David Gilmour's biography of Giuseppe di Lampedusa unearths the life story of the creator of "The Leopard", one of the great novels of the twentieth century. A book whose imagery, once tasted, haunts the reader forever. "The Leopard" describes the golden era of the nineteenth-century Sicily in all its sensual, fading, aristocratic glory. But beneath the surface lurk Sicily's millenial contagions - corruption, brutality and inequality. Who wrote this masterpiece, this work of art? the answer is as unlikely as one might hope. This is a fascinating meditation on what it is that makes a writer.

As one of the most creative intellectuals of the twentieth century, C. S. Lewis transcended all literary, philosophical, and religious boundaries. A world-renowned scholar of medieval literature at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, he wrote and lectured in such clear, direct language that ordinary people were able to fully comprehend the truths he extolled. The prolific author of many classic masterpieces - including "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe", soon to be released as a feature movie and one of several volumes in "The Chronicles of Narnia" - he also lived a life that was as compelling as his work. This book offers a clear view of the character of this extraordinarily gifted man. Lewis believed that his sharp mind and rich imagination were to be accompanied by a sense of responsibility to the wider world. Thus this volume demonstrates why, two generations after his death, Lewis continues to be numbered among our best-selling authors and most influential thinkers.

"Price not only rises above the hurt and hate, she uses her hard-won insights to shine a light for others." -Jeannette Walls, #1 New York Times bestselling author

For readers of Educated, The Glass Castle, and Know My Name comes a powerful memoir that is a remarkable testament to survival and resilience. At once harrowing and exquisite, haunting and inspiring, Kate Price’s story will leave readers with a profound assurance in the power to heal.

Kate Price grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania with her sister and parents. Price was destined to leave, and in doing so, to break one of many unwritten rules when it came to unbroken cycles of poverty, violence, addiction, mental illness, and abuse. She started a new life in Boston, where she discovered the truth of her dark past through a series of hazy flashbacks accompanied by a "chilling of her blood and uncomfortable feeling in her bones."

Overcome with unexplainable grief, she sought out Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a trauma specialist, to help her understand these flashbacks. Price discovered what that darkness that lay within her was - that her father had abused and trafficked her as a child. And so began a 10-year quest with a journalist from the Boston Globe to prove what Price knew to be her truth. With many trips back to the hometown she thought she had left forever, the two eventually found the hard-earned proof Price had been searching for.

Now, in her exquisitely rendered, transformative memoir, Price describes how she broke free of that which had defined her childhood to create a life and family on her own terms. From victim to advocate, from fearful child to empowered adult, and from despair to triumph, This Happened to Me is a story of astonishing resilience and breathtaking determination.

Investigating the oeuvre of the Italian humanist Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481), this collection is the first to make extensive use of the critical editions of Filelfo's numerous writings - in particular of his Epistolarium, published in 2016 by Jeroen De Keyser, who also edited this volume. Uncovering a lot of new information not previously mentioned in the literature on Filelfo, twelve specialized scholars draw attention to long-neglected material, shedding new light on Filelfo's intellectual endeavors and his literary journey between Greek and Latin. This illuminating collection offers historians of ideas as well as literary scholars and Neo-Latinists new inroads into Filelfo's vast oeuvre, and through it to the world of Quattrocento humanism. Contributors include: Jean-Louis Charlet, Guy Claessens, Jeroen De Keyser, Tom Deneire, Ide Francois, James Hankins, Noreen Humble, Gary Ianziti, Han Lamers, David Marsh, John Monfasani, and Jan Papy.

