Paul O'Prey – författare

A rich and unforgettable tragic-comic novel of sexual intrigue and political scheming, The House of Ulloa is one of the greatest works of nineteenth-century Spanish literature.The House of Ulloa follows pure and pious Father Julián Alvarez, who is sent to a remote country estate to put the affairs of the marquis, an irresponsible libertine, in order. When he discovers moral decadence, cruelty and corruption at his new home, Julián's well-meaning but ineffectual attempts to prevent the fall of the House of Ulloa end in tragedy. Combining gothic elements with humour and social satire, The House of Ulloa is the finest achievement of Emilia Pardo Bazán, a prolific writer, feminist, traveller and intellectual, and one of the most dynamic figures of her time.Brilliantly balancing biting satire and gothic undertones, and evoking a rich sense of place, this is a wonderful novel that deserves to be ranked with the other great books of the period. The Countess Emilia Pardo Bazán was born in 1851 and married at sixteen. After separating from her husband, she embarked on an affair with novelist Benito Pérez Galdós. The House of Ulloa (1886) is generally considered as her masterpiece among her many literary works. Professor Paul O'Prey is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Roehampton, London. Lucia Graves has translated works by Robert Graves, Anaïs Nin, Katherine Mansfield and Carlos Ruiz Zafón, and is the author of a memoir, A Woman Unknown, and a novel, The Memory House.'An absolutely first-rate novelist [...] Bazán's genius lies in the way she mixes comedy, farce, realism and heightened-pitch hysteria with a dash of gothic [...] People may travel by donkey in this book, but it could have been written yesterday' - Nick Lezard, Guardian'Pardo Bazán's mastery of social types and of the political currents that swirled around the liberal revolution are unsurpassed in Spanish literature ... O'Prey and Graves ... avoid awkward literalisms while nonetheless remaining true to the spirit of the original' New Criterion

From the worst horrors of modern trench warfare a small handful of soldiers and nurses created a body of poetry that is so vivid and intense that one hundred years later it has engraved itself on our national consciousness. Most anthologies of First World War poetry include quite uneven poems by many different poets, seeking to represent the wide range of war poetry that was written during the conflict. It can be hard to find your way through single poems by so many different voices. Instead, this anthology will be distinctive in focusing only on the most iconic figures of the war to explore their work in more depth. They include Rupert Brooke, Charles Hamilton Sorley, Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon. Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, and Edward Thomas will be particularly well represented, but so will three poets whose reputation is still growing: Ivor Gurney, Edmund Blunden and David Jones. It will also include powerful poems by three nurses who served in France: Vera Brittain, Mary Borden and May Cannan. The poems are accompanied by a brief and accessible introduction, which sets the context for a reader new to the poems, as well as short biographical profiles of the poets.