In 1953 at the age of 41 Kathleen Ferrier Englands greatest lyric contralto lost her courageous battle with breast cancer. Her huge appeal to a wide audience
- in concerts on records on the radio & in the opera house
- has ensured her name endures to this day despite a career which lasted barely ten years. In just half that time this former telephone exchange operator was singing on stage at Covent Garden before royalty at private parties & at New Yorks Carnegie Hall. This collection of letters & twelve years of her personal diaries was first published by Boydell Press in 2003. Here an enlarged paperback edition contains a new chapter revealing her growing importance to the BBC an additional 90 letters together with much revised material & a selection of moving tributes. Published to mark the centenary of her birth in 1912 the book of more than 400 letters provides a vivid picture of a life which illuminated the war & post-war years of austerity & hardship. Kathleen Ferrier was surely fun to know. Her personality was a mix of extreme modesty & self-determined ambition topped with a mischievously blunt sense of earthy Lancastrian humour. She is known for her glorious voice but through the pages of these fascinating letters & diaries we get to meet the real person. DR CHRISTOPHER FIFIELD is a conductor music historian lecturer & broadcaster. He is the biographer of Max Bruch (Boydell Press 2005) & conductor Hans Richter & the author of a history of the music agents Ibbs & Tillett.

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Nothing in the papers not the most vivid & heart-rending descriptions have made me realise war like your letters Vera Brittain to Roland Leighton 17 April 1915. This selection of letters written between 1913 & 1918 between Vera Brittain & four young men
- her fiance Roland Leighton her brother Edward & their close friends Victor Richardson & Geoffrey Thurlow present a remarkable & profoundly moving portrait of five young people caught up in the cataclysm of total war. Roland Monseigneur is the leader & his letters most clearly trace the path leading from idealism to disillusionment. Edward Immaculate of the Trenches was orderly & controlled down even to his attire. Geoffrey the non-militarist at heart had not rushed to enlist but put aside his objections to the war for patriotisms sake. Victor on the other hand possessed a very sweet character & was known as Father Confessor. An important historical testimony telling a powerful story of idealism disillusionment & personal tragedy.
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*A very funny book indeed.
- Michael Palin * It made me laugh with wicked glee.
- Sunday Express A hilarious collection of witty

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It was if they came from another planet reflected one Suffolk farm worker remembering the arrival of the Yanks in 1944. They took the place by storm! recalled an old lady
- with a twinkle in her eye because more than the place it was the young women they took. The tall courteous big-spending strangers often became the first love & sometimes the love of a life. In Over Here" Jack Rosenthal tells the story of one such romance particularly significant to him as he would become its offspring. Using letters preserved by his mother Rosenthal reconstructs the relationship from the day of its beginning in March 1944 to its culmination in marriage in July 1945. With the stories behind linked weddings the narrative ranges from a dramatic escape after the fall of Hong Kong to the nightmares of the Arctic convoys & is supported by lively insights into the histories & social circumstances of the four families involved."
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Letters from Burma"
- an unforgettable collection from the Nobel Peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. In these astonishing
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This revised edition of Tolkiens famous illustrated letters from Father Christmas to his children

Includes::

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The first ever B-format edition of Tolkiens complete Father Christmas letters including a new introduction & rare archive materials. Every December an envelope bearing a stamp from the North Pole would arrive for J.R.R. Tolkiens children. Inside would be a letter in strange spidery handwriting & a beautiful coloured drawing or some sketches. The letters were from Father Christmas. They told wonderful tales of life at the North Pole: how all the reindeer got loose & scattered presents all over the place; how the accident-prone Polar Bear climbed the North Pole & fell through the roof of Father Christmass house into the dining-room; how he broke the Moon into four pieces & made the Man in it fall into the back garden; how there were wars with the troublesome horde of goblins who lived in the caves beneath the house! Sometimes the Polar Bear would scrawl a note & sometimes Ilbereth the Elf would write in his elegant flowing script adding yet more life & humour to the stories. No reader young or old can fail to be charmed by the inventiveness & authenticity of Tolkiens Letters from Father Christmas. To mark ten years since the publication of the complete edition of Tolkiens Letters from Father Christmas in 1999 this new edition is the first time the letters have been available in B format. ...

Two people. An unforgettable moment. One extraordinary love story. In Chicago Illinois two people are about to lock eyes across a crowded dance floor. The following moment will spark the love story of a lifetime! The year is 1944 & America has just entered the war. Young men & women are being drafted in to fight with their allies on Europes distant shores. Throughout America sweethearts are saying their last goodbyes. Liz Stephens is already betrothed to budding US politician Dalton Harris but when she meets GI Morgan Mc Clain she feels an instant & intense connection. But then he dances with her flirtatious best friend Betty & Liz is left feeling like just another soldiers fancy. Betty is mesmerized by Morgan & begs Liz to write letters for her to post to him overseas. Liz reluctantly agrees in the end anxious to retain a connection to him. As the last searing days of World War II loom a correspondence begins that will alter the course of their lives forever. ...

Hernan Cortess Cartas de Relacion written over a seven-year period to Charles V of Spain provide an extraordinary narrative account of the conquest of Mexico from the founding of the coastal town of Veracruz until Cortess journey to Honduras in 1525. Pagdens English translation has been prepared from a close examination of the earliest surviving manuscript & of the first printed editions & he also provides a new introduction offering a bold & innovative interpretation of the nature of the conquest & Cortess involvement in it. J. H. Elliots introductory essay explains Cortess conflicts with the Crown & with Diego Velazquez the governor of Cuba. ...

18 June 1940 Oh my Margaret You have no secrets from me but I've kept a part of myself locked away always. A part of me that started scratching at the wall the day this other war started that started howling to get out right now the day you ran off to meet your soldier. I should have told you should've taught you to steel your heart. Taught you that a letter isn't always just a letter. Words on the page can drench the sould. If only you knew. Mother Elspeth is fond of saying to her daughter that 'the first volume of my life is out of print'. But when a bomb hits an Edinburgh street & Margaret finds her mother crouched in the ruins of her bedroom pulling armfuls of yellowed letters onto her lap the past Elspeth has kept so carefully locked away is out in the open. The next day Elspeth disappears. Left alone with the letters Margaret discovers a mother she never knew existed: a poet living on the Isle of Skye who in 1912 answered a fan letter from an impetuous young man in Illinois. Without having to worry about appearances or expectations Elspeth & Davey confess their dreams & their worries things they've never told another soul. Even without meeting they know one another. Played out across oceans in peacetime & wartime but most of all through paper & ink Letters from Skye is about the transformative power of a letter
- the letter that shouldn't have been sent the letter that is never sent & the letter the reader will keep for ever.
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