A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

A. J. Liebling, born in Manhattan in 1904, joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1935 and contributed innumerable articles to the magazine throughout his lifetime, on subjects ranging from food to boxing and France to horse racing. As a war correspondent during the Second World War, he reported from France, England and Algeria, and participated in the Normandy landings. In later life he married the writer Jean Stafford, his third wife. He died in 1963.

A. J. Liebling

A. J. Rosen is an author of YA fantasy novels and is an ambassador for Wattpad, known as @agatharoza. Entwined is her first novel.

A. J. Rosen

A. K. Davidson

A. O. Scott has been a film critic at the New York Times since 2000. His writing has appeared in many other publications, including the New York Review of Books, Slate, the New Yorker and the Nation. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2010, Scott is currently Distinguished Professor of Film Criticism at Wesleyan University. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York. 
 
@aoscott

A. O. Scott

A.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her ‘inspiring contribution to life writing’ and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

A. S. Byatt

A. T. Williams won the George Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2013 for his book A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa. He lives in Warwickshire.

A. T. Williams

A. W. Chase

Dubbed ‘The new queen of spy fiction’ by the Guardian newspaper, and ‘the real thing’ by the Washington Post, A.C. 'Ava' Glass is the CWA Dagger-shortlisted author of Alias Emma (The Chase), The Traitor and The Trap. The Traitor was a 2023 Richard and Judy Bookclub pick. Alias Emma was a Barnes and Noble book of the month. A former crime reporter and communications consultant, for five years Ava worked closely with spies. Her time in that world fascinated her, and the people she met back then inspire every book she writes.

A.C. Glass

A.E. Housman

Arthur Edward Waite was the designer and co-creator of the now famous Rider Waite Tarot deck. 
 
An American-born British poet and scholarly mystic, his strong interest in all esoteric matters - divination, magic, Kabbalism, alchemy and Freemasony - led to him penning a number of books. These include the Key to the Tarot, The Book of Ceremonial Magic and A New Encyclopedia of Freemasony.

A.E. Waite

A.E. Warren is the author of the Tomorrow's Ancestors series, which consists of Subject Twenty-One, The Hidden Base, The Fourth Species and The Final Rising. 
 
After spending eight years working as a lawyer, she began to write in the evenings and early mornings as a form of escapism from life in a very small cubicle with lots of files. She self-published her first novels in her spare time, which were picked up by Del Rey UK which is the science fiction/fantasy imprint of Penguin Random House. 
 
 She is an avid reader, occasional gamer and fair-weather runner. She lives in the UK with her husband, daughter and hopefully, one day, a wise border terrier named Austen.

A.E. Warren

A.G.D. Maran

A.J. Ayer

A.J. Cronin

A K Benedict writes crime and speculative fiction in a room filled with clowns, mannequins and Doctor Who figures. Her first novel, The Beauty of Murder, was nominated for an eDunnit award and is in development for a major 8-part TV series by Company Pictures. Her second, Jonathan Dark or The Evidence of Ghosts, came out in February 2016. She's written Torchwood audio dramas for Big Finish and her short stories have featured in anthologies including Great British Horror and Best British Short Stories. She lives in St Leonards-on-Sea with her dog, Dame Margaret Rutherford.

A.K.Benedict

A. L. Kennedy has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and has won a host of other awards – including the Costa Book of the Year for her novel Day. She lives in Essex.

A.L. Kennedy

A.M. Ellis is a speculative fiction author and lover of everything steeped in myth and mystery. Her stories often lean into diverse voices, not only in her identity as a Black woman, but in exploring neurodivergence and mental health. A proud introvert and nostalgic gamer, she lives in Maryland, USA, with her husband and three children.

A.M. Ellis

A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

A.N. Wilson

A. T. Emerald lives with her husband and baby daughter in Nottinghamshire. She discovered her love of writing in 2020 and has not shut up about enemies to lovers ever since. She loves iced matcha, torrid love confessions with knives pressed to throats (fictional, of course) and does not accept bills for any therapy her books might incur.

