Clayhanger

The life and times of Edwin Clayhanger will surprise, move and fascinate, as he grows from boy to man in the Five Towns at the beginning of the twentieth century

Crammed with details of Victorian life, the first book in Bennett's trilogy about a Potteries family examines how one man, Edwin Clayhanger, is shaped by class, geography and ties of blood.

Arnold Bennett writes marvelously on the stuff of life

For Bennett...compassion is not soggy. It involves understanding. The core of his writing is psychological truth, clinically observed, crisply reported

Arnold Bennett was born in Staffordshire on 27 May 1867, the son of a solicitor. Rather than following his father into the law, Bennett moved to London at the age of twenty-one and began a career in writing . His first novel, The Man from the North, was published in 1898 during a spell as editor of a periodical - throughout his life journalism supplemented his writing career. In 1902 Bennett moved to Paris, married, and published some of his best known novels, most of which were set in The Potteries district where he grew up: Anna of the Five Towns (1902), The Old Wives Tale (1908), and the Clayhanger series (1910-1918). These works, as well as several successful plays, established him both in Europe and America as one of the most popular and acclaimed writers of his era. Bennett returned to England in 1912, and during the First World War worked for Lord Beaverbrook in the Ministry of Information. In 1921, separated from his first wife, he fell in love with an actress, Dorothy Cheston, with whom he had a child. He received the James Tait Black Award for his novel Riceyman Steps in 1923. Arnold Bennett died of typhoid in London on 27 March 1931.

No longer a boy, not quite a man, Edwin Clayhanger stands on a canal bridge on his last day of school, and surveys the valley of Bursley and the Five Towns. Serious, good-natured and full of incoherent ambition, Edwin's hopes and dreams for the future are just taking shape, even as they are put to the test by challenges from Edwin's domineering father, the stifling constraints of society, and an unusual young woman.

Anna of the Five Towns

A young woman used to life under the strict rule of her tyrannical father finds herself on the brink of a new existence

Arnold Bennett is very much worth reading. This will be contrary to what any of you who might have studied English Literature at university since the last war will have been told, so please park such prejudices.

Bennett's great novels  all deal with the great emotions, though they are revealed through the stories of 'ordinary' people

Bennett has long been one of my favourite writers

Miserly and mysterious, the richest man in the Five Towns lives simply, ruling his household with an iron fist and a cruel temper. His daughter, Anna, is used to the life of strict, thrifty order imposed by her father. But when she comes of age, Anna inherits a small fortune and attracts the attentions of the town's most eligible bachelor. A new world seems to be opening to Anna, but her heart, given a taste of freedom, leads her in unexpected directions.

The Grand Babylon Hotel

An American millionaire buys an exclusive hotel on a whim, but soon discovers that shady dealings, secret passageways, kidnapping and murder lurk behind the expensive exteriors and aristocratic calm of the Grand Babylon Hotel.

Funny, undemanding... involves kidnapping, dilapidated central European royalty and redoubtable American millionairesses.

Arnold Bennett is generally rather excellent

Nella, daughter of millionaire Theodore Racksole, orders a dinner of steak and beer at the exclusive Grand Babylon Hotel in London. Her order is refused, so Theodore promptly buys the chef, the kitchen and the whole hotel. But when hotel staff begin to vanish and a German prince goes missing, Nella discovers that murder, blackmail and kidnapping are also on the menu. A rollicking murder mystery from one of the finest writers of the last century.

Riceyman Steps

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Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was one of the most versatile, ambitious and successful British novelists of the early 20th century.  His novels and short stories both celebrate and deplore a rapidly changing Britain.  Much of his greatest work is set where he grew up, in the Potteries of the West Midlands.  Inspired by Zola and Maupassant, he realized that this world of brutal industrial work and rapid social change, religious severity and material temptation, was the perfect backdrop for everything from comedy to tragedy.  He died of typhoid.

Henry Earlforward, a shabby Clerkenwell bookseller, has retired from life to devote himself (and his wife Violet) to a consuming passion for money. Miserliness becomes a fatal illness and Bennett gives a terrifying description of its ravages. But the book's horrible situation is saved through the character of Elsie - whose life-affirming refusal to engage with the nightmarish world of the bookseller transforms the story. 
 
