Can a woman have a penis? Is the West forever stained by racism? Are we all going to die from climate change? To the liberal establishment of London, New York or Sydney, the answer to all of these questions is 'yes'. And anyone who disagrees is a racist, climate-change-denying transphobe. Our elites have become convinced of some very strange and extreme ideas. And yet there is precious little pushback against them. Critics are cowed by the threat...

Drawing together a fascinating body of writing from over 14 years of work, Figures in a Landscape ranges from profiles of cultural icons (Oliver Sacks, Elizabeth Taylor, Robin Williams) to intimate personal remembrances; from thrilling adventures in Africa to literary writings from Theroux's rich and expansive personal reading. Collectively these pieces offer a fascinating portrait of the author himself, his extraordinary life, restless and ever-curious...

'A Guest at the Feast' uncovers the places where politics and poetics meet, where life and fiction overlap, where one can be inside writing and also outside of it. From the melancholy and amusement within the work of the writer John McGahern to an extraordinary essay on his own cancer diagnosis, Toibin delineates the bleakness and strangeness of life and also its richness and its complexity. As he reveals the shades of light and dark in a Venice without...

A balm for our times from the internationally bestselling author of Wintering. Our sense of enchantment is not only sparked by grand things. The awe-inspiring, the numinous, is all around us, all the time. It is transformed by our deliberate attention. The magic is of our own conjuring. Feeling bone-tired, anxious and overwhelmed by the rolling news cycle and the pandemic age, Katherine May seeks to unravel the threads of a life wound too tightly....

From cultural icon Margaret Atwood comes a brilliant collection of essays - funny, erudite, endlessly curious, uncannily prescient - which seek answers to burning questions such as: Why do people everywhere, in all cultures, tell stories? How much of yourself can you give away without evaporating? How can we live on our planet? Is it true? And is it fair? What do zombies have to do with authoritarianism? In over fifty pieces Atwood aims her prodigious...

If, like me, you?re sick and tired of being told how to think, speak, eat and behave, then this book is for you. If, like me, you think common sense is being thrown out of the window, then this book is for you. If, like me, you think the world?s going absolutely nuts, then this book is for you. If, like me, you think NHS heroes and Captain Tom are the real stars of our society, not self-obsessed tone-deaf celebrities (and royal renegades!), then this...

Mostly drawn from the earliest part of her astonishing five-decade career, the wide-ranging pieces in this collection include Didion writing about a Gamblers Anonymous meeting, a visit to San Simeon, and a reunion of WWII veterans in Las Vegas, and about topics ranging from Nancy Reagan to Robert Mapplethorpe to Martha Stewart. Here are subjects Didion has long written about - the press, politics, California robber baronsac, women, the act of writing,...

Alan Bennett's third collection of prose 'Keeping On Keeping On' follows in the footsteps of the phenomenally successfully 'Writing Home' and 'Untold Stories', each published ten years apart. The latest collection contains Bennett's peerless diaries 2005 to 2015, reflecting on a decade that saw four premieres at the National Theatre, a West End double-bill transfer, and the films of 'The History Boys' and 'The Lady in the Van'.

For years, Nigel Slater has kept notebooks of curiosities and wonderings, penned while at his kitchen table, soaked in a fisherman?s hut in Reykjavik, sitting calmly in a moss garden in Japan or sheltering from a blizzard in a Vienna Konditorei. These are the small moments, events and happenings that gave pleasure before they disappeared. Miso soup for breakfast, packing a suitcase for a trip and watching a butterfly settle on a carpet, hiding in...

THE SUNDAY TIMES AND IRISH TIMES BESTSELLER In this incisive, radical and practical essay, Emma Dabiri - acclaimed author of Don't Touch My Hair - draws on years of research and personal experience to challenge us to create meaningful, lasting change.