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  River War The - An Account of...

  Winston Churchill

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  When the self-proclaimed Mahdi (“Guided One”) gathered Islamic forces and kicked the Anglo-Egyptians out of the Sudan, he unleashed a backlash. With the image of the heroic General Charles Gordon dying at Khartoum, the British public was ready to support a war to reclaim the lost territories. And when the political time was right, a British-Egyptian-Sudanese expedition led by the redoubtable Herbert Kitchener set out to do just that. The river involved was the Nile. For millennia, its annual flood has made habitable a slender strip, though hundreds of miles of deserts, between its tributaries and its delta. Through this desolate region, man and beast struggled to supply the bare essentials of life. Though this same region, the expedition had to find and defeat an enemy several times larger than itself. The young Churchill was hot to gain war experience to aid his career, and so he wangled a transfer to the 21st Lancers and participated in the last successful cavalry charge the world ever saw, in the climactic battle of Omdurman. He also had a position as war correspondent for the Morning Post, and on his return to England he used his notes to compose this book.

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  Our Mutual Friend

  Charles Dickens

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  Our Mutual Friend, written in 1864-1865, is the last novel completed by Charles Dickens and is one of his most sophisticated works, combining savage satire with social analysis. It centres on, in the words of critic J. Hillis Miller, quoting the book's character Bella Wilfer, "money, money, money, and what money can make of life".Most reviewers in the 1860s continued to praise Dickens's skill as a writer in general, but did not review this novel in detail. Some found the plot both too complex and not well laid out. The Times of London found the first few chapters did not draw the reader into the characters. In the 20th century, however, reviewers began to find much to approve in the later novels of Dickens, including Our Mutual Friend. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, some reviewers suggested that Dickens was, in fact, experimenting with structure, and that the characters considered somewhat flat and not recognized by the contemporary reviewers were meant rather to be true representations of the Victorian working class and the key to understanding the structure of the society depicted by Dickens in the novel.

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  Big Drunk Draf' The (Unabridged)

  Rudyard Kipling

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  First published in The Week's News on 24 March 1888, and collected in Soldiers Three (Indian Railway Library No. 1) the same year, and in Soldiers Three and other Stories in 1899.This story is told by Mulvaney, now working as a foreman on railway construction after leaving the army. The previous week he had encountered a draft of discharged men from the 'ould regiment on their way to Bombay, drunken and insubordinate because they were technically out of the army. Mulvaney dealt summarily with the drunkest of them, and encouraged their young officer to ignore the regulations and keep them under draconian military discipline. He did so, they knuckled down and behaved themselves, and were delivered to the docks chastened and sober.

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  Shakespeare on Toast - Getting a...

  Ben Crystal

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  Actor, producer and director Ben Crystal revisits his acclaimed book on Shakespeare for the 400th anniversary of his death, updating and adding three new chapters.
  
  Shakespeare on Toast knocks the stuffing from the staid old myth of the Bard, revealing the man and his plays for what they really are: modern, thrilling, uplifting drama.
  
  The bright words and colourful characters of the greatest hack writer are brought brilliantly to life, sweeping cobwebs from the Bard – his language, his life, his world, his sounds, his craft. Crystal reveals man and work as relevant, accessible and alive – and, astonishingly, finds Shakespeare's own voice amid the poetry.
  
  Whether you're studying Shakespeare for the first time or you've never set foot near one of his plays but have always wanted to, this book smashes down the walls that have been built up around this untouchable literary figure.
  
  Told in five fascinating Acts, this is quick, easy and good for you. Just like beans on toast.

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  The Dak Bungalow at Dakor

  B. M. Croker

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  Bithia Mary Croker (1848-1920) was an Irish-born novelist and a notable writer of ghost stories, most of which concern life and society in British India.'The Dâk Bungalow at Dakor' is the story of Mrs Goodchild and Mrs Lloyd, who are travelling from Karwassa to Chanda to see their husbands for Christmas. After some local bullock trouble, the two women are forced to stay the night in a travellers' bungalow at Dakor that hasn't been used for seven years, and the visions they have there after nightfall lead to the solving of an old crime.

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  Clotilde Graves - A Short Story...

  Clotilde Graves

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  Clotilde Augusta Inez Mary Graves was born on the 3rd June 1863 at Buttevant Castle, Co. Cork, to parents with military backgrounds. 
   
  At age nine, the family moved to Southsea in England for yet another military posting.  Her father’s postings gave her valuable experiences that would be put to good use in later years in some of her literary works. 
   
  She was educated at a Catholic convent in Lourdes before returning to London in 1884 to study art in Bloomsbury.  She worked part-time at the British Museum and the Royal Female School of Art and generated further income by drawing little pen-and-ink grotesques for the comic papers.  
   
  A few years later a chance meeting found her writing extra lyrics for a pantomime version of Puss in Boots.  She followed up with several financially successful plays, both in London and New York, and gained a measure of notoriety in one with the comparison of marriage and prostitution.   
   
  Despite her dramatic success she published her first novel in 1911 under the pseudonym of Richard Dehan which she continued to use for later works.  As well as novels and plays she published collections of short stories which glow with talent and invention. 
   
  She was an unusual figure in London society, wearing her hair short, taking on a masculine manner and cut of clothing, and smoking cigarettes in public when such traits were considered eccentric at best.  Add to this her admired collection of Chinese and Japanese trophies, her enthusiasm for fly-fishing and her riding of a tricycle and you have a perfect image of this fascinating writer. 
   
  Clotilde Graves died at the convent of Our Lady of Lourdes at Hatch End in Middlesex, on the 3rd December 1932.  She was 69. 
   
  1 - Clotilde Graves - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  2 - Under The Electrics by Clotilde Graves writing as Richard Dehan 
  3 - The Lost Room by Clotilde Graves writing as Richard Dehan 
  4 - A Spirit Elopement by Clotilde Graves 
  5 - In The Fourth Dimension by Clotilde Graves writing as Richard Dehan 
  6 - A Nocturne by Clotilde Graves writing as by Richard Dehan

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