Profile Books The Uncommon Reader Bennett Alan

In 1974, the homeless Miss Shepherd moved her broken down van into Alan Bennett's garden. Deeply eccentric and stubborn to her bones, Miss Shepherd was not an easy tenant. And Bennett, despite inviting her in the first place, was a reluctant landlord. And yet she lived there for fifteen years • This account of those years was first published in 1989 in the London Review of Books. The play premiered in 1999, directed by Nicholas Hytner and starring Dame Maggie Smith, who reprise their roles in this new film adaptation. Shot on location at Bennett's house, Alex Jennings plays the author, alongside household names including Frances de la Tour, Jim Broadbent and Dominic Cooper

A short history of one of Ancient Britain's most enigmatic civilisations • Who were the Celts? Were they a people, a civilisation, an empire, or a fiction of historical imagination? They flit as ghosts through Europe's ancient past, purported ancestors of the Irish, Welsh, Scottish, Cornish and Bretons • Yet they have never been identified with any one land, or with any one history or language • Simon Jenkins argues compellingly that the 'Celts' is a misleading concept, bundling together quite distinct peoples. The word keltoi first appears in Greek, applied generally to aliens or 'barbarians' - and theories of Celticism continue to fuel many of the prejudices and misconceptions that divide the British Isles to this day • Fascinating and increasingly relevant, who the Celts were - or weren't - goes to the heart of the ongoing argument over the future of a dis-United Kingdom

Look out of your window, walk down a country path or go to the beach in Great Britain, and you are sure to see many wild species that you can take home and eat. From dandelions in spring to sloe berries in autumn, via wild garlic, samphire, chanterelles and even grasshoppers, our countryside is full of edible delights in any season • John Wright is the country's foremost expert in foraging and brings decades of experience, including as forager at the River Cottage, to this seasonal guide. Month by month, he shows us what species can be found and where, how to identify them, and how to store, use and cook them. You'll learn the stories behind the Latin names, the best way to tap a Birch tree, and how to fry an ant, make rosehip syrup and cook a hop omelette

From the best-selling author of Cosmopolitanism comes this revealing exploration of how the collective identities that shape our polarised world are riddled with contradiction • We often think identity is personal. But the identities that shape the world, our struggles, and our hopes, are social ones, shared with countless others. Our sense of self is shaped by our family, but also by affiliations that spread out from there, like our nationality, culture, class, race and religion • Taking these broad categories as a starting point, Professor Appiah challenges our assumptions about how identity works. In eloquent and lively chapters, he weaves personal anecdote with historical, cultural and literary example to explore the entanglements within the stories we tell ourselves

По мнению Вирджинии Вулф, обыкновенный читатель – это человек, который читает «в свое удовольствие, а не ради того чтобы поделиться знаниями или уличить собратьев в неправильном суждении». Во второй том сборника «Обыкновенный читатель» вошли эссе, посвященные произведениям Джона Донна, Кристины Россетти и Мэри Уолстонкрафт, а также многих других поэтов и писателей. Сборник станет отличным подарком для поклонников творчества писательницы • Книга на английском языке • 'He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others' • So Virginia Woolf described the 'common reader' for whom she wrote her second series of essays. Here she turns her brilliant eye on novels and poetry from John Donne to Christina Rossetti and Mary Wollstonecraft as well as many others

«Обыкновенный читатель» – это сборник эссе английской писательницы Вирджинии Вулф, посвященных одним из самых известных романистов и драматургов – от древних греков до Джейн Остен и многих других • Вирджиния Вулф была лишена образовательных привилегий, которыми обладали ее современники-мужчины, и как никто другой была способна понять проблемы «обыкновенных читателей» своего времени. Ее эссе охватывают и средневековую Англию, и царскую Россию, и елизаветинскую и викторианскую эпохи, и других эссеистов начала XX века. В первый том «Обыкновенного читателя» вошли эссе о Джейн Остен, Джордж Элиот, Нэнси Митфорд, Джозефе Конраде, Мишеле де Монтене, Даниэле Дефо и многих других выдающихся писателях • Книга на английском языке • Discover Virginia Woolf’s informative and erudite critical essays on some of the key novelists and dramatists of the canon – from the ancient Greeks to Jane Austen and beyond

