' There is a salubrious élan about much of the book, & the fact that it is a book, not just a selection the significant poems, amplifies our sense of what Stone really means to its contemporary readers'

Seamus Heaney

' What makes Robert Tracy



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In his most dazzling & brilliant novel since An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears tells the story of John Stone, financier ...

In his most dazzling & brilliant novel since An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears tells the story of John Stone, financier ...

In his most dazzling & brilliant novel since An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears tells the story of John Stone, financier ...

' People say I made the Stones. I didn't. They were there already. They only wanted exploiting. They were all bad boys when I found them. I just brought out the worst in them' Andrew Loog Oldham was nineteen years old when he discovered & became the manager & producer of an unknown band called The Rolling Stones. His radical vision transformed them from a starving south London blues combo to the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band That Ever Drew Breath, while the revolutionary strategies he used to get them there provoked both adulation & revulsion throughout British society & beyond. An ultra-hip mod, flash, brash & schooled in style by Mary Quant, he was a hustler of genius, addicted to scandal, notoriety & innovation. Brian Epstein had hired him to break The Beatles, but it was his thrilling work with the Stones that turned him into a legend & introduced sex & hype to an austere, conservative industry. A ferociously brilliant, near-mythical svengali-figure to many, a manipulative upper-class thug to others, he quickly established himself as the most mercurial & anarchic impresario of the decade. Stoned is Andrew Loog Oldham's astonishing story told in his own words, with contributions from Mary Quant, Pete Townshend, Vidal Sassoon, Nik Cohn, Lionel Bart & many other friends, colleagues & associates. ...

' People say I made the Stones. I didn't. They were there already. They only wanted exploiting. They were all bad boys when I found them. I just brought out the worst in them' Andrew Loog Oldham was nineteen years old when he discovered & became the manager & producer of an unknown band called The Rolling Stones. His radical vision transformed them from a starving south London blues combo to the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band That Ever Drew Breath, while the revolutionary strategies he used to get them there provoked both adulation & revulsion throughout British society & beyond. An ultra-hip mod, flash, brash & schooled in style by Mary Quant, he was a hustler of genius, addicted to scandal, notoriety & innovation. Brian Epstein had hired him to break The Beatles, but it was his thrilling work with the Stones that turned him into a legend & introduced sex & hype to an austere, conservative industry. A ferociously brilliant, near-mythical svengali-figure to many, a manipulative upper-class thug to others, he quickly established himself as the most mercurial & anarchic impresario of the decade. Stoned is Andrew Loog Oldham's astonishing story told in his own words, with contributions from Mary Quant, Pete Townshend, Vidal Sassoon, Nik Cohn, Lionel Bart & many other friends, colleagues & associates. ...

The son of a Midwestern farmer, William Stoner comes to the University of Missouri in 1910 to study agriculture. He had intended to return home & take over his father's farm
- but instead, inspired by the professor of English literature, he remains at the university to teach. Stoner tells of love & conflict, passion & responsibility against the backdrop of academic life in the early 20th century. Powerfully & movingly written, Stoner is a study of a dedicated man relentlessly committed to honesty in himself & in his dealings with others. The truth of one man's unassuming life can rarely have been captured with such skill & beauty.
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