An account of the life and career of the Bloomsbury political intellectual and husband of Virginia Woolf covers his comfortable Jewish childhood, role in inspiring the League of Nations, and relationships with such figures as E. M. Forster and T. S. Eliot. 40,000 first printing.
From the award-winning author of Electricity - an absorbing and finely-drawn tale of professional and personal romance in modern Europe. Martagon, a young and talented engineer and a loner by nature, has devoted his life to his career -- occasionally, and regretfully, sacrificing friendship and family for professional success. He accepts a position masterminding the construction of new, high-tech airport in France, applying his cutting-edge expertise to build it almost entirely of glass. The land and vineyards on which the airport will be built belonged to a feuding brother and sister. It is Marina, the beautiful, flamboyant, and completely irresistible sister, with whom Martagon falls in love for the first time in his life. The detached and rational engineer is thrown completely off balance, begins questioning the ambitions he once took for granted. He takes risks to be with Marina, compromises himself -- professionally and emotionally -- a mistake that could cost him everything he has struggled to achieve. Written with unusual urgency and perception about the relations between men and women, Victoria Glendinning's Flight is a story of passionate love, morality, self-discovery, professional ethics -- of what happens when solid ground disappears from below, and the only options left are to either soar or fall.
First published in Great Britain by George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Limited 1983. Text used for this edition published in Penguin Books 1984"--Title page verso.
A woman in Tudor England fends for herself after Henry VIII closes her abbey in this historical novel perfect for fans of Wolf Hall and Philippa Gregory. In 1535, England is hardly a wellspring of gender equality; it is a grim and oppressive age where women―even the privileged few who can read and write―have little independence. In The Butcher’s Daughter, it is this milieu that mandates Agnes Peppin, daughter of a simple country butcher, to leave her family home in disgrace and live out her days cloistered behind the walls of the Shaftesbury Abbey. But with her great intellect, she becomes the assistant to the Abbess and as a result integrates herself into the unstable royal landscape of King Henry VIII. As Agnes grapples with the complex rules and hierarchies of her new life, King Henry VIII has proclaimed himself the new head of the Church. Religious houses are being formally subjugated, monasteries dissolved, and the great Abbey is no exception to the purge. The cosseted world in which Agnes has carved out for herself a sliver of liberty is shattered. Now, free at last to be the master of her own fate, she descends into a world she knows little about, using her wits and testing her moral convictions against her need to survive by any means necessary . . . The Butcher’s Daughter is the riveting story of a young woman facing head-on the obstacles carefully constructed against her sex. This dark and affecting novel by award-winning author Victoria Glendinning intricately depicts the lives of women in the sixteenth century in a world dominated by men. “A fresh perspective [of the Tudor Era]. . . . Glendinning’s research convincingly depicts the bustling and frequently ruthless world of Henry VIII’s England.” —Library Journal “Psychologically astute . . . and evincing deep knowledge of Tudor-era society. Glendinning thoughtfully explores womanhood’s many facets.” —Booklist “Unabashedly feminist . . . elegant, intelligent, compulsively entertaining. . . . [The Butcher’s Daughter] demonstrates the power of individuals with inner strength and determination to work for change when able to choose a life of their own design.” —Foreword Reviews (starred review)
Victoria Glendinning provides a woman's view of Anthony Trollope, placing emphasis on family, particularly on his relationship with his mother. But it is Anthony as a husband and lover that intrigues her most. She looks at the nature of his love for his wife, Rose and at his love for Kate Field.
Jonathan Swift is an infinitely intriguing figure in the literary and political history of England and Ireland. Best known as the author of GULLIVERS TRAVELS, he was an ordained clergyman whose enemies thought did not believe in God. He became a legendary Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, whose ambition for church perferment in Englandwas perpetually frustrated. For four short, intoxicating years he was the intimate of Queen Anne's chief ministers - a 'spin-doctor' before the term was invented. His private life was intense and enigmatic Two younger women whom he called Stella and Vanessa, moved to Ireland to be close to him. He made both of them unhappy. Poet, polemicist, pamphleteer and wit, Swift is the master of shock. His furious satirical responses to the corruption and hypocrisy he saw around him in public and private life have every relevance for our own artifice and civilisation, gave a new adjective - Swiftian -to the lexicon of criticism. Victoria Glendinning, prize-winning biographer, investigates at close range the main events and relationships of Swift's life, providing a compelling and provocative portrait set in a rich tapestry of controversy and paradox.
