Most Popular Books by D. J. Taylor

Winner of the Whitbread Biography Award: A “profoundly moving [and] definitive” portrait of George Orwell, author of 1984 and larger-than-life literary genius (The Daily Telegraph). It was not easy to bury George Orwell. After a lifetime of iconoclasm, during which he professed no interest in religion and no affiliation with any church, he asked to be buried in an Anglican churchyard—but none would have him. Orwell’s friends fought for him to have a proper grave, however, and the author of 1984, Animal Farm, and Homage to Catalonia, among other brilliant works of prose, poetry, and journalism, was laid to rest in a quiet country cemetery. Almost immediately, his legacy was in dispute. Orwell did not want any biographies written of him, but that has not stopped scholars from trying. Of all those published since the author’s death in 1950, D. J. Taylor’s prize-winning book is considered the most definitive. Born in India, Orwell spent his forty-six years of life traveling the British Empire and confronting the world head on. From the trenches of Spain to the top of bestseller lists, Taylor presents Orwell fully—as a writer, social critic, and human being.

A screenwriter is about to discover that in life there are no rewrites Martin Benson writes scripts for porn films. He didn’t always aspire to be a screenwriter; he once had dreams of becoming a great journalist. But life has a way of interfering with the best-laid plans. In this darkly captivating novel, Martin shares the story of his past— and a future that is yet to be written. Martin’s search for that elusive thing called happiness takes him back to the Norfolk village of his youth. There, he meets and moves in with schoolteacher Suzi Richards, whose biological clock is ticking. But he is haunted by Elaine Keenan, the gorgeous actress who got away. Then one day the phone rings, sending Martin on a search for his lost love and a final reckoning with the past. Filled with angst and longing, Real Life charts one man’s course back through his own history—a witty, lively account that blurs the line between art and reality, with an ending you will never see coming.

A rich and evocative portrait of one of the greatest authors of Victorian England Who was William Makepeace Thackeray? Was he the wealthy dilettante who came to London in the 1830s and squandered his fortune on newspapers? Was he the impoverished freelance author of the 1840s who scrapped for every penny he could get? Or was he the great writer who published Vanity Fair in 1847, skewering Victorian society and ensuring his literary legacy? Throughout the many phases of his life, Thackeray remained an enigma. He was friendly but standoffish, generous yet miserly, confident and utterly terrified of failure. A century and a half after Thackeray’s death, D. J. Taylor has produced a biography that tackles the complexities of these contradictions and restores Thackeray to his place in the literary pantheon. His fortune lost by the time he was thirty, his personal life in constant torment, Thackeray’s story is as dramatic as that of any of his characters. In Thackeray, the man can finally be seen in full.

A wanderer struggles to understand his uncle’s downfall six years after a financial catastrophe George Chell has never met a man as witty, as charming, or as brilliant as his uncle. Edward Chell was a financial titan, ruling over a kingdom of profit with an emperor’s savage grace—until a stock market crash revealed that everything he had was built on sand. It destroyed both empire and emperor in one fell swoop, and nephew George was cast out into the world in the aftermath. For six years, he has wandered Britain, staying in grubby hotels and trying as hard as he can to forget his uncle. But when an article in the Financial Times reminds him of all he has lost, George has no choice but to confront the past in an attempt to understand the disaster that upended his life. Raised in the provincial backwater of a Norwich council flat, George was dazzled by the bright lights of the London financial world—but to save himself, he will have to look at that world with new eyes.

“Jampacked and delicious, crammed with a cast of selfish, feckless, darling, talented, almost terminally eccentric, good-looking men and women.” —Carolyn See, The Washington Post Before the media circus of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and our modern obsession with celebrity, there were the Bright Young People, a voraciously pleasure-seeking band of bohemian party-givers and blue-blooded socialites who romped through the gossip columns of 1920s London. Evelyn Waugh immortalized their slang, their pranks, and their tragedies in his novels, and over the next half century, many—from Cecil Beaton to Nancy Mitford and John Betjeman—would become household names. But beneath the veneer of hedonism and practical jokes was a tormented generation, brought up in the shadow of war. Sparkling talent was too often brought low by alcoholism and addiction. Drawing on the virtuosic and often wrenching writings of the Bright Young People themselves, the biographer and novelist D. J. Taylor has produced an enthralling account of an age of fleeting brilliance. “[An] ultimately elegiac narrative with a surprising amount of intellectual and emotional sympathy.” —The New York Times “Engaging . . . Taylor’s skillful reconstruction of the whole hazy time feels like a lasting party favor.” —NPR “Incisive . . . [and] richly detailed.” —The New York Times Book Review “A poignant study of the elusive relationship between art and the social world from whence it springs.” —The New York Observer “[A] splendid social history . . . By placing generational tensions and tenderness center-stage, Taylor gives his book a beating emotional heart.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review “Entertaining and incisive.” —The Boston Globe “Fascinating.” —The Wall Street Journal “Compelling and ultimately touching.” —The Guardian

An entertainer looks back on his life in this novel based on the rise and fall of a famous British comedy team From the vantage point of late middle age, Edward “Ted” King—one half of the dynamic duo Upward & King—discovers that nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. Ted met Arthur Upward in Britain’s National Service. They started out doing gigs at Soho cabarets, and in the mid-sixties, they took their act on the road. By the late seventies, they were the most beloved comedians on British television, watched by ten million viewers per week. This inventive novel, narrated by Ted on the eve of the release of a documentary about their famous partnership, begins with his boyhood in the farm fields of post-war Yarmouth. The son of a shopkeeper with few aspirations, Ted soon realizes he wants to tell jokes for a living. Then, one day in a hall at the sergeants’ mess, he sees Arthur perform the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” He instantly senses the titanic influence the other man will have on his life. Ted plays the straight man to Arthur’s pratfalling comic, and they go on to captivate a nation. Until it all goes wrong. Crosscutting between the past and present, The Comedy Man is a poignant, funny “memoir” that reminds us how comedy is often derived from the most serious situations—and from the inexpressible longings of the human heart.

Past and present collide for a man on a mission to document a history that may or may not exist, in this ingenious novel by the acclaimed author of Derby Day Dr. Feelgood’s is a brothel overrun with fat, overindulged mice that lies at the western tip of a remote village somewhere in the Far East. It’s presided over by Mr. Mouzookseem, an illiterate Englishman with his own reasons for fleeing the family fold for a life of anonymity. This is the beginning—or is it the end?—of a story that weaves in and out of time as David Castell immortalizes Mouzookseem and others in his notebook. A pragmatist whose father had his own ideas about what history can teach, David is a traveler of the mind and heart. Although he has been to exotic places, from Kashmir to the Russian steppe, he finds the domestic train from Paddington to Oxford hopelessly confounding—and the subject of an existential conversation. His musings unfold into a vivid tapestry of his own past, from his life as a student at Oxford to the women he loved and lusted after. As the stories and observations in David’s notebooks take shape, they become an allegory for life, death, and the distortions of memory.

A spirited and essential companion to Orwell and his works, covering all the novels and major essays An intellectual who hated intellectuals, a socialist who didn’t trust the state—our foremost political essayist and author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four was a man of stark, puzzling contradictions. Knowing Orwell’s life and reading Orwell’s works produces just as many questions as it answers. Celebrated Orwell biographer D. J. Taylor guides fans and new readers alike through the many twists and turns of Orwell’s books, life and thought. As a writer he intended his works to be transparent and instantly accessible, yet they are also full of secrets and surprises, tantalising private histories, and psychological quirks. From his conflicted relationship with religion to his competing anti-imperialism and fascination with empire, Who Is Big Brother? delves into the complex development of this essential yet enigmatic voice. Taylor leads us through Orwell’s principal writings and complex life—crafting an illuminating guide to one of the most enduringly relevant writers in the English language.

A literary tour-de-force ranging from the American frontier to Edwardian England and the decadent carousing of the Bright Young People of London''s jazz age. 1904. A pretty young woman travels apprehensively across the American prairies; on a whim she makes a bold decision, grabbing her future with both hands. A quarter of a century later, in the brightly colored world of London high life, Alice Keach is queen among society hostesses. Her face stares from every gossip column. Behind her lie a marriage to a wealthy landowner and a career as a celebrated actress. But Alice has a secret, whose roots run five thousand miles away to that Kansas train ride, and a chain of connection with the potential to blow her comfortable existence apart. Ranging from the Dakota Badlands to the drawing rooms of Mayfair and the casting couches of the Edwardian theater, Ask Alice is a remarkable novel that confirms D. J. Taylor as a writer of the highest intellect, vision, and imagination.