Bennett wished in Riceyman Steps to create an English novel as powerful as anything by Balzac, the writer he most admired, with the same sense of great human issues being played out within the confines of a household. The result is an unforgettable work which is also a gripping description of the harsh, battered London of the period just after the First World War.

'Deeply moving, original, and dealing with material that I had never encountered in fiction, but only in life' Margaret Drabble 
 
Growing up in the world of the 'five towns' of industrial England, with their furnaces and chimneys, huddled red-brown streets, prayer meetings and small-minded bigotry, Anna is dominated by her miserly and tyrannical father. When she inherits a fortune and finds love, she struggles to break free from the constraints upon her, even though she is torn between duty and her deepest feelings. Arnold's novel of parental tyranny and rebellion is a portrayal of a woman of great spirit, complexity and integrity.

A Story of Adventure in the Five Towns

The Card

One of fiction's greatest chancers - the story of Denry Machin and his unceasing, ingenious efforts to become a great man 
 
Set in the raw, Victorian world of the 'Five Towns', The Card tells the extremely funny and tangled story of Denry Machin's rise from mediocrity to fame through a series of ludicrous and yet perversely successful schemes. He dances, pleads, cheats and inspires his way through life in a series of set-pieces which wonderfully evoke a now long-gone world of civic balls, seaside excursions, newspaper boys and patent chocolate remedies. As everybody said after one of his most stylish coups, Denry 'was not simply a card; he was the card.'

The Old Wives' Tale

A long-neglected twentieth century masterpiece about the lives of two sisters, spanning seventy years of the nineteenth century from Northern England to Paris

Bennett's masterpiece... There are few more moving accounts of the effects of time, the passage of history and the slow encroachment of age than this remarkable, epic novel

It's not just a wonderful story; it's also an expressionist masterpiece, almost surreal at times. It's also an amazing feat of empathy... It's also very intimate, and highly emotional. In fact, it's the perfect novel

Arguably the finest novel written by an Englishman in the 20th century

Arnold Bennett did write one indisputable masterpiece, The Old Wives' Tale, and that is where I recommend you start... Each time I'm in the midst of reading it, I think it the best novel ever written

The Old Wives Tale is the shining example of realism - the novel which...neither idealises nor caricatures

This novel...established Arnold Bennett's reputation as one of the great English novelists of the early 20th century

Arnold Bennett (Author) Arnold Bennett was born in Staffordshire on 27 May 1867, the son of a solicitor. Rather than following his father into the law, Bennett moved to London at the age of twenty-one and began a career in writing . His first novel, The Man from the North, was published in 1898 during a spell as editor of a periodical - throughout his life journalism supplemented his writing career. In 1902 Bennett moved to Paris, married, and published some of his best known novels, most of which were set in The Potteries district where he grew up: Anna of the Five Towns (1902), The Old Wives Tale (1908), and the Clayhanger series (1910-1918). These works, as well as several successful plays, established him both in Europe and America as one of the most popular and acclaimed writers of his era. Bennett returned to England in 1912, and during the First World War worked for Lord Beaverbrook in the Ministry of Information. In 1921, separated from his first wife, he fell in love with an actress, Dorothy Cheston, with whom he had a child. He received the James Tait Black Award for his novel Riceyman Steps in 1923. Arnold Bennett died of typhoid in London on 27 March 1931. Sathnam Sanghera (Introducer) Sathnam Sanghera was born to Punjabi immigrant parents in Wolverhampton in 1976. He entered the education system unable to speak English but, after attending Wolverhampton Grammar School, graduated from Christ's College, Cambridge with a first class degree in English Language and Literature in 1998. He has been shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards twice, for his memoir The Boy With The Topknot and his novel Marriage Material, the former being adapted by BBC Drama in 2017 and named Mind Book of the Year in 2009. He has won numerous prizes for his journalism at The Financial Times and The Times, including Young Journalist of the Year in 2002 and Media Commentator of the Year in 2015. He lives in London.

