24 Literature


72643 THE BOOK OF THE DEAD: Lives of the Justly Famous and the


Undeservedly Obscure by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson


This is a book that is more keen on tapping into incredible connections and coincidences than building a closed system of classification. So, the authors have selected themes that focus on people who died virgins, who kept pet monkeys,


who lost limbs or whose corpses refused to stay put. From a cross-dressing, bear-baiting female gangster to the reason why Freud had a lifelong fear of trains, and from the one thing that really made Isaac Newton laugh to the inside story on how Catherine the Great really died, this sparkling non-biography will keep you riveted from beginning to end. 434 rough cut pages. $21.95 NOW £4


72362 THE LADY WHO WAS BEAUTIFUL


INSIDE by Edward Monkton The genius cartoonist and bizarre thinker Edward Monkton makes us smile. ‘As she SMILED, an amazing thing happened. The rain stopped and the SUN broke through the clouds. Flowers BLOOMED in her footsteps, birds began to SING and the trees burst into BLOSSOM all around her.’ An irresistible story with cartoon illus on every right hand page. £6.95 NOW £2.50


71444 BEST OF MAC 2000-2009: A Decade of Cartoons from the Daily Mail by Stan


McMurtry (Mac) edited by Mark Bryant Instead of publishing the usual annual book, the Daily Mail, in its wisdom, decided to leave it to the author to pick his favourites from the past ten years. Considering that he is never truly happy with what he drew last week, never mind a whole decade’s worth, this was a gargantuan task. Rising oil prices, GM food protests, the credit crunch, financial irregularity, failing schools and hospitals, sex scandals and more! Try not to split your sides on the 128 hilarious pages. £9.99 NOW £1.75


71445 BEST OF MAC: The Political Years 2010


What a decade it was! Meteors rained down on Tony Blair’s Labour government from page one onwards as we see how little has changed. Captions plus explanations, one large cartoon per page ending in May 2010. £9.99 NOW £1.75


72556 YOU DON’T KNOW SH*T: The Ultimate


Toilet Book by Doug Mayer, Val Stori et al The Romans didn’t give a poo - they sat cheerily alongside a dozen fellow citizens, each also mid- droppage. When medieval monks started pooing alone, everything changed. This historical romp down the back alleys and sewers compares average number of pieces, weight, combined length, diameter, shape, odour, colour and sinking or floaters with types 1 to 7. The colour comes from the breakdown of red blood cells. Learn about early toilet paper manufacturers and that Germans love to look before they flush! Diagrams, drawings and photos, 214pp.


£9.99 NOW £3.50


72516 BITEBACK DICTIONARY OF HUMOROUS POLITICAL


QUOTATIONS by Fred Metcalf Bankers to bin Laden, bumper stickers to Biden, Churchill’s gravitas and a liberal dose of sex, drugs and Frank Zappa, Metcalf has produced a hearty panoply of memorable political rhetoric to cover any occasion. Churchill said ‘We are all worms, but I do believe that I am a glow-worm.’ ‘The House of Lords is a model of how to care for the elderly’ - Frank Field, Labour MP 1981. ‘The House of Lords is like a glass of champagne that has stood for five days.’ - Clement Attlee. From agriculture, aid, America and Americanisms, the army, communism, Marxism, revolution, sport to Woodrow Wilson. 342pp in paperback. £9.99 NOW £4


72555 YES MINISTER


MISCELLANY by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn Yes Minister and its sequel Yes Prime Minister is one of the most popular and critically successful British sitcoms of all time. Originally broadcast in the early 1980s, derived its humour from the eternal conflict between the


interests of politicians and their civil servants. Sir Humphrey’s finest obfuscations, how to be a civil servant, translating civil service speak, how to stall a minister and other essential tips from the show. Includes important dates, classic scenes and the legendary Margaret Thatcher sketch in its entirety, as well as obituaries of the great leaders. 124pp, cartoons. £6.99 NOW £3.50


72934 HYMIE JOKE BOOKS by Michael Winner


Subtitled 50 Shades of Oy Vey, here by popular demand is a collection of the ribald, edgy and funny bon mots from Michael Winner’s much-loved (and hated) alter ego from his Sunday Times column. ‘Ah, now there’s a beauty, Joanna Lumley. Becky would love to meet Joanna Lumley. She’d like to congratulate her on all she did for the Indians.’ ‘She didn’t do anything for the Indians, Hymie. She pioneered to get the Burmese who’d fought for the British during the war accepted into this country.’ ‘Nepalese, Schepalese, Indian Schmindian, what’s the difference? Becky would still like to meet her.’ ‘Police arrest two boys, one for drinking battery liquid, the other for smoking fireworks. They charged the first boy and let the other one off.’ You don’t need to be Jewish to have a giggle at this collection. 196pp with crude line art. £12.99 NOW £5


