth, knowledge and absorption, and as a result Sharp is a real achievement' Meg Wolitzer, New York Times Dorothy Parker, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron and Janet Malcolm are just some of the women whose lives intertwined as they cut through twentieth-century cultural and intellectual life in the United States, arguing as fervently with each other as they did with the men who so often belittled their work as journalists, novelists, critics and poets. These women are united by their 'sharpness': an accuracy and precision of thought and wit, a claiming of power through their writing. Sharp is a rich and lively portrait of these women and their world, where Manhattan cocktail parties, fuelled by lethal quantities of both alcohol and gossip, could lead to high-stakes slanging matches in the Partisan Review or the New York Review of Books. It is fascinating and revealing on how these women came to be so influential in a climate in which they were routinely met with condescension and derision by their male counterparts. Michelle Dean mixes biography, criticism and cultural and social history to create an enthralling exploration of how a group of brilliant women became central figures in the world of letters, staked out territory for themselves and began to change the world.

THE RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK 'Gobsmacking' The Times 'Luscious' Mail on Sunday 'Delectable . . . ravishing' Sunday Times 'A chocolate box full of delicious gothic delights - jump in' Lucy Worsley 'Stranger than fiction, as dark as any gothic drama . . . utterly gripping' Amanda Foreman 'Brings to life the colourful characters of the Georgian era's most notorious families with all the verve and skill of the era's finest novelists . . . A powdered and pomaded, sordid and silk-swathed adventure' Hallie Rubenhold Many know Lord Byron as leading poet of the Romantic movement. But few know the dynasty from which he emerged; infamous for its scandal and impropriety, with tales of elopement, murder, kidnaping, profligacy, doomed romance and adultery. A sumptuous story that begins in rural Nottinghamshire and plays out in the gentleman's clubs of Georgian London, amid tempests on far-flung seas, and in the glamour of pre-revolutionary France, The Fall of the House of Byron is the acclaimed account of intense family drama over three turbulent generations.

'Life was a wordless battle of wits between us, with her keeping a sharp look-out for signs of neglect, and me trying to disguise my slovenliness by subterfuge. I became an adept at sweeping dust under the bed, and always used the same few pieces of silver' Unimpressed by the world of debutante balls, Monica Dickens shocked her family by getting a job. With no experience whatsoever, she gained employment as a cook-general. Monica's cooking and cleaning skills left much to be desired, and her first few positions were short lived, but soon she started to hold her own. Monica discovered the pleasure of daily banter with the milkman and grocer's boy and the joy of doing an honest day's work, all the while keeping a wry eye on the childish pique of her employers. One Pair of Hands is a fascinating and thoroughly entertaining memoir of life upstairs and downstairs in the early 1930s.

(This is the paperback edition of a previously released hardcover.) Yukio Mishima (b. 1925) was a brilliant writer and intellectual whose relentless obsession with beauty, purity, and patriotism ended in his astonishing self-disembowelment and decapitation in downtown Tokyo in 1970. Nominated for the Nobel Prize, Mishima was the best-known novelist of his time (works like Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion are still in print in English), and his legacy-his persona-is still honored and puzzled over. Who was Yukio Mishima really? This, the first full biography to appear in English in almost forty years, traces Mishima's trajectory from a sickly boy named Kimitake Hiraoka to a hard-bodied student of martial arts. In detail it examines his family life, the wartime years, and his emergence, then fame, as a writer and advocate for traditional values. Revealed here are all the personalities and conflicts and sometimes petty backbiting that shaped the culture of postwar literary Japan. Working entirely from primary sources and material unavailable to other biographers, author Naoki Inose and translator Hiroaki Sato together have produced a monumental work that covers much new ground in unprecedented depth. Using interviews, social and psychological analysis, and close reading of novels and essays, Persona removes the mask that Mishima so artfully created to disguise his true self. Naoki Inose, currently vice governor of Tokyo, has also written biographies of writers Kikuchi Kan and Osamu Dazai. New York-based Hiroaki Sato is an award-winning translator of classical and modern Japanese poetry, and also translated Mishima's novel Silk and Insight.

From the award-winning poet, dark comic microbursts of prose deliver a whole childhood, at the hands of an aspiring middle-class Jewish family whose hard-boiled American values and wit were the forge of a poet's coming-of-age.

“My grandparents taught me to write my sins on paper and cast them into the water. . . . They didn’t expect an entire book,” Hirsch says in the “prologue” to this glorious festival of knife-sharp observations. In microchapters—sometimes only a single scathing sentence long—with titles like “Call to Breakfast,” “Pay Cash,” “The Sorrow of Manly Sports,” and “Aristotle on Lawrence Avenue,” Eddie’s gambling father, Ruby, son of a white metal smelter, schools him and his sister in blackjack; Eddie’s mom bangs pots to wake the kids to a breakfast of cold cereal; Uncle Bob, in the collection business, is heard threatening people on the phone; and nobody suffers fools. In this household, Eddie learned to jab with his left and cross with his right, never to kid a kidder, and how to sneak out at night.
Affectionate, deadpan, and exuberant, steeped in Yiddishkeit and Midwestern practicality, Hirsch’s laugh-and-cry performance animates a heartbreaking odyssey, from the cradle to the day he leaves home, armed with sorrow and a huge store of poetic wit.

