Anita Desai

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Salman Rushdie

‘The first great rock ’n’ roll novel in the English language’ The Times 
 
On Valentine’s Day, 1989, Vina Apsara, a famous and much-loved singer, disappears in a devastating earthquake. 
 
Her lover, the singer Ormus Cama, cannot accept that he has lost her, and so begins his eternal quest to find her and bring her back. His journey takes him across the globe and through cities pulsating with the power of rock ’n’ roll, to Bombay, London and New York. 
 
But around the star-crossed lover and his quest, the uncertain world itself is beginning to tremble and break. Cracks and tears are appearing in the very fabric of reality, and exposing the abyss beyond. And Ormus has to confront just how far he is willing to go for love.

The Ground Beneath Her Feet

John Heilpern

John Osborne (1929-1994), unapologetic rebel and original Angry Young Man, changed the face of modern British theatre forever with Look Back in Anger. An actor turned playwright, Osborne was married five times, his private life generating a tumult and drama to match that of his work. 
 
This startlightly candid, authorised but intimate and informal biography is the first to have access to Osborne's own notebooks and private letters, which record for posterity his often anguished nature. It includes personal interviews with scores of his friends and enemies, among them a bombshell of a confession from Osborne's alleged male lover, and the first public comments from his estranged daughter Nolan, who was thrown out of the family home at just sixteen. 
 
This is an essential, unorthodox, moving and extraordinarily frank portrait of the man, the playwright and his era.

John Osborne

A Patriot for Us

Jean Stein

West of Eden is the definitive story of Hollywood, told, in their own words, by the people on the inside: Lauren Bacall, Arthur Miller, Dennis Hopper, Frank Gehry, Ring Lardner, Joan Didion, Stephen Sondheim – all interviewed by Jean Stein, who grew up in the Forties in a fairytale mansion in the Hollywood Hills. 
 
The book takes us from the discovery of oil in the Twenties with the story of the tycoon Edward Doheny (There Will Be Blood) and traces the growth of corruption through the syndicates, the mob, and the movie studios – from the beginnings of the film industry to the end, with News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch (who bought the Stein mansion in 1985). 
 
West of Eden is about money, power, fame and terrible secrets: the doomed Hollywood of the late Fifties, early Sixties – ‘the rotten heart of paradise’. Like her last book, the best-selling Edie, this is an oral history told through brilliantly edited interviews. As this is Hollywood, it’s a book full of sex, drugs and celebrity glamour; but because it’s built from the firsthand accounts of people who were actually there, many of them writers, actors and artists, it’s also strangely claustrophobic, seductive, and completely compelling.

West of Eden

Simon Morrison

As heard on Radio 4 Book of the Week 
 
Lina Prokofiev was alone in her Moscow apartment one night when the telephone rang. The caller insisted that she come downstairs to collect a parcel, but when she reached the courtyard she was arrested for treason. 
 
First enraptured by the young pianist and rising star, Serge Prokofiev, during a courtship in Brooklyn, then abandoned by him in Moscow, Lina survived one of the darkest periods in Soviet history – enduring eight years in the Gulag after she received that fateful telephone call. 
 
Unfolding with the intrigue of a spy novel, The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev traces the largely untold story of a remarkable woman who gave up her career, her country and her freedom for the brilliant man she married.

The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev

The Story of Lina and Serge Prokofiev

Charles King

'A delicious history of music, power, love, genius, royalty and adventure. Unforgettable' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFORE 
 
'A mesmerising journey through one of the most fascinating and creative moments in human history' AMANDA FOREMAN 
 
London - Dublin, 1741-42. 
An actress mired in scandal plans her escape from an abusive husband. 
A penniless sea captain sets out to rescue the city’s abandoned infants. 
An African Muslim and former captive in the colonies becomes a celebrity. 
A grieving political dissident seeks release from his torment. 
And a great composer to kings – George Frideric Handel – now ill and straining to keep an audience’s attention, faces a decision that will secure his place in history. 
 
'An absolute delight, beautifully told' PETER FRANKOPAN 
 
Evoking a pivotal moment at the birth of modernity, a time of fear, conspiracy and uprising, and featuring some of the most unusual and brilliant personalities of the eighteenth century, Every Valley is a cinematic and moving drama of hope in the darkness and the entangled lives that shaped a masterpiece. 
 