A.T. Emerald

A.W. Priest

A.B.C. Merriman-Labor was a barrister, writer and munitions worker born in Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1877. His published works include A Series of Lectures on the Negro Race and The Story of the African Slave in a Nutshell. He also edited two editions of the Handbook of Sierra Leone. He arrived in the UK in 1904 to study law. In 1907, he organised a centenary commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade in Westminster Abbey. He later embarked on an 'entertainment-lecture' tour called Life and Scenes in Britain, travelling across thousands of miles of West, South West and Central Africa, which he expanded on to create Britons Through Negro Spectacles.

ABC Merriman-Labor

AJ Cronin

AJ Molloy

Aabria Iyengar is an American actress and author.

Aabria Iyengar

Aaliya Jaleel is a freelance illustrator, designer, and visual development artist, currently majoring in Animation at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is also the illustrator of Under My Hijab and Muslim Girls Rise. You can visit her online at www.aaliyamj.com.

Aaliya Jaleel

Aaron Allston

After more than fifteen years of experience as a clinical psychotherapist, Dr Aaron Balick has taken the amazing insights from psychology and psychotherapy out of the consultation room and made them accessible to the wider world. 
 
He has been an ‘agony uncle’ for many years for both CBBC and BBC Radio 1, as well as on television, including BBC Worldwide, BBC 3 and BBC Learning.

Aaron Balick

Aaron Carroll

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Paul Kildea

Chopin's Piano begins in November 1838, when George Sand, her children and Frederick Chopin took a boat to Majorca for the winter. It describes their circumstances there, and how Chopin completed one of the most revolutionary works in the history of music - his Preludes - on 'a small Mallorquin piano' which he picked up when they arrived and carted up to the monastery in the mountains where he and Sand lodged. Kildea traces the history of the Preludes, their pianists, their interpretations, and the history of the Mallorquin piano itself, to find an unexpected path through the history of romantic music - via Wanda Landowska in Berlin in 1913, Paris in 1940-41 when the Nazis seized the piano, down to the end of romantic music. It is an astonishing narrative and detective story, an unclassifiable and thrilling book, which explores in an original way the changing meaning of music through time.

Chopin's Piano

A Journey through Romanticism

Daniel Levitin

Dividing the sum total of human musical achievement, from Beethoven to The Beatles, Busta Rhymes to Bach, into just six fundamental forms, Levitin illuminates, through songs of friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion and love, how music has been instrumental in the evolution of language, thought and culture. And how, far from being a bit of a song and dance, music is at the core of what it means to be human. 
 
A one-time record producer, now a leading neuroscientist, Levitin has composed a catchy and startlingly ambitious narrative that weaves together Darwin and Dionne Warwick, memoir and biology, anthropology and a jukebox of anecdote to create nothing less than the ' soundtrack of civilisation' .

The World in Six Songs

How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature

Using musical examples from Bach to the Beatles, Levitin reveals the role of music in human evolution, shows how our musical preferences begin to form even before we are born and explains why music can offer such an emotional experience. 
 
Music is an obsession at the heart of human nature, even more fundamental to our species than language. In This Is Your Brain On Music Levitin offers nothing less than a new way to understand it, and its role in human life

This is Your Brain on Music

Understanding a Human Obsession

Zadie Smith

No subject is too fringe or too mainstream for Zadie Smith's insatiable curiosity. From social media to the environment, Tarantino to Jay-Z to Knausgaard, she has endless fascination and the boundless wit, insight and wisdom to match. In Feel Free, pop culture, high culture, social change and political debate all get the Zadie Smith treatment: dissected with razor-sharp intellect, set brilliantly against the context of the utterly contemporary, and considered with a deep humanity and compassion. 
 
This electrifying new collection showcases its author as a true literary powerhouse, demonstrating once again her credentials as an essential voice of her generation.

