Hermione Lee sees Virginia Woolf afresh, in her historical setting & as a vital figure for our times. Her book moves freely between a richly detailed life-story & new attempts to understand crucial questions
- the impact of her childhood, the cause & nature of her madness & suicide, the truth about her marriage, her feelings for women, her prejudies & obsessions. This is a vivid, close-up portrait, returning to primary sources, & showing Woolf as occupying a distinct, even uneasy position with ' Bloomsbury'. It is a writer's life, illustrating how the concerns of her work arise & develop, & a political life, which establishes Woolf as a radically sceptical, subversive, courageous feminist. Incorporating newly discovered sources & illustrated with photos & drawings never used before, this biography is a revelation -informed, intelligent & moving.
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Hermione Lee sees Virginia Woolf afresh, in her historical setting & as a vital figure for our times. Her book moves freely between a richly detailed life-story & new attempts to understand crucial questions
- the impact of her childhood, the cause & nature of her madness & suicide, the truth about her marriage, her feelings for women, her prejudies & obsessions. This is a vivid, close-up portrait, returning to primary sources, & showing Woolf as occupying a distinct, even uneasy position with ' Bloomsbury'. It is a writer's life, illustrating how the concerns of her work arise & develop, & a political life, which establishes Woolf as a radically sceptical, subversive, courageous feminist. Incorporating newly discovered sources & illustrated with photos & drawings never used before, this biography is a revelation -informed, intelligent & moving.
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As the nephew of Viginia Woolf, Quentin Bell enjoyed an initimacy with his subject granted to few biographers. Originally published in two volumes in 1972, his acclaimed biography describes Virginia Woolf's family & childhood; her earliest writings; the formation of the Bloomsbury Group; her marriage to Leonard Woolf; the mental breakdown of the years 1912-15; the origins & growth of the Hogarth Press; her friendships with T. S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield & Vita Sackvill-West; her struggles to write THE WAVES & THE YEARS; & the political & personal distresses of her last decade. Compelling, moving & entertaining, Quentin Bell's biography was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize & the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize. It is a fitting tribute to a remarkable & complex woman, one of the greatest writers of the century. ...

In the summer of 2000, Rupert Murdoch is weeks away from realising his life's dream. Three years ago, he set out to challenge every media group in America & he failed. Now unexpectedly the last wave of the tech stockmarket boom has given him a second chance. Murdoch's gamble is to change the way the world communicates. His plan will establish himself as the most powerful media figure on the planet & put him in direct conflict with Bill Gates. With time running out, Murdoch must beat Gates to the Premier League television rights, then float the world's biggest satellite platform on Wall Street before the market falls over. Battling cancer, his family fraying while the empire falters, Murdoch will do whatever he must to make this final, greatest gamble work. ...

Justine only goes to the Virtual Reality Exhibition in the hope she might get lucky with fit hunk Alex. Instead she gets unlucky with an Alternative Reality machine & leaves the exhibition as Jake!

Once she's got over the shock, Justine starts to see the potential of her new situation. As Jake she has the opportunity to hang out with the lads & find out what really makes them tick. But when her real self develops a major crush on her virtual self, things start to get just a bit too complicated...

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Saints, sinners, & the mere mortals in between

What do you need to be a saint these days? Ambition, determination

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Fuelled by innumerable cigarettes, Martin Amis provides dazzling portraits of contemporaries & mentors alike: Larkin & Rushdie; Greene & Pritchett; Ballard & Burgess & Nicholson Baker; John Updike
- warts & all. Vigorously zipping across to Washington, he exposes the double-think of nuke-speak; in New Orleans the Republican Convention gets a going over. & then there's sport: he visits the world of darts & its disastrous attempt to clean itself up; dirty tricks in the world of chess; & some brisk but vicious poker with Al Alvarez & David Mamet. Sex without Madonna, expulsion from school, a Stones gig that should have been gagged, on set with Robocop or on court with Gabriela Sabatini, this is Martin Amis at his electric best.
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Fuelled by innumerable cigarettes, Martin Amis provides dazzling portraits of contemporaries & mentors alike: Larkin & Rushdie; Greene & Pritchett; Ballard & Burgess & Nicholson Baker; John Updike
- warts & all. Vigorously zipping across to Washington, he exposes the double-think of nuke-speak; in New Orleans the Republican Convention gets a going over. & then there's sport: he visits the world of darts & its disastrous attempt to clean itself up; dirty tricks in the world of chess; & some brisk but vicious poker with Al Alvarez & David Mamet. Sex without Madonna, expulsion from school, a Stones gig that should have been gagged, on set with Robocop or on court with Gabriela Sabatini, this is Martin Amis at his electric best.
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