One Million Tiny Plays about Britain

One Million Tiny Plays about Britain PDF Author: Craig Taylor
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408838257
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
A Wonder Woman and bride-to-be finds herself worse for wear at the end of a hen night; a funeral director's love of Manchester United proves unhelpful when talking to the bereaved; two overly-vigilant mothers wrestle with their paranoia in the queue for Santa's Grotto; a widow recounts her disastrous return to the world of dating and a father realises that his son is growing away from him as he helps him tie his football boots.In these snippets of overheard conversations from across the length and breadth of the country, Craig Taylor captures the state we're in with humour and pathos and perfect timing. Laugh-out-loud funny, and sometimes heartbreakingly moving, these tiny plays in which every one of us could have a starring role are little windows into other people's lives that reveal the triumphs, disasters, prejudices, horrors and joys of twenty-first-century life.Hugely entertaining and utterly addictive, this is book that can be dipped into or feasted upon in one sitting. It will change the way you listen to the world around you, and train journeys will never be the same again.

A Year in the Woods

A Year in the Woods PDF Author: Colin Elford
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141928387
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
Colin Elford's A Year in the Woods is an enthralling journey into the heart of the English countryside - with a preamble by Craig Taylor. Colin Elford spends his days alone - alone but for the deer, the squirrels, the rabbits, the birds, and the many other creatures inhabiting the woods. From the crisp cold of January, through the promise of spring and the heat of summer, and then into damp autumn and the chill winds of winter, we accompany the forest-ranger as he goes about his work - stalking in the early morning darkness, putting an injured fallow buck out of its misery, watching stoats kill a hare, observing owls, and simply being a part of the outdoors. Colin Elford immerses himself in the richly diverse and unique landscapes of Britain, existing in rhythm with natural environments. For fans of Robert Macfarlane's Landmarks, Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk orJames Rebanks' A Shepherd's Life, Colin's rare and uplifiting journey will unveil the true nature and beauty of Britain's countryside. 'This is nature for real . . . Elford describes woodland wonders in short paragraphs of luminous intensity' Daily Mail 'A poetic insight in the world of hidden Nature' Countryman 'Stalking sharpens the senses and there is an almost hallucinatory clarity to Elford's writing' Observer 'Refreshingly unsentimental. Contains some wonderful descriptions and sentences which are so profound they demand a second reading' Sunday Express Colin Elford is a forest ranger on the Dorset/Wiltshire border. Craig Taylor is the author of Return to Akenfield and One Million Tiny Plays About Britain and the editor of the magazine Five Dials.

New Yorkers: A City and its People in Our Time

New Yorkers: A City and its People in Our Time PDF Author: Craig Taylor
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393242331
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
Winner of the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize A symphony of contemporary New York through the magnificent words of its people—from the best-selling author of Londoners. In the first twenty years of the twenty-first century, New York City has been convulsed by terrorist attack, blackout, hurricane, recession, social injustice, and pandemic. New Yorkers weaves the voices of some of the city’s best talkers into an indelible portrait of New York in our time—and a powerful hymn to the vitality and resilience of its people. Best-selling author Craig Taylor has been hailed as “a peerless journalist and a beautiful craftsman” (David Rakoff), acclaimed for the way he “fuses the mundane truth of conversation with the higher truth of art” (Michel Faber). In the wake of his celebrated book Londoners, Taylor moved to New York and spent years meeting regularly with hundreds of New Yorkers as diverse as the city itself. New Yorkers features 75 of the most remarkable of them, their fascinating true tales arranged in thematic sections that follow Taylor’s growing engagement with the city. Here are the uncelebrated people who propel New York each day—bodega cashier, hospital nurse, elevator repairman, emergency dispatcher. Here are those who wire the lights at the top of the Empire State Building, clean the windows of Rockefeller Center, and keep the subway running. Here are people whose experiences reflect the city’s fractured realities: the mother of a Latino teenager jailed at Rikers, a BLM activist in the wake of police shootings. And here are those who capture the ineffable feeling of New York, such as a balloon handler in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade or a security guard at the Statue of Liberty. Vibrant and bursting with life, New Yorkers explores the nonstop hustle to make it; the pressures on new immigrants, people of color, and the poor; the constant battle between loving the city and wanting to leave it; and the question of who gets to be considered a "New Yorker." It captures the strength of an irrepressible city that—no matter what it goes through—dares call itself the greatest in the world.

The Play about My Dad

The Play about My Dad PDF Author: Boo Killebrew
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786825449
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 102

Book Description
“Dad. Could you start? But, you know, like it's you, just talking?” It's not easy putting on a play. It's even harder when your dad is the lead character, he's playing himself, and even though you're the professional playwright and he's the emergency surgeon, he keeps trying to rewrite your script. After Hurricane Katrina swept through her home town, Boo was determined to write a play about it. But she never imagined it would be this hard...

