Alamein to Zem Zem: Keith Douglas
A classic war book by one of the finest poets of the Second World War.
Keith Douglas was posted to Palestine in 1941 with a cavalry regiment. When fighting broke out at El Alamein in 1942, he was instructed to stay behind as a staff officer. But he wanted to fight, and so, completely disobeying orders, he drove a truck to the site of the battle and participated as a tank commander.
Alamein to Zem Zem is a vivid and unforgettable description of his experiences on the desert battlefield, seen through the eyes of a poet-soldier.
'Highly charged, violent descriptive prose … conveys the humour, the pathos and the literal beauty of that dead world of tanks, sand, scrub and human corpses … Comparable in descriptive power and intelligence to the books of Remarque, Sassoon and Blunden which spoke in similar terms of 1914-1918.' Spectator More
Mervyn Peake: Malcolm Yorke
Mervyn Peake (1911-1968) was a painter, poet, illustrator, dramatist, and most famously the creator of the Gormenghast trilogy. Very much his own man, and charmingly so, neither as an artist ... More
Anton Chekhov: Donald Rayfield
First published in 1997, Donald Rayfield's biography (read the introduction) of the elusive writer, for which he drew on the vast Chekhov archives, polarised critical opinion ... More
Ultra in the West: Ralph Bennett
Ultra in the West is a major work in the field of Second World War literature. Originally published in 1979, it told for the first time Ultra's contribution to the ... More
Democratic Ideals and Reality: Halford J. Mackinder
Two major polemical works were published in 1919: The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes and Democratic Ideals and Reality by Halford J. Mackinder. The former is ... More
Angus Wilson: Margaret Drabble
Angus Wilson was a critic, lecturer and man of letters. Pre-eminently though he was a novelist, indeed, in the words of Paul Bailey 'no other novelist of his generation offered ... More
The Grasshoppers Come and A Rabbit in the Air: David Garnett
This is an unusual book. The Grasshoppers Come is fiction: Rabbit in the Air in non-fiction. They are however united by the subject of flying. Of The Grasshoppers Come, T. ... More
Kenneth Grahame: Alison Prince
Russia: J. G. Kohl
'Kohl's Russia is a revelation and should not be missed by anyone who is intrigued by that astonishing country ...' Jonathan Dimbleby More
Opium and the Romantic Imagination: Alethea Hayter
Does the habit of taking drugs make authors write better, or worse, or differently? Does it alter the quality of their consciousness, shape their imagery, influence their technique? For the ... More
A Curious Life for a Lady: Pat Barr
Isabella Bird was a woman of remarkable gifts. In 1872, at the age of forty, this rather earnest daughter of a country parson abandoned the rectory nest and began her ... More
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