'Fascinating...cinematic...truly informative, imaginative and engaging' Financial Times

Every Valley

The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times that Made Handel’s Messiah

The Story of Handel’s Messiah

Joseph O'Connor

The first novel by Joseph O'Connor, bestselling author of Star of the Sea and Shadowplay. 
 
Eddie Virago, proud owner of the last mohican haircut in Dublin, leaves his home town to find the fame and fortune he's convinced awaits in the wild world of the London rock scene. 
 
Things don't quite go as planned, however. He finds himself living in a ramshackle hotel with a girl he met on the ferry over, while a bewildering array of acid-house ravers, saloon-bar revolutionaries, music-business wideboys and media primadonnas all seem very anxious to help Eddie on his way... 
 
'Very funny... An immensely readable and entertaining book, full of truth about the world we live in' Sunday Independent 
 
'Clever, wry and often hilarious...with sardonic, very knowing digs at youthful pretension' Time Out

Cowboys and Indians

Anne Enright

‘Written with all the ingenuity and twisty tautness of a thriller’ The Times 
 
From the Booker-winning Irish author, a brilliant and moving novel about fame, sexual power, and a daughter’s search to understand her mother’s hidden truths. 
 
 This is the story of Irish theatre legend Katherine O’Dell, as told by her daughter Norah. It tells of early stardom in Hollywood, of highs and lows on the stages of Dublin and London’s West End. Katherine’s life is a grand performance, with young Norah watching from the wings. 
 
 But this romance between mother and daughter cannot survive Katherine’s past, or the world’s damage. As Norah uncovers her mother’s secrets, she acquires a few of her own. Then, fame turns to infamy when Katherine decides to commit a bizarre crime. 
 
 Actress is about a daughter’s search for the truth: the dark secret in the bright star, and what drove Katherine finally mad . . .

Actress

Caroline Davison

***WINNER OF THE NEW ANGLE PRIZE FOR LITERATURE*** 
***WINNER OF THE HWA NON-FICTION AWARD*** 
 
A beautifully written exploration of the world of Edwardian folk music, and its influence on the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams 
 
In January 1905 the young Vaughan Williams, not yet one of England's most famous composers, visited Norfolk to find folk songs 'from the mouths of the singers'. An old fisherman, James 'Duggie' Carter, performed 'The Captain's Apprentice', a brutal tale of torture sung to the most beautiful tune the young composer had ever heard. 
 
With this transformational moment at its heart, the book traces the contrasting lives of the well-to-do composer and a forgotten cabin boy who died at sea, and brings fresh perspectives on folk-song collectors, the singers and their songs. 
 
***AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4*** 
 
'A quirky, fascinating read. Davison excels in evoking English landscapes' Sunday Times 
 
'Animated, entertaining... Presenting a richly complex picture of a subject that can all too easily be shrouded in a sentimental haze' Daily Telegraph

The Captain's Apprentice

Ralph Vaughan Williams and the Story of a Folk Song

Howard Goodall

The dramatic story of five key turning points in a thousand years of Western music - discoveries that changed the course of history. 
 
Who first invented 'Doh Re Mi...'? 
 
What do we mean by "in tune"? 
 
Looking back down the corridor of a thousand years, Howard Goodall guides us through the stories of five seismic developments in the history of Western music. His "big bangs" may not be the ones we expect - some are surprising and some are so obvious we overlook them - but all have had an extraordinary impact. 
 
Goodall starts with the invention of notation by an 11th-century Italian monk, which removed the creation of music from the hands of the players to the pens of the composers; moves on to the first opera; then to the invention of the piano, and ends with the story of the first recording made in history. 
 
Howard Goodall has the gift of making these complicated musical advances both clear and utterly fascinating. Racy and vivid in a narrative full of colourful characters and graphic illustrations of technical processes, he also gives a wonderful sense of the culture of trial and error and competition, be it in 11th-century Italy or 19th-century America, in which all progress takes place. 
 
Big Bangs opens a window on the crucial moments in our musical culture - discoveries that made possible everything from Bach to the Beatles - and tells us a riveting story of a millennium of endeavour.

Big Bangs

Jimmy McDonough

Neil Young is one of rock and roll's most important, influential and enigmatic figures, an intensely reticent artist who has granted no writer access to his inner sanctum - until now. Shakey is the whole story of Young's incredible life and career: from his childhood in Canada to the founding of folk-rock pioneers Buffalo Springfield; the bleary conglomeration of Crazy Horse and the monstrous success of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; to the depths of the Tonight's the Night depravity and the Geffen years; and Young's unprecedented nineties 'comeback'. 
 
