In his touching and amusing memoir Chance Meetings, William Saroyan gives us a glimpse of the characters that have left an indelible impression on his mind for years to come.
'I have tried to depict Arnold Bennett as a man of character and integrity, a fundamentally innocent humorist, a superlative friend, and, to others, not myself, a difficult personality; but I have worked under considerable difficulties, with many interruptions, and the result may be unsatisfactory.
With a rare blend of grace, warmth, and scholarship, Leslie Stainton raises the stakes of our appreciation for the greatest of Spain's modern poets, Federico Garca Lorca.
Ann Bridge, besides being a famous author, was also, in her own words, a person who frequently has, when awake, inexplicable 'knowings' of events taking place at a distance: and, in dreams, am informed, sometimes uncomfortably, of facts of which I can have no knowledge by normal means .
As a novelist, biographer, editor, and screenwriter, Nicholas Mosley has always been concerned with the central paradox of writing: if by definition fiction is untrue, and biography never complete, is there a form that will enable a writer to get at the truth of a life?
First published in 1978 Fa ades details the lives of three of the twentieth century's most intriguing literary figures: Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell.
From the author of All the Money in the World, now a major motion picture directed by Ridley Scott, comes an account of a phenomenon and a legend in her lifetime, Barbara Cartland.
First published in 1967, this tells of an Author, publisher, traveller, cricketer, lover of wine: Alec Waugh has been all these in the course of a life which has brought him a host of friends around the world.
An extraordinary book of real passionate research Edmund de WaalIn 1945, Ezra Pound was due to stand trial for treason for his broadcasts in Fascist Italy during the Second World War.
Gustave Flaubert, whose Madame Bovary outraged France's right-thinking bourgeoisie when it was first published in 1857, is brought to life in Frederick Brown's new biography in all his singularity and brilliance.
Mary Wesley published her first novel at seventy and went on to write a further nine bestsellers, including the legendary The Camomile Lawn, in a style best described as arsenic without the old lace.
Of all the poets of the First World War, Wilfred Owen most fires the imagination today this is the comprehensive literary biography of the greatest WW1 poetWilfred Owen tragically died in battle just a few days before the Armistice.
Unruly Times is a superlative portrait of the relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge, and a fascinating exploration of the Romantic Movement and the dramatic events that shaped it.
Christopher Isherwood settled in California in 1939 and spent the war years writing for Hollywood, but by 1945 he had all but ceased to write fiction and even abandoned his habit of keeping a diary.
'An invigorating discussion of general ills, this collection of autobiographical essays ranges over adultery and parenthood, ghosts and gods, fiction and football.
From Dylan Thomas s eighteen straight whiskies to Sylvia Plath s desperate suicide in the gas oven of her Primrose Hill kitchen; from Chatterton s Pre-Raphaelite demise to Keats death warrant in a smudge of arterial blood, the deaths of poets have often cast a backward shadow on their work.
The critically acclaimed memoir from the well-loved broadcaster Gerry AndersonGerry Anderson broadcast every day out of Londonderry, which once upon a time was called Doire Colmcille, evolving, under the influence of the English, into LondonDerry in the 17th century.
In this final volume of Christopher Isherwood's diaries, capstone of a million-word masterwork, he greets advancing age with poignant humour and an unquenchable appetite for the new.
WINNER OF THE SOMERSET MAUGHAM AWARD NBCC AWARD FINALIST WINNER OF THE 2017 SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE Selected as a Book of the Year 2016 in The Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Financial Times, Spectator and ObserverAngela Carter s life was as unconventional as anything in her fiction.
The definitive biography of Wilkie Collins: the Victorian novelist, playwright, author of The Moonstone and The Woman in White, who lived a life of sensation.