Steve Roud was Local Studies Librarian for the London Borough of Croydon and served as Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society for over fifteen years. He has been researching British folklore for over thirty years and is the joint author of the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, plus other books on traditional drama and folk song, and the Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland, which won the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award in 2004. His publications include London Lore (2008) and The Lore of the Playground (2010). He also compiles the Folk Song Index and the Broadside Index, two internationally acclaimed computer databases of traditional folk and popular song. He lives in Sussex.

Steve Roud

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Laurie Lee

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'Magical' Daily Mail 
'I finished it with an ache in my heart and a tear in my eye' Spectator 
 
From the author of Cider With Rosie, Village Christmas is a moving, lyrical portrait of England through the changing years and seasons. 
 
Laurie Lee left his childhood home in the Cotswolds when he was nineteen, but it remained with him throughout his life until, many years later, he returned for good. This collection brings to life the sights, sounds, landscapes and traditions of his home - from centuries-old May Day rituals to his own patch of garden, from carol singing in crunching snow to pub conversations and songs. Here too he writes about the mysteries of love, living in wartime Chelsea, Winston Churchill's wintry funeral and his battle, in old age, to save his beloved Slad Valley from developers. 
 
Told with a warm sense of humour and a powerful sense of history, Village Christmas brings us a picture of a vanished world. 
 
'Brings to life the landscapes and traditions of Lee's home in Gloucestershire, from centuries-old May Day rituals and carol-singing on Christmas Eve, to his battle in old age to save his beloved Slad valley from developers' Guardian 
 
'Simply written, observant and shot through with Lee's characteristic humility ... Against his whitewashed prose are touches of beauty' The Times Literary Supplement

Village Christmas

And Other Notes on the English Year

Jean-Paul Sartre

Nausea is both the story of the troubled life of a young writer, Antoine Roquentin, and an exposition of one of the most influential and significant philosophical attitudes of modern times - existentialism. The book chronicles his struggle with the realization that he is an entirely free agent in a world devoid of meaning; a world in which he must find his own purpose and then take total responsibility for his choices. A seminal work of contemporary literary philosophy, Nausea evokes and examines the dizzying angst that can come from simply trying to live.

Nausea

A landmark collection of poems from the author of Cider with Rosie 
 
Laurie Lee is beloved for his writing on a lost rural world. His evocative poetry springs from his deep connection with nature, as he tracks the seasons changing and the years turning over. Yet Lee's poems also captured war, human relationships and distant places, informed by his own experiences of lives uprooted by change and conflict. Written during the course of his lifetime, the verses brought together in Collected Poems range over Lee playing his fiddle in a Spanish town; ecstatic in springtime of his beloved Slad valley; or digging for faith in the depths of winter. 
 
Gathered in one volume for the first time, and including a generous selection of previously unseen verses from Lee's archives, these timeless, poignant poems show him expressing the essence of life, love and loss.

Collected Poems

'Living in our valley was like broad beans in a pod, so snug and enclosed and protective.' 
 
 Laurie Lee walked out of his childhood village one summer morning to travel the world, but he was always drawn back to his beloved Slad Valley, eventually returning to make it his home. 
 
 In this never-before-published portrait of his Cotswold home, Laurie Lee guides us through its landscapes, and shares memories of his village youth - from his favourite pub, The Woolpack, to winter skating on the pond, the church through the seasons, local legends, learning the violin and playing jazz records in the privy on a wind-up gramophone. 
 
 Filled with wry humour and a love of place, Down in the Valley is a writer's tribute to the landscape that shaped him, and where he found peace.

Down in the Valley

A Writer's Landscape

John Mortimer

Horace Rumpole, the irrepressible barrister fuelled by cigars, Tennyson, steak-and-kidney pud and the cooking claret from Pommeroy's wine bar, is back for further misadventures. Amid an unfortunate and temporary downturn in London crime, the Old Bailey hack sits in Chambers (he never writes at home for fear of She Who Must Be Obeyed) and picks up his pen to recount six classic tales of his recent trials. Here he deals with, among others, a clergyman on a shoplifting rampage, a backstage theatrical murder, a villain with unfortunate sartorial taste and, worst of all, the possibility that he may have to hang up his wig and retire.

The Trials of Rumpole

Len Deighton

The three confidence tricksters had a style that earned them millions. Silas was the leader, slick and self-assured - but dissatisfied. Bob was the junior partner, longing for the open road where pickings were rich and the living was easy. And Liz, Silas' mistress, was in between. Theirs was a built-in love triangle with its own rewards ... and its own dangers. 
 
