Bøker utgitt av Faber & Faber

Happy Days was written in 1960 and first produced in London at the Royal Court Theatre in November 1962.WINNIE: [ . . .] Well anyway - this man Shower - or Cooker - no matter - and the woman - hand in hand - in the other hands bags - kind of big brown grips - standing there gaping at me [...] - What's she doing? he says - What's the idea? he says - stuck up to her diddies in the bleeding ground - coarse fellow - What does it mean? he says - What's it meant to mean? - and so on - lot more stuff like that - usual drivel - Do you hear me? He says - I do, she says, God help me - What do you mean, he says, God help you? (stops filing nails, raises head, gazes front.) And you, she says, what's the idea of you, she says, what are you meant to mean?

Originally written in French and translated into English by Beckett, Endgame was given its first London performance at the Royal Court Theatre in 1957.HAMM: Clov!CLOV: Yes.HAMM: Nature has forgotten us.CLOV: There's no more nature.HAMM: No more nature! You exaggerate.CLOV: In the vicinity.HAMM: But we breathe, we change! We lose our hair our teeth! Our bloom! Our ideals!CLOV: Then she hasn't forgotten us.

Krapp's Last Tape was first performed by Patrick Magee at the Royal Court Theatre in October 1958, and described as 'a solo, if that is the word, for one voice and two organs: one human, one mechanical. It fills few pages. It is perhaps the most original and important play of its length ever written.' (Roy Walker)The present volume brings together Krapp's Last Tape and Beckett's other shorter works or 'dramaticules' written for the stage. It will be complemented by a forthcoming Faber edition of dramatic works written for radio and screen. Arranged in chronological order of composition, these shorter plays exhibit the laconic means and compassionate ends of Beckett's dramatic vision. KRAPP 'Here I end this reel. Box - [Pause.] - three, spool - [Pause.] - five. [Pause.] Perhaps my best years have gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back. [Staring motionless before him.]

These four stories or 'nouvelles' date from 1945, though all were published much later, in French and subsequently in English. All make use of a first-person narrator, and relish its vagaries - the inability to remember facts, the uncertainty as to why he is speaking in the first place, the loss of heart when explanations seem called for... Above all, the stories crisply plot the narrator's plotless descent into vagrancy, the steeper as it approaches The End. Out of these short works and their patient procedures grew the large canvases of Molloy and Malone Dies.My bench was still there. It was shaped to fit the curves of the seated body. It stood beside a watering trough, gift of a Mrs Maxwell to the city horses, according to the inscription. During the short time I rested there, several horses took advantage of the monument. The iron shoes approached and the jingle of the harness. Then silence. That was the horse looking at me. Then the noise of pebbles and mud that horses make when drinking. Then the silence again. That was the horse looking at me again. Then the pebbles again. Then the silence again. Till the horse had finished drinking or the driver deemed it had drunk its fill.Edited by Christopher Ricks

Alan Ross (1922-2001) - distinguished poet, travel writer, and editor of London Magazine - also managed to excel in the role of cricket correspondent for the Observer, in which capacity he followed England/MCC on tours of Australia, South Africa and the West Indies. In the book-length accounts he published of these tours, his lifelong love of the game found glorious expression. Australia 63 offers Ross's account of an Ashes series that pitted the England XI led by Ted Dexter against Richie Benaud's host side. On paper England had talent to spare, including the recall to the team of ordained minister David Sheppard, and the renowned bowling attack of Fred Trueman and Brian Statham. But Benaud's Australian side had strength in depth too. Both captains were expressly committed to playing entertaining cricket. The reality, however, did not quite live up to the billing.

In 1988 Hugo Williams began to pen his 'Freelance' column for the Times Literary Supplement: a window that allowed him to exhibit the full panoply of his gifts as travel writer, literary portraitist, working poet, and all-round chronicler of the curious existence of the contemporary writer. Freelancing is a collection of these TLS columns that finds Williams variously in Sarajevo, Central America, Jerusalem, Skyros, Portugal and Norwich. In the course of events he sees his Selected Poems published, his mother dies, his wife inherits a chateau and he crashes his motorbike. He reads and teaches, as most poets do, but also strolls through Paris dressed as Marlene Dietrich, encounters some of the great and good, and explores his personal history. His account of these adventures, reflections and discoveries is elegantly turned, frequently hilarious, and at times surprisingly poignant.

