Hot on the heels of Madeline Miller’s and Pat Barker’s comedian and classicist Natalie Haynes’ all-female retelling of the Trojan War. A Thousand Ships shows why Homeric classics are such rich source material for 21st- century authors. With piercing wit and crystalline prose Haynes draws compelling parallels between the inner lives of women caught in the conflict and modern attitudes to sex and gender.
In The Great Romantic, award-winning author Duncan Hamilton demonstrates how Cardus changed sports journalism for ever. While popularising cricket - while appealing, in Cardus' words to people who 'didn't know a leg-break from the pavilion cat at Lord's'- he became a star in his own right with exquisite phrase-making, disdain for statistics and a penchant for literary and musical allusions.
Among those who venerated Cardus were PG Wodehouse, John Arlott, Harold Pinter, JB Priestley and Don Bradman. However, behind the rhapsody in blue skies, green grass and colourful characters, this richly evocative biography finds that Cardus' mother was a prostitute, he never knew his father and he received negligible education. Infatuations with younger women ran parallel to a decidedly unromantic marriage. And, astonishingly, the supreme stylist's aversion to factual accuracy led to his reporting on matches he never attended.
All author and publisher profits from this book will go to NHS Charities Together to fund vital research and projects, and The Lullaby Trust which supports parents bereaved of babies and young children.
Great writers, artists, entertainers and thinkers talk about their experiences of the NHS and explore what it means to them in this unique collection curated and edited by Adam Kay, author of the multi-million-copy bestseller This Is Going to Hurt. With pieces by Emilia Clarke, Peter Kay, Sir Paul McCartney, Stephen Fry, Dawn French, Sir Trevor McDonald, Graham Norton, Sir Michael Palin, Naomie Harris, Ricky Gervais, Sir David Jason, Dame Emma Thompson, Joanna Lumley and many many more, Dear NHS is a thank you and a celebration of our health service and all who work within it.
The NHS is our single greatest achievement as a country. No matter who you are, no matter what your health needs are, and no matter how much money you have, the NHS is there for you. In Dear NHS, 100 inspirational people come together to share their stories of how the national health service has been there for them, and changed their lives in the process. By turns deeply moving, hilarious, hopeful and impassioned, these stories together become a love letter to the NHS and the 1.4 million people who go above and beyond the call of duty every single day - selflessly, generously, putting others before themselves, never more so than now.
They are all heroes, and this book is our way of saying thank you.