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Underlying the poignancy of the tale is the intriguing subject of the influence one writer can have on another. Sisman seeks to answer fundamental questions about this relationship: why was Wordsworth so reliant on Coleridge, and why was he so easily swayed in the most critical decision of his career? Was it in Coleridge's nature to play second fiddle? Would it, in fact, have been better for both men if they had never met? Sisman writes the story of their frienship in all its aspects in order to provide a clearer picture of the effect they had on each other, thereby illuminating the very process of creation. He examines too, the neglected subject of male friendship itself, and draws out the shared ambition of these two charismatic figures: to write poems that would change the world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49504892584209,"sku":"GOR001870452","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49648722346257,"sku":"GOR002757449","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0007160526.jpg?v=1751434728"},{"product_id":"secret-life-of-john-le-carre-book-adam-sisman-9781800817784","title":"The Secret Life of John le Carre","description":"The extraordinary secret life of a great novelist, which his biographer could not publish while le Carre was alive","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49510967214353,"sku":"GOR013367939","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49589461025041,"sku":"GOR013666987","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49745753014545,"sku":"NGR9781800817784","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49975343087889,"sku":"GOR013347332","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52684225544465,"sku":"NLS9781800817784","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53117412901137,"sku":"GOR014751960","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1800817789.jpg?v=1759226808"},{"product_id":"boswell-s-presumptuous-task-book-adam-sisman-9780374115616","title":"Boswell's Presumptuous Task","description":"Joseph Payne Brennan is one of the most effective writers in the horror genre, and he is certainly one of the writers I have patterned my own career upon, declared Stephen King. In fact, he added, \u003ci\u003eThe Shapes of Midnight\u003c\/i\u003e could serve as an exercise-book for the young writer who aspires to pen and publish his or her own weird tales.\u003cbr\u003eA poet as well as a writer of horror fiction, Brennan worked at Yale's Sterling Memorial Library as an acquisitions assistant for over 40 years. He wrote hundreds of stories for \u003ci\u003eWeird Tales\u003c\/i\u003e and other pulp magazines. 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This is a truly wonderful story' A. N. Wilson, Spectator  'A white-knuckle roller-coaster ride of fibs and frauds' Sunday Telegraph  'An utterly mad, and wholly delightful story of chicanery and fantasy' Simon Winchester  One day in November 1958, the celebrated historian Hugh Trevor-Roper received a curious letter. It was an appeal for help, written on behalf of a student at Magdalen College, with the unlikely claim that he was being persecuted by the Bishop of Oxford. Curiosity piqued, Trevor-Roper agreed to a meeting. It was to be his first encounter with Robert Parkin Peters: plagiarist, bigamist, fraudulent priest and imposter extraordinaire.   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From wartime code-breaking to grilling Nazis while the trail was still fresh in 1945 (and finding Hitler's will buried inside a bottle), to his wide-ranging interests, his snobbery and his malice, his formidable post-war feuds with Evelyn Waugh, Tawney, Toynbee, Taylor and many others, and his secret and passionate affair with an older, married woman. 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This is a truly wonderful story' A. N. Wilson, Spectator  'A white-knuckle roller-coaster ride of fibs and frauds' Sunday Telegraph  'An utterly mad, and wholly delightful story of chicanery and fantasy' Simon Winchester  One day in November 1958, the celebrated historian Hugh Trevor-Roper received a curious letter. It was an appeal for help, written on behalf of a student at Magdalen College, with the unlikely claim that he was being persecuted by the Bishop of Oxford. Curiosity piqued, Trevor-Roper agreed to a meeting. It was to be his first encounter with Robert Parkin Peters: plagiarist, bigamist, fraudulent priest and imposter extraordinaire. The Professor and the Parson traces the strange career of one of Britain's most eccentric criminals. Motivated not by money but by a desire for prestige, Peters' lied, stole and cheated his way to academic positions and religious posts from Cambridge to New York, Singapore and South Africa. 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In John le Carré, Sisman shines a spotlight on David Cornwell, an expert at hiding in plain sight--\"born to lying,\" he wrote in 2002, \"bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practiced in it as a novelist.\"\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOf course, the pseudonym \"John le Carré\" has helped to keep the public at a distance. Sisman probes Cornwell's unusual upbringing, abandoned by his mother at the age of only five and raised by his con man father (when not in prison), and explores his background in British intelligence, as well as his struggle to become a writer, and his personal life. Sisman has benefited from unfettered access to le Carré's private archive, talked to the most important people in his life, and interviewed the man himself at length.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWho is John le Carré? 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He has consistently quarried his life for his writing, and his novels seem to offer tantalizing glimpses of their author - but in the narrative of his life fact and fiction have become intertwined, and little is really known of one of the world's most successful writers.  In Cornwell's lonely childhood Adam Sisman uncovers the origins of the themes of love and abandonment which have dominated le Carré's fiction: the departure of his mother when he was five, followed by 'sixteen hugless years' in the dubious care of his father, a man of energy and charm, a serial seducer and conman who hid the Bentleys in the trees when the bailiffs came calling - a 'totally incomprehensible father' who could 'put a hand on your shoulder and the other in your pocket, both gestures equally sincere'. And in Cornwell's adult life - from recruitment by both MI5 and MI6, through marriage and family life, to his emergence as the master of the spy novel - Sisman explores the idea of espionage and its significance in human terms; the extent to which betrayal is acceptable in exchange for love; and the endless need for forgiveness, especially from oneself.  