Reissue to follow up publication of Paul Bailey's new novel Kitty and Virgil. Both 'Peter Smart's Confessions' and 'Gabriel's Lament' were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The eponymous hero of Peter Smart's Confessions, an unhappy husband and none-too-successful actor, is writing after a suicide attempt. Peter's mother, as an actor friend enthusiastically points out, is a comic monster: 'If you put her in a book - as they say - no one would believe her... Only Wagner could do her justice.' She's matched by the larger-than-life eccentric, F. Leonard Cottle, randy retired doctor and author of 'With Stethoscope and Scalpel', who employs Peter's mother as housekeeper after her husband dies. Cottle introduces the boy Peter to the facts of life. There are some bravura-satirical set pieces on playwrights, players and critics: the staging and reception of a 'revolutionary' production of Hamlet based on the premise that he was suffering from congenital syphilis, a pointed parody of Eliot's The Cocktail Party.

In her magnificent novel, Marguerite Yourcenor recreates the life and death of one of the great rulers of the ancient world. The Emperor Hadrian, aware his demise is imminent, writes a long valedictory letter to Marcus Aurelius, his future successor. The Emperor meditates on his past, describing his accession, military triumphs, love of poetry and music, and the philosophy that informed his powerful and far-flung rule. A work of superbly detailed research and sustained empathy, Memoirs of Hadrian captures the living spirit of the Emperor and of Ancient Rome.

New and experimental ways to capture landscape in acrylics. Landscape artist Paul Bailey's fascination with the natural world is sensationally conveyed in his colourful and semi-abstract paintings. In Experimental Nature in Acrylics, he reveals his techniques for the first time – making it simple for readers to produce their own work that is abstract, evocative and full of vivid colour. Through easy-to-follow explanations and step-by-step demonstrations, Paul describes how to manipulate the medium in surprising – yet often simple – ways. Readers will learn how distil craggy cliffs, rolling farmland hills, tidal rivers or flat, open-skied wilderness in striking and unusual colour palettes. There are tips on how to paint organic shapes and using abstract elements in the natural landscape as the basis for a painting, and how to create a compositional sense of rhythm. Paul’s beautiful and contemporary work appears throughout the book and acts as a masterclass in scraping, pulling, weathering and splattering the paint. As well as showing how to build layer upon layer, the process of construction and how to tease a sense of movement from a static image. This essential guide is a must for anyone wishing to augment their understanding of the acrylic medium and appreciation of composition and colour, and to liberate their own beautiful paintings.

Ma Jianzhong was a close adviser to the powerful Qing government official, Li Hong-zhang, and wrote several essays between 1878 and 1890 outlining his plans for economic and administrative reform. He was the first Chinese to advocate the creation of a specialized and professional diplomatic corps. His contribution to the late nineteenth-century Chinese discourse on the state and the economy has hitherto been neglected. Paul Bailey's translation of his essays will contribute to a wider understanding of the origins and circulation of reform ideas in the late Qing.

Ma Jianzhong was a close advisor to the powerful Qing government official, Li Hongzhang, and wrote several essays between 1878 and 1890 outlining his plans for economic and administrative reform. He was the first Chinese to advocate the creation of a specialized and professional diplomatic corps. This translation of his essays aims to contribute to a wider understanding of the origins and circulation of reform ideas in the late Qing.

Reissue to follow up publication of Paul Bailey's new novel Kitty and Virgil. Two of his previous novels 'Peter Smart's Confessions' and 'Gabriel's Lament', were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. First published in 1980, Old Soldiers is Bailey's most elegantly simple and perhaps most moving novel. The eponymous soldiers are two old men who (as his own father had been) are still haunted by First World War memories. Victor Harker - a survivor from the Somme, dazed with grief after his wife's recent death - gets entangled with another man, who splits himself into an 'unholy trinity' of parts; by turns a military man, a tramp and a poet, he performs each part enthusiastically, with a loving attention to verisimilitude. It's only at the end that we glimpse the sixty-year-old shame and grief which he has wasted a life time denying.

