An American officer meets a sad and lonely woman on a deserted British beach in a restricted military zone. Lady Sarah Hayward lost her husband and young son in the war. Major Bill Talbot has never known love...until now. He is part of Patton's dash against France and the Battle of the Bulge, the battle that finally brings the German rape of Europe to a halt.
One of the most beguiling storytellers on either side of the Atlantic delivers a luminous new collection whose 14 stories are a series of variations on the theme of love–and its shady cousin lust. A film director’s journal becomes an unintended chronicle of his deepening and ruinous obsession with a leading lady (“Notebook No. 9”). While flying business class, a well-behaved English architect feels the chill onset of an otherworldly visitation that will shatter his family and career (“A Haunting”). An unhappy young boy, neglected by both his father and adulterous mother, finds an unexpected friend in an elderly painter (“Varengeville”). Wise, unsettling, humane, and endlessly surprising, Fascination lives up to its title on every page, while confirming William Boyd’s stature as a writer of incandescent talent.
The New Confessions is a wickedly funny novel by bestselling author William Boyd 'Brilliant ... a Citizen Kane of a novel' Daily Telegraph The New Confessions is the outrageous, extraordinary, hilarious and heartbreaking autobiography of John James Todd, a Scotsman born in 1899 and one of the great self-appointed (and failed) geniuses of the twentieth century. 'An often magnificent feat of story-telling and panoramic reconstruction ... John James Todd's reminiscences carry us through the ups and downs of a long and lively career that begins in genteel Edinburgh, devastatingly detours out to the Western Front, forks off, after a period of cosy family life in London, to the electric excitements of the Berlin film-world of the Twenties, then moves on to Hollywood ... to ordeal by McCarthyism and eventual escape to Europe' Peter Kemp, Observer. The New Confessions will be loved by fans of An Ice-cream War and Any Human Heart, as well as readers of Ben Macintyre, Sebastian Faulks, Nick Hornby and Hilary Mantel.
Throughout his career as a novelist, William Boyd has never stopped writing non-fiction, providing a fascinating counterpoint to the world of his novels. Bamboo gathers together Boyd's writing on literature, art, the movie business, television, people he has met, places he has visited and autobiographical reflections on his African childhood and his years at boarding school. From Pablo Picasso to the allure of the British caff, from Charles Dickens to Catherine Deneuve, from mini-cabs to Brideshead Revisited, this collection proves an engrossing and revealing companion to the work of one of Britain's leading novelists.
The ground war on the mainland of Europe began on D-Day, June 6, 1944. After the initial ferocity of the Normandy invasion came the summer's grim deadlines in the hedgerows. The subsequent Allied breakout and dash across France was followed by the battles at the gates of Germany that occupied the entire autumn of 1944. Winter set in. Spring promised a new Allied assault that would sweep into Germany from the west. But the Germans did not intend to wait for spring. In the middle of December, they struck with three Panzer armies in the Ardennes. The attack was swift and unexpeced and drove a "bulge" into the American line. The bitter winter turned brutal as armies surged back and forth leaving trails of blood in the snow. The Germans struck again, this time in Alsace. They hit hard against a thin line. They attacked with Panzers, SS infantry, and crack paratroops. Again, the Americans fought back with a valiant desperation, throwing in all their reserves; now, in the first days of January 1945, they had emptied their infantry replacement depots from Le Havre to the Ardennes and from Marseilles to Alsace. Everything they had was on the line.
***William Boyd's new novel, The Romantic, is available to pre-order now*** 'An elating read' Sunday Times A producer. A novelist. An actress. It is summer in 1968, the year of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. There are riots in Paris and the Vietnam War is out of control. While the world is reeling our three characters are involved in making a Swingin' Sixties movie in sunny Brighton. All are leading secret lives. Elfrida is drowning her writer's block in vodka; Talbot, coping with the daily dysfunction of making a film, is hiding something in a secret apartment; and the glamorous Anny is wondering why the CIA is suddenly so interested in her. But the show must go on and, as it does, the trio's private worlds begin to take over their public ones. Pressures build inexorably - someone's going to crack. Or maybe they all will. From one of Britain's best loved writers comes an exhilarating, tender novel that asks the vital questions: what makes life worth living? And what do you do if you find it isn't? _______________________________________________ PRAISE FOR WILLIAM BOYD 'The ultimate in immersive fiction . . . magnificent' Sunday Times 'A finely judged performance: a deft and resonant alchemy of fact and fiction, of literary myth and imagination' Guardian on Love is Blind 'William Boyd has probably written more classic books than any of his contemporaries' Daily Telegraph 'Simply the best realistic storyteller of his generation' Sebastian Faulks
When Ruth Gilmartin learns the true identity-and the WWII profession-of her aging mother, Sally Gilmartin, at the start of Boyd's elegant ninth novel, Ruth is understandably surprised. Sally, nee Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian emigree living in Paris in 1939, was recruited as a spy by Lucas Romer, the head of a secretive propaganda group called British Security Coordination, to help get America into the war.
When he is hired as the personal piano tuner for a brilliant pianist, Brodie Moncur suddenly finds himself swept up into a life of luxury that he could never have imagined. But while accompanying his new employer on tours from Paris to St. Petersburg, Brodie falls madly in love with the Russian soprano Lika Blum: beautiful, worldly, seductive—and forbidden. Though seemingly doomed from the start, Brodie’s passion for Lika only grows as their lives become increasingly more intertwined, more secretive, and, finally, more dangerous. A tale of dizzying passion and brutal revenge; of artistic endeavor and the illusions it can create; of the possibilities that life offers and the cruel speed with which they can be snatched away, Love Is Blind is a dazzling work of historical fiction that unfolds across fin de siècle Europe.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.