This is the first full biography of Athlone-born writer John Broderick (1924-89), whose powerful Balzacian novels of life in the Irish midlands depict sexuality and Catholicism in a series of pungent tableaux and portraits drawn from vivid but entrapped lives. Son of a prosperous baker, the solitude of his childhood (compounded by boarding-school), an enveloping mother, homosexuality and alcoholism fuelled his fictions, from The Pilgrimage (1961) to An Apology for Roses (1973) and The Tria...

This is the first full biography of Athlone-born writer John Broderick (1924-89), whose powerful Balzacian novels of life in the Irish midlands depict sexuality and Catholicism in a series of pungent tableaux and portraits drawn from vivid but entrapped lives. Son of a prosperous baker, the solitude of his childhood (compounded by boarding-school), an enveloping mother, homosexuality and alcoholism fuelled his fictions, from The Pilgrimage (1961) to An Apology for Roses (1973) and The Tria...

Summer 1931 in seedy Bayswater and James Ross is on his uppers. An aspiring writer whose stories nobody will buy ('It's the slump'), with a landlady harassing him for unpaid rent and occasional sleepless nights spent in the waiting room at King's Cross Station, he is reduced to selling carpet-cleaning lotion door-to-door. His prospects brighten when he meets the glamorous Suzi ('the red hair and the tight jumper weren't a false card: she really was a looker and no mistake'), but their rela...

If Wallis Simpson had not died on the operating table in December 1936, Edward VIII would not have been King of England three years later. He would have abdicated for “the woman he loves,” but now, the throne beckons. If Henry Bannister’s car had not careened off the Colombo back-road in the summer before the war, Cynthia Kirkpatrick would never have found out about The Faction.It is autumn 1939, and everything in history is just as it was. Except, that is, for the identity of the ...

Nominated for the Man Booker Prize, an exquisite tale of romance and rivalry, gambling and greed, from one of England’s finest writers.**As the shadows lengthen over the June grass, all England is heading for Epsom Down?high life and low life, society beauties and White chapel street girls, bookmakers and gypsies, hawkers and thieves. Hopes are high, nerves are taut, hats are tossed in the air?this is Derby Day.For months people have been waiting and plotti...

Ready to rock and roll through the tumultuous times of the music industry?Our protagonist, Nick Du Pont, is a savvy manager navigating the highs and lows of the music scene in the 70s and 80s. He's a man on a mission, dealing with difficult artists, and battling to get his bands played on popular radio shows.Can Nick sign the unpredictable band 'The Flame Throwers' and manage their wild ways? Will he be able to keep up with the rapidly changing trends and survive in the cut...

Ever wondered about the whirlwind world of the 60s music scene?Our protagonist, Nicholas Du Pont, a British expatriate, finds himself tangled in the vibrant vortex of the American and British music industry. As he navigates the cultural, political, and social dynamics of the era, he experiences personal and professional highs and lows.Will Nicholas be able to sustain his position in the tumultuous music industry? Can he reconcile with his past while keeping pace with the ra...

Autumn 1933, and for once struggling writer James Ross seems to have fallen on his feet. Not only has the Labour Exchange fixed him up with a day-job collecting rents in Soho, but friendly Mr Samuelson is employing him front-of-house in the Toreador night-club. Even his melancholy love-life is looking up, thanks to a chance encounter with the alluring Gladys, enigmatic inhabitant of the Meard Street second-floor back.On the other hand, Soho looks an increasingly dangerous place in ...

'Hugely enjoyable' AN Wilson, Sunday Times'Thoughtful, entertaining and enjoyable' Michael Gove, Book of the Week, The TimesInspired by William Makepeace Thackeray, the first great analyst of snobbery, and his trail-blazing The Book of Snobs (1848), D. J. Taylor brings us a field guide to the modern snob.Short of calling someone a racist or a paedophile, one of the worst charges you can lay at anybody's do...

Fiction Category Winner in the 2022 East Anglian Book AwardsSome of the characters in Stewkey Blues have lived in Norfolk all their lives. Others are short-term residents or passage migrants. Whether young or old, self-confident or ground-down, local or blow-in, all of them are reaching uneasy compromises with the world they inhabit and the landscape in which that life takes place.

When Henry Ireland dies unexpectedly from what appears to be a riding accident in August 1863, the failed landowner leaves behind little save his high-strung young widow, Isabel—who somehow ends up in the home of Ireland's friend James Dixey. A celebrated naturalist, Dixey collects strange trophies in his secluded, decaying manse and has questionable associations with rather unsavory characters—including a pair of thuggish poachers named Dewar and Dunbar. Dixey's precocious, inquisitive yo...

Eighteen tales featuring down-on-their-luck characters whose dreams will never come true, by Man Booker Prize–long-listed author D. J. TaylorIn the vein of Raymond Carver's short prose, these eighteen stories sharply capture ordinary people desperate to escape their dead-end lives as they grapple with failure, disappointment, and missed chances. In "Dreams of Leaving," Harlem pornographer Fuchs has seen it all; though he has never traveled farther west than Cincinn...