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  British Short Story The - Volume...

  Rudyard Kipling, H G Wells,...

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  These British Isles, moored across from mainland Europe, are more often seen as a world unto themselves.  Restless and creative, they often warred amongst themselves until they began a global push to forge a World Empire of territory, of trade and of language. 
   
  Here our ambitions are only of the literary kind.  These shores have mustered many masters of literature. So this anthology’s boundaries includes only those authors who were born in the British Isles - which as a geographical definition is the UK mainland and the island of Ireland - and wrote in a familiar form of English. 
   
  Whilst Daniel Defoe is the normal starting point we begin a little earlier with Aphra Behn, an equally colourful character as well as an astonishing playwright and poet.  And this is how we begin to differentiate our offering; both in scope, in breadth and in depth.  These islands have raised and nurtured female authors of the highest order and rank and more often than not they have been sidelined or ignored in favour of that other gender which usually gets the plaudits and the royalties. 
   
  Way back when it was almost immoral that a woman should write.  A few pages of verse might be tolerated but anything else brought ridicule and shame.  That seems unfathomable now but centuries ago women really were chattel, with marriage being, as the Victorian author Charlotte Smith boldly stated ‘legal prostitution’.  Some of course did find a way through - Jane Austen, the Brontes and Virginia Woolf but for many others only by changing their names to that of men was it possible to get their book to publication and into a readers hands.  Here we include George Eliot and other examples. 
   
  We add further depth with many stories by authors who were famed and fawned over in their day.  Some wrote only a hidden gem or two before succumbing to poverty and death. There was no second career as a game show guest, reality TV contestant or youtuber. They remain almost forgotten outposts of talent who never prospered despite devoted hours of pen and brain. 
   
  Keeping to a chronological order helps us to highlight how authors through the ages played around with characters and narrative to achieve distinctive results across many scenarios, many styles and many genres. The short story became a sort of literary laboratory, an early disruptor, of how to present and how to appeal to a growing audience as a reflection of social and societal changes.  Was this bound to happen or did a growing population that could read begin to influence rather than just accept? 
   
  Moving through the centuries we gather a groundswell of authors as we hit the Victorian Age - an age of physical mass communication albeit only on an actual printed page.  An audience was offered a multitude of forms: novels (both whole and in serialised form) essays, short stories, poems all in weekly, monthly and quarterly form.  Many of these periodicals were founded or edited by literary behemoths from Dickens and Thackeray through to Jerome K Jerome and, even some female editors including Ethel Colburn Mayne, Alice Meynell and Ella D’Arcy. 
   
  Now authors began to offer a wider, more diverse choice from social activism and justice – and injustice to cutting stories of manners and principles.  From many forms of comedy to mental meltdowns, from science fiction to unrequited heartache.  If you can imagine it an author probably wrote it.  
   
  At the end of the 19th Century bestseller lists and then prizes, such as the Nobel and Pulitzer, helped focus an audience’s attention to a books literary merit and sales worth. Previously coffeehouses, Imperial trade, unscrupulous overseas printers ignoring copyright restrictions, publishers with their book lists as an appendix and the gossip and interchange of polite society had been the main avenues to secure sales and profits.

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  Dick Taverne: Against the Tide -...

  Dick Taverne

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  In 1973, Labour MP Dick Taverne caused a national sensation when he stood against his own party as an independent to win a historic by-election in Lincoln. Demonstrating the power of the individual against party politics, his bold move was a forerunner for the formation of the SDP some eight years later and cemented his own place in political history. Peppered with entertaining anecdotes, Against the Tide sets Taverne's political battles in the context of a rich and varied life. After studying at Oxford University, Taverne juggled a legal career while taking his first steps in politics, before serving in Harold Wilson's government during the 1960s. His later achievements included the launch of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the founding of the charity Sense About Science, whose objective of advancing public understanding of science continues to inform public debate today. Still an active member of the House of Lords, Dick Taverne presents a thoughtful and compelling memoir, as well as a measured account of fraught and turbulent times.

