Toby Jones stars in this three-part BBC adaptation of John Lanchester's novel. The drama centres around the residents of the fictional Pepys Road in South London, where houses cost a small fortune. Occupiers of the street vary from those who have lived there since before the London property boom, including elderly widow Petunia Howe (Gemma Jones), to the recently moved in wealthier residents, including banker Roger Hunt (Jones). After all of the street's residents receive mysterious postcards bearing the message 'We want what you have', the interweaving connections between them begin to unravel.

Friedrich Schiller, the dramatist and poet, greatly influenced the development of aesthetics through his essays. He sums up the eighteenth century while anticipating modern ideas; his notions of the naive and the sentimental, of art as play, and of beauty as semblance, have had a lasting impact on aesthetic speculation.Dr Sharpe's book is the first study devoted to tracing the attempts of successive generations of philosophers and literary critics to expound the works and deal with the problems they present. Surveying Anglo-American as well as German-language criticism, she illuminates the impact of critical and political change on their evaluation.

TV adaptation of the bestselling children's novel by Nina Bawden. When 14-year-old Carrie Willow (Keeley Fawcett) and her younger brother Nick (Jack Stanley) are evacuated from London to the small Welsh town of Druids Bottom during World War II, they are taken in by the strict Mr Evans (Alun Armstrong) and his sister Auntie Lou (Lesley Sharp). As the children gradually realise they have entered a mysterious world of curses, witchcraft and druids, their lives are altered forever.

In this important study, Lesley Sharpe assesses Schiller's development as a dramatist, poet and thinker, and provides detailed discussions of all his major works, including his essays on aesthetics. His works are viewed against the social, political and literary background of the late eighteenth century. Spanning a period from the late 1770s to 1805 they explore the insistent themes of the age - the loss of tradition and authority, the individual's claim to self-expression and the search for stability. While the early works focus on the turbulent individual, Schiller later turns to the great public concerns of the French Revolutionary era - legitimacy and power, the exercise of freedom and the relationship between morality and politics. The aesthetic essays explore the vital role of art in integrating the aesthetic, moral and political realms.

This study provides a stimulating and accessible survey of this many-sided figure. The volume places Goethe in the context of the Germany and Europe of his lifetime. His literary work is covered in individual chapters on poetry, drama--with a separate chapter on Faust, prose fiction and autobiography. A wide-ranging survey of reception inside and outside Germany and an extensive guide to further reading complete the volume, which will appeal to students and specialists alike.

This study provides a stimulating and accessible survey of this many-sided figure. The volume places Goethe in the context of the Germany and Europe of his lifetime. His literary work is covered in individual chapters on poetry, drama--with a separate chapter on Faust, prose fiction and autobiography. A wide-ranging survey of reception inside and outside Germany and an extensive guide to further reading complete the volume, which will appeal to students and specialists alike.

This is the first general study of Friedrich Schiller’s works to appear in English for over forty years. Lesley Sharpe assesses Schiller’s development as a dramatist, poet and thinker, and provides detailed discussions of all his major works, including his essays on aesthetics. His works are viewed against the social, political and literary background of the late eighteenth century. Spanning a period from the late 1770s to 1805 they explore the insistent themes of the age - the loss of tradition and authority, the individual's claim to self-expression and the search for stability. While the early works focus on the turbulent individual, Schiller later turns to the great public concerns of the French Revolutionary era - legitimacy and power, the exercise of freedom, and the relationship between morality and politics. The aesthetic essays explore the vital role of art in integrating the aesthetic, moral and political realms.

The complete story of the Wannsee Conference, the meeting that paved the way for the Holocaust. On 20 January 1942, fifteen men arrived for a meeting in a luxurious villa on the shores of the Wannsee in the far-western outskirts of Berlin. They came at the invitation of Reinhard Heydrich and were almost all high-ranking Nazi Party, government, and SS officials. The exquisite position by the lake, the imposing driveway up to the villa, culminating in a generously sized roundabout in front of the house, the expansive, carefully landscaped park, the generous suite of rooms that opened on to the park and the lake, the three-level terrace that stretched the entire garden side of the house, and the winter garden with its marble fountain, all give today's visitor to the villa a good idea of its owner's aspiration to build a sophisticated, almost palatial structure as a testament to his cultivation and worldly success. But the beauty of the situation stood in stark contrast to the purpose of the meeting to which the fifteen had come in January 1942: the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question'. According to the surviving records of the meeting, items on the agenda included the precise definition of exactly which group of people was to be affected, followed by a discussion of how upwards of eleven million people were to be deported and subjected to the toughest form of forced labour, and following on from this a discussion of how the survivors of this forced labour as well as those not capable of it were ultimately to be killed. The next item on the agenda was breakfast.

