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The Vintage Podcast, January: DJ Taylor, Sarah Howe, Julian Barnes and 2016 preview

The Windsor Faction

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...

A tense phoney-war thriller, as evocative in its period representations as it is compelling in its denouement

With its meticulous period detail and its dissection of the English class system at work, this new novel from the author of the highly accomplished Derby Day proves that good historical fiction does not have to take place in a past that actually happened

It is much harder to show historical change occurring through incremental creep rather than sudden swerves of direction. That DJ Taylor’s novel achieves this so well makes in an unusually smart and subtle addition to the genre… Gripping entertainment

A splendid “what if” thriller… Terrific

This galloping, might-have-been thriller… Taylor cleverly uses genuine historical details to make the nightmare horribly convincing

A highly successful literary thriller with one eye on a shocking chapter in the nation’s genuine history and another on the potential for authorial invention

Offers a chilling alternative view of the direction the Second World War might have taken had the man who later became the Duke of Windsor…remained on the British throne

A crafty and pitch-perfect novel of Nazi sympathizers and secret agents in wartime London

It is Taylor’s achievement to have written a tense, page-turning thriller, enriched by acute social observation, within which unfolds a subtle meditation upon where the quest for peace ends and the path to treason begins

The novel is much more than an intriguing exercise in alternative history… This is as skilful and enjoyable a novel as you can ask for, the work of a master-craftsman

A fascinating foray into the 'what if?'… Ingenious and extremely plausible

A gripping and highly convincing novel… Here are intrigue and clever parallel narratives… One emerges from immersion in this tantalizing creation admiring both Taylor’s art and the cleverness of his imagination

A splendidly disrespectful counterfactual history that questions the perceived patriotism of King Edward VIII and his notoriously pro-Hitler views

A witty, meticulous detailed alternative version of the second world war

D.J. Taylor's novels include English Settlement, which won a Grinzane Cavour Prize, Trespass and Derby Day, both of which were long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and Kept: A Victorian Mystery, a Publishers’ Weekly Book of the Year. His other books include After the War: The Novel and England Since 1945, Thackeray, Orwell: The Life, which won the 2003 Whitbread Biography Prize, and Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation 1918-1940. He lives in Norwich with his wife, the novelist Rachel Hore, and their three sons. 
 
‘A writer of formidable accomplishment’ Washington Post 
 
‘Taylor is marking out a territory as distinct and disturbing as Greeneland, with the same imperative towards moral inquisition and a flatlands melancholy that is all his own’ Hilary Mantel, Sunday Times 
 
‘Taylor is a felicitous, intelligent writer’ Herald

‘Terrific’ Daily Mail ‘Tremendous’ Guardian ‘Page-turning’ The Times ‘Gripping’ Daily Telegraph 
 
Autumn 1939. In an alternative world, where Edward VIII still sits on the throne, storm clouds gather over Europe, German troops amass and a ‘King’s Party’ of fascist peace campaigners is stealthily undermining the war effort. 
 
For Cynthia Kirkpatrick, the war brings a new-found freedom – lunchtime drinks at the Ritz, rented attic rooms, late-night rackety parties and intriguing new acquaintances. 
 
But two new friends loom larger than others, her glamorous colleague Anthea and Tyler, an enigmatic American working at the Embassy. Initially Cynthia is dazzled by them both but soon discovers they have secrets which could prove dangerous, both to her and the country at large…

A Victorian Mystery

Derby Day

A gripping novel of romance and rivalry, gambling and greed, from acclaimed novelist and biographer D.J. Taylor - longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2011

Meticulously plotted and written with bouncy confidence... A rattling good yarn

Derby Day is a triumphant success...in this unputdownable Victorian romp [Taylor] enjoyably proves himself to be one of the finest of our 21st-century novelists

The novel is richly redolent of the novels of Wilkie Collins, Dickens and Thackeray... The characters who plot and squirm throughout the course of Derby Day are fully rounded and memorably drawn and the atmosphere is palpable. In fact here is an intelligent novel which is also a genuine page-turner. Truly a terrific read

Rich and gorgeous as a plum cake, this is absorbing entertainment indeed

Taylor, with patient stealth, assembles a ring of enjoyably seedy or unprepossessing figures...What distinguishes it from generic thriller-writing is the author's knowledge of the period