Benjamin Zephaniah, who has travelled the world for his art and his humanitarianism, now tells the one story that encompasses it all: the story of his life. In the early 1980s when punks and Rastas were on the streets protesting about unemployment, homelessness and the National Front, Benjamin's poetry could be heard at demonstrations, outside police stations and on the dance floor. His mission was to take poetry everywhere, and to popularise it by reaching people who didn't read books. His poetry was political, musical, radical and relevant. By the early 1990s, Benjamin had performed on every continent in the world (a feat which he achieved in only one year) and he hasn't stopped performing and touring since. Nelson Mandela, after hearing Benjamin's tribute to him while he was in prison, requested an introduction to the poet that grew into a lifelong relationship, inspiring Benjamin's work with children in South Africa. Benjamin would also go on to be the first artist to record with The Wailers after the death of Bob Marley in a musical tribute to Nelson Mandela. The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah is a truly extraordinary life story which celebrates the power of poetry and the importance of pushing boundaries with the arts.

The first modern study of Hartley Coleridge, showing that he deserves our attention not as the son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but as a literary presence in his own right.

A unique chronicle of the hundred-year period when the Jewish people changed the world - and it changed them Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Bernhardt and Kafka. Between the middle of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a few dozen men and women changed the way we see the world. But many have vanished from our collective memory despite their enduring importance in our daily lives. Without Karl Landsteiner, for instance, there would be no blood transfusions or major surgery. Without Paul Ehrlich no chemotherapy. Without Siegfried Marcus no motor car. Without Rosalind Franklin genetic science would look very different. Without Fritz Haber there would not be enough food to sustain life on earth. These visionaries all have something in common - their Jewish origins and a gift for thinking outside the box. In 1847 the Jewish people made up less than 0.25% of the world's population, and yet they saw what others could not. How?

This is the brilliant memoir of a man who starts out in Manhattan and comes of age in the skies over Korea, before emerging as one of America's finest authors in the New York of the 1960s. Burning the Days showcases James Salter's uniquely beautiful style with some of the most evocative pages about flying ever written, together with portraits of the actors, directors and authors who later influenced him. It is an unforgettable book about passion, ambition and what it means to live and to write.

The newly revised and updated Charleston: A Bloomsbury House & Garden is the definitive publication on the Bloomsbury Group's rural outpost in the heart of the Sussex Downs. "It's absolutely perfect...", wrote the artist Vanessa Bell when she moved to Charleston in 1916. For fifty years, Vanessa and her fellow painter Duncan Grant lived, loved and worked in this isolated Sussex farmhouse, together transforming the house and garden into an extraordinary work of art and creating a rural retreat for the Bloomsbury group. Now, Vanessa's son, Quentin Bell, and her granddaughter Virginia Nicholson tell the inside story of their family home, linking it with some of the pioneering cultural figures who spent time there, including Vanessa's sister Virginia Woolf, the economist Maynard Keynes, the writer Lytton Strachey and the art critic Roger Fry. Taking readers through each room of the house - from Clive Bell's Study, the Dining Room, the Kitchen and the Garden Room, through to individual bedrooms, the Studios and the Library - Quentin Bell relives old memories, including having T.S. Eliot over for a dinner party and staging plays in the Studio, while Virginia Nicholson details the artistic techniques (stencilling, embroidery, painting, sculpture, ceramics and more) used to embellish and enliven the once simple farmhouse. In this refreshed edition of the original 1997 publication, Gavin Kingcombe's specially commissioned photographs breathe life into the colourful interiors and garden of the Sussex farmhouse, while updated text and captions by Virginia Nicholson capture the evolution of Charleston as it continues to inspire a new generation. For lovers of literature, decorative arts, and all things Bloomsbury, Charleston: A Bloomsbury House & Garden offers a window onto a truly unique creative hub.

