Classics HIGHLIGHTS

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Contents

Anniversaries 4 Women Writers of the 20th Century 5 Original Thinkers 6 -11 Sci-Fi 12-15 Travels 16-23 Animals & Nature 24-28 Mistery & Crime 29-33

Agents

US Rights: Georgia Glover Film & TV Rights: Nicky Lund; Georgina Ruffhead Translation Rights:

Alice Howe: [email protected] Direct: Brazil; France; Germany; Netherlands Subagented: Italy

Emma Jamison: [email protected] Direct: Arabic; Croatia; Estonia; Greece; Israel; Latvia; Lithuania; Portugal; Slovenia; Spain and Spanish in Latin America; Ukraine Sub-agented: Czech Republic; Hungary; Poland; Romania; Russia; Scandinavia; Slovakia; Turkey

Emily Randle: [email protected] Direct: Afrikaans; Albanian; all Indian languages; Macedonia; Vietnam; Wales; plus miscellaneous requests Subagented: China; Bulgaria; Indonesia; Japan; Korea; Serbia; Taiwan; Thailand

Contact t: +44 (0)20 7434 5900 f: +44 (0)20 7437 1072 www.davidhigham.co.uk ANNIVERSARIES

2016

Roald Dahl (100) James Herriot (100)

2017

A. Burgess (100) E. Hobsbawm A. C. Clarke

2018

Muriel Spark (100)

4 WOMEN WRITERS OF THE 20th CENTURY

M. M. Kaye Molly Keane Marghanita Laski

Olivia Manning Kate O’ Brien Dorothy L Sayers

Muriel Spark Josephine Tey Dorothy Whipple

5 ORIGINAL THINKERS ERIC HOBSBAWM

Eric Hobsbawm was remarkable among historians in being proud to call himself a Marxist long after Marxism had been discredited in the West.

To his admirers he was one of the greatest historians of the 20th Century. To his critics he was an apologist for Soviet tyranny who never fully changed his views. But he was too shrewd, too open-minded to pursue a narrow Marxist approach in his work or his politics. In 2013 he received the Balzan Prize for ‘his brilliant analysis of the troubled history of the 20th Century Europe and for his ability to combine in-depth historical research with great literary talent’. Current Sales

Chinese Complex (Rye Field); Chinese Simplified (CITIC); Czech (Argo); Dutch (Het Spectrum); THE AGE OF EXTREMES Finland (Osuuskunta Vastapaino); In his trilogy, The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital French (Andre Versaille); and The Age of Empire, he wrote the history of the 19th Greek (Themelio); Century. In The Age of Extremes, he wrote the history of Hebrew (Am Oved); Japanese (Chikuma Shobo); his own times. As a Marxist he believed historical events Korean (Kachi); were driven by economic changes but his interests were Polish (Krytyka Polityczna); broad. Eric Hobsbawm’s titles have been translated Portuguese in Brazil (Companhia); into 39 languages. Portuguese (Presenca); Romania (Cartier); Russian (Corpus); . Spanish (Planeta)

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Graham Greene is recognised as one of the most important writers of the twentieth century, achieving both literary acclaim and popular success. His best known works include Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The Quiet American and The Power and the Glory. Born in 1904, he went into journalism on leaving Oxford, before dedicating himself full-time to his writing with his first big success Stamboul Train. He became involved in screenwriting and wrote adaptations for the cinema as well as original screenplays, the most successful being The Third Man. Religious, moral and political themes are at the root of much of his writing, and throughout his life he travelled to some of the wildest Current Sales and most volatile parts of the world. Haiti, Vietnam, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cuba and Mexico all provided Chinese simplified (Shanghai H&H); settings for his fiction. He died in 1991 at the age of 86. Chinese Complex (China Times); France (Laffont); . German (Paul Zsolnay); Hungary (Titis) THE END OF THE AFFAIR (Vintage, UK) Italy (Mondadori); The love affair between Maurice Bendrix and Sarah, Japan (Hayakawa); flourishing in the turbulent times of the Blitz, ends Netherlands (Xander); Norway (Cappelen Damm) when she suddenly and without explanation breaks Portuguese in Brazil (Globo); it off. After a chance meeting rekindles his love and Romania (Polirom); jealousy two years later, Bendrix hires a private detective Russia (Amphora); to follow Sarah, and slowly his love for her turns into an Serbia (Alnari) obsession. Sweden (Modernista); Turkey (K A Kitap);

