Diaries, letters & journals
Showing 1–16 of 17 results
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A Nurse’s War
£8.99A Nurse’s War
The remarkable wartime diary of nurse Kathleen Johnstone
‘Warm, chatty and endlessly absorbing, this delightful diary brims with intelligence and humour.’ Wendy Moore, author of Endell Street: The Women Who Ran Britain’s Trailblazing Military Hospital
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Confessions of A Bookseller
£8.99Confessions of A Bookseller
‘Do you have a list of your books, or do I just have to stare at them?’ Shaun Bythell is the owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland. With more than a mile of shelving, real log fires in the shop and the sea lapping nearby, the shop should by an idyll for bookworms. Unfortunately, Shaun also has to contend with bizarre requests from people who don’t understand what the shop is, home invasions during the Wigtown Book Festival and Granny, his neurotic Italian assistant who likes digging for river mud to make poultices. ‘The Diary of a Bookseller’ (soon to be a major TV series) introduced us to the joys and frustrations of life lived in books. Sardonic and sympathetic in equal measures, ‘Confessions of a Bookseller’ will reunite readers with the characters they’ve come to know and love.
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Dare to Be Different
£20.00Dare to Be Different
Ben Brooks has brought together 100 people who have all in some way or another used words to do wonderful things. Some may have changed a single life, while others have changed the course of history for almost everyone on earth. But whether their effects were big or small, these individuals’ speeches, letters, poems, songs, stories, and advice prove one thing: words can make the world a better place. And they can make you feel better about yourself too. This compendium includes personal letters that were written for just one reader to help guide them through life’s journey; sometimes they were intended for millions of people to hear about grand declarations of war, peace or new discoveries.
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House Arrest
£6.99House Arrest
4 March. HMQ pictured in the paper at an investiture wearing gloves, presumably as a precaution against Coronavirus. But not just gloves; these are almost gauntlets. I hope they’re not the thin end of a precautionary wedge lest Her Majesty end up swathed in protective get-up such as is worn at the average crime scene. 20 March. With Rupert now working from home my life is much easier, as I get regular cups of tea and a lovely hot lunch. A year in and out of lockdown as experienced by Alan Bennett. The diary takes us from the filming of Talking Heads to thoughts on Boris Johnson, from his father’s short-lived craze for family fishing trips, to stair lifts, junk shops of old, having a haircut, and encounters on the local park bench.
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La Reine Blanche
£9.99La Reine Blanche
New B-format paperback – The life of the beautiful Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII, through her own words and letters and the correspondence of those who knew her.
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Last Stop Auschwitz
£8.99Last Stop Auschwitz
Eddy de Wind, a Dutch doctor and psychiatrist, was shipped to Auschwitz with his wife Friedel, whom he had met and married at the Westerbork labour camp in the Netherlands. At Auschwitz, they made it through the brutal selection process and were put to work. Each day, each hour became a battle for survival. For Friedel, it meant avoiding the Nazis’ barbaric medical experiments. Despite such daily stresses, love prevailed. Passing notes through the fence, sometimes stealing a brief embrace, Friedel and Eddy clung to life. As the end of the war approached and the Russian Army drew closer, the last Nazis fled, taking many prisoners with them, including Friedel. Eddy hid under a pile of old clothes and stayed behind. This book is an extraordinary account of life as a prisoner, a near real-time record of the daily struggle to survive.
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Letters from Brenda
£16.99Letters from Brenda
After her mother, Brenda, passed away and her father sold the family home, broadcaster and writer Emma Kennedy found herself floundering, unable to make peace with the complex, charismatic woman who had been her mum. And then they found the letters. This heartbreakingly funny book about the impact of discovering lost letters is a celebration of correspondence; those lost acts of penned love, the vivid snapshots in time scattered back through a life. It is also about a childhood shrouded in shame, the lies Brenda told her family, the madness that set in, and ultimately what it means to be a daughter and a mother. Finally, Emma allows herself to explore what she couldn’t while she was growing up: the question of who her mother really was.
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Letters On Motherhood
£8.99Letters On Motherhood
‘Letters on Motherhood’ is a collection of heartfelt and deeply personal letters written by Giovanna to her three young sons Buzz, Buddy and Max, husband, Tom, and the family and friends who have inspired and supported her to become the mother that she is today. In this book, she shares the funny and moving personal tales of her own family life whilst also talking about the deeper universal truths of parenting – coping with mum guilt, finding a work/family life balance, positive body image, rediscovering a sense of identity, and a parent’s hopes, fears and expectations for their child’s future.
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Many Different Kinds of Love
£9.99Many Different Kinds of Love
In March 2020, Michael Rosen became unwell. Soon he was struggling to breathe, and he was admitted to hospital with coronavirus. What followed was months on the wards: a month in an induced coma, and weeks of rehab and recovery as the NHS saved his life, and then got him back on his feet. Throughout it all, a notebook lay at the end of Michael’s bed, where his nurses wrote him letters of hope and support. And as soon as he was awake, he was ready to start writing his own story. Combining stunning new prose poems by one of Britain’s best loved poets and the moving coronavirus diaries of his nurses, and featuring original illustrations by Chris Riddell, this is a beautiful book about love, life and the NHS that celebrates the power of community and the indomitable spirits of the people who keep us well.
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My Unapologetic Diaries
£20.00My Unapologetic Diaries
These are Dame Joan Collins’ ‘uncensored diaries’. Often outrageous, the entries were almost written entirely in real time. Most were done within ten hours of the events Joan describes, and many are hilarious. Whether it is an encounter with a member of the Royal Family, or her keen and honest insights of other celebrities at parties or dinners, Joan doesn’t care. She’s unapologetic! The diaries are intimate and funny, as readers of her column for the Spectator will recognise.
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Red Comet
£14.99Red Comet
Determined not to read Plath’s work as if her every act, from childhood on, was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Heather Clark presents new materials about Plath’s scientist father, her juvenile writings, and her psychiatric treatment, and evokes a culture in transition in the mid-twentieth century, in the shadow of the atom bomb and the Holocaust, as she explores Sylvia’s world: her early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife; her conflicted ties to her well-meaning, widowed mother; her troubles at the hands of an unenlightened mental-health industry; and her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes, a true marriage of minds that would change the course of poetry in English.
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Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman
£10.99Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965, Richard Feynman was one of the world’s greatest theoretical physicists, but he was also a man who fell, often jumped, into adventure. An artist, safecracker, practical joker and storyteller, Feynman’s life was a series of combustible combinations made possible by his unique mixture of high intelligence, unquenchable curiosity and eternal scepticism. Over a period of years, Feynman’s conversations with his friend Ralph Leighton were first taped and then set down as they appear here, little changed from their spoken form, giving a wise, funny, passionate and totally honest self-portrait of one of the greatest men of our age.
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The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym
£10.99The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym
‘Captures both Barbara and her writing so miraculously’ JILLY COOPER
Picked as a Book to Look Forward to in 2021 by the Guardian, The Times and the Observer
A Radio 4 Book of the Week, April 2021
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The Jane Austen Files
£14.99The Jane Austen Files
A fascinating insight into the life of Jane in the words of the people who knew her
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The Motorcycle Diaries
£9.99The Motorcycle Diaries
Che Guevara, revolutionary guerilla, became an international icon for generations of radicals. Three years before his fateful meeting with Fidel Castro, he set out on his motorcycle on an eight month voyage of discovery around Latin America.
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This Is Going To Hurt
£8.99This Is Going To Hurt
The often hilarious, at times horrifying and occasionally heartbreaking diaries of a former junior doctor, and the story of why he decided to hang up his stethoscope.
£8.99