Taylor has written an exceptionally clever pastiche 19th-century novel with a richness of character that almost matches his models of Dickens and Thackeray

Derby Day is pitch-perfect... It's enormous fun and meticulously researched and conceived

Taylor's great skill is in characterisation... In this accomplished work [he] has effectively captured the mutable nature of this unsettling period

Enjoyable, intelligent and thoroughly entertaining... Highly recommended

[Taylor's] prose is note-perfect and seems completely natural...Better still, he never forgets the 'mystery' part of that promise on the cover. As the great race approaches, the many strands of the story come together in a way that's wholly satisfying and exciting

Taylor wears his research lightly but there is no doubt how much effort he has expended... The whole is an engaging drama - escapism of the highest standard

Taylor manages to successfully pastiche a 19th-century mystery novel with this fast paced, enjoyable read

This is a book to read by the fireside, to be swept along in, to realise - with a start - that hours have gone by...In other words, to rediscover the lost-in-another-world joy of reading. And this book really IS a joy...my favourite book of the year so far

A delicious, highly intelligent page-turner... With clever, confident plotting and meticulous period details, this is an engrossing and deeply satisfying read

As you would expect from somebody steeped in Victorian fictional history, Taylor rarely puts a foot wrong...the colourful events which take place on the Downs should delight any racing enthusiast

Taylor’s love and understanding of Victorian melodrama is put to good use in this tangibly detailed and deliciously written pastiche centred on an Epsom Derby swindle

This is a fictional world in which daughters are ready to bump off their fathers, husbands to exploit their wives, and everyone is happy to chance their assets on the wheel of fortune. It’s a novel that will keep you gripped until the very last furlong

It is a detective story as gripping as the Victorian novels that inspired it, and is written with narrative flair and a terrific sense of fun

Derby Day will be hard to put down... As ever with Taylor, literary complexities lurk under the smooth surface of a stylish page-turner

D.J. Taylor was born in Norwich in 1960. He is a novelist, critic and acclaimed biographer, whose biography of Thackeray was a critically-acclaimed success and whose Orwell: The Life won the Whitbread Biography prize in 2003. His most recent books are Kept: A Victorian Mystery (a Publishers Weekly Book of the Year), Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation 1918-1940, and the novels Ask Alice and At the Chime of a City Clock.

It's Derby Day and all of England is heading for the Epsom Downs. Society beauties rub shoulders with Whitechapel street girls, as every class of society gathers with high hopes and taut nerves for the greatest race of the year. 
 
All through winter, from London to France, plans have been laid, money exchanged, disputes begun. And uniting the destinies of old Mr Gresham and his tigerish daughter, the rakish Mr Happerton and his crony Captain Raff, brooding Mr Davenant, Mr Pardew the burglar and detective Captain McTurk is the champion horse Tiberius. 
 
In this rich and exuberant novel, rife with the idioms of Victorian England, the mysteries pile high, propelling us towards the day of the great race, and we wait with bated breath as the story gallops to a finish that no one expects. 
 
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2011.

Thackeray

'Brilliant... A most enjoyable and skilful biography' - A. N. Wilson

An accomplished, responsible, imaginative reconstruction of life, and of a life. Thackeray has come home

Wonderful... An outstanding biography. It is unlikely there will be a better one for years to come

A compelling biography... Taylor succeeds always in evoking a rich sense of context...without losing the narrative momentum

A richly detailed book... Taylor writes with verve and affection and is shrewdly perceptive

Outstanding... On every page there is evidence of a formidable critical and imaginative intelligence at work... A splendid book

Taylor's awareness of the task of biography is just one of the many delights of this fond, yet not overly reverent account.'

He's a gift of a subject to DJ Taylor (a novelist who loves to teem, and teems with brio)

D.J. Taylor was born in Norwich in 1960. He is a novelist, critic and acclaimed biographer, whose biography of Thackeray was a critically-acclaimed success and whose Orwell: The Life won the Whitbread Biography prize in 2003. His most recent books are Kept: A Victorian Mystery (a Publishers Weekly Book of the Year), Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation 1918-1940, and the novels Ask Alice, At the Chime of a City Clock and, most recently, Derby Day.

