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Cruel and Tender'A mordantly knowing modernisation of Sophocles's Trachiniae... . The approach here manages to be at once lethally level and capable of surges of anguished feeling... Highly recommended.' IndependentFewer Emergencies'A triptych of vicious modern fairy tales that brings the nightmare right back and stabs you through the soul.'GuardianThe City'Although this is the most disquieting play in London, there is a curious exhilaration about both the performance and Crimp's confrontation with our perpetual unease.' GuardianDefinitely the Bahamas'A summation of a life lived vicariously, at the margins of other lives, between suffocating suburban walls; and the play is as unflinching as it is unnerving.' The TimesPlay House'Play House concerns the volatility and vulnerability of love, as a young couple, Simon and Katrina set up home... Unusually for Crimp, the play both begins and ends with moving declarations of love. Suddenly this usually chilly dramatist seems unexpectedly blessed with a warm heart.' Daily TelegraphIn the Republic of Happiness'Crimp goes so far as to call it "e;an entertainment in three parts,"e; and it rocks along like a dystopian vaudeville... The actors are imprisoned and liberated at once, their strange between-worlds condition a source of joy, intemperateness and above all a care for our diversion... My favourite play of the year.'What's on Stage

'I want to give my country a model of perfection... Nothing less. My country needs cheering up. I'm the man to do it.'Nobody can doubt John Christie's passion nor his formidable will: his wooing of his opera singer wife has been marked by a determination befitting a man who won the Military Cross at the Battle of Loos. Now, in 1934, this Etonian science teacher's admiration for the works of Wagner has led him to embark on an ambitious project: the construction of an Opera House on his estate in Sussex.But such is the scale of the enterprise that passion alone may not be enough. It's only when a famous violinist is delayed by fog overnight in Eastbourne that Christie hears word of a group of refugees for whom life in Germany is becoming impossible. Perhaps they can deliver Christie's vision of the sublime - assuming they're willing to cast his wife in the lead.David Hare's new play is the story of an intense love affair between some unlikely bedfellows, and of the unrelenting search for artistic excellence in the face of searing scrutiny, sacrifice and war.The Moderate Soprano premieres at Hampstead Theatre, London, in October 2015.

This phenomenal novel is the first in a trilogy packed with shooting contests, train robberies, festivals under the stars, powerful Djinni magic and an electrifying love story."e;Tell me that and we'll go. Right now. Save ourselves and leave this place to burn. Tell me that's how you want your story to go and we'll write it straight across the sand."e;Dustwalk is Amani's home. The desert sand is in her bones. But she wants to escape. More than a want. A need. Then a foreigner with no name turns up to save her life, and with him the chance to run. But to where? The desert plains are full of danger. Sand and blood are swirling, and the Sultan's enemies are on the rise.

The cheque's in the post. I'm still at the office. That looks great on you. Lies make the world go round. And in this book the Would I Lie To You? team celebrates the fine art of the everyday fib.Like the deliriously funny contributions of Rob Brydon, Lee Mack and David Mitchell in the hugely successful panel game, here is a delightful collection of 100 fibs that all of us can recognise. Lies like: I didn't even notice she was pretty; I'm working from home tomorrow; and wow, your tattoo looks really... interesting. Written in the same warm, witty and inspired tone that's made the TV show such a hit, the book uncovers the little deceptions that strike a chord with all of us. There are the lies we tell others, the lies people tell us and the lies we tell ourselves. Each entry in the book is laugh-out-loud funny, and filled with more than a little bit of painful truth.If you're a fan of the show, a lover of spot-on observational comedy, or have ever told a porky, Would I Lie To You? Presents the 100 Most Popular Lies of All Time is the book you've been waiting for.

America. 1776.Christian is a Quaker. His family came to America to live in peace. But he is a young man fired up by dreams of revolution. Should he defy his community and pick up a gun?Thomas Jefferson is an idealist, with a vision of liberty for all. But America is a fractured coalition of states, in a bloody war for independence. How will he balance the ideal with the reality?Susanna was born a slave. But the British promise liberation for those who join their fight against the revolution. Where does true freedom lie?Jefferson's Garden by Timberlake Wertenbaker premiered at Watford Palace Theatre in February 2015.