The harshly magnificent landscape of the Elan Valley in Mid Wales was changed utterly in the late 1890s by a reservoir building project initiated by the Corporation of Birmingham in order to supply water to that expanding city. A great feat of civil engineering, the project required the flooding of land by the River Elan and the compensating of local landowners; but also made a tremendous impact on the traditions, rights and privileges of the local commoners, and on a flock system of hill farming that had existed for hundreds of years. Originally published in 1969, The Valley is Elizabeth Clarke's account of hill farming life in the Elan Valley and the massive changes wrought upon it between the first period of reservoir construction and a subsequent project that followed the Second World War.

Alan Ross (1922-2001) - distinguished poet, travel writer, and editor of London Magazine - also managed to excel in the role of cricket correspondent for the Observer, in which capacity he followed England/MCC on tours of Australia, South Africa and the West Indies. In the book-length accounts he published of these tours, his lifelong love of the game found glorious expression. Australia 55 offers Ross's perspectives on the battle for the Ashes, the visiting side led by Len Hutton, and Ross's own vivid first impressions of the host country. 'The massive fluctuations of the series - England, overwhelmed in Brisbane, won in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide to retain the Ashes - engaged [Ross's] interest; his fascination with Len Hutton, a 'lonely figure struck down by as many disasters as any overworked hero in Greek mythology', deepened...' Gideon Haigh, Cricinfo

'So the recruiters, rolling up their sleeves, varied the appeal to pride, honour, manliness and vengeance with warnings to eschew shame, disgrace, betrayal, sloth and cowardice. From a poster showing the ruins of Belgium a woman asked, 'Will you go or must I?'' First published in 1980, Dear Old Blighty is E.S. Turner's superb account of life 'on the home front' in Britain during the Great War of 1914-1918: a time of conscription, propaganda, 'spy fever', industrial unrest in the arms factories, and grieving families turning to spiritualism. When even the blind were being recruited to serve as listening sentries for approaching Zeppelins, all were expected to contribute to the war effort; and, as Turner shows us, the means of exhortation (and the penalties for non-compliance) were many. 'No matter where you open a page, you learn something you feel you should have known.' Miles Kington, Independent

The late 1950s, twilight years of the British Empire, saw the end of the era of the 'tramp steamer' - coal-burning merchant ships that 'tramped' from port to port in the days before bulk carriers, hunting for any cargo that needed hauling to any place.In this marvelous memoir Christopher Lee offers the diaries of a 'Lad' much like himself who, at the age of 17, took his first job aboard the tramp ship Empire Heywood. Over two years this Lad would get to travel through the Suez canal, into the Indian Ocean and across the Pacific - so acquiring a panoramic view of the fading empire - before returning home to England as a man. The diaries give a splendid account of all the dramas of life aboard ship, with an eccentric cast of characters and a wealth of lively seafaring language. A third-person narrative from the author provides invaluable historical context.

A sale? Why not? Release all your wonderful treasures onto the open market and they are there for everyone to enjoy. It's a kind of emancipation, a setting them free to range the world ... a saleroom here, an exhibition there; art, Lady Stacpoole, is a rover.People spoil things; there are so many of them and the last thing one wants is them traipsing through one's house. But with the park a jungle and a bath on the billiard table, what is one to do? Dorothy wonders if an attic sale could be a solution. People premieres at the National Theatre, London, in October 2012.As with Alan Bennett's previous two plays, The History Boys and The Habit of Art, People will open in the Lyttelton Theatre in a production directed by the National's artistic director Nicholas Hytner.- How're you doing?- Not sure.- Well why don't you get on the mobile to your dick and find out.

A terrifying supernatural thriller for fans of Let the Right One In, The Passage, and The Loney'Very scary. Never mind Scandi crime fiction, the time has come for Scandi horror.' Metro *****'Ratchets up the tension to an almost unbearable level ... Astonishing.' Independent on Sunday, Books of the YearIn the late 1970s, a young boy disappears from a summer cabin in the Swedish woods. His mother claims that he was abducted by a giant. The boy is never found.Twenty-five years later, an old woman claims that a creature has been standing outside her house, observing her and her five year old grandson for hours.When Susso - a blogger who's dedicated her life to the search for creatures whose existences have not been proved - hears of this, and sees a possible link between the two incidents, she takes to the road on a terrifying adventure into the unknown.

Homecoming is a big-hearted, bittersweet drama about how a family falls apart and comes back together again from a hugely talented new writer.Up on the North Yorkshire moors, the Hartle family is about to have a life-changing year. Ann and Joe, with more than thirty years of marriage and two sons between them, are torn between giving up and pressing on with their struggling farm. Max, their older son, is set to inherit the farm and his wife Primrose has news to share, but is he ready for these new responsibilities? Their younger son, Bartholomew, escaped to the south as soon as he could, building a new life for himself with his girlfriend Ruby. But when tragedy strikes he is forced to return home -- and must come to terms with his past, in order to create a future.

'It's just to say that no-one has come to pick Nathan up from school, and we were wondering if there was a problem of some kind?' As Mark Douglas photographs a pod of whales stranded in the waters off Edinburgh's Portobello Beach, he is called by his son's school: his wife, Lauren, hasn't turned up to collect their son. Calm at first, Mark collects Nathan and takes him home but as the hours slowly crawl by he increasingly starts to worry. With brilliantly controlled reveals, we learn some of the painful secrets of the couple's shared past, not least that it isn't the first time Lauren has disappeared. And as Mark struggles to care for his son and shield him from the truth of what's going on, the police seem dangerously short of leads. That is, until a shocking discovery...

'The best one-volume study of Churchill yet available.' David Cannadine, Observer'Magisterial.' Vernon Bogdanor, New Statesman'A tour de force... A masterly chronicle of Churchill as a domestic figure rather than as the bulldog wartime leader, and one of the most subtle portraits of him as a politician. Addison revises the view of Churchill as uninterested and out of his depth in domestic affairs, painting instead a nuanced picture of a canny parliamentarian. Churchill changed parties twice but managed to accomplish the change, writes Addison, 'with exceptional dexterity', making it appear as if he were maintaining his principles while the parties changed theirs... Addison's most interesting assertion is that the rise of Hitler saved Churchill from drifting into right-wing irrelevance. Most impressively, Addison doesn't settle for easy classifications, admitting that 'Churchill... is a man of whom almost everything that can be said is true in part.'' Kirkus Review

'He gave his name to the longest, and one of the most important, British administrations of the nineteenth century. Yet the man himself has remained a shadowy figure.' Norman Gash, from the introductionPrime Minister at the time of the battle of Waterloo, Robert Banks Jenkinson, the 2nd Earl of Liverpool, was in power from 1812 to 1827. But despite his seeing off the threat of Napoleon, and being British premier during the turbulent years of Peterloo, the Six Acts and the campaign for Catholic Emancipation, Lord Liverpool was later dubbed the 'Arch-Mediocrity' by Disraeli, and was generally forgotten, eclipsed by the events of his day. This biography, first published in 1984, brings both the man and his politics out of the shadows.

'An excellent book.' Angus Calder, London Review of Books First published in 1985, based on an acclaimed BBC TV series, Paul Addison's Now The War is Over examines the great changes in British society that followed hard upon what had been the most destructive war ever known: years of recovery and reform, as Britain was reshaped by high ideals and a collective desire to enjoy the fruits and opportunities of peacetime.Labour was elected in 1945 on a wave of what Addison calls 'Forties collectivism.' Soon Britons would have the benefits of Beveridge's Welfare State, new housing, secondary education for all and, in July 1948, the dawning of the National Health Service. But new interests in consumerism and the pursuit of affluence were also emerging and, as Addison shows in this rich and fascinating study, would prove just as influential as the efforts of government.

'It is a melancholy thought that as soon as reforms are put into practice, disillusionment enters the political scene...'Norman Gash's Ford Lectures, originally delivered at Oxford in 1964, address an era of reform that followed the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828, Catholic Emancipation in 1829, and the Reform Act of 1832. The history of this period has often focused on the conflicts that proved necessary before the Acts came to pass. But it was only after 1832 that the real crisis of reform emerged: the clash between what had actually been done, and what men thought should be the consequences of what had been done. As Gash notes of the arguments over the Reform Bill of 1831, "e;substantially the foundations for the Victorian two-party system were laid by the divisions of politicians into Reformers and Conservatives."e;