Shakey (the title refers to one of Young's many aliases) is also the compelling human story of a lonely kid for whom music was the only outlet, a driven yet tortured figure who controlled his epilepsy via 'mind over matter', an oddly passionate model train mogul who, inspired by his own son's struggle with cerebral palsy, became a major activist in the quest to help those with the condition. 
 
This long-awaited, unprecedented story of a rock 'n' roll legend is uniquely told through the interwoven voices of McDonough - biographer, critic, historian, obsessive fan - and the ever-cantankerous (but slyly funny) Young himself.

Shakey

Neil Young's Biography

James Gavin

From his emergence in the 1950s - when an uncannily beautiful young man from Oklahoma appeared in the West Coast and became, seemingly overnight, the prince of 'cool' jazz - until his violent, drug-related death in Amsterdam in 1988, Chet Baker lived a life that has become an American myth. At once sexy and forbidding, the so-called 'James Dean of Jazz' struck a note of menace in the staid fifties. 
 
In this first major biography, the story of Baker's demise is finally revealed. So is the truth behind his tormented childhood. Behind Baker's icy façade lay something ominous, unspoken. The mystery drove both sexes crazy. But his only real romance, apart from music, was with drugs. Gavin brilliantly recreates the life of a man whose journey from golden promise to eventual destruction mirrored America's fall from post-war innocence - but whose music has never lost the power to enchant and seduce us.

Deep In A Dream

The Long Night of Chet Baker

Amy Key

Is it possible life without romantic love isn't so bad? 
 
An essential memoir about building life on your own terms 
 
***A SUNDAY TIMES AND INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023*** 
 
'The book I've been waiting for my entire life' 
DOLLY ALDERTON, author of Everything I Know About Love 
 
'Marks an important shift in ideas about intimacy' 
OBSERVER 
 
'The harbinger of real talent' 
SUNDAY TIMES 
 
When poet Amy Key was growing up, she looked forward to a life shaped by romance, fuelled by desire, longing and the conventional markers of success that come when you share a life with another person. But that didn't happen for her. Now in her forties, she sets out to explore the realities of a life lived in the absence of romantic love. 
 
Using Joni Mitchell's seminal album Blue - which shaped Key's expectations of love - as an anchor, Arrangements in Blue elegantly honours a life lived completely by, and for, oneself. Building a home, travelling alone, choosing whether to be a mother, recognising her own milestones, learning the limits of self-care and the expansive potential of self-friendship, Key uncovers the many forms of connection and care that often go unnoticed. 
 
With profound candour and intimacy, Arrangements in Blue explores the painful feelings we are usually too ashamed to discuss: loneliness, envy, grief and failure. The result is a book which inspires us to live and love more honestly.

Arrangements in Blue

Notes on Love and Making a Life

Simon Callow

A companion volume to Being an Actor, Callow's classic text about the experience of acting in the theatre, Shooting the Actor reveals the truth about film acting. The book describes his film work, from Amadeus to Four Weddings and a Funeral, from Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls to Shakespeare in Love. 
 
Its centrepiece is a hilarious and sometimes agonising account of the making of Manifesto, shot in the former Yugoslavia. When Callow first met the film's director Dušan Makavejev to discuss the movie, they both got on famously. Months later the two were barely speaking. Insightful and always entertaining, Shooting the Actor reveals more than any formal guide could about the process of film-making and the highly complex nature of being both actor and director.

Shooting the Actor

Ian McEwan

Charles Frieth, pre-eminent composer, conductor and prodigious womaniser, is preparing for a performance of one of his early works, and the world premiere of Demonic Aubade. Obstinate and myopic, he is oblivious to the growing turmoil around him; his wife's poor health and sadness; the exhausted efforts of his secretary, and the destructive passion of his housekeeper, Maria. 
 
As the first performance draws near, the maestro is suddenly awoken to the chaos, and as Charles struggles to regain control of his life, a terrible tragedy begins to unfold.

For You

The Libretto for Michael Berkeley's Opera

Few actors are more eloquent, honest or entertaining about their life and their profession than Simon Callow. Being an Actor traces his stage journey from the letter he wrote to Laurence Olivier that led him to his first job, to his triumph as Mozart in the original production of Amadeus. This new edition continues to tell the story of his past two decades onstage. Callow discusses his occasionally ambivalent yet always passionate feelings about both film and theatre, conflicting sentiments partially resolved by his acclaimed return to the stage with his solo performances in The Importance of Being Oscar and The Mystery of Charles Dickens, seen in the West End and on Broadway in 2002. 
 