In New York these con-artists do a 'business deal' worth millions. But back in London Silas' plan to bilk an emergent African nation misfires. Then Bob takes over the running of the operation - and Liz. A Beirut bank is their target and each member of the trio gets what he or she deserves - each with a twist of lemon.

Only When I Larf

Ishmael Reed

Deep in the American South, 'land of the hunted and the haunted,' three young slaves have broken free. But they have their former master hot on their heels, and they must outrun, outwit, or outgun him and his personal 'CIA' if they are to secure their freedom--all while dodging the bullets of the Civil War raging on around them. When the three men part ways, the adventure begins: the first buys up a huge number of arms in readiness for a final showdown; the second sells his body for pornographic flicks; while the third, Raven Quickskill, hero, poet, heartbreaker, swigs champagne on a non-stop jumbo jet to Canada. Flight to Canada is fun, pacey, adventurous, and touched by Reed's taste for the absurd. Reed takes us on a wild ride through a nineteenth-century Virginia that looks a lot like the West today, littered with everything from Xerox copiers to jumbo jets, and casts an unsettling sideways look at history, race and the American media.

Flight to Canada

Ernesto Che Guevara

'All we could see was the dust on the road ahead and ourselves on the bike, devouring kilometers in our flight northward' 
 
'In late 1951, Guevara and Alberto Granado set off on the 500cc Norton they nicknamed La Poderosa ('The Powerful One') with no other agenda than a lust for life and a desire to see it all. The Motorcycle Diaries offer a unique perspective on what led this would-be doctor from relatively affluent Argentina to become one of the 20th century's most important political figures ... genuinely exhilarating' Guardian 
 
'For every comic escapade of the carefree roustabout there is an equally eye-opening moment in the development of the future revolutionary leader. By the end of the journey, a politicized Guevara has emerged to predict his own legendary future' Time

The Motorcycle Diaries

Arthur Miller

A reticent personnel manager living with his mother, Mr Newman shares the prejudices of his times and of his neighbours - and neither a Hispanic woman abused outside his window nor the persecution of the Jewish store owner he buys his paper from are any of his business. Until Newman begins wearing glasses, and others begin to mistake him for a Jew.

Focus

Ambrose Bierce

An incomparable satirist, Ambrose Bierce became the &quot;laughing devil&quot; of the San Francisco news media, for he was about as discreet as a runaway locomotive, according to H.L.Mencken, and nowhere are his uninhibited irony and gift for verse parody more in evidence than in this &quot;dictionary&quot;.

The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary

Geoffrey Willans

Ronald Searle

School is 'wet and weedy', according to Nigel Molesworth, the 'goriller of 3B', 'curse of St Custard's' and superb chronicler of fifties English life. Nothing escapes his disaffected eye and he has little time for such things as botany walks and cissy poetry with an assortment of swots, snekes and oiks. Instead he is very good at missing lessons, charming masters and putting down little brothers, in fact he is exceptional at most things except spelling. Wildly funny and full of sharp observations on life, the &lsquo;Molesworth tetralogy&rsquo; is magnificently complemented by the illustrations of Ronald Searle

Molesworth

Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams's controversial Hollywood screenplay Baby Doll opens with Archie Lee's teenage bride driving him to distraction, as she has refused to consummate their marriage until the day of her twentieth birthday. Enter wily Sicilian Silva Vaccaro, Archie's rival both in the cotton business and for the affections of the flirtatious Baby Doll, and things reach breaking-point. This volume also contains Something Unspoken, a brilliantly comic study of a wealthy, manipulative Southern spinster, and Summer and Smoke, a sexually charged portrayal of Alma, a sensitive, unmarried minister's daughter, and her childhood love, the wild, sensual doctor's son John.

Baby Doll and Other Plays

Joanne Greenberg

Two young deaf people, Abel and Janice, leave their punitive school and begin their life as a married couple &lsquo;Outside&rsquo; &ndash; in the unwelcoming world of the hearing. A misunderstanding about the payment plan on a car kickstarts years of debt, hard labour and ostracization; but they find solace and expression in the richness of Sign, in their hard-won independence and in the birth of their daughter Margaret. 
 
First published in 1970, only a decade after ASL&rsquo;s formal recognition as a language, In This Sign is a rare, compassionate portrait of the deaf community and a moving family saga that spans the twentieth century. 
 
With an introduction by Sara Novic and a new afterword by the author.

In This Sign

Eddie Carbone is a longshoreman and a straightforward man, with a strong sense of decency and of honour. For Eddie, it's a privilege to take in his wife's cousins, straight off the boat from Italy. But, as his niece begins to fall for one of them, it's clear that it's not just, as Eddie claims, that he's too strange, too sissy, too careless for her, but that something bigger, deeper is wrong, and wrong inside Eddie, in a way he can't face. Something which threatens the happiness of their whole family.