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Few writers have been more versatile, or more prolific, than Anthony Burgess (1917-1993): one of the leading novelists of his day, he was also a poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. In addition to his best-known work, A Clockwork Orange, he wrote thirty-three novels, twenty-five works of non-fiction, two volumes of autobiography, three symphonies, more than 150 musical works, reams of journalism and much more. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, received honorary degrees from St Andrews, and Manchester universities and in France was created Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, the highest level of the Order. Considered a modern master Current Sales of English prose, the centenary of Anthony Burgess’s birth will be celebrated in 2017 French (Grassset/Laffont); Portuguese in Brazil (Aleph); Romania (Sc Humanitas); A DEAD MAN IN DEPTFORD (Vintage, UK) Russia (AST): A Dead Man in Deptford re-imagines the riotous life and Turkish (Kultur Yayinlari); suspicious death of Christopher Marlowe. Poet, lover and spy, Marlowe must negotiate the pressures placed All Titles and Previous Publishers upon him by theatre, Queen and country. Burgess brings this dazzling figure to life and pungently evokes Elizabethan England

‘One of the most productive, imaginative and risk-tak- ing of writers.’ Irish Times

‘One of the cleverest and most original writers of his generation.’

9 DYLAN THOMAS

Dylan Thomas is one of the most celebrated poets in the English language. Born in 1914, he worked briefly as a journalist before deciding to embark on a freelance literary career. He rapidly established himself as a remarkable personality and one of the finest poets of his generation. His first collection, 18 Poems, appeared in 1934; several further volumes followed over the next two decades. In Country Sleep, which featured Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, a eulogy to his dying father and one of his best-known and oft-quoted works, was published in 1952. His Collected Poems appeared during the same year and has been in print ever since.His short Current Sales for COLLECTED POEMS stories include Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog and his play include Under Milk Wood. He died at the age Catalan (Els Llums); of thirty-nine in 1953. In 1982 a memorial stone was Denmark (Det Poetiske Bureaus) unveiled in ‘Poets’ Corner’ in Westminster Abbey, and Norwegian (Bokvennen); Russia (Rudimino); in 2014 the international book community celebrated Polish (I Festival Swiat Literacki); his centenary, with a new edition of ‘Collected Poems’. All Titles and Previous Publishers THE COLLECTED POEMS OF DYLAN THOMAS (Centenary edition, Ed. John Goodby, Orion, UK) This new edition of his poems, edited and annotated by Dylan Thomas expert John Goodby, commemorates the centenary of Thomas’s birth. With recently discovered material and accessible critique, it looks at his body of work in a fresh light and takes us to the beating heart of Thomas’s poetry.

10 MURIEL SPARK

Muriel Spark originally worked as a secretary and then a poet and literary journalist. She was completely unknown and impoverished until she started her career as a story writer and novelist. Then everything changed literally overnight. From 1957, and the appearance of her first novel, The Comforters, she was warmly applauded by many famous writers of the day including , Graham Greene and W.H. Auden. Her novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was made into a play on Broadway and the West End of London and then a famous film for which Maggie Smith obtained an Oscar. Muriel Spark was made a Dame in 1993 in recognition of her services to literature. She was twice short-listed Current Sales for the Booker Prize, in 1969 for The Public Image and in 1981 for Loitering with Intent. She received many Catalan (LaBreu); Chinese Simplified (Thinkingdom honorary degrees from universities, and was awarded Media); countless prizes and honours, as well as being translated Hungarian (L’Harmattan Kiado); into all major languages. She died in 2006, aged 88. Korean (Munhakdogne); Norwegian (Oktober); THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE (Penguin Modern Classics, Portuguese (Ahab Edicioes); Spanish (Editorial Pre-Textos); UK) Miss Jean Brodie is a teacher unlike any other, proud Romanian (Vellant); and cultured, enigmatic and freethinking; a romantic, with Swedish(Modernista); progressive, sometimes shocking ideas and aspirations for Turkish (Siren Yayinlari). the girls in her charge. At the Marcia Blaine Academy she takes a select group of girls under her wing. Spellbound All Titles and Previous Publishers by Miss Brodie’s unconventional teaching, these devoted pupils form the Brodie set. But as the girls enter their teenage years and they become increasingly drawn in by Miss Brodie’s personal life, her ambitions for them take a startling and dark turn with devastating consequences.

11 SCIENCE-FICTION ARTHUR C CLARKE

Along with H G Wells and Isaac Asimov, Sir Arthur C Clarke is considered one of the founding fathers of modern science fiction. Born in 1917, he authored or co-authored over 100 books of science fiction and science fact, and his visions of space travel and computing sparked the imagination of readers and scientists alike.

