This is the account of a summer journey through Sardinia in the 1950s, an island which at that time had hardly been touched by the twentieth century. The author has also written "Ranji" and two volumes of autobiography - "Blindfold Games" and "Coastwise Lights".

The Bandit on the Billiard Table

Sports & Outdoors

Ross, Alan

Individual Sports

Vintage/Ebury (A Division of Random House Group)

Coastwise lights

<p>In this autobiography, Alan Ross takes up the story of his life and enthusiasms where his first volume, "Blindfold Games" left off. We see him in Paris with John Minton in 1946 and later in Corsica. The book provides a history of metropolitan literary life from the end of the War.</p>

Coastwise Lights

Collins Harvill, Grafton St

This book captures the magical lure of the racecourse in the words of its celebrants: Diarists like Charles Greville, Samuel Pepys, and John Evelyn; poets like Shakespeare, John Masefield and John Betjeman; and novelists like Dickens, R.S.Surtees, D H Lawrence, Hemingway.

The Turf (Small Oxford books)

Literature & Fiction

Oxford University Press

The London Magazine: April/May Issue

Pan/Macmillan

Peter Porter has drawn on the full range of the published work, from "A Private Country" (1943) to "Vega" (1973), and has provided a long overdue revaluation of Durrell's poetic career. In his detailed introduction, Porter makes the case for "A Private Country" as one of the most accomplished debut collections of the twentieth century, and traces Durrell's preoccupations and poetic personality within the wider scene. The selection of poems makes its own strong case for the continuing power of this attractive, and wholly individual body of work.

Selected Poems of Lawrence Durrell

DURRELL, LAWRENCE

Poetry

Faber and Faber Ltd.

Blindfold Games was the first volume of Alan Ross's autobiography. He was a most attractive man. William Boyd has eloquently described his appeal, 'There was a sophisticated raffishness and glamour about him . . . nothing seedy or earnest. He owned racehorses. He loved women and travel. . . He was a poet and a brilliant writer on cricket.' He was also one of the great literary editors, running the London Magazine in its heyday.This volume begins in Bengal, where he was born, and ends in Germany in 1946 when the author was twenty-four. It takes in his childhood in India, his schooldays in England, his time at Oxford, and, most hauntingly, his experiences on the Arctic convoys during the Second World War. He survived: very many of his friends were killed. To give it a less humdrum description one can turn to the author's own words. 'War, India, cricket: these were my first subjects as a writer and they remain the preoccupations of this book. In due course, the playing of games was replaced by writing about them, and it was to the belief that the best characteristics of each derive from the same source that I nailed my colours. The searching for 'suitable similes' . . . whether for Hammond's off-drive, Stanley Matthews' mesmeric dribbling, or a racehorse's action, was as good a way as I could imagine of relating techniques to aesthetics. . .Perhaps, as much as anything, writing this book has been an attempt to reconcile differing definitions of style and to trace the manner in which a single-minded devotion to sport developed into a passion for poetry.' 'An exceptional autobiography, beautifully written' John Carey'A beautifully composed book' Raleigh Trevelyan'A Delightful account of the first part of his life, which, I shall lay odds, is likely to become a classic' Allan Massie, Listener'A brilliant performance' Anthony Curtis

Blindfold Games

British & Irish

Faber and Faber

'It was rugged travel; the hotels where we stayed were basic and often dirty. We lived on bread, cheese, figs, pastis and wine. The bus journeys were slow and suffocating, with long stops for no particular reason. One day we would be languishing in the humid heat of an estuary, the next exhilarated by sweet mountain air, waking to forests and mountains. We never saw an English person, and hardly any French, except at Calvi and Ile-Rousse towards the end of our trip.'That is Alan Ross describing Corsica in 1947 which he and the artist John Minton visited, in the footsteps of Edward Lear, expressly to write this book. Although admitting, perhaps too modestly, to the influence of Graham Greene's The Lawless Roads and Journey Without Maps and therefore 'too inclined to see Corsica in terms of defeated priests, corrupt politicians and saintly monks' he wrote one of the best travel books since the Second World War. It is, in fact, a collaboration between a gifted writer and the most romantic artist of his generation, and, in its own lesser way, it played a part, alongside the early Elizabeth Davids (also illustrated by John Minton), of reminding drab, grey, post-war Britain of a warmer, sunnier, more colourful alternative: the Mediterranean.'Evocative and splendid . . . alert, fresh and sensuous' Times Literary Supplement'Poetic, personal, the pungent effect of travel on keen senses' V. S. Pritchett, New Statesman'Splashed with bold strokes and burning colours . . . We are made to see and small, hear and feel the place. That is the test of a good travel book' Observer

Time Was Away: A Journey Through Corsica

Travel

Europe

This, the second volume of Alan Ross's autobiography, deals with his postwar life as cricket correspondent, publisher, man of letters and racehorse owner. The narrative is richly peopled: Johnny Minton, Keith Vaughan, Agatha Christie, Gavin Maxwell, Wilfred Thesiger, Cyril Connolly, T. C. Worsley, William Plomer, Terence Rattigan, William Sansom are just some who are memorably characterized.   William Boyd has written of Alan Ross, 'He was the opposite of parochial, his interests were wide and not elitist, his enthusiasms were carefully hedonistic. He was a very fine writer of prose ... his two volumes of memoirs are small classics ... and his poetry is limpid and evocative.' As a beguiling bonus, each chapter of Coastwise Lights is eked out with a small and apt selection of his poems.  The first autobiographical volume, Blindfold Games, is also available in Faber Finds as will be many other of his titles.  'A true celebration of friendship and talent as well as the sports ... football, cricket, horse-racing ... which have engaged him in the last four decades.' Philip Oakes, New Statesman  'His obvious affection for the friends who flit through this beautifully written sketchbook is masked by a writer's curiosity and detached amusement.' Euan Cameron, Independent  'A fascinating history of metropolitan literary life from the end of the war.' Chris Peachment, The Times

Australia 55

Business & Money

Industries

Faber&Faber

This highly original book is the first in-depth study of a footsoldier of the seventeenth-century German Republic of Letters. Its subject, the German polymath and schoolteacher Christian Daum, is today almost completely forgotten, yet he left behind one of the largest private archives of any early modern European scholar. On the basis of this unique source, the book portrays schools as focal points of a whole world of Lutheran learning outside of universities and courts, as places not just of education but of intense scholarship, and examines their significance for German culture.Protestant Germany was different from Catholic France and Protestant England in that its network of small cities fostered educational and cultural competition and made possible a much larger and socially open Republic. This book allows us for the first time to understand how the Republic of Letters was constructed from below and how it was possible for individuals from relatively humble backgrounds and occupations to be at the centre of European intellectual life.This book is aimed at other specialists as well as postgraduate students in the fields of history, education and gender studies, and can also serve as an introduction to recent European literature on early modern scholarship for undergraduate students.

Daum's boys: Schools and the Republic of Letters in early modern Germany (Studies in Early Modern European History)

History

Manchester University Press

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