Bainbridge, Beryl

"Front Row is a collection of Beryl Bainbridge's best writing about the theatre. It contains fascinating insights into the work of such contemporaries as Alan Bennett, Alan Rickmann and Ronald Harwood, alongside amusing sketches of the actors Bainbridge worked with in her early years, including Judith Chalmers and Billie Whitelaw. And in her autobiographical introduction, Beryl Bainbridge evokes all the magic that the footlights possess for her."--Jacket.

"The literary world of Georgian London and the more private arena of its most celebrated man of letters, Samuel Johnson, come to life in this tale of unrequited love and compelling passion. Although melancholia and the gout have jaded the middle-aged Dr. Johnson's palate for society, the eminent, if increasingly irascible lexicographer nonetheless accepts an introduction to the excellent table of the wealthy Southwark brewer Henry Thrale. So it is that an evening in 1764, instead of meeting Johnson's very low expectations, takes him into the social orbit of the charming, vivacious Mrs. Thrale - and marks the beginning of an extraordinary relationship that will span the final two decades of his life. As Johnson settles more and more comfortably into his niche among the Thrales, the family's already hectic domain is thrown further into lively chaos by the literary giant's retinue of sycophants, admirers, scholars, and friends like the illustrious actor David Garrick, poet Oliver Goldsmith, novelist Fanny Burney, and painter Joshua Reynolds. Ambiguities have meanwhile begun to complicate the bond between Johnson and Mrs. Thrale. Possessiveness vies with rejection, and sexual tensions stir beneath the decorous surfaces of everyday life."--BOOK JACKET.

On Wednesday, April 10, 1912, the RMS Titanic left Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York. Four days later, half an hour before midnight, she struck an iceberg. By 2 a.m. the last lifeboat had rowed frantically away. Minutes later the great ship sank. Fifteen hundred people had lost their lives. Every Man for Himself recaptures those four crucial days at the end of the Belle Epoque. J. Pierpont Morgan's nephew, en route to New York, has booked passage on the world's most luxurious ocean liner. His companions include a host of Guggenheims, Vanderbilts, and upper crust fellow travelers. It is a voyage of black-tie dining and moonlight serenades, of illicit romances and reserved travelers with shadowy pasts. The young Morgan soon finds his destiny linked to those of his shipmates, memorable personalities all, as the great ship sails toward her fate. But the Titanic's destiny may not be unknown to everyone on board: just hours before tragedy strikes, one of the passengers is heard to remark, "Have you not yet learned that it's every man for himself?" Bainbridge vividly recreates each scene of the voyage, from the suspicious fire in the Number 10 coal boiler, to the champagne and crystal of the first-class public rooms, to that terrible midnight chaos in the frigid North Atlantic. This remarkable, haunting tale confirms Bainbridge as a consummate observer of human behavior and the human condition.

The fictional recreation of the last journey of Captain Scott and the four men he led to their deaths in Antarctica in 1912.

It is 1950 and Stella has been taken on as assistant stage manager for a Liverpool rep company. She quickly becomes obsessed with their dissolute director, but when the celebrated O'Hara arrives to take the lead, a different drama unfolds. He and Stella are bound in a past neither dares interpret.

In this hilarious and ingenious novel set in 1912, Young Adolf Hitler, age twenty-three, comes to Liverpool, penniless, traveling with false papers, and perpetually stalked by imaginary enemies. His half-brother, Alois, who works as a hotel waiter and a salesman, has convinced him to assist in building a commercial empire based on the newly invented safety razor. Adolf moves in with Alois, his Irish wife, and their infant son and promptly inconveniences them: He is difficult, depressed, lies for days on the sofa, bungles the simplest jobs, and has not yet found himself. In episodes of disarming comedy, at every turn young Adolf becomes involved in ludicrous and embarrassing situations, so much so that he would never, for the rest of his life, mention his laughably awkward visit to England. Taking on one of history's odder incidents with her considerable imagination and wicked sense of humor, Beryl Bainbridge makes Adolf Hitler as absurd a figure in words as Charlie Chaplin made him on film.

Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling.Joseph decides to take his mistress and son, together with a few friends, to stay in a cabin in deepest Wales for the weekend - with absolutely disastrous results. Beryl Bainbridge's gift for deadpan dialogue and spare narrative, and her darkly comic vision of the world, are all in evidence in this early novel.

Melissa Dornay is the daughter of a humble dressmaker. When her mother dies, Melissa is offered a home by wealthy Lilian Winterton, but she soon realises Lilian wants an unpaid seamstress. Treated as a servant by the Wintertons, Melissa is befriended by Reenie, a kitchen maid, and they enjoy dressing up in Lilian's cast-off clothes. Wearing finery, Melissa meets handsome young artist James Pennington, but she runs away, frightened he will guess her true status. Scandal follows and Melissa is unfairly thrown out on to the streets. Can the rags of her life be sewn into riches!?