Feel Free

Essays

David Cairns

Berlioz was one of the towering figures of Romanticism: not only was he a great and revolutionary composer, but also the finest composer of his day and an outstanding critic and writer. Yet throughout his life he struggled for money and his music was persistently reviled in his native France. With exceptional insight and sympathy, David Cairns draws together the major strands of Berlioz's life: his tempestuous marriage to the actress Harriet Smithson; the genesis of his famous works, including the Requiem, Romeo and Juliet and his crowning masterpiece The Trojans; his friendships with Mendelssohn, Liszt, Princess Wittgenstein and Wagner; and, finally, his last years haunted once again by personal tragedy. Here, as never before, is Berlioz the artist - and the man.

Berlioz

Servitude and Greatness 1832-1869

No artist's achievement connects more directly with early experience than that of Berlioz. David Cairns draws on a wealth of family papers to recreate in authentic and intimate detail the provincial milieu of Berlioz's boyhood, showing how the son of a village doctor was already transforming himself into the composer of the Fantastic Symphony. Berlioz's desperate attempts to win his father's approval for his vocation, his struggles to establish himself on the Parisian musical scene, and his passionate pursuit of love are all brought vividly to life in this first volume of David Cairn's award-winning biography.

The Making of an Artist 1803-1832

Timothy Day

The sound of the choir of King's College, Cambridge - its voices perfectly blended, its emotions restrained, its impact sublime - has become famous all over the world, and for many, the distillation of a particular kind of Englishness. This is especially so at Christmas time, with the broadcast of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, whose centenary is celebrated this year. How did this small band of men and boys in a famous fenland town in England come to sing in the extraordinary way they did in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries? 
 
It has been widely assumed that the King's style essentially continues an English choral tradition inherited directly from the Middle Ages. In this original and illuminating book, Timothy Day shows that this could hardly be further from the truth. Until the 1930s, the singing at King's was full of high Victorian emotionalism, like that at many other English choral foundations well into the twentieth century. 
 
The choir's modern sound was brought about by two intertwined revolutions, one social and one musical. From 1928, singing with the trebles in place of the old lay clerks, the choir was fully made up of choral scholars - college men, reading for a degree. Under two exceptional directors of music - Boris Ord from 1929 and David Willcocks from 1958 - the style was transformed and the choir broadcast and recorded until it became the epitome of English choral singing, setting the benchmark for all other choral foundations either to imitate or to react against. Its style has now been taken over and adapted by classical performers who sing both sacred and secular music in secular settings all over the world with a precision inspired by the King's tradition. 
 
I Saw Eternity the Other Night investigates the timbres of voices, the enunciation of words, the use of vibrato. But the singing of all human beings, in whatever style, always reflects in profound and subtle ways their preoccupations and attitudes to life. These are the underlying themes explored by this book.

I Saw Eternity the Other Night

King's College, Cambridge, and an English Singing Style

Nathan Carter

Nathan Carter has become Ireland's biggest country music star. He is heralded by many as reviving the country music genre and bringing it into the mainstream. He has sold out venues across the UK and Ireland, has landed his own primetime show, and is loved and respected by legions of fans across Ireland. 
 
But how did a lad from Liverpool accomplish all this before the age of 27? 
 
In his revealing and inspirational autobiography, Nathan reminisces about his music filled childhood, and growing up in Merseyside with his Liverpool-Irish family. From his first taste of showbiz at the tender age of four, to his success on the north of England club circuit and his subsequent relocation to Donegal, Nathan explores the twists of fate that took him to chart success and to become Ireland's adopted poster boy for country music.

Born for the Road

My Story So Far

Fiona Maddocks

Part of the new Ladybird Expert series, Twentieth-Century Classical Music is an accessible, authoritative, and entertaining introduction to the Western classical music that captured the defining moments of the contemporary world. 
 
