Art & Literature

From much-loved documentary maker Louis Theroux comes a funny, heartfelt and entertaining account of his life and weird times in TV....

Come round to Louis Theroux’s house where the much-loved TV documentary-maker, podcaster and best-selling author of Gotta Get Theroux This finds himself in unexpected danger....

Stefan Zweig's memoir, The World of Yesterday, recalls the golden age of prewar Europe - its seeming permanence, its promise and its devastating fall with the onset of two world wars....

In this definitive biography - blessed by John le Carré himself - Adam Sisman reveals the man behind the best-selling persona....

Based on extensive interviews with Anna Wintour's closest friends and collaborators, including some of the biggest names in fashion, journalist Amy Odell has crafted the most revealing portrait of Wintour ever published.... 

In this long-awaited and candid memoir, Hitchens re-traces the footsteps of his life to date....

On Writing is part biography, part a collection of tips for the aspiring writer....

Katherine Rundell embarks on a fleet-footed 'act of evangelism', showing us the many sides of Donne's extraordinary life, his obsessions, his blazing words and his tempestuous Elizabeth times—unveiling Donne as the most remarkable mind and as a lesson in living....

David Sedaris returns with his first new collection of personal essays since the best-selling Calypso....

What could be a more tempting Christmas gift than a compendium of David Sedaris' best stories, selected by the author himself? From a spectacular career spanning almost three decades, these stories have become modern classics and are now for the first time collected in one volume....

An irresistible collection of essays and memoir from the internationally best-selling, Women’s Prize-winning author of The Dutch House....

This is the second part of Roald Dahl's remarkable life story, following on from Boy.... 

From an early age, Grace Dent was hungry. As a little girl growing up in Currock, Carlisle, she yearned to be something bigger, to go somewhere better....

No book ever written has more perfectly captured the spirit of the 1960s counterculture....

Scott Adams has probably failed at more things than anyone you've ever met. So how did he go from hapless office worker and serial failure to the creator of Dilbert, one of the world's most famous comic strips, in just a few years....

In 1982 Murakami began running to keep fit. Here he reflects on his running experiences....

Brilliantly compiled and edited, and filled with detail and anecdote, Daily Rituals is irresistible, addictive, magically inspiring....

Retired wreckhead Catherine Gray, author of surprise best seller The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, is now in her ninth sober year and has learnt a damn sight more....

"You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed"....

The book is full of humorous anecdote and rich characterization, and paints a vivid picture of 18th-century London, peopled by prominent personalities of the time....

Britain's national icon, Michael Parkinson reads his long-awaited autobiography....

A real-life detective story, investigating how Agatha Christie and colleagues in a mysterious literary club transformed crime fiction....

The star presenter and judge of Channel 4's The Great Pottery Throw Down looks back on his life and career - and the passion for ceramics that started it all....

In his late 30s, Edward Parnell found himself trapped in the recurring nightmare of a family tragedy.... 

In 1612, Shakespeare gave evidence at the Court of Requests in Westminster - providing us with the only surviving record of his spoken words....

Miranda Seymour’s biography reveals a proud and fiercely independent artist, one who experienced tragedy and extreme poverty, alcohol and drug dependency, romantic and sexual turmoil—and yet was never a victim. I Used to Live Here Once enables one of our most excitingly intuitive biographers to uncover the hidden truth about a fascinatingly elusive woman. Persuasive, surprising and compassionate, this unforgettable biography brings Jean Rhys to life as never before.

Hans Holbein the Younger is chiefly celebrated for his beautiful and precisely realised portraiture, which includes representations of Henry VIII, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, Anne of Cleves, Jane Seymour and an array of the Tudor lords and ladies he encountered during the course of two sojourns in England. But beyond these familiar images, which have come to define our perception of the world of the Henrician court, Holbein was a protean and multi-faceted genius.