A View from the Bridge

Sigmund Freud

Building on the crucial insight that jokes use many of the same mechanisms he had already discovered in dreams, Freud developed one of the richest and most comprehensive theories of humour that has ever been produced. 
 
Jokes, he argues, provide immense pleasure by allowing us to express many of our deepest sexual, aggressive and cynical thoughts and feelings which would otherwise remain repressed. In elaborating this central thesis, he brings together a dazzling set of puns, anecdotes, snappyone-liners, spoonerisms and beloved stories of Jewish beggars and marriage-brokers. Many remain highly amusing, while others throw a vivid light on the lost world of early twentieth-century Vienna.

The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious

Virginia M. Axline

In 1964, renowned psychotherapist Virginia M. Axline visited a New York school. There she encountered a little boy apart from teachers and children. Dibs sat alone, or gently traced the edge of the room, defying approach and every attempt at interaction. Every day was like this, and every day his teachers feared further that their support was not enough. As a last resort, Axline was asked to meet with Dibs for a series of weekly play therapy sessions. There, through the guise of time spent will toys and paint, Dibs' extraordinary character -- and the circumstance of his pain -- is slowly revealed... 
 
Based on the transcripts of their sessions together, Dibs in Search of Self is a seminal testament to the power of psychotherapy, and a classic of twentieth century nonfiction -- an incredible true story of personal transformation.

Dibs in Search of Self

Personality Development in Play Therapy

Embattled agent Bernard Samson is used to being passed over for promotion as his younger, more ambitious colleagues - including his own wife Fiona - rise up the ranks of MI6. When a valued agent in East Berlin warns the British of a mole at the heart of the Service, Samson must return to the field and the city he loves to uncover the traitor's identity. This is the first novel in Len Deighton's acclaimed Game, Set and Match trilogy.

Berlin Game

Penguin Modern Classics

A Soviet space scientist defects to win academic freedom, but western intelligence has other plans for him, and sends an unnamed spy - perhaps the same reluctant hero of The IPCRESS File - to look after him. But what follows is a blood-streaked trail across three continents... 
 
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Spy reveals a more mature Deighton exploring relationships between couples: professional rivals and private allies, spy and counter-spy, master and slave. Some are drawn together mutual comfort, others for exploitation. With an uncanny feeling for landscape, he begins his story in the awesome emptiness and remorseless heat of the Sahara desert. From there a trail of blood leads to Manhattan, Paris, Dublin and halfway back across Africa. 
 
In a narrative as compelling as it is tantalizing, Deighton surpasses all his previous triumphs and holds the reader spellbound to the very last page.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy

Anaïs Nin

The brilliant tale of Anais Nin's true love affair with Henry Miller, and her ambiguous, charged relationship with his wife, June. Drawn from the journals of a single momentous year in Paris, Henry and June provides a wildly lyrical account of a woman's sexual awakening and the disillusion of idealized marriage.

Henry and June

Bernard Samson returns to Berlin in the second novel in the classic spy trilogy, FAITH, HOPE and CHARITY. 
 
Bernard is trying hard to readjust his life in the face of questions about his wife Fiona, and her defection to the East. Is she the brilliant high-flyer that her Department seems to think she is? Or is she a spent force, a wife and mother unwilling or unable to face her domestic responsibilities? Bernard doesn't know but is determined to find out. 
 
Bernard's boos Dicky Cruyer is certainly not anxious to reveal what he knows, as he jostles for power with Fiona herself in London Central, and takes to the road with Bernard on a mysterious mission to Poland.

Hope

Wang Xiaobo

Wang Xiaobo made his name as a novelist but his essays, too, have become ongoing bestsellers in China since their publication in the 1990s. Bringing together his thoughts on reading and talking and silence in the Cultural Revolution, about the irrepressible spirit of one beloved pig he met while an 'educated youth', and about being operated on via a textbook, these essays give a rare glimpse into a world rarely seen and discussed with such honesty. 
 
Written with a light touch and with a wry sense of humour, these are also the essays of a great literary talent, grappling with sociology, sexuality and feminism, with the cultural clash of living in the USA, and with Chinese sci-fi, the internet, and beloved European writers like Bertrand Russell and Italo Calvino. Electrifying, containing a razor-sharp wit and intellect, this collection reveals the voice of a generation to English-speaking readers for the very first time.