Written by The Observer's classical music critic Fiona Maddocks, Twentieth-Century Classical Music will take you on an acoustic journey through history with a curated playlist on each page. 
 
Early in the century, Schoenberg pioneered musical experiments which turned old traditions on their head. Then Stravinsky's sensational Rite of Spring, written on the eve of WWI dramatically altered the course of all classical music that followed. 
 
 From the influence of the jazz age and the sounds of cities, the nationalism of folk revival, Russian revolutions from the Bolsheviks to Stalin, to the fall of the Berlin Wall, you'll learn how Western composers painted with a new orchestral palette to capture the sentiments of their time.

Twentieth-Century Classical Music

A Ladybird Expert Book

Maria Alyokhina

From activist, Pussy Riot member and freedom fighter Maria Alyokhina, a raw, hallucinatory, passionate account of her arrest, trial and imprisonment in Siberian jail for standing up for what she believed in. 
 
'One of the most brilliant and inspiring things I've read in years. Couldn't put it down. This book is freedom' Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick 
 
'A women's prison memoir like no other! One tough cookie!' @MargaretAtwood 
 
'Once you begin reading, you are completely disarmed, unable to put it down until the last page' Marina Abramovic 
 
People who believe in freedom and democracy think it will exist forever. 
 
That is a mistake. What happened in Russia - what happened to me - could happen anywhere. 
 
When I was jailed for political protest, I learned that prison doesn't just teach you to follow the rules. It teaches you to think that you can never break them. 
 
It's inevitable that the prison gates will open at some point. But this doesn't mean that you leave the 'prisoner' category and go straight into the category of 'the free'. 
 
Freedom does not exist unless you fight for it every day. 
 
This is the story about how I made a choice.

Riot Days

Min Kym

'All my life my Stradivarius had been waiting for me, as I had been waiting for her . . .' 
 
The thing you live for: Gone. 
 
At twenty-one, violinist prodigy Min Kym found the one - a 1696 Stradivarius. At last she had found her true voice. Together they toured the world, playing to rapt audiences. 
 
But in 2010 Min's violin was stolen at a train station - and suddenly her world collapsed. Unable to play, with little hope of ever finding the instrument that was now an extension of herself, she could see no future. 
 
Yet Min knew that the music was still inside her - if only she could rediscover what she had lost, she might just find herself . . .

Gone

A Girl, a Violin, a Life Unstrung

Roger Scruton

'The ideal interpreter of the Ring ... a fascinating and valuable study ... absorbing and convincing' Sunday Times 
 
The Ring of the Nibelung is one of the greatest works of art created in modern times. Roger Scruton's brilliant and passionate exploration of the drama, music, symbolism and philosophy of Wagner's masterpiece - with its themes of love, death, sacrifice and freedom - shows how, ultimately, it expresses the truth about the human condition. 
 
'Highly original and penetrating ... tremendous' Tim Blanning, Literary Review 
 
'A rich, historical account ... After reading this book, only the most unadventurous reader would turn down the chance to see Wagner's masterpiece' Economist 
 
'A brilliant gallop through the master's religious, musical and philosophical contexts' Sue Prideaux, Spectator 
 
'Scruton is one of the finest philosopher-musicians since Schopenhauer' Jonathan Gaisman, Standpoint

The Ring of Truth

The Wisdom of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung

Ben Ratliff

The most significant revolution in the recent history of music has to do with listening: it is now possible to listen to nearly anything at any time, to ignore albums, and to instantly flit across genres and generations, from 1980s Detroit techno to 1890s Viennese neo-romanticism. Yet music criticism has historically focused on the musician's intent, not the listener's experience. Every Song Ever is therefore the definitive field guide to listening in an age of glorious, overwhelming abundance. By revealing the essential similarities between wildly different kinds of music, Ben Ratliff shows how we listen to music now, and suggests how we can listen better.

