The comprehensive collection of letters spanning the adult life of one of the world’s greatest storytellers, now revised and expanded to include more than 150 previously unseen letters, with revealing new insights into The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of the languages and history of Middle-earth as recorded in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, was one of the most prolific letter-writers of this century. Over the years he wrote a mass of letters – to his publishers, to members of his family, to friends, and to 'fans' of his books – which often reveal the inner workings of his mind, and which record the history of composition of his works and his reaction to subsequent events. A selection from Tolkien's correspondence, collected and edited by Tolkien's official biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, and assisted by Christopher Tolkien, was published in 1981. It presented, in Tolkien's own words, a highly detailed portrait of the man in his many aspects: storyteller, scholar, Catholic, parent, friend, and observer of the world around him. In this revised and expanded edition of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, it has been possible to go back to the editors’ original typescripts and notes, restoring more than 150 letters that were excised purely to achieve what was then deemed a ‘publishable length’, and present the book as originally intended. Enthusiasts for his writings will find much that is new, for the letters not only include fresh information about Middle-earth, such as Tolkien’s own plot summary of the entirety of The Lord of the Rings and a vision for publishing his ‘Tales of the Three Ages’, but also many insights into the man and his world. In addition, this new selection will entertain anyone who appreciates the art of letter-writing, of which J.R.R. Tolkien was a master.

The original authorised biography, and the only one written by an author who actually met J.R.R. Tolkien, reissued to mark Tolkien’s 125th Anniversary. In more than 40 years since Tolkien’s death in September 1973, millions have read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and become fascinated about the very private man behind the books. Born in Bloemfontein in January 1892, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was orphaned in childhood, brought up in near-poverty and almost thwarted in adolescent romance. He served in the First World War, surviving the Battle of the Somme, where he lost some of his closest friends, and returned to academic life, achieving high repute as a scholar and university teacher, eventually becoming Merton Professor of English at Oxford. Then suddenly his life changed dramatically. One day while marking essay papers he found himself writing ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit’ – and worldwide renown awaited him. Humphrey Carpenter was given unrestricted access to all Tolkien’s papers, and interviewed his friends and family. From these sources he follows the long and painful process of creation that produced The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and offers a wealth of information about the life and work of the twentieth century’s most cherished author.

Critically acclaimed, award-winning biography of CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien and the brilliant group of writers to come out of Oxford during the Second World War. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and their friends were a regular feature of the Oxford scenery in the years during and after the Second World War. They drank beer on Tuesdays at the 'Bird and Baby', and on Thursday nights they met in Lewis' Magdalen College rooms to read aloud from the books they were writing; jokingly they called themselves 'The Inklings'. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien first introduced The Screwtape Letters and The Lord of the Rings to an audience in this company and Charles Williams, poet and writer of supernatural thrillers, was another prominent member of the group. Humphrey Carpenter, who wrote the acclaimed biography of J.R.R. Tolkien, draws upon unpublished letters and diaries, to which he was given special access, in this engrossing story.

Ezra Pound's greatness as a man of letters - poet, translator, critic, editor, pedagogue, universal correspondent - made him a central figure in the literature of the twentieth century. He was an exotic and controversial character throughout his life, and his public career achieved melodrama in l945 when he was indicted on a charge of treason, for broadcasting Axis propaganda on Rome radio during the war. He was eventually confined to a Washington psychiatric hospital for thirteen years. The final period of his life, after his release and return to Italy, was as dramatic - and tragic - as anything that had gone before. In this vigorous and fully documented biography Humphrey Carpenter carefully scrutinizes and often takes issue with the accepted valuation of Pound's achievements and his personality. He had access to Pound's vast correspondence - including highly revealing letters to his parents - and to medical records and confidential American government memoranda relating to Pound's indictment and trial. A Serious Character is rich in fascinating detail and acutely challenging in its judgements and commentary. Its title is taken from one of Pound's favourite sayings (first recorded in 1913): 'Are you or are you not, a serious character?'.

It started with "Beyond the Fringe" at the Edinburgh Festival of 1960. Four Cambridge undergraduates, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett had created a satirical revue, which by its iconoclastic irreverence destroyed what Humphrey Carpenter describes as 'the culture of deference' so prevalent in the preceding decade.

Satire was quick to spread: The Establishment Club, 'London's first satirical nightclub', opened in Soho: "Private Eye "began to appear: and "That Was The Week That Was" started to be screened on the BBC on Saturday nights.

Why was there this sudden upsurge of satire? What really happened in those years? Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller, Ned Sherrin, Richard Ingrams and the late John Wells were all interviewed by Humphrey Carpenter. Their stories have been woven together to create a narrative which vibrantly brings alive this period of social and cultural change.

'It's an interesting story, and I think that it's never been really got quite right (before now), largely because it hasn't been set in its social context. . . This is the first detailed, scholarly account of this peculiar episode in British cultural history, and I suspect will remain a definitive one.' Jonathan Miller

In Humphrey Carpenter's own words, 'This is the story of the longest-ever literary party, which went on in Montparnasse, on the Left Bank, throughout the 1920s.'