Return To Akenfield

Return To Akenfield PDF Author: Craig Taylor
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN: 1847087892
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
Ronald Blythe's 1969 book Akenfield - a moving portrait of English country life told in the voices of the farmers and villagers themselves - is a modern classic. In 2004, writer and reporter Craig Taylor returned to the village in Suffolk on which Akenfield was based. Over the course of several months, he sought out locals who had appeared in the original book to see how their lives had changed, he met newcomers to discuss their own views, and he interviewed Ronald Blythe himself, now in his eighties. Young farmers, retired orchardmen and Eastern European migrant workers talk about the nature of farming in an age of computerization and encroaching supermarkets; commuters, weekenders and retirees discuss the realities behind the rural idyll; and the local priest, teacher and more describe the daily pleasures and tribulations of village life. Together, they offer a panoramic and revealing portrait of rural English society at a time of great change.

The Romans in Britain

The Romans in Britain PDF Author: Howard Brenton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472574419
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 133

Book Description
First staged at London's National Theatre in 1980, having been commissioned by Peter Hall, The Romans in Britain contrasts Julius Caesar's Roman invasion of Celtic Britain with the Saxon invasion of Romano-Celtic Britain, and finally Britain's involvement in Northern Ireland during The Troubles of the late twentieth century. As these scenes bleed into one another, Brenton suggests what it might have been like for these people to meet. Three Roman soldiers sexually assault a young druid priest. A lone, wounded Saxon soldier stumbles into a field, a nightmare made real. An army intelligence officer begins to lose his mind in the Irish fields. Brenton's sinewy vernaculars summon a lost history of cultural collision and oppression, of fear and sorrow. This edition features an introduction by Philip Roberts, Emeritus Professor of Drama & Theatre Studies at the University of Leeds, and a foreword by director Sam West.

Tiny Dynamite

Tiny Dynamite PDF Author: Abi Morgan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1783192283
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 82

Book Description
When memory takes hold, when chaos takes over and when the electricity between us becomes overwhelming. An impossible love story is given a second chance and three scorched characters are about to learn that lightning does strike twice.

Londoners

Londoners PDF Author: Craig Taylor
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062096931
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
“A rich and exuberant kaleidoscopic portrait of a great, messy, noisy, daunting, inspiring, maddening, enthralling, constantly shifting Rorschach test of a place. . . . Delightful. . . . In Taylor’s patient and sympathetic hands, regular people become poets, philosophers, orators.” -- New York Times Book Review Londoners is a fresh and compulsively readable view of one of the world's most fascinating cities–a vibrant narrative portrait of the London of our own time, featuring unforgettable stories told by the real people who make the city hum. Acclaimed writer and editor Craig Taylor has spent years traversing every corner of the city, getting to know the most interesting Londoners, including the voice of the London Underground, a West End rickshaw driver, an East End nightclub doorperson, a mounted soldier of the Queen's Life Guard at Buckingham Palace, and a couple who fell in love at the Tower of London—and now live there. With candor and humor, this diverse cast—rich and poor, old and young, native and immigrant, men and women (and even a Sarah who used to be a George)—shares indelible tales that capture the city as never before. Together, these voices paint a vivid, epic, and wholly original portrait of twenty-first-century London in all its breadth, from Notting Hill to Brixton, from Piccadilly Circus to Canary Wharf, from an airliner flying into London Heathrow Airport to Big Ben and Tower Bridge, and down to the deepest tunnels of the London Underground. Londoners is the autobiography of one of the world's greatest cities.

Fall of Giants

Fall of Giants PDF Author: Ken Follett
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101543558
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1010

Book Description
Ken Follett’s magnificent historical epic begins as five interrelated families move through the momentous dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women’s suffrage. A thirteen-year-old Welsh boy enters a man’s world in the mining pits. . . . An American law student rejected in love finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson’s White House. . . . A housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts takes a fateful step above her station, while Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory when she falls in love with a German spy. . . . And two orphaned Russian brothers embark on radically different paths when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription, and revolution. From the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty, Fall of Giants takes us into the inextricably entangled fates of five families—and into a century that we thought we knew, but that now will never seem the same again. . . .

I Capture the Castle

I Capture the Castle PDF Author: Dodie Smith
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466842121
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
One of the 20th Century's most beloved novels is still winning hearts! I Capture the Castle tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries. Her journals candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the castle's walls, and her own first descent into love. By the time she pens her final entry, she has "captured the castle"-- and the heart of the reader-- in one of literature's most enchanting entertainments. “This book has one of the most charismatic narrators I've ever met.” -- J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series
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