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The long-awaited biography of one of the great writers of the twentieth century – ‘a wonderful blend of scholarly fact and juicy storytelling’ (Mail on Sunday).

Muriel Spark ended was one of the great writers of the twentieth century. Hers is a Cinderella story, the first thirty-nine years of which she presented in her autobiography, Curriculum Vitae (1992), politely blurring the intensity of her darker moments: her relations with her brother, mother, son, husband; a terrifying period of hallucinations and subsequent depression; and the disastrously misplaced love she had felt for two men she had wanted to marry, Howard Sergeant and Derek Stanford.

Aged nineteen, Spark left Scotland to marry in Southern Rhodesia, escaping back to Britain on a troopship in 1944 after her divorce. Her son returned in 1945 to be brought up by her parents in Edinburgh while she established herself as a poet and critic in London. After becoming a Roman Catholic in 1954, she began a novel, The Comforters, and with Memento Mori, The Ballad of Peckham Rye and The Bachelors rose rapidly into the literary stratosphere.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), with its adaptation into a successful stage-play and film, marked her full translation into international celebrity and from that point she went to live first in New York, then Rome, and finally Tuscany where for over thirty years, until her death in 2006, she shared a house with her companion, the artist Penelope Jardine.

The long-awaited biography of one of the great writers of the twentieth century – ‘a wonderful blend of scholarly fact and juicy storytelling’ (Mail on Sunday).

Muriel Spark ended was one of the great writers of the twentieth century. Hers is a Cinderella story, the first thirty-nine years of which she presented in her autobiography, Curriculum Vitae (1992), politely blurring the intensity of her darker moments: her relations with her brother, mother, son, husband; a terrifying period of hallucinations and subsequent depression; and the disastrously misplaced love she had felt for two men she had wanted to marry, Howard Sergeant and Derek Stanford.

Aged nineteen, Spark left Scotland to marry in Southern Rhodesia, escaping back to Britain on a troopship in 1944 after her divorce. Her son returned in 1945 to be brought up by her parents in Edinburgh while she established herself as a poet and critic in London. After becoming a Roman Catholic in 1954, she began a novel, The Comforters, and with Memento Mori, The Ballad of Peckham Rye and The Bachelors rose rapidly into the literary stratosphere.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), with its adaptation into a successful stage-play and film, marked her full translation into international celebrity and from that point she went to live first in New York, then Rome, and finally Tuscany where for over thirty years, until her death in 2006, she shared a house with her companion, the artist Penelope Jardine.

A selection of poetry by Lord Byron, a poet considered amongst the most treasured and influential in English literature.

The poet George Gordon Byron, commonly known as Lord Byron, was a leading figure of the Romantic movement in England and one of the most influential writers of verse in English literature. Whilst his poetry was considered scandalous and shocking by Victorian society, it has now reclaimed its rightful place in the canon of definitive English verse. However, the excesses and vicissitudes of Byron himself continue to provoke disbelief and awe in even the most hardened readers.

In this selection of poetry, readers are given a taste for the astonishing variety in Byron’s work. From drama to introspection, risqué sexual comedy to social commentary, this Everyman edition collates verse for seasoned readers of poetry as well as newcomers to the genre.

The classic eye-witness account of Nazi Germany, by Hitler’s Armaments Minister and right-hand man.

‘Inside the Third Reich is not only the most significant personal German account to come out of the war but the most revealing document on the Hitler phenomenon yet written. It takes the reader inside Nazi Germany on four different levels: Hitler’s inner circle, National Socialism as a whole, the area of wartime production and the inner struggle of Albert Speer. The author does not try to make excuses, even by implication, and is unrelenting toward himself and his associates … Speer’s full-length portrait of Hitler has unnerving reality. The Führer emerges as neither an incompetent nor a carpet-gnawing madman but as an evil genius of warped conceits endowed with an ineffable personal magic’ New York Times

An acclaimed biography of Elizabeth I and an examination of the politics and intrigues of her Tudor court.