Being an Actor is a guide not only to the profession but also to the intricacies of the art, told with wit, candour, and irrepressible verve by one if the great figures of the stage.

Being An Actor

T E Carhart

T. E. Carhart, an American living in Paris, is intrigued by a piano repair shop hidden down a street near his apartment. When he finally gains admittance to the secretive world of the atelier, he finds himself in an enormous glass-roofed workshop filled with dozens of pianos. His love affair with this most magical of instruments and its music is reawakened. 
 
Packed with delicate cameos of Parisians and reflections on how pianos work and their glorious history, The Piano Shop on the Left Bank is an atmospheric and absorbing journey to an older way of life.

The Piano Shop On The Left Bank

Michael Holroyd

Henry Irving - a merchant's clerk who became the saviour of British theatre - and Ellen Terry, who made her first theatre appearance as soon as she could walk, were the king and queen of the Victorian stage. Creatively interdependent, they founded a power-house of arts at the Lyceum Theatre, with Bram Stoker as business manager, where they recast Shakespeare's plays on an epic scale and took the company on lucrative and exhilarating international tours. 
 
In his masterly new biography, award-winning writer Michael Holroyd explores their public and private lives, showing how their artistic legacy and their brilliant but troubled children came to influence the modern world.

A Strange Eventful History

The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their Remarkable Families

Nicholas Hytner

The Sunday Times Bestseller 
 
This is the inside story of twelve years at the helm of Britain’s greatest theatre. 
 
It is a story of lunatic failures and spectacular successes such as The History Boys, War Horse and One Man, Two Guvnors; of opening the doors of the National Theatre to a broader audience than ever before, and changing the public’s perception of what theatre is for. It is about probing Shakespeare from every angle and reinventing the classics. About fostering new talent and directing some of the most celebrated actors of our times. Its cast includes the likes of Alan Bennett, Maggie Smith, Mike Leigh, Daniel Day-Lewis, Michael Gambon and Helen Mirren. 
 
Intimate, candid and insightful, Balancing Acts is a passionate exploration of the art and alchemy of making theatre.

Balancing Acts

Behind the Scenes at the National Theatre

Alan Root

Alan Root is one of the great wildlife pioneers. His unmatched experience of East African wildlife and his appetite for risk have made him a world-class naturalist and film-maker. 
 
Ivory, Apes &amp; Peacocks tells the story of his life’s work, from his arrival in Kenya as a young boy to the making of his game-changing films. From a hot-air balloon Alan was the first to track the wildebeest migration; then he flew it over Kilimanjaro. He filmed inside a termite mound and dived with hippos and crocodiles. 
 
In this extraordinary memoir we look at Africa’s wonders through the eyes of a visionary, live through hair-raising adventure and personal sorrow, and also bear witness to a natural world now largely lost from view.

Ivory, Apes & Peacocks

Animals, adventure and discovery in the wild places of Africa

The reason for the decline of Orson Welles's career is a hotly debated issue, but decline it certainly did. When Citizen Kane, his first film, opened in 1941, Welles was universally acclaimed as the most audacious filmmaker alive. But instead of marking the beginning of a triumphant career in Hollywood, the film still regularly voted the greatest ever made proved to be an exception in Welles's life and work. 
 
In 1947 Welles left America for Europe and lived for the best part of twenty years in self-imposed exile. Welles himself famously quipped 'I started at the top and worked my way down' - the second volume of Simon Callow's compelling biography tells the story of that complex and protracted descent from grace.

Orson Welles, Volume 2

Hello Americans

Christopher Andrew

Julius Green

A vastly entertaining and unique history of the interaction between spying and showbiz, from the Elizabethan age to the Cold War and beyond. 
 
'A treasure trove of human ingenuity' The Times 
 
Written by two experts in their fields, Stars and Spies is the first history of the extraordinary connections between the intelligence services and show business. 
 
We travel back to the golden age of theatre and intelligence in the reign of Elizabeth I. We meet the writers, actors and entertainers drawn into espionage in the Restoration, the Ancien Régime and Civil War America. And we witness the entry of spying into mainstream popular culture throughout the twentieth century and beyond - from the adventures of James Bond to the thrillers of John le Carré and long-running TV series such as The Americans. 
 