72882 WORLD FAMOUS WEIRD NEWS STORIES by Colin Wilson, Damon Wilson and Rowan Wilson


Brings together some of the strangest tales, goof and oddities as well as newspapers’ most embarrassing and side-splitting mistakes, headlines and insanities. Here is the gourmet magazine that accidently published a recipe for poisonous cookies and poisoner William Palmer on the scaffold asking ‘Are you sure this damn thing’s safe?’ UFOs, freak occurrences and accidents, boobs and misprints, and foot-in-mouth are among the quotes, one liners, blunders and other comic snippits. 184pp in illus paperback.


£3.99 NOW £2.75 LITERATURE


house. I have your review before me. It will soon be behind me.


I am sitting in the smallest room in the - Max Reger 72317 HERO OF A HUNDRED


FIGHTS by Ned Buntline Edward Zane Carroll Judson, better known to millions of late 19th century readers as Ned Buntline, was a sailor, soldier, duellist, showman, gambler, bigamist and all- round rabble-rouser, but above all he was a writer, the king of the “dime- novelists”. At a time when the West was still being won and when its


legends were still living and had not yet assumed the status of folk heroes, Buntline not only wrote about them - he was one of them! Prof. Clay Reynolds here brings together a collection of four of his signature novels, all full-length and unabridged, in a handsome rough-cut collection which also includes a history of Buntline’s life and work and he sets the scene, contextualising the novels with their publishing history, the social conditions at the time and the author’s own larger than life adventures. The stories include Buffalo Bill: The King of Border Men, the book which made Buntline’s name and made the book’s hero, one William F. Cody, a household name. The book is also notable for the first literary appearance of Bill’s companion, and hero in his own right, Wild Bill Hickok. The second book, Hazel-Eye, the Girl Trapper introduces us to Buntline’s alter-ego, the fanciful mountain-man Cale Durg, and the third, The Miner Detective, set in the goldfields of Northern California, is a fascinating fusion of western and mystery genres. Finally, in Wild Bill’s Last Trail, Hickok, haunted by a premonition of his death, looks back at his life with regret and guilt. Buntline’s books introduced and codified the attributes of the Old West that endure today. 438pp. £17.99 NOW £6


73064 ARGUABLY by Christopher Hitchens When Christopher Hitchens died aged 62 on 15 December 2011, shortly after this book was published, the eulogies that issued from the great and good probably would have astounded him, having spent most of his life trying - usually successfully - to rub them up the wrong way. Perhaps the best word to describe him would have been


“contrary”. Although he described himself as leftist, he railed against the left as much as the right, and he was consistent in his rejection of organised religion, his book God is Not Great selling 500,000 copies. As an essay writer his views would frequently go beyond idiosyncrasy towards eccentricity, yet were always expressed in perfect, remorseless logic and with sympathy for the oppressed. This monster 788pp volume is a collection of his best articles written between 2000 and 2011 for publications such as the New Statesman, Vanity Fair, the TLS, the New York Times, The Atlantic and many others. In it he explores a wide range of cultural and political issues ranging from - as one would expect - religion, to some absolutely wonderful reassessments of literary figures such as Dickens, Orwell, Larkin and Rebecca West. Politically his viewpoint is sharpened by a lifetime of travelling and reporting from places such as China, Iran and Pakistan and a deep immersion in the very midst of US politics. Hitchens will be remembered as defiant, witty, courageous and humble, a sage commentator in the age of 24-hour soundbite politics and digital punditry who was the voice of reason amid the clamour. Although not originally produced for the purpose, this collection is a fitting tribute to a singular character. £30 NOW £8


72384 LADY SUSAN AND


OTHER WORKS by Jane Austen


This collection brings together Jane Austen’s earliest experiments in the art of fiction and novels that she left incomplete at the time of her premature death in 1817. Her fragmentary juvenilia show Austen developing her own sense of narrative form whilst parodying popular kinds of fiction of her day. Lady Susan is a wickedly funny


epistolary novel about a captivating but unscrupulous widow seeking to snare husbands for her daughter and herself. The Watsons explores themes of family relationships, the marriage market, and attitudes to rank, which became the hallmarks of her major novels. In Sanditon, Austen exercises her acute powers of social observation in the setting of a newly fashionable seaside resort. These novels are here joined by shorter fictions that survive in Austen’s manuscripts, including critically acclaimed works like Catharine, Love and Freindship [sic], and The History of England. Paperback, 359pp. ONLY £2


