Showing titles in Letters & Correspondence

Here are some of the best of Churchill’s letters, many of a more personal and intimate nature, presented in chronological order, with a preface to each letter explaining the context. The recipients include a vast range of people, including his schoolmaster, his American grandmother and former President Eisenhower. They are taken from within the Churchill Archive in Cambridge, where there is a mass of Churchill’s correspondence. Several of the letters included have never appeared in book form before.

These have been called the most famous and beloved letters of the past century. Rainer Maria Rilke himself said that much of his creative expression went into his correspondence, and here he touches upon a wide range of subjects that will interest writers, artists, and thinkers. This luminous translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's classic offers brilliant inspiration to all people who seek to know and express their inner truth.

'Dear Mama, I am having a lovely time here. We play football every day here. The beds have no springs....' So begins the first letter that nine-year-old Roald Dahl penned to his mother, Sofie Magdalene, under the watchful eye of his boarding school headmaster. For most of his life, Roald Dahl would continue to write weekly letters to his mother, chronicling his adventures, frustrations and opinions, from the delights of childhood to the excitements of flying as a World War II fighter pilot....

London, 1934. Doreen Bates is working in the same office as E, an older married man. They strike up a passionate affair and Doreen records it all in her diary - secret midnight walks, countryside escapades and stolen moments of intimacy. But Doreen longs for a child with E. Despite all the taboos at the time and against the wishes of E, Doreen gets pregnant and is amazed when twins are born during the war. However, Doreen faces an uncertain future - will E ever leave his wife and join his new family?

Gay icon, great poet, leather daddy, eccentric professor, English, American, biker, non-driver, drug addict, hedonist, intellectual, enigmatic, friendly, Everyman, one-of-a-kind, brother, roommate, HIV-negative, paradigmatic AIDS writer, Nazi belt wearer, Jeff Dahmer scholar, Guggenheim Genius, secret philanthropist, Formalist, Existentialist, prolific letter writer, some-sort-of-an-angel...Thom Gunn was all of these and more... But hovering above these figures lay the memory of his mother.

In Letters of Note: Art, Shaun Usher celebrates extraordinary correspondence about art, from missives on the agony of being overlooked, the ecstasy of producing work that excites, to surprising sources of inspiration and rousing manifestos. A star-studded cast of readers brings the letters to life, with contributions from Sanjeev Bhaskar, Louise Brealey, Simon Callow, Crystal Clarke, Benedict Cumberbatch, Stephen Fry, Neil Gaiman, Toby Jones, Ferdinand Kingsley, Jude Law, Helen McCrory, Stephen Mangan, Clarke Peters, Juliet Stevenson, Mark Strong and Meera Syal.

The extant letters of Pliny, written between AD 97 and 112, give us a unique insight into Imperial Rome under the early Antonine emperors. Organised into 10 books, the letters reflect a wide range of topics, mirroring Pliny’s own public and private interests. Among many other subjects, the letters also include an eye-witness account of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, with the final book containing the exchange of letters between the writer (whose career culminated as Governor of Bithynia) and the emperor Trajan.

John Keats' letters paint an unforgettably vivid and moving picture of the richly productive but also tragic final years of the poet's life. As he ponders on the nature of the writer's craft, he must first confront his brother's death from tuberculosis and then the imminent prospect of his own, tormented by the fear that he will not live to consummate his relationship with Fanny Brawne.

Celia Paul has felt a lifelong connection to the artist Gwen John. There are extraordinary parallels in their lives and work. Both have always made art on their own terms. Both were involved with older male artists. Both worked hard to keep themselves and the sacred flame of their creativity from being extinguished by others. Letters to Gwen John is Paul's imagined correspondence with Gwen John, whose life and work have loomed so large in hers.

Throughout his life, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke addressed letters to individuals who were close to him, who had contacted him after reading his works, or who he had met briefly – anyone with whom he felt an inner connection. Within his vast correspondence, there are about two dozen letters of condolence. In these direct, personal and practical letters, Rilke writes about loss and mortality, assuming the role of a sensitive, serious and uplifting guide through life’s difficulties.