Drawing on twenty years of research, this is the definitive biography of Primo Levi. Over the last seventy years, Primo Levi (1919-87) has been recognized as the foremost literary witness of the extermination of the European Jews. In Primo Levi: An Identikit, a product of twenty years of research, Marco Belpoliti explores Levi's tormented life, his trajectory as a writer and intellectual, and, above all, his multifaceted and complex oeuvre. Organized in a mosaic format, this volume devotes a different chapter to each of Levi's books. In addition to tracing the history of each book's composition, publication, and literary influences, Belpoliti explores their contents across the many worlds of Primo Levi: from chemistry to anthropology, biology to ethology, space flights to linguistics. If This Is a Man, his initially rejected masterpiece, is also reread with a fresh perspective. We learn of dreams, animals, and travel; of literary writing, comedy, and tragedy; of shame, memory, and the relationship with other writers such as Franz Kafka and Georges Perec, Jean Amery and Varlam Shalamov. Fundamental themes such as Judaism, the camp, and testimony innervate the book, which is complemented by photographs and letters found by the author in hitherto unexplored archives. This will be the definitive book on Primo Levi, a treasure trove of stories and reflections that paint a rich, nuanced composite portrait of one of the twentieth century's most unique and urgent voices.

First published in 1970, this is a detailed and balanced biography of one of the most controversial literary figures of the twentieth century. Ezra Pound, an American who left home for Venice and London at the age of twenty-three, was a leading member of the modern movement, a friend and helper of Joyce, Eliot, Yeats, Hemingway, an early supporter of Lawrence and Frost. As a critic of modern society his far-reaching and controversial theories on politics, economics and religion led him to broadcast over Rome Radio during the Second World War, after which he was indicted for treason but declared insane by an American court. He then spent more than twelve years in St Elizabeth 's Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Washington, D.C. In 1958 the changes against him were dropped and he returned to Italy where he had lived between 1924 and 1945.

'I seem to have banged on this year rather more than usual. I make no apology for that, nor am I nervous that it will it make a jot of difference. I shall still be thought to be kindly, cosy and essentially harmless. I am in the pigeon-hole marked 'no threat' and did I stab Judi Dench with a pitchfork I should still be a teddy bear.'

Alan Bennett's third collection of prose Keeping On Keeping On follows in the footsteps of the phenomenally successful Writing Home and Untold Stories, each published ten years apart. This latest collection contains Bennett's peerless diaries 2005 to 2015, reflecting on a decade that saw four premieres at the National Theatre (The Habit of Art, People, Hymn and Cocktail Sticks), a West End double-bill transfer, and the films of The History Boys and The Lady in the Van.

There's a provocative sermon on private education given before the University at King's College Chapel, Cambridge, and 'Baffled at a Bookcase' offers a passionate defence of the public library. This is an engaging, humane, sharp, funny and unforgettable record of life according to the inimitable Alan Bennett.

George's memory is inseparable from Orkney, where he was born the youngest child of a poor family and which he rarely left. His mother was a beautiful woman who spoke only Gaelic and his father was a wit, mimic and singer, who also doubled as postman and tailor. Tuberculosis framed George's early life and kept him in a kind of limbo. He discovered alcohol which gave him insights into the workings of the mind. While attending the University of Edinburgh he came into contact with Goodsir Smith, MacDiarmid and Norman MacCaig - and Stella Cartwright with whom perhaps all of them were in love. By the time of his death in 1996 he was recognised as one of the great writers of his time and country.

A SPECTATOR, NEW STATESMAN AND THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 'The best biography I have read in years' Philippe Sands 'Spectacular' Observer 'A remarkable portrait' Guardian W. G. Sebald was one of the most extraordinary and influential writers of the twentieth century. Through books including The Emigrants, Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn, he pursued an original literary vision that combined fiction, history, autobiography and photography and addressed some of the most profound themes of contemporary literature: the burden of the Holocaust, memory, loss and exile. The first biography to explore his life and work, Speak, Silence pursues the true Sebald through the memories of those who knew him and through the work he left behind. This quest takes Carole Angier from Sebald's birth as a second-generation German at the end of the Second World War, through his rejection of the poisoned inheritance of the Third Reich, to his emigration to England, exploring the choice of isolation and exile that drove his work. It digs deep into a creative mind on the edge, finding profound empathy and paradoxical ruthlessness, saving humour, and an elusive mix of fact and fiction in his life as well as work. The result is a unique, ferociously original portrait.

