Creator: John N. Hall
Edition: REV. & Enlarged
Publication date: 1983-11-30
Dewey code: 823.8
RRP: £140.95
Price: £116.33
Review The Letters of Anthony Trollope / Stanford University Press:
Creator: Kenneth Branagh
Edition: Abridged
Publication date: 2003-04-14
Dewey code: 941
RRP: £9.99
Price: £9.50
Review The Diary of Samuel Pepys / Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books:
Creator: Josh Alan Friedman
Publication date: 2002-07-04
RRP: £8.99
Price: £4.62
Review Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern, 1950-1995 / Methuen Publishing Ltd:
Creator: D.M. Balme
Publication date: 1991-12-02
Dewey code: 591
RRP: £15.95
Price: £12.53
Review Historia Animalium: Bk. 7-10 (Loeb Classical Library) / LOEB:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 1972-05-25
Price: £7.99
Review The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte / Penguin Books Ltd:
Authors
- Ira Berlin
- Joseph P. Reidy
- Steven F. Miller
- Leslie S. Rowland
- etc.
- Barbara J. Fields
Publication date: 1994-01-30
Dewey code: 973.0496073
RRP: £13.99
Price: £7.97
Review Free at Last: Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom and the Civil War / The New Press:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2006-04-04
Dewey code: 530
RRP: £9.99
Price: £6.83
Review Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman / Basic Books:
Creator: Sarah Curtis
Publication date: 1999-12-10
Dewey code: 320
RRP: £25.00
Price: £25.00
Review The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt: v. 2 / Macmillan:Whether coincidence or otherwise, most of the best political diarists seem to have been of a Tory bent. The 1930s saw Chips Channon, and of recent times the people's favourite, in Blair-speak, has been the late Alan Clark. However, a richer palate might feast on the musings of former Labour MP Woodrow Wyatt, the self-appointed Voice of Reason, who facilitated the posthumous vanity publication of his diaries as a pension for his surviving family. Covering the Major years (though perhaps beyond his own peak), from the general election in 1992 until three months before his death in December 1997, aged 79, Wyatt's self-referential intimacies present brown-nosing of the highest order in his obsessive quest to keep the Chairmanship of the Tote and his newspaper columns, which netted him over £250,000 a year. An endless barrage of dinner parties, ingratiating conversations and geriatric leching occupied Wyatt's leisure hours when not fretting over money, with a primary concern of reconciling Major-"You are a great man", he told him, noting without discernible irony that "history will see him as such"-with his increasingly eccentric predecessor. The presiding deity, though, is Rupert Murdoch, to whom Wyatt desperately toadies, and who brings the diaries to a catastrophic (for Wyatt) climax, when he switches his allegiance to Blair. Editor Sarah Curtis should be applauded for making a molehill out of a mountain, in reducing the original three million words by a factor of 10. Indiscreet, yet chiding indiscretion in others (Beryl Bainbridge alone is exempt from criticism), the main amusement from these latter journals comes from the buffet of inadvertent humour and pathos arising from his resolute lack of introspection. Wyatt thought Alan Clark was "mad as a hatter", while the predatory Clark disingenuously scorned the Voice of Reason as "gaga". This was unfair. [+]As charming in cigar-puffing person as his ilk so often are, these silly snobberies, never knowingly understated, serve to expose the serious absence of a genuine British political class, a sourly lingering aftertaste to such frippery. -David Vincent When Woodrow Wyatt died, in December 1997, his will mentioned the mysterious Project X-the journals he had been secretly writing. This second volume covers the years 1989-1992 and offers a compelling perspective on Margaret Thatcher's fall from power from the man with whom she spoke almost daily. She becomes his tragic heroine in an as-it-happened record written by a man who cannot understand why either the Tories or the country would want to betray such a strong, successful and in his view sensitive leader. He writes, "I know she is the best prime minister of my lifetime and if I can help to strengthen and comfort her when things look bleak, I will do it. "As with the first volume, this second volume works at several levels: as a candid look at one of the extraordinary periods in recent British political life, as a fascinating window on the relationship between politicians and the press and as a delightfully indiscreet revelation of the private lives, political views, personal grievances and drinking habits of the great and grand. No matter how snobbish, rude and conceited Wyatt himself comes across, he fingers his own failings with the same scrutiny and mercilessness he affords to others. -Fiona Buckland.