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""'This book', to continue to quote Carpenter himself, 'is chiefly a collage of Left-Bank expatriate life as it was experienced by the Hemingway generation - "The Lost Generation," as Gertrude Stein named it in a famous remark to Hemingway.'

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""There are brief portraits of Gertrude Stein, Natalie Clifford Barney and Sylvia Beach, who moved to Paris before the First World War and provided vital introductions for the exiles of the 1920s. The main narrative, however, concerns the years 1921 to 1928 because these saw the arrival and departure of Hemingway and most of his Paris associates.

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""'He is a compelling guide, catching the kind of idiosyncratic detail or incident that holds the readers' attention and maintains a cracking pace. Anyone wanting an introduction to the constellation of talent that made the Left Bank in Paris during the Twenties a second Greenwich Village would find this a useful and inspiring book.' "Times Educational Supplement "

Covering the period from the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Winnie-the-Pooh, Humphrey Carpenter examines the lives and writings of Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Grahame, George Macdonald, Louisa May Alcott, Frances Hodgson Burnett, A.A. Milne and others whose works make up the Golden Age of children's literature.

Both a collective biography and a work of criticism, Secret Gardens forces us to reconsider childhood classics in a new light.

'Secret Gardens permits us to see in a fresh light the interaction between cultural history and literature, and to realize that ... it wasn't mere misfits who withdrew into the writing of children's books, but rather the sort of misfits who reflected the prevailing dissatisfactions of the age.' "New York Times Book Review"

Kingsley Amis, John Osborne, John Braine, Colin Wilson, John Wain - five names instantly redolent of the 1950s and the Angry Young Men phenomenon. However, as Humphrey Carpenter explores with relish, the suggestion that these and other writers, tagged in the same way, formed a homogeneous cadre of rebellion is false and is much more the product of media myth-making than anything else. Indeed, the Angry Young Men could hardly have been a more diverse group, sundered by ability, achievement, beliefs and outlook. This was the sort of book Humphrey Carpenter excelled at, with The Inklings, Secret Gardens, Geniuses Together, The Brideshead Generation and The Angry Young Men almost making the category of group literary biography his own. This was his last in the idiom and probably the funniest.

Dennis Potter's death in 1994 deprived British television of its most controversial figure. Potter was a prolific writer of genius. Yet while his subversive television plays, such as Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective, scandalized and delighted the nation, they also made him the butt of the tabloids, who nicknamed him 'Dirty Den' for his 1989 serial Blackeyes. Humphrey Carpenter, acclaimed biographer of Tolkien, Auden, Pound, Britten and Robert Runcie, interviewed everyone who came close to Potter, and had exclusive access to Potter's archives, including the many unmade television and film scripts. Carpenter portrays a very different Potter from the aggressive public image: a deeply shy and reclusive man, who was psychologically as well as physically scarred by the illness which struck him down at the age of twenty-six. Potter was a man with a vast interest in sex but also a terrible loathing of it, thanks to an appalling experience he suffered in childhood. Potter was a man much gossiped about. Carpenter's remarkable biography establishes the extraordinary truth behind the rumours; describes Potter's strange, obsessive relationships with women such as Gina Bellman, who played Blackeyes; and gives a vivid portrait of the backstage dramas and fights behind Potter's screen triumphs. 'What is valuable about this book is that it reveals Potter's real private life, which barely features in his plays ... A wonderfully vivid portrait of the man: his generosity and cruelty, his coarseness and tenderness, and the thwarted sexual yearning that underlay everything.' Lynn Barber, Daily Telegraph

'[The Brideshead Generation] has both style and substance, and is above all an enjoyable companion. It has a wildly amusing cast, here controlled by a skilful director.' Evening Standard 'Jovial and entertaining, full of the sort of stories that your friends will tell you if you don't read it before them.' Independent 'Carpenter has read widely and has collected an enormous fund of entertaining stories and facts.' Sunday Telegraph 'Hauntingly sad and wonderfully funny and by far the best thing Humphrey Carpenter has done.' Fiona MacCarthy, The Times

"Magic carpets don't turn up in schools."

But this is exactly what does happen when Class Three's new teacher flies in through the window. With Mr Majeika in charge, it's going to be the most exciting school term ever . . .

W. H. Auden disapproved of literary biography. Or did he? The truth is far more equivocal than at first seems apparent. There is no denying he delivered himself of such unambiguous pronouncements as 'Biographies of writers are always superfluous and usually in bad taste.'; and that he asked for his friends to burn his letters at his death, but, against that, Auden himself often reviewed literary biographies and normally with enthusiasm. Moreover he argued for biographies of writers such as Dryden, Trollope, Wagner and Gerard Manley Hopkins as their lives would tell us something about their art.

Humphrey Carpenter himself nicely summarizes Auden's ambiguity on this question. 'Here (referring to literary biography), as so often in his life, Auden adopted a dogmatic attitude which did not reflect the full range of his opinions, and which he sometimes flatly contradicted.'

