The Booker Prize–nominated author of Derby Day delivers a sumptuous cultural history as seen through the lives of four enigmatic women.Who were the Lost Girls? Chic, glamorous, and bohemian, as likely to be found living in a rat-haunted maisonette as dining at the Ritz, Lys Lubbock, Sonia Brownell, Barbara Skelton, and Janetta Parlade cut a swath through English literary and artistic life at the height of World War II.Three of them had affairs with Lucian Freud. One of them married George Orwell. Another became the mistress of the King of Egypt.They had very different—and sometimes explosive—personalities, but taken together they form a distinctive part of the wartime demographic: bright, beautiful, independent-minded women with tough upbringings who were determined to make the most of their lives in a chaotic time.Ranging from Bloomsbury and Soho to Cairo and the couture studios of Schiaparelli and Hartnell,...

If Wallis Simpson had not died on the operating table in December 1936, Edward VIII would not have been King of England three years later. He would have abdicated for "the woman he loves," but now, the throne beckons. If Henry Bannister's car had not careened off the Colombo back-road in the summer before the war, Cynthia Kirkpatrick would never have found out about The Faction. It is autumn 1939, and everything in history is just as it was. Except, that is, for the identity of the man in Buckingham Palace and the existence of a secret organization operating at the highest levels of society and determined to derail the war effort against Nazi Germany. From the staff of the newly-founded literary magazine, Duration, hunkered down in their Bloomsbury square, and the country house parties full of renegade Tory MPs, to Tyler Kent, the Embassy cipher clerk with his sheaf of stolen presidential telegrams, the journalist Beverley Nichols deviously at work on an alternative...

Some of the characters in Stewkey Blues have lived in Norfolk all their lives. Others are short-term residents or passage migrants. Whether young or old, self-confident or ground-down, local or blow-in, all of them are reaching uneasy compromises with the world they inhabit and the landscape in which that life takes place.

A fascinating exploration of George Orwell—and his body of work—by an award-winning Orwellian biographer and scholar, presenting the author anew to twenty-first-century readers. We find ourselves in an era when the moment is ripe for a reevaluation of the life and the works of one of the twentieth century's greatest authors. This is the first twenty-first-century biography on George Orwell, with special recognition to D. J. Taylor's stature as an award-winning biographer and Orwellian. Using new sources that are now available for the first time, we are tantalizingly at the end of the lifespan of Orwell's last few contemporaries, whose final reflections are caught in this book. The way we look at a writer and his canon has changed even over the course of the last two decades; there is a post-millennial prism through which we must now look for such a biography to be fresh and relevant. This is what Orwell: The New Life achieves.

Since the late 1990s, Private Eye's 'What You Didn't Miss' column has trained a vigilant lens on some of the great literary reputations of our age. Highlights of this bumper selection include Martin Amis exploring the sexual revolution of the 1960s, A.S. Byatt rewriting the Norse myths and the late Anthony Powell reflecting on his death. There are verse contributions from such distinguished contemporary poets as Seamus Heaney, Clive James and Sir Andrew Motion and a host of biographical subjects ranging from Hugh Trevor-Roper to the Bloomsbury Group. Edited and introduced by D.J. Taylor, What You Didn't Miss Part 94 doubles up as both an hilarious collection of literary lampoons and an alternative history of modern English Literature.

Eighteen tales featuring down-on-their-luck characters whose dreams will never come true, by Man Booker Prize–long-listed author D. J. Taylor In the vein of Raymond Carver's short prose, these eighteen stories sharply capture ordinary people desperate to escape their dead-end lives as they grapple with failure, disappointment, and missed chances. In "Dreams of Leaving," Harlem pornographer Fuchs has seen it all; though he has never traveled farther west than Cincinnati, his bedroom is a shrine to all the places he secretly fantasizes about. "The Summer People" are the tourists who come to Cromer and invade Julian's life every July and August, but this sweltering season of change will mark a turning point in the Norfolk teen's life. In "Flights," a mid-level insurance salesman named Dorfman haunts airports and collects model airplane kits—only to find his humdrum life changed forever by a beautiful Filipino flight attendant. "The Survivor" is about an...

When Henry Ireland dies unexpectedly from what appears to be a riding accident in August 1863, the failed landowner leaves behind little save his high-strung young widow, Isabel—who somehow ends up in the home of Ireland's friend James Dixey. A celebrated naturalist, Dixey collects strange trophies in his secluded, decaying manse and has questionable associations with rather unsavory characters—including a pair of thuggish poachers named Dewar and Dunbar. Dixey's precocious, inquisitive young servant, Esther, cannot turn a blind eye to the suspicious activities surrounding her. While in the crime-ridden streets of London, a determined captain of Scotland Yard follows the threads that may well link a daring train robbery to the disappearance of a disturbed heiress as well as to the possible murder of Henry Ireland.D. J. Taylor's Kept is a gorgeously intricate, dazzling reinvention of Victorian life and passions that is also a riveting investigation into some of the darkest, most secret chambers of the human heart.

A new collection from one of the UK's most celebrated biographers, novelists, critics - and, as these stories show, a quite brilliant artist. Wrote For Luck ranges from North Norfolk to Chicago, from sordid old antique dealers to glamorous young writers, from glorious local gossips to frustrated academics. The stories abound with gleeful absurdity, waspish humour, and exquisitely awkward, delightfully English conversations. But they are also rich in melancholy and the heady sadness of people struggling to find a place in the world. Some are fascinatingly strange; others are uncomfortably familiar. Some are simply hilarious - and all are touchingly human