Elizabeth I ruled England in defiance of convention, exercising supreme authority in a man’s world. With courage, brilliance and style, she reigned for nearly forty-five years. Anne Somerset’s penetrating biography of this complex and uniquely gifted woman is unrivalled in its analysis of both Elizabeth’s personal life and her career as leader.

The essential and fully revised guide to interpreting the Laws of Cricket.

Tom Smith first wrote his guide for umpires and scorers in 1980. Since then, his indispensable guide has gone through six fully-revised editions. The ‘new’ Tom Smith is the first to be fully redesigned and updated for the 21st century. Its publication coincides with international recognition that there should be one universal standard for the training of umpires whatever country they operate in.

The ‘new’ Tom Smith incorporates the full 2000 Code of the Laws of Cricket with subsequent amendments as ratified by the MCC and international and national cricket bodies. The freshly drawn diagrams are easy to follow and will be of value not only to umpires and scorers, but to all lovers of the game of cricket.

As Richie Benaud, the great Australian cricketer and commentator, has said, he never goes without his copy of ‘Tom Smith’. Nor should any spectator who wishes to feel fully qualified in discussing the application of the Laws of Cricket to the game.

David Lloyd says, ‘Tom Smith is just as valuable a piece of kit as Hawkeye, Snicko and Hotspot in the Sky Sports commentary box, its interpretation of the Laws of the game is the first thing we turn to regarding decisions. it’s a “must-have” alongside the Laws of cricket.’

Tom Smith first wrote his guide for umpires and scorers in 1980. Since then, his indispensable guide has gone through six fully-revised editions. The ‘new’ Tom Smith is the first to be fully redesigned and updated for the 21st century. Its publication coincides with international recognition that there should be one universal standard for the training of umpires whatever country they operate in.

The ‘new’ Tom Smith incorporates the full 2000 Code of the Laws of Cricket with subsequent amendments as ratified by the MCC and international and national cricket bodies. The freshly drawn diagrams are easy to follow and will be of value not only to umpires and scorers, but to all lovers of the game of cricket.

As Richie Benaud, the great Australian cricketer and commentator, has said, he never goes without his copy of ‘Tom Smith’. Nor should any spectator who wishes to feel fully qualified in discussing the application of the Laws of Cricket to the game.

David Lloyd says, ‘Tom Smith is just as valuable a piece of kit as Hawkeye, Snicko and Hotspot in the Sky Sports commentary box, its interpretation of the Laws of the game is the first thing we turn to regarding decisions. it’s a “must-have” alongside the Laws of cricket.’

When his ultra-logical computer tells him that to survive he must become the richest man in the universe, Rod McBan the hundred and fifty-first thought he had a good plan. A telepathic cripple, rejected by many of his people, owner of the Station of Doom, the safety of wealth would keep him safe. In one crowded, unbelievable night he achieved the impossible, became the richest boy in the galaxy.

But Rod McBan will soon discover that money brings trouble. A galaxy of people and other beings – out to rob him, use him or kill him!

Wompler’s Walking Babies once put Millford, Utah, on the map. But they aren’t selling like they used to. In fact, they aren’t selling at all and the only alternative to winding the company up is to tap the government for a research grant. And so Wompler Research Laboratories and Project 32 come into being. The plan is to produce self-replicating mechanisms; identical cells equipped to repair intracellular breakdowns, convert power from their environment and create new cells. But suddenly the nondescript grey metal boxes start crawling about the laboratory, feeding voraciously on any metal… and multiplying at an alarming rate.

Simeon Krug’s obsession is to see a tower built, on kilometre high, that will reach out to answer the voice from space. The Androids are his tools; superb, man-like creations of Man. The Androids take Krug for their God, and seek to become one with flesh-and-blood mankind through his wisdom. But Krug is not God – and it takes a God to control the terrible emotions Krug has stirred . . .

Critic, essayist, educator and poet, author of The Scholar Gypsy, Dover Beach, The Forsaken Merman and other popular poems.

