From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War, to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, le Carré has always written from the heart of modern times. In this, his first memoir, le Carré is as funny as he is incisive, reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues...

"A vivid, deeply researched account of the tumultuous life of one of the twentieth century's greatest novelists, the author of The End of the Affair. Graham Greene lived a life as strange and compelling as those in his brilliant novels. A journalist and MI6 officer, Greene sought out the inner narratives of war and politics across the world; he witnessed the Second World War, the Vietnam War, the Mau Mau Rebellion, the rise of Fidel Castro, and the...

Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was “just” an ordinary housewife, when clearly she wasn’t? Her life is fascinating for its mysteries and its passions and, as Lucy Worsley says, "She was thrillingly, scintillatingly modern." She went surfing in Hawaii, she loved fast cars, and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology, which helped her through devastating mental illness. So why—despite all the...

"Virginia Woolf was one of the twentieth century's greatest writers and creative thinkers. This beautifully illustrated biography celebrates her life and work, featuring wonderful details - from Woolf's nickname for her husband, to how slowly her first novel sold, to her involvement in a revolutionary group of artists and writers - paired with intimate excepts from Woolf's personal letters and diaries. Virginia Woolf: An Illustrated Biography reveals...

Recounts the author's life-long obsession with Graham Greene's writings on the experiences of being an outsider, which informed both the author's travels and his private explorations of his relationship with his elusive father.

"Iris Murdoch's life - like her books - was full of extraordinary passions and profound relationships with some of the most inspiring and influential thinkers, artists, writers and poets of her time. During the war she pondered Aldous Huxley's doctrine that, for a writer, 'it is not what one has experienced but what one does with what one has experienced that matters, ' and she later wrote that the person who might help her better herself 'must not...

Traces the life and achievements of classic novelist Daphne du Maurier, sharing creative insights into the master writer's life at different ages and her enduring influence in literature.