In 1945 he published a paper setting out his hypothesis of the principles of satellite communication, which led to the global satellite systems in use today. Among his science fiction classics are the short story ‘The Sentinel’ (rights DHA) that formed the basis for 2001: A Space Currents Sales Odyssey, which he co-wrote with Stanley Kubrick. He died in 2008, at his home in Sri Lanka, shortly after Brazil (Aleph); completing his final book,The Last Theorem. Chinese Simplified (Shanghai Dook); French (J’ai Lu); Galician (Hugin e Munin); RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA (Orion, UK) Rama is a vast German (Bastei Lubbe); alien spacecraft that enters the Solar System. A perfect Japanese (Hayakawa); cylinder some fifty kilometres long, spinning rapidly, Polish (Vis-A-Vis); racing through space, Rama is a technological marvel, Romanian (Nemira); Spanish (EDHASA) a mysterious and deeply enigmatic alien artifact. It is Mankind’s first visitor from the stars and must be All Titles and Previous Publishers investigated …

‘The very personification of science fiction’ – The Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction

‘One of the truly prophetic figures of the space age ... The colossus of science fiction’ –The New Yorker

13 RUSSELL HOBAN

Born in 1925 in Pennsylvania, Russell Hoban was an illustrator before becoming a writer. He is the author of many extraordinary novels including Turtle Diary, Riddley Walker, Angelica’s Grotto, and Amaryllis Night and Day. He has also written some classic books for children including The Mouse and the Child and the Frances books. He died in 2011.

RIDDLEY WALKER (Orion, UK) ‘Walker is my name and I am the same. Riddley Walker. Walking my riddels where ever theyve took me and walking them now on this paper the same. There aint that many sir prizes in life if you take noatis Current sales of every thing. Every time will have its happenings out and every place the same. Thats why I finely come to French (Toussaint Louverture); writing all this down. Thinking on what the idear of us Japanese (Kirakusha); Spanish (Editorial Catedra) myt be. Thinking on that thing whats in us lorn and loan and oansome.’ All Titles and Previous Publishers Composed in an English which has never been spoken and laced with a storytelling tradition that predates the written word, Riddley Walker is the world waiting for us at the bitter end of the nuclear road. It is desolate, dangerous and harrowing, and a modern masterpiece.

‘Russell Hoban has brought off an extraordinary feat of imagination and of style ... funny, terrible, haunting and unsettling, this book is a masterpiece’ Observer

14 JOHN WYNDHAM

Born in 1903, Wyndham pioneered a form of science fiction that he labelled ‘logical fantasy’, moving away from the ‘traditional’ form of sci-fi which was mainly set in outer space and featured what Wyndham called ‘galactic gangsters’, to write about situations that were rational extensions of the present day and featuring ordinary people who try to sustain civilized values when the normal social system has collapsed.

The Day of the Triffids, Wyndham’s first significant novel, has been permanently in print since its publication in 1951 and remains one of his most widely-read and Current sales highly-acclaimed works. His other classic novels include The Chrysalids, The Kraken Wakes, The Midwich Cuckoos Chinese Simplified (Shanghai 99); and Chocky. He died in 1969. Czech (BB Art); Estonian (Eesti Paevaleht); German (Heyne); THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS (Penguin, UK) Italian (Mondadori); When Bill Masen wakes up blindfolded in hospital there Japanese (Sogen-sha); is a bitter irony in his situation. Carefully removing his Korea (Hyundae Munhak); bandages, he realizes that he is the only person who Portuguese (Presenca); Spanish (Minotauro); can see: everyone else, doctors and patients alike, has Swedish (Styxx Fantasy); been blinded by a meteor shower. Now, with civilization Turkish (Tudem) in chaos, the triffids - huge, large-rooted plants able to ‘walk’, feeding on human flesh - can have their day. All Titles and Previous Publishers The Day of the Triffids, published in 1951, expresses many of the political concerns of its time: the , the fear of biological experimentation and the man-made apocalypse. However, with its terrifyingly believable insights into the genetic modification of plants, the book is more relevant today than ever before.

15 TRAVEL J.R. ACKERLEY

J. R. Ackerley (1896-1967) was, for many years, the literary editor of the BBC Magazine, The Listener. A respected mentor to such younger writers as Christopher Isherwood and W. H. Auden, he was also a long time friend and literary associate of E. M. Forster. His works include two memoirs, My Dog Tulip and My Father and Myself, a travel journal, Hindoo Holiday, and a novel, We Think the World of You.

