Faber & Faber

'An immensely engaging writer: wry and witty, and insightful.' Sunday Times

'A vivid and meticulous writer.' Observer

From the widely renowned author Andrew O'Hagan, a heartbreaking novel of an extraordinary lifelong friendship.

Everyone has a Tully Dawson: the friend who defines your life.

In the summer of 1986, in a small Scottish town, James and Tully ignite a brilliant friendship based on music, films and the rebel spirit. With school over and the locked world of their fathers before them, they rush towards the climax of their youth: a magical weekend in Manchester, the epicentre of everything that inspires them in working-class Britain. There, against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded, a vow is made: to go at life differently. Thirty years on, half a life away, the phone rings. Tully has news.

Mayflies is a memorial to youth’s euphorias and to everyday tragedy. A tender goodbye to an old union, it discovers the joy and the costs of love.

'The body is in the library,’ Colonel Osborne said. ‘Come this way.’

Following the discovery of the corpse of a highly respected parish priest at Ballyglass House - the Co. Wexford family seat of the aristocratic, secretive Osborne family - Detective Inspector St John Strafford is called in from Dublin to investigate.

Strafford faces obstruction from all angles, but carries on determinedly in his pursuit of the murderer. However, as the snow continues to fall over this ever-expanding mystery, the people of Ballyglass are equally determined to keep their secrets.

‘The sinister and unnerving Snow has all the trimmings of a classic country house mystery - body in the library, closed circle of suspects, foul weather - all elevated by Banville's immaculate, penetrating prose.’ Peter Swanson

In this gripping narrative, Hermione Lee builds a unique portrait of one of our greatest playwrights. Her biography is remarkable for its unprecedented access to private papers, diaries and letters, and for the countless interviews it draws on. Meticulously researched, it tracks its subject from his Czech origins and childhood in India to every school and home he’s ever lived in, every piece of writing he’s ever done, and every play and film he’s ever worked on. It tells the whole story, from his family’s wartime escape from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, to his English upbringing and lifelong love of his adopted country. It vividly evokes his youth as a Bristol reporter and would-be playwright and his dramatic leap to fame in the 1960s with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. It follows a life of amazing energy and activity, involving three marriages and four children, alongside constant writing, casting, rehearsing, lecture tours, interviews, first nights and transatlantic travel. It looks at the complexities of his political involvements, from his reputation for conservatism and disengagement, to his long years of work on behalf of Eastern Europe, Soviet “prisoners of conscience”, PEN and the Free Belarus Theatre, and his close friendship with the playwright, dissident, and Czech President Václav Havel. It describes a career spanning over five decades, right up to his new, movingly personal play Leopoldstadt, opening in 2020, soon before the publication of this book.

Lee’s biography is full of Stoppard’s voice, humour and thoughts about life: there’s a Stoppard joke on almost every page. It observes him in rehearsal, looks at the changes he makes to his classic plays over many years, and makes brilliant close readings of his best, and least, known work for stage, screen and radio.

Well over 100 people have been interviewed, including names from the theatrical, movie, music and literary worlds such as Felicity Kendal, Trevor Nunn, Diana Rigg, John Boorman, Richard Eyre, Sonia Friedman, Michael Kitchen, Simon Russell Beale, Tim Rice, Steven Spielberg, and David Cornwell (alias John le Carré). It draws on several years of long, exploratory conversations with Stoppard himself. But in the end this is the story of a complex, elusive and private man, which tells you an enormous amount about him but leaves you, also, with the fascinating mystery of his ultimate unknowability.

Staggering talent Kae Tempest's first work of non-fiction: a meditation on the power of creative connection

‘Powerful and merciful.’ Ali Smith
‘Tempest . . . doesn’t just leap off the page, but leaps into your throat and demands to be shouted all the way out.’ Marlon James
‘[Kae's] language hits like lightning. It illuminates and it burns.’ Guardian

Beneath the surface we are all connected . . .

This is a meditation on the power of creative connection. Drawing on twenty years’ experience as a writer and performer, Kae Tempest explores how and why creativity – however we choose to practise it – can cultivate greater self-awareness and help us establish a deeper relationship to ourselves and the world.

Honest, tender and written with piercing clarity, On Connection is a call to arms that speaks to a universal yet intimate truth.