24 Literature


flamenco, in vino veritas and running of the bullies plus five ways to get slapped by a woman, five ways to insult a guy’s manhood, insults that could get you lynched, and five of the best ‘your mother’ insults included. So if your waiter charges you 25 euros for bottled water, you need no longer feel powerless! Use carefully. 96pp. Cartoon illus. ONLY £3


70691 AN ENGLISHMAN, AN IRISHMAN AND A SCOTSMAN by Nick Harris


A mammoth compendium of the best jokes, gags and one liners on a whole range of subjects - the battle of the sexes, cannibals, children, doctors, drunks, music, religion, sport and working life. If you can’t find a good laugh here, then I’m a


Dutchman. Plus the classic subjects of mother-in-law, actress/bishop and the downright surreal and stupid like ‘Yo momma’s so stupid she didn’t even pass her blood test’ etc. 416pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3


70223 EASY AS PI: The Countless Ways We Use Numbers Every Day


by Jamie Buchan Do not panic at the title. The author is not a mathematician, just an interested amateur who has done everything possible to make his book interesting and amusing. Zooming from zero to infinity via Amazonian tribes, drug culture and nuclear paranoia, he investigates the derivation of numerical expressions and their inescapable influence on our culture, from alarm clocks to cell phones. En route, he skilfully answers such puzzling questions as: What makes ‘cloud nine’ and ‘seventh heaven’ so blissful? Why is number 7 so lucky and number 13 so unlucky? A joy of a book. 174 pages with delightful line drawings and short glossary of mathematical terms. £14.95 NOW £4.50


70453 THE BROONS OOR


WULLIE SUMMER ANNUAL by D. C. Thomson


Featuring a set of colour playing cards, fun stickers and family puzzles, here is a big cartoon book to celebrate 75 years of summer holiday fun with the Broons and Oor Wullie. These comic strips first appeared in the Sunday Post newspaper on March 8th 1936.


Their popularity was instant and long lasting, both strips having been ever-present since that time. The language of the stories is a broad Scottish dialect, unique to these cartoons. Join The Broons at the beach and go with them to their But An’ Ben, hideaway holiday cottage. Large softback, cartoons. £5.99 NOW £3


70310 R.I.P: Here Lie the Last Words, Morbid Musings, Epitaphs and Fond Farewells of the Famous and Not-So-Famous by Susan Hom


We love the singularly appropriate format of this book, in the style of a tombstone. We meet world leaders like George Washington, gangsters such as Al Capone and actors of the stature of Bette Davis, as well as scientists, musicians, criminals, writers and people from all walks of life - all of whom have something significant or humorous to say about passing away to the other side. Some of them are recent, some have been hanging around for hundreds of years. Happy epitaphs. 160 pages. £4.99 NOW £3


70643 GRUMPY OLD GITS


GUIDE TO LIFE by Geoff Tibballs


Have you ever whined because you stood, in your bare feet, on an upturned electric plug? Then, sorry, but we have you diagnosed as a Grumpy Old Git. They come in all shapes and sizes, and many of them are not all that old. But what makes a GOG tick? What is it about life, if you can call it living,


that stabs so at his heart? Here, a true Grump has penned a fitting tribute to his brothers-in-gloom. 192 hilarious pages. £9.99 NOW £4


70514 WHY DO FARTS SMELL LIKE ROTTEN EGGS?


by Mitchell Symons


Its acid green colour and cheeky illustrations ensure you are in for hours of fun facts and curious trivia - do lemmings really jump off cliffs? What is the hidden message behind the nursery rhyme ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’? Why are enthusiasts called ‘buffs’? Why is Blackadder’s Baldrick known as a dogsbody? No subject is too strange and no trivia too tough for Mitchell Symons, who has the answer to all of these crazy questions and many more! 335 pages, entertaining illustrations.


£7.99 NOW £4


70668 MONTY PYTHON LIVE!


edited by Eric Idle


The Pythons first achieved stardom with a television series, so that when they embarked on live touring in 1973 they were astonished to find themselves treated like rock stars. If Carol Cleveland’s revelations are to be


believed they were soon taking full advantage of the fringe benefits attendant on their new lifestyle. Among the recollections, archive photographs, Gilliamesque graphics and old playbills are embedded the scripts of sketches, both classic and less well known, including the immortal “Parrot”, the “Four Yorkshiremen” who compete with ever taller tales of childhood hardship, “The Last Supper” in which Michelangelo explains to the Pope why there are three Jesuses in his first draft for the picture, and needless to say the “Silly Walks” sketch and the Lumberjack song. Colour and b/w photos. 233pp, paperback, fully illustrated in Terry Gilliam’s wacky style.