A concise collection of Alan Bennett's latest diaries - and more • Following the phenomenally successful Writing Home and Untold Stories, Keeping On Keeping On contains Bennett's diaries 2005 to 2015, reflecting on a decade that saw four premieres at the National Theatre, a West End double-bill transfer, and the films of The History Boys and The Lady in the Van. There's a provocative sermon against private education, a passionate defence of the public library, a radio play and a screenplay, introductions and eulogies • An unforgettable record of life according to the inimitable Alan Bennett

Here are Alan Bennett's four hugely admired, triumphantly reviewed and bestselling stories, brought together in one book for the first time • Like everything Bennett does, these stories are playful, witty and painfully observant of ordinary people's foibles. They all have brilliant twists, are immensely entertaining and highly moral. And all are modern classics • The Laying on of Hands • The painfully observant account of a memorial service for a masseur to the famous • The Clothes They Stood Up In • The comic tale of an elderly couple's trials after their flat is stripped completely bare • Father! Father! Burning Bright • The savage satire on the family of a dying man who rules over them from his hospital bed • The Lady in the Van • The true story of the eccentric old woman who is invited to live in a homeowner's front garden

Unexpected tales from the master of short fiction • The Shielding of Mrs Forbes • Graham Forbes is a disappointment to his mother, who thinks that if he must have a wife, he should have done better. Though her own husband isn't all that satisfactory either. Still, this is Alan Bennett, so what is happening in the bedroom (and in lots of other places too) is altogether more startling, perhaps shocking, and ultimately more true to people's predilections • The Greening of Mrs Donaldson • Mrs Donaldson is a conventional middle-class woman beached on the shores of widowhood after a marriage that had been much like many others: happy to begin with, then satisfactory and finally dull. But when she decides to take in two lodgers, her mundane life becomes much more stimulating

Following up 2016's hit Go Figure and 2018's Sunday Times bestseller Seriously Curious, another collection of astonishing bite-sized explainers from the Economist • The world can be an amazing place if you know the right questions to ask • How did carrots become orange? What's stopping us from having a four-day week? How can we remove all the broken bits of satellite from orbit? If everything is so terrible, why is the global suicide rate falling? • The keen minds of the Economist love to look beyond everyday appearances to find out what really makes things tick. In this latest collection of The Economist Explains, they have gathered together the juiciest fruits of their never-ending quest for answers. For an uncommonly interesting read, take a peek at some Uncommon Knowledge - and pass it on! The world only gets more amazing when discoveries are shared

Over two decades ago we set up Sort of Books to help our friend, the some-time Genesis drummer Chris Stewart, bring his sunlit stories of life on a Spanish mountain farm to print. Ever the optimist, Chris hoped to earn enough money to buy a second-hand tractor for his farm. He got his tractor, as the book spent a year on the Sunday Times Top 10 charts and went on to sell a million and a half copies • His story is a classic. A dreamer and an itinerant sheep shearer, he moves with his wife Ana to a mountain farm in Las Alpujarras, an oddball region in the south of Spain. Misadventures gleefully unfold as Chris discovers that the owner had no intention of leaving. He meets their neighbours, an engaging mix of farmers, shepherds and New Age travellers, and their daughter Chloe is born, linking them irrevocably to their new life

China is one of the oldest states in the world. It achieved its approximate current borders with the Ascendancy of the Yuan dynasty in the 13th century, and despite the passing of one Imperial dynasty to the next, it has maintained them for the eight centuries since. Even the European colonial powers at the height of their power could not move past coastal enclaves. Thus, China remained China through the Ming, the Qing, the Republic, the Occupation, and Communism • But, despite the desires of some of the most powerful people in the Great State through the ages, China has never been alone in the world. It has had to contend with invaders from the steppe and the challenges posed by foreign traders and imperialists. Indeed, its rulers for the majority of the last eight centuries have not been Chinese