Rose Tremain Books

The BP Portrait Award, now in its twenty-first year, is one of Britain's most prestigious art prizes, and is the leading showcase for artists throughout the world specialising in portraiture. Last year nearly 300,000 people visited the exhibition, which is based on the competition open to all artists aged eighteen and over from around the world. The catalogue features sixty works from an international list of artists, which together display a diverse range of styles and painterly techniques. It also includes a fascinating essay by bestselling novelist Rose Tremain and an illustrated article by the 2009 Travel Award winner Isobel Peachey. Peachey describes the journeys she undertook to Switzerland and Belgium to document historical re-enactment weekends in which participants recreated life in a medieval castle and a Napoleonic battle. Her account and the accompanying portraits capture her sitters' passionate involvement in recreating the past, and their dual identity as contemporary people re-enacting historical events.

From an acclaimed voice in literature comes a children's story steeped in magic...Oliver loves birds - watching them soar into the sky and wishing that just sometimes they would stay close.So when he discovers a robin made of iron, he thinks he's found the perfect friend - even if his pet dragon isn't quite so certain! When the robin begins to glimmer and hop, Oliver is overjoyed, but in a terrible turn of events, this new friend is lost. But the magic of Iron Robin and the joy of friendship means that there is wonder and excitement ahead for Oliver...Join Oliver on the start of his adventure, with this lyrical and funny story which explores friendship, loyalty and the power of hope. Iron Robin is the perfect bedtime story to share together.

Robert Merivel abandons his medical studies for the vibrant Court of Charles II, where he finds unexpected favour with the King and serves as a 'paper groom' to the youngest of the royal mistresses. But by falling in love with her, Merivel violates the one rule that will cast him out from his new found paradise. Driven to work in a Quaker Bedlam, he must endure a yet more painful fall from grace before he can achieve spiritual and social restoration.

Set in seventeenth-century England, the story follows Robert Merivel, a physician and courtier to Charles II, as he grapples with the complexities of middle age. As he questions his roles as a father, master, and friend to the King, Merivel embarks on a journey to the French court of Versailles. His quest for self-discovery leads to a series of misadventures, blending humor and introspection in a richly depicted historical context.

Court physician Robert Merivel has a middle age crisis and sets off for Versailles where he meets Madame de Flamanville, a Swiss botanist, and rescues a captive bear to take back to Bidnold Manor.

Standing in a cold Suffolk field with her family, six-year-old Mary Ward has a revelation: I am not Mary. I am not a girl. I'm a boy. So begins Mary's heroic struggle to change gender. In this book, her story begins from the rural community of the 1950s to London in the Sixties, and beyond to the glitter of America in the Seventies.

Restoration is a dazzling romp through 17th-century England. The main character Robert Merivel not only embodies the contradictions of his era, but ours as well. He is trapped between the longing for wealth and power and the realization that the pursuit of these trappings can leave one's life rather empty.

Shortlisted for the Costa Book Award The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller What is the difference between friendship and love? Jewish and mercurial, a talented pianist tortured by nerves when he has to play in public, Anton fails to understand how deeply and irrevocably his life and Gustav's are entwined.

Lev is on his way to Britain to seek work, so that he can send money back to eastern Europe to support his mother and little daughter. He struggles with the mysterious rituals of 'Englishness', and the fashions and fads of the London scene. We see the road Lev travels through his eyes, and we share his dilemmas.