HINDOO HOLIDAY (Penguin Books, UK; The New York Review of Books, US). In the 1920s, the young J. R. Ackerley spent several months in India as the personal secretary to the maharajah of a small Indian principality. In his journals, Ackerley recorded the Maharajah’s fantastically eccentric habits and riddling conversations, and the odd shambling day-to-day life of his court. Hindoo Holiday is an intimate and very funny account of an exceedingly strange place, and one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century travel literature.

‘His humour is the humour of pity and love. He is an artist of the understanding.’ V.S. Pritchett

‘Stands upon a superior and totally distinct plane of artistic achievement...It is a work of high literary skill and very delicate aesthetic perception radiantly delightful’ Evelyn Waugh

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17 ROBERT HUGHES

Born in 1900, Richard Hughes was the author of the world’s first radio play,Danger , commissioned by the BBC and broadcast in 1924. Two years later he published the first and perhaps best known of his four novels, A High Wind in Jamaica. It became a worldwide bestseller and won the Prix Femina in France, establishing itself as a modern classic.

In his latter years, he worked on a series of novels, called The Human Predicament, a massive project in which he explored the social, economic, political and moral forces which shaped the period from the 1920s through the Second World War, including real characters and events – such as Hitler’s escape following the abortive Current Sales: Munich putsch. Although only two of these novels, The Fox in the Attic (1961) and The Wooden Shepherdess Polish (W.A.B) Korean (Moonijn Media) (1973), were completed, Hughes’s achievement has been widely praised. No other twentieth century novelist All Titles and Previous Publishers has so successfully transposed history into fiction.

‘…timeless power it should probably be on every school curriculum… masterful storytelling becomes something dream-like and haunting. It’s not a book you easily forget.’Independent on Sunday

A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA (Vintage Classics, UK; NYRB, US) Richard Hughes’s celebrated short novel is a master- piece of concentrated narrative. Its dreamlike action begins among the decayed plantation houses and overwhelming natural abundance of late nineteenth- century Jamaica, before moving out onto the high seas, as Hughes tells the story of a group of children thrown upon the mercy of a crew of pirates. A tale of seduction and betrayal, of accommodation and ma- nipulation, of weird humour and unforeseen violence, this classic of twentieth-century literature is above all an extraordinary reckoning with the secret reasons and otherworldly realities of childhood.

18 M.M. KAYE

M.M. Kaye was born in India and grew up there. After school in England she returned to India and lived there throughout her early married life. She earned international acclaim as the author of The Far Pavilions, and went on to write Shadow of the Moon and Trade Wind, also set in India, as well as atmospheric murder mysteries, ‘Death in…’ series. She wrote three volumes of memoirs, collectively entitled Share of Summer. She died in January 2004.

The Far Pavilions (Penguin UK, Martin Press US) The Far Pavilions is the story of an English man - Ashton Pelham-Martyn - brought up as a Hindu. It is the story of his passionate, but dangerous love for Juli, an Indian Current sales princess. It is the story of divided loyalties, of friendship that endures till death, of high adventure and of the Czech (Euromedia) French (Albin Michel) clash between East and West. To the burning plains German (Krueger) and snow-capped mountains of this great, humming Italian (E/O) continent, M.M. Kaye brings her exceptional gifts of Russian (Exmo) storytelling and meticulous historical accuracy, plus her insight into the human heart. All Titles and Previous Publishers ‘A long, romantic adventure story of the highest cali- bre ... wildly exciting’ Daily Telegraph

‘Magnificent is the only possible description for The Far Pavilions ... not one of its 950 pages is a page too much’ Evening Standard

‘A Gone With the Wind of the North-West frontier’ Jan Morris, The Times

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Paul Scott was born in north London in 1920. During the Second World War he held a commission in the Indian army, after which he worked for several years in publishing. His first novel, Johnnie Sahib was published in 1952, followed by twelve others of which the best known are The Raj Quartet: The Jewel in the Crown, The Day of the Scorpian, and A Division of Spoils, which were adapted for television in the 1980s. Scott’s novels persistently draw on his experiences of India and service in the armed forces, with strong sub-texts of uneasy relationships between male friends or brothers, and explore both the social privilege and the oppressive class and racial stratifications of empire. Scott’s last novel won the Booker Current Sales: Prize in 1977.He died in 1978. Assamese(NN Baruah) STAYING ON (Random House, UK) All Titles and Previous Publishers Tusker and Lily Smalley stayed on in India. Given the chance to return ‘home’ when Tusker, once a Colonel in the British Army, retired, they chose instead to remain in the small hill town of Pangkot, with its eccentric inhabitants and archaic rituals left over from the days of the Empire. Only the tyranny of their landlady, the imposing Mrs Bhoolabhoy, threatens to upset the quiet rhythm of their days. Both funny and deeply moving, Staying On is a unique, engrossing portrait of the end of an empire and of a forty-year love affair.

