To the cool of the hills at Simla comes a reluctant Dr. McNab, with his wife and young niece. For Emily, romance is in the air. For the mysterious Mrs Forester, there is scandal brewing. And for the Bishop of Simla, rainclouds are not the only storms on the horizon. This incomplete novel underlines the tragedy of J.G. Farrell's untimely death. 'This is a must.'YORKSHIRE POST'Completely fresh, fully imagined, truthful in spirit.'SUNDAY TIMES'This remarkable novel... captivating from page one.'JOHN OSBORNE, EVENING STANDARDJ.G. FARRELL'One of the outstanding novelists of his generation.'SPECTATOR'What a striking loss he is to the craft he pursued.'JOHN OSBORNE, EVENING STANDARD'He treads the borderline between tragedy and farce with amazing skill.'SUNDAY TELEGRAPH'His death is a great loss to literature.'PUNCH

The Hill Station and An Indian Diary: An Unfinished Novel

Literature & Fiction

FARRELL, J.G.

Spurling, John

Contemporary

HarperCollins, Publishers

Beckett the Playwright (Routledge Library Editions: Beckett)

Arts & Photography

FLETCHER, John

Music

Routledge

This book, first published in 1985, stresses Beckett's success as an innovator in the theatre through a close reading and analysis of his plays. The differing backgrounds of the two authors enables them to approach Beckett's drama in a particularly fruitful way: 'Their analysis is clever yet level-headed, readable but does not shirk complexities.' (Times Educational Supplement). 'Brilliant collection of essays on Beckett and his works.' (Irish Times)

The classical Greek intellectual tradition pervades nearly every aspect of our modern Western civilization. Our logic and science, our philosophy, politics, literature, architecture, and art are all indebted to the ancient inhabitants of the small mountainous Mediterranean country. And the powerful myths of the Greeks, refined by Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, and the great Greek dramatists, still resonate at the core of our culture.\nTaking as his starting point many of the famous tourist sites in the Peloponnese, where the stories are set, John Spurling, winner of the 2015 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, freshly imagines key narratives from the Greek canon, including tales of the doomed house of Atreus (notably Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks at Troy, murdered by his wife in his palace bathroom); of the god Apollo; goddess Athene; Theseus, scourge of the Minotaur; the Twelve Labors of Heracles; and Perseus, rescuer of Andromeda.\nIn this vibrant, gripping and often grisly retelling of the Greek myths, stories of murder, power, revenge, love, and traumatic family relationships are made new again for our time with wit and relish by a gifted author. Spurling has added scene, dialogue, and context, while always staying true to the spirit of the original myth.

Arcadian Nights: Gods, Heroes and Monsters from Greek Myth – from the winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

Genre Fiction

Duckworth

Offers a brief survey of Beckett's life and career, examines his major plays, and discusses their themes style, and performance

Beckett: The Playwright

History & Criticism

Hill & Wang Pub

Trojan War: Sculptures by Anthony Caro

BRYANT, Julius

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Caro, Anthony

Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood (London, England)

Humanities Press/Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd.

Beckett: A Study of his Plays (Routledge Revivals)

British & Irish

Graham Greene is an immensely popular as well as powerful and idiosyncratic writer. His leading characters are murderers, spies, fugitives and outsiders and his most typical plot is that of the hunter and the hunted. In this book, originally published in 1983, John Spurling sets about tracking down the author behind the protagonists. Beginning with an analysis of the patterns of Greene's mind as revealed in the 40 or so works of fiction, drama, criticism, travel and autobiography he has published, the author goes on to explore the way the patterns are modified from the political thrillers of the 1930s through the 'Catholic' novels of the 1940s and 1950s to the post-war comedies and 'Third World' novels. Greene is the odd man out of a generation of remarkable writers born around the turn of the 20th Century who lived through the destruction of the 19th century world order. John Spurling's highly original study tells us why.

Graham Greene (Routledge Revivals)

In the turbulent final years of the Yuan Dynasty, Wang Meng is a low-level bureaucrat, employed by the government of Mongol conquerors established by the Kublai Khan. Though he wonders about his own complicity wit this regime―the Mongols, after all, are invaders―he prefers not to dwell on his official duties, choosing instead to live the life of the mind. Wang is an extraordinarily gifted artist. His paintings are at once delicate and confident; in them, one can see the wind blowing through the trees, the water rushing through rocky valleys, the infinite expanse of China’s natural beauty. But this is not a time for sitting still, and as The Ten Thousand Things unfolds, we follow Wang as he travels through an empire in turmoil. In his wanderings, he encounters, among many memorable characters, other master painters of the period, including the austere eccentric Ni Zan, a fierce female warrior known as the White Tigress who will recruit him as a military strategist, and an ugly young Buddhist monk who rises from beggary to extraordinary heights. The Ten Thousand Things is rich with exquisite observations, and John Spurling endows every description―every detail―with the precision and depth that the real-life Wang Meng brought to his painting. But it is also a novel of fated meetings, grand battles, and riveting drama, and in its seamless fusion of the epic and the intimate, it achieves a truly singular beauty. A novel that deserves to be compared to the classic Chinese novels that inspired it, The Ten Thousand Things is nothing short of a literary event.

The Ten Thousand Things: A Novel

The Overlook Press

Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

The Ten Thousand Things

Literary

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