72798 ABINGER HARVEST:


And England’s Pleasant Land by E. M. Forster edited by Elizabeth Heine


The aim of the Abinger Edition is to provide a new, properly edited compilation of the literary works of E. M. Forster, and one that will do full justice to his genius. The texts are chosen with scrupulous care - all known versions, whether published, typescript or manuscript, having being compared and collated. This


particular volume is a scholarly success as well as a page-turning read, although it must have posed almost insuperable editorial problems in the collation of the extensive mass of material. David Garnett, publisher, writer and member of the Bloomsbury group, called this definitive text ‘one of the most delightful collections of occasional writings I have read’. It comprises an immensely engaging selection of articles, essays, reviews and poems, demonstrating the enormous range of Forster’s interests. He was able to write divertingly and with equal ease about chess, Mickey Mouse, Liberty in England, Life in India, Marco Polo, the Emperor Babur, Egypt and the Orient. This volume also contains his frank and sometimes caustic reflections on other writers such as Proust, T. E. Lawrence, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad and T. S. Eliot. To round off the collection, there are the complete texts of two pageants that Forster wrote for the Surrey village of Abinger, where he lived. They are The Abinger Pageant and England’s Pleasant Land. A worthwhile 464 pages with notes, annotated index and editor’s note. £25 NOW £6


72816 THE PRINCE’S TALE edited by P. N. Furbank Spanning more than 50 years of E. M. Forster’s reviews and essays, and compiled and edited by his acclaimed biographer P. N. Furbank, this book offers further insight into the creative imagination of one of the 20th century’s finest writers. This selection of Forster’s hitherto uncollected book reviews and essays is the latest volume in the distinguished Abinger Edition of


his writings. The topics include authors as different as Tolstoy and Virginia Woolf, H. G. Wells and D. H. Lawrence, and subjects ranging from India to the arts, politics, royalty, Forster’s loss of his religious faith, and old age. The brilliant success of Howards End in 1910 left him feeling that he might have dried up as a novelist, and he diverted his talents towards literary journalism. He soon proved himself to be a sharp-eyed book reviewer and essayist and Arnold Bennett called him ‘the best reviewer in London’. As this serious- minded but highly diverting collection reveals, Forster was no respecter of reputation, withering in his dismissal of anything that smacked to him of pomposity and sentimentality, but open-minded and sympathetic where he found genuine imagination. 344 pages with list of books reviewed and annotated index. £25 NOW £6


72892 ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN


WONDERLAND by Lewis Carroll


Perhaps the greatest fantasy of all time, Alice in Wonderland takes us into a dream-world in which everything is topsy-turvy but still makes sense. Following the White Rabbit down into his burrow, Alice


meets a caterpillar with a hookah, finds herself reciting radical new versions of familiar rhymes, encounters the short-tempered Duchess with her baby pig and is directed by the Cheshire Cat to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, where time stands still and the hapless Dormouse is constantly asleep. Next comes croquet with the Queen of Hearts who shouts “Off with his head” whenever anything displeases her, causing problems for the Executioner when the Cheshire Cat enters the scene, since he is a head with no body. The Mock Turtle’s


72559 ALADDIN AND HIS WONDERFUL


LAMP IN RHYME by Arthur Ransome


Thomas Mackenzie was a talented etcher, engraver, painter and illustrator, strongly influenced by Aubrey Beardsley, Harry Clarke and Kay Nielsen. In 1919, a fortuitous collaboration with Arthur Ransome, already renowned for his Swallows and Amazons series for children, produced one of the loveliest gift books of the 20th century. This must surely be the most spell-binding edition of the stories ever published. From the elegant typography and silhouetted endpapers to the 12 colour plates and the addition of myriad decorative elements - ornamental heads, initials, silhouettes, partial borders and more - the book is a unique presentation and a triumph of design. In his dedication, Ransome modestly disparages his abilities as a poet, describing his efforts as ‘not high poesy’ but we found his verse-rendering charming, adding a certain je ne sais quoi to these magic stories. Here are the Slave of the Lamp, the Sultan’s daughter Bedrelbood, the ‘twelve tall Negroes, black as coals, and twelve tall slaves, Circassian, white’ the ‘crowd of pig-tailed Chinamen who bowed’ and the evil Magician, all bringing these much-loved ancient stories to life in a new medium. Circa 150 un-numbered pages bound in a soft turquoise suede-effect material with 12 turquoise, orange, black and cream


illustrations plus hundreds more in silhouette and b/ w.


