Peter Davison

Christopher Hitchens

George Orwell

Collects the diaries of George Orwell, chronicling the major events of his life, including the rise of totalitarianism and the death of his first wife, that influenced his writing.

Diaries

Guy Adams

Jonathan Morris

James Goss

John Dorney

Howard Carter

Nicholas Briggs

Matt Fitton

The Legacy of Time

Doctor Who

George Orwell was a tireless and lively correspondent. He communicated with family members, friends and newspapers, figures such as Henry Miller, Cyril Connolly, Stephen Spender and Arthur Koestler, and strangers who wrote to him out of the blue. This carefully selected volume of his correspondence provides an eloquent narrative of Orwell's life, from his schooldays to his final illness. Orwell's letters afford a unique and fascinating view of his thoughts on matters both personal, political and much in between, from poltergeists, to girls' school songs and the art of playing croquet. In a note home to his mother from school, he reports having 'aufel fun after tea'; much later he writes of choosing a pseudonym and smuggling a copy of Ulysses into the country. We catch illuminating glimpses of his family life: his son Richard's developing teeth, the death of his wife Eileen and his own illness. His talent as a political writer comes to the fore in his descriptions of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, his opinions on bayonets, and on the chaining of German prisoners. And of course, letters to friends and his publisher chart the development and publication of some of the most famous novels in the English language, providing unparalleled insight into his views on his own work and that of his contemporaries. A Life in Letters features previously unpublished material, including letters which shed new light on a love that would haunt him for his whole life, as well as revealing the inspiration for some of his most famous characters. Presented for the first time in a dedicated volume, this selection of Orwell's letters is an indispensible companion to his diaries.

A Life in Letters

Edward Shils

Rolf Meyersohn

Media

Uses of Literacy

Orwell described his time at the BBC as "two wasted years," yet this volume continues to show how much he achieved. Among the educational series in this period were those devoted to new developments in science, modern English verse, great dramatists, and psychology. Orwell continued to broadcast to Malaya, and wrote and read news commentaries for Indonesia. He wrote over a dozen reviews, several essays, and a long study, The Detective Story, printed here for the first time in its original French version and an English translation. The volume concludes with the devastating report by an Intelligence Officer on the ineffectiveness of the BBC's broadcasting service to India, as well as Orwell's preparatory notes for The Quick & the Dead and The Last Man in Europe.

1943

Two Wasted Years

Peter Davison's Book of Alien Monsters

A Personal History

Half Remembered

His fans have spoken, but despite their requests, Peter Davison has gone ahead and written his autobiography anyway. It wasn’t the book they tried to stop – it was more like the book they didn’t want him to start. An aspiring singer-songwriter, once dubbed Woking’s answer to Bob Dylan (by his mum, who once heard a Bob Dylan song), Peter actually penned a hit for Dave Clark but soon swapped a life on the pub circuit to tread the boards. From colonial roots – his dad was Guyanese and his mother was born in India – the family settled in Surrey where Peter’s academic achievements were unspectacular – he even managed to fail CSE woodwork, eliciting a lament from his astonished teacher (‘All you have to do is recognise wood!’). Despite this, Peter has secured his place in science fiction history, becoming the fifth Doctor Who, although he nearly turned down the role. The Time Lord connection continued with the marriage of his daughter Georgia to Dr Who number ten, David Tennant. The artist formerly known as Peter Malcolm Gordon Moffett has starred in a number of television series including Love for Lydia, A Very Peculiar Practice, At Home with the Braithwaites and The Last Detective and became a national treasure for having his arm up a cow in his role as Tristan Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small. He was also in a Michael Winner movie... He made his first stage appearance with an amateur dramatic company, but The Byfleet Players’ loss was the West End’s gain as he now has a number of musicals to his name, including Legally Blonde, Chicago and Spamalot. Most recently he starred in the box office record-breaking Gypsy where he rubbed shoulders backstage with Dames Meryl Streep, Maggie Smith and Judi Dench – all asking him for directions to Imelda Staunton’s dressing room. One thing is for sure: of all the British screen and stage actors of the last fifty years, Peter Davison is certainly one of them and, within these pages, intrepid readers will at last have the dubious honour of sharing in his life and times – as he despairs over whether there truly ever can be life outside the box.