A Thickness of Particulars: The Poetry of Anthony Hecht is the first book-length study of one of the great formal poets of the later twentieth century (1923-2004). Making use of Hecht's correspondence, which the author edited, it situates Hecht's writings in the context of pre- and post-World-War II verse, including poetry written by W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, James Merrill, and Richard Wilbur. In nine chapters, the book ranges over Hecht's full career, with special emphasis placed on the effects of the war on his memory; Hecht participated in the final push by the Allied troops in Europe and was involved in the liberation of the Flossenburg Concentration Camp. The study explores the important place Venice and Italy occupied in his imagination as well as the significance of the visual and dramatic arts and music more generally. Chapters are devoted to analyzing celebrated individual poems, such as "The Book of Yolek" and "The Venetian Vespers" ; the making of particular volumes, as in the case of the Pulitzer-Prize-winning "The Hard Hours"; the poet's mid-career turn toward writing dramatic monologues and longer narrative poems ("Green, An Epistle," "The Grapes," and "See Naples and Die") and ekphrases; the inspiring use he made of Shakespeare, especially in "A Love for Four Voices," his delightful riff on "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; and his collaboration with the artist Leonard Baskin in the "Presumptions of Death" series from "Flight Among the Tombs." The book seeks to unfold the itinerary of a highly civilized mind brooding, with wit, over the dark landscape of the later twentieth century in poems of unrivalled beauty.

The new series of Ngaio Marsh editions concludes with a new edition of her autobiography. What sort of person was Ngaio Marsh, whose detective novels made her name known throughout the world? With all the insight and sense of style her readers have come to expect of her, her autobiography reveals the influences and environment that have shaped her personality. Widely acclaimed when first published in 1965, Black Beech and Honeydew is a sensitive account of Ngaio Marsh's childhood and adolescence in Christchurch and the establishment of her theatre and writing careers both there and in the UK. It captures all the joys, fears and hopes of a spirited young woman growing up and transmits an artist's gradual awareness of the special flavour of life in New Zealand and the individual character of its landscape. Fully revised and updated in 1981, this new edition is reissued 21 years later as a commemoration of Ngaio Marsh's life and work. It is a sanguine, poised, unpretentious, thoughtful and often moving record of a full life, and - despite its unavailability for nearly 20 years - has been acclaimed as her most distinguished work. No one who had read and enjoyed any of Ngaio Marsh's 32 novels can afford to overlook this gifted and charming autobiography.

"You don't have to be Irish to cherish this literary gift-just being human and curious and from a family will suffice." -Malachy McCourt, New York Times bestselling author of A Monk Swimming In the tradition of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes and Alice Taylor's To School Through the Fields, Tom Phelan's We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It is a heartfelt and masterfully written memoir of growing up in Ireland in the 1940s. Tom Phelan, who was born and raised in County Laois in the Irish midlands, spent his formative years working with his wise and demanding father as he sought to wrest a livelihood from a farm that was often wet, muddy, and back-breaking. It was a time before rural electrification, the telephone, and indoor plumbing; a time when the main modes of travel were bicycle and animal cart; a time when small farmers struggled to survive and turkey eggs were hatched in the kitchen cupboard; a time when the Church exerted enormous control over Ireland. We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It recounts Tom's upbringing in an isolated, rural community from the day he was delivered by the local midwife. With tears and laughter, it speaks to the strength of the human spirit in the face of life's adversities.

A compelling portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft that shows the intimate connections between her life and work Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, first published in 1792, is a work of enduring relevance in women's rights advocacy. However, as Sylvana Tomaselli shows, a full understanding of Wollstonecraft's thought is possible only through a more comprehensive appreciation of Wollstonecraft herself, as a philosopher and moralist who deftly tackled major social and political issues and the arguments of such figures as Edmund Burke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Adam Smith. Reading Wollstonecraft through the lens of the politics and culture of her own time, this book restores her to her rightful place as a major eighteenth-century thinker, reminding us why her work still resonates today. The book's format echoes one that Wollstonecraft favored in Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: short essays paired with concise headings. Under titles such as "Painting," "Music," "Memory," "Property and Appearance," and "Rank and Luxury," Tomaselli explores not only what Wollstonecraft enjoyed and valued, but also her views on society, knowledge and the mind, human nature, and the problem of evil-and how a society based on mutual respect could fight it. The resulting picture of Wollstonecraft reveals her as a particularly engaging author and an eloquent participant in enduring social and political concerns. Drawing us into Wollstonecraft's approach to the human condition and the debates of her day, Wollstonecraft ultimately invites us to consider timeless issues with her, so that we can become better attuned to the world as she saw it then, and as we might wish to see it now.