Download or read book The Mad Boy Lord Berners My Grandmother and Me written by Sofka Zinovieff and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2015-03-31 with total page 665 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like The Bolter and Portrait of a Marriage, this beguiling, heady tale of a scandalous ménage à trois among England's upper classes combines memoir and biography to re-create an unforgettably decadent world. Among the glittering stars of British society, Sofka Zinovieff's grandparents lived and loved with abandon. Robert Heber-Percy was a dashing young man who would rather have a drink than open a book, so his involvement with Jennifer Fry, a gorgeous socialite famous for her style and charm, was not surprising. But by the time Robert met and married Jennifer, he had already been involved with a man—Gerald, Lord Berners—for more than a decade. Stout, eccentric and significantly older, Gerald was a composer, writer and aesthete—a creative aristocrat most at home in the company of the era's best and brightest minds. He also owned one of Britain's loveliest stately homes, Faringdon House, in Oxfordshire, which under his stewardship became a beacon of sybaritic beauty. Robert and Gerald made an unlikely couple, especially because they lived together at Faringdon House when homosexuality was illegal. And then a pregnant Jennifer moved into Faringdon in 1942, creating a formidable ménage à trois. In this gorgeous, entertaining narrative of bohemian aristocracy, Sofka Zinovieff probes the mysteries of her grandparents and the third man in their marriage: Gerald, the complex and talented heir to a legendary house, its walls lined with priceless art and its gardens roamed by a bevy of doves, where he entertained everyone from Igor Stravinsky to Gertrude Stein. What brought Robert and Jennifer together under his roof, and why did Jennifer stay—and marry Robert? Blending memoir and biography in her quest to lay old ghosts to rest, Zinovieff pieces together the complicated reality behind the scandals of revelry and sexuality. The resulting story, defined by keen insight, deep affection and marvelous wit, captures the glory and indulgence of the age, and explores the many ways in which we have the capacity to love.
Download or read book Putney written by Sofka Zinovieff and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-08-21 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spirit of Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal and Tom Perrotta’s Mrs. Fletcher, an explosive and thought-provoking novel about the far-reaching repercussions of an illicit relationship between a young girl and a man twenty years her senior. A rising star in the London arts scene of the early 1970s, gifted composer Ralph Boyd is approached by renowned novelist Edmund Greenslay to score a stage adaptation of his most famous work. Welcomed into Greenslay’s sprawling bohemian house in Putney, an artistic and prosperous district in southwest London, the musical wunderkind is introduced to Edmund’s activist wife Ellie, his aloof son Theo, and his nine-year old daughter Daphne, who quickly becomes Ralph’s muse. Ralph showers Daphne with tokens of his affection—clandestine gifts and secret notes. In a home that is exciting but often lonely, Daphne finds Ralph to be a dazzling companion, and while he worships her, he doesn't touch her. Their bond remains strong even after Ralph becomes a husband and father. But in the summer of 1976, when Ralph accompanies thirteen-year-old Daphne alone to meet her parents in Greece, their relationship intensifies irrevocably. One person knows of their passionate trysts: Daphne’s best friend Jane, whose awe of the intoxicating Greenslay family ensures her silence. Forty years later Daphne is back in London. After years lost to decadence and drug abuse, she is struggling to create a normal, stable life for herself and her adolescent daughter. When circumstances bring her back in touch with her long-lost friend, Jane, their reunion inevitably turns to Ralph, now a world-famous musician also living in the city. Daphne’s recollections of her childhood and her growing anxiety over her own daughter eventually lead to an explosive realization that propels her to confront Ralph and their years together. Told from three diverse viewpoints—victim, perpetrator, and witness—Putney is a subtle and powerful novel about consent, agency, and what we tell ourselves to justify what we do, and what others do to us.
Download or read book The House on Paradise Street written by Sofka Zinovieff and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2008 Antigone Perifanis returns to her old family home in Athens after 60 years in exile. She has come to attend the funeral of her only son, Nikitas, who was born in prison, and whom she has not seen since she left him as a baby. At the same time, Nikitas’s English widow Maud – disturbed by her husband’s strange behaviour in the days before his death – starts to investigate his complicated past. She soon finds herself reigniting a bitter family feud, and discovers a heartbreaking story of a young mother caught up in the political tides of the Greek Civil War, forced to make a terrible decision that will blight not only her life but that of future generations...