An Actor Despairs

Is There Life Outside The Box?

Character of Hamlet - Comedy of Hamlet - Relevance - Performance - Globe and Garrick versions - Olivier film, 1948 - Guilgud and Burton, 1934 and 1964 - Royal Shakespeare Company, 1965.

Text and Performance

Hamlet

The poetry of Peter Davison, of which this is the ninth volume, covers a broad range of subject matter. Musical and supple, with rewards for the eye, the ear, and the mind, concerned as much with country as with city matters, Davison's poems move past personality. They open questions of identity, explorations of the natural world, personal and religious conflict, and the mysterious workings of memory. His poetry, such as the long poem "The Great Ledge," is especially moving and powerful when read aloud. Though Davison is perhaps most widely known as an editor of poetry, his poems are neither academic nor exclusive. John Hall Wheelock wrote, after Davison's earliest book won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award in 1963, "With Peter Davison, feeling has come back into poetry." May Swenson, reviewing his second book, said: "There is a savage self-revelation and deep understanding of the hearts and minds of others." Alfred Kazin spoke of "the bone-sharp integrity of Davison's poetry, with its notable openness to difficulties, both personal and historic." When Davison's fourth book was published in Great Britain, John Fuller wrote, "What an assured talent is here revealed! It is a splendidly accessible body of work," and Robert Penn Warren concurred: "He has found a new depth and force...He has splendidly found himself...himself and his way." Vernon Young called him, in Parnassus, "one of the few poets of the first order writing in English today," and James Dickey said, Peter Davison's quiet, deep poems are among the best being written. Any thoughtful reader will be moved by his clear, unpretentious writing, his imaginative participation in life, his passionate balance." Jay Parini, in Virginia Quarterly, called Davison "one of America's finest contemporary poets, whose sharpness of vision and candor [leave] the reader breathless," and Phoebe Pettingell, in The New Leader, said, "Peter Davison's verse illuminates the commonplace with a mystical sense of the divine revealed in nature." This volume, combining Davison's most recent work with all the earlier poems he wishes to preserve, reveals a poet in his late middle age writing out of the midst of a life both active and contemplative, yet given over to poetry. He is a worthy heir to the passionate poetic tradition of Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost.

l957-l995

The Poems of Peter Davison

"Nineteen Eighty-Four" revealed George Orwell as one of the twentieth century's greatest mythmakers. While the totalitarian system that provoked him into writing it has since passed into oblivion, his harrowing cautionary tale of a man trapped in a political nightmare has had the opposite fate: its relevance and power to disturb our complacency seem to grow decade by decade. In Winston Smith's desperate struggle to free himself from an all-encompassing, malevolent state, Orwell zeroed in on tendencies apparent in every modern society, and made vivid the universal predicament of the individual.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Poems

The Great Ledge

Celebrates the ever-changing cycle of the seasons with a new collection of poetry exploring the topics of growing old, death, rebirth, memory, parents, and the literary life.

New Poems

Breathing Room

James Dickey, in reviewing Peter Davison's last book, Praying Wrong: New and Selected Poems, 1957-1984, said, ' Davison will not let things break him. His voice is his; he has earned it and can use it, and as a result is surely one of our better poets.' That sense of this poet's singularity is one of the great strengths of this new book; these deeply felt poems are uniquely his. From the almost unbearably moving 'Equinox 1980, ' which opens the book, to the delightful 'Peaches, ' The Great Ledge confirms the remark of Vernon Young that Davison is 'one of the few poets of the first order writing in English today.'

Theatre and Song

Stanley Wells

William Shakespeare

The volume contains Richard II, Henry IV Part One, henry IV Part Two, and Henry V. Each play possesses its own distinctive mood, tone and style, and together they inhabit the turbulent period of change from the usurpation of the throne of Richard II by Bolingbroke to the triumph of heroic kingship in Henry V.

Peter Davison

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