Michael Symmons Roberts’s fourth book of poetry, Corpus, was the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize, and the Griffin International Prize. His sixth collection, Drysalter, was the winner of both the Forward Prize and the Costa Poetry Prize in 2013. He collaborated with Paul Farley on Edgelands (Cape/Vintage) and will do so again in The Deaths of the Poets (Cape, 2017). He has also worked many times with the composer James MacMillan. He has published two novels, and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Michael Symmons Roberts

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David Lodge

Philip Swallow, Morris Zapp, Persse McGarrigle and the lovely Angelica are the jet-propelled academics who are on the move, in the air and on the make in David Lodge's satirical Small World. 
 
It is a world of glamorous travel and high excitement, where stuffy lecture rooms are swapped for lush corners of the globe, and romance is in the air...

Small World

When Vic Wilcox (MD of Pringle's engineering works) meets English lecturer Dr Robyn Penrose, sparks fly as their lifestyles and ideologies collide head on. What, after all, are they supposed to learn from each other? But in time both parties make some surprising discoveries about each other's worlds - and about themselves.

Nice Work

Jill Ker Conway

Conway opens with her assessment of her life, passions, possibilities and the making of her decision to leave Canada and return to the United States to become Smith's first woman president. Settling into her new environment, she is at once struck by the beauty of the Connecticut Valley and the Olmstead-designed Smith campus - but also by the College's financial problems and a quarrelsome and complaining faculty engaged in disputes and trivial lawsuits. The jolt of energy she gets from being in the presence of several thousand young women enables her to take on the various Smith constituencies: the self-appointed custodians of the great western male tradition of humanistic learning, the puzzled liberals, the younger male feminists, the 'lady scholars doing intellectual petitpoint', and the young committed feminists of all stripes. We see her harnessing the negative energies in more positive directions, redefining and redesigning parts of the institution, strategising, positioning herself and building a political base, introducing feminist scholarship into the curriculum, creating a programme for older students and a funded research centre, adding fields of study and athletic programmes, developing strong career counselling, changing investment strategy, increasing the endowment - and, in general, mobilising the institution to share the urgency she felt for shaping the kind of women's institution that would attract the students of the '90s and beyond. Through it all we see her continuing to cope with her husband John's ill health and learning to protect and sustain her inner self in the quiet solitude of gardening at their country home - a North American variant of the solitude of her native Australian plains. As the end of the Smith decade approaches she reviews what she has learned and decides that she has had her education and that it is time to 'graduate'.

A Woman's Education

Ryan Wilson

'A frank, funny and long overdue ode to teachers and teaching' ADAM KAY 
 
The malodorous horrors of Sports Day. 
Bracing yourself for Parents' Evening. 
Refereeing teenage relationship dramas... 
 
From the age of eight, Ryan Wilson dreamed of being a teacher. This is the inside story of his time at the chalkface, from fresh-faced trainee with grand ideals to exhausted assistant head battling ever-changing demands. 
 
It is a tribute, too, to the colleagues who befriended him and to the students who inspired him. Above all, it's about the lessons they taught him: how to be patient and resilient, how to live authentically and how to value every day. 
 
'Hilarious, inspiring and so terrifyingly true' Lucy Kellaway 
 
'Delightfully frank and funny' Jacqueline Wilson 
 
'A hilarious love letter to teaching' Christie Watson 
 
'Funny, sensitive and clever' Victoria Derbyshire

Let That Be a Lesson

A Teacher’s Life in the Classroom

'A frank, funny and long overdue ode to teachers and teaching' Adam Kay

Colin McAdam

A place of pressure and contradictions, St Ebury is an exclusive boarding school for the children of Canada's elite, where boys must act as men while navigating their adolescence. 
 
One of only a handful of girls at the school, Fall is the most beautiful. Noel, a clever, ghostly loner, watches her, certain that one day Fall will come to know him deeply. But like everyone else, she is drawn to Julius, the confident and magnetic son of the American ambassador to Canada. They fall in love and Noel keeps watching. 
 
In their final year, the boys room together and as Julius grows closer to Fall, Noel's enthusiasm for their relationship shades into something darker as he imagines himself as a confidante to Julius, sensing that the time has come for him to enter Fall's life forever.

Fall

Nick Davies

Over a period of 18 months, Davies researched for the Guardian a special series of stories investigating the condition of our state schools. They were published in three batches between September 1999 and July 2000, at lengths varying from 600 words to 7,000. The series attempted to go beneath the surface issues to expose the fundamentals - the undeclared but highly successful policy to kill off our comprehensive schools; the bogus analysis of school failure used by Ofsted; the fabrication of facts by Ofsted's chief inspector, Chris Woodhead; the gross dishonesty about funding by the Secretary of State; the link between the success of private schools and the failure of state schools; graphic stories about underfunding, about the lives of truants; an expose of how teachers have joined children in cheating to deliver the exam results which the government demands; some pointers to solutions, based on Dutch schools. The response was huge.

