Böcker av Margaret Drabble

Margaret Drabble returns with a powerful novel of unbreakable love, enduring friendships and a society changing forever

A young girl is plucked from obscurity to marry the Crown Prince of Korea. In her diaries, she chronicles the intrigues of courtly life and her own extraordinary existence.Two hundred years later, the Red Queen's ghost haunts Dr Babs Halliwell, an Oxford academic obsessed with her memoirs and possessed by the many parallels with her own complicated past. But why and how does she keep the Red Queen's story alive?

Ailsa and Humphrey met as children by a grey, northern sea in post-war Britain. She, freckled and furious; he, quietly studious; both fascinated by the other. Years later, their lives collide as adults and burst into an intense yet brief love affair.Now, after thirty years apart, their lives are converging once again as they hurtle towards each other - their motivations, regrets and decisions laid bare.

The second in Margaret Drabble's trilogy, following The Radiant Way

Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, an intimate novel about human desire against the backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the Sixties

The first in a trilogy, this startling novel charts the radical change in Britain during the Eighties through the eyes of three women

An honest and moving portrait of the everyday messiness of life, and the complications of love

Loosely based on Drabble's own experiences, a compelling, beautifully written novel following three generations of women in one family

An award-winning novel about the perils of motherhood in a failing healthcare system and a woman's fight against the social stigma of the Sixties

Witty and compassionate, the extraordinary debut from one of our greatest novelists, about lies and deceit, love and forgiveness

David Hockney (b 1937) has always been closely associated with Pop Art and California, where he has lived for much of his life. This study of his work redefines him as an important painter of the English countryside, addressing the artists place in the landscape tradition, his video works and their relationship to English landscape film-making.

Writers, artists and thinkers in British life talk about what Europe means to them

The new novel from literary great Margaret Drabble is by turns dark and joyous, hilarious and heartbreaking, and asks us what makes a good life, and a good death

It is the Swinging Sixties, and Rosamund Stacey is young and inexperienced at a time when sexual liberation is well on its way. She conceals her ignorance beneath a show of independence, and becomes pregnant as a result of a one night stand.

Novelist, critic and biographer, Margaret Drabble is one of the major literary figures of her generation. This collection shows her to be a leading practitioner of the art of the short story, presenting her complete short fiction for the first time in a single volume, spanning four decades, from 1964 to 2000. Several of the stories, like The Dower House at Kellynch, are set in Somerset and Dorset and reflect their author's intimate knowledge of the land and flora there, but their settings also range as far as Elba and Cappadocia. Taken as a whole, the stories reflect the social changes of the past forty years, by showing the English at home and abroad. In 'The Gifts of War', peace-protesting students clash with a mother buying a toy for her son, with tragic consequences. An Englishman on honeymoon has a brief but significant epiphany, finding a shared humanity with a Moroccan crowd in 'Hassan's Tower'. Their protagonists are men and women, husbands and lovers, television presenters and housewives, all subtly and precisely captured as products of their time and place. In his introduction, Spanish scholar Jos Francisco Fern ndez celebrates the 'pure and simple pleasure to be found in reading these survivalist, questioning, belligerently intense short stories'.

Set in 18th century Korea and the present day, Margaret Drabble's The Red Queen is a rich and atmospheric novel about love, and what it means to be remembered.200 years after being plucked from obscurity to marry the Crown Prince of Korea, the Red Queen's ghost decides to set the record straight about her extraordinary existence - and Dr Babs Halliwell, with her own complicated past, is the perfect envoy. Why does the Red Queen pick Babs to keep her story alive, and what else does she want from her? A terrific novel set in 18th century Korea and the present day, The Red Queen is a rich and atmospheric novel about love, and what it means to be remembered'Elegant . . . a seductive beguiling narrator . . . delicious history' Daily Express'One of our foremost women writers' Guardian'Carefully wrought and beautifully written The Red Queen is another fine addition to the Drabble oeuvre' Literary ReviewMargaret Drabble was born in 1939 in Sheffield, Yorkshire, the daughter of barrister and novelist John F. Drabble, and sister of novelist A.S. Byatt. She is the author of eighteen novels and eight works of non-fiction, including biographies of Arnold Bennett and Angus Wilson. Her many novels include The Radiant Way (1987), A Natural Curiosity (1989), The Gates of Ivory (1991), The Peppered Moth (2000), The Seven Sisters (2002) and The Red Queen (2004) all of which are published by Penguin. In 1980, Margaret Drabble was made a CBE and in 2008 she was made DBE. She is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd, and lives in London and Somerset.

'Arnold Bennett was born in a street called Hope Street. A street less hopeful it would be hard to imagine.' Thus begins Margaret Drabble's biography of a man whose most famous achievement was to re-create, in such novels as The Old Wives' Tale and Clayhanger, the life, atmosphere and character of the 'Five Towns' region in which he was born and grew up.Arnold Bennett is a very personal book. 'What interests me', writes the author, 'is Bennett's background, his childhood and origins, for they are very similar to my own. My mother's family came from the Potteries, and the Bennett novels seem to me to portray a way of life that still existed when I was a child, and indeed persists in certain areas. So like all books this has been partly an act of self-exploration.'Of Bennett as a writer Drabble says 'The best books I think are very fine indeed, on the highest level, deeply moving, original and dealing with material that I had never before encountered in fiction, but only in life: I feel they have been underrated, and my response to them is so constant, even after years of work on them and constant re-readings, that I want to communicate enthusiasm.'Of Bennett as a man she paints an affectionate portrait, not glossing over the irritability, dyspepsia and rigidity which at times made him so difficult a companion but reminding us too of his honesty, kindliness and sensitivity. 'Many a time,' she writes at the end of the book, 're-reading a novel, reading a letter or a piece of his Journal, I have wanted to shake his hand, or to thank him, to say well done. I have written this instead.'

A beautifully written and deeply personal book on the jigsaw and the part it plays in the patchwork of its distinguished author's life. A mix of memoir, jigsaw history and the strange delights of puzzling

Bringing together new short stories by ten of the city's most celebrated writers. From young creatives and refugees, to scrap metal collectors and student radicals, these stories offer ten different look-out points from which to gaze down on the ever-changing face of the 'Steel City'.

Its virtues - a bright, crowded canvas, warmth, a witty, polished style - are those of Wilson's novels .

The love of place is endemic in English literature, from the work of the earliest poets and hermits to the suburban celebrations of John Betjeman, covering all varieties of the British rural and urban landscape. This book presents an image of Britain as seen by writers of different regions and periods.

Humphrey and Ailsa meet as children by a grey, northern sea. Humphrey is quiet, serious - and will in time explore the sea's mysteries; Ailsa is angry, a freckled cobra ready to strike. Yet they fascinate one another and when they meet again years later they fall briefly - and disastrously - in love.