Life Love And The Archers

Wendy Cope has long been one of the nation's best-loved poets, with her sharp eye for human foibles and wry sense of humour. For the first time, Life, Love and the Archers brings together the best of her prose - recollections, reviews and essays from the light-hearted to the serious, taken from a lifetime of published and unpublished work, and all with Cope's lightness of touch. Here readers can meet the Enid-Blyton-obsessed schoolgirl, the ambivalent daughter, the amused teacher, the sensitive journalist, the cynical romantic and the sardonic television critic, as well as touching on books and writers who have informed a lifetime of reading and writing. Wendy Cope is a master of the one-liner as well as the couplet, the telling review as well as the sonnet, and Life, Love and the Archers gives us a wonderfully entertaining and unforgettable portrait of one of England's favourite writers.

The Archers Archives celebrates 60 years of the nation's favourite radio drama - looking back at the most dramatic events to happen over 16,000 episodes, complete with cast and crew interviews. Relive the defining moments in Archers history, from the devastating 1955 stables fire and the 1957 Tom Forrest manslaughter charge to the shocking imprisonment of Susan Carter in the early 1990s, the revelation of Brian Aldridge's affair with Siobhan Hathaway, and the Grundys' eviction from Grange Farm and exile to Meadow Rise. Script-writer Simon Frith and journalist Chris Arnot take you inside the creative life of the show, sharing how the series' storylines are planned and produced, and how the historical and cultural background of each period is interwoven into the everyday lives of the residents of Ambridge. Complete with original photos, some never-before-seen, The Archers Archives is an indispensable addition to every Archers fan's collection.

The bestselling guide to all things Ambridge is back Bringing together a wealth of fascinating facts, amusing insights and expert trivia about characters, controversies and country customs – now fully revised and updated to include recent developments – this unofficial companion is the perfect gift for avid addicts and keen newcomers alike.

Fandom Culture and The Archers looks beyond the popular success of the Archers to explore how the program, and the themes it discusses, are used in teaching, learning, research and professional settings, and how the Academic Archers fandom helps shape these real life impacts.

An inspiring and intimate look at the work of a generation of British artists across all disciplines. The Artist in Time brings together twenty creatives from across the UK, with photographs and interviews that disclose their daily working habits and motivations. All born before 1950, this is a collective portrait of a generation who have shaped our artistic landscape. They provide a range of different answers to the question 'what makes an artist?', and a set of insights into what makes up a creative life. Giving you access to the studio and working spaces of a diverse group of painters, poets, choreographers, filmmakers, illustrators, musicians, photographers, sculptors, writers and creators, The Artist in Time is a handbook for creativity and inspiration, made up of artists from all backgrounds who have all in their own way shaped, and continue to shape, the creative landscape of the United Kingdom.

This is the first critical book on the poetry of Wendy Cope, one of Britain's most widely read poets. Rory Waterman considers her five 'adult' collections, her works for children and her uncollected poems, with many close readings, and careful consideration of her cultural and literary contexts and her poetic development.

Why is it that for many people 'England' has always meant an unspoilt rural landscape rather than the ever-changing urban world in which most English people live? What was the 'England' for which people fought in two world wars? What is about the English that makes them constantly hanker for a vanished past, so that nostalgia has become a national characteristic? In March 1896 a small volume of sixty-three poems was published by the small British firm of Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd in an edition of 500 copies, priced at half-a-crown each. The author was not a professional poet, but a thirty-seven-year-old professor of Latin at University College, London called Alfred Edward Housman who had been obliged to pay £30 towards the cost of publication. Although slow to sell at first, A Shropshire Lad went on to become one of the most popular books of poetry ever published and has never been out of print. As well as being a publishing phenomenon, the book has had an influence on English culture and notions of what 'England' means, both in England itself and abroad, out of all proportion to its apparent scope. Housman Country will not only look at how A Shropshire Lad came to be written and became a publishing and cultural phenomenon, but will use the poems as a prism through which to examine England and Englishness. The book contains a full transcript of A Shropshire lad itself, also making it a superb present.