'Thoroughly entertaining' Spectator 
 
'I found it extremely difficult to put this book down' Daily Telegraph

Stars and Spies

The Astonishing History of Espionage and Show Business

The story of Intelligence Operations…

Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog is the undisputed master of extreme cinema: building an opera house in the middle of the jungle; walking from Munich to Paris in the dead of winter; descending into an active volcano; living in the wilderness among grizzly bears - he has always been intrigued by the extremes of human experience. 
 
From his early movies to his later documentaries, he has made a career out of exploring the boundaries of human endurance: what we are capable of in exceptional circumstances and what these situations reveal about who we really are. But these are not just great cinematic themes. During the making of his films, Herzog pushed himself and others to the limits, often putting himself in life-threatening situations. 
 
As a child in rural Bavaria, a single loaf of bread had to last his family all week. The hunger and deprivation he experienced during his early years perhaps explain his fascination with the limits of physical endurance.All his life, Herzog would embrace risk and danger, constantly looking for challenges and adventures. 
 
Filled to the brim with memorable stories and poignant observations, Every Man for Himself and God against All unveils the influences and ideas that drive his creativity and have shaped his unique view of the world. This book tells, for the first time, the story of his extraordinary and fascinating life.

Every Man for Himself and God against All

A Memoir

Zawe Ashton

'Entertaining...revealing, shocking' BERNARDINE EVARISTO 
 
'Sublime' CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS 
 
Actor and director Zawe Ashton brings us a unique look at life, work and the absurdities of today's world 
 
Zawe Ashton has been acting since she was six. She has played many different roles, from 'cute little girl' to 'assassin with attitude', Oscar Wilde's Salome to St Trinian's schoolgirl by way of Fresh Meat's Vod. 
 
In Character Breakdown, Zawe scrolls through a version of her life. Or is it a version of her art? Or something in between. In it, she encounters glamour, horror, absurdity and questions like: is a life spent more on performance than reality any life at all? 
 
'Smart, funny, vivid, honest, dark, timely' The Times 
 
'A smart, funny and well-written take-down of modern showbiz' Elizabeth Day, author of How To Fail 
 
Selected by Bernardine Evaristo as one her 20 books by Black British Womxn Writers

Character Breakdown

Julia Blackburn

'This is a raw, true book that evokes not just the life of the great singer Billie Holiday but an entire jazz era....' Mail on Sunday 
 
 Julia Blackburn's brilliant and haunting book is a life of Billie Holiday told in the voices of those who knew her. 
 
During the 1970s a young woman called Linda Kuehl, planning to write a biography of Billie, recorded interviews with more than 150 people. Kuehl died in 1978 and her book never came out, but her recordings survived to provide the raw material for this extraordinary account of the life of America's First Lady of Jazz. 
 
These same recordings have been used as the basis for the 2020 film, Billie. 
 
Billie Holiday is usually portrayed as a tragic victim of her own vices. These intimate stories give us a much deeper picture of her personality - we witness scenes from her chaotic childhood; we see her when she first arrives in Harlem at the age of fourteen; and we follow her through her rise to fame and into the notoriety that came so close on its heels. 
 
Billie's friends and lovers and fellow musicians talk about her troubles and her addictions, but they also have a lot to say about her warmth and her courage, and the ones who were really close to her understood that although she had a lot of men and drugs and booze in her life, all that really mattered was the singing. 
______________ 
 
PRAISE FOR WITH BILLIE: 
'Gives a far more complete idea of Holiday as an artist than anything else I have read, GuardianJulia Blackburn's book gives a far more complete idea of Holiday as an artist than anything else I have read' Guardian 
'This addition to the tide of Billie Holiday books is extremely welcome. Nowhere else is the context of her life and work so vividly captured' Toni Morrison 
'Full of vigour and colour...Ms Blackburn's portrait of a unique artist is moving, revealing and quite unforgettable' Economist

With Billie

Colin Grant

Discover the untold history of reggae legends of Bob Marley and the original Wailers. 
 
The perfect must-read if you loved the film One Love. 
 
Over one dramatic decade, a trio of Trench Town R&amp;B crooners, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer and Bob Marley, swapped their 1960s Brylcreem hairdos and two-tone suits for 1970s battle fatigues and dreadlocks to become the Wailers - one of the most influential groups in popular music. Now one of our best and brightest non-fiction writers examines the story of the influential reggae band. 
 
