D. J. Taylor Book order

A spirited and essential companion to Orwell and his works, covering all the novels and major essays

It's 1978 and Nick Du Pont, one-time PR man to Sixties rock behemoths the Helium Kids, is back in London and bent on founding his own record label. A new kind of music - sharp, hard and dangerous - is bursting onto the airwaves on both sides of the Atlantic and Nick wants a slice of the action - in particular, the work of The Flame Throwers, the most provocative assemblage of street-smart desperadoes ever to hail from downtown Los Angeles.Picking up from where the highly-praised Rock and Roll is Life (2018) left off, this is the story of Resurgam Records and the personal traumas and tragedies that attended its coruscating rise - until the time when, as so invariably happens, the dancers shuffle to a halt and the music stops. 'Taylor's 1,000-watt satire is set half in the real rockbiz,' Philip Norman has observed, and 'half in an imaginary one whose monsters are just as believable - and unbelievable. A near-narcotic treat.

Rock and Roll is Life pays homage to a formative period in music history, at the height of the Helium Kids' popularity. Three decades after their heyday in the late '60s and early '70s, the band's publicist Nick Du Pont looks back on the turbulent trajectory of the supergroup, traversing the bacchanalian excesses and tragedies of a golden age in British music.

A fascinating exploration of George Orwell—and his body of work—by an award-winning Orwellian biographer and scholar, presenting the author anew to twenty-first-century readers. We find ourselves in an era when the moment is ripe for a reevaluation of the life and the works of one of the twentieth century’s greatest authors. This is the first twenty-first-century biography on George Orwell, with special recognition to D. J. Taylor's stature as an award-winning biographer and Orwellian. Using new sources that are now available for the first time, we are tantalizingly at the end of the lifespan of Orwell's last few contemporaries, whose final reflections are caught in this book. The way we look at a writer and his canon has changed even over the course of the last two decades; there is a post-millennial prism through which we must now look for such a biography to be fresh and relevant. This is what Orwell: The New Life achieves.

Some of the characters in Stewkey Blues have lived in Norfolk all their lives. Others are short-term residents or passage migrants. Whether young or old, self-confident or ground-down, local or blow-in, all of them are reaching uneasy compromises with the world they inhabit and the landscape in which that life takes place.

Set against the backdrop of World War II, the narrative explores the lives of Lys Lubbock, Sonia Brownell, Barbara Skelton, and Janetta Parlade—four women who embodied a blend of chic glamour and bohemian spirit. Their experiences oscillate between the opulence of the Ritz and the gritty realities of life in a rat-infested maisonette, showcasing their influential roles in English literary and artistic circles during a tumultuous period.

By acclaimed Orwell biographer D. J. Taylor, this is the story of the Lost Girls, the missing link between the first wave of newly-liberated young women of the post-Great War era and Dionysiac free-for-all of the 1960s.

"Since its publication nearly 70 years ago, George Orwell's 1984 has been regarded as one of the most influential novels of the modern age. Politicians have testified to its influence on their intellectual identities, rock musicians have made records about it, TV viewers watch a reality show named for it, and a White House spokesperson tells of 'alternative facts.' The world we live in is often described as an Orwellian one, awash in inescapable surveillance and invasions of privacy. On 1984 dives deep into Orwell's life to chart his earlier writings and key moments in his youth, such as his years at a boarding school, whose strict and charismatic headmaster shaped the idea of Big Brother. Taylor tells the story of the writing of the book, taking readers to the Scottish island of Jura, where Orwell, newly famous thanks to Animal Farm but coping with personal tragedy and rapidly declining health, struggled to finish 1984. Published during the cold war -- a term Orwell coined -- Taylor elucidates the environmental influences on the book. Then he examines 1984's post-publication life, including its role as a tool to understand our language, politics, and government. In a current climate where truth, surveillance, censorship, and critical thinking are contentious, Orwell's work is necessary" -- Provided by publisher

'Rock and Roll is Life' is the new novel from the country's leading man of letters, D. J. Taylor.