New essays providing a in-depth view of the many facets of the great world poet's work. Friedrich Schiller is not merely one of Germany's foremost poets. He is also one of the major German contributors to world literature. The undying words he gave to characters such as Marquis Posa in Don Carlos and Wilhelm Tell in the eponymous drama continue to underscore the need for human freedom. Schiller cultivated hope in the actualization of moral knowledge through aesthetic education and critical reflection, leading to his ideal of a more humane humanity. At the same time, he was fully cognizant of the problems that attend various forms of idealism. Yet for Schiller, ultimately, love remains the gravitational center of the universe and of human existence, and beyond life and death joy prevails. This collection of cutting-edge essays by some of the world's leading Schiller experts constitutes a milestone in scholarship. It includes in-depth discussions of the writer's major dramatic and poeticworks, his essays on aesthetics, and his activities as historian, anthropologist, and physiologist, as well as of his relation to the ancients and of Schiller reception in 20th-century Germany. Contributors: Steven D.Martinson, Walter Hinderer, David Pugh, Otto Dann, Werner von Stransky-Stranka-Greifenfels, J. M. van der Laan, Rolf-Peter Janz, Lesley Sharpe, Norbert Oellers, Dieter Borchmeyer, Karl S. Guthke, Wulf Koepke. Steven D.Martinson is Professor of German at the University of Arizona.

Double bill of BBC adaptations of M.R. James's ghost story 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad', written in 1904. In 'Whistle and I'll Come to You' (1968) Michael Hordern plays Professor Parkin who heads to a hotel on the east coast of England where he comes across a bone whistle while out on a walk. He takes it back to the hotel with him but that night hears strange noises in his room and, despite his dismissal of the supernatural, he is soon faced with more mysterious goings-on. In 'Whistle and I'll Come to You' (2010) John Hurt stars as James Parkin who, in this version, is a retired astronomer taking a much needed break from caring for his ailing wife. After finding a ring while wandering through the coastal resort he finds himself experiencing increasingly frightening and seemingly paranormal activity.

From Goethe to Gide brings together twelve essays on canonical male writers (six French and six German) commissioned from leading specialists in Britain and North America. Working with the tools of feminist criticism, the authors demonstrate how feminist readings of these writers can illuminate far more than attitudes to women. They raise fundamental aesthetic questions regarding, creativity, genre, realism and canonicity and show how feminist criticism can revitalize debate on these much-read writers. These commissioned essays from individual specialists focus on Rousseau, Goethe, Schiller, Hoffmann, Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Heine, Fontane, Zola, Kafka, Gide. The collection therefore foregrounds the major authors taught on British university BA courses in French and German who also shaped the dominant aesthetics, philosophy and bourgeois culture of European letters between 1770 and 1936. on these writers Unique in providing a comparative feminist reading of the aesthetics of canonical male works from the literatures of France and Germany, 1770-1936 Provides a major reassessment of some of the literary figures most studied in French and German courses around the world

Don Carlos and Mary Stuart, two of German literature's greatest dramas, deal with the timeless issues of power, freedom, and justice. Dating from 1787 and 1800 respectively, one play was written before the French Revolution, the other in its aftermath. Both dramatize periods of crisis in sixteenth-century Europe, and in doing so reflect Schiller's passionate engagement with the great themes of his own age - justice, power, freedom of conscience, legitimacy of government. A youthful work, Don Carlos shows the victory of the forces of reaction over the representatives of a new age. Mary Stuart shows the struggle of the Scottish queen in her last days of her life, not only for her freedom, but also for peace with her conscience, and that of her English rival, Elizabeth I, with the challenge of ruling justly. A vivid imaginative experience when read, these plays, with their starkly contrasting characters and thrilling confrontations, also demonstrate Schiller's brilliant stagecraft. These new translations into blank verse are accurate, elegant, and playable. The introduction, notes, and chronology set the plays in their cultural and intellectual background, while a family tree explains the historical relationship bewteen Don Carlos and Mary Stuart. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Johnny Depp stars as Inspector Abberline, the Victorian detective charged with catching Jack the Ripper, in this big screen adaptation of Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's acclaimed graphic novel. Despite the fact that he is struggling with an opium addiction and the ghosts of his dead wife and child, Abberline nevertheless quickly discovers that the Ripper is a man with an expert's knowledge of human anatomy and some kind of connection to the Freemasons. As his investigations continue, he meets prostitute Mary Kelly (Heather Graham) and following her leads discovers that the killings are connected to people in the highest reaches of British society; but as he gets closer to revealing the culprit, both he and Mary find themselves in mortal danger.