Non-Fiction Books

What has gone wrong with English novels? Why do they seem so feeble compared to the Victorian greats? Is it the fault of the writing or the fragmented modern world the writers try to capture? D.J. Taylor asks these tough, fundamental questions. Following his reading of a host of authors - Waugh and Powell, Kingsley Amis, Malcolm Bradbury, John Fowles, A.S. Byatt and many more - readers can trace, in this account of modern fiction, a particular tradition and even define the "Thatcherite" novel. It is also possible to look at history differently, from the post-war dreams to the nineties recession.

In this acclaimed biography of the 19th-century author of Vanity Fair , the first major study in twenty years, D.J. Taylor paints a compelling portrait of the endearing, exasperating, paradoxical figure.

Winner of the 2004 Whitbread Prize for Biography "D. J. Taylor has written not only the best recent biography of George Orwell . . . but also one of the cleverest studies of the relationship of that life to the written word." - The Washington Post Book World In the last fifty years, Animal Farm and 1984 have sold more than forty million copies, and "Orwellian" is now a byword for a particular way of thinking about life, literature, and language. D. J. Taylor's magisterial assessment cuts through George Orwell's iconic status to reveal a bitter critic who concealed a profound totalitarian streak and whose progress through the literary world of the 1930s and 1940s was characterized by the myths he built around himself. Drawing on previously unseen material, Orwell is a strikingly human portrait of the writer too often embalmed as a secular saint. This biography is as vibrant, powerful, and resonant as its extraordinary subject.

D.J. Taylor's Bright Young People offers a scintillating portrait of 1920s London and the birth of the cult of celebrity. Before the media circus of Britney, Paris, and our modern obsession with celebrity, there were the Bright Young People, a voraciously pleasure-seeking band of bohemian party-givers and blue-blooded socialites who romped through the gossip columns of 1920s London. Evelyn Waugh immortalized their slang, their pranks, and their tragedies in his novels, and over the next half century, many―from Cecil Beaton to Nancy Mitford and John Betjeman―would become household names. But beneath the veneer of hedonism and practical jokes was a tormented generation, brought up in the shadow of war. Sparkling talent was too often brought low by alcoholism and addiction. Drawing on the virtuosic and often wrenching writings of the Bright Young People themselves, the biographer and novelist D. J. Taylor has produced an enthralling account of an age of fleeting brilliance.

In this brilliant study of the patterns of sporting and cultural life, D. J. Taylor examines the process that led to professionalism’s triumph and the long rearguard action fought by sportsmen — and literature — on amateurism’s behalf. He describes a changing moral universe with profound consequences both for sport and the world beyond it.

Since the late 1990s, Private Eye's "What You Didn't Miss" column has trained a vigilant lens on some of the great literary reputations of our age. Highlights of this bumper selection include Martin Amis exploring the sexual revolution of the 1960s, A.S. Byatt rewriting the Norse myths and the late Anthony Powell reflecting on his death. There are verse contributions from such distinguished contemporary poets as Seamus Heaney, Clive James and Sir Andrew Motion and a host of biographical subjects ranging from Hugh Trevor-Roper to the Bloomsbury Group. Edited and introduced by D.J. Taylor, What You Didn't Miss doubles up as both an hilarious collection of literary lampoons and an alternative history of modern English Literature.

Gossipy journalists, revolutionary poets, political novelists and influential professors: take a tour of twentieth century literary culture. The book DJ Taylor was born to write: award-winning literary biographer (won Whitbread Prize for biography of George Orwell), esteemed journalist and novelist (longlisted for Booker for Derby Day) is the expert on 20th century literary culture: he's lived and worked through half of it! Gossipy and entertaining: a fantastