Best Selling Books by Humphrey Carpenter

Amusing retellings of Shakespeare''s plays set in the present day. The plays include: As You Like It, King Lear, Othello, Richard III, Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing.

Dennis Potter''s death in 1994 deprived British television of its most controversial figure. Potter was a prolific writer of genius. Yet while his subversive television plays, such as Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective, scandalized and delighted the nation, they also made him the butt of the tabloids, who nicknamed him ''Dirty Den'' for his 1989 serial Blackeyes. Humphrey Carpenter, acclaimed biographer of Tolkien, Auden, Pound, Britten and Robert Runcie, interviewed everyone who came close to Potter, and had exclusive access to Potter''s archives, including the many unmade television and film scripts. Carpenter portrays a very different Potter from the aggressive public image: a deeply shy and reclusive man, who was psychologically as well as physically scarred by the illness which struck him down at the age of twenty-six. Potter was a man with a vast interest in sex but also a terrible loathing of it, thanks to an appalling experience he suffered in childhood. Potter was a man much gossiped about. Carpenter''s remarkable biography establishes the extraordinary truth behind the rumours; describes Potter''s strange, obsessive relationships with women such as Gina Bellman, who played Blackeyes; and gives a vivid portrait of the backstage dramas and fights behind Potter''s screen triumphs. ''What is valuable about this book is that it reveals Potter''s real private life, which barely features in his plays ... A wonderfully vivid portrait of the man: his generosity and cruelty, his coarseness and tenderness, and the thwarted sexual yearning that underlay everything.'' Lynn Barber, Daily Telegraph

"A biografia autorizada do criador da Terra-média. Nas décadas posteriores ao falecimento de J.R.R. Tolkien, em setembro de 1973, milhões de pessoas leram O Hobbit, O Senhor dos Anéis e O Silmarillion e ficaram tão fascinadas quanto intrigadas com o homem muito reservado por trás dos livros. Nascido na África do Sul, em janeiro de 1892, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien ficou órfão durante a infância e cresceu quase na pobreza. Ele serviu na Primeira Guerra Mundial e sobreviveu à Batalha do Somme, onde perdeu quase todos os seus amigos mais íntimos. Após a guerra, retornou à vida acadêmica, conquistando uma grande reputação como estudioso e professor universitário, e tornando-se, por fim, Professor de Inglês em Oxford, onde fez amizade com C.S. Lewis e os outros escritores conhecidos, formando um grupo denominado Os Inklings. Então, de repente, sua vida mudou dramaticamente. Certo dia, enquanto corrigia provas, ele acabou escrevendo no verso de uma folha: "Numa toca no chão vivia um hobbit" – e a fama mundial o aguardava. Humphrey Carpenter recebeu acesso irrestrito a todos os documentos de Tolkien e entrevistou seus amigos e familiares. A partir dessas fontes ele segue o longo e doloroso processo de criação que produziu O Senhor dos Anéis e O Silmarillion e fornece uma vasta gama de informações sobre a vida e a obra de um dos mais estimados autores do século XX."

Do you know what a raga is? How many strings does a harp have? Where does reggae music come from? From A-Z, this fully illustrated book looks at blues to soul, flamenco to punk, the Beatles to Mozart. See the special features on key topics: instruments, jazz, pop and rock, notation, world music, orchestra With over 300 words and musicians listed alphabetically, the Oxford Children''s A-Z of Music is a great resource to help you improve your musical vocabulary.

From the burning of Byron''s memoirs, Jane Austen''s clipped businesslike manner, and the lucrative controversy caused by the publication of Darwin''s Origin of Species, through to the discovery of the new young poet John Betjeman, the name John Murray has for more than two hundred years been synonymous with challenging, intelligent and progressive publishing. From its birth in 1768, when the first John Murray of Edinburgh came down to London, each of its seven leaders has made his own contribution to the dissemination of literature and the understanding of the world. One became Byron''s publisher and confidante; another began the revolutionary series of Murray handbooks which transformed world travel in the early years of the railways; a third broke controversial new ground with the publication of Queen Victoria''s letters. So the tradition progressed to the end of the twentieth century, and a list of literary giants including Patrick Leigh Fermor, Osbert Lancaster, Fransoise Sagan and Poet Laureate, John Betjeman. Written in Carpenter''s rollicking and iconoclastic style, it is an affectionate and vibrant account of the longest-surviving publishing house in the world.

Studie over het leven en de literaire werken van de Engelse auteur (1892-1973).

Comments, in a letter addressed jointly to Humphrey Carpenter and Edward Mendelson, on their studies of W.H. Auden; responses from both; photocopy of his essay on Auden, published in Spender''s Tribute (1974).

Tolkien''s life through diaries, private papers, letters and living memory, this is a vivid portrait of the man who created a whole magical world beloved to millions.

School is a lot of fun, especially if the new boy in the class comes from outer space! Suggested level: junior.

Contains studies of the most influential figures in the early Christian world: Jesus, Paul, Augustine and Aquinas. The four separate studies which make up this book constitute a guide to the making of Christian doctrine.