'To have been lucky enough to play Smiley in one's career; and now go and play Jackson Lamb in Mick Herron's novels - the heir, in a way, to le Carre - is a terrific thing' Gary Oldman
Slough House is the outpost where disgraced spies are banished to see out the rest of their derailed careers. Known as the 'slow horses' these misfits have committed crimes of drugs and drunkenness, lechery and failure, politics and betrayal while on duty.
In this drab and mildewed office these highly trained spies don't run…
What a great evocation of 1950s London, written with real warmth and immediacy. It's a story we should all know about, one that puts real people into the two-dimensional image we normally get about post-war immigration, race, and coloniality.
The Lonely Londoners, an unforgettable account of immigrant experience and one of the great twentieth-century London novels, now in in a stunning Clothbound Classics edition.
At Waterloo Station, hopeful new arrivals from the West Indies step off the boat train, ready to start afresh in 1950s London. There, homesick Moses Aloetta, who has already lived in the city for years, meets Henry 'Sir Galahad' Oliver and shows him the ropes. In this strange, cold and foggy city where the natives can be less than friendly at the sight of a black face, has Galahad met his Waterloo? But the irrepressible…
This is the prequel to Grossman's well-known 'Life and Fate', in my opinion even more absorbing. It gives a fantastic account of the Russian experience of the German assault on Stalingrad in WWII, from the point of view of a range of different characters. The story-lines interweave, like 'War and Peace'. The writing is engaging and the descriptions often very moving. Grossman takes you into individual lives with simplicity and directness and doesn't shy away from the most difficult and complex of emotions. The book also has dramatic pace, although it is very long and heavy. I'm reading it in stages with long gaps in between.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER AND NOW A MAJOR RADIO 4 DRAMA
'One of the great novels of the 20th century, and now published in English for the first time' Observer
'A gripping panorama of the human experience' Kenneth Branagh
In April 1942, Hitler and Mussolini plan the huge offensive on the Eastern Front that will culminate in the greatest battle in human history.
Hundreds of miles away, Pyotr Vavilov receives his call-up papers and spends a final night with his wife and children in the hut that is his home. As war approaches, the Shaposhnikov family gathers for a meal:…