The School Report

Richard Beard

'Read this book' Alastair Campbell 
 
'A really wonderful book' Nigella Lawson via Twitter 
 
In 1975 Richard Beard was sent away to boarding school. So were Boris Johnson and David Cameron. 
 
He didn't enjoy it. But the first and most important lesson was not to let that show. 
 
A public school education has long been accepted in Britain as a preparation for leadership, but being separated from your parents at a young age is traumatic. What sort of adult does it mould? Tackling debates about privilege head-on, Sad Little Men reveals what happens when you put a succession of men from boarding schools into positions of influence, including at 10 Downing Street, and asks the question: is this really who we want in charge? 
 
'The most important book I've read this year' Adam Rutherford

Sad Little Men

Inside the secretive world that shaped Boris Johnson

The revealing book about the world that shaped Boris Johnson

Private Schools and the Ruin of England

Margaret Reynolds

Jonathan Noakes

In Vintage Living Texts, teachers and students will find the essential guide to the works of Salman Rushdie. Vintage Living Texts is unique in that it offers an in-depth interview with Salman Rushdie, relating specifically to the texts under discussion. This guide deals with Rushdie's themes, genre and narrative technique,and a close reading of the texts will provide a rich source of ideas for intelligent and inventive ways of approaching the novels. 
 
Also included in this guide are detailed reading plans for all three novels, questions for essay and discussion, contextual material, suggested texts for complementary and comparative reading, extracts from reviews, a biography, a bibliography and a glossary of literary terms. 
 
Texts covered: Midnight's Children, Shame and The Satanic Verses. 
 
Whether a teacher, student or general reader, the Vintage Living Texts series gives you the chance to explore new resources and enjoy new pleasures.

Salman Rushdie

The Essential Guide

In Vintage Living Texts teachers and students will find the essential guide to the works of Margaret Atwood. This guide will deal with her themes, genre and narrative technique, and a close reading of the texts will be accompanied with likely exam questions, and contexts and comparisons - as well as providing a rich source of ideas for intelligent and inventive ways of approaching the novels.

Margaret Atwood

the essential guide

Isabel Fonseca

Gypsies have always intrigued and fascinated - partly because of their mysterious origins, and partly because of the romance of nomadism. But because they resist assimilation, having survived as a distinct people for over a thousand years, they have also been the victims of other people's nationalism and xenophobia. 
 
In this fascinating and timely study, Fonseca focuses particularly on the gypsies in Eastern Europe (an estimated 6 million), and their future as a distinct race within a nationalist Europe. While researching the book, Fonseca learned Romany and stayed with the gypsies, becoming deeply involved with their lives, and befriending several gypsy kings. 
 
The result is a clolourful and frank book, filled with enthusiasm and curiosity, without lapsing into piety or romanticism.

Bury Me Standing

The Gypsies and their Journey

Louisa Joyner

In Vintage Living Texts, teachers and students will find the essential guide to the works of Toni Morrison. Vintage Living Texts is unique in that it offers an in-depth interview with Toni Morrison, relating specifically to the texts under discussion. This guide deals with Morrison's themes, genre and narrative technique, and a close reading of the texts will provide a rich source of ideas for intelligent and inventive ways of approaching the novels. 
 
Also included in this guide are detailed reading plans for the novels, questions for essays and discussion, contextual material, suggested texts for complementary and comparative reading, extracts from reviews, a biography, bibliography and a glossary of literary terms. 
 
Whether a teacher, student or general reader, Vintage Living Texts gives you the chance to explore new resources and enjoy new pleasures.

Toni Morrison

Bill Burnett

Dave Evans

Change your life in 2023 with the simple, scientifically proven method that has already worked for thousands of people. 
 
'Life has questions. They have answers' New York Times 
 
At last, a book that shows you how to build - design - a life you can thrive in, at any age or stage. A well-designed life means a life well-lived. Many of us are still looking for an answer to that perennial question, 'What do I want to be when I grow up?' 
 
Stanford innovators Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us create a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of who and where we are, our careers and our age. Designing Your Life puts forward the idea that the same design thinking responsible for amazing technology, products and spaces can be used to build towards a better life and career by a design of your own making. 
 
'[Designing Your Life] teaches you how to change what's not working by turning ideas on their head' Viv Groskop, author of How To Own The Room 
 
'An empowering book based on their popular class of the same name at Stanford University...this book will easily earn a place among career-finding classics' Publishers Weekly

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