Category Archives: Travel Guides
An Italian Education
How does an Italian become Italian? Or an Englishman English, for that matter? Are foreigners born, or made? In “Italian Education, the sequel to his bestselling “Italian Neighbours”, Tim Parks focuses on his own young children in the small village near Verona where he lives, building a fascinating picture of the contemporary Italian family at
Foucault`s Pendulum
Umberto Eco`s Foucault`s Pendulum tells the story of three book editors who are jaded by reading far too many crackpot manuscripts on the mystic and the occult, and are inspired by an extraordinary conspiracy story told to them by a strange colonel to have some fun. They start feeding random bits of information into a
London Under
“London Under” is an atmospheric, imaginative introduction to everything that goes on under London, from original springs and streams and Roman amphitheatres to Victorian sewers, gang hideouts and modern Underground stations. This book tunnels down through the geological layers, meeting the creatures, both real and fictional, that dwell in the darkness – rats and eels,
The English Ghost
The English Ghost is Peter Ackroyd’s study of spectres through time. Apparently the English see more ghosts than any other nation, with each region laying claim to its own particular spirits ‘“ from the Celtic ghosts of Cornwall to the dobies and boggarts of the north. Like all good ghost stories, the tales featured here
Bowen`s Court & Seven Winters : Memories of a Dublin Childhood
In Seven Winters Elizabeth Bowen recalls with endearing candour her family and her Dublin childhood as seen through the eyes of a child who could not read till she was seven and who fed her imagination only on sights and sounds.Bowen`s Court describes the history of one Anglo-Irish family in County Cork from the Cromwellian
The Temple Of The Golden Pavilion
Because of the boyhood trauma of seeing his mother make love to another man in the presence of his dying father, Mizoguchi becomes a hopeless stutterer. Taunted by his schoolmates, he feels utterly alone untill he becomes an acolyte at a famous temple in Kyoto, where he develops an all-consuming obsession with the temple`s beauty.
Peeping Tom
Barney Fugleman has two major preoccupations in life: sex and literature. He is obsessed by the life and work of a man hailed by many as a genius of the nineteenth century – and by Barney as a `prurient little Victorian ratbag`. This curious propulsion drives him out of Finchley, and out of the life
Our Man in Havana
One of Graham Greene’s most popular books, `Our Man in Havana` has all the usual trademarks of a Greene novel (foreign locale, one man, a higher power and the perversion thereof), except instead of being a taught thriller, Greene’s wit shines through and proves to be as blackly comic as one could imagine.Wormold, a vacuum
The Woman in Black
Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is summoned to attend the funeral Mrs Alice Drablow, the house`s sole inhabitant of Eel Marsh House, unaware of the tragic secrets which lie hidden behind the shuttered windows. The house stands at the end of a causeway, wreathed in fog and mystery, but it is not until he glimpses
The Third Man
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY IAN THOMPSON. The Third Man is Graham Greene`s brilliant recreation of post-war Vienna, a `smashed dreary city` occupied by the four Allied powers. Rollo Martins, a second-rate novelist, arrives penniless to visit his friend and hero, Harry Lime. But Harry has died in suspicious circumstances, and the police are closing in
Mrs Craddock
Bertha Ley comes of age, inherits her father`s money and promptly marries a handsome, calm and unimaginative man. Bertha is wildly in love with Edward and believes she can be happy playing the role of a dutiful wife in their country home. But, intelligent and sensual, she quickly becomes bored by her oppressively conventional life,
The Lawless Roads
Graham Greene was commissioned to visit Mexico in 1938 in order to discover the state of the country and its people following the brutal anti-catholic, clerical purges of President Calles and his attempts at enforced secularisation; the result of his journey of discovery was his travel biography ‘The Lawless Roads’.
Geisha
Liza Dalby, author of The Tale of Murasaki, is the only non-Japanese woman ever to have become a geisha. This is her unique insight into the extraordinary, closed world of the geisha, a world of grace, beauty and tradition that has long fascinated and enthralled the West. Taking us to the heart of a way
The Way of a Ship
Benjamin Lundy crossed oceans under sail in the late nineteenth century and over one hundred years later Derek Lundy, his great-great nephew, has re-created that journey. In The Way of a Ship he places Benjamin on board the Beara Head with a community of fellow seamen as they perform the exhausting and dangerous work of
The Decay Of The Angel
The dramatic climax of “The Sea of Fertility” tetraology takes place in the late 1960s. Honda, now an aged and wealthy man, discovers and adopts a sixteen-year-old orphan, Toru, as his heir, identifying him with the tragic protagonists of the three previous novels, each of whom died at the age of twenty. Honda raises and
The Hotel
These were the balmy days of the 1920s. The English, liberated from one long war and not yet faced with the next had – at least when well-off- a confident kind of vitality. `The Hotel` was a comfortable hotel on the Italian Riviera, run for prosperous English visitors. It was a closed world of wealth
The Moon and Sixpence
Charles Strickland, a conventional stockbroker, abandons his wife and children for Paris and Tahiti, to live his life as a painter. Whilst his betrayal of family, duty and honour gives him the freedom to achieve greatness, his decision leads to an obsession which carries severe implications. Inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin, “The Moon
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea
A band of savage thirteen-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call `objectivity`. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship`s officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first; but it is not long before they
The Shelbourne
Elizabeth Bowen`s classic story of the famous Dublin landmark, the Shelbourne Hotel, is a wonderfully evocative account of Dublin life through more than a century. Looking out on Dublin as if from the windows of the Shelbourne, and then turning inward to witness the impact of events on the hotel, its guests and staff, Elizabeth
A Time In Rome
Elisabeth`s Bowen account of a time spent in Rome between February and Easter is both an introduction for visitors and an attempt to capture the “mood” of the Eternal City. It is no ordinary guidebook but an evocation of a city – its history, its architecture and, above all, its atmosphere.She describes the famous classical
