Herbert Howells

Paul Spicer

Composer, organist, teacher, writer and broadcaster, Herbert Howells (1892-1983) is a major figure in English music. His three choral masterpieces, Hymnus Paradisi, the Stabat Mater and Missa Sabrinensis, are classics, while his ecclesiastical music - quite possiblly sung daily in Britain - is the greatest contribution to Anglican Church music of the twentieth century ...

Housman, A. E.

Keith Jebb


The poetry of A.E. Housman is being redisovered. His volume A Shropshire Lad led him to be considered the finest poet in England. Housman’s work, popular, accessible, pessimistic, fell from favour in the post-war period but as his times are reassessed there is a growing interest in his authentic voice ...

Intermittent Journals

Dannie Abse


"More, please Dannie" said The Sunday Times on the publication of ’Journals from the Ant-Heap’ in 1986. ’Intermittent Journals’ answers that call, bringing back into print that book and adding to it ’Notes Mainly from the Clinic’ (1981), unpublished new jottings 1987-1992, and a specially commissioned journal for 1993, Abse’s seventieth birthday year …

Jan Morris: Around the World in 80 Years

ed. Paul Clements

PAPERBACK OF THE WEEK - The Observer.

Jan Morris is one of the world’s leading writers. In this tribute to her on her eightieth birthday, a number of well-known people from the world of travel writing, journalism, broadcasting and publishing celebrate the writer, as well as the person…

John Cowper Powys

Herbert Williams


John Cowper Powys (1872-1963) has been called the forgotten man of English literature, seemingly a remarkable assessment for such a prolific writer. Novels such as Weymouth Sands, Wolf Solent, A Glastonbury Romance and Maiden Castle stand as landmarks in twentieth century writing, yet debate over his genius, or lack of it, has raged controversially since before his death ...

Kerry’s Children

Ellen Davis

Ellen Davis was born in 1929 in the small German village of Hoof. Her Jewish family had lived there since 1760 but its peaceful existence was shattered when Hitler came to power and German Jews were persecuted ...

Laughter from the Dark

Michael Parnell

Novelist, playwright, broadcaster, raconteur: by the time of his early death in 1981, Gwyn Thomas was widely admired as all these things, in addition to being a much-Ioved columnist in Punch. Once described as ’the greatest talker in the world’ he was the veteran entertainer of The Brains Trust and Tonight, and a moving commentator on the Aberfan disaster ...

Love from Blodwen

Margaret Wyles

Love From Blodwen is a captivating memoir that takes the reader on a haunting journey through the life of Margaret, a small child who moved with her family from the valleys of industrial south Wales to rural west Wales in the 1930s ...

The Man in the Middle

Derek Bevan

A referee can’t make a bad game good, but he can make a good game bad. Based on this assumption, Derek Bevan became one of the world’s best - and best known - rugby union referees....

Margiad Evans

Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan


Novelist, essayist, poet and writer of short stories, Margiad Evans (1909-1959) was one of the most remarkable women writers of the mid-twentieth century. Having published three novels, two autobiographical works and two volumes of poetry during her life, her relatively slim output belies considerable achievement in the face of intermittent poverty and the illness of her later years ...