{"title":"Books by Oliver Soden","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780750995672","title":"Jeoffry","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e'An inspired an original tale ... Jeoffry is the greatest cat in the English language'\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e - Hilary Mantel\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e'Simply unforgettable ... one of the most beautiful and haunting books of recent times'\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e - Alexander McCall Smith\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e'A heart-lifting delight; I absolutely loved it. A triumph'\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e - Alexandra Harris\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eJeoffry\u003c\/em\u003e was a real cat who lived 250 years ago, confined to an asylum with Christopher Smart, one of the most visionary poets of the age.\u003c\/strong\u003e In exchange for love and companionship, Smart rewarded Jeoffry with the greatest tribute to a feline ever written.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePrize-winning biographer Oliver Soden combines meticulous research with passages of dazzling invention to recount the life of the cat praised as ‘a mixture of gravity and waggery’. The narrative roams from the theatres and bordellos of Covent Garden to the cell where Smart was imprisoned for mania. At once whimsical and profound, witty and deeply moving, Soden’s biography plays with the genre like a cat with a toy. It tells the story of a poet and a poem, while setting Jeoffry’s life and adventures against the roaring backdrop of eighteenth-century London.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57688201658741,"sku":"9780750999311","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":56294629343605,"sku":"9780750995672","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780750999311_1aca3a33-5d30-4979-8409-c190ae8acf94.jpg?v=1792686124"},{"product_id":"9781474612821","title":"Masquerade","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'This is the biography - truthful, sympathetic and thorough - that Coward deserves'\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eDAILY TELEGRAPH\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe voice, the dressing-gown, the cigarette in its holder, remain unmistakable. There is rarely a week when one of \u003ci\u003ePrivate Lives\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eHay Fever\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eBlithe Spirit \u003c\/i\u003eis not in production somewhere in the world. Phrases from Noël Coward's songs - \"Mad About The Boy\", \"Mad Dogs and Englishman\" - are forever lodged in the public consciousness. He was at one point the most highly paid author in the world. Yet some of his most striking and daring writing remains unfamiliar. As T.S. Eliot said, in 1954, \"there are things you can learn from Noël Coward that you won't learn from Shakespeare\".\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCoward wrote some fifty plays and nine musicals, as well as revues, screenplays, short stories, poetry, and a novel. He was both composer and lyricist for approximately 675 songs. Louis Mountbatten's famous tribute argued that, while there were greater comedians, novelists, composers, painters and so on, only \"the master\" had combined fourteen talents in one. So central was he to his age's theatre that any account of his career is also a  history of the British stage. And so daring was Coward's unorthdoxy in his closest relationships, obliquely reflected throughout his writing, that it must also be a history of sexual liberation in the twentieth century. In Oliver Soden's sparkling, story-packed new Life, the Master finally gets his due.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56301081198965,"sku":"9781474612821","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781474612821_1d98908c-fb79-494a-8e69-1c5ccca95f30.jpg?v=1786020814"},{"product_id":"9781474606035","title":"Michael Tippett","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'A delight to read' Philip Pullman\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Essential reading ... a genuine landmark publication' Tom Service\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA BBC Radio 4 'Book of the Week'\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe music of the British composer Michael Tippett - including the oratorio A Child of Our Time, five operas, and four symphonies - is among the most visionary of the twentieth century. But little has been written about his extraordinary life. In this long-awaited first biography, Oliver Soden weaves a century-spanning narrative of epic scope and penetrating insight. His achievement is to have enriched our understanding not only of Tippett but of the twentieth century. Figures such as T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, Barbara Hepworth, and W.H. Auden jostle in the cast list. An Edwardian world of gaslight and empire cedes to turmoil and warfare and his operas' game-changing attitudes to gay and civil rights, against a backdrop of the Cold War and the Space Race.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe result is a landmark in the study of twentieth-century culture, simultaneously an astonishing feat of scholarship and a story as enthralling as in any great novel.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56312459329909,"sku":"9781474606035","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781474606035_e620fe44-337e-483d-9635-c30c716c0951.jpg?v=1786020640"},{"product_id":"super-beast","title":"Super-Beast","description":"'Magnificent . . . miraculous . . . one of the best literary biographies I have ever read' STEPHEN FRY'A quite extraordinary story, quite beautifully told' GYLES BRANDRETH 'Exquisite . . . A vivid and elegant record of a lost world' PHILIP HOARE  'Clear-sighted and delighting in equal measure' ELEY WILLIAMS'Wise, witty and wry - the biography that Saki, and all devoted Sakiphants, deserve' BEN SCHOTTThere has been no more mischievous an influence on the English comic imagination than that of Hector Hugh Munro, the enigmatic genius better known as Saki.   His stories are among the wittiest ever written: dark satires of Edwardian society, populated by decadent dandies, cunning children and wild beasts. Their playful wickedness has inspired the work of everyone from P. G. Wodehouse to Roald Dahl, Noël Coward to The League of Gentlemen. But Saki is among the most mysterious and contradictory characters in literary history: conservative campaigner, courageous soldier, pioneer of the camp sensibility and a pagan lord of misrule. Leaving almost no letters or papers, he had an uncanny ability to disappear.   In the first biography of Saki for nearly half a century, Oliver Soden follows the tracks of this rare beast, discovering much startling new material. This is a book as witty and adventurous as its subject, roaming from Edwardian drawing rooms to the Burmese jungle, from revolutionary Russia to the killing fields of the Somme. Saki is revealed as never before, in all his outrageous brilliance.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57503587369333,"sku":"9781399625852","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781399625852.jpg?v=1786867294"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-oliver-soden.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}