A Very English Christmas

A Very English Christmas: A Gay Amish Story

The perfect quiz book to get you in the Christmassy mood, to play at the office Christmas lunch or to pop into a stocking. In Britain, it's estimated that 800 million of what traditional Christmas treat are eaten each year? Which actor gives the voiceover at the beginning of Love Actually? True or False: Queen Elizabeth II wore a Santa hat for her 1996 Christmas Day televised speech. We Brits can't get enough of a quiz - and never has this been more true at Christmastime. So if you're stumped for office party small talk, trying to make it through Christmas dinner with the in-laws, or simply a quiz connoisseur after puzzles with some festive flair, you can't go wrong with the VERY BRITISH PROBLEMS CHRISTMAS QUIZ BOOK. Inside you'll find all sorts of tickly teasers, complex conundrums, worrisome word searches and much more on topics ranging from nostalgic Christmas adverts and beloved TV specials to toys through the ages and everyone's favourite holiday snacks. Best enjoyed with a cup of tea and a mince pie. *** Praise for Very British Problems 'Had us guffawing into our Earl Grey tea' Bella 'My favourite twitter account at the moment is Very British Problems (@soverybritish) . . . it makes me laugh out loud' Tom Hiddleston 'Hilarious' Daily Express 'Temple pays affectionate and comic homage to the sheer quirkiness of being British' Good Book Guide

This work features three heart-warming stories that make Christmas dreams come true. They are 'A Winter Love Story' by Betty Neels, 'Give Me Forever' by Caroline Anderson, and 'Jed Hunter's Reluctant Bride' by Susanne James.

‘Funny, touching and ludicrously British.’ India Knight ‘Makes Christmas slightly less awful’ Al Murray

'If I could work my will,' said Scrooge indignantly, 'Every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.' This year go carol-singing in the Cotswolds with Laurie Lee or attend church with a grumpy Samuel Pepys. Make plum puddings for bemused French villagers with Elizabeth David; go present shopping with Virginia Woolf or eat far too much with Agatha Christie. Celebrate Christmas at Chatsworth, in the workhouse or marooned in the ice with Shackleton ... For forty-five years, the arrival of John Julius Norwich's latest Christmas Cracker became as essential a part of the Christmas experience as holly and mistletoe. In An English Christmas the late legendary popular historian gathered all the best writing about this strangest and most memorable time of year into one book and his brilliant eye for a story is evident on every page. Vividly evoking all the good things about the festive season, this unexpected anthology is just as entertaining about its darker aspects. Eight-year-old Princess Margaret's thank-you list jostles with moving letters home from the trenches. Sherlock Holmes solves his trickiest case. George Orwell writes about indigestion; Jane Austen about reluctant socialising and Thomas Hardy about the old folk belief that all animals kneel at midnight on 24 December. There are ghost stories, games and bizarre recipes. Diary-entries, recipes and letters sit alongside poems and short stories. An English Christmas could convert any Scrooge into an instant enthusiast.

Richard Perceval Graves, who has written acclaimed biographies of A.E. Housman, Richard Hughes, the Powys Brothers and his uncle Robert Graves, has now turned the spotlight on his own life and times: primarily because he wishes to give a true account of what it was like being brought up in those far-off and very different days of the 1940s and 1950s. At the start of Richard’s story, we are living in the shadow of the Second World War. Rationing still exists. Traditional patriarchal families are the norm, with most women staying at home to look after their children. England is a largely white, largely Christian and highly deferential society. There is no Internet and no such thing as a smartphone; and children are reading many of the same books and being brought up in much the same way as their late-nineteenth-century predecessors, although the wireless now brings them Children’s Hour. The British Empire still exists: King George VI remains Emperor of India; but a Labour Government is coming to power and great social changes lie immediately ahead.

A remarkable, truthful and vivid recollection of childhood, from the author of Stet, After a Funeral, Don't Look at Me Like That and Instead of a Letter. Here Athill goes back to the beginning in a sharp evocation of a childhood unfashionably filled with happiness - a Norfolk country house, servants, the pleasures of horses, the unfolding secrets of adults and sex. This is England in the 1920s seen (with a clear and unsentimental eye) from the vantage point of England in 2001. It was a privileged and loving life: but did it equip the author to be happy?

Modest, handsome and a fine poet, eccentric Englishman Frank Thompson made an unlikely soldier. Brother of E. P. Thompson and lover of Iris Murdoch, Frank was an intellectual idealist, a rare combination of brilliant mind and enormous heart. Of his wartime experiences, Frank wrote prodigiously. His letters, diaries and poetry still read fresh and intimate today - and it is from these that Peter J. Conradi brings vividly to life a brilliantly attractive and courageous personality. Aged just twenty-three, Frank was captured, tortured and executed in Bulgaria. A soldier of principle and integrity, he fought a poet's war; a very English hero from a very different era.