Vanity Fair, published in serial parts in 1847-8, made William Makepeace Thackeray famous 'all but at the top of the tree', he told his mother, 'and having a great fight up there with Dickens'. Behind him lay an extraordinary life - an intense, Anglo-Indian childhood, a fortune lost by his early twenties, a disastrous marriage to a wife who went mad and left him to bring up two small daughters in near penury. 
 
But his later life was no less troubled. As D.J. Taylor shows in this incisive biography, Thackeray was a complex, touchy man, acutely sensitive to criticism and fearful of the publicity that accompanied his passage through life.

The Decline of Amateurism in Sport

On The Corinthian Spirit

A fascinating study of a bygone era: the rise and fall of amateur sportsmen

After scoring 42 goals for the 14th Norwich Cub Scout XI in their outstanding 1970-71 season, D J Taylor retired from the game at the age of ten. Despite finding the net with six novels and a Whitbread Prize-winning biography of George Orwell, he believes that nothing in his later life has quite matched these early triumphs. His latest novel, Kept, was published by Chatto &amp; Windus in February 2006, and his group biography, Bright Young Things, will be published in October 2007.

In January 1929, before 20,000 spectators, Norwich City of the Third Division South went down 0-5 in the third round of the FA Cup to an amateur side composed of ex-public school boys who disdained professional tactics in favour of instinct and teamwork. Within a decade, the Corinthians, the club that for forty years had supplied the entire English national side, had all but ceased to exist. The world was changing. By the time of the last 'Gentleman vs. Players' cricket match in 1962 a whole era in English sport had come to an end. 
 
But the passing of amateur sportsmen - footballers, cricketers, golfers, tennis players - had implications beyond the playing field. A century ago 'amateur' was a compliment to someone who played a game simply for love of it. A hundred years later it is a byword for cack-handed incompetence. In this brilliant study of the patterns of sporting and cultural life, D J Taylor examines the process that led to professionalism's triumph and the long rearguard action fought by sportsmen - and literature - on amateurism's behalf. 
 
On the Corinthian Spirit has many heroes - from 'Charlie Bam', the legendary Corinthian defender, who once played a game with a broken leg, to the boys' school story hero Strickland of the Sixth, Old Etonian cricket-lover George Orwell and the 14th Norwich Cub Scout XI of the early 1970s. Drawing on his own experiences of 'amateurism', D J Taylor describes a changing moral universe with profound consequences both for sport and the world beyond it.

Ask Alice

A wonderful novel of concealment and subterfuge, sweeping from Kansas to London, from 1904 to 1936, by the author of Kept - about a woman's rise and fall, the chances she takes and the secret which will undo her.

A gripping page-turner filled with surprises, shocks and deep psychological insight... Intelligent, absorbing and most enjoyable

Utterly gripping reading... You are in for a treat

DJ Taylor creates characters who have dynamic spirit and capture the imagination, while the story has the tension of a thriller, the sensitivity of a romance and the wit of an idiosyncratic adventure

Ambitious and immensely accomplished ... above all a meditation on selfhood and memory

A highly accomplished novel. It is engrossingly plotted, and its depiction of the vibrant decade leading to the 1929 Crash offers an interesting parallel to our own times

Intelligent, absorbing and most enjoyable

Excellent ... the impenetrable, imperturbable Alice compels

Carefully constructed sets and a convincing commentary on social change

mesmerising novel paints pictures of many different worlds in the early 20th century...busting with detail... captivating

When on song, which he often is here, Taylor is a felicitous, intelligent writer. He sets a scene with admirable clarity, peoples it with memorable characters, and offers a plot that will keep most readers hooked and satisfied for nigh on 350 pages. These days this is rarer than you might think

D  J Taylor is remarkably under-appreciated as a novelist.

This special piece of period realism is very far indeed from being either silly or dull.

Taylor is excellent on the 'incidentals' - arresting tableaux abound - and the impenetrable, imperturbable Alice compels.

A plot of Victorian complexity handled with great skill

D.J. Taylor was born in Norwich in 1960. He is a novelist, critic and acclaimed biographer, whose biography of Thackeray was a critically-acclaimed success and whose Orwell: The Life won the Whitbread Biography prize in 2003. His most recent books are Kept: A Victorian Mystery (a Publishers Weekly Book of the Year) and Derby Day: A Victorian Mystery. He is also the author of Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation 1918-1940, and the novel At the Chime of a City Clock.