As a songwriter, James Weldon Johnson is best known for "Life Every Voice," which he wrote with his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson. However, during the early 1900s he was part of one of the most popular and successful songwriting teams in America. Johnson, along with his brother, Rosamond, and Bob Cole wrote hit songs for musicals during the ragtime era, 1895-1910. Later, he became one of the most prominent African-Americans in the United States before World War II. He was a diplomat, the author of a novel (The Autobiography of a Colored Man), poet ("God's Trombones"), Civil Rights leader (the first black Executive Secretary of the NAACP), an active member of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s and a distinguished Professor at Fisk University. Most of James Weldon Johnson's songs have not been heard for over a hundred years because he wrote during the era of sheet music. Now, for the first time, here is a collection of Johnson's lyrics and an extended biographical essay on him as a songwriter. Don Cusic is Professor of Music Business at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee and the author of 25 books. Cusic and Mike Curb produced a double album containing 30 of James Weldon Johnson's songs, recorded by Melinda Doolittle, for Curb Records.

Includes an exciting sneak peek extract from Three Sisters - the conclusion to The Tattooist of Auschwitz Trilogy. Available now. The Tattooist of Auschwitz is one of the bestselling books of the 21st Century. Now, in this essential companion, Heather Morris presents an inspiring manual for life, with a series of tales of the remarkable people she has met, the incredible stories they have shared with her, and the lessons they hold for us all. In Stories of Hope, Heather will explore her extraordinary talents as a listener - a skill she employed when she first met Lale Sokolov, the tattooist at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the inspiration for her bestselling novel. It was this ability that led Lale to entrust Heather with his story, which she told in her novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz and the bestselling follow up, Cilka's Journey. Now Heather shares the story behind her inspirational writing journey and the defining experiences of her life, including her profound friendship with Lale, and explores how she learned to really listen to the stories people told her - skills she believes we can all learn. 'Stories are what connect us and remind us that hope is always possible.' Heather Morris An international phenomenon, The Tattooist of Auschwitz has sold over six million copies. Cilka's Journey has sold over a million copies worldwide.

Barbara Hepworth sculpted outdoors and Janet Frame wore earmuffs as she worked to block out noise. Kate Chopin wrote with her six children ‘swarming around her’ whereas the artist Rosa Bonheur filled her bedroom with the sixty birds that inspired her work. Louisa May Alcott wrote so vigorously – skipping sleep and meals – that she had to learn to write with her left hand to give her cramped right hand a break.

From Isak Dinesen subsisting on oysters, champagne and amphetamines, to Isabel Allende's insistence that she begins each new book on 8 January, here are the working routines of over 140 brilliant female painters, composers, sculptors, writers, filmmakers and performers.

Filled with details of the large and small choices these women made, Daily Rituals Women at Work is a source of fascination and inspiration.

In his motivational autobiography Glimpses of Greatness, Philip Guy Rochford shares the milestones of his life that mark not only his spiritual journey, but also his very successful professional career as a financier.

Rochford was born in 1933 in Port of Spain, Trinidad-arriving into the world with a clean slate of consciousness. Raised in a strict Catholic household by a single mother, Rochford received his first lessons in applied economics as he and his family dealt with the financial ripples of World War II. With an honest, conversational style, Rochford details his intriguing life story beginning with his school years when he was encouraged to work in a local pharmacy to his education in several countries to the challenges-political, professional, and personal-that he faced on a daily basis as he enjoyed a fruitful career as an economist and chartered secretary, banker, and accountant. By including questions and answer segments at the end of each chapter, Rochford allows for deeper explanations, insight, and elaboration into his life experiences and many professional accomplishments.

Rochford combines anecdotes, poetry, and letters with a compelling life story that will surely motivate others to let their brilliance shine through, no matter what their barriers.