A hugely readable story of sexual intrigue, vanity, nemesis and unexpected death 'There are no grown-ups.' Everyone in this wickedly entertaining novel, whatever their age, bullies or deceives or adores someone else, in the merciless playgrounds of London flats, country villages, television studios and conferences. At the centre of it all is Leo Ulm, social scientist and media guru, who magnetizes his wives, lovers and friends with his fading brilliance. He obsesses them all, including clear-eyed Clara, though she may often wish he were dead. The god of his own universe, Leo is monstrously vain and arrogant - until something happens which leaves all the women in his life in shock. Then, perhaps, Clara begins to grow up....
I always wanted everything so frantically, and I'm just the person that can't have them.' Based on family papers and memories, this picture of middle class life at the end of the nineteenth century tells the poignant story of Winnie Seebohm, Victoria Glendinning's great-aunt, who in 1885 was one of the early students at Newnham College, Cambridge. Though much loved by her family, Winnie was stifled in her desire for life and died at the age of twenty-two.
Celebrated novelist, acerbic critic, and journalist without peer, friend and lover of the great and gifted, social and sexual rebel, observer of modern history's turning points, Rebecca West led one of the great lives of the twentieth century. In this first full-scale biography of Rebecca West, the widely admired biographer Victoria Glendinning captures that life in all its disturbing brilliance and haunting pain.
A prize-winning biographer tells the story of the immortal Swift. Poet, polemicist, pamphleteer, and wit, Swift is the master of shock. His furious satirical responses to the corruption and hypocrisy he saw around him in private and public life in eighteenth-century England and Ireland have every relevance for our own times. His black imagination, and his preoccupation with the foulness that lies beneath the thin veneer of artifice and civilization, gave a new adjective-Swiftian-to the lexicon of criticism. Jonathan Swift is best known as the author of Gulliver's Travels, and like his Gulliver in the land of Lilliput, Swift is a problem in perspective and scale. Victoria Glinning has taken a literary zoom lens to illuminate this proud and intractable man. She investigates at close range the main events and relationships of Swift's life, providing a compelling and provocative portrait set in a rich tapestry of controversy and paradox. Yeats said famously that he saw Swift round every corner, that his ghost survived.
Not until her twenties was the real Edith Sitwell born. Freed from her unhappy home life she set up home in a shabby London flat: she became - almost overnight - one of the best-known 1920s pioneering poets. Her Plantagenet good looks attracted the photographer Cecil Beaton and the principal painters of the day. She befriended Aldous Huxley, T.S. Eliot, and Gertrude Stein. She rebuffed Wyndham Lewis and ardently loved the temperamental Russian painter, Pavel Tchelitchew. The thirties she spent in penury, writing her novels, poems and biographies and it was only when Yeats hailed her as 'a major poet' that her work reached a wider audience and she set off to conquer New York and Hollywood. In this vivid and sympathetic portrayal, drawing on Edith's brilliantly funny and often outrageous letters, Victoria Glendinning shows the spontaneous, gallant, yet tragically insecure woman behind the public image.
Anthony Trollope has come down to us as the most Victorian of Victorian novelists, who perfected a "bluff, roast-beef kind of Englishness" into high--and immensely popular--art. Glendinning ushers readers into the furthest reaches of Trollope's work and life to reveal a man of extraordinary depth and liveliness. Photos.
Traces the sexual and intellectual awakening of a Victorian Englishwoman, who marries an electrical engineer and becomes caught up in the excitement of the new science and the charms of a country aristocrat
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