£24.99 NOW £6 LITERATURE


71034 TRAVELS WITH A TYPEWRITER by Michael Frayn


Before Michael Frayn hit the jackpot with plays such as the West End hit Noises Off, he was a journalist writing features for The Observer and other quality papers. This collection of 14 pieces from the 60s and 70s, most with international settings, makes fascinating reading. Frayn recreates a vanished era in dispatches from Soviet Moscow and


Iron Curtain Berlin, and he finds that Paris and Cambridge are reluctant to enter the 1960s. Israel in 1969 is dominated by the war two years earlier which had re-ignited the Israeli-Arab conflict, and Frayn meets the charismatic Uri Avnery who unusually questions government policy towards the Arabs. Berlin in 1972 is the “Capital of Nowhere”, an enormous non-place where nearly a third of the inhabitants are over 60 and the suicide rate is the highest in the world. Frayn’s host shows him the building in Friedrichstrasse where the concentration camps were administered. The past still dominates. A review from 1975 celebrates the fictional England created by Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time, while in the same year a visit to Vienna prompts Frayn to quote Wittgenstein on hidden worlds beneath the surface of things, worlds that Frayn himself is unusually good at seeing. 281pp. £15.99 NOW £5.50


71016 TOWERS OF TREBIZOND


by Rose Macaulay


‘Take my camel, dear,’ said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass. Rose Macaulay was an upper-middle-class English maiden lady, a relative of Lord Macaulay the historian, a devout Anglican by faith whose work appealed directly to her peers in England and to Anglophiles in the US. Many


characters are easily recognisable and some are named by their real name - John Betjeman and Freya Stark - but it is a tale of pure fiction and pretty wild fiction at that. Dorothea Ffoulkes-Corbett, Aunt Dot of the opening line, plans to write he own Turkey book and sets out from England on a Levantine expedition with her camel and her niece, the narrator. By an eccentric genius of English literature, this fine and funny adventure is set in the back lands of modern Turkey as the highly unusual travel companions make their way from Istanbul to legendary Trebizond. They encounter potion-dealing sorcerers, recalcitrant policemen and Billy Graham on a tour with a bus load of southern evangelists. 277pp in paperback.


$15.95 NOW £4


71022 UNIVERSAL HOME DOCTOR by Simon Armitage


A masterpiece of restraint, passion, tenderness and elegy, this is a Poetry Book Society recommendation. As the title implies, Armitage’s flesh-and-blood accounts of numerous personal journeys reads like a private encyclopedia of emotion and hell. The poems range from the rainforests of South America to the deserts of Western Australia, and all are set against the ultimate and most intimate of all landscapes, the human body. Equally, the body politic comes into question through subtle enquiries into Englishness and the idea of home. Here is a short poem entitled Splinter: ‘Was it a fall in pressure or some upward force that went to the head of that spikelet of glass and drew it through flesh, caused it to show its face so many years to the day after the great crash.’ 66 page Faber paperback. £8.99 NOW £3.50


70749 THE WISE VIRGINS by Leonard Woolf A member of the Bloomsbury Group, Woolf was a noted historian, autobiographer, novelist and civil servant. The Wise Virgins (1914) was Leonard Woolf’s second novel, published two years after his marriage to Virginia Stephen. The autobiographical elements are well documented. Two weeks after reading it, Virginia suffered one of


the worst of her many breakdowns. As a roman à clef the novel holds considerable interest for its picture of Leonard and Virginia’s courtship as well as its sketches of Vanessa Stephen and Clive Bell. It remains a witty and engaging satire about English society just before World War One and its conventions and prejudices. In Harry Davis, the author created a memorable Jewish anti-hero who rails against society’s conventions. 285pp in paperback.


£10 NOW £3.50 71071 THEN CAME


OCTOBER by L. E. Usher In 1934 is a coastal Pembrokeshire hamlet, Mardie Carew longs to discover the truth concerning her father’s death and the secret surrounding her mother’s life. When she accidently locates her mother Edith’s diaries, they reveal a vivid account of a Victorian childhood in Glastonbury, Edith’s romantic and sexual awakening while staying


with an eccentric family in Wales, and then a disastrous marriage in the isolation of the colonial community of Yokohama, Japan. The real life Edith Carew was convicted of her husband’s murder in 1897 but later


Bibliophile Books Unit 5 Datapoint, 6 South Crescent, London E16 4TL TEL: 020 74 74 24 74


paroled. This deeply imagined novel is not interested in whether Edith was guilty but more in the world of séances, hauntings and visions in which Edith initially found joy and freedom, but one which led to madness and ruin. 320pp in paperback. £12 NOW £3