Pleasure of Thinking

Sam Selvon

Set in London in 1965, The Housing Lark follows a group of West Indian friends as they attempt to buy a house together in the city they now call home, while also navigating racist attitudes, sexual politics, exploitative landlords and brushes with the law. Written with Selvon's characteristic exuberance and humour, this is a vivid and moving depiction of the migrant experience, peopled by a compelling cast of schemers, dreamers and hustlers.

The Housing Lark

George Orwell

The Lion and the Unicorn was written in London during the worst period of the Blitz. It is vintage Orwell, a dynamic outline of his belief in socialism, patriotism and an English revolution. His fullest political statement, it has been described as 'one of the most moving and incisive portraits of the English character' and is as relevant now as it ever has been.

The Lion and the Unicorn

Socialism and the English Genius

Ved Mehta

Fly and the Fly Bottle is perhaps Ved Mehta's masterpiece: a collection of his brilliantly revealing conversations with some of the twentieth century's most important philosophers. Engaging with such heavyweights as Isaiah Berlin, Gilbert Ryle, and Elizabeth Anscombe, Mehta is not only able to shed light on the personalities involved in shaping modern philosophy, as well as on the particularities of that philosophic thought, but also to minutely examine the surrounding atmosphere of mid-century British life.

Fly and the Fly-Bottle

Hunter S Thompson

'Hot damn! Let us rumble, keep going and don't slow down . . . let's have a little fun . . .' 
 
In his much-anticipated memoir, Hunter S. Thompson looks back on a long and productive life. It 
is a story of crazed road trips fuelled by bourbon and black acid, of insane judges and giant porcupines, of girls, guns, explosives and, of course, bikes. He also takes on his dissolute youth in Louisville; his adventures in pornography; campaigning for local office in Aspen; and what it's like to accidentally be accused of trying to kill Jack Nicholson.

Kingdom of Fear

Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

'Deighton is a marvel ... a tale told by an author at the height of his power' Chicago Tribune 
 
World-weary agent Bernard Samson is losing control of his personal and professional life. Sent to Mexico to aid the defection of a KGB agent to the West, he has a chance to prove his worth. Instead he is torn between conflicting loyalties, and lost in a maze of double-dealing and duplicity. The second novel in the Game, Set and Match trilogy is a gripping portrayal of a man who can trust no one, not even those closest to him. 
 
A BERNARD SAMSON NOVEL

Mexico Set

Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson skewered the trials of domestic life in 1950s America with wry wit and uncanny precision. In this sequel to Life Among the Savages, her four offspring have now grown into fully-fledged demons. As their house starts to burst at the seams, the Jackson clan somehow manage (without really planning it) to move into a larger home, only to take the chaos - absent furniture, vanishing children, misbehaving refrigerators, an avalanche of books - right along with them.

Raising Demons

Elaine Kraf

Ellen is a single artist living alone on New York’s Upper West Side in the 1970s. She is beset by old boyfriends, paint pigment choices, and, occasionally, by 'radiances' - episodes of joyous, reckless unreality. Under the influence of 'radiances' she becomes Princess Esmeralda, and West 72nd Street becomes the kingdom over which she rules. Life as Esmeralda is a liberating experience for Ellen, who, despite the chaos and stigma these episodes can bring, relishes the respite from the confines of the everyday. And yet those around her, particularly the men in her life, are threatened by her incarnation as Esmeralda, and by the freedom that it gives her. 
 
The Princess of 72nd Street is Elaine Kraf's witty, dizzyingly inventive take on female liberation and mental health, a work of immense literary power and unbridled energy. Provocative at the time of its publication in 1979 and thoroughly iconoclastic, it is a remarkable portrait of an unforgettable woman.

The Princess of 72nd Street

Kingsley Amis

The King's English is Kingsley Amis's authoritative and witty guide to the use and abuse of the English language. A scourge of illiteracy and a thorn in the side of pretension, Amis provides indispensable advice about the linguistic blunders and barbarities that lie in wait for us, from danglers, four-letter words to jargon and even Welsh rarebit. If you have ever wondered whether it's acceptable to start a sentence with 'and', to boldly split an infinitive, or to cross your sevens in the French style, Amis has the answer - or a trenchant opinion. By turns reflective, acerbic and provocative, The King's English is for anyone who cares about how the English language is used.

The King's English

Bernard Samson returns to Berlin in the first novel in the classic spy trilogy, FAITH, HOPE and CHARITY. 
 
Bernard has known that he is not getting the full picture from London Central ever since discovering that his wife Fiona was a double agent. 
 
Werner Volkmann has been cast out by London Central as untrustworthy. Yet Werner still seems able to pick up information that Bernard should have been told...

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