‘Staying On covers only a few months but it carries the emotional impact of a lifetime, even a civilisation’ Philip Larkin

‘Certainly his funniest and, I think, his best. It is a first- class book and deserves to be remembered for a long time’ Evening Standard

‘One of the most cherished books of the last quarter- century. It is good to re-read it for its humour and pathos as well as its wonderful description of the legacy of the Raj’ Sunday Telegraph

20 OLIVIA MANNING

Olivia Manning was born in and spent much of her youth in . In 1939 she married R D ‘Reggie’ Smith, and his work took them to Athens, and before returning to London in 1946, where she lived until her death in 1980.

Manning’s experiences formed the basis for her best known work, the six novels making up The Balkan Trilogy (rights DHA) and The Levant Trilogy (rights Weidenfeld & Nicholson), published between 1960 and 1980 and known collectively as Fortunes of War, which was described by Anthony Burgess as ‘the finest fictional record of the war produced by a British writer’. In addition to her novels, Manning wrote short stories, Current Sales: essays and criticism, history, a screenplay, and a book Italian (Giulio Einaudi) about Burmese and Siamese cats. Her work has been Current Sales for School for Love compared to that of , Graham Greene, French (Editions Sous-Soi) Evelyn Waugh and . All Titles and Previous Publishers THE BALKAN TRILOGY (Arrow, UK) Living and working in Romania, Guy and Harriet Pringle are forced to evacuate to Greece before the steady advance of the German army. The Balkan Trilogy is the remarkable portrait of their marriage, a haunting evo- cation of a vanished way of life and a delightfully ironic comedy of manners in a breaking world.

‘Olivia Manning is an extraordinarily vivid writer, one with a true artist’s respect and discipline for her craft’ The Scotsman

21 KATE O’BRIEN

Kate O’Brien was born in Limerick City in 1897. After the success of her play Distinguished Villa in 1926, she took to full-time writing and was awarded the 1931 James Tait Black Prize for her debut novel Without My Cloak. Kate O’Brien is best known for her novel The Ante-Room, The Land of Spices, and That Lady. Many of her books deal with issues of female agency and sexuality in ways that were new and radical at the time. Throughout her life, O’Brien felt a particular affinity with Spain—while her experiences in the Basque Country inspired Mary Lavelle, she also wrote a life of the Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila, and she used the relationship between the Spanish king Philip II and Maria de Mendoza to write the anti-fascist novel That Lady. She died in Faversham, near Canterbury, in 1974.

FAREWELL SPAIN (Virago, UK) This distinctly personal elegy was written during the early days of the Spanish Civil War by a writer whose future was indelibly marked by a year of travelling in a unique and changing country. A series of reminiscences, impressions and vivid insights, Kate O’Brien’s thoughtful journey offers something unique at every stage, and captures perfectly the spirit of a lost place and the experience of travel and memory

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22 GRAHAM GREENE

OUR MAN IN HAVANA (Vintage, UK) Wormold is a vacuum cleaner salesman in a city of power cuts. His adolescent daughter spends his money with a skill that amazes him, so when a mysterious Englishman offers him an extra income he’s tempted. In return all he has to do is carry out a little espionage and file a few reports. But when his fake reports start coming true, things suddenly get more complicated and Havana becomes a threatening place.

‘As comical, satirical, atmospherical an “entertainment” as he has given us’ Daily Telegraph

‘He had a sharp nose for trouble and injustice. In Our Man In Havana - a witty send-up of an agent’s life - it was Cuba before Castro’ Financial Times

Current Sales: Bulgaria (Colibri), Chinese Complex (Yuan-Liou), Chinese Simplified (Yuan-Liou), Denmark (Lindhardt & Ringhoff), Netherlands (Atlas Contact), France (Laffont), Germany (Paul Zsolnay), Greece (Po- lis), Hebrew (Penn), Italian (Mondadori), Japan (Hayakawa), Korea (Woongjin Think Big), Norway (Cappelen Damm AS), Poland (Sonia-Draga), Portuguese in Brazil (Globo), Romania (Polirom), Russia (Amphora), Spain (various publishers), Spanish in Latin America (Sudamericana), Sweden (Modernista), Turkey (K A Kitap)

ANTHONY BURGESS

THE MALAYAN TRILOGY (Vintage, UK) Anthony Burgess was an officer in the Colonial Service. The Malayan Trilogy consists of Time for a Tiger, The Enemy in the Blanket and Beds in the East - he satirises the dog days of . Victor Crabbe is a well meaning, ineffectual English man in the tropics, keen to teach the Malays what the West can do for them. Through Crabbe’s rise and fall and a series of wonderfully colourful characters, Burgess lays bare racial and social prejudices of the post-war state of Malaya during the upheaval of Independence.

