Madness, greed, love, obsession, Machiavellian plotting, and a great train robbery, in a captivating Victorian mystery about the extreme and curious things men do to get—and keep—what they want
August 1863. Henry Ireland, a failed landowner, dies unexpectedly in a riding accident, leaving a highly strung young widow. Not far away lives Ireland's friend James Dixey, a celebrated naturalist who collects strange trophies—a stuffed bear, a pet mouse, and a wolf that he keeps caged in the grounds of his decaying house, lost in the fog on the edge of the fens.
The poachers, Dewar and Dunbar, with their cargo of pilfered eggs; Esther the observant kitchen maid, pining to be reunited with her vanished admirer; the ancient lawyer Mr. Crabbe, made careless by snobbery; John Carstairs, in search of his cousin, the elusive widow; an enigmatic debt-collector, busily plotting an audacious robbery; various lowlife henchmen; a beady-eyed country curate who sees more than he should; and Captain McTurk of Scotland Yard, patiently investigating the circumstances of Mr. Ireland's death and many other things besides—all are drawn into a net of intrigue with wide and sinister implications.
Ranging from the loch-sides of Scotland to the slums of Clerkenwell, from the gentlemen's clubs of St. James's to the Yukon wilds, Kept is a gorgeously intricate novel about the urge to possess, at once a gripping investigation of some of the secret chambers of the human heart and a dazzling reinvention of Victorian life and passions.

Kept: A Victorian Mystery

Literature & Fiction

TAYLOR, D.J.

British & Irish

Harper

When Henry Ireland dies unexpectedly from what appears to be a riding accident in August 1863, the failed landowner leaves behind little save his high-strung young widow, Isabel—who somehow ends up in the home of Ireland's friend James Dixey. A celebrated naturalist, Dixey collects strange trophies in his secluded, decaying manse and has questionable associations with rather unsavory characters—including a pair of thuggish poachers named Dewar and Dunbar. Dixey's precocious, inquisitive young servant, Esther, cannot turn a blind eye to the suspicious activities surrounding her. While in the crime-ridden streets of London, a determined captain of Scotland Yard follows the threads that may well link a daring train robbery to the disappearance of a disturbed heiress as well as to the possible murder of Henry Ireland. D. J. Taylor's Kept is a gorgeously intricate, dazzling reinvention of Victorian life and passions that is also a riveting investigation into some of the darkest, most secret chambers of the human heart.

Kept: A Novel

Harper-perennial

'"Bright Young People". Making the most of our youth. They talk in the Press of our social success. But quite the reverse is the truth' - Noel Coward. The Bright Young People were one of the most extraordinary youth cults in British history. A pleasure-seeking band of bohemian party-givers and blue-blooded socialites, they romped through the 1920s gossip columns. Evelyn Waugh dramatised their antics in Vile Bodies and many of them, such as Anthony Powell, Nancy Mitford,Cecil Beaton and John Betjeman, later became household names. Their dealings with the media foreshadowed our modern celebrity culture and even today,we can detect their influence in our cultural life. But the quest for pleasure came at a price. Beneath the parties and practical jokes was a tormented generation, brought up in the shadow of war, whose relationships - with their parents and with each other - were prone to fracture.For many, their progress through the 'serious' Thirties, when the age of parties was over and another war hung over the horizon, led only to drink, drugs and disappointment, and in the case of Elizabeth Ponsonby - whose story forms a central strand of this book - to a family torn apart by tragedy. Moving from the Great War to the Blitz, "Bright Young People" is both a chronicle of England's 'lost generation' of the Jazz Age, and a panoramic portrait of a world that could accommodate both dizzying success and paralysing failure. Drawing on the writings and reminiscences of the Bright Young People themselves, D.J. Taylor has produced an enthralling social and cultural history, a definitive portrait of a vanished age.

Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation, 1918-1940

History

Vintage

Derby Day [paperback] D. J. Taylor [Jan 01, 2012]

Derby Day

The Prose Factory: Literary Life in Britain Since 1918

What do we mean when we talk about ‘taste’? 'Taste’ takes countless forms. There is the exclusive taste of highbrow critics such as T.S. Eliot and F.R. Leavis. There is the taste of ordinary book lovers persuaded to buy the best-sellers of the day. And there is the taste of Virginia Woolf’s elusive ‘common reader’. A taste that in the days of the Victorian reading public was founded on shared standards but now, in the age of Twitter and the blogosphere, is fragmenting into chaos. Spanning a century of literary history, from the pitched battles fought between Eliot-era modernists and Georgian traditionalists to the political in-fighting of the Thirties, the arrival of the upwardly mobile post-war ‘New Man’ and the impact of creative writing degrees and the media don, The Prose Factory explores the myriad influences on English literary life in the past century and the way in which they have shaped our preferences. It is also a tale of personalities – ‘star reviewers’, sniping critics, caballing editors, crusading ideologues, megalomaniac professors, Arts Council functionaries – a tale of dazzling successes and embittered failures in which gossip and intrigue are as important as intellectual zeal. Above all, it is a study of change. We live in a world where it is ever more difficult for professional writers to make a living, where the dangers of institutionalisation lurk on every corner and where critical authority is giving way to the whims of cyberspace. Wide-ranging and controversial, as interested in the newspaper essayist and the bookclub best-seller as the view from Mount Olympus, The Prose Factory is the book that D.J. Taylor was born to write.

Vintage Books

In this acclaimed biography of the 19th-century author of Vanity Fair, the first major study in twenty years, D.J. Taylor paints a compelling portrait of the endearing, exasperating, paradoxical figure.

Thackeray

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

The Windsor Faction

A taut and gripping thriller: King Edward VIII is on the throne and keen to broker peace at any cost -- WWII could turn out very differently.      Autumn 1939. In a parallel world where Edward VIII never abdicated and the Second World War might have taken a very different course.     Storm clouds gather over Europe, German troops amass and a 'King's Party' of fascist peace campaigners is stealthily undermining the war-effort. Country house parties teem with conspiring Tory MPs, an American Embassy clerk pilfers Presidential telegrams and paranoia grips MI5. In the offices of Duration magazine Cynthia Kirkpatrick finds herself at the centre of a web of intrigue. Journalist Beverley Nichols is engaged on the most important commission of his life -- a speech for King Edward VIII that will shock the nation. As history threatens to derail, both learn that taking sides can be a very dangerous business.

After Bathing At Baxter's

Contemporary

London, Vintage (1997)

In this brilliant study of the patterns of sporting and cultural life, D. J. Taylor examines the process that led to professionalism’s triumph and the long rearguard action fought by sportsmen — and literature — on amateurism’s behalf. He describes a changing moral universe with profound consequences both for sport and the world beyond it.

On the Corinthian Spirit: The Decline of Amateurism in Sport

Sports & Outdoors

Yellow Jersey Press

A spirited and essential companion to Orwell and his works, covering all the novels and major essays &nbsp; An intellectual who hated intellectuals, a socialist who didn't trust the state--our foremost political essayist and author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four was a man of stark, puzzling contradictions. Knowing Orwell's life and reading Orwell's works produces just as many questions as it answers. &nbsp; Celebrated Orwell biographer D. J. Taylor guides fans and new readers alike through the many twists and turns of Orwell's books, life and thought. As a writer he intended his works to be transparent and instantly accessible, yet they are also full of secrets and surprises, tantalising private histories, and psychological quirks. From his conflicted relationship with religion to his competing anti-imperialism and fascination with empire, Who Is Big Brother? delves into the complex development of this essential yet enigmatic voice. &nbsp; Taylor leads us through Orwell's principal writings and complex life--crafting an illuminating guide to one of the most enduringly relevant writers in the English language.

Who Is Big Brother?: A Reader's Guide to George Orwell

Yale University Press

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