Showing results for "Life" in Memoirs, Diaries & Correspondence

Step aboard Boater, a mesmerising voyage along the tranquil waterways of England, written by former UK Canal Laureate, Jo Bell. ' It's not a lifestyle. It's a life ' For over twenty years, Jo Bell, archaeologist and poet, has travelled the waterways of England (and sometimes Wales) meeting...

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS POPULAR NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2014 A laugh-out-loud true story of the trials and tribulations of being a live-in nanny in 1980s London and inspired a major TV series starring Helena Bonham Carter. ***** In 1982 Nina Stibbe, a 20-year-old from Leicester...

'This is a unique juxtaposition of the shatteringly honest diaries of two Jewish girls fighting to survive — Grandma Rosi in the Holocaust and two generations later Jess in today's grubby showbiz world. It appalled, uplifted and delighted me. I wish I’d written it.' MIRIAM MARGOLYES 'Deeply...

Now in the pantheon of great thinkers, Simone Weil (1909–1943) lived largely in the shadows, searching for her spiritual home while bearing witness to the violence that devastated Europe twice in her brief lifetime. The letters she wrote to her parents and brother from childhood onward chart her intellectual range as well as her itinerancy and ever-shifting preoccupations, revealing the singular personality at the heart of her brilliant essays. The first complete collection of Weil's missives to her family, A Life in Letters offers new insight into her personal relationships and experiences.

In a beautiful literary exploration, Sally Bayley tracks the evolution – and the potential twenty first century death of – the diary, mourning what it means to lose the art of writing simply for oneself. Diaries hold all manner of things: they allow us a moment to be completely personal, to...

A Sunday Times Book of the Year All royalties from sales of this book go to The Big Issue If you could write a letter to your younger self, what would it say? Over 10 years ago, The Big Issue began to ask some of the best-known, most interesting and most successful figures in entertainment...

The remarkable story of Margaret Paston, whose letters form the most extensive collection of personal writings by a medieval English woman.

James Bailey was unemployed, heartbroken, and questioning his purpose on the planet. In desperate search of an answer, he decided to write to luminaries from all fields and ask one simple question: What is the meaning of life? Then he waited. Slowly but surely their responses arrived through his letterbox. From entrepreneurs and environmentalists, to artists, authors and adventurers, this book gathers a kaleidoscope of perspectives on what it means to be human. With over one hundred enlightening responses, it's more than just a collection of letters; it's a roadmap to finding your own path.

In September of 2022, twenty-five years after Leonard Peltier received a life sentence for the murder of two FBI agents, the Democratic National Committee unanimously passed a resolution urging President Joe Biden to release him. Peltier has affirmed his innocence ever since his sentencing in 1977—his case was made fully and famously in Peter Matthiessen’s best-selling In the Spirit of Crazy Horse—and many remain convinced he was wrongly convicted. A wise and unsettling book, Prison Writings is both memoir and manifesto, chronicling Peltier’s life in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas.

Gay icon, great poet, leather daddy, eccentric professor, English, American, biker, non-driver, drug addict, hedonist, intellectual, enigmatic, friendly, Everyman, one-of-a-kind, brother, roommate, HIV-negative, paradigmatic AIDS writer, Nazi belt wearer, Jeff Dahmer scholar, Guggenheim Genius, secret philanthropist, Formalist, Existentialist, prolific letter writer, some-sort-of-an-angel...Thom Gunn was all of these and more... But hovering above these figures lay the memory of his mother.

UG Krishnamurti has been called the ‘anti-guru’, the ‘raging sage’ and the ‘thinker who shuns thought’. UG does not give lectures, has no organizations, does not write books, holds no gatherings and peddles no mantras. Yet he is the most talked-about thinker in India. This biography...

Meet Anne Lister, the 18th-century landowner, industrialist, explorer, lesbian and feminist icon. This is her story.... Anne was different from society’s expectations of a woman at the time: she not only did not wish to marry, but she also did not want to conform. Anne was interested only in women and had ‘marriage’ ceremonies with Mariana Lawton and later Ann Walker. She spent a great deal of time studying, managed her own estates, sought business opportunities, travelled widely and climbed mountains.  

When Delia's beloved first husband, Jerry, died of cancer in 2015, after 35 years of marriage, she struggled without him. Focusing on the day-to-day, she decided to make one small move forward and cancel Jerry's dedicated landline. This spiralled into days of frustration, prompting Delia to turn to words to process her grief and bewilderment. Her New York Times piece about the woes of customer service caught the eye of Peter, who emailed to commiserate.

In 1936 anthropologist Tom Harrison, poet and journalist Charles Madge and documentary filmmaker Humphrey Jennings set up the Mass Observation Project. The idea was simple: ordinary people would record, in diary form, the events of their everyday lives. An estimated one million pages...

Dark night of the soul, spirituality, ascension. These were all new concepts to KR. A whole new world had opened up to him. Willing to explore this new world, KR embraced the future with an open mind. And then there was Theresa, the catalyst that awakened him, sending him on a quest for answers that led him to a juncture of two paths, where anything could be manifested.

In this collection of 40ish short spiritual devotionals, Good Enough reveals the small things we can do to inch toward a deeper, richer, truer kind of faith. Through blessings, prayers and human truths, learn to live with imperfection in a culture of self-help that promotes endless progress and discover a companion for when you want to stop feeling guilty that you're not living your best life now.

‘An extraordinary treasure trove’ Andrew Marr A unique collection of unpublished letters from the climbing legend George Mallory to his family, revealing his innermost thoughts about people, places and mountains. On the 8th of June, 1924, George Mallory and Sandy Irvine were seen through a...

From sickly child to pioneering Victorian explorer, Isabella Bird defied convention. After back surgery in 1850 and the recommendation of life in the open air, she finally looked her malaise and her pain in the eye and set off across the world completely alone. In Colorado she covered 800 miles on horseback, climbing mountains, wrangling cattle, sleeping in snow and finding herself drawn to a violent, one-eyed outlaw with a soft spot for poetry, known as ‘Mountain Jim’.

Letter writing is more than communication—it’s connection, reflection, and sometimes even transformation. A letter is a piece of yourself, preserved in ink and paper, that says, “I cared enough to take the time.” In a time of auto-corrected feelings and fleeting texts, A Life in Letters is a bold return to what’s real. Award-winning educator and storyteller Ronda Beaman shares the letters she never sent—but needed to write. Honest, heartfelt, and sometimes hilariously raw, these notes of recognition, regret, and release trace a life lived fully and felt deeply.

The crônica, a literary genre peculiar to Brazilian newspapers, allows writers, or even soccer stars, to address a wide readership on any theme they like. Chatty, mystical, intimate, flirtatious, and revelatory, Clarice Lispector’s pieces for the Saturday edition of Rio’s leading paper, the Jornal do Brasil, from 1967 to 1973, take the forms of memories, essays, aphorisms, and serialized stories. Endlessly delightful, her insights make one sit up and think, whether about children or social ills or pets or society women or the business of writing or love.