Bradford, Richard – The Bell Bookshop

The Durrells

Emma — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A variously tragic tale of escapism and assimilation, Richard Bradford’s The Durrells explores the truth behind the image.

The Durrells are probably the most celebrated literary family of the 20th century. Gerald turned them into celebrities with his tripartite memoir, beginning with My Family and Other Animals (1956) which told of his experiences with his widowed mother Louisa and three siblings during their time in 1930s Corfu. We know of the Durrells from their own writings and from the image of them created by TV, film and biographical accounts of specific figures. What we do not know is the truth.

Using previously unpublished material from the Jersey Archive, Richard Bradford unravels the lives of the famous four children of the Corfu era – Larry, Gerry, Margo and Lesli – as they find themselves geographically and emotionally divided amongst a backdrop of imperial decline and unrest. The children of moneyed colonialists, they were already used to being treated with aghast fascination by the island’s locals, and by expatriate Britons as a disgrace to the homeland.

Yet their story goes beyond the Ionian Sea, and The Durrells delves into the complex social and political circumstances in which the family lived, with seemingly constant threats of war and endangerment to both themselves and their natural environment.

Devils, lusts and strange desires

Emma — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

‘My New Year’s Eve Toast: to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle – may they never give me peace’ – Patricia Highsmith (New Year’s Eve, 1947).Made famous by the great success of her psychological thrillers, The Talented Mr Ripley and Strangers on a Train, Patricia Highsmith is renowned as one of the most influential and celebrated modern writers. However, there has never been a clear picture of the woman behind the books.The relationship between Highsmith’s lesbianism, her fraught personality – by parts self-destructive and malicious – and her fiction, has been largely ignored by biographers in the past. As an openly homosexual writer, she wrote the seminal lesbian love story Carol for which she would be venerated, in modern times, as a radical exponent of the LGBTQ+ community.Alas, her status as an LGBTQ+ icon is undermined by her excessive cruelty towards and exploitation of her friends and many lovers. In this biography, Richard Bradford brings his sharp and incisive style to one of the greatest and most controversial writers of the twentieth century. He considers Highsmith’s bestsellers in the context of her troubled personal life; her alcoholism, licentious sex life, racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and abundant self-loathing.

Tough guy

Emma — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The first biography to examine Mailer’s life as a twisted lens, offering a unique insight into the history of America from the end of World War II to the election of Barack Obama.Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, firstly in 1969 for The Armies of the Night and again in 1980 for The Executioner’s Song, Norman Mailer’s life comes as close as is possible to being the Great American Novel: beyond reason, inexplicable, wonderfully grotesque and addictive.The Naked and the Dead was acclaimed not so much for its intrinsic qualities but rather because it launched a brutally realistic sub-genre of military fiction – Catch 22 and MASH would not exist without it. Richard Bradford combs through Mailer’s personal letters – to lovers and editors – which appear to be a rehearsal for his career as a shifty literary narcissist, and which shape the characters of one of the most widely celebrated World War II novels.Bradford strikes again with a merciless biography in which diary entries, journal extracts and newspaper columns set the tone of this study of a controversial figure. From friendships with contemporaries such as James Baldwin, failed correspondences with Hemingway and the Kennedys, to terrible – but justified – criticism of his work by William Faulkner and Eleanor Roosevelt, this book gives a unique, snappy and convincing perspective of Mailer’s ferocious personality and writings.

Devils, lusts and strange desires

Emma — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

‘My New Year’s Eve Toast: to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle – may they never give me peace’ PATRICIA HIGHSMITH (New Year’s Eve, 1947)Made famous by the great success of her psychological thrillers, The Talented Mr Ripley and Strangers on a Train, Patricia Highsmith is lauded as one of the most influential and celebrated modern writers. However, there has never been a clear picture of the woman behind the books.The relationship between Highsmith’s lesbianism, her fraught personality – by parts self-destructive and malicious – and her fiction, has been largely avoided by biographers. She was openly homosexual and wrote the seminal lesbian love story, Carol. In modern times, she would be venerated as a radical exponent of the LGBT community. However, her status as an LGBT icon is undermined by the fact that she was excessively cruel and exploitative of her friends and lovers.In this new biography, Richard Bradford brings his sharp, incisive style to one of the great and most controversial writers of the twentieth century. He considers Highsmith’s bestsellers in the context of her troubled personal life; her alcoholism, licentious sex life, racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and abundant self-loathing.