Authors
- Madeleine Jeay
- Kathleen Garay
Publication date: 2001-10-25
Dewey code: 282.092
RRP: £50.00
Price: £30.00
Review The Life of Saint Douceline, a Beguine of Provence: Translated from the Occitan with Introduction, Notes and Interpretive Essay (Library of Medieval Women) / D.S. Brewer:
Edition: Reprint
Publication date: 1993-06-17
Dewey code: 888.0107
Price: £7.99
Review Selected Essays and Dialogues (World's Classics) / Oxford Paperbacks:
Publication date: 2000-12-11
Dewey code: 759.2
RRP: £30.00
Price: £23.50
Review The Letters of Sir Joshua Reynolds (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies) / Yale University Press:
Creator: P.H. Davison
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2001-09-06
Dewey code: 820
RRP: £20.00
Price: £56.95
Review I Have Tried to Tell the Truth: 1943-44 (The complete works of George Orwell) / Secker & Warburg:
Publication date: 1995-01-10
Dewey code: 828.809
RRP: £35.00
Price: £23.10
Review Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson: July 1884-August 1887 v. 5 (The collected letters of Robert Louis Stevenson) / Yale University Press:
Creator: Philip Ward
Publication date: 1978-08-10
Dewey code: 860.3
Price: £29.50
Review The Oxford Companion to Spanish Literature / Oxford University Press:
Authors
- Janet Ross
- Lucie Austin Duff-Gordon
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 1983-07-21
Dewey code: 962.030924
RRP: £12.00
Price: £10.15
Review Letters from Egypt / Virago Press Ltd:
Creator: Guy de la Bedoyere
Publication date: 2006-04-20
Dewey code: 942.066092
RRP: £25.00
Price: £14.50
Review The Letters of Samuel Pepys / The Boydell Press:
Edition: Touchstone ed
Publication date: 1999-06-08
Dewey code: 508
RRP: £8.99
Price: £3.33
Review Wild Thoughts from Wild Places / Touchstone:
Creator: Patricia W. Romero
Publication date: 1992-02-28
Dewey code: 916.8044
RRP: £22.50
Price: £16.37
Review Women's Voices on Africa (Topics in World History) / Markus Wiener Publishing Inc:
Publication date: 1999-06-01
Dewey code: 306.7663092
RRP: £14.99
Price: £17.95
Review Tales of the Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation / Basic Books:
Creator: Malcolm Sparkes
Publication date: 2000-06-29
RRP: £14.00
Price: £9.79
Review I Was Writing This Diary for You, Sasha / Day Books:
| Browse Essays, Journals & Letters:
Models & Brands:
The Letters of Anthony Trollope, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern, 1950-1995, Historia Animalium: Bk. 7-10 (Loeb Classical Library), The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte, Free at Last: Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom and the Civil War, Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman, The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt: v. 2, The Life of Saint Douceline, a Beguine of Provence: Translated from the Occitan with Introduction, Notes and Interpretive Essay (Library of Medieval Women), Selected Essays and Dialogues (World's Classics), The Letters of Sir Joshua Reynolds (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies), I Have Tried to Tell the Truth: 1943-44 (The complete works of George Orwell), Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson: July 1884-August 1887 v. 5 (The collected letters of Robert Louis Stevenson), The Oxford Companion to Spanish Literature, Letters from Egypt, The Letters of Samuel Pepys, Wild Thoughts from Wild Places, Women's Voices on Africa (Topics in World History), Tales of the Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation, I Was Writing This Diary for You, Sasha |