23101 FIRST WORLD WAR POETRY edited by Marcus Clapham


The First World War was one of seemingly endless and unremitting waste and sacrifice. ‘Who will remember passing through this Gate, The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?’ was Siegfreid Sassoon’s anguished cry for those whose sacrifice seemed futile. Yet 80 years later it is because of Sassoon and his fellow poets - Owen, Rosenberg, Sorley and many others - that we do remember. This anthology will serve as an introduction to the poetry of that great conflict, and the inclusion of a number of rarely anthologised poets, many from the ranks, as well as anonymous poems and songs. Paperback, 140pp. ONLY £4


23774 GREENMANTLE by John Buchan Greenmantle continues the thrilling adventures of Richard Hannay. His mission; to neutralise and destroy a cunning and potentially devastating plot to foment Holy War in the Islamic Near East, which could ignite a powder keg and shake the balance of world power and the course of war. Hannay is assisted by intrepid companions: the sauve, dashing, exotic and devastatingly romantic Sandy and the South African Boer Scout - Peter Pienaar. 240pp. Paperback. ONLY £2


23775 ISLAND OF SHEEP by John Buchan In this, his final adventure, Buchan’s hero Richard Hannay becomes embroiled in one of the most hazardous escapades of his life. Two men are honour bound to help the tormented Valdemar Haraldsen, and a third decides to mastermind the whole affair out of sheer love of adventure and a dislike of villains. In the final event, the fate of Haraldsen and his three redoubtable defenders rests on the undaunted bravery of two children. This thriller reflects a fundamental faith in the magnanimity of human nature. 208pp. Paperback. ONLY £2


24264 DANIEL DERONDA by George Eliot Gwendolen Harleth, George Eliot’s most remarkable heroine, marries for money and power rather than love, but finds marriage a trap and her husband’s sadistic use of power constricting. The upper class Victorian society in which she moves is juxtaposed with that of the hero, Daniel Deronda. The warmth and profound moral fervour of his newly discovered community of English Jews casts a harsh light on the superficiality and hypocrisy of Gwendolen’s world. Daniel’s influence is a redemptive force that breaks new ground for the English novel. 675pp. Paperback. ONLY £2


25264 REPUBLIC by Plato


The ideas of Plato (c.429-347BC) have influenced Western philosophers for over 2,000 years. The Republic deals with the great range of Platonic thought combining argument and myth to advocate a life organised by reason rather than dominated by desires and appetites. Regarded by some as the foundation document of totalitarianism, it remains a challenging and intensely exciting work. 400 page paperback. ONLY £4


30603 FOUR LATE PLAYS by William Shakespeare


‘It is required you do awake your faith’. (The Winter’s Tale). Written late in Shakespeare’s life, these plays delightfully exhibit his interest in the conventions of the fairytale. They are tales of enchantment, heard from afar and seen through a fine gauze. In each play a family is forcibly divided through natural mischance (a storm at sea) or human folly (a wrongful accusation), and in each the lost ones are restored to their families. We move from the pain of separation through the despair of loss to the joy of restoration and resurrection. This mature vision of the world looks unblinkingly into the jaws of despair, yet still chooses to consider life worth celebrating. 432pp, paperback. ONLY £3


30614 KARAMAZOV BROTHERS by Fyodor Dostoevsky


Old Fyodor Karamazov, the embodiment of bestial sensuality, has four sons: Dimitry, Ivan, Aloysha and the bastard Smerdyakov. The father is a depraved buffoon and Dimitry’s rival for the local siren Grushenka. Violent quarrels over her and over Dimitry’s disputed inheritance ensue. A host of other factors are masterfully linked to the main plot. The second son Ivan, tortured intellectual, gradually realises that he has secretly wished for his father’s death and may have transmitted this wish to Smerdyakov, a grotesque caricature of the brilliant Ivan. Aloysha acts as a religious foil to his brothers. Besides being a story of crime and a novel of religious and ethical ideas, the book is in part social document buttressed by the psychological probings for which Dostoevsky is well known. 960pp. Paperback. ONLY £4


34957 DEVILS by Fyodor Dostoevsky In 1869 a young Russian was strangled, shot through the head and thrown into a pond. His crime? A wish to leave a small group of violent revolutionaries, from which he had become alienated. Dostoevsky takes this real-life catastrophe as the subject and culmination of Devils, a title that refers to the young radicals themselves and also to the materialistic ideas that possessed the minds of many thinking people in Russian society at the time. The satirical portraits of the revolutionaries, with their naivety, ludicrous single-mindedness and readiness for murder and destruction, might seem exaggerated - until we consider their all-too-recognisable descendants in the real world ever since. 720 page paperback. ONLY £2