'People of the Book is set in the Thirty Years' War, which began and still shapes our present system of world order. David Stacton's incomparable prose reveals how the treatises of scholars and the tactics of commanders so rarely comprehend the vagaries of the human condition. A book to put on the shelf with Thucydides' Peloponnesian War and Tolstoy's War and Peace.'Professor Charles Hill (author of Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order)'A troubling and fantastic book... Stacton sets up a duel plot. One follows the fortunes of the Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus, the other recounts the fate of an orphaned boy and his little sister who try to make their way across Germany from their ruined home to refuge with an imagined uncle.' Life'[An] extraordinary evocation of the whole spiritual climate of the time; the very vapours of Teutonic mists seem to rise from its pages.' Frederic Raphael, Sunday Times

In 1756 Calcutta is a city on the brink of Empire. The grandiose buildings of White Town, settled about Fort William, stand in stark contrast to the bustle of Black Town across the Maratha Ditch. In White Town Chief Magistrate Holwell and his arch-rival Governor Drake must unite to outwit the dangerous schemes of the nawab of Murshidabad. In Black Town the half-cast girl Sati, believed possessed by the Goddess Kali, finds herself the centre of a religious cult. But in Murshidabad the nawab wishes only to rid India of the British - an obsession that will lead to the notorious incident of 'The Black Hole of Calcutta.' 'Chand tells the story in a direct and compelling manner. The prose sweeps forward, and she evokes the period beautifully.' Telegraph 'Gripping... This rich and powerful novel is a wonderful historical epic and a poignant account of human suffering.' Good Book Guide

In our time, Bernard Leach has done for pottery what Henry Moore has done for scuplture. This... infinitely rewarding book is an account of his pilgrimage through life.' TimesBernard Leach (1887-1979) was as renowned in Japan and the East as in Europe and America, both as an artist-craftsman and as a thinker. His interpretation of the traditions of the Orient in the making of pots - and in evolving a philosophy of life - was a lodestar for many potters in the West.Beyond East and West, first published in 1978, is more than an autobiography. Full of sharply-etched and amusing recollections, it contains much of Leach's deeper thought and a great deal too about the practical application of his ideas. Its recurrent theme is the meeting of East and West at all levels - artistic, cultural, social, political.

'Dancer in Darkness is a unique three-way collaboration - the tragic tale of the murdered Giovanna d'Aragona, Duchess of Amalfi, as told in Renaissance Italian sources, then in The Duchess of Malfi, John Webster's masterpiece of Jacobean revenge and fate, and now here by David Stacton, the literally incomparable American historical novelist. Black as stage velvet, Stacton's version is as full of chilling insights and dreadful doings as Webster's, but at bottom all his own.' John Crowley (Little, Big, Engine Summer)'The prose of David Stacton is like that of no other writer. It suggests a corridor in a dark Gothic tower, ill-lit by tapers, at one end of which a gong sounds incessantly. Stacton's gong clashes are malevolent aphorisms, asides spoken to Nemesis, hard little explanations of motive.' Time

'Segaki is the story of two men, a woman, a dog, and a handful of snails. It is a very simple story. But like most simple stories, it is also a parable... It is the third volume of three novels concerned with various aspects of the religious experience... Segaki deals with [the] getting of wisdom, or insight, and deals with it, moreover, entirely in terms of Zen... Zen cannot be explained. It can only be embodied, and in that form, shown to people who will not see it unless they were accustomed to seeing it there anyway.' David Stacton, 1957 'I am enormously impressed by this... I haven't read such an electrifying work in ages. [Stacton] sounds not only like a magnificent poet but an initiate as well. And he seems to know Japan (the everlasting one) better than most Japanese...' Henry Miller (in a letter of October 1959)

'Bhai Sahib examined Mrs Hathiramani's horoscope. He sat cross-legged on the stone floor in a once white vest and dhoti... 'What is it?' Mrs Hathiramani asked, leaning forward. She was alarmed, not so much at what might be written in the horoscope, but at the change in Bhai Sahib's expression...'Mrs Hathiramani is not the only soul in the town of Sadhbela to be unsettled by the coming of Saturn into the House of the Sun. As Meira Chand's tale unfolds, various other townspeople will meet with struggles and surprises, turmoil and cruelty, ill fate and good fortune. 'Splendidly successful... with its unexpected vein of humour and skilful intermeshing of many lives.' TLS 'Vibrant, emotional, crowded... A colourful soap opera.' Sunday Times 'A sensitively crafted exploration of a community.' Independent on Sunday

