Visar resultat för..."Notting Hill Editions"

A new book from one of our most acclaimed writers.‘We always believe that changing our mind is an improvement, bringing a greater truthfulness to our dealings with the world and other people. It puts an end to vacillation, uncertainty, weak-mindedness. It seems to make us stronger and more mature. Well, we would think that, wouldn't we?’In this engaging and erudite essay, critically acclaimed writer Julian Barnes explores what is involved when we change our minds: about words, about politics, about books; about memories, age and time.

Joe Brainard's I Remember is a cult classic, envied and admired by writers from Frank O'Hara to John Ashbery and Edmund White. As autobiography, Brainard's method was brilliantly simple: to set down specific memories as they rose to the surface of his consciousness, each prefaced by the refrain 'I remember'.Fifty-two years after its original US publication in 1970, this is the first UK edition.'In simple, forthright, declarative sentences, he charts the map of the human soul and permanently alters the way we look at the world. I Remember is both uproariously funny and deeply moving. It is also one of the few totally original books I have ever read.' Paul Auster

Richard Sennett has spent an intellectual lifetime exploring how humans live in cities. In this pair of essays he visits two of the world's greatest cities at crucial moments in their history to meditate on the condition of exile in both geographical and psychic space: the Jewish Ghetto of Renaissance Venice, where state-imposed outsiderdom was translated into a rich community identity; and nineteenth-century Paris, a magnet for political exiles, where the experience of displacement seeped into the city's culture at large.

Morris's intimate journals, written for a friend, unconsciously explore questions of travel, noting his reaction to the idea of leaving or arriving, to hurry and delay, what it means to dread a place you've never been to or to encounter the actuality of a long-held vision. Poet Lavinia Greenlaw draws out these questions as she follows in the footprints of Morris's prose, responding to its surfaces and undercurrents, extending its horizons. The result is a new and composite work, which brilliantly explores our conflicted reasons for not staying at home.

From Macaulay in the 19th century to Fukuyama in the late 20th, historians have often been lulled into thinking that things can only get better. Such belief in progress, argues leading political commentator Simon Heffer, may be typical of times of plenty, but it ignores a less palatable truth: that, since the beginnings of recorded history, the major events in international relations can be attributed to a single cause, the desire by rulers to assert or protect their power.

What happens when an art critic loses some of his sight to cataracts? What wonders are glimpsed once vision is restored? In this impressionistic essay written in the spirit of Montaigne, John Berger, whose treatises on seeing have shaped cultural and media studies for four decades, records the effects of cataract removal operations on each of his eyes. With words by John Berger and beautiful illustrations by Turkish artist Selçuk Demirel that complement the text, Cataract is a collaborative collectors’ piece that is perfect for every reader’s bedside table.

Completed in 1980 but published here for the first time, My Prizes is an accounting - prize by prize, blow by blow - of the background and circumstances of reception of nine literary prizes that Thomas Bernhard was awarded between 1963 and 1980, followed by some of the speeches he delivered on those occasions - each of which was also the occasion for scandal or worse. The result is a portrait of the artist as prizewinner and prize farceur: sardonic, laconic, biting-the-hand, relishing both the world and himself with bitter amusement. 'Thank goodness for Thomas Bernhard, the most truthful, the funniest and the most musical of writers since Marcel Proust.' Gabriel Josipovici

‘Late Spring, directed and co-written by Yasujirō Ozu, was released in 1949, which makes it an old film, or a film that has been new for a long time…’ So begins this remarkable essay in narrative reconstruction. Film-critic, novelist and essayist Mars-Jones gives a virtuoso performance as the lost figure of film explainer, drawing out a host of meaning from the reticence of Ozu’s classic Japanese movie.‘So long after its first release Late Spring is still limber and elusive,’ enthuses Mars-Jones. Noriko Smiling breathes new life into both Ozu’s film, and film studies as a whole. There has never been a film book like this.

The lives of people both famous and obscure are filled with moments when their dirty laundry sees daylight. At such times we witness the reversibility of success, of prominence, but also come to terms viscerally with our own most vulnerable selves. We cannot stop watching the scene of shame, identifying with it, absorbing its nearness, relishing our immunity, even as we acknowledge the universality of the human stain, the uneasy predicament of living in our own bodies -

Things I Don't Want to Know is a unique response to George Orwell from one of our most vital contemporary writers. Taking Orwell's famous list of motives for writing as the jumping-off point for a sequence of thrilling reflections on the writing life, this is a perfect companion not just to Orwell's essay, but also to Levy's own, essential oeuvre.Deborah Levy writes: 'Perhaps when Orwell described sheer egoism as a necessary quality for a writer, he was not thinking about the sheer egoism of a female writer. Even the most arrogant female writer has to work over time to build an ego that is robust enough to get her through January, never mind all the way to December.'