Although the biography was not authorized it did receive the co-operation of the Auden Estate which gave permission for letters and unpublished works to be quoted. The result is a biography that was widely praised on first publication in 1981 and which continues to hold its own. Now is the obvious time to reissue it with the character of Humphrey Carpenter playing an important role in Alan Bennett's "The Habit of Art. "In his introduction Alan Bennett writes 'When I started writing the play I made much use of the biographies of both Auden and Britten written by Humphrey Carpenter and both are models of their kind. Indeed I was consulting his books so much that eventually Carpenter found his way into the play.'" "

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""'Carpenter is a model biographer - diligent, unspeculative, sympathetic, and extremely good at finding out what happened when and with whom . . . admirably detailed and researched study.' John Bayley, "The Listener"

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""'an illuminating book; full of information, unobtrusively affectionate, it describes with unpretentious elegance the curve of a great poet's life and work' Frank Kermode, "Guardian"

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""'sharpens and usually lights up even the most canvassed parts of the Auden life and myth . . . a deeply interesting book about a deeply interesting life' Roy Fuller, "Sunday Times"

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""' . . . the story of a remarkable man told by one of the best living biographers' David Cecil, "Book Choice "

A biography of Benjamin Britten which presents a panorama of British musical life since the 1920s.

"I really am quite useless as a wizard."

But Class Three think Mr Majeika is an excellent wizard, particularly when his spells go wrong! First, Hamish Bigmore ends up on TV. Then a real giant appears in the School Play. Finally, Mr Majeika gets the whole class lost on a magic carpet!

There's always an adventure with Mr Majeika around.

Class Three has got a new computer and while exploring it, Mr Majeika manages to get the whole class trapped in the school website. Many adventures follow and Class Three meet bizarre characters before they can get out.

More amazing adventures with Mr Majeika, the ex-wizard turned teacher, and his class at St Barty's School including a trip down a magic river, saving St Barty's from the wrecking ball, and work experience for class three.

Welcome to Wizardford-upon-Sky. No parking of magic carpets. No bicycles allowed within the city gates.

Class 3 are sure that something is very wrong when Mr Majeika leaves school without saying goodbye. So when they find a message from him saying he's been arrested by the Silly Crime Squad, they are determined to rescue him. But Hamish Bigmore and Mr Majeika's old enemy Wilhemina Worlock are already at Wizardford-upon-Sky lying in wait . . .

When old Mr Jenks retires, St Barty's School advertises for a new caretaker. Unfortunately there's only one applicant - Hamish Bigmore's Uncle Wilf who is just as rude and bad-tempered as Hamish. When Mr Majeika is hurt in an accident it becomes clear that Uncle Wilf is working for the wickedest of witches, Wilhelmina Warlock! It's up to Mr Majeika to work his magic and put things right again.

"Do be careful, Mr Majeika, there might be real ghosts in there."

When Class Three and Mr Majeika get on board a Ghost Train they are in for a surprise. Real ghosts appear and the wicked Wilhelmina Worlock isn't far away. But Jody comes to the rescue . . . with a dragon to help her.

Another magical adventure for Class Three.

"Gosh," said Thomas, "isn't that Robin Hood?"

Class Three have fun at their Book Week when famous story book characters suddenly appear! But there's trouble ahead with Wilhelmina Worlock the witch at the School Sports day and Hamish Bigmore causes havoc on a day trip to France. Mr Majeika manages to keep control . . . with the help of a little bit of magic.

"Sometimes," whispered Jody, "I think school dinners would be all right if it wasn't for her."

The dinner lady's "favourite friend" is nasty Hamish Bigmore. It is up to Mr Majeika to try and change the school menu. Meanwhile, on Bartyshire Farm Park, there are some very strange-looking animals indeed . . .

"Oh, don't be cowards," said Jody. "I'm sure it's perfectly safe".

Mysteriously stranded in the fog at night, Mr Majeika and Class Three find themselves in a creepy hotel near Hadrian's Wall where some very spooky things start to happen. Strange lights, ghostly sounds and vanishing people . . .

A hilarious and haunting story!

"A Great, Silly Grin" opens at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival, where a staggeringly inspired satirical revue called Beyond the Fringe startled a public steeped in the polite, bland banality of the 1950s. From there it is a short trip to the coffee bars of London, where the appearance of a scruffy yellow pamphlet calling itself Private Eye overturned the way Britons looked at their world. The apotheosis of the satire boom, and the progenitor of so many American comedy acts, was the groundbreaking BBC television program "That Was the Week That Was," which combined elements of sketch comedy and evening-news broadcast to produce something essential, hilarious, and, on occasion, scandalous. Humphrey Carpenter's history of this tumultuous and exciting era introduces us not only to the people involved in its creation--Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Michael Frayn, Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett, and David Frost--but also their routines and sketches.

"Use of magic by teacher strictly forbidden."

Poor Mr Majeika goes to the bottom of the class when the school inspector comes to call. Things don't get any easier when Mr Majeika turns himself into a lobster by mistake. Class Three somehow have to get Wilhelmina Worlock to undo the spell . . .

More hilarious tales of magic and mayhem.