70061 BLISS by Peter Carey The first novel by Peter Carey. For 39 years, Harry Joy has been the quintessential good guy. But one morning he has a heart attack in his front garden, and for nine minutes he becomes a dead guy. Although he is resuscitated, Harry will never be the same. The novel is an astonishing, darkly funny story which explores how death can be a necessary prelude to life. Peter Carey went on to receive the Booker prize for ‘Oscar and Lucinda’. 354pp in paperback. £8 NOW £2.25


e-mail: orders@bibliophilebooks.com ALAN BENNETT


The acknowledged master of the television play


71018 ME, I’M AFRAID OF


VIRGINIA WOOLF by Alan Bennett


Bennett is the acknowledged master of the television play. This vintage collection of his works from the 1970s illustrates his skill and mastery of the medium from the beginning. Perceptive, poignant, truthful and very funny, the work here gives as much enjoyment in the reading as it did in the viewing, and


provides a welcome addition to the Bennett canon. This volume contains a new general introduction by Bennett himself as well as the original preface by Lindsay Anderson to ‘The Old Crowd’. A companion volume Rolling Home is also available through Bibliophile, code 71017. 242pp in paperback. £12.99 NOW £5


71017 ROLLING HOME by Alan Bennett A companion to Me, I’m Afraid of Virginia Woolf code 71018, here is a funny, touching second collection of Alan Bennett’s classic works for television from the late 70s and early 80s. Full of fine observation of life as it is lived, often imitated but never equalled, his work is a master class in how to write for the small screen. Contains a new general introduction by Bennett and the contents include Our Winnie, All Day on the Sands and Intensive Care. 226pp in paperback.


£12.99 NOW £5


71074 UNTOLD STORIES PART FOUR: A Common


Assault - Two CDs by Alan Bennett


In his languid Yorkshire accent, running time two hours 20 minutes on two CDs, Alan Bennett reads from A Common


Assault which contains two more reminiscences from his life and an essay on the class system. It describes an incident in Italy when Alan was mugged and found himself trying to give a statement to the police in bad Italian. ‘The History Boys’ harks back once more to Bennett’s time at school, and shows how the raw material of experience was eventually transformed into the highly-acclaimed stage play. ‘Arise, Sir…’ finishes on a light-hearted note, in which Bennett muses on the Honours List in typically iconoclastic mode. £12.99 NOW £5


47917 SHORTER NOVELS OF CHARLES DICKENS by Charles Dickens


This collection brings together perhaps the finest of Dickens’ shorter novels, filled with event, character, and the unsurpassed brilliance of his story-telling. ‘Oliver Twist’ enhanced and strengthened Dickens’ reputation and contains classic Dickensian themes - grinding poverty, desperation, fear, temptation and the eventual triumph of good in the face of great adversity. ‘Hard Times’ was attacked by Macaulay for its ‘sullen socialism’. ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ (1859), Dickens’ greatest historical novel, traces the lives of a group of people caught up in the cataclysm of the French Revolution and the Terror. ‘Great Expectations’ traces the life of Philip Pirrip (Pip), from a boy of shallow dreams to a man of character - the story abounds with memorable characters. 1312 pages. Paperback. ONLY £7


54979 THE COLLECTED WORKS OF OSCAR WILDE


Wilde’s works are suffused with his aestheticism, brilliant craftsmanship, legendary wit and, ultimately, his tragic muse. He wrote tender fairy stories for children employing all his grace, artistry and wit, of which the best-known is ‘The Happy Prince’. Counterpoints to this were his novel ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, which shocked and outraged many readers of his day, and his stories for adults which exhibited his fascination with the relations between serene art and decadent life. Wilde took London by storm with his plays, particularly his masterpiece ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’. His essays - in particular De Profundis and his Ballad of Reading Gaol, both written after his release from prison, strikingly break the bounds of his usual expressive range. His other essays and poems are all included in this comprehensive collection. Deluxe binding in cloth with gold tooling. 1104 pages. ONLY £12


58184 COMPLETE STORIES OF SHERLOCK


HOLMES by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle From 1891, beginning with ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’, Strand Magazine began serialising Arthur Conan Doyle’s matchless tales of detection, featuring the incomparable sleuth. The stories are illustrated by the remarkable Sydney Paget. Very attractive bound volume of 1408 pages with tipped in front cover illus. and gold tooling and hundreds of original illus from the Strand Magazine. The stories contained in this volume are A Study in Scarlett, The Sign of the Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Valley of Fear, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow and The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes. ONLY £12


58189 SELECTED WORKS OF G. K. CHESTERTON


G. K. Chesterton was born in London in 1874. He went to St Paul’s School and then on to the Slade School of Art. Despite a chaotic life-style this was the genius who wrote ‘The Everlasting Man’, a book which led a young atheist named C. S. Lewis to become a Christian; ‘The Napoleon of Notting Hill’, a novel which inspired Michael Collins to lead a movement for Irish Independence; an essay in the Illustrated London News that inspired Mahatma Gandhi to lead a movement to end British colonial rule in India. He wrote countless books, poems, plays, novels and short stories - most famously those about his creation, the priest-detective Father Brown. 1482pp. Paperback. ONLY £7


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