Written with exclusive access to David Cornwell himself, to his private archive and to the most important people in his life - family, friends, enemies, intelligence ex-colleagues and ex-lovers - and featuring a wealth of previously unseen photographic material, Adam Sisman's extraordinarily insightful and constantly revealing biography brings in from the cold a man whose own life has been as complex and confounding and filled with treachery as any of his novels. 'I'm a liar,' Cornwell has written. 'Born to lying, bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practised in it as a novelist.'  This is the definitive biography of a major writer, described by Ian McEwan as 'perhaps the most significant novelist of the second half of the twentieth century in Britain'.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49541833589009,"sku":"GOR007166037","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49608377991441,"sku":"GOR007527711","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49994898080017,"sku":"GOR007042717","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1408827921.jpg?v=1751241424"},{"product_id":"friendship-book-adam-sisman-9780007160532","title":"The Friendship","description":"The first book to explore the extraordinary story of the legendary friendship – and quarrel – between Wordsworth and Coleridge, two giants of English Romanticism.             Wordsworth and Coleridge’s passionate intimacy, shared ambition and subsequent estrangement contribute to a tragic tale. But Sisman’s biography of this most remarkable friendship – the first to devote itself wholly to exploring the impact of their relationship on each other – seeks to re-examine the orthodox assumption that these two poets flourished as a result of it. Instead, Sisman argues that it was a meeting that may well have been disastrous for both: for it was Wordsworth’s rejection of Coleridge, and not primarily his opium addiction, that destroyed the latter as a poet, and that Coleridge’s impossible ambitions for Wordsworth pushed the latter towards failure and disappointment.             Underlying the poignancy of the tale is the intriguing subject of the influence one writer can have on another. Sisman seeks to answer fundamental questions about this relationship: why was Wordsworth so reliant on Coleridge, and why was he so easily swayed in the most critical decision of his career? Was it in Coleridge’s nature to play second fiddle? Would it, in fact, have been better for both men if they had never met?","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49543977140497,"sku":"GOR001479618","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50347159486737,"sku":"GOR005406420","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50451035685137,"sku":"GOR005217549","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52430780301585,"sku":"NLS9780007160532","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0007160534.jpg?v=1751421138"},{"product_id":"boswell-s-presumptuous-task-book-adam-sisman-9780140254211","title":"Boswell's Presumptuous Task","description":"James Boswell died a disappointed man, considered by his contemporaries to be a \"foolish failure\". 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Since then, le Carré has produced another twenty-one bestselling novels. A master at weaving fiction with fact, le Carré creates complex protagonists who expose tantalizing glimpses into the author's own character. But appearances are deceptive. The real truth is that David Cornwell, the man behind the pseudonym and one of the world's most celebrated writers, has remained an enigma for more than half a century.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this authoritative biography short-listed for the 2016 Pen Award, Adam Sisman explores how the central themes of Cornwell's life defined his fiction. From his lonely, hugless childhood to his early recruitment by British intelligence and the evolution of his spycraft, to his fraught roles as husband and family man, Cornwell's personal history encompasses the basic questions at the heart of his work: What does espionage mean in human terms? To what extent is betrayal acceptable in the name of love? How does a person manage the endless need for forgiveness, especially from oneself?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWritten with exclusive access to David Cornwell, his private archive, and his family, friends, enemies, ex-intelligence colleagues, and ex-lovers--and featuring a wealth of previously unseen photographic material--Sisman's biography at last brings in from the cold a man whose life has been as complex, confounding, and filled with treachery as any of his novels.\u003c\/p\u003e--\u003cb\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Economist\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49551717728529,"sku":"GOR008703487","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0307361500.jpg?v=1750780799"},{"product_id":"hugh-trevor-roper-book-adam-sisman-9780753828618","title":"Hugh Trevor-Roper","description":"Hugh Trevor-Roper's life is a rich subject for a biography - with elements of Greek tragedy, comedy and moments of high farce. Clever, witty and sophisticated, Trevor-Roper was the most brilliant historian of his generation. Until his downfall, he seemed to have everything: wealth and connections, a chair at Oxford, a beautiful country house, an aristocratic wife, and, eventually, a title of his own. Eloquent and versatile, fearless and formidable, he moved easily between Oxford and London, between the dreaming spires of scholarship and the jostling corridors of power. He developed a lucid prose style which he used to deadly effect. He was notorious for his acerbic attacks on other historians, but ultimately tainted his own reputation with a catastrophic error when he authenticated the forged 'Hitler Diaries'. Adam Sisman sheds new light on this fascinating and dramatic episode, but also shows that there was much more to Hugh Trevor-Roper's career than the fiasco of the Hitler Diaries hoax that became his epitaph. 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