$30 NOW £8.50


72840 DORE’S LONDON: All 180 Images from the Original London Series with Selected Writings by Gustave Doré


This luxury volume attempts to convey the immense power and emotional truth of Doré’s images by setting them in the context of the writings of the period - Dickens, Henry Mayhew, Wilkie Collins, Thackeray, Gissing, Henry James, Anthony Trollope, Oscar Wilde and others. This involved liberating the 180 drawings from their imprisonment in a minor work and arranging them, rather as Dickens rearranged the novels for his Public Readings, so as to form a simple but potent narrative. Doré’s method was to sketch unobtrusively in the street, screened by Jerrold and, in the poorer districts, protected by plain clothed policemen. Doré’s wonderful images have been divided into four very simple but powerful sections - Riches, Rags, Work and Play. It ends most hopefully with London at its most united in the wild carnival of Derby Day. In the Riches section is ‘The Eustace Diamonds’, ‘The Woman In White’ and ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, in Rags are ‘Sketches by Boz’, ‘The Mysteries of London’ by G. M. W. Reynolds and ‘Oliver Twist’; in Work there are excerpts from ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ and under Play, ‘Pendennis’ by


Thackeray and ‘Twice Around the Clock’ by G. A. Sala. Exquisitely detailed woodcuts and engravings by Doré himself. A book to treasure, 384 outsize pages. 7½” x 9½”.


£14.99 NOW £8.50


Story, the Lobster Quadrille and the pressing question of Who Stole the Tarts follow in quick succession before Alice wakes up. An introduction by Philip Pullman points out that Alice is a resourceful heroine for our own times, and the illustrations are coloured versions of Tenniel’s classic drawings. 196pp, larger print, beautifully produced with numerous colour illustrations. £20 NOW £11


73090 LETTERS OF EVELYN WAUGH


edited by Mark Amory Born in 1903 in Hampstead, Evelyn Waugh was the second son of Arthur Waugh, renowned publisher and literary critic and brother of Alec Waugh, the popular novelist. Although he penned some of the finest novels of the 20th century including Vile Bodies, Scoop, A Handful of Dust and Brideshead Revisited, and three acclaimed


volumes of war memoirs serving in the Royal Marines and Royal Horse Guards, today he is remembered equally for his letters. Waugh was truly the last of the great letter-writers, and his sparkling, elegant correspondence with his wide circle of friends is intimate, revealing and compelling reading. In the 1920s he writes of his undergraduate escapades at Oxford, unfulfilling jobs, literary plans and the failure of his first marriage. Things get more boisterous in the 1930s as his novels bring him success and his social life and travels improve accordingly. During the war, served in the Middle East and Yugoslavia, we see the depth of his love for his second wife Laura, and he was also inspired by and corresponded with other worldly and fashionable women such as Ann Fleming, Diana Cooper and Nancy Mitford. Some of the funniest are those written to his son Auberon (“Bron”), but throughout these letters are consistently amusing and witty, so much so that one wonders whether he had always known that his correspondence would be so widely read and enjoyed decades after his death! Compiled and edited by a long- time friend of the Waugh family, a joy to read in hefty 760pp paperback. £20 NOW £7


73106 AGATHA CHRISTIE’S SECRET NOTEBOOKS: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making


edited by John Curran Packed with details that Agatha Christie was too modest to reveal in her own autobiography, this remarkable new volume includes a wealth of excerpts and pages reproduced from her notebooks and letters. With sales of more than 2


billion copies worldwide, in more than 100 countries, she had achieved what was allegedly impossible, that is, more than one book every year since the 1920s, every one a best seller. So prolific was her output - 66 crime novels, 20 plays, six romantic novels and more than 150 short stories - it was often claimed that she had a photographic memory. Was this true? Or did she resort over those 55 years to more mundane methods of working out her ingenious crimes? Following the death of her daughter, an astonishing legacy was revealed. Unearthed among her effects at the family home of Greenway were her mother’s private notebooks - 73 handwritten volumes of notes, lists and drafts, outlining all her plans for her many books, plays and stories. Buried in this treasure trove, all in her totally unmistakable handwriting, are revelations about her famous books that will fascinate anyone who has ever read or watched an Agatha Christie story. Here are the answers to intriguing questions such as: How did the infamous twist in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd really come about? Which very famous Poirot novel started life as an adventure for Miss Marple? Which books were designed to have completely different endings? What were the plot ideas that she considered and rejected? A


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