(Paperback)

Glamorous Alice Keach is one of 1930s London's foremost hostesses. Despite humble American origins, she has secured her place in high society through marriage to one of England's wealthiest bachelors.

But Alice has a secret. Now, a visit from America looks set to blow apart Alice's glittering pre-eminence forever.

(Paperback)

In Belgrave Square old Mr Gresham is baffled by his tigerish daughter Rebecca, whose intentions he cannot fathom. In the clubs of St James' rakish Mr Happerton plays billiards with his crony Captain Raff, while in darkest Lincolnshire sad Mr Davenant broods over his financial embarrassments and waits for his daughter's new governess.

(Paperback)

A stuffed bear, a pet mouse, fraud and felony on the streets of London, and strange goings-on in the fens... And what are the sinister bonds that link these men to the poaching of osprey eggs in Scotland, the doomned romance of Dixey's kitchen maid and the first Great Train Robbery

(Paperback)

Vanity Fair, published in serial parts in 1847-8, made William Makepeace Thackeray famous 'all but at the top of the tree', he told his mother, 'and having a great fight up there with Dickens'.

(Paperback)

The Bright Young People were one of the most extraordinary youth cults in British history. A pleasure-seeking band of bohemian party-givers and blue-blooded socialites, they romped through the 1920s gossip columns. This book chronicles England's 'lost generation' of the Jazz Age.

(Paperback)

Drawing on previously unseen material, D J Taylor offers a portrait of the writer often embalmed as a secular saint. Here is a man who, for all his outward unworldliness, effectively stage-managed his own life; who combined chilling detachment with warmth and gentleness, and battled through illness to produce two masterpieces of the 20th century.

(Paperback)

Spanning a century of literary history, from the pitched battles fought between Eliot-era modernists and Georgian traditionalists to the impact of creative writing degrees and the media don of today and more, this book explores the myriad influences on English literary life in the past century and the way in which they have shaped our preferences.