Every Song Ever

Twenty Ways to Listen to Music Now

ZAYN

A photographic journey of his life since leaving One Direction, ZAYN opens up with this collection of thoughts, inspiration, and never-before-seen personal photographs. After five years of massive success with One Direction, ZAYN launched his career as a solo artist with Mind of Mine, becoming one of the most successful artists in the world. Now, for the first time ever, ZAYN is going to tell and show all in this intimate and raw scrapbook of his life. Never-before-released photos give readers insight to ZAYN, no-holds-barred. Gorgeously designed with hundreds of full-colour photographs and Zayn's notes, drawings, song lyrics, and personal stories, the book captures Zayn's most private moments &amp; his candid feelings on fame, success, music, and life. The next chapter of ZAYN'S evolution into global superstar, told by the artist who is living it.

Zayn

The Official Autobiography

Dominic Sandbrook

Britain's empire has gone. Our manufacturing base is a shadow of its former self; the Royal Navy has been reduced to a skeleton. In military, diplomatic and economic terms, we no longer matter as we once did. And yet there is still one area in which we can legitimately claim superpower status: our popular culture. 
 
This is a book about the success and the meaning of Britain's modern popular culture, from Bond and the Beatles to heavy metal and Coronation Street, from the Angry Young Men to Harry Potter, from Damien Hirst to The X Factor.

The Great British Dream Factory

The Strange History of Our National Imagination

Tom Jones

In a career that has spanned six decades, Sir Tom Jones has performed with almost every major recording artist, from Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis and Sinatra, to Robbie Williams, Van Morrison and Jessie J, across every imaginable genre, from rock and pop to country, blues and soul. The one constant throughout has been his unique musical gift and unmistakable voice. 
 
In this, his first ever autobiography, Tom revisits his past, both personal and professional, exploring the twists of fate that took a boy from a poor Welsh coal-mining family to global celebrity status. He charts the stories behind the hits as well as the ups and downs of his professional life - from the heyday in Las Vegas and subsequent fallow years in the 1980s to his renaissance and comeback, thanks to the direction and management of his son, Mark - as well as shedding a light on the life he has led behind the cameras and the stage.

Over the Top and Back

The remarkable autobiography from a national treasure

Elvis Costello

'I asked my dad if he needed "Please, Please Me" any more. He laughed and handed the record to me . . ." 
 
In a career spanning four decades, Elvis Costello (born Declan MacManus) has made himself a huge reputation through his tunes, lyrics and occasional bad behaviour. His long-awaited memoir finally reveals all about his mistakes and his marriages, his faults and his family. 
 
From his controversial early television appearances, to becoming one of the industry's elder statesmen, Costello's memoir - which he has written himself - is a one-man history of British music. A warm, deep and surprisingly funny insight into an amazing life, it is rich with anecdotes about fame, music and the creation of his famous songs.

Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink

'I asked my dad if he needed "Please, Please Me" any more. He laughed and handed the record to me . . ." 
 
In a career spanning four decades, Elvis Costello (born Declan MacManus) has made himself a huge reputation through his tunes, lyrics and occasional bad behaviour. Now, for the first time, he is telling his story. 
 
From miming on Top of the Pops, to becoming one of the industry's elder statesmen, Costello's memoir - which he has written himself and will promote assiduously - is a one-man history of British music. A warm, deep and surprisingly funny insight into an amazing life, it is rich with anecdotes about family, musicians and the creation of his famous songs.

Deluxe Edition

Roger Parker

Carolyn Abbate

Abbate and Parker's A History of Opera is the first full new history of opera in sixty years - now in paperback in an updated second edition 
 
'The best single volume ever written on the subject' The Times Literary Supplement 
 
Why has opera transfixed and fascinated audiences for centuries? Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker answer this question in their scrupulous and provocative retelling of the history of opera, examining its development, the means by which it communicates, and its societal role. In a new revision with an expanded examination of opera as an institution in the twenty-first century this book explores the tensions that have sustained opera over 400 years: between words and music, character and singer, inattention and absorption. Abbate and Parker argue that, though the genre's most popular and enduring works were almost all written in a distant European past, opera continues to transform the viewer with its enduring power.