In Junkspace (2001), architect Rem Koolhaas itemises in delirious detail how our cities are being overwhelmed. His celebrated jeremiad is here updated and twinned with Running Room, a fresh response from architectural critic Hal Foster.'The manifesto is a modernist mode, one that looks to the future… Junkspace makes no such claim: “Architecture disappeared in the twentieth century,” states Koolhaas matter-of-factly. Junkspace does a harder thing: it “foretells” the present, which is to say that it calls on us to recognize what is already everywhere around us.’ Hal Foster

A new edition of Britain's Changing Towns (1967), introduced, edited and updated by Owen Hatherley.These essays show Nairn writing about cities and towns as wholes rather than as collections of individual buildings. In each of them, there are several things happening at once - assessments of historic townscape, capsule reviews of new buildings, attempts to find the specific character of each place.Includes sixteen essays on places as varied as Glasgow and Norwich, Llanidloes and Sheffield, by the finest English architectural writer of the 20th Century.

Woolf's fine character studies of several authors, among them Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who 'seems not a man, but a swarm, a cloud, a buzz of words, darting this way and that, clustering, quivering and hanging suspended'. He is, Woolf adds,so complex, so eccentric, that we 'become dazed in the labyrinth of what we call Coleridge'. He was incapable of adopting requisite social modes, of suppressing his obsessive urge to talk, of pandering to the expectations of others. Woolf tries to capture a 'clear picture' of Coleridge but this metaphor is skewed and what she really reveals is a voice - mad and beautiful - never to be heard again:

Cyclogeography is an essay about the bicycle in the cultural imagination and a portrait of London seen from the saddle. The bicycle enables us to feel a landscape, rather than just see it, and in the great tradition of the psychogeographers, Day attempts to depart from the map and reclaim the streets of the city whilst exploring the relationship between bodies, bikes and geography.

When novelist Kirsty Gunn received a Randell Fellowship from the British Academy and Carnegie Foundation in 2009 she returned to New Zealand to spend the winter in Wellington, near the childhood home of Katherine Mansfield, the writer to whom she'd always felt most connected. In this lyrical essay, Gunn explores the ideas of home and belonging - and of her own deep connection to a place where every flower and gatepost seems embroidered with the memory of some story or another.

This new selection of essays by Oscar Wilde show-cases the varied aspects of his genius. For Pearson, the biographer, the essays and dialogues illustrate the many faces of Wilde's extraordinary character: wit, romancer, talker, lecturer, humanist and scholar. The ideas expressed remain remarkably relevant to modern readers, whilst his popularity remains undiminished.

In this extraordinary memoir, neuroscientist Andrew Lees explains how William Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch and troubled drug addict, played an unlikely part in his medical career.Lees draws on Burroughs' search for an addiction cure to discover a ground-breaking treatment for shaking palsy, and learns how to use the deductive reasoning of Sherlock Holmes to diagnose patients. Lees follows Burroughs into the rainforest and under the influence of yage (ayahuasca) gains insights that encourage him to pursue new lines of pharmacological research and explore new forms of science.

In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche conducts his protagonist through his great journey of life - the quest for meaning, and fulfilment, and for a way to live with the knowledge of death. In this faithful new translation by Michael Hulse, Zarathustra is revealed in all his bold and ironic splendour, as a man who strives to find a way to live - joyfully - in a secular world. Luminous and ecstatic, Thus Spake Zarathustra is a grand celebration of perilous, beautiful, human life by one of the most important philosophers in history.

BBC broadcaster Stephen Johnson explores how Shostakovich's music took shape under Stalin's reign of terror. Johnson writes of the healing effect of music on sufferers of mental illness and tells of how Shostakovich's music lent him unexpected strength in his struggle against bipolar disorder.Through interviews conducted with surviving members of Soviet orchestras, through his reading of philosophers, psychoanalysts, and neurologists, Johnson paints a compelling picture of one man's music and its power to validate and sustain another man's life.

A pictorial essay by the great art critic, novelist and long-time smoker, John Berger, and Turkish writer and illustrator Selçuk Demirel."Once upon a time, men, women and (secretly) children smoked."This charming illustrated work reflects on the cultural implications of smoking, and suggests, through a series of brilliantly inventive illustrations, that society's attitude to smoke is both paradoxical and intolerant. It portrays a world in which smokers, banished from public places, must encounter one another as outlaws. Meanwhile, car exhausts and factory chimneys continue to pollute the atmosphere. Smoke is a beautifully illustrated prose poem that lingers in the mind."A cigarette is a breathing space. It makes a parenthesis. The time of a cigarette is a parenthesis, and if it is shared you are both in that parenthesis. It's like a proscenium arch for a dialogue." - John Berger (in interview)

Following on from the bestselling Nairn's Towns - a celebration of the city of Paris by cult figure Ian Nairn. Illustrated with original black and white images taken by Nairn himself. More than a guide book - this is a journey of discovery. Out of print since 1968, this is a unique guide book from the late, great architectural writer, Ian Nairn. Illustrated with the author's snaps of the city, Nairn gives his readers an idiosyncratic and unpretentious portrait of the 'collective masterpiece' that is Paris. 'Once you discover [Nairn]...you want to read everything he's written.' - Daily Telegraph

What motivated the 16th century explorers? The question is a vexed one the world over. To this day, a troubled folkloric status hangs about the better-known names. Many of the Tudor explorers set sail from the South West peninsula. Morpurgo, with his own deep connections to the Dorset coast, unearths the stories behind little-known key figures Stephen Borough and John Davis, and their brilliant navigational teacher, John Dee, inventor of the 'paradoxall compass'. Morpurgo dramatises an episode in Drake's circumnavigation during which the Golden Hind was stranded on a rock off Celebes, Indonesia. What altercation occurred between Drake and the ship's chaplain, Francis Fletcher, during those terrifying twenty hours? Morpurgo makes a compelling argument for what was really at the heart of that disagreement, and its present-day repercussions. He argues that the Tudor navigators and their stories may hold the key to how we should approach the current environmental crisis. This is the Age of Discovery as you've never heard it before.