With Chris Trengove and Peter LawrenceIn 1967 Peter 'Dougal' Butler became a roadie for The Who and their mercurial genius drummer Keith Moon. Soon he would be Moon's personal assistant, chauffeur, and all-purpose wingman. The ride lasted a tumultuous ten years, ending just prior to Moon's untimely death in 1978. Full Moon is Butler's memoir of that ride: essential reading for Who fans, and a masterclass in the mayhem caused by rock 'n' roll excess. 'The most candid insight into the Who star's life.' Daily Star 'Written in a wonderful fast, racy style, Runyonesque and full of good jokes.' Girl About Town 'A welcome change from the usual bland rock book reportage... Butler clearly has a deep and lasting affection for Moon.' Andy Gill, NME 'Certainly outrageous, sometimes funny, but mostly a sad account of life with a talented neurotic.' Daily Mirror

During the years when George IV ruled the United Kingdom, first as Prince Regent then as King, his extravagant tastes served to characterize the times - the Regency period being identified strongly with new trends in British architecture, fashion and culture. The literary expression of this era was the genre of so-called 'silver fork' novels set in fashionable London society. Initially devoured as authentic insights into the rarefied world of the best social circles, these novels were thus serving as etiquette primers for growing numbers of nouveaux riches. The detail and decor of the novels gives them an enduring socio-historical interest, hence the value of Alison Adburgham's study, first published in 1983, which offers astute readings of such 'silver fork' specialists as Disraeli, Bulwer-Lytton, and Catherine Gore. With an assured eye for the social context of these works, Adburgham explores the class tensions and complex social interactions behind the high sheen of the silver fork.

Based on a true story, Meira Chand's The Painted Cage explores the tragedy of a Victorian woman who becomes the victim of her own sensuality. In Yokohama, Japan, on the morning of January 5th 1897, the trial begins of Amy Redmore, charged with the murder of her husband Reggie, ex-secretary of the Yokohama United Club. Marriage had transported Amy - an heiress 15 years her husband's junior - from the green fields of Somerset, and along the way she discovered disturbing truths about Reggie: his mistress and secret child, his addiction to arsenic. In colonial Yokohama the couple began to lead separate lives, with fatal consequences. 'The scope of this novel and... its various beautiful images of imprisonment make the book its author's most substantial achievement.' Times Literary Supplement 'Meira Chand writes with great power.' Women's Review

'On A Balcony is devoted to the 14th century [B.C.] and the Pharaoh Ikhnaton, his sister-wife Nefertiti, the sculptor Tutmose, and the rivalry his religion of Aton brought to Egypt and its then current cult of Amon... presenting Ikhnaton's imposition of a new religion upon those who look on him as a god.' Kirkus Review'A fascinating study in royal neuroticism.' John Davenport, Observer 'A weird, subtle and compelling novel.' Time & Tide'What is important about Mr Stacton is his originality. We cannot guess how his book is going to develop. We cannot trace influences on his writing or fit him into any preconceived literary scheme...There is a self-confidence about his writing that has no trace of vanity.' Times Literary Supplement.

The Indian Ocean, 1809. At stake: Britain's commercial lifeline to India and naval supremacy. In one fatal season, the natural order of maritime power since Trafalgar was destroyed. Storm and Conquest brings together the terrifying ordeal of men, women and children caught at sea in hurricanes, and those who survived to drive the French from the Eastern seas. All shared a need to prove themselves - to make a career, or a fortune, or a marriage - in places which could be at once magnificent and terrifying.

The 'Grosvenor' was one of the finest East Indiamen of her day, a grand three-masted square-rigger of 741 tons bristling with 26 cannon. When she ran aground on the treacherous coast of south-east Africa, an astonishing number of her crew and passengers, including women and children, reached the shore safely. But the castaways were hundreds of miles from the nearest European outpost - and utterly ignorant of their surroundings and the people among whom they found themselves.Stephen Taylor pieces together this extraordinary saga with tremendous narrative flair. Drawing upon much new research, he sifts the myths that became attached to the 'Grosvenor' from a reality that is no less gripping. Taking the reader to the heart of what is now the Wild Coast of Pondoland, The Caliban Shore reveals the misunderstandings that led to tragedy, tells the story of those who escaped and unravels the mystery of those who stayed.