Stop What You're Doing And Read This!

A mission statement about the transformative power of reading; about the way it inspires us, the tangible impact it can have on our wellbeing, the importance it holds for us now and will continue to hold in the future.

A strong argument for making "reading more" one of your new Year's Resolutions

Not having enough time to read is a common complaint. But as this collection of essays by ten committed bibliophiles attempts to show, reading should be an activity as regular as brushing your teeth

Ebullient... Subtle... Inspiring and impassioned... This advocacy for intense reading is punchy and sharp

A delightful collection of essays from luminaries of the book world... Some are personal, some political, but all are passionate

In any 24 hours there might be sleeping, eating, kids, parents, friends, lovers, work, school, travel, deadlines, emails, phone calls, Facebook, Twitter, the news, the TV, Playstation, music, movies, sport, responsibilities, passions, desires, dreams. 
 
Why should you stop what you're doing and read a book? 
 
People have always needed stories. We need literature - novels, poetry - because we need to make sense of our lives, test our depths, understand our joys and discover what humans are capable of. Great books can provide companionship when we are lonely or peacefulness in the midst of an overcrowded daily life. Reading provides a unique kind of pleasure and no-one should live without it. 
 
In the ten essays in this book some of our finest authors and passionate advocates from the worlds of science, publishing, technology and social enterprise tell us about the experience of reading, why access to books should never be taken forgranted, how reading transforms our brains, and how literature can save lives. In any 24 hours there are so many demands on your time and attention - make books one of them. 
 
Carmen Callil Tim Parks 
Nicholas Carr Michael Rosen 
Jane Davis Zadie Smith 
Mark Haddon Jeanette Winterson 
Blake Morrison Dr Maryanne Wolf &amp; Dr Mirit Barzillai

A History of Family and Fatherland

Bad Faith

The story of one of history's most despicable villians told by a brilliant author - shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.

A superb exploration of the fractured mind of French anti-Semitism

The story she has uncovered is so strange and powerful that it would be an unusual reader who was not profoundly moved

A work of phenomenally thorough, generous and humane scholarship....Callil understands anguish, and lays bare its causes with clarity and precision. Bad Faith exemplifies what Primo Levi called the 'continuous intellectual and moral effort' that is the only adequate response to the events described here

Bad Faith is a book of passion and anger which, nonetheless, manages to keep its head as a significant work of history

We cannot know what Anne Darquier would have thought of Callil's book, but my guess is that she would have been as moved, astonished and impressed as any other reader

Extraordinary...touching... a masterpiece of lacerating satire

In providing such a detailed picture of one of the functionaries of the Nazi empire, Callil has brilliantly shown how such a system could encourage and promote nonentities who were prepared to mouth the necessary phrases, and to ignore the call of humanity

Bad Faith represents eight years of astonishing research...a remarkable book

A meticulous work of scholarship... [an] astonishing biography

Impeccably researched, Bad Faith is a work of great power and originality; Callil is to be congratulated on her achieivement

Carmen Callil was born and educated in Melbourne, Australia, and came to the UK in 1960. In 1972 she founded Virago and ten years later became Managing Director of Chatto &amp; Windus. In 1994 she was awarded honorary doctorates by the universities of Sheffield, York, Oxford Brookes and The Open University. In 1996 she chaired the judging panel of the Booker Prize. She is the author (with Colm Toibin) of The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English since 1950. She lives in London.

Bad Faith tells the story of one of history's most despicable villains and conmen - Louis Darquier, Nazi collaborator and 'Commissioner for Jewish Affairs', who dissembled his way to power in the Vichy government and was responsible for sending thousands of children to the gas chambers. After the war he left France, never to be brought to justice. 
 
Early on in his career Louis married the alcoholic Myrtle Jones from Tasmania, equally practised in the arts of fantasy and deception, and together they had a child, Anne whom they abandoned in England. Her tragic story is woven through the narrative. 
 
In Carmen Callil's masterful, elegiac and sometimes darkly comic account, Darquier's rise during the years leading up to the Second World War mirrors the rise of French anti-Semitism. Epic, haunting, the product of extraordinary research, this is a study in powerlessness, hatred and the role of remembrance. 
 
Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.