In this haunting memoir, Alison Gold gives a luminous account of key moments in her life that brought her to be the writer she is.Alison Leslie Gold is best known for her works that have kept alive stories from the time of the Holocaust, stories of courage and survival - most famously her Anne Frank Remembered, co-authored with Miep Gies (who risked her life to protect the Frank family).She has never chosen to write about her own life or what made her into a gatherer of other people's stories, until now, in Found and Lost, a tender memorial to the extraordinary people in the author’s life, and a compelling tale of redemption.Starting with her childhood experience of running her primary school 'Lost and Found' depot, Gold develops, through a series of letters, a meditation on ageing, friendship, loss and the forces that link us to the dead. They tell of her early activism, her descent into alcoholism and her recovery, and her discovery of the power of writing to give a shape and meaning to a life. In the very act of writing, she begins to find a route out of depression and grief.

A seasonal anthology of Christmas-themed writings to savour during the highs and lows of Christmas Day.This delightful book offers a diverse array of classic and contemporary writers who have expressed their thoughts about Christmas over the centuries - with joy, nostalgia and dazzling wit.Includes selections from Dostoevsky, Truman Capote, A.A. Milne, Jerome K. Jerome, and modern day diarists, this beautiful volume is as full of delight and nostalgia as Christmas itself.

A walking guide to this historic London neighbourhood, uncovering its countercultural roots.A delightful English/Japanese pocket-size guide to London's most popular district. Through four walks London writer Julian Mash uncovers the history, culture and fascinating characters that have made Notting Hill so iconic. Beautifully laid out including several photographic images and four hand-drawn maps, the guide will appeal to both tourists and residents alike.

“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness.” —Søren Kierkegaard Duncan Minshull has always walked and in the last twenty years has made use of it by writing and publishing books on the subject. He has described the whys, hows, and wheres of traveling on foot for various magazines and newspapers, including The Times (London), the Financial Times, Condé Nast Traveler, and Vogue. He has edited two other collections on walking: While Wandering: A Walking Companion (originally The Vintage Book of Walking) and The Burning Leg: Walking Scenes from Classic Fiction.Walking and writing have always gone together. Think of the poets who walk out a rhythm for their lines and the novelists who put their characters on a path. But the best insights, the deepest and most joyous examinations of this simple activity are to be found in nonfiction—in essays, travelogues, and memoirs.Beneath My Feet: Writers on Walking rounds up the most memorable walker-writers from the 1700s to the modern day, from country hikers to urban strollers, from the rationalists to the truly outlandish. Follow in the footsteps of William Hazlitt, George Sand, Rebecca Solnit, Will Self, and dozens of others. Keep up with them—and be astonished.

A.A. Milne, best known as the author of the classic Winnie-the-Pooh stories, was a successful writer long before his children’s stories launched him to overnight success.At the age of twenty-three, he was appointed the Assistant Editor of Punch magazine. He claimed ‘I know no work manual or mental to equal the appalling heart-breaking anguish of fetching an idea from nowhere.’ But Milne had a talent for regularly turning out a thousand whimsical words on lost hats and umbrellas, tennis, dogs, faulty geysers, dotty maids, women loading film in a camera, the English obsession with rank and titles, cheap cigars, and any amount of life’s other little difficulties. He was praised for being able to produce ‘with apparently effortless ease and the utmost gaiety’ articles notable for their ‘enchanting ingenuity’.But there was another, more serious side to Milne. After serving in World War 1, where he survived the Somme, Milne was invalided home with trench fever in 1916. His experiences made him a committed and vocal pacifist. War was nothing but ‘mental and moral degradation’. His fiercely argued pacifism was ahead of his time, and forms some of his most powerful work.This selection of Milne’s articles, spanning over four decades of his life from 1910 to 1952, are collected for the first time in this volume, including his passionately argued writings on pacifism. The writings demonstrate his trademark wit, varied genius, little-known political views, and nostalgia for a lost era.

A fascinating account by one of the world's leading neurologists of the profound influence of William Burroughs on his medical career. Lees relates how Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch and troubled drug addict, inspired him to discover a ground-breaking treatment for Parkinson's Disease. Lees journeys to the Amazonian rainforest in search of cures for Parkinson's Disease, and through self-experimentation seeks to find the answers his patients crave. He enters a powerful plea for the return of imagination to medical research.