‘There are few more moving accounts of the effects of time, the passage of history and the slow encroachment of age than this remarkable, epic novel’ Guardian 
 
 Discover this powerful novel about the ordinary lives of the Baines sisters. The perfect next step for fans of Little Women. 
 
 In The Old Wives' Tale, Arnold Bennett tells the story of two such old wives, sisters Constance and Sophia, from youth, through marriage, heartbreak, triumphs and disasters, to old age. In doing so, he reveals with careful compassion the intense inner lives that throb beneath every seemingly insignificant exterior. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SATHNAM SANGHERA

Grand Babylon Hotel, The (Classic Serial)

Murder mystery by Arnold Bennett, adapted in two parts by Chris Harrald.  
Episode 1. American tycoon Theodore Racksole buys Europe&#39;s most exclusive hotel on a whim, but is warned by the seller that he will live to regret it. Soon, a mysterious death occurs and Theodore and his daughter Nella find themselves in danger in their own hotel. 
Episode 2: Having bought Europe&#39;s most exclusive hotel, American tycoon Theodore Racksole is thrown in to a world of intrigue, espionage and murder.
Starring John Sessions with full cast.

Complete

Anna Of The Five Towns

A BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Arnold Bennett's tale of love, tyranny and rebellion, 'Anna of the Five Towns'.

A BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Arnold Bennett's tale of love, tyranny and rebellion, 'Anna of the Five Towns'.   Brought up in the repressive tradition of Methodism by her miserly father, Anna Tellwright dreams of independence and freedom. On coming of age she learns that she is to inherit a fortune and realises that she is loved by the charismatic Henry Mynors. But with the money comes responsibility, and Anna's growing concern for William, the son of one of her tenants, leads her to a defiant act that threatens everything...   Arnold Bennett's 'Anna of the Five Towns' was dramatised by Helen Edmundson, and stars Charlotte Riley as Anna, David Schofield as Tellwright, Emilia Harker as Young Agnes and Michael Socha as William. Also featured amongst the cast are James Masters, Lee Williams, Rosina Carbone, Olwen May, Andrew Westfield, Jonathan Keeble and Jacqueline Redgwell.   Originally broadcast as the 'Classic Serial' in two parts on 6 and 13 March 2011.

First published in 1908, The Old Wives' Tale affirms the integrity of ordinary lives as it tells the story of the Baines sisters--shy, retiring Constance and defiant, romantic Sophia--over the course of nearly half a century. Bennett traces the sisters' lives from childhood in their father's drapery shop in provincial Bursley, England, during the mid-Victorian era, through their married lives, to the modern industrial age, when they are reunited as old women. The setting moves from the Five Towns of Staffordshire to exotic and cosmopolitan Paris, while the action moves from the subdued domestic routine of the Baines household to the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.

Arnold Bennett

Kate O'Flynn

Neil Dudgeon

Tim McInnerny

Don Gilet

Rebekah Staton

Full Cast

BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations

Neil Dudgeon and Tim McInnerny star in this epic tale of money, passion and defiance, inspired by the 'Five Towns' novels of Arnold Bennett 
 
In this radical reinterpretation of Arnold Bennett's classic novels set in the Staffordshire potteries, it's the 19th Century and the Industrial Revolution is at full throttle. Only the ruthless thrive in this uncompromising world - and Ephraim Tellwright and Darius Clayhanger are both determined to succeed. 
 
From humble beginnings, these two self-made men have risen to become wealthy and powerful. Now, they hold the fate of the Five Towns in their hands, passing judgement on those who put the prosperity and reputation of their community at risk... 
 
Over 10 hours and almost 40 years, we follow them, their descendants, and the inhabitants of Bursley and the Five Towns, as individuals rise, fall, flourish, age, and see the world around them become unrecognisable, transformed by new technology. Fortunes are lost, hearts broken, empires built and compromises made. 
 
These tales of aspiration and passion, damage and danger are told with Bennett's forensic eye for human psychology and a surprising degree of witty comedy, and feature a star cast including Emma Cunniffe, Kate O'Flynn, Don Gilet and Rebekah Staton.

Arnold Bennett

Books by Arnold Bennett

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