Now a major motion picture, starring Jessica Chastain & Daniel Bruhl, based on a remarkable true story of bravery & sanctuary during World War II
- out in Spring 2017. When Germany invades Pol&, Luftwaffe bombers devastate Warsaw & the city`s zoo along with it. With most of their animals killed, or stolen away to Berlin, zookeepers Jan & Antonina Zabinski begin smuggling Jews into the empty cages. As the war escalates Jan becomes increasingly involved in the anti-Nazi resistance. Ammunition is buried in the elephant enclosure & explosives stored in the animal hospital. Plans are prepared for what will become the Warsaw uprising. Through the ever-present fear of discovery, Antonina must keep her unusual household afloat, caring for both its human & animal inhabitants
- otters, a badger, hyena pups, lynxes
- as Europe crumbles around them. Written with the narrative drive & emotional punch of a novel, The Zookeeper`s Wife is a remarkable true story. It shows us the human & personal impact of war
- of life in the Warsaw Ghetto, of fighting in the anti-Nazi resistance. But more than anything it is a story of decency & sacrifice triumphing over terror & oppression. Jan & Antonina saved over 300 people from the death camps of the Holocaust. It has already been acclaimed by Jonathan Safran Foer: `I can`t imagine a better story or storyteller. The Zookeeper`s Wife will touch every nerve you have.`



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Blank inside, this card comes with a white envelope & is cello wrapped. The Coconut Tin Card Company is the creation of London based illustrator Finn Dean, award winning illustrator of evocative cityscapes & landscapes, which blend 20th century aesthetic with contemporary imagery. ...

Theatre of Fish documents John Gimlette’s travels along the coast of Newfoundland & Labrador, in a journey that broadly mirrors that of his great-grandfather, Dr Eliot Curwen, who spent a summer there as a doctor in 1893. Gimlette’s ancestor was witness to both some of the most beautiful landscapes & some of the cruellest poverty in the British Empire. Using Curwen’s frank journal, Gimlette revisits the places it describes & explores his own links with the brutal icy l&. ...

` Visually stunning...it`s gone straight to the top of my Christmas present list.` The Bookseller`I remember how well I liked ...

At the beginning of the Second World War the Ministry of Information, through the advice of Kenneth Clark, commissioned Cecil Beaton to photograph the Home Front. Beaton set to work recording the destruction of the Wren churches in the City & the heroism of Londoners under attack. He conducted a survey of Bomber & Fighter Commands for the RAF, which was published with Beaton`s own astute commentary. Beaton was an effective propagandist, but his voice, like his photographs, was touchingly elegant. Whatever his subject, Beaton was always a stylist. Beaton`s wartime work for the Ministry amounted to seven thousand photographs, which are now housed with their negatives at the Imperial War Museums. They form a great document both of the landscape of war & of the passing of the Empire. He travelled through the Western Desert & on to Iraq, Palestine, Transjordan & Syria. In 1943 he left for India where he photographed the final days of the Raj in New Delhi & Calcutta before joining the Burma campaign. He ended the war deep in Chinese territory where he witnessed the Nationalist resistance to the Japanese. Beaton`s inherent sense of theatre extended from palatial drawing rooms to the jungle & the desert. Whatever the circumstances he never departed from his radical aesthetic. ” Theatre of War” is published in conjunction with the Imperial War Museums on the occasion of a major exhibition. ...

The author takes us from the Globe of Shakespeare to the modern Globe on the South Bank. He describes the bad times during the Commonwealth when the theatres were closed & public entertainment banned, & explores the conditions that gave rise to the theatre-building spree of the 19th century, the formation of the National Theatre & the abolition of the Lord Chancellor's power of censorship in 1968. This well-illustrated book

Includes:: a survey of the actors, directors, entrepreneurs, playwrights & architects over the centuries, who made London an international centre of theatre.

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Narrated by the twin voices of the artist Butcher Bones, & his `damaged two-hundred-&-twenty-pound brother` Hugh, Theft: A Love Story once again displays Peter Carey`s extraordinary flair for language. Ranging from the rural wilds of Australia to Manhattan via Tokyo, it is a brilliant & moving exploration of art, fraud, responsibility & redemption. ...

When Janie, at sixteen, is caught kissing shiftless Johnny Taylor, her grandmother swiftly marries her off to an old man with sixty acres. Janie endures two stifling marriages before meeting the man of her dreams, who offers not diamonds, but a packet of flowering seeds.. .` For me, THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD is one of the very greatest American novels of the 20th century. It is so lyrical it should be sentimental; it is so passionate it should be overwrought, but it is instead a rigorous, convincing & dazzling piece of prose, as emotionally satisfying as it is impressive. There is no novel I love more` Zadie Smith ...

” Ian Buruma`s maternal grandparents were born into the same world: children of German-Jewish emigre stockbrokers living in London. But at the demand of his parents, Ian`s grandfather, the dutiful son, broke up with his fiancee by letter just before leaving for the Western Front during World War One, where he served as a stretcher bearer in the Battle of the Somme. It was the first great shock their romance would suffer, but their love would survive it. Bernard (` Bun`) & Winifred (` Win`) Schlesinger were married for more than sixty years, but the heart of their story lies within the span of the two world wars. This is the moving story of an assimilated Jewish family in unhappy times. With the outbreak of war in 1939, the Schlesingers began to face the real prospect that the Nazis could defeat England & place their family`s survival in question. Nonetheless, they helped twelve Jewish children escape from Nazi Germany & gave them new lives in Britain. Drawn into service during World War Two, Bun was stationed in India as a military doctor. No matter what else befell them, Win & Bernard sustained a remarkably consistent stream of letters back & forth between England & India, averaging a letter every other day, & filling their correspondence with vivid accounts of wartime activity. Back home, Win struggled through wartime privation & the Blitz to hold her family together. Through courage & imagination, she cast a spell over her children that kept fear & horror at bay. Their Promised Land is Ian Buruma`s spellbinding homage to the sustaining power of a family`s love & devotion through very dark days.” ...

Ian Buruma`s maternal grandparents, Bernard & Winifred (Bun & Win), wrote to each other regularly throughout their life together. The first letters were written in 1915, when Bun was still at school at Uppingham & Win was taking music lessons in Hampstead. They were married for more than sixty years, but the heart of their remarkable story lies within the span of the two world wars. After a brief separation, when Bernard served as a stretcher bearer on the Western Front during the Great War, the couple exchanged letters whenever they were apart. Most of them were written during the Second World War & their correspondence is filled with vivid accounts of wartime activity at home & abroad. Bernard was stationed in India as an army doctor, while Win struggled through wartime privation & the Blitz to hold her family together, including their eldest son, the later film director John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy, Sunday Bloody Sunday), & twelve Jewish children they had arranged to be rescued from Nazi Germany. Their letters are a priceless record of an assimilated Jewish family living in England throughout the upheavals of the twentieth century & a moving portrait of a loving couple separated by war. By using their own words, Ian Buruma has created a spellbinding homage to the sustaining power of a family`s love & devotion through very dark days ...