The complete story of how the German Enigma codes were broken. Perfect for fans of THE IMITATION GAME, the new film on Alan Turing’s Enigma code, starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

Breaking the German Enigma codes was not only about brilliant mathematicians and professors at Bletchley Park. There is another aspect of the story which it is only now possible to tell. It takes in the exploits of spies, naval officers and ordinary British seamen who risked, and in some cases lost, their lives snatching the vital Enigma codebooks from under the noses of Nazi officials and from sinking German ships and submarines.

This book tells the whole Enigma story: its original invention and use by German forces and how it was the Poles who first cracked – and passed on to the British – the key to the German airforce Enigma. The more complicated German Navy Enigma appeared to them to be unbreakable.

Born to be misunderstood, Spinoza was a man whose theology was banned for Godlessness. The very virtuosity of his reasoning left logicians unsettled, while even to professional thinkers in our own time, Spinoza has seemed too clever by half.

And yet, as Roger Scruton shows in this strikingly readable introduction to the man and his though, Spinoza’s concerns were both simple and sublime. Few philosophers, indeed, have shown such a straightforward, sustained and honest interest in uncovering the most fundamental aspects of existence. Too important to be dismissed as a mere genius, Spinoza is rediscovered here in all his quiet and consoling simplicity.

Pre-Order THE GRANDDAUGHTER: the unforgettable story of German reunification that asks what might be found when it seems like all is lost, from the international bestselling author of THE READER, Bernhard Schlink

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An exceptionally powerful novel exploring the themes of betrayal, guilt and memory against the background of the Holocaust. An international bestseller.

For 15-year-old Michael Berg, a chance meeting with an older woman leads to far more than he ever imagined. The woman in question is Hanna, and before long they embark on a passionate, clandestine love affair which leaves Michael both euphoric and confused. For Hanna is not all she seems.

Years later, as a law student observing a trial in Germany, Michael is shocked to realize that the person in the dock is Hanna. The woman he had loved is a criminal. Much about her behaviour during the trial does not make sense. But then suddenly, and terribly, it does – Hanna is not only obliged to answer for a horrible crime, she is also desperately concealing an even deeper secret.

‘A tender, horrifying novel that shows blazingly well how the Holocaust should be dealt with in fiction. A thriller, a love story and a deeply moving examination of a German conscience’ INDEPENDENT

Renowned for his wicked wit and bons mots, Wilde also had a deep understanding of the human condition – as revealed with moving simplicity in THE BALLARD OF READING GOAL.

Pascal 1623-1662

The moralist who advocated dressing up, the ascetic who liked a flutter, the devout Christian who lauded vanity, Pascal is a funnier, more ironic philosopher than his reputation as an anguished existentialist would suggest.

Yet however irreverent the terms of his ironic project, its underlying impetus is both serious and profound. In this superb new introduction to the thinker and his thought, Ben Rogers demonstrates the deep wisdom of Pascal’s defence of popular folly – a defence which he used to highlight the higher delusions of the learned.

Setting the Pensées in the context of Pascal’s life and philosophical career, Rogers reveals how their apparent frivolity underpins a fascinating, far-reaching and still challenging body of moral and political thought. His remarkable guide offers an eye-opening account of the work of a marvellous and much neglected thinker.

A controversial account of the Churchill years by a bestselling historian.
‘The best sort of history – revealing, gossipy and acidulous’ OBSERVER

This highly praised book by the Wolfson History Prize-winning author of SALISBURY tackles six aspects of Churchilliana and uncovers a plethora of disturbing facts about wartime and post-war Britain.
His revelations include:

– The case for the impeachment of Lord Mountbatten
– The Nazi sympathies of Sir Arthur Bryant, hitherto considered a ‘patriotic historian’
– The British establishment’s doubt about Churchill’s role after Dunkirk
– The appeasement of the trade unions in Churchill’s Indian summer
– The inside story of black immigration in the early 1950s
– The anti-Churchill stance adopted by the Royal Family in 1940

R. G. Collingwood 1889-1943

Many philosophers have been interested in aesthetics, but Collingwood was passionate about art. His theories were never merely theoretical: aesthetics for him was a vivid, vibrant thing, to be experienced immediately in worked paint and in sculpted stone, in poetry and music.

