Most Popular Books by Melvyn Bragg

A history of the English language traces its evolution from a Germanic dialect around 500 A.D. to its modern form, noting the influence of such groups and individuals as early Anglo-Saxon tribes, Alfred the Great, and William Shakespeare.

The Seventh Seal is probably Bergman's best-known work and the film that most clearly bears the director's unmistakeable signature. The opening scene sets the tone: a stony beach under a leaden sky, the knight alone with his thoughts, then the approach of black-clad Death, whom the knight invites to play a game of chess. Bergman's medieval allegory of faith and doubt is dark with the horrors of witch-burnings and the plague. But it is also shot through with bright flashes of peace and joy, symbolised in the milk and wild strawberries offered to the knight by an innocent family of actors. In his compelling appreciation, Melvyn Bragg describes his own first encounter as a student with this extraordinary film, and how it revealed to him another cinema, quite different from the Hollywood he had grown up with. He recounts too his later meeting with Bergman himself, and how the marks of the director's powerful personality are everywhere in this troubling and inspiring masterpiece.

Melvyn Bragg's first ever memoir - an elegiac, intimate account of growing up in post-war Cumbria, which lyrically evokes a vanished world. 'The best thing he's ever written . . . I loved it' Observer 'A memoir bursting with affection' Sunday Times In this elegiac and heartfelt memoir, Melvyn Bragg recreates his youth in the Cumbrian market town of Wigton: a working-class boy who expected to leave school at fifteen yet who gained a scholarship to Oxford University; who happily roamed the streets and raided orchards with his gang of friends until a breakdown in adolescence drove him to find refuge in books. Vividly evoking the post-war era, Bragg draws an indelible portrait of all that formed him: a community-spirited northern town, still steeped in the old ways; the Lake District landscapes that inspired him; and the many remarkable people in his close-knit world. 'A moving portrait of a lost England . . . remarkable' Daily Telegraph

A lifetime of restraint and placid affection erupts when a retired bank manager falls for a youngh girl. Set in Cumbria, this is an intensely moving evocation of an overwhelming passion and its destructive kernel of jealousy.

Some of the greatest minds of science are profiled in a series of engaging portraits, including Archimedes, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Curie, Freud, Einstein, James Watson, and Francis Crick.

The upheavals of the Second World War reverberated in the peace that followed, and many found a return to the old life more difficult than they had anticipated. Like Sam Richardson, who was determined to break free of the constraints of his background and leave Cumbria for the promised land of Australia. Yet now, a few months on, he has settled for a job in Wigton's paper factory, and believes he has put both his aspirations and his memories of fighting in Burma behind him. His wife, Ellen, begins to know better, realising how close to the brink their marriage had come. Between them their young son Joe strives to fulfil the conflicting expectations of childhood and adolescence and confronts his own demons. Crafted with potent understatement and acute insight into the twists and turns of the heart, this is a formidable successor to Melvyn Bragg's widely praised and award-winning novel, THE SOLDIER'S RETURN

A lifetime of restraint and placid affection erupts when a retired bank manager falls for a young girl, as far removed from him in background and experience as in age. Set in Cumbria, this is an intensely moving evocation of an overwhelming passion and its destructive kernel of jealousy.

Continuing the story of Joe from "A Son of War", this is the story of the rapid changes in his life from working-class Wigton to the rarified atmosphere of Oxford as he begins his studies there. He finds many changes, including his relationship with Rachel, his fiancée in Wigton. Set in Britain in the 1950s, this novel follows the intertwined fates of people crossing boundaries in their lives.

'The effect of the book is massive . . . loving, deep and perceptive' Sunday Times 'Bragg has a very sure touch with his characters: they live' Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange In the shadow of Hadrian's Wall, two young men chafe at the constraints of rural life and yearn to break free from the courses set for them: John Foster, driven hard by his tyrannical, ambitious father on their tenant farm, and Arthur Langley, reluctant inheritor of his father's waning estate. Though class has long kept their neighbouring families apart, the pair form an intense friendship - until John makes the mistake of falling for Arthur's mercurial sister.

A compelling story of passion, loyalty and the dangers of an obsessive relationship by the Booker Prize-longlisted and bestselling author Melvyn Bragg Half-French and with an agile, inquiring mind, Rosemary Lewis cannot help being out of the ordinary in Thurston, the Cumbrian market town where she grows up between the wars. An early, bruising failure in love drives her inwards to the solace of books until she meets Edgar - vigorous, down to earth and determined to win her. Charting their life together, this powerful novel probes with exceptional acuity the heights and tortured depths of a bond that becomes a shackle. 'Rosemary is an outstanding creation' Sunday Telegraph 'A vigorous but never crude study of female sexuality, it is distinguished by passages of prose which have precisely the sort of leaping life that Lawrence held up before himself as an ideal all through his career' Guardian

Richard Burton: star. The roaring boy from the Welsh coal valleys who came to sport on the banks of the old Nile, playing great Antony to Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra. From the West End to Hollywood, from Camelot to Shakespeare, he drank, dazzled and despaired, playing out his life on the public stage. But there was another, quieter, off-stage Richard Burton, a face hidden from the multitude. Melvyn Bragg, allowed free access to the never-before-revealed Burton private notebooks, and with the cooperation of friends who have never spoken about him before, has brought together the private and public sides for the first time. Rich is the complete Richard Burton: a revelation.

