Ysenda Maxtone Graham – författare

''Brilliant, hilarious... My book of the year'' INDIA KNIGHT''A wonderful book'' CRAIG BROWN, Mail on Sunday''Funny, bloodcurdling and moving'' Daily MailThe cruel teachers. The pashes on other girls. The gossip. The giggles. The awful food. The homesickness. The friendships made for life. The shivering cold. Games of lacrosse, and cricket. ''The girls'' boarding school! What a ripe theme for the most observant verbal artist in our midst today - the absurdly undersung Ysenda Maxtone Graham, who has the beadiness and nosiness of the best investigative reporter, the wit of Jane Austen and a take on life which is like no one else''s. This book has been my constant companion ever since it appeared'' A.N. WILSON, Evening Standard

A gently humorous take on the modern world - from the pitfalls of knicker-envy to the weaponising of email sign-offsScreams is Ysenda Maxtone Graham''s idiosyncratic and gently funny take on the modern world. She pinpoints all those small things that irritate, but which have a disproportionate effect on our wellbeing (for example, agonising waits for HMRC while stuck in a loop playing the Four Seasons; deep-seated recycling fears; friends that gaslight you with too many xxxs) and also takes pleasure in the small victories that bring surprising joy (lunch from leftovers and finding a miraculous parking space against all odds).''Screams is as sharp as holly, and as sparkling as fairy lights... it''s bound to find its way into many a Christmas stocking'' Mail on Sunday''The beauty of this book is its specificity... Graham has successfully and with wit translated into precise words the minutiae of everyday life'' The Times

British Summer Time Begins is about summer holidays of the mid-twentieth century and how they were spent, as recounted to Ysenda Maxtone-Graham in vividly remembered detail by people who were there. Through this prism, it paints a revealing portrait of twentieth-century Britain in summertime: how we were, how families functioned, what houses and gardens and streets were like, what journeys were like, and what people did all day in their free time. It explores their expectations, hopes, fears and habits, the rules or lack of rules under which they lived, their happiness and sadness, their sense of being treasured or neglected - all within living memory, from pre-war summers to the late 1970s. Ysenda takes us back to the long stretch of time from the last days of June till the early days of September - those months when the term-time self was cast off and you could become the person you really were, and you had (if you were lucky) enough hours in the endless succession of days to become good at the things that would later define your adulthood. The ''showpiece'' part of the summer holidays was ''the summer holiday'', when families took off to the seaside, or to grandparents'' houses teeming with cousins, or on early package holidays to France or Spain, siblings wedged into the back of small cars, roof-racks clattering, mothers preparing picnics. British Summer Time Begins is as much about the long weeks either side of that holiday as the trip itself: the weeks when nothing much officially happened, boredom often lurked nearby, and you vanished for hours on end, nobody much knowing or even caring where you were. Could it be that those unscheduled days were actually the most important and formative of your life?From the author of the beloved Terms & Conditions, British Summer Time Begins is a delightful, nostalgic and joyous celebration of summers.

A unique take on women''s history from the bestselling author of British Summer Time Begins