Biological Science covers both core and option material for AS Level and A Level. This is the third edition of the highly successful book, Biological Science. The text has been revised and updated to provide comprehensive coverage of the latest syllabuses. New material has been added in the following areas: human health and disease, microbiology and biotechnology, and the applications of genetics. Questions and practical work permeate the text and useful appendices are included covering biological chemistry, biological techniques and statistics. Biological Science is available as two soft cover volumes and as a combined volume hardback.

Eighteen tales featuring down-on-their-luck characters whose dreams will never come true, by Man Booker Prize–long-listed author D. J. Taylor In the vein of Raymond Carver’s short prose, these eighteen stories sharply capture ordinary people desperate to escape their dead-end lives as they grapple with failure, disappointment, and missed chances. In “Dreams of Leaving,” Harlem pornographer Fuchs has seen it all; though he has never traveled farther west than Cincinnati, his bedroom is a shrine to all the places he secretly fantasizes about. “The Summer People” are the tourists who come to Cromer and invade Julian’s life every July and August, but this sweltering season of change will mark a turning point in the Norfolk teen’s life. In “Flights,” a mid-level insurance salesman named Dorfman haunts airports and collects model airplane kits—only to find his humdrum life changed forever by a beautiful Filipino flight attendant. “The Survivor” is about an unsung writer who lives through many millennia, from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age to the present—as well as an unimaginable world without books. And in the title story, twenty-four-year-old deli worker Susy fantasizes about an end-of-summer vacation away from Tara City, Wyoming—“a place you moved out of.” Football, a Montana rock band, and a running man populate other tales in this superlative anthology that showcases Taylor’s mastery of his craft.

The Booker Prize–nominated author of Derby Day delivers a sumptuous cultural history as seen through the lives of four enigmatic women. Who were the Lost Girls? Chic, glamorous, and bohemian, as likely to be found living in a rat-haunted maisonette as dining at the Ritz, Lys Lubbock, Sonia Brownell, Barbara Skelton, and Janetta Parlade cut a swath through English literary and artistic life at the height of World War II. Three of them had affairs with Lucian Freud. One of them married George Orwell. Another became the mistress of the King of Egypt. They had very different—and sometimes explosive—personalities, but taken together they form a distinctive part of the wartime demographic: bright, beautiful, independent-minded women with tough upbringings who were determined to make the most of their lives in a chaotic time. Ranging from Bloomsbury and Soho to Cairo and the couture studios of Schiaparelli and Hartnell, the Lost Girls would inspire the work of George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, and Nancy Mitford. They are the missing link between the Lost Generation and Bright Young People and the Dionysiac cultural revolution of the 1960s. Sweeping, passionate, and unexpectedly poignant, this is their untold story.

Madness, greed, love, obsession, Machiavellian schemes, and a great train robbery--all are interwoven in this wonderfully imaginative novel that reinvents Victorian life and passions with dazzling skill and wit.

This is the third edition of the highly successful book, Biological Science. The text has been revised and updated to provide comprehensive coverage of the latest syllabuses. New material has been added in the following areas: human health and disease, microbiology and biotechnology, and the applications of genetics. Questions and practical work permeate the text and useful appendices are included covering biological chemistry, biological techniques and statistics. Biological Science is available as two soft cover volumes and as a combined volume hardback.

Cambridge Low Price Editions are reprints of internationally respected books from Cambridge University Press. The text has been completely revised and updated to provide comprehensive coverage of all the major biology syllabuses at Advanced level. It is also suitable for first-year students in higher education. It contains: clearly written up-to-date information appropriate to the new Advanced level biology syllabuses, new material covering microbiology and biotechnology, the applications of genetics, and human health and disease, a variety of questions throughout the text, carefully selected and clearly presented practical investigations in many of the units, appendices providing basic information and techniques relating to the relevant areas of the physical sciences and mathematics (e.g.biological chemistry and statistics)