Right from the start, when the train carrying British soldier Sam Richardson home to Wigton after his service in the Burma campaign breaks down two miles from town and he and his army comrades have to walk home, it is clear we are in the hands of a compassionate, clear-sighted writer. Bragg's work has been compared to that of Hardy and D.H. Lawrence, not without some justice. His smalltown people are closely and warmly observed, but without a shred of sentimentality, and although this story is familiar¢a man home from a dehumanizing war finds it hard to readjust¢it has seldom been imbued with such rueful humanity. For Sam, England after WWII, and after the sufferings he and his men endured in the frightful jungle campaigns, is stuffy and limiting; soon he starts dreaming of wider horizons. His adored wife, Ellen, however, is happily rooted in the little northern town where she grew up; their small son, Joe, who has hardly known his father, is bewitched but also terrified of him. How the family works out its fate in the shabby postwar years is Braggs story, and he makes of it something at once endearing and heroic. So many scenes, the regimental reunion, Joe's efforts to win friends among the tough town kids, a final scene at a railway station as heartrending as the movie Brief Encounter, linger in the mind. The book is a small classic, deeply touching and true. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

In this gripping novel, Melvyn Bragg brings an extraordinary episode in English history to fresh, urgent life. At the end of May 1381, the fourteen-year-old King of England had reason to be fearful: the plague had returned, the royal coffers were empty and a draconian poll tax was being widely evaded. Yet Richard, bolstered by his powerful, admired mother, felt secure in his God-given right to reign. But within two weeks, the unthinkable happened: a vast force of common people invaded London, led by a former soldier, Walter Tyler, and the radical preacher John Ball, demanding freedom, equality and the complete uprooting of the Church and state. And for three intense, violent days, it looked as if they would sweep all before them. Now is the Time depicts the events of the Peasants' Revolt on both a grand and intimate scale, vividly portraying its central figures and telling an archetypal tale of an epic struggle between the powerful and the apparently powerless.

The Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller celebrating 400 years of the King James Bible. The King James Bible has often been called the Book of Books both in itself and in what it stands for. Since its publication in 1611 it has been the best selling book in the world, and many believe, had the greatest impact. The King James Bible has spread the Protestant faith. It has also been the greatest influence on the enrichment of the English language and its literature. It has been the Bible of wars from the British Civil War in the seventeenth century to the American Civil War two centuries later and it has been carried into battle in innumerable conflicts since then. Its influence on social movements - particularly involving women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - and politics was profound. It was crucial to the growth of democracy. It was integral to the abolition of slavery and it defined attitudes to modern science, education and sex. As THE ADVENTURE OF ENGLISH explored the history of our language, so THE BOOK OF BOOKS reveals the extraordinary and still-felt impact of a work created over 400 years ago.

Based on Melvyn Bragg's stirring novel of rural and industrial working life early in the twentieth century, The Hired Man tells of one family's - Bragg's grandparents' - journey from land laborers to colliers and back to the land. The superb score is a marvelous succession of chorales, operatic duets and vigorous foot stomping rhythms.5 women, 14 men

Melvyn Bragg's highly acclaimed, bestselling historical novel, the story behind one of the 19th century's greatest scandals. 'This is the story of an impostor and bigamist, a self-styled Colonel Hope, who travels to the North, where eventually he marries "The Maid of Buttermere", a young woman whose natural beauty inspired the dreams and confirmed the theories of various early nineteenth-century writers . . . It is a fine story . . . This is historical fiction with a human face' Peter Ackroyd, The Times 'A skilled, ornate and convincing examination of a nineteenth-century scandal in Bragg's own Cumbria' Thomas Keneally 'A triumph . . . I am overwhelmingly impressed' Beryl Bainbridge 'Bragg achieves the most difficult of feats, the telling of the changing perceptions and ideals of a radical age . . . He is also as powerful as ever in his description of nature' Sunday Times

Episode uit het leven van drie mannen, afkomstig uit een Noordengels arbeidersgezin, die in verschillende omstandigheden ieder hun problemen te verwerken krijgen.

In this digitised age of shared information it is easy to take for granted the power of the printed word. Here Melvyn Bragg presents a vivid reminder of the book as agent of social, political and personal revolution. In the fascinating book accompanying the ITV series, Melvyn Bragg takes a look at the most important British books in history, and their long-lasting effects which can still be felt throughout the world today. Far from being a study of dry texts, TWELVE BRITISH BOOKS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD presents a rich variety of human endeavour and a great diversity of characters. From scientific breakthroughs to seminal human rights treatises; from dramatic works of staggering emotional depth to what were at the time seemingly innocuous documents - all these works have shaped the history of Britain and beyond. Definitive, always illuminating and sometimes controversial, the hidden story of these twelve books is a journey through the colourful history of our island and its people.

Jimmie Johnston first became a Labour MP in Cumbria when there was a brave new post-war world to build. Now, in the late 70s, another general election looms but he is no longer so optimistic. And as he fights to keep his seat, his family begins to fracture around him and scandal threatens. In this absorbing and fast-paced novel, Melvyn Bragg's portrait of the mood and politics of the era remains as pertinent today as on its original publication.

THE FINAL NOVEL IN 'ONE OF THE MOST DISTINGUISHED LITERARY SERIES IN RECENT TIMES' (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH) 'Eclipses anything Bragg has written before' Daily Mirror 'Utterly absorbing' Scotsman 'A terrific book' Daily Mail 'A powerful novel that communicates difficult emotional truths' The Times A passionate but ultimately tragic love affair starts when two students - one French, one English - meet at university at the beginning of the sixties. From its tentative early stages, the relationship develops into a life-changing one, whose profound impact continues to reverberate forty years later.