Conor Cruise O'Brien's brilliant and hugely controversial 1965 essay on the political convictions of W. B. Yeats is the title-piece for this superb 1988 collection of pieces on politics, religion, nationalism and terrorism.'O'Brien is a man of strong views, and he writes with verve and wit. Agree with him or not, one reads him with enjoyment.' Foreign Affairs'[Passion and Cunning] displays once again [O'Brien's] wonderful range of talents: a beautiful command of the language, gentle wit and coruscating satire, shrewd political judgment and a raking critical power. O'Brien is, moreover, a critic against all-comers, his spiky guns pointing in all directions: woe betide anyone incautious enough to presume that O'Brien is on their 'side'. . . O'Brien believes in all manner of good causes, but his own independence is finally what he cares about most.' R. W. Johnson, London Review of Books

In 1977 Prime Minister James Callaghan and Liberal leader David Steel struck a constitutional deal, by which the Labour government could survive a vote of no confidence and get its business through Parliament, while the Liberals gained access to the anterooms of power.The Pact, a contemporaneous account of the hatching and workings of the 'Lib-Lab' deal of 1977-8, is an invaluable time-capsule of British politics but also a pointer to its future. Coalition government has oft been scorned in Britain, since - as Alistair Michie and Simon Hoggart note - the main parties regard their opponents chiefly as 'targets off which points may be scored'. But hung parliaments and inter-party deals, as revived in May of 2010, may be back to stay.This new edition of The Pact, in memory of its co-author Simon Hoggart (1946-2014), includes new prefaces by David Steel, Roy Hattersley, and the journalist Stephen Bush.

'A marvellous and remarkable book.' Melvyn Bragg'A life-affirming novel.' TelegraphFirst published in 1963, Anarchists in Love was the first of a quartet of novels by Colin Spencer concerning the Simpson family. This volume centres on Sundy Simpson, who, on a warm May evening in Brighton, runs into Reg Pearson in a bar. They begin an affair: she paints, he writes, and on the surface they seem well matched. Reg, however, is a keeper of secrets.In a new preface to this edition Colin Spencer recalls the controversy that attended its first publication, and his wish to celebrate Brighton, 'which appeared to me in my twenties to be as complicated as the human soul'.

Karl Braun is a slight, grey-haired man who lodges in West London and works as a tuner for a firm of piano makers who know little or nothing about him. His fellow lodgers believe that he, like them, came to England to flee Hitler. But the outwardly poised Herr Braun is inwardly a very anxious man, wracked especially by newspaper reports of the ongoing hunt for Nazi war criminals.The Glass Pearls (1966) was the second novel by Emeric Pressburger, who, with Michael Powell, created such cinematic masterworks as A Matter of Life and Death and The Red Shoes. Likely inspired by the capture of Adolf Eichmann, it is a gripping psychological study of a cultured man, guilty of unspeakable crimes, trying to hide in plain sight.This new edition includes two new introductions, by cinema scholar Caitlin McDonald and by Pressburger's grandson, the Oscar-winning film director Kevin Macdonald.

Dinner'A cracking black comedy that has you laughing uproariously one moment and jumping with shock the next . . . For those with strong stomachs, Dinner offers a delicious feast of comedy and the macabre.' Daily TelegraphDying for It'A subversive Russian classic: one that addresses the ultimate question of "e;why live?"e;' Guardian'The play, freely adapted by Moira Buffini, presents a glorious gallery of comic types.' IndependentWelcome to Thebes'It's thrilling. Moira Buffini's strange and daring play is moving, wise, funny, horrifying . . . Full of resonances you weren't expecting, jokes you didn't see coming . . . It raises huge questions with wit.' The TimesHandbaggedWinner of the 2014 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre'A phenomenon.' Sunday Telegraph'Perfectly pitched between the comic and the serious.' Guardian

