Possibly the most colourful figure in the history of Western music, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) was certainly the most eloquent....

Benvenuto Cellini is an artist-craftsman, one of the greatest sculptors in the renaissance, passionately devoted to art, the...

This wide-ranging anthology pays tribute to fathers young and old. At one end of the spectrum, a touching story by Ann Packer...

From Li Bai's 'Bring in the Ale' to Ted Kooser's 'Beer Bottle'; from Robert Burns's' John Barleycorn' to Carol Ann Duffy's 'John...

The spirit of satire flourished during the Enlightenment as in no other period and the crowning achievement of that caustic,...

Given that insects vastly outnumber us (there are approximately 200 million insects for every human) it is no surprise that there...

Although E. Nesbit regarded her poetry as her most important work, it is her children's books (written 'to keep the house going')...

Shooting parties in great country houses, turbulent scenes in parliament and the luxury life in Budapest provide the backdrop for...

‘Am dining at Goldini’s Restaurant, Gloucester Road, Kensington. Please come at once and join me there. Bring with you a jemmy, a...

It is the autobiography of Giorgio Bassani, told in a time span of around 15 years, a time where the ambiguous and mysterious...

We begin - at the turn of the century, in an unnamed South American country - in the childhood home of the woman who will be the...

Since its publication in 1842, Dead Souls has been celebrated as a supremely realistic portrait of provincial Russian life and as...

There are novels, like journeys, which you never want to end: this is one of them. One seventh of July at six in the afternoon, a...

In the comic masterpiece which established him one of the greatest writers in the English language, Naipaul follows the fortunes...

When young Charles Dickens was commissioned to write the text for a series of sporting illustrations in 1836, no one could have...

This novel renews the Victorian family saga in a modern setting, tracing the history of the Brangwens through several...

Set in the Malay Archipelago, where Conrad spent much of his youth as an officer in the British Merchant Navy, Victory is a...

When the weaver Silas Marner is wrongly accused of crime and expelled from his community, he becomes a miser and vows to turn his...

Hardy's account of a pure woman betrayed by love is his most powerful and moving novel. Set in the sometimes bleak but always...

Stoddart... , Кингсли...

The Art of Angling offers a bountiful catch of poems from around the world and through the ages on every aspect of the popular...

A celebration of fathers and fatherhood, this anthology features the richly varied voices of sons and daughters, and of fathers...

Rabelais... , Гюго...

In the eighteenth century, Laurence Sterne explores the temptations of the French capital in a teasing study of foreign mores and...

Duvan... , Anonymous

Fishing Stories nets an abundant catch of wonderful writing in a wide variety of genres and styles. The moods range from the...

Markham... , Смайли...

Horse Stories corrals two centuries of short fiction about the most majestic of domesticated animals. From writers old and new...

Stories of Motherhood gathers together more than a century of short fiction from a wide variety of authors in a literary...

M... , Кальвино...

Love Stories brings together a captivating assortment of short stories inspired by romantic entanglement in its many forms: first...

Based around the pivotal WWII battle of Stalingrad (1942-3), where the German advance into Russia was eventually halted by the...

In these articles first produced for magazines and substantially rewritten for book publication, Wodehouse reveals his enduring...

When is an autobiography not an autobiography? When the author is P. G. Wodehouse.

Over Seventy purports to be a series of...

Clarence Chugwater is not a Boy Scout for nothing. It is summer 1909 and everyone is too interested in the Test Match to notice...