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  On This Day: June 9

  Emily Goldstein

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  On This Day: June 9. Daily podcast of historical and noteworthy activity on this calendar day. Margaret Thatcher elected to a second term; Donald Duck makes his movie debut; birth of Les Paul; Secretariat wins the Belmont Stakes

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  I'm Writing You from Tehran - A...

  Delphine Minoui

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  A journalist returns to her family home in Iran, witnessing enormous political, social, and personal change. 
  Suffering the recent loss of her beloved grandfather and newly committed to a career in journalism, Delphine Minoui decided to visit Iran for the first time since the revolution—since she was four years old. It was 1998. She would stay for ten years. 
  In the course of that decade, great change comes to both writer and country, often at the same time. Minoui settles into daily life—getting to know her devout grandmother for the first time, making friends with local women who help her escape secret dance parties when the morality police arrive, figuring out how to be a journalist in a country that is suspicious of the press and Westerners. Once she finally starts to learn Persian, she begins to see Iran through her grandfather's eyes. And so it is all the more crushing when the political situation falters. She is caught up in protests and interrogated by secret police; some friends disappear and others may be tracking her movements. She finds love, loses her press credentials, marries, and is separated from her husband by erupting global conflict. Through it all, her love for this place and its people deepens and she discovers in her family's past a mission that will shape her entire future. 
  Framed as a letter to her grandfather and filled with disarming characters in momentous times, I'm Writing You from Tehran is an unforgettable, moving view into an often obscured part of our world.

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  Little Women Podcast: The...

  Niina Niskanen

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  There was a real-life Friedrich Bhaer. In fact, Louisa May Alcott wanted to marry him and even start a school with him. This man appears in literal disguises in all of her novels. He is Friedrich in Little Women, Mac in Rose in Bloom and David in Work and many more. Henry and Louisa shared a deep friendship, was it more than friendship? In Little Women Jo's and Friedrich's age gap is 16 years. It is the same age difference as between Henry and Louisa. 
  One of the models for Jo and Friedrich might be Louisa's friend Elizabeth and her husband. Her life was surprisingly similar to the book Jo. She wasn't a writer, but there are parallels. Based on what I have found, her marriage with her lawyer husband was a happy one. She was devoted to the educational work and in the same way, as Jo does, she promoted co-education, for both male and female students. She became a dean of the university. Same way as Jo who becomes the matriarch of the Bhaer Academy in "Jo´s Boys".. 
  There is a very compelling case to be made that Henry David Thoreau was the real-life Friedrich Bhaer. Louisa once called her friend Emerson "The God of my idolatry" but it was Henry who merited her lifelong affection. The ties between Henry and the Alcotts are more extensive than one might expect. From the time when the Alcotts moved to Concord in March 1840 until Henry's passing in 1862. He was a frequent guest in the Alcott´s home taking tea or dinner with the family. Bronson who admired the young man's intellect often visited him in his hut at Walden Pond. If the connection between Henry and the Alcotts was strong, the connection between Louisa and Henry was even stronger

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  The Boy on the Lake - A True Story

  Susan Rosser, Charlie Smith,...

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  The inspiring true story of a boy who turned his struggle with cancer into a public health crusade that went all the way to Washington, DC.   Trevor Smith Schaefer was the boy with everything to live for. Born into a family of baseball and Big Macs, his life in a small Idaho mountain town was full of nothing but potential.   Then came the piercing headaches that wouldn’t stop. And soon after his thirteenth birthday he received the diagnosis that would turn Trevor’s world upside-down—he had brain cancer. After having a tumor the size of a golf ball removed from his brain, Trevor persevered through a difficult recovery. But he wasn’t done fighting.   With the help of his mother, Trevor began organizing fundraisers and educational awareness events for cancer—specifically the types occurring in children due to environmental factors like pollution and toxic waste.   This is the incredible tale of Trevor’s journey from cancer patient to community activist and the force behind what became known as “Trevor’s Law”—which required the government to track and follow cancer clusters and their causes. The bill was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2016.   The passing and signing of Trevor’s Law proved “the power of one Idahoan, one American, to bring change that will benefit millions of people who could face cancer one day.” —Senator Mike Crapo, R–Idaho

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