In Herod: Reflections on Political Violence (first published in 1978) Conor Cruise O'Brien collects a number of essays alongside three short plays that dramatise political arguments through the infamous figure of the Roman king of Judaea for whom the collection is named.'A great book. In it, O'Brien not only denounces IRA terrorism, as you would expect from a mainstream politician, but - in a sense quite different from the rationalisations offered by ideological apologists for political violence - seeks to understand it. I mean, really understand it - not extenuate it by equivocation and non sequitur. And his thinking leads him to attack the republican mythology at the heart of the Irish state. Few writers have analysed terrorism so acutely or been as effective in undermining its ideological justifications.' Oliver Kamm, from his preface to this edition

The Suspecting Glance (first published in 1972) collects Conor Cruise O'Brien's four T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures as delivered at the University of Kent, Canterbury, in November 1969. The lectures were inspired by O'Brien's experience of holding the Albert Schweitzer Chair in Humanities at New York University from 1965-9, and there teaching students in whom he noted burning radical convictions but also a disconcerting 'lack of suspicion in those bright, young eyes'. Whereas to O'Brien's mind the 'suspecting glance' was a mark of political maturity that had to be first directed at one's own opinions prior to decrying another's.Brien's Eliot lectures were, as his friend Frank Callanan noted, a 'corrective gesture' toward his New York experience. In them he considers four writers - Machiavelli, Burke, Nietzsche, Yeats - whom he reads as being 'profoundly aware of the resource and versatility of violence and deception in man, in society, and in themselves'.

'The best thriller I've ever read.' Philip PullmanKolymsky Heights. A Siberian permafrost hell lost in endless night, the perfect setting for an underground Russian research station. It's a place so secret it doesn't officially exist; once there, the scientists are forbidden to leave. But one scientist is desperate to get a message to the outside world. So desperate, he sends a plea across the wildness to the West in order to summon the one man alive capable of achieving the impossible... 'Excellent... Kolymsky Heights is up there with The Silence of the Lambs, Casino Royale and Smiley's People.' Toby Young, Spectator'A breathless story of fear and courage.' Daily Telegraph

Not one of us must breathe a word of what we've found.It's a dark and stormy night. Jim, the inn-keeper's granddaughter, opens the door to a terrifying stranger. At the old sailor's feet sits a huge sea-chest, full of secrets. Jim invites him in - and her dangerous voyage begins.Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson's classic story of murder, money and mutiny, premiered at the National Theatre, London, in December 2014, in a thrilling adaptation by Bryony Lavery.

Written in 1972 in the wake of Bloody Sunday and direct rule, States of Ireland was Conor Cruise O'Brien's searching analysis of contemporary Irish nationalism: part-memoir, part-history, part-polemic.'If The Great Melody (1992) is O'Brien's major academic work, States of Ireland is the one that will endure as a vital moment in Irish intellectual and political history.' Roy Foster, Standpoint'States of Ireland [is] a book which influenced a generation. [O'Brien] saw that partition, while scarcely desirable in itself, recognized the reality of two different communities in the island, and that the Dublin state's formal irredentist claim on Northern Ireland was undemocratic and even imperialistic, as well as insincere. The republican ideology to which most Irish people paid lip service was a shirt of Nessus, he later wrote: "e;it clings to us and burns"e;.' Geoffrey Wheatcroft,Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Conor Cruise O'Brien's penetrative reading of Albert Camus, Nobel laureate and author of L',tranger and La Peste, was originally published in 1970.'O'Brien's Camus is brilliant. While having been himself profoundly moved by Camus's work, he asks why students have so often misinterpreted him.' Marghanita Laski, The Times'[Camus] displays O'Brien's cultivated intelligence at its most joyous pitch, and . . . demonstrates his unique critical talent . . . [O'Brien] demonstrates that Camus was far from being an exemplar of the truly independent intellectual and that his conception of "e;Mediterranean culture"e; served to legitimise France's possession of Algeria . . . O'Brien's prose has a sweet rigour as he first explores Camus's sense of estrangement and unreality, and then places his work within a social context.' Tom Paulin, Times Literary Supplement