Glamorous Alice Keach is one of 1930s London's foremost hostesses. Despite humble American origins, she has secured her place in high society through marriage to one of England's wealthiest bachelors. 
 
But Alice has a secret. Its roots run years back, and miles away, to the dust-blasted prairies of Kansas. It corncerns a lost little boy left under the haphazard guidance of an eccentric uncle. Now, a visit from America looks set to blow apart Alice's glittering pre-eminence forever.

The Rise and Fall of a Generation 1918-1940

Bright Young People

A remarkable history of the 'lost generation' of the 1920s - parties, scandal, Jazz, clashing generations and the dark legacy of war.

Taylor writes with such skill and aplomb that it's impossible not to be swept along by the intelligence and observations

Shrewd and absorbing in his analysis of the way Waugh and Nancy Mitford promoted the world they would soon skewer in fiction

The depth and integrity of Taylor's research can only inspire awe and admiration.

D J Taylor's enthusiasm, delivered with the zeal of a recent convert, proves there is fascination even in empty living and that the Bright Young Brigade of the 1920s are just as worthy of a book or two as Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, Tamara Beckwith, Calum Best and all the flapping 'It-people' of our own generation

A spirited and nostalgic book...a giddy ride through a lost world of overindulgent gaiety and the next best thing to being at the parties oneself'

His fascinating study of hedonism, futility and fracture... a complex study of family, fear and breakdown

D.J.Taylor is a novelist, critic and acclaimed biographer of William Thackeray and George Orwell (both available in paperback). His Orwell: The Life won the Whitbread Biography of the year for 2003. His most recent books are the Victorian novel Kept: A Victorian Mystery (Chatto, 2006) and The Corinthian Spirit: on the decline of Amateurism in Sport (Yellow Jersey, 2006). He is married with three children and lives in Norwich.

Bright Young People/ Making the most of our youth/ They talk in the Press of our social success/ But quite the reverse is the truth. [Noel Coward] 
 
The Bright Young People were one of the most extraordinary youth cults in British history. A pleasure-seeking band of bohemian party-givers and blue-blooded socialites, they romped through the 1920s gossip columns. Evelyn Waugh dramatised their antics in Vile Bodies and many of them, such as Anthony Powell, Nancy Mitford,Cecil Beaton and John Betjeman, later became household names. Their dealings with the media foreshadowed our modern celebrity culture and even today,we can detect their influence in our cultural life. 
 
 
But the quest for pleasure came at a price. Beneath the parties and practical jokes was a tormented generation, brought up in the shadow of war, whose relationships - with their parents and with each other - were prone to fracture. For many, their progress through the 'serious' Thirties, when the age of parties was over and another war hung over the horizon, led only to drink, drugs and disappointment, and in the case of Elizabeth Ponsonby - whose story forms a central strand of this book - to a family torn apart by tragedy. 
 
 
Moving from the Great War to the Blitz, Bright Young People is both a chronicle of England's 'lost generation' of the Jazz Age, and a panoramic portrait of a world that could accommodate both dizzying success and paralysing failure. Drawing on the writings and reminiscences of the Bright Young People themselves, D.J. Taylor has produced an enthralling social and cultural history, a definitive portrait of a vanished age.

D J Taylor

Literary Life in Britain Since 1918

‘An entertaining history of literary life’ Nicholas Shakespeare, Daily Telegraph 
 
Spanning a century of literary history, from the pitched battles fought between Eliot-era modernists and Georgian traditionalists to the impact of creative writing degrees and the media don of today and taking in ‘star reviewers’, sniping critics, caballing editors and megalomaniac professors along the way, The Prose Factory explores the myriad influences on English literary life in the past century and the way in which they have shaped our preferences. 
 
‘An amazing achievement’ David Lodge 
 
‘A pleasingly gossipy history of literary life in England since 1918…very enjoyable’ Observer 
 
‘Elegantly written, defiantly intelligent, scrupulously researched and richly enjoyable’ Mail on Sunday

D J Taylor

The Prose Factory

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