A History of Opera

The Last Four Hundred Years

Gruff Rhys

In 1792, John Evans, a young farmhand from Wales, travelled to America to discover whether there was, as widely believed, a tribe of Welsh-speaking native Americans still walking the great plains. 
 
In 2012, Gruff Rhys set out on an 'investigative concert tour' in the footsteps of John Evans, with concerts in New Orleans, Baltimore, St Louis, and more. 
 
American Interior is the story of these journeys. It is also an exploration of how wild fantasies interact with hard history and how myth-making can inspire humans to partake in crazy, vain pursuits of glory, including exploration, war and the creative arts.

American Interior

The quixotic journey of John Evans, his search for a lost tribe and how, fuelled by fantasy and (possibly) booze, he accidentally annexed a third of North America

The Quixotic Journey of John Evans

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

'They wanted me to give a concert; I wanted them to beg me. And so they did. I gave a concert.' 
 
Entertaining, touching and sharp-tongued letters between the great eighteenth-century composer and his mentor father.

My Dearest Father

Neil Young

Quirky and wonderfully candid, Neil Young's new book of reminiscences is as compelling as his first book. He returns with more unforgettable stories about his six decades in the music business - but this is not your average rock biography. He centres this new work on one of his life's passions, cars, using the framework of all the cars he's ever owned to construct a narrative of his life and career, exploring and demonstrating how memories are attached to objects. Young also expresses regret for the environmental impact of his past cars, and now passionately advocates the use of clean energy. 
Special Deluxe is a mix of memoir and environmental politics by one of the most gifted and influential artists of our time.

Special Deluxe

Coleen Nolan

Coleen Nolan has lived her entire life in the spotlight. From touring the world in the Nolan Sisters to being one of our favourite TV presenters, she always creates headlines. But in No Regrets, her latest number one bestselling memoir, Coleen talks candidly for the first time about the tragic early death of her beloved sister Bernie, heart-breaking family feuds and how she had to walk away from her TV career to heal herself after the life she knew was torn apart.

No Regrets

Iain Sinclair

On the trail of the American Beats, Iain Sinclair makes a delirious and perhaps ill-fated expedition in the footsteps of Malcolm Lowry, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Charles Olson and Gary Snyder. It is a journey in search of literary ghosts behind mirages of volcanoes and the Old West. In which rumours vie with false memories and unreliable reports to steer our guide from one strange adventure into another. It is an odyssey in which the beginning offers no clues as to where it may end.

American Smoke

Journeys to the End of the Light

John Eliot Gardiner

Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the most unfathomable composers in the history of music. How can such sublime work have been produced by a man who seems so ordinary, so opaque - and occasionally so intemperate? 
 
In this remarkable book, John Eliot Gardiner distils the fruits of a lifetime's immersion as one of Bach's greatest living interpreters. Explaining in wonderful detail how Bach worked and how his music achieves its effects, he also takes us as deeply into Bach's works and mind as perhaps words can. The result is a unique book about one of the greatest of all creative artists.

Music in the Castle of Heaven

A Portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach

Graham Nash

In this candid and riveting autobiography Graham Nash tells it all: the love, the sex, the jealousy, the drugs, and the magical music-making. 
 
This is one of the great rock and roll stories: growing up in poverty in postwar Manchester, where Nash founded the Hollies with schoolfriend Allan Clarke and the incredible success that followed, friendships with all the great British bands of the 60s including the Beatles, the Stones and the Kinks, decamping to America and becoming the lover of Joni Mitchell (for whom he wrote 'Our House') and achieving superstardom with David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Neil Young.