‘A sad, hilarious book about the underlife of the expatriate East’ Independent on Sunday

Current Sales: Italy (Einaudi)

23 ANIMALS and NATURE JAMES HERBERT

James Herbert was not just Britain’s number one bestselling writer of chiller fiction, a position he held ever since publication of his first novel, but was also one of our greatest popular novelists. Widely imitated and hugely influential, his twenty-three novels have sold more than fifty-four million copies worldwide, and have been translated into over thirty languages, including Russian and Chinese. In 2010, he was made the Grand Master of Horror by the World Horror Convention and was also awarded an OBE by the Queen for services to literature. His final novel was Ash. James Herbert died in March 2013.

Current sales THE RATS (Macmillan, UK) It was only when the bones of the first devoured victims were discovered that the true France (Bragelonne) nature and power of these swarming black creatures Hungary (Pecsi Direkt Kft) Romania (Nemira) with their razor sharp teeth and the taste for human Serbia (Paladin) blood began to be realised by a panic-stricken city. For millions of years man and rats had been natural enemies. All Titles and Previous Publishers But now for the first time – suddenly, shockingly, horribly – the balance of power had shifted . . .

‘The effectiveness of the gruesome set pieces and brilliant finale are all its own’ Sunday Times JAMES HERRIOT

James Herriot qualified as a veterinary surgeon at Glasgow Veterinary College. Shortly afterwards he took up a position as an assistant in a North York- shire practice where he remained, with the ex- ception of his wartime service in the RAF.His sto- ries about his life as a vet have charmed and delighted millions of readers since his first book If Only They Could Talk was published in 1972. It was followed by It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet, Let Sleeping Vets Lie, Vet in Harness, Vet in a Spin, Ev- ery Living Thing and The Lord God Made Them All. The books have sold over 70 million copies worldwide and have been translated into twenty-eight different Current Sales languages.The books have been adapted for televi- sion, feature film and stage. 2011 saw the broadcast of Chinese Simplified (Beijing Double a three-part drama entitled Young James which is in- Spiral) Chinese Complex (Crown Culture) spired by the young James Herriot’s years at veterinary Indonesia (PT Gramedia) college, drawing on archive material including Herriot’s Italian (Rizzoli) diaries and case notes. Russia (Zakharov) ALL CREATURE GREAT AND SMALL (Macmillan, UK) To All Titles and Previous Publishers the young James Herriot 1930s Yorkshire seems to offers an idyllic pocket of rural life in a rapidly changing world. But from his erratic new colleagues, brothers Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, to incomprehensible farmers, herds of semi-feral cattle, a pig called Nugent and an over- weight Pekingese called Tricki Woo, James find he is on a learning curve as steep as the hills around him. And when he meets Helen, the beautiful daughter of a lo- cal farmer, all the training and experience in the world can’t help him

26 T.H. WHITE

Born in Bombay, India, in 1906, T. H. White was a novel- ist, satirist, and a social historian best known for his bril- liant adaptation of Sir Thomas Malory’s 15th-century romance, Morte d’Arthur, into the quartet of novels called The Once and Future King, which were in turn adapted as the Broadway musical Camelot and the animated film The Sword in the Stone. His first real critical success was England Have My Bones, an autobiographical account of his country life, which he wrote while he was an English mas- ter at Stowe School. His books spanned genres and include The Elephant and the Kangaroo, in which a repetition of Noah’s Flood occurs in Ireland, The Age of Current Sales: Scandal, a collection of essays about 18th-century Eng- land, and The Goshawk. In 1954 White translated and Italy (Adelphi); edited The Book of Beasts, an English translation of a Netherlands (Athaneum); medieval bestiary originally written in Latin. White died Spain (Aticos dos Libros); in 1964 aboard a ship in Piraeus (Athens), Greece, while Italy (Adelphi); Spain (Atico de los Libros) returning home from his American lecture tour. His last book, America At Last, which was published after his All Titles and Previous Publish- death, records the tour. ers In September, Weidenfeld & Nicolson have reissued a new edition with a new foreword by Helen Macdonald.

