Fifteen specially commissioned essays from distinguished authors explore the place of the writer, past and present, the value of critical thinking, and the power of the written word. Their work articulates 'brave new words' at the heart of battles against limitations on fundamental rights of citizenship, the closure of national borders, fake news, and an increasing reluctance to engage with critical democratic debate. Contributors include Eva Hoffman, Romesh Gunesekera, Githa Hariharan, Ja...

Poet, playwright and novelist Blake Morrison evokes the lives of the Brontë sisters, with a nod to Chekhov's Three Sisters.Against the backdrop of a windswept northern village, three remarkable young women live their lives brightly.In Haworth in the 1840s, in a gloomy parsonage, where there are neither curtains nor comforts, Charlotte, Anne and Emily Brontë light up their world with outspoken wit, aspirations, dreams and ideas. And throughout their confined lives i...

'Lucid, tender and humane . . . One of the most formally agile and compassionate poets of our age’ Fiona BensonHere you are, on the balcony,the sea serenading you,the sun with its armful of light.In Afterburn, Blake Morrison returns to poetry, his first calling, to offers scenes from his own life and the lives of others. In psychology, 'afterburn' refers to the time before a past event is assimilated – an id...

A delightful compendium of musings from the master of life writing, the much-loved Blake Morrison, for those who practise the art of memoir, and those who read it.'Hallelujah! — now is the perfect time for Morrison’s book On Memoir' THE TIMES'Lessons in life writing from a master' THE GUARDIAN'The critic every literary editor turns to… an essential reference book' THE SPECTATOR

In recent years Seamus Heaney has earned the reputation of being ‘the most important Irish poet since Yeats’. In this book, originally published in 1982, Blake Morrison identifies the central characteristics of his achievement, uncovering the sources of Heaney’s poems, placing his work within both Irish and Anglo-American traditions and explaining his poetry’s complex relation to the political troubles in Northern Ireland. A lively, personal and carefully researched account by a writer who...

'I do not know of any other writer who has done as much with language ... a very funny book' William S. BurroughsFifteen-year-old Alex doesn't just like ultra-violence - he also enjoys rape, drugs and Beethoven's ninth. He and his gang of droogs rampage through a dystopian future, hunting for terrible thrills. But when Alex finds himself at the mercy of the state and subject to the ministrations of Dr Brodsky, and the mind-altering treatment of the Ludovic...

'Tender, vivid and achingly sad' GUARDIAN, BOOK OF THE YEARTWO SISTERS publishes on the 30th anniversary of Blake Morrison’s ground-breaking book And When Did You Last See Your Father? which forged the way for a new genre of confessional memoir.‘She’s gone, that’s all, and though there’s no retrieving her I’d like to make sense of who she was and what she became. It wasn’t just that she changed over time. She ...

The use of creative writing as a route to personal development is a powerful therapeutic tool - a fact that is recognized in the growing numbers of workshops and writing groups within professional contexts, including clinical, health and criminal justice settings.Writing Works is a guide for writers or therapists working with groups or individuals and is full of practical advice on everything from the equipment needed to run a session to ideas for themes, all backed up by the theor...

In any 24 hours there might be sleeping, eating, kids, parents, friends, lovers, work, school, travel, deadlines, emails, phone calls, Facebook, Twitter, the news, the TV, Playstation, music, movies, sport, responsibilities, passions, desires, dreams.Why should you stop what you're doing and read a book?Reading is not an innate human ability. Many people can't read. Many people would rather read a newspaper, a magazine, a blog, a cereal packet, than a novel.But peop...

Set over a long weekend in East Anglia, this is the chilling story of a rivalrous friendship - as told with deceptive casualness by the narrator, Ian. It opens with a surprise phone call from an old university friend, inviting Ian and his wife, Em, for a few days by the sea. Their hosts, Ollie and Daisy, are a golden couple, and the scene is set for sunlit relaxation.But dangerous tensions quickly emerge, and in the stifling atmosphere of a remote cottage in the hottest days of sum...

‘A cul-de-sac, a dead-end track,A sandbanked strand to sink a fleet,A bay, a bar, a strip, a trap,A wrecking ground, that’s Shingle Street.’Blake Morrison’s first two collections, Dark Glasses (1984) and The Ballad of a Yorkshire Ripper (1987) established him as one of our most inventive and accomplished contemporary poets.In his first full-length collection for nearly thirty years, Shingle Street sees a return to the...

Published in 1957, two years after its author's death at the age of forty-five, A Death in the Family remains a near-perfect work of art, an autobiographical novel that contains one of the most evocative depictions of loss and grief ever written. As Jay Follet hurries back to his home in Knoxville, Tennessee, he is killed in a car accident - a tragedy that destroys not only a life, but also the domestic happiness and contentment of a young family. A novel of great courage, lyric f...