Arguably Conor Cruise O'Brien's most influential and admired book was this brilliant collection of essays - on history, literature and public affairs - first published in 1965. 'I can still remember the excitement with which I discovered a copy of Writers and Politics, in a provincial library in Devonshire thirty years ago. Nobody who tries to write about either of those subjects, or about "e;the bloody crossroads"e; where they have so often met, can disown a debt to the Cruiser.' Christopher Hitchens, London Review of Books'When a liberal can write such pieces as "e;Mercy and Mercenaries"e;, "e;Journal de Combat"e;, "e;Varieties of Anti-Communism"e;, "e;A New Yorker Critic"e;, and "e;Generation of Saints"e;, an important voice has returned to our culture.' Raymond Williams,Guardian

The last of the three trilogies authored by David Stacton (1923-68) was described by the author as 'an intermezzo designed to deal with sexual relations'. After Old Acquaintance (1962) and Sir William (1963) came Kaliyuga (1965), described by Stacton as 'the story of the relations of Siva and Kali, lightly told'.Its chief figures are Charlie and Denise, an American couple in Switzerland, prone to domestic spats. After one such set-to Charlie finds himself wishing men were gods, so to be spared the banality of life's cyclical little dramas. But he knows not of what he speaks or wants. In Hindu mythology the gods go round and round as we do, making the same mistakes - as Charlie and Denise will discover.

'What will survive of us is love.'In this new anthology poets from across the ages lead us on a journey of love in its many forms. From Shakespeare to Rossetti, Keats to Auden, Byron to Browning an beyond, as well as a host of contemporary voices including Wendy Cope, Simon Armitage and Carol Ann Duffy, this new gathering of timeless love poems speaks to the heart about this most universal of themes.Whether in marriage or heartbreak, friendship or infatuation, whether in pursuit of the unattainable ideal or else settling down together for life, whether in love or out of it, you will find poems here to touch the heart. A vital assembly of our most treasured and enduring love poems.

I will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all.Promising young playwright Will Shakespeare is tormented by writer's block until he finds his muse in the form of passionate noblewoman, Viola De Lesseps. Their forbidden love draws many others, including Queen Elizabeth, into the drama and inspires Will to write the greatest love story of all time, Romeo and Juliet.Based on Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard's Oscar-winning screenplay, Lee Hall's stage adaptation of Shakespeare in Love premiered in July 2014 at the Noel Coward Theatre, London, in a co-production by Disney and Sonia Friedman Productions.

The first literary phase in the brilliant and protean career of Conor Cruise O'Brien was his work as critic for Dublin literary magazine The Bell, which begat this collection of essays first published in 1952 (under the pseudonym 'Donat O'Donnell', as O'Brien was then a working civil servant.) In it, O'Brien set himself to a study of 'the patterns of several exceptionally vivid imaginations which are permeated by Catholicism' - from Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh to Francois Mauriac and Paul Claudel - and to analyse 'what those patterns might share'. The originality and flair of Maria Cross won O'Brien many vocal admirers, among them Dag Hammarskjold, cerebral Secretary-General of the United Nations.'A most interesting and at times brilliant book, admirably and wittily written.'New Statesman'One of the most acute and stimulating books of literary criticism to be published for some years.' Spectator

It Was the Nightingale (1962) was the tenth volume of Williamson's great roman-fleuve, A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. After only a year of married happiness, Phillip Maddison experiences tragedy when his young wife Barley dies in childbirth. Left with a baby son, a cat, a dog and an otter cub he and Barley rescued while on holiday in France, Phillip endures the deepest grief. When the otter goes missing Phillip dedicates his life to searching for her, in the hope that success might grant him a new start in life.'At times almost unbearably poignant... In It Was the Nightingale Maddison enters a world with which Williamson, on the strength of the remarkable Tarka the Otter, will always be associated.' Anthony Burgess, Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English Since 1939

Here today, up and off to somewhere else tomorrow! Toad has always been a silly sort of fellow. But when his latest obsession with motor cars - the faster the better - threatens to lead him to disaster, it is up to Toad's good friends Mole, Ratty and Badger to get him under control. Can they save Toad from prison, and his home Toad Hall from the wicked Weasels and Stoats? Adventure abounds in this classic story of friendship.

The secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.Mary Lennox has grown up in India, surrounded by colour and life, and people who always do exactly what she wants. When her parents die, she is sent to her uncle's cold and lonely manor on the Yorkshire moors. There she finds the house and the gardens full of secrets. And unearthing them might just lead to the greatest discovery of all.The classic tale about the healing powers of friendship and nature in a stunning new edition.

July 1960: The newly independent Congo is hit by the secession of its mineral rich-province Katanga, led by Mo,se Tshombe and backed by Belgium and Britain.June 1961: Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien arrives in Katanga as Special Representative of United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskj,ld, his task (under a UN resolution) to arrest and repatriate the mercenaries and foreign interests propping up Tshombe. The consequences of this mission will prove fateful for all parties.This is the story of how a brilliant Irish diplomat found himself in Africa amid one of history's maelstroms. O'Brien reconstructs the complex, tragic, sometimes comic events of a drama in which he found himself controversially at centre stage. The result is history from the inside: a valuable study of 'the game of nations', and of the UN's unique functioning and malfunctioning.

Locked into a bloody cycle of murder and reprisal, Electra, haunted by her father's assassination, is consumed by grief and a thirst for vengeance. When her brother Orestes at last returns, she urges him to a savage and terrifying conclusion. Frank McGuinness's charged adaptation of Sophocles' powerful tragedy was first performed at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1997 and was revived at the Old Vic, London, in 2014.

1946, Texarkana: a town on the border of Texas and Arkansas. Disgraced New York reporter Charlie Yates has been sent to cover the story of a spate of brutal murders - young couples who've been slaughtered at a local date spot. Charlie finds himself drawn into the case by the beautiful and fiery Lizzie, sister to one of the victims, Alice - the only person to have survived the attacks and seen the killer up close. But Charlie has his own demons to fight, and as he starts to dig into the murders he discovers that the people of Texarkana have secrets that they want kept hidden at all costs. Before long, Charlie discovers that powerful forces might be protecting the killer, and as he investigates further his pursuit of the truth could cost him more than his job... Loosely based on true events, The Dark Inside is a compelling and pacy thriller that heralds a new voice in the genre. It will appeal to fans of RJ Ellory, Tom Franklin, Daniel Woodrell and True Detective.

Above all don't use the word good as though it meant something in evolutionary science.Hilary, a young psychology researcher at a brain-science institute, is nursing a private sorrow and a troubling question at work, where psychology and biology meet. If there is nothing but matter, what is consciousness?This is 'the hard problem' which puts Hilary at odds with her colleagues who include her first mentor Spike, her boss Leo and the billionaire founder of the institute, Jerry.Is the day coming when the computer and the fMRI scanner will answer all the questions psychology can ask?Meanwhile Hilary needs a miracle, and she is prepared to pray for one.The Hard Problem by Tom Stoppard premieres at the National Theatre, London, in January 2015.

A new edition of the well-loved classic story.Even before she came to Belton, Minty Cane had known that she was a witch, or something very like it...Minty is the kind of girl who notices things. Pockets of cold air on a stairway. Cries on the wind. Ghosts.On night-time jaunts from the house where she's staying while her mother recovers from an accident, Minty stumbles upon a moondial which takes her back in time. She finds Tom, a sickly kitchen boy, and Sarah, a girl with a birthmark who is only allowed out at night because her family think she has the mark of the devil...Can Minty save her friends, or will she get stuck in the past...?

It's November 1917 and the Third Battle of Ypres is lurching towards its bloody conclusion. Young soldiers Will, Robbie and Jumbo are thrust into a landscape starkly different to the playing fields and estates of their Sunderland home. When the trio's singing causes a disturbance up the line, they face unwelcome attention from their commanding officers. Is music their ticket away from the front, as Robbie dreams, or will the passion it brings about prove more dangerous than bullets and gas?The Muddy Choir is a story about boys growing up and the humanising power of music. The play, which includes period songs, tells the story of three young boys serving with the Durham Light Infantry in 1917.Marking the centenary of the First World War, Jesse Briton's The Muddy Choir was first performed in a UK tour in 2014 produced by Theatre Centre.