{"title":"Books by D.J. Taylor","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781472126849","title":"Lost Girls","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA\u003ci\u003e Times\u003c\/i\u003e Book of the Year 2019\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'You should not deny yourself the pleasure of reading it' \u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'A remarkable work and an important addition to the extraordinary wartime history of literary London' \u003ci\u003eLiterary Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWho were the Lost Girls? At least a dozen or so young women at large in Blitz-era London have a claim to this title. But \u003ci\u003eLost Girls\u003c\/i\u003e concentrates on just four: Lys Lubbock, Sonia Brownell, Barbara Skelton and Janetta Parlade. \u003ci\u003eChic\u003c\/i\u003e, glamorous and bohemian, as likely to be found living in a rat-haunted maisonette as dining at the Ritz, they cut a swathe through English literary and artistic life in the 1940s. Three of them had affairs with Lucian Freud. One of them married George Orwell. Another became the mistress of the King of Egypt and was flogged by him on the steps of the Royal Palace. And all of them were associated with the decade's most celebrated literary magazine, \u003ci\u003eHorizon\u003c\/i\u003e, and its charismatic editor Cyril Connolly. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLys, Sonia, Barbara and Janetta had very different - and sometimes explosive personalities - but taken together they form a distinctive part of the war-time demographic: bright, beautiful, independent-minded women with tough upbringings behind them determined to make the most of their lives in a highly uncertain environment. Theirs was the world of the buzz bomb, the cocktail party behind blackout curtains, the severed hand seen on the pavement in the Bloomsbury square, the rustle of a telegram falling through the letter-box, the hasty farewell to another half who might not ever come back, a world of living for the moment and snatching at pleasure before it disappeared. But if their trail runs through vast acreages of war-time cultural life then, in the end, it returns to Connolly and his amorous web-spinning, in which all four of them regularly featured and which sometimes complicated their emotional lives to the point of meltdown.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Lost Girls were the product of a highly artificial environment. After it came to an end - on \u003ci\u003eHorizon\u003c\/i\u003e's closure in 1950 - their careers wound on. Later they would have affairs with dukes, feature in celebrity divorce cases and make appearances in the novels of George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell and Nancy Mitford. The last of them - Janetta - died as recently as three months ago. However tiny their number, they are a genuine missing link between the first wave of newly-liberated young women of the post-Great War era and the Dionysiac free-for-all of the 1960s. Hectic, passionate and at times unexpectedly poignant, this is their story.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43204425384114,"sku":"9781472126849","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781472126849_918b686a-ded6-4072-b57f-ec70a14f30d4.jpg?v=1786020539"},{"product_id":"9780300284232","title":"George Orwell: A Reader`s Guide – Or, `Who Is Big Brother?` and Other Puzzles","description":"A spirited and essential companion to Orwell and his works, covering all the novels and major essays   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.      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, this book delves into the complex development of this essential yet enigmatic voice.      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.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56232639168885,"sku":"9780300284232","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780300284232.jpg?v=1791212828"},{"product_id":"9780521561785","title":"Biological Science 1 \u0026 2","description":"This is the third edition of the highly successful book, Biological Science. The text has been revised and updated to provide comprehensive coverage of the latest syllabuses. New material has been added in the following areas: human health and disease, microbiology and biotechnology, and the applications of genetics. Questions and practical work permeate the text and useful appendices are included covering biological chemistry, biological techniques and statistics. Biological Science is available as two soft cover volumes and as a combined volume hardback.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56291830694261,"sku":"9780521561785","price":71.25,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780521561785_d895d358-921d-493d-86ae-f60aa2891a7b.jpg?v=1786014138"},{"product_id":"9781472123930","title":"The New Book of Snobs","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Hugely enjoyable' AN Wilson, \u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Thoughtful, entertaining and enjoyable' Michael Gove, Book of the Week, \u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eInspired by William Makepeace Thackeray, the first great analyst of snobbery, and his trail-blazing \u003ci\u003eThe Book of Snobs \u003c\/i\u003e(1848), D. J. Taylor brings us a field guide to the modern snob. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShort of calling someone a racist or a paedophile, one of the worst charges you can lay at anybody's door in the early twenty-first century is to suggest that they happen to be a snob. But what constitutes snobbishness? Who are the snobs and where are they to be found? Are you a snob? Am I?  What are the distinguishing marks? Snobbery is, in fact, one of the keys to contemporary British life, as vital to the backstreet family on benefits as the proprietor of the grandest stately home, and an essential element of their view of who of they are and what the world might be thought to owe them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe New Book of Snobs\u003c\/i\u003e will take a marked interest in language, the vocabulary of snobbery - as exemplified in the 'U' and 'Non U' controversy of the 1950s - being a particular field in which the phenomenon consistently makes its presence felt, and alternate social analysis with sketches of  groups and individuals on the Thackerayan principle. Prepare to meet the Political Snob, the City Snob, the Technology Snob, the Property Snob, the Rural Snob, the Literary Snob, the Working-class Snob, the Sporting Snob, the Popular Cultural Snob and the Food Snob.