THE GOSHAWK (NYRB, Weidenfeld & Nicolson) T. H. White was a young writer who found himself rifling through old handbooks of falconry. A sentence—”the bird reverted to a feral state”—seized his imagination, and, White later wrote, “A longing came to my mind that I should be able to do this myself.

Immediately, White wrote to Germany to acquire a young goshawk. Gos, as White named the bird, was ferocious and free, and White had no idea how to break him in beyond the ancient (and, though he did not know it, long superseded) practice of depriving him of sleep, which meant that he, White, also went without rest.

27 J.R. ACKERLEY

MY DOG TULIP (NYRB, UK and US) J.R. Ackerley’s German shepherd Tulip was skittish, possessive and wild, but he loved her deeply. This clear-eyed and wondering, humorous and moving book is her biography, a work of faultless and respectful observation that transcends the seeming modesty of its subject. In telling the story of his beloved Tulip, Ackerley has written a book that is a profound and subtle meditation on the strangeness abiding at the heart of all relationships. A critically-acclaimed animated feature film adaptation of My Dog Tulip was released in 2011, starring Christopher Plummer.

‘The best book ever written about a dog’ – Times Literary Supplement

Current Sales: Spain (Edtioral Anagrama), Poland (Studio Emka Klara Mulnar).

RUSSELL HOBAN

TURTLE DIARY (NYRB, UK and US) Life in a city can be atomizing, isolating. And it certainly is for William G. and Neaera H., the strangers at the center of Russell Hoban’s surprisingly heartwarming novel Turtle Diary. William, a clerk at a used-book store, lives in a rooming house after a divorce that has left him without home or family. Neaera is a successful writer of children’s books, who, in her own estimation, “looks like a man’s woman who hasn’t got a man”. Entirely unknown to each other, they are both drawn to the turtle tank at the London zoo with “minds full of turtle thoughts”, wondering how the turtles might be freed. And then comes the day when Neaera walks into William’s bookstore, and together they form an unlikely partnership to make what seemed a crazy dream become a reality.

28 MYSTERY & CRIME JOHN DICKSON CARR

John Dickson Carr, who also published under the pen names Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fair- bairn, is generally regarded as one of the greatest writers of so-called ‘Golden Age’ mysteries - com- plex, plot-driven stories in which the puzzle is para- mount. He was a great exponent of the ‘locked room mystery’, with most of his novels featuring the elucidation, by an eccentric detective, of ap- parently impossible, and seemingly supernatural, crimes.

The Hollow Man, published in 1935, was selected in 1981 as the best locked-room mystery of all time by a pan- el of seventeen mystery authors and reviewers. Carr’s Current Sales works have formed the basis of a number of film and television productions, including the 1956 television se- Chinese Complex (Faces) French (Les Editions du Masque) ries Colonel March of Scotland Yard, which starred Bo- Greek (Motibo) ris Karloff as Colonel March and ran for twenty-six epi- Italian (Mondadori) sodes. Carr was twice a winner of an Edgar Award from Japanese (Hayakawa) the Mystery Writers of America, first in 1950 for his biog- Korean (Elixir) raphy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and again in 1970 in All Titles and Previous Publishers recognition of his forty-year career as a mystery writer. He was also presented with the MWA’s Grand Master Award in 1963.

‘The sheer ingenuity of the plot is a delight.’ Daily Mail

THE HOLLOW MAN (Orion, UK) Professor Charles Gri- maud is explaining to some friends the natural causes behind an ancient superstition about men leaving their coffins when a stranger enters and challenges Grimaud’s skepticism. The stranger asserts that he has risen from his own coffin and that four walls mean nothing to him. He adds, ‘My brother can do more... he wants your life and will call on you!’ The brother came during a snowstorm, walks through the locked front door, shoots Grimaud and vanishes. The tragedy brings Dr Gideon Fell into the bizarre mystery of a killer who left no footprints.

