My friend Paul Westlake, who has died of cancer aged 65, was a pillar of the radical publishing world from the mid-1970s onwards. He was an advocate of workers' co-operatives and gained much experience in ensuring that the output of independent publishers reached the bookshops.In autumn 1976, after months of planning, we became co-founders, with three others, of a distributor for small radical and feminist publishers, including periodicals. Paul, who had a few years' experience in managing a bookshop, took on the key role of handling the finances, which was a big challenge, particularly for someone without an accounting background.At the beginning, Paul organised the building of an office and warehouse in Clerkenwell Workshops, central London, putting up the internal walls block by block. The Workshops were also home to the magazines Spare Rib and Undercurrents.In 1979 Paul co-founded Zed Books, where he met his partner, Anne. He took on a role in finance and rights administration and in 1983 persuaded the company and its owners to convert to a workers' co-operative. He supported the Industrial Common Ownership Movement for nearly a decade. Always ready to help out in the running of the organisation, he personally introduced the staff to spreadsheets. He also played a leading role in Hackney Co-operative Developments and chaired its trust, which today has a solid property base in Dalston.Paul spent more than 20 years fostering southern African publishing. He founded the... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2013-11-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
As her latest Jackson Brodie thriller comes out, the award-winning author discusses cosy crime, sniffy critics, and how she investigated her own family’s secretsKate Atkinson has an idea for a fun side-hustle: at some point in the future, when she’s done with the second world war, and with her... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2024-08-10 08:00:37 UTC ]
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“No one should be surprised by a writer’s library,” says the author of the Maisie Dobbs series, about a World War I battlefield nurse turned private investigator. The series’ 18th and final book is “The Comfort of Ghosts.” Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2024-06-06 09:00:13 UTC ]
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By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Fly’ is not one of the best-known short stories of the New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923), but it is significant for being one of her few stories which deals directly with the First World War. In the story, a man is reminded […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2023-08-21 14:00:52 UTC ]
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Before you say it, I know: there are so, so many books about the Second World War. And when I set out to write my most recent novel, The Paris Deception, the thought crossed my mind—do we really need another book about Paris during the war? But historical fiction is a rich field, and there […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2023-06-30 08:55:14 UTC ]
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Books to steer people through doubt and trauma, a light look at theological battles over beards, and a historical novel of friendship tested by jealousy and the strains of World War I are among titles releasing in July. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-06-27 04:00:00 UTC ]
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When Alice Winn stumbled on the archives of her British boarding school’s newspaper, she discovered a world, only to see it “destroyed and dismantled” during World War I. She brought it back in her novel, “In Memoriam.” Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2023-03-05 14:54:05 UTC ]
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Lindsey Fitzharris's “The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I” tells of a plastic surgeon whose care went beyond physical healing. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-07-15 12:00:26 UTC ]
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Providence Journal editor John Revelstoke Rathom also had a fake biography, writes journalist Mark Arsenault. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-05-20 12:00:53 UTC ]
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The Booker prize-winning author’s new novel Lessons is ‘a powerful meditation on history and humanity told through the prism of one man’s lifetime’Ian McEwan’s “most epic book to date”, moving from the end of the second world war to the current pandemic and exploring the impact of childhood... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-01-19 12:00:11 UTC ]
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The translation of Deceit by ‘groundbreaking’ author Yuri Felsen, who died in Auschwitz in 1943, is set to come out next MayThe debut novel by Yuri Felsen, an author once regarded as the “Russian Proust” whose work has been forgotten since he died in Auschwitz in 1943, is set to be published in... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-12-01 14:12:48 UTC ]
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Academic Alex Hyde‘s first novel is a lyrical tale about two women named Violet during the Second World War. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-11-26 18:23:13 UTC ]
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Robert Graves (1895-1985) is now probably best-remembered for two prose works: his 1929 memoir Goodbye to All That, about his experience fighting in the First World War, and his 1934 novel I, Claudius, set in ancient Rome. But Graves was also a highly influential poet – and theorist of poetry […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2021-11-24 15:00:55 UTC ]
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Legend Press has landed The Tin Nose Shop, an “incredibly powerful” First World War novel by Don J Snyder. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-11-11 06:14:29 UTC ]
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The story of the First World War has been told in fiction, film, and television many times since the Great War began in 1914. Previously, we gathered together some of the best poems about the First World War, but what about the novels and short stories that have been written? […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2021-09-02 14:00:03 UTC ]
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The German film director has announced two new books: a memoir and The Twilight World, about a remarkable second world war officerWerner Herzog is writing a book about Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who took three decades to surrender after the end of the second world war.The esteemed German... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-08-18 12:56:08 UTC ]
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Lit Lists Earlier this spring, the editors of WLT invited twenty-one writers to nominate a single book, published since the year 2000, that has had a major influence on their own work, along with a brief statement explaining their choice. We published... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2021-06-28 13:32:05 UTC ]
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Teresa Lim’s multi-generational memoir about a long-buried family tragedy set against the Second World War in Singapore has gone to Penguin Michael Joseph. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-06-19 12:40:25 UTC ]
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Williams Collins has pre-empted a memoir by political columnist and commentator Daniel Finkelstein uncovering his family’s devastating experiences of persecution during the Second World War. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-05-05 16:01:10 UTC ]
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A former radio producer, she interviewed thousands of veterans for books that made her known as “the recording angel of the common soldier.” Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-04-22 15:07:00 UTC ]
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