Carmen Callil

[A] remarkable tale...drawing chilling parallels to the inequalities of our time... A book that is both a heartfelt outpouring of pity and sorrow and an irate demand for restitution... Oh Happy Day deserves to be called Dickensian.

Fascinating... [Oh Happy Day] evokes echoes of the present in speaking about the past, as all great works of history do. It's a gripping narrative.

Oh Happy Day gives a voice to the voiceless and adds another major work to Carmen Callil's formidable achievements.

Oh Happy Day is a phenomenal achievement... The book covers great swathes of history... These are intriguing stories.

An absorbing account of empire, migration, the poverty of injustice and enduring love... The book bristles with Callil's righteous anger at the injustices meted out to her forbears, and at the parallels for our own times.

An extraordinary reclamation of lives usually lost to history... A model of how to construct a compelling narrative from patchy material... Other writers, from Dickens onwards, have exposed these hardships: few have done so with the rigour and bitter irony that Callil employs.

Powerfully told... [Oh Happy Day is] an impressive work, shining merciless beams of light on murky specifics of the early 1800s... She's such a forceful writer.

Callil speaks in the vehement voice of a furious warrior, adversary and advocate. She deftly wields a mighty weapon of words as she puts the case for the dispossessed of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries... From her research, Callil can conjure jewels that light the scene, astonish and delight. Or maybe horrify... The construction of the narrative is a masterpiece of beguiling tessellation... This is a book to be read slowly, reread, treasured.

[A] stirring and intelligent second book... Oh Happy Day brings a veritable mine of information. Whether she's detailing the rise of the Chartists, the daily grind of the stockinger families, the horrors of the prison hulks, or ruminating on Britain's obsession with flagellation, Callil certainly knows her stuff.

[A] poignant mixture of the personal and the political... a stirring, opinionated account.

Those Times and These Times

'A triumphant family memoir' Hallie Rubenhold 
'Powerfully told...an impressive work' The Times 
'Oh Happy Day gives a voice to the voiceless' Australian Book Review 
 
In this remarkable book, Carmen Callil discovers the story of her British ancestors, beginning with her great-great grandmother Sary Lacey, born in 1808, an impoverished stocking frame worker. Through detailed research, we follow Sary from slum to tenement and from pregnancy to pregnancy. We also meet George Conquest, a canal worker and the father of one of Sary's children. George was sentenced - for a minor theft - to seven years' transportation to Australia, where he faced the extraordinary brutality of convict life. 
 
But for George, as for so many disenfranchised British people like him, Australia turned out to be his Happy Day. He survived, prospered and eventually returned to England, where he met Sary again, after nearly thirty years. He brought her out to Australia, and they were never parted again. 
 
A miracle of research and fuelled by righteous anger, Oh Happy Day is a story of Empire, migration and the inequality and injustice of nineteenth-century England. 
 
'A remarkable tale...drawing chilling parallels to the inequalities of our times' Observer

Carmen Callil

Praise for Oh Happy Day

[A] remarkable tale...drawing chilling parallels to the inequalities of our time... A book that is both a heartfelt outpouring of pity and sorrow and an irate demand for restitution... Oh Happy Day deserves t ...

Fascinating... [Oh Happy Day] evokes echoes of the present in speaking about the past, as all great works of history do. It's a gripping narrative.

Oh Happy Day gives a voice to the voiceless and adds another major work to Carmen Callil's formidable achievements.

[A] remarkable tale...drawing chilling parallels to the inequalities of our time... A book that is both a heartfelt outpouring of pity and sorrow and an irate demand for restitution... Oh Happy Day deserves t ...

Fascinating... [Oh Happy Day] evokes echoes of the present in speaking about the past, as all great works of history do. It's a gripping narrative.

Oh Happy Day gives a voice to the voiceless and adds another major work to Carmen Callil's formidable achievements.

[A] remarkable tale...drawing chilling parallels to the inequalities of our time... A book that is both a heartfelt outpouring of pity and sorrow and an irate demand for restitution... Oh Happy Day deserves t ...

Fascinating... [Oh Happy Day] evokes echoes of the present in speaking about the past, as all great works of history do. It's a gripping narrative.

Oh Happy Day gives a voice to the voiceless and adds another major work to Carmen Callil's formidable achievements.

Books by Carmen Callil

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