Download or read book Red Princess written by Sofka Zinovieff and published by Granta Books (UK). This book was released on 2008 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The remarkable adventures of a Russian princess set against the tumult of the twentieth century.
Download or read book Collected Tales and Fantasies of Lord Berners written by Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson Baron Berners and published by Turtle Point Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legendary eccentric English writer (1883-1950) presents an unforgettable cast of characters starring in a collection of gem-like works of short fiction.
Download or read book Eurydice Street written by Sofka Zinovieff and published by Granta Books (Uk). This book was released on 2004 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fluid, alluring memoir recounting a family's move to Athens and their adaption to a new culture.
Download or read book The Rattle Bag written by Seamus Heaney and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2005-03-17 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of more than 400 hundred poems from all around the world.
Download or read book Obsessed by a Dream written by Aashild Sørheim and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-01-01 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Open Access biography chronicles the life and achievements of the Norwegian engineer and physicist Rolf Widerøe. Readers who meet him in the pages of this book will wonder why he isn't better known. The first of Widerøe's many pioneering contributions in the field of accelerator physics was the betatron. He later went on to build the first radiation therapy machine, an advance that would eventually revolutionize cancer treatment. Hospitals worldwide installed his machine, and today's modern radiation treatment equipment is based on his inventions. Widerøe's story also includes a fair share of drama, particularly during World War II when both Germans and the Allies vied for his collaboration. Widerøe held leading positions in multinational industry groups and was one of the consultants for building the world's largest nuclear laboratory, CERN, in Switzerland. He gained over 200 patents, received several honorary doctorates and a number of international awards. The author, a professional writer and maker of TV documentaries, has gained access to hitherto restricted archives in several countries, which provided a wealth of new material and insights, in particular in relation to the war years. She tells here a gripping and illuminating story.
Download or read book None Other Gods written by Robert Hugh Benson and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Penguin Readers Level 5 The Pursuit of Love ELT Graded Reader written by Nancy Mitford and published by Random House. This book was released on 2023-02-02 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series. Please note that the eBook edition does NOT include access to the audio edition and digital book. Written for learners of English as a foreign language, each title includes carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers' story comprehension and develop vocabulary. The Pursuit of Love, a Level 5 Reader, is B1 in the CEFR framework. The text is made up of sentences with up to four clauses, introducing present perfect continuous, past perfect, reported speech and second conditional. It is well supported by illustrations, which appear regularly. The Pursuit of Love is about the love adventures of Fanny Logan's cousin, Linda Radlett, who is beautiful, brave and fun. Linda finally finds love and seems happy, but this is the 1930s and her country will soon go to war with Germany. What will happen to Linda then? Visit the Penguin Readers website Register to access online resources including tests, worksheets and answer keys. Exclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock a digital book and audio edition (not available with the eBook).
