Biographies & Memoirs

In The Rare Book Room

Philip Pullman. The Most Dangerous Man in England?

It was the right-wing commentator Peter Hitchens who termed Philip Pullman ‘the most dangerous man in England’. His provocation was the trilogy of books written for children which Pullman collectively called His Dark Materials. Of concern to religious groups is the trilogy’s portrayal of the Church as villains and the story of God as a myth concocted for human consumption by an over-reaching, and ultimately pathetically slain, angel.

It’s for these reasons that in November 2007, a month before the film of the first of trilogy, The Golden Compass, opened, that libraries and schools in the United States began to question whether it was a series suitable for children. Were both the film and the author as unexpected successes as they appeared?

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Editor's Picks

The Exmoor Files: How I Lost a Husband and Found Rural Bliss

Liz Jones

Moving from Islington to Exmoor; one small step for mankind but a very large one for 'Mail on Sunday' columnist Liz Jones.

Liz Jones lived the perfect urban life. The immaculate Georgian townhouse in a leafy London square. The glamorous career where she would hob nob (not the right word: these people don't eat biscuits) with models and movie stars and fashion designers. The Italian wardrobe stuffed with designer bags and shoes. The much younger novelist husband. But then it all goes horribly wrong. She discovers her husband has been having numerous affairs (with women who are younger, dimmer, slimmer) and realises that her pursuit of perfection has never made her happy, and probably never will. And so she decides to start all over again, burying herself alive in the middle of the bleak, unforgiving wilderness that is Exmoor National Park. She buys a wreck of a farmhouse, with an original stable block, 46 acres, an ancient wood and a lake. She rescues a nervous and abused but breathtakingly beautiful racehorse, nursing the dream that she will be able to ride her thoroughbred bareback on the beach, spend her days wafting through flower-filled meadows, harvest her own organic produce and generally live out the rural dream. The reality, of course, is much, much harder. 'The Exmoor Files' is a funny, honest, often brutal real-life account of what it is like to start all over again in an alien environment. It is about discovering that you cannot find peace just by moving somewhere peaceful. It is about mourning for a relationship and letting go of the life you thought you deserved. And most of all it is about how Liz and her racehorse finally learn to trust, and to love, and to live, again.

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Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead

Paula Byrne

A terrifically engaging biography about one of England's greatest novelists, and the glamorous, eccentric, debauched and ultimately tragic family that provided him with the most significant friendships of his life and inspired his masterpiece, Brideshead Revisited. This brilliantly original memoir unlocks for the first time the extent to which Waugh's great novel encoded and transformed his own experiences. In so doing, it illuminates the loves and obsessions that shaped his life, and brings us inevitably to a secret that dared not speak its name.

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