Some appear to be written to a young man, some to a woman. And although the poems are full of mystery – why did Shakespeare write them, and to whom? – each one speaks to us from across the centuries of love, hate and the intensity of being alive.

INTRODUCED BY ANDREW McMILLAN

‘This is a crazy, all-consuming, feverish and sweaty love; love, in all its uncut, full-strength intensity; an adolescent love’ Don Paterson, Guardian

‘A remarkable achievement’ Spectator

In the summer of 1705, a masked woman knocked on the door of a London printer’s workshop. She did not leave her name, only a package and the promise of protection.

Soon after, an anonymous pamphlet was quietly distributed in the backstreets of the city. Entitled The Memorial of the Church of England, the argument it proposed threatened to topple the government. Fearing insurrection, parliament was in turmoil and government minister Robert Harley launched a hunt for all of those involved. The printer was eventually named, but could not be found…

In this breakneck political adventure, Joseph Hone shows us a nation in crisis through the story of a single incendiary document.

‘An elegant blend of scholarship and detection’ Peter Moore, author of Endeavour
‘Enthralling’ London Review of Books
‘An exciting story told with vigour’ Adrian Tinniswood, Literary Review

In A Place for Everything, acclaimed historian Judith Flanders fascinatingly lays out the gradual triumph of alphabetical order, from its use as a sorting tool in the Great Library of Alexandria to its current decline in prominence in the digital age. Along the way, the reader encounters a wonderful cast of characters,from the great collector Robert Cotton, who catalogued his manuscripts by the names of the busts of the Roman emperors surmounting his book cases, to the unassuming sixteenth-century London bookseller who ushered in a revolution by listing his authors by ‘sirname’ first.

‘One of the many fascinations of Judith Flanders’ book is that it reveals what a weird, unlikely creation the alphabet is.’ Guardian

An adventure story of politics, philosophy and printing from the age of Queen Anne

In the summer of 1705, a masked woman knocked on the door of David Edwards’s London workshop. She did not leave her name, only a package and a coded means of identifying her courier.

Edwards was a Welsh printer working in the dark confines of Nevill’s Alley, outside the city walls. The package was an illegal, anonymous pamphlet: The Memorial of the Church of England. The argument it proposed threatened to topple the government, but sedition sold well in the coffeehouses of Fleet Street and the woman promised protection. Edwards swiftly set about printing and surreptitiously distributing the pamphlet.

Parliament was soon in turmoil and government minister Robert Harley launched a hunt for all those involved. When Edwards was nowhere to be found, his wife was imprisoned and the pamphlet was burnt in his place. The printer was not the only villain, though, and Harley had to find the unknown writers who wished to bring the government down.

Full of original research, The Paper Chase tears through the backstreets of London and its corridors of power as Edwards’s allegiances waver and Harley’s grasp on parliament threatens to slip. Amateur detectives and government spies race to unmask the secrets of the age in this complex break-neck political adventure. Joseph Hone shows us a nation in crisis through the fascinating story of a single incendiary document.

“An elegant blend of scholarship and detection that reanimates the dangerous, exciting, clandestine world of Fleet Street at the start of the modern age” Peter Moore, author of Endeavour

‘It makes you impatient to see or re-read the plays at once’ Hilary Mantel

A genius and prophet whose timeless works encapsulate the human condition like no others. A writer who surpassed his contemporaries in vision, originality and literary mastery. Who wrote like an angel, putting it all so much better than anyone else.
Is this Shakespeare? Well, sort of.

But it doesn’t really tell us the whole truth. So much of what we say about Shakespeare is either not true, or just not relevant, deflecting us from investigating the challenges of his inconsistencies and flaws. This electrifying new book thrives on revealing, not resolving, the ambiguities of Shakespeare’s plays and their changing topicality. It introduces an intellectually, theatrically and ethically exciting writer who engages with intersectionality as much as with Ovid, with economics as much as poetry: who writes in strikingly modern ways about individual agency, privacy, politics, celebrity and sex. It takes us into a world of politicking and copy-catting, as we watch him emulating the blockbusters of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd, the Spielberg and Tarantino of their day; flirting with and skirting round the cut-throat issues of succession politics, religious upheaval and technological change. The Shakespeare in this book poses awkward questions rather than offering bland answers, always implicating us in working out what it might mean.

This is Shakespeare. And he needs your attention.

One of the Observer’s ‘Books of the Year 2014’

In November 1596 a woman signed a document which would nearly destroy the career of William Shakespeare . . .

Who was the woman who played such an instrumental, yet little known, role in Shakespeare’s life?

Never far from controversy when she was alive – she sparked numerous riots and indulged in acts of bribery, breaking-and-entering, and kidnapping – Elizabeth Russell has been edited out of public memory, yet the chain of events she set in motion would be the making of Shakespeare as we all know him today.

Providing new pieces to the puzzle, Chris Laoutaris’s thrilling biography reveals for the first time the life of this extraordinary woman, and why she decided to wage her battle against Shakespeare.

‘A splendid and original book’ Sunday Telegraph

‘A work of historical and literary detection which takes us straight to the heart of religious politics in Elizabethan England.’ Frances Wilson, New Statesman

‘I’m in love with the brilliant research on display in Shakespeare and the Countess by Christopher Laoutaris and how it brings to light Lady Elizabeth Russell, a force to be reckoned with and a trailblazing early feminist.’ Amma Asante, Observer (Books of the Year)

How did plague turn Shakespeare from a jobbing hack into a courtly poet? How did Bottom’s dream rewrite the Bible? How did Shakespeare’s plays lead to the deaths of an earl and a king? And why was he the one dramatist of his generation never to be imprisoned?

Weaving a dazzling tapestry of Elizabethan beliefs and obsessions, private passions and political intrigues, Soul of the Age leads us on an exhilarating tour of the extraordinary, colourful and often violent world that shaped and informed Shakespeare’s thinking. Written by one of the world’s leading experts, it combines almost everything there is to know about the man and his work in one sensational narrative.

‘Bate probably knows as much as any single person can know about Shakespeare … Surprising, fresh, exhilarating, brilliant’, Guardian

‘Intensely enjoyable … you find yourself gasping with pleasure’ John Carey, Sunday Times

Jonathan Bate is Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the University of Warwick, chief editor of The RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works and the author of many books, including most recently John Clare: A Biography, which won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature and the James Tait Black Prize for Biography. A Fellow of the British Academy, he was awarded a CBE in 2006.