Art and life were no dichotomy for Collingwood – for how could you have one without the other? Works of art were created in and for the real world, to be enjoyed by real people, to enchant and enhance.

Aaron Ridley’s fascinating introduction opens up the work of this most rewarding of aesthetic thinkers, tracing his thought from its philosophic origins through to its practical consequence and ethical implications. The man who saw art as ‘the community’s medicine for the worst disease of mind’ had a sense of its urgent importance which we ignore at our peril today.

Nine hundred thousand years ago, something wiped out the Amarantin. For the human colonists now settling the Amarantin homeworld Resurgam, it’s of little more than academic interest, even after the discovery of a long-hidden, almost perfect Amarantin city and a colossal statue of a winged Amarantin. For brilliant but ruthless scientist Dan Sylveste, it’s more than merely intellectual curiosity – and he will stop at nothing to get at the truth. Even if the truth costs him everything. But the Amarantin were wiped out for a reason, and that danger is closer and greater than even Syveste imagines …

REVELATION SPACE: a huge, magnificent space opera that ranges across the known and unknown universe … towards the most terrifying of destinations.

‘The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking’ Heidegger

‘We should never allow our fears of the expectations of others to set the frontiers of our destiny’

Martin Heidegger was one of the most controversial philosophers of the 20th century, and still causes widespread division. Born in Germany, he was concerned with what makes beings intelligible as beings, and best known for his contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics and existentialism.

Johnathan Ree’s brief introduction to his life and work is an insightful figure into one of the most divisive philosophers of the modern age.

Karl Popper 1902-1994

The political history of the twentieth century has been full of savage ‘certainties’. A similar idea of history warranted the callous savageries of both Marxism and Fascism. They shared a faith in what Karl Popper called ‘Historicism’: the belief that the future could be predicted and that man had to align himself with its bloody progress.

Totalitarianism, Popper maintained, was based on ideas implicit in Western philosophy, from Plato to Hegel and Marx. It was his unique achievement to challenge the fundamental arguments in which Left and Right cloaked their authority.

At a time when Communism and Fascism were devastatingly alluring to many intellectuals, Popper attacked their philosophical roots with passionate reasonableness and unflinching scepticism. As Frederic Raphael suggests in this elegant and intriguing introduction to his philosophy of science and history, Popper’s epic modesty may have made him the most radical thinker of our times.

‘A masterly account…of supreme interest…a classic of recorded field work and meticulous scholarship’ Country Life

Long accepted as the best work on the subject, Oliver Rackham’s book is both a comprehensive history of Britain’s woodland and a field-work guide that presents trees individually and as part of the landscape.

From prehistoric times, through the Roman period and into the Middle Ages, Oliver Rackham describes the changing character, role and history of trees and woodland. He concludes this definitive study with a section on the conservation and future of Britain’s trees, woodlands and hedgerows.

‘As an aid to understanding the landscape I haven’t found its equal’ New Scientist

From its earliest origins to the present day, Oliver Rackham describes the endlessly changing character of Britain’s countryside.

Exploring the natural and man-made features of the land – fields, highways, hedgerows, fens, marshes, rivers, heaths, coasts, woods and wood pastures – he shows conclusively and unforgettably how they have developed over the centuries. In doing so, he covers a wealth of related subjects to provide a fascinating account of the sometimes subtle and sometimes radical ways in which people, fauna, flora, climate, soils and other physical conditions have played their part in the shaping of the countryside.

‘One thing is certain: no one would be wise to write further on our natural history, or to make films about it, without thinking very hard about what is contained in these authoritative pages’ Country Life

‘A classic of scholarship and imagination…A monumental work, but it is written with humanity, dignity, concern and a great deal of humour’ Times Educational Supplement

A short book combining extracts from the work of one of the world’s greatest thinkers with commentary by one of Britain’s most distinguished writers on philosophy.