Other books that might interest you

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  Notes from a Small Island -...

  Bill Bryson

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  'So, if you Americans already have cornflakes and Woolworths, what brings you to England?'
  It's 1973, and a young man from Des Moines, Iowa, has arrived on the ferry at Dover. He intends to conquer the whole of the island, like Caesar attempted before him.
  But Caesar didn't have to deal with counterpanes, kippers, Cadbury's Curly Wurlies, or Mrs Smegma the landlady's eccentric house rules. As Bill travels the length and breadth of Britain, through villages with names like Titsey and Little Dribbling, something strange starts to happen. Can it be true? Is he really starting to feel at home?
  Bill Bryson's smash-hit memoir Notes from a Small Island spent three years in The Sunday Times bestseller list, sold over two million copies, and was voted the book which best represents the UK.
  Tim Whitnall's hilarious stage adaptation was first produced at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury, in 2023. Written for an ensemble cast of seven (but suitable for a cast of dozens), it will appeal to amateur drama groups as a glorious celebration of one of the nation's most beloved books, and a brilliant dissection of the enduring quirks of our small island.

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  The Way Old Friends Do

  Ian Hallard

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  In 1988, two Birmingham school friends tentatively come out to one another: Edward as gay; Peter, even more daringly, as an ABBA fan.
  Nearly thirty years later, they meet again – and take a chance by forming the world's first ABBA tribute band in drag. It's a riot of platform boots and dodgy beards, 'Waterloos' and 'Chiquititas', and they couldn't escape if they wanted to. But can Edward and Peter's friendship survive the tribulations of a life on the road?
  Ian Hallard's The Way Old Friends Do is a tender, laugh-out-loud comedy about devotion, desire and dancing queens. It premiered at Birmingham Rep in 2023, directed by Mark Gatiss, before touring the UK, including a run at Park Theatre, London.
  The play offers every theatre company and drama group all the ingredients to give their audience the time of its life.

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  The Poetry of Gerard Manley...

  Gerard Manley Hopkins

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  Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in Stratford, then part of Essex on 28th July, 1844, to deeply religious parents?the first of nine children. 
  The family moved to Hampstead in 1852, near to where John Keats had lived thirty years before.  At age ten the young Gerard was sent to school in nearby Highgate and afterwards to Balliol College, Oxford. 
  Hopkins was unusually shy and reserved and prone to bizarre ideas. He once argued that most people drank more liquids than they really needed and bet that he could go without drinking for a week. He persisted until his tongue was black and he collapsed.  
  In January 1866 Hopkins composed his most ascetic poem, The Habit of Perfection but a few days later he included poetry in the list of things to be given up for Lent. In July he decided to become a Catholic and by May 1868 Hopkins firmly "resolved to be religious." Less than a week later, he made a bonfire of his poems and ceased to write for almost seven years.  
  In 1874 Hopkins returned to the Society of Jesus at Manresa House, Roehampton to teach classics. While he was studying in the Jesuit house of theological studies in North Wales, he was asked to write a poem to commemorate the foundering of a German ship in a storm. So in 1875 he was moved to take up poetry once more and write a lengthy poem, The Wreck of the Deutschland, inspired by the Deutschland maritime disaster in which 157 people died, including five nuns.  The poem was accepted but not printed by a Jesuit publication. This rejection fed his ambivalence about his poetry. Most of his poetry remained unpublished until after his death. 
  Hopkins chose the austere and restrictive life of a Jesuit and was at times gloomy. The brilliant student who had left Oxford with a first-class honours degree failed his final theology exam and although ordained in 1877, Hopkins would not progress in the order. That same year he wrote God’s Grandeur, and sonnets including The Starlight Night and finished The Windhover. 
  In 1884 he became professor of Greek and Latin at University College Dublin. His English roots, his disagreement with current Irish politics, as well as his own small stature (5'2"), shy nature and personal foibles meant that he was not an effective teacher. This and his isolation in Ireland deepened his gloom.  
  The final years of his life continued to find him in a depressed state and to restrict his poetic inspiration. His extremely heavy work load coupled with the dislike of living in Dublin, away from England and friends meant his health further deteriorated, even his eyesight began to fail. As a devout Jesuit, he found himself in an artistic dilemma. To subdue any egotism which would violate the humility required by his religious position, he decided never to publish his poems.  
  After suffering several bouts of diarrhoea, Gerard Manley Hopkins died of typhoid fever on 8th June, 1889 at the early age of 44. On his death bed, his last words were, "I am so happy, I am so happy. I loved my life." 
   This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing.  Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.

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  The Pre-Raphaelite Poets - A...

  William Morris, Dante Gabriel...

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  The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood began as a group of painters, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt, who wished to reject the stern and academic strictures of current painting and return to the simpler and more uncomplicated days before the Italian High Renaissance and the days of Raphael. 
  The movement was short lived but very influential and, as well, was taken up by a number of different arts. 
  For poetry, it was a major movement and, because of its depiction of pleasures of the flesh, was, at the time, heavily criticised.  One critic called it ‘The Fleshly School of Poetry’. However, the sensationalist aside, it unleashed works that had instant appeal.  The movement pushed back against contemporary writings which seemed full of tradition and the more mundane problems of society.  
  To exploit and gain attention for their ideas, the Brotherhood started their own periodical; The Germ, which, although it only lasted four numbers did much to bring them attention.  
  Its devotion to the Mediaeval, to symbols and a more naturalistic and detailed approach to poetry were refreshing, especially as the movement sprang up from a Victorian Society that believed morals should be strictly managed, or at least in public. 
  The Pre-Raphaelites as an organised group eventually went their own way but had behind them works which heavily influenced painting and literature for decades to come. 
  With poets of the calibre of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, his sister Christina Georgina Rossetti, William Morris, Charles Algernon Swinburne and George Meredith poetry of great beauty, tenderness and even rawness was placed on the page. 
   This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing.  Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.

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  Alice's Underland: - Poetry...

  Lewis Carroll

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  A selection of poetry first published in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The poems, carefully selected, are arranged to bring you directly towards the edge of Victorian Absurdism.

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  Burritt's Rapids and Beyond

  Louis Contant, Wilma Brown

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  n BURRITT’S RAPIDS AND BEYOND, “whatever flows, remains.” From Winnipeg, Vancouver, Montreal, and rural Ontario, Louis Contant considers his place in the world. Fireflies, whip-poor-wills, squirrels, dragonflies, waterfalls, and the soulful notes of a sonata drift through these meditations on nature, spirituality, writing, love, family, friendship, and music. Louis’ poems inhabit sorrow and suffering yet are rich with praise, delighting in the comforts and joys of ritual and routine alongside brevity and ephemera. Whether considering the “alpine range” of Auden’s contributions to literature, the solitude of the poet, the “molded contours” of friendship, the possibility of life on other planets, or the cedar cottage sweetness of home, Louis reminds us that “what really matters is happening all the time / without us.” 
  With humour, wit, and humbleness, Louis confronts his own mortality and celebrates human connection in an age of technology and social unrest. Playful rhymes and uncompromising narratives are accompanied by the poet’s feisty resilience and tuneful undercurrents of grace. 
  Published posthumously, and compiled and contextualized by the poet’s wife, Wilma Brown, Burritt’s Rapids and Beyond showcases and pays tribute to the life of one wise and curious man. At its heart, this book asks what it means to truly belong to this world, to live in it with pleasure and reverence, trying not to step on any wildflowers.

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