In Letters of Note: Fathers, Shaun Usher collects letters celebrating weird and wonderful dads.

In Letters of Note: Sex, Shaun Usher collects together some of the most noteworthy missives ever written on the subject, from euphemism-laden, flirtatious exchanges and desire-driven expressions of passion to sincere and thoughtful meditations on the meaning of sex. Includes letters by John Cheever, Sigmund Freud, Dorothy Day, James Joyce, Margaret Mead, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Mae West and many others.

How can we begin to talk about what is happening to the world? We are facing a global emergency. Temperatures are rising. Mass species extinction has begun. The time for denial is over. It is time to act. Letters to the Earth is the beginning of a new story. It is an invitation to act and an opportunity to extend the invitation. These letters are the result of a callout from Culture Declares Emergency to the public to write a response to climate and ecological emergency.

This letter is the closest that Kafka came to setting down his autobiography. He was driven to write it by his father's opposition to his engagement with Julie Wohryzek. The marriage did not take place; the letter was not delivered.

If you like to use your drive time for education by audiobook, consider this book for widening and deepening your view of an event you studied briefly in school - the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Conquistador Voices, which relies more heavily than most works of this kind on first-person accounts, neither glamorizes nor condemns the conquistadors. Somewhat in the manner of a modern film documentary, it treats the so-called conquest as an historical event that’s worth learning about for its own sake, with most of the moralizing left to the listener.

In this moving collection, Shaun Usher gathers together some of the most powerful letters about love ever written. Whether inspired by love’s first blush or the recriminations at its ending, the regrets of unrequited feelings and the joys of passions known, Letters of Note: Love is essential listening for anyone with a heart.

When newly commissioned Royal Engineers Second Lieutenant Lawrence (Tommy) Bond was ordered overseas in February 1943, he left behind his wife Millicent and their two small children. They would not be reunited for more than two and a half years. How, in those pre-internet days, did they not only hold their marriage and their family together but plan their post-war future? The answer is, of course, that, like tens of thousands of others in that and every previous war, they wrote letters; literally hundreds of letters.

In Letters of Note: Cats, Shaun Usher collects together the most engaging missives that celebrate, eulogise, rail against and analyse the idiosyncratic ways of our feline companions. A star-studded cast of readers brings the letters to life, with contributions from Sanjeev Bhaskar, Louise Brealey, Simon Callow, Benedict Cumberbatch, Adrian Edmondson, Stephen Fry, Neil Gaiman, Danny Huston, Toby Jones, Ferdinand Kingsley, Helen McCrory, Natascha McElhone, Stephen Mangan, Miriam Margolyes, Clarke Peters, Juliet Stevenson, Mark Strong and Meera Syal.

In Letters of Note: Music, Shaun Usher brings together a riveting collection of letters by and about some of the musicians and music that enrich our lives. Wonderfully wide-ranging and illuminating, it will delight music lovers of all stripes. A star-studded cast of readers brings the letters to life, with contributions from Sanjeev Bhaskar, Louise Brealey, Simon Callow, Nick Cave, Crystal Clarke, Benedict Cumberbatch, Adrian Edmondson, Stephen Fry, Danny Huston, Toby Jones, Jude Law, Stephen Mangan, Miriam Margolyes, Clarke Peters, Juliet Stevenson and Mark Strong.

Née le 1er septembre 1940 à Lillebonne, en Seine-Maritime, Annie Ernaux a grandi à Yvetot, en Normandie, où ses parents tenaient un café-épicerie. Issue d'un milieu modeste, elle poursuit cependant des études supérieures et devient agrégée de lettres. Elle enseignera à Annecy, puis au Centre National d'Enseignement à Distance. Son premier roman, Les armoires vides (1974), met en scène Denise Lesur, sorte de double de l'auteur, héroïne confrontée à un avortement.