At the age of 70, Andrew Peters looks back across the years to remember life with his doting Uncle Rudolf, who rescued him from fascist Romania as a child. Vivid, often hilarious, stories of Rudolf's brilliant but blighted singing career are intertwined with the slow unfolding of secrets that have shadowed Andrew's otherwise happy life. Told in matchless prose, this deeply moving novel captures a vanished epoch with exquisite tact and restraint.

'A very funny book, but never jeering, full of pity, but unsentimentally harsh with the tragedy of old age which institutional kindness cannot cushion' Financial Times. Following the death from leukaemia of her daughter, Celia, Mrs Gadny goes to live with her sullen stepson Henry. But she finds little affection or contentment either with him, or with his selfish wife Thelma, or with their ungrateful children. She is sent to an old people's home, 'The Jerusalem', a converted workhouse, green-and-white-tiled. Mrs Gadny is repulsed and humiliated by the home and its inmates: women like acid-tongued Miss Trimmer, the vulgar toothless Mrs Affery, and Mrs O'Blath with her hysterical laughter. Retreating from the kindness offered her by the nurses and the friendly Mrs Capes, she withdraws into her memories, but even their fragmented recollection provides small comfort. Mrs Gadny's only escape from 'The Jerusalem' lies in her own crumbling consciousness. Paul Bailey is sensitive to the exact nuance of conversation, the precise detail that can create an environment or a mood, and draw the reader into it. His book is an exquisitely defined miniature whose impression will not easily be forgotten. With an introduction by Colm Toibin.

In May 1927, nineteen-year-old Dinu Grigorescu, a skinny boy with literary ambitions, is newly arrived in Paris. He has been sent from Bucharest, the city of his childhood, by his wealthy father to embark upon a bohemian adventure and relish the unique pleasures of Parisian life. An innocent in a new city, still grieving the sudden loss of his beloved mother Elena seven years earlier, Dinu is encouraged to enjoy la vie de Boheme by his distant cousin, Eduard. But tentatively, secretly, Dinu is drawn to the Bains du Ballon d'Alsace, a notorious establishment rumoured to offer the men of Paris, married or otherwise, who enjoy something different, everything they crave. It is here that he meets Razvan, a fellow Romanian, the adopted child of a man of refinement - a prince's boy - whose stories of Proust and other artists entrance Dinu, and who will become the young man's teacher in the ways of the world. At a distance of forty years, and written in London, his refuge from the horrors of Europe's early twentieth-century history, Dinu's memoir of his brief spell in Paris is one of exploration and rediscovery. The love that blossomed that sunlit day in such inauspicious and unromantic surroundings would transcend lust, separation, despair and even death to endure a lifetime. This is a work of extraordinary sensual delicacy, an exquisite novel from one of our most celebrated writers.

Les Miserables is a magnificent, sweeping story of revolution, love and the will to survive set amidst the poverty stricken streets of nineteeth-century Paris. 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 has features an introduction by Paul Bailey. Escaped convict Jean Valjean turns his back on his criminal past to build his fortunes as an honest man. He takes in abandoned orphan Cosette and raises her as his own daughter. But Jean Valjean is unable to free himself from his previous life and is pursued to the end by ruthless policeman Javert. As Cosette grows up, young idealist Marius catches a glimpse of her and falls desperately in love. The fates of all the characters await them during the violent turmoil of the June Rebellion in 1832. This abridged version of Victor Hugo's masterpiece was published in 1915 with the aim to provide 'a unified story of the life and soul-struggles of Jean Valjean'.

'Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is, for me, her masterpiece' - Robert McCrum, Guardian, 'The Best 100 Novels' 'An author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth' - SARAH WATERS 'Jane Austen, Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabath Bowen - soul-sisters all' ANNE TYLER On a rainy Sunday in January, the recently widowed Mrs Palfrey arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining days. Her fellow residents are magnificently eccentric and endlessly curious, living off crumbs of affection and snippets of gossip. Together, upper lips stiffened, they fight off their twin enemies: boredom and the Grim Reaper. Then one day Mrs Palfrey strikes up an unlikely friendship with an impoverished young writer, Ludo, who sees her as inspiration for his novel. 'Elizabeth Taylor's exquisitely drawn character study of eccentricity in old age is a sharp and witty portrait of genteel postwar English life facing the changes taking shape in the 60s . . . Much of the reader's joy lies in the exquisite subtlety in Taylor's depiction of all the relationships, the sharp brevity of her wit, and the apparently effortless way the plot unfolds' -Robert McCrum 'the 100 best novels', Guardian

Named by the Guardian as one of 'the 100 best novels,' and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Mrs Palfrey At The Claremont is a humorous and compassionate look at friendship between an old woman and a young man from a 'magnificent...writer, the missing link between Jane Austen and John Updike' (David Baddiel, Independent) On a rainy Sunday in January, the recently widowed Mrs Palfrey arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining days. Her fellow residents are magnificently eccentric and endlessly curious, living off crumbs of affection and snippets of gossip. Together, upper lips stiffened, they fight off their twin enemies: boredom and the Grim Reaper. Then one day Mrs Palfrey strikes up an unlikely friendship with an impoverished young writer, Ludo, who sees her as inspiration for his novel. 'Elizabeth Taylor's exquisitely drawn character study of eccentricity in old age is a sharp and witty portrait of genteel postwar English life facing the changes taking shape in the 60s . . . Much of the reader's joy lies in the exquisite subtlety in Taylor's depiction of all the relationships, the sharp brevity of her wit, and the apparently effortless way the plot unfolds' -Robert McCrum 'the 100 best novels', Guardian

Norman is the clever one of a close-knit Jewish family in the East End of London. Infant prodigy; brilliant barrister; the apple of his parents' eyes . . . until at forty-one he becomes a drug addict, confined to his bedroom, at the mercy of his hallucinations and paranoia. For Norman, his committal to a mental hospital represents the ultimate act of betrayal. For Rbbi Zweck, Norman's father, his son's deterioration is a bitter reminder of his own guilt and failure. Only Bella, the unmarried sister, still in her childhood white ankle socks, can reach across the abyss of pain to bring father and son the elusive peace which they both desperately crave.

The Diary of a Nobody is a comic masterpiece that has been hugely influential since its first publication in 1892.

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 features Weedon Grossmith’s original illustrations and an afterword by novelist Paul Bailey.

Proud to be ensconced with his wife Carrie at ‘The Laurels’ in the desirable London suburb of Holloway, bank clerk Charles Pooter decides to keep a diary. From the frequent visits from his dear friends Mr Cummings and Mr Gowing to the ups and downs of his feckless son Lupin, the self-regarding Mr Pooter considers, mistakenly, that all aspects of his life are worthy of note. The result is a hilarious spoof and a perfectly pitched satire on late Victorian society.

'A very funny book, but never jeering, full of pity, but unsentimentally harsh with the tragedy of old age which institutional kindness cannot cushion' Financial Times. Following the death from leukaemia of her daughter, Celia, Mrs Gadny goes to live with her sullen stepson Henry. But she finds little affection or contentment either with him, or with his selfish wife Thelma, or with their ungrateful children. She is sent to an old people's home, 'The Jerusalem', a converted workhouse, green-and-white-tiled. Mrs Gadny is repulsed and humiliated by the home and its inmates: women like acid-tongued Miss Trimmer, the vulgar toothless Mrs Affery, and Mrs O'Blath with her hysterical laughter. Retreating from the kindness offered her by the nurses and the friendly Mrs Capes, she withdraws into her memories, but even their fragmented recollection provides small comfort. Mrs Gadny's only escape from 'The Jerusalem' lies in her own crumbling consciousness. Paul Bailey is sensitive to the exact nuance of conversation, the precise detail that can create an environment or a mood, and draw the reader into it. His book is an exquisitely defined miniature whose impression will not easily be forgotten. With an introduction by Colm Toibin.