30 THE DETECTION CLUB

The Detection Club was formed in 1930 by a group of British mystery writers, including Agatha Christie, Doro- thy L. Sayers, Ronald Knox, Freeman Wills Crofts, Arthur Morrison, John Rhode, Jessie Rickard, Baroness Emma Orczy, R. Austin Freeman, G. D. H. Cole, Margaret Cole, E. C. Bentley, Henry Wade and H. C. Bailey. There was a fanciful initiation ritual with an oath probably writ- ten by either Chesterton or Sayers, and the club held regular dinner meetings in London. In addition to meet- ing for dinners and helping each other with technical aspects in their individual writings, the members of the club agreed to adhere to a code of ethics in their writ- ing to give the reader a fair chance at guessing the Current Sales guilty party. These fair-play “rules” were never intended as more than guidelines, and not all the members took IEnglish overseas (Hachette) them seriously. Italy (Giunti) Portugal (ASA) Spain (Akal) THE FLOATING ADMIRAL (HaperCollins, UK) Inspector Russia (AST) Rudge does not encounter many cases of murder in the sleepy seaside town of Whynmouth. But when an All Titles and Previous Publishers old sailor lands a rowing boat containing a fresh corpse with a stab wound to the chest, the inspector’s inves- tigation immediately comes up against several obsta- cles. The vicar, whose boat the body was found in, is clearly withholding information, and the victim’s niece has disappeared. There is more to this case than meets the eye - even the identity of the victim is called into doubt. Inspector Rudge begins to wonder just how many people have contributed to this extraordinary crime and whether he will ever unravel it…

31 DOROTHY L.SAYERS

Dorothy L. Sayers is recognised as one of the greatest mystery writers of the twentieth century. Born in 1893, Sayers was one of the first women to be awarded a degree from Oxford University. She started as an advertising copywriter and began writing mysteries to break free and become a professional writer. A refined author whose wry mysteries were spiced with quotations of verse and observations about English society, Sayers created aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey who featured in eleven novels and 21 short stories, the first of which was published in 1923. These stories have been adapted for television and radio, with great success. In addition to the novels Current Sales for which she is best known, she also wrote religious plays, poems, essays and a new translation of Dante. French (Les Editions du Masque) Five volumes of her letters have been published, edited German (Rowohlt) Polish (C&T- Pawel Marszalek) by Barbara Reynolds. Together with Jill Paton Walsh, Russian (AST) Dorothy L. Sayers wrote The Late Scholar and The Attenbury Emeralds. All Titles and Previous Publishers ‘She brought to the detective novel originality, intelli- gence, energy and wit.’ P. D. James

‘D. L. Sayers is one of the best detective story writers.’ E. C. Bentley, Daily Telegraph

WHOSE BODY? (Dover, US) Lord Peter is intrigued by the sudden appearance of a naked dead body in the bath and investigates. A financier has also gone missing under strange circumstances and it becomes clear that the two events are linked in some way. A hired man has just found a corpse in the bath in his flat: a body wearing nothing but a pair of pince-nez. In the meantime, the financier has apparently disappeared into thin air from his own bedroom. Ignoring the clumsy efforts of the official investigator, Lord Peter starts his own enquiry. Can he solve this mysterious disappearance and even more mysterious murder? JOSEPHINE TEY

Josephine Tey is one of the best known and best loved of all crime writers. She began to write full time after the successful publication of her first novel,The Man in the Queue in 1929 which introduced Inspector Grant of Scotland Yard. In 1937 she returned to crime writ- ing with A Shilling for Candles, but it wasn’t until after the Second World War that the majority of her crime novels were published. A number of her nov- els have been adapted for radio and television.

THE DAUGHTER OF TIME (Random House, UK) Richard III reigned for only two years, and for centuries he was villified as the hunch-backed wicked uncle, murderer Current Sales of the princes in the Tower. Josephine Tey’s novel is an investigation into the real facts Catalan (Lleonard Muntaner); behind the last Plantagenet king’s reign, and an at- Chinese Complex (Azoth Books); French (10/18) tempt to right what many believe to be the terrible in- Italian (Mondadori) justice done to him by the Tudor dynasty. Russian (AST) Spanish (RBA Libros) ‘Most people will find The Daughter Of Time as interest- Turkish (April Publishing) ing and enjoyable a book as they will meet in a month All Titles and Previous Publishers of Sundays.’ Observer

‘A detective story with a very considerable difference. Ingenious, stimulating and very enjoyable.’ Sunday Times

33 J.R. Ackerley Robert Hughes

Anthony Burgess M.M. Kaye

Arthur C. Clarke Olivia Manning

The Detection Club Kate O’Brien

John Dickson Carr Dorothy L Sayers

Roald Dahl Paul Scott

Graham Greene Muriel Spark

James Herriot Josephine Tey

James Herbert Dylan Thomas

Russell Hoban T.H. White

Eric Hobsbawm John Wyndham