Wild Tales

Paul Kildea's Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century is the definitive biography of Britain's greatest modern composer - now in paperback 
 
Benjamin Britten was Britain's greatest twentieth-century composer, who broke decisively with figures such as Elgar and Vaughan Williams and recreated English music in a fresh, modern, European form. Paul Kildea's biography has been acclaimed as the definitive account of Britten's extraordinary life, exploring his deeply held and controversial pacifism; his complex forty-year relationship with Peter Pears; and his creation of an artistic community in Aldeburgh. Above all, however, this book helps us understand the relationship of Britten's music to his life, and takes us as far into its unique alchemy as we are ever likely to go. 
 
PAUL KILDEA is a writer and conductor who has performed many of the Britten works he writes about, in opera houses and concert halls from Sydney to Hamburg. His previous books include Selling Britten (2002) and (as editor) Britten on Music (2003). He was Head of Music at the Aldeburgh Festival between 1999 and 2002 and subsequently Artistic Director of the Wigmore Hall in London, and lives in Berlin. 
 
'Must now rank as the standard work' Financial Times 
 
'Indispensable ... This is a masterly, highly readable account and the most comprehensive to date of the life and work of one of the 20th century's great musical figures' Barry Millington, Evening Standard 
 
'[A] wise, cautious, challenging book ... Kildea's verbal explorations of the music are done with level-headed sensitivity leavened by a quirky lightness of touch' Alexandra Harris, New Statesman

Benjamin Britten

A Life in the Twentieth Century

Nick Hornby

'I decided that I wanted to write a little book of essays about songs I loved ... Songs are what I listen to, almost to the exclusion of everything else.' 
 
In his first non-fiction work since Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby writes about 31 songs that either have some great significance in his life - or are just songs that he loves. He discusses, among other things, guitar solos and losing your virginity to a Rod Stewart song and singers whose teeth whistle and the sort of music you hear in Body Shop. 
 
'The soundtrack to his life ... a revealing insight into one of Britain's most popular writers' Evening Standard

31 Songs

Victoria Beckham

From the time when, as an eight-year-old girl, she saw the movie Fame, Victoria wanted to be a star. There was a line from the title song that stayed with her - 'I'm gonna live forever, I'm gonna learn how to fly'. With this extraordinary book she gives us the chance to follow her on her journey from lonely teenager to international star; to fly alongside her. At heart is an uplifting story of tenderness and passion, but kidnap threats and media lies have often turned the dream into a nightmare. Incredibly frank and told with coruscating humour, Victoria's autobiography describes her extraordinary life as it really is. LEARNING TO FLY is more compelling than any novel.

Learning to Fly

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Benjamin Britten single-handedly transformed the reputation of British classical music. The enormous popular appeal of his great works, such as Peter Grimes (1945) and the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946), make him the most successful opera composer of any born in the twentieth century. But his success was not without controversy and pain: he was accused of fleeing Britain to avoid military service, he was widely known to be sexually obsessed with boys and he suffered an astonishing array of illnesses. 
 
This short book combines a colourful overview of his life with pithy descriptions of all of his major musical works, providing an intimate portrait of this highly unusual man and the perfect introduction to a towering figure of British culture.

A Private Thriller

A series of children's modern classic novels by renowned 20th century children's writers. All the titles in this series have the A Puffin Book logo, contemporary-style covers, and child-friendly endnotes.

A Puffin Book

A Ripley Novel

A Slice of the Moon

A Victorian Mystery

A Walk in...

A Women’s Murder Club Thriller

A chef Paul Delamare Mystery

Aberrations

Across the Universe

Actiphons

Adelia Aguilar

Adrian Mole

Adventures in Time

Aftermath

Against War

Age of X

Agent 21

Agent Z

Detective Aidan Waits is a troubled junior detective haunted by his past. Facing an uncertain future, and disconnected from his history, DC Waits and his partner, Detective Inspector Peter 'Sutty' Sutcliffe work on Manchester's streets to uncover the city's worst criminals among the grime of the underworld.

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