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56299936612725,"sku":"9781472123930","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781472123930_e30950bd-9f6d-4918-9299-9a6e9ac647f1.jpg?v=1786020454"},{"product_id":"9781472132987","title":"Orwell","description":"\u003cp\u003eOver seventy years since his premature death, George Orwell (1903-50) has become one of the most significant figures in western literature. His two dystopian masterpieces, \u003ci\u003eAnimal Farm\u003c\/i\u003e (1945) and \u003ci\u003eNineteen Eighty-Four\u003c\/i\u003e (1949) have together sold over 40 million copies. Even now, he continues to exert a decisive influence on our understanding of international power-politics.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eD.J. Taylor's new biography, the first full-length study for 20 years, draws on a wide range of previously unseen material - newly-discovered letters to old girlfriends and professional colleagues, the recollections of the dwindling band of people who remember him, new information about his life in the early 1930s - to produce a definitive portrait of this complex, driven and self-mythologising man.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56300112085365,"sku":"9781472132987","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781472132987_97392c95-40dc-486a-8a6e-f2f89966e31d.jpg?v=1786020711"},{"product_id":"9781784633462","title":"Poppyland","description":"Shortlisted for the East Anglian Book Awards 2025On Stewkey Blues: ‘In his solid, grounded, entertaining collection of stories, DJ Taylor draws out the mythical qualities of East Anglia’s terrain, urban or rural or somewhere marginal in between.’ —Hilary MantelMost of the people in Poppyland are watching their lives begin to blur at the margins. From small-hours taxi offices, out-of-season holiday estates and flyblown market stalls, they sit observing an environment that seems to be moving steadily out of kilter, struggling to find agency, making compromises with a world that threatens to undermine them, and sometimes – but only sometimes – taking a decisive step that will change their destinies.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56304037757301,"sku":"9781784633462","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781784633462_22c501c0-eece-4f36-92b0-c9247acc3fba.jpg?v=1786025752"},{"product_id":"9781915553195","title":"Critic at Large","description":"\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback \/ softback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309434286453,"sku":"9781915553195","price":10.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781915553195_d8e8a7ab-9d44-48f7-9c63-d990592edace.jpg?v=1786030250"},{"product_id":"9780099283461","title":"Orwell","description":"\u003cp\u003eOrwell has become one of the most potent and symbolic figures in western political thought. Even the adjective 'Orwellian' is now a byword for a particular way of thinking about life, literature and language yet, despite this iconic status, the man who was born Eric Blair in 1903 remains an enigma. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDrawing on a mass of previously unseen material, D J Taylor offers a strikingly human portrait of the writer too often embalmed as a secular saint. 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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 \u003ci\u003eVile Bodies\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMoving from the Great War to the Blitz, \u003ci\u003eBright Young People\u003c\/i\u003e 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. 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Whether young or old, self-confident or ground-down, local or blow-in, all of them are reaching uneasy compromises with the world they inhabit and the landscape in which that life takes place.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56312837800309,"sku":"9781784632458","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781784632458_4fdbc5a4-15ec-4b7c-86f6-cfd35e9fba82.jpg?v=1786025700"},{"product_id":"9781408721803","title":"The King Under the Mountain","description":"'It is no surprise that his biographers have often struggled, which makes D.J. Taylor the right man for the job. A polymathic critic and serious novelist, he knows as much about inter and postwar literature as anyone alive' The Times'This is by far the most entertaining study of Tolkien I've ever read' Alex Diggins, The TelegraphA provocative and suggestive account of the life of one of history's most original literary giants: J. R. R. Tolkien.   Since his death in 1973, J.R.R. Tolkien's major works - The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion - have sold over half a billion copies, been made into prodigiously successful films and had an incalculable influence on the generations of fantasy writers who followed in their wake. But Tolkien himself remains an enigma - a deeply conservative Oxford don and a diehard Roman Catholic who regarded biography as a waste of time, was suspicious of literary criticism and jealously guarded his private life from an intrusive media.   Few major literary figures of the twentieth century are shrouded in such mystery. The King Under the Mountain unravels Tolkien's life and work: part biography, part critical study and part a fan's notes on the deepest recesses of Tolkien's imaginative world, D. J. Taylor unpicks the myths that Tolkien created around himself, as well as the social, political and cultural contexts that informed his work with dazzling effect.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":56368832872821,"sku":"9781408721803","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57682564055413,"sku":"9781408721827","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781408721803_fac07a72-f17f-4bbe-b81f-b90a323b7463.jpg?v=1792511503"},{"product_id":"definitive-gaze","title":"DEFINITIVE GAZE","description":null,"brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57499190198645,"sku":"9780349000930","price":30.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]},{"product_id":"the-story-of-animal-farm","title":"The Story of Animal Farm","description":null,"brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57613232570741,"sku":"9781917532457","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781917532457.jpg?v=1792425445"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-dj-taylor.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}