Vintage books The Bayeux Tapestry. The Life Story of a Masterpiece Hicks Carola

One autumn evening, not long after ending a stint as a pop music critic, Eric Siblin attended a recital of Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites - and fell deeply in love. So began a quest that would unravel three centuries of mystery, intrigue, history, politics, and passion. The Cello Suites weaves together three dramatic narratives: the first features Bach and the missing manuscript of the suites; the next, the legendary Spanish Catalan cellist Pablo Casals and his historic discovery of the music; and finally, Eric Siblin's own infatuation • From the back streets of Barcelona to archives, festivals, and conferences, and even to cello lessons, Siblin attempts to unravel the enigmas that continue to haunt this mesmerisingly beautiful music

In 1845, a Reading bookseller named John Snare came across the dirt-blackened portrait of a prince at a country house auction. Suspecting that it might be a long-lost Velazquez, he bought the picture and set out to discover its strange history - a quest that led from fame to ruin and exile • Fusing detection and biography, this book shows how and why great works of art can affect us, even to the point of mania. And on the trail of John Snare, Cumming makes a surprising discovery of her own. But most movingly, The Vanishing Man is an eloquent and passionate homage to the Spanish master Velazquez, bringing us closer to the creation and appreciation of his works than ever before

Нет ничего прекраснее английского загородного дома летом. И никогда еще не было такого лета, как то бабье лето между двумя мировыми войнами, периода плавного упадка, когда солнце медленно садилось над Британской империей, а тени удлинялись на лужайках тысяч величественных домов • Реальная жизнь в загородном доме в 1920-1930-е годы не всегда была такой солнечной. То богатые, то обычные, благородные и порочные, но их тени становились все темнее. В «Длинных выходных» Адриан Тиннисвуд раскрывает правду о полузабытом мире, окутанном мифами и скрытом за жесткими губами и улыбками кинозвезды • Опираясь на сотни мемуаров, неопубликованные письма и дневники, на свидетельства очевидцев подпоясанных графов, несчастных наследниц и задиристых дворецких, The Long Weekend дает голос людям, населяющим этот мир, и показывает, как образ загородного дома тщательно охранялся обитателями над и под лестницей, и что реальность оказалась намного интереснее мечты

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Free Love and Late in the Day, discover a story of two lives stretched between two cities, two stories bound by the London train • Paul sets out in search of his eldest daughter Pia, who has gone missing somewhere in London. At first he thinks he wants to rescue her, but as time passes he is drawn deeper into the excitements of the capital, and a life lived in jeopardy, he forgets his own way home • In the opposite direction, Cora is moving back to Cardiff, to the house she inherited from her parents. She is escaping her marriage and the disappointments of her London life. And then she receives a telephone call to say that her husband has disappeared • 'She has such great psychological insights into human beings, which is rare

The Ruppert Mundys, once the greatest baseball team in America, are now in a terminal decline, their line-up filled with a disreputable assortment of old men, drunks and even amputees. Around them baseball itself seems to be collapsing, brought down by a bizarre mixture of criminality, stupidity, and The Great Communist Conspiracy, aimed at the very heart of the American way of life • In this hilarious and wonderfully eccentric novel Philip Roth turns his attention to one of the most beloved of all American rituals: baseball. Players, tycoons and the paying public are all targets as Roth satirises the dense tapestry of myths and legends that have grown up around The Great American Pastime

The Bridge on the River Kwai tells the story of three POWs who endure the hell of the Japanese camps on the Burma-Siam railway - Colonel Nicholson, a man prepared to sacrifice his life but not his dignity; Major Warden, a modest hero, saboteur and deadly killer; Commander Shears, who escaped from hell but was sent back • Ordered by the Japanese to build a bridge, the Colonel refuses, as it is against regulations for officers to work with other ranks. The Japanese give way but, to prove a point of British superiority, construction of the bridge goes ahead - at great cost to the men under Nicholson's command

The world's finest living short story writer turns to her family for inspiration; and what follows is a fictionalised, brilliantly imagined version of the past. From her ancestors' view from Edinburgh's Castle Rock in the eighteenth century to her parents' thwarted ambitions in Ontario, and her own awakening in 1950s Canada, Munro effortlessly weaves fact and myth to create an epic story of past and present, proving that fiction has much to tell us about life

The story of modern Australia begins in eighteenth-century Britain, where people were hanged for petty offences but crime was rife, and the gaols were bursting. From this situation was born the Sydney experiment, with criminals perceived to be damaging British society transported to Sydney, an 'open air prison with walls 14,000 miles thick' • Eleven ships were dispatched in 1781, and arrived in Australia after eight hellish months at sea. Tom Keneally describes the first four years of the 'thief colony' and how, despite the escapes, the floggings, the murders and the rebellions, it survived against the odds to create a culture which would never have been tolerated in its homeland but which, in Australia, became part of the identity of a new and audacious nation

The Bass Rock has for centuries watched over the lives that pass under its shadow on the Scottish mainland. And across the centuries the fates of three women are linked: to this place, to each other • In the early 1700s, Sarah, accused of being a witch, flees for her life • In the aftermath of the Second World War, Ruth navigates a new house, a new husband and the strange waters of the local community • Six decades later, the house stands empty. Viv, mourning the death of her father, catalogues Ruth's belongings and discovers her place in the past - and perhaps a way forward • Each woman's choices are circumscribed by the men in their lives. But in sisterhood there is the hope of survival and new life

The Leopard is a modern classic which tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution • 'There is a great feeling of opulence, decay, love and death about it' Rick Stein • In the spring of 1860, Fabrizio, the charismatic Prince of Salina, still rules over thousands of acres and hundreds of people, including his own numerous family, in mingled splendour and squalor. Then comes Garibaldi's landing in Sicily and the Prince must decide whether to resist the forces of change or come to terms with them • 'Every once in a while, like certain golden moments of happiness, infinitely memorable, one stumbles on a book or a writer, and the impact is like an indelible mark

The Complete Stories gathers together Anita Desai's short story collections Diamond Dust and Games at Twilight and the novellas of The Artist of Disappearance, with a new preface from the author. From the icy suburbs of Canada to the overcrowded B&Bs of Cornwall, via the hill towns and cities of India, Anita Desai observes human behaviour unflinchingly but not unkindly, recognising our ordinariness and our strangeness, and capturing both with quiet precision

The prequel to the bestselling Suite Francaise • Paris 1918, Bernard Jacquelain returns from the trenches a changed man • The city is a whirl of decadence and corruption and he embarks on a life of parties and shady business dealings, as well as an illicit affair • But as another war threatens, everything around him starts to crumble, and the future for him and for France suddenly looks dangerously uncertain