It's 1978 and Nick Du Pont, one-time PR man to Sixties rock behemoths the Helium Kids, is back in London and bent on founding his own record label. A new kind of music - sharp, hard and dangerous - is bursting onto the airwaves on both sides of the Atlantic and Nick wants a slice of the action - in particular, the work of The Flame Throwers, the most provocative assemblage of street-smart desperadoes ever to hail from downtown Los Angeles.
Picking up from where the highly-praised Rock and Roll is Life (2018) left off, this is the story of Resurgam Records and the personal traumas and tragedies that attended its coruscating rise - until the time when, as so invariably happens, the dancers shuffle to a halt and the music stops.
Since its publication nearly seventy years ago, George Orwell's 1984 has been regarded as one of the most influential novels of the modern age. Politicians have testified to its influence on their intellectual identities, rock musicians have made records about it, TV viewers watch a reality show named for it, and a White House spokesperson tells of "alternative facts." The world we live in is often described as an Orwellian one, awash in inescapable surveillance and invasions of privacy. On 1984 dives deep into Orwell's life to chart his earlier writings and key moments in his youth, such as his years at a boarding school that's strict and charismatic headmaster shaped the idea of Big Brother. Taylor tells the story of the writing of the book, taking listeners to the Scottish island of Jura, where Orwell, newly famous thanks to Animal Farm but coping with personal tragedy and rapidly declining health, struggled to finish 1984. Published during the cold war-a term Orwell coined-Taylor elucidates the environmental influences on the book. Then he examines 1984's post-publication life, including its role as a tool to understand our language, politics, and government.
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 and waspish humour. 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.
A taut and gripping thriller: King Edward VIII is on the throne and keen to broker peace at any cost - WWII could turn out very differently...
As the storm clouds gather over Europe and German troops are amassing, a clandestine 'King's Party' of fascist peace campaigners is stealthily undermining the war-effort. Back from Ceylon to work on a newly-founded literary magazine, Cynthia Kirkpatrick finds herself at the centre of a web of intrigue. London shivers with uncertainty. As Hitler's troops encroach further into Europe, Cynthia soon discovers that taking sides can be a very dangerous business.
Nominated for the Man Booker Prize, an exquisite tale of romance and rivalry, gambling and greed, from one of England's finest writers. As the shadows lengthen over the June grass, all England is heading for Epsom Down--high life and low life, society beauties and Whitechapel street girls, bookmakers and gypsies, hawkers and thieves. Hopes are high, nerves are taut, hats are tossed in the air--this is Derby Day. For months people have been waiting and plotting for this day. Everyone's eyes are on champion horse Tiberius, on whose performance half a dozen destinies depend. In this rich and exuberant novel, rife with the idioms of Victorian England, the mysteries pile high, propelling us toward the day of the great race, and we wait with bated breath as the story gallops to a finish that no one expects.