Download or read book Time Was Soft There written by Jeremy Mercer and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2006-09-19 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Some bookstores are filled with stories both inside and outside the bindings. These are places of sanctuary, even redemption---and Jeremy Mercer has found both amid the stacks of Shakespeare & Co." ---Paul Collins, author of Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books In a small square on the left bank of the Seine, the door to a green-fronted bookshop beckoned. . . . With gangsters on his tail and his meager savings in hand, crime reporter Jeremy Mercer fled Canada in 1999 and ended up in Paris. Broke and almost homeless, he found himself invited to a tea party amongst the riffraff of the timeless Left Bank fantasy known as Shakespeare & Co. In its present incarnation, Shakespeare & Co. has become a destination for writers and readers the world over, trying to reclaim the lost world of literary Paris in the 1920s. Having been inspired by Sylvia Beach's original store, the present owner, George Whitman, invites writers who are down and out in Paris to live and dream amid the bookshelves in return for work. Jeremy Mercer tumbled into this literary rabbit hole and found a life of camaraderie with the other eccentric residents, and became, for a time, George Whitman's confidante and right-hand man. Time Was Soft There is one of the great stories of bohemian Paris and recalls the work of many writers who were bewitched by the City of Light in their youth. Jeremy's comrades include Simon, the eccentric British poet who refuses to give up his bed in the antiquarian book room, beautiful blonde Pia, who contributes the elegant spirit of Parisian couture to the store, the handsome American Kurt, who flirts with beautiful women looking for copies of Tropic of Cancer, and George himself, the man who holds the key to it all. As Time Was Soft There winds in and around the streets of Paris, the staff fall in and out of love, straighten bookshelves, host tea parties, drink in the more down-at-the-heels cafés, sell a few books, and help George find a way to keep his endangered bookstore open. Spend a few days with Jeremy Mercer at 37 Rue de la Bucherie, and discover the bohemian world of Paris that still bustles in the shadow of Notre Dame. "Jeremy Mercer has captured Shakespeare & Co. and its complicated owner, George Whitman, with remarkable insight. Time Was Soft There is a charming memoir about living in Whitman's Shakespeare & Co. and the strange, broken, lost, and occasionally talented, eccentrics and residents of this Tumblewood Hotel." ---Noel Riley Fitch, author of Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties & Thirties "There does seem to be something about the odd ducks that work at bookstores. Jeremy Mercer has captured the story of a wonderful, unique store that could only be born out of a love for books and the written word." --- Liz Schlegel, the Book Revue bookshop, Huntington, New York
Download or read book A Collection of Familiar Quotations written by John Bartlett and published by . This book was released on 1856 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Lord Berners written by Sam Leith and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2012-10-04 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here lies Lord Berners/One of life's learners, Thanks be to the Lord/He was never bored. So reads the epitaph on the gravestone of Lord Berners. In its witty way, it hints at his range of accomplishment. He was a composer (admired by Stravinsky), writer, painter, aesthete and eccentric, indeed in Mark Amory's words 'The Last Eccentric', famously dyeing the pigeons at his house, Faringdon, in vibrant colours, and, for a time, having a giraffe as a pet and tea companion. His literary and artistic milieu was glittering: Stravinsky, Picasso, Salvador Dali, Siegfried Sassoon, John Betjeman, the Sitwells, Harold Nicolson, Frederick Ashton and Gertrude Stein - they all belonged to it. In fiction, he was famously portrayed as Lord Merlin in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love. 'As social history and a chronicle of a mad-cap English eccentric this long awaited, much needed and beautifully written book is, to use a simple cliché, indispensable.' Alexander Waugh, Literary Review 'In Amory, this engaging character has found the ideal biographer. Getting the exact measure of its subject throughout, written in a dry, wittily ironic prose ... the biography offers of sheer bliss.' Gilbert Adair, Sunday Times
Download or read book The Romany Rye written by George Henry Borrow and published by . This book was released on 1858 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Sorcery Club written by Elliott O'Donnell and published by IndyPublish.com. This book was released on 1912 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Complete Short Stories written by Ronald Firbank and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best known for his witty, ingenious novels, Ronald Firbank began his literary apprenticeship as a writer of short stories (or "contes," as he called them), all of which are gathered here for the first time. They were written at a time when the literature of the decadent 1890s was maturing into the modernism of the early twentieth century, a growth reflected here as Firbank works through a variety of styles, genres, and voices, both imitating and subverting the literary models of his day. Written between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two, they are, properly speaking, his juvenilia, and are not to be judged by the standards of his mature work. All the seeds of the later work, however, were planted in this early work, and it is instructive and entertaining to observe Firbank as he tends his literary garden.Ranging from impressionistic prose poems and allegories to sardonic vignettes of high-society life, they all display Firbank's satiric eye and stylistic flair. Only a few of the stories were published commercially; most have been available only in expensive, limited editions, and four stories are published here for the first time from Firbank's manuscripts. Included in a appendix are two other pieces Firbank wrote at the same age--the poem "The Wind & the Roses" and his only venture into art criticism, "An Early Flemish Painter"--and detailed textual notes that give the publishing history for all the works.
Download or read book First Childhood written by Lord Berners and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Childhood by Lord Berners is an autobiographical account of the author's early years. Berners, a talented composer, artist, and writer, recalls his childhood with an honest and poignant tone. His recollections are filled with touching anecdotes, providing readers with insight into the formative experiences that shaped this multifaceted individual.
