Athill, Diana – The Bell Bookshop

Alive, alive oh!

Emma — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

What matters in the end? In the final years of life, which memories stand out? Writing from her retirement home in Highgate, London, as she approaches her 100th year, Diana Athill recalls in sparkling detail the moments in her life which sustain her. With vivid memories of the past mingled with candid, wise and often very funny reflections on the experience of being very old, Alive, Alive Oh! reminds us of the joy and richness to be found at every stage of life.

Instead of a Book

Emma — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Written with an intimacy and spontaneity even more revealing than her celebrated memoirs, Diana Athill’s correspondence with the American poet Edward Field covers thirty years of pleasure and pain, fame and gossip, relationships and ailments. Edited, selected and introduced by Athill, this collection of those letters covers her career as an editor and the adventure of her retirement, revealing a sharply intelligent woman with a keen eye for the absurd, a brilliant turn of phrase and a wicked sense of humour. Vivid, direct and entertaining, Instead of a Book is a wonderful insight into a woman growing older without ever losing her zest for life.

Instead of a letter

Emma — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Despite her family’s ailing finances, Diana Athill’s childhood – spent in a lovely house in Norfolk – was blissful. In 1932, she fell in love with Paul: an undergraduate who tutored her younger brother. Within several years, she had moved to Oxford to study and they were engaged to be married. Then everything fell apart in the cruellest possible way.Athill’s debut is also her most personal: a dissection of personal tragedy and the struggle to rebuild her life amid severe disappointment and loneliness. Unfolding throughout the Second World War, Instead of a Letter is an inspiring story of love and loss, heartbreak and hope, and a testament to her strength of character – her vivacity, honesty and perspicacity.

Somewhere towards the end

Emma — Thu, 02 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

What is it like to be old? Written in her nineties, when she was free from any inhibitions she may have once had, Diana Athill reflects frankly on the losses and occasionally the gains that old age can bring, and on the wisdom and fortitude required to face death.Lively, fearless and humorous, Somewhere Towards the End encapsulates the vibrant final decades of Athill’s life. Filled with events, love and friendships, this is a memoir about maintaining hope, joy and vigour in later life, resisting regret, and questioning the beliefs and customs of your own generation.

Alive Alive Oh!

Emma — Thu, 07 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

What matters in the end? In the final years of life, which memories stand out? Writing from her retirement home in Highgate, London, as she approaches her 100th year, Diana Athill reflects on what it is like to be in her nineties, and on the moments in her life which have risen to the surface and sustain her in her later years. She recalls in sparkling detail the exact layout of the garden of her childhood, a vast and beautiful park attached to a large house, and writes with humour, clarity and honesty about her experiences of the First and Second World Wars, and her trips to Europe as a young woman. In the remarkable title chapter, Athill describes her pregnancy at the age of forty-three, losing the baby and almost losing her life, and her gratitude on discovering that she had survived.With vivid memories of the past mingled with candid, wise and often very funny reflections on the experience of being very old, Alive, Alive Oh! reminds us of the joy and richness to be found at every stage of life.

After a Funeral

Emma — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This is the story of how and why a talented writer came to kill himself. When Diana Athill met the man she calls Didi, an Egyptian in exile, she fell in love instantly and out of love just as fast. Didi moved into her flat, they shared housework and holidays, and a life of easy intimacy seemed to beckon. But Didi’s sweetness and intelligence soon revealed a darker side – he was a gambler, a drinker and a womanizer, impossible to live with but impossible to ignore. With painful honesty, Athill explores the three years they spent together, a period that culminated in Didi’s suicide – in her home – an event he described in the journals he left for her to read as ‘the one authentic act of my life’.

Make Believe: A True Story

Emma — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In Make Believe, Diana Athill, acclaimed author of Instead of a Letter and Stet, remembers her turbulent friendship with Hakim Jamal, a young black convert to the teachings of Malcolm X, whom she met in London in the late 1960s.Despite a desperately troubled youth, he became an eloquent spokesman for the black underclass, was Jean Seberg’s lover and published a book about Malcolm X, before descending into a mania that had him believing he was God. A witness to his struggles, Diana Athill writes with her characteristic honesty about her entanglement with Jamal, Jamal’s relationship with the daughter of a British MP, Gail Benson, and Jamal’s, and separately Gail’s, eventual murders.

Instead Of A Book Letters To A Friend

Emma — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Diana Athill has corresponded with the American poet Edward Field for over thirty years, freely sharing jokes, pleasures and pains with her old friend, and writing with an intimacy and spontaneity even more revealing than the candour of her celebrated memoirs.Edited, selected and introduced by Athill, and annotated with her own delightful notes, this collection of those letters reveals a sharply intelligent woman with a keen eye for the absurd, a brilliant turn of phrase and a wicked sense of humour. Covering her career as an editor, the adventure of her retirement, her immersion in her own writing and her reactions to becoming unexpectedly famous in her old-age, and including gossip about mutual friends, sharp pen portraits, and uninhibited accounts her relationships – and ailments – Instead of a Book gives a wonderful description of a woman growing older without ever losing her zest for life.

Instead Of A Letter

Emma — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Diana Athill’s childhood was idyllic, brought up in the Norfolk countryside. Aged only fifteen, she fell in love with a young undergraduate. They travelled to Oxford, engaged to be married. Then everything fell apart in the cruellest possible way. In this classic modern memoir, Diana Athill dissects the terrible consequences of loss and her struggle to rebuild a personality destroyed by sadness. Yet for all its unhappiness, Instead of a Letter remains a story of hope, written with the frank intelligence and lack of self-pity that have become the hallmarks of Athill’s writing.