Charting their complex relationship, their fluctuating fortunes, musical peak, and the politics and ideologies that provoked their split, Colin Grant shows us why they were not just extraordinary musicians, but also natural mystics. And, following a trail from Jamaica through Europe, America, Africa and back to the vibrant and volatile world of Trench Town, he travels in search of the last surviving Wailer. 
 
'In Grant's hands life in Trench Town in the 1960's is energetic and theatrical, rich in comedy and tragic irony...This brilliant book is not just about Jamaica, but about ourselves' Guardian

I & I: The Natural Mystics

Marley, Tosh and Wailer

A brilliant biography of the young Orson Welles, from his prodigious childhood and youth, his triumphs with the Mercury Theatre, to the making of Citizen Kane. Vivid, vastly entertaining, this is the definitive Welles biography.

Orson Welles, Volume 1

The Road to Xanadu

Peter Doggett

Read the definitive biography of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, whose music and career illuminate the legacy of 1960s counterculture. 
 
Between 1969 and 1974, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were the most successful, influential and politically potent rock band in America. More than any of their peers, they channelled and broadcast all the radical anger, romantic idealism and generational angst of their era. The vast emotional range of their music, from delicate acoustic confessionals to raucous counter-culture anthems, was mirrored in the turbulence of their personal lives. 
 
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young is the first major biography of a band whose first two albums are undisputed rock classics, and which continues to attract a large and loyal following to their sporadic reunions. At the same time, Peter Doggett illuminates the pivotal years of 1960s counterculture through the story of four of its key protagonists, whose music, beliefs and relationships with each other chronicle both its trajectory and its legacy. 
 
'A fascinating, rip-roaring and timely re-telling of a corner of music history' Frank Turner

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

The definitive biography

Neneh Cherry

A SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, NEW STATESMAN, EVENING STANDARD, UNCUT AND ROUGH TRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 
 
Top of the Pops, December 1988. The world sat up as a young woman made her debut: gold bra, gold bomber jacket, and proudly, gloriously, seven months pregnant. This was no ordinary artist. This was Neneh Cherry. 
 
But navigating fame and family wasn't always simple. In this beautiful and deeply personal memoir, Cherry remembers the collaborations, the highs and lows, the friendships and loves, and the addictions and traumas that have shaped her as a woman and an artist. At the heart of it, always, is family: the extraordinary three generations of artists and musicians that are her inheritance and her legacy. 
 
Musician. Songwriter. Collaborator. Activist. Mother. Daughter. Lover. Friend. Icon. This is her story.

A Thousand Threads

Jenny Landreth

'With spot-on injections of humour and a frequently raised sardonic eyebrow, joy and warmth shine from this fascinating and funny book' Jo Brand 
 
A joyful celebration of amateur theatre 
 
From the Mystery Plays of the Middle Ages, via the Georgian aristocrats who built opulent private theatres in their own homes, to the radical lefties taking political theatre to the streets, this is the story of amateur dramatics in Britain. We meet a cast of characters who tell us about the joy amateur theatre brings them and we follow the full arc of a production, from first auditions to last night party, with all the mishaps and forgotten lines that come in between. In a triumphant mix of memoir, social history and manifesto, Jenny Landreth opens our eyes to am-dram and shows us a vibrant world that is a crucial part of our culture.

Break a Leg

A memoir, manifesto and celebration of amateur theatre

At college in 1980s Luton, Robbie Goulding, an Irish-born teenager, meets the elusive Fran Mulvey, an orphaned Vietnamese refugee. Together they form a band. Joined by cellist Sarah-Thérèse Sherlock and her twin brother Seán on drums, The Ships in the Night set out to chase fame. But the story of this makeshift family is haunted by ghosts from the past. 
 
Spanning 25 years, The Thrill of it All rewinds and fast-forwards through an evocative soundtrack of struggle and laughter. Infused with blues, ska, classic showtunes, New Wave and punk, using interviews, lyrics, memoirs and diaries, the tale stretches from suburban England to Manhattan’s East Village, from Thatcher-era London to the Hollywood Bowl, from the meadows of the Glastonbury Festival to a wintry Long Island, culminating in a Dublin evening in July 2012, a night that changes everything. 
 
A story of loyalties, friendship, the call of the muse, and the beguiling shimmer of teenage dreams, this is a warm-hearted, funny and deeply moving novel for anyone that’s ever loved a song.

The Thrill of it All

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