From janitor to journalist, Stringer: A Sportswriter's Memoir is the true story of former sports reporter Robert Garrett, who stumbled into his dream job. While cleaning offices at the Tampa Tribune, inspiration strikes him, and he submits a writing sample in the hopes of covering high school football part-time. It works. Robert is hooked on the business from his first game, which was marred by a brawl. Thus begins a seven-year adventure where he writes over 1,200 stories for four publications on everything sports, from shuffleboard to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Eye Contact is the story of a photographer's decade-long journey in search of meaning and manhood. An experienced freelancer with the New York Times, author Luke Sharrett treats listeners to a behind-the-scenes look at covering the White House and flying aboard Air Force One. Despite achieving professional success at a young age, he is haunted by a feeling that he simply doesn't belong. He can't seem to outrun a nagging fear that he doesn't have what it takes to succeed in life. As he navigates his career, he begins searching for answers. Who am I? Where do I belong?

Almost everyone yearns to know their parents more thoroughly before they die, to solve some of those lifelong mysteries. Maybe, just maybe, those answers will help you live your own life. But life doesn’t stop to wait. In his fifties, New Yorker writer Tad Friend is grappling with being a husband and a father as he tries to grasp who he is as a son. Torn between two families, he careens between two stages in life. On some days he feels vigorous, on the brink of greatness when he plays tournament squash. 

As a child, Anna Wintour was a tomboy with no apparent interest in clothing, but, seduced by the miniskirts and bob haircuts of swinging 1960s London, she grew into a fashion-obsessed teenager. Her father, the influential editor of the Evening Standard, loomed large in her life, and once he decided she should become editor in chief of Vogue, she never looked back. Impatient to start her career, she left high school and got a job at a fashionable boutique in London—an experience that would be the first of many defeats.

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung contains the wild and brilliant writings of Lester Bangs—the most outrageous and popular rock critic of the 1970s—edited and with an introduction by the reigning dean of rock critics, Greil Marcus.

This Very Short introduction explores the major themes of Austen criticism through close analysis of her major and minor works, with particular emphasis on the literary, social, and political backgrounds from which the novels emerge, and with which they engage. Thomas Keymer combines critical introductions to each of Austen's six major novels with an exploration of the key themes in her works. 

Awaiting the return of her husband and young son from a road trip, Obiajulu Ejiofor receives shattering news. There’s been a fatal car crash, and one of them is dead. In Where the Children Take Us, Obiajulu’s daughter, Zain E. Asher, tells the story of her mother’s harrowing fight to raise four children as a widowed immigrant in South London. Drawing on tough-love parenting strategies, Obiajulu teaches her sons and daughters to overcome the daily pressures of poverty, crime and prejudice—and much more. 

What does it mean to create, not in "a room of one's own," but in a domestic space? Do children and genius rule each other out? In The Baby on the Fire Escape, Julie Phillips traverses the shifting terrain where motherhood and creativity converge. With fierce empathy and vivid prose, Phillips evokes the intimate struggles of brilliant artists and writers, including Doris Lessing, Ursula K. Le Guin, Audre Lorde, and Alice Neel. A meditation on maternal identity and artistic greatness, Phillips illuminates some of the most pressing conflicts in contemporary women's lives. 

John Muir was a prominent Scottish-American biologist, author, ecological philosophy, botanist, zoologist, glaciologist, and early supporter for the conservation of wilderness in the US of America. He was also called "John of the Mountains" and "Dad of the National Parks."

For nearly fifty years, Dave Lopez covered every major story in the Southland. The veteran news reporter was a nightly presence in LA living rooms on KCBS Channel 2 for a remarkable 48-year career on camera. General managers and news directors came and went in the unforgiving world of major market TV news, but Dave outlasted more than twenty regime changes. 

Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing. He was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, an MP, a priest, the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral—and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. He converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a high-born girl without her father's consent, struggled to feed a family of 10 children and was often ill and in pain.

Shakespeare’s world is never too far different from our own, permeated with the same tragedies, the same existential questions and domestic worries. In this extraordinary book, Jonathan Bate brings then and now together. He investigates moments of his own life—losses and challenges—and asks whether, if you persevere with Shakespeare, he can offer a word of wisdom or a human insight for any time or any crisis. 

Vir Sanghvi's has been an interesting life—one that took him to Oxford, movie and political journalism, television and magazines—and he depicts it with the silky polish his fans expect of him. In A Rude Life, he turns his dispassionate observer's gaze on himself, and in taut prose tells us about all that he's experienced and nothing more, for he's still a private man. He unhurriedly recounts memories from his childhood and college years, moving on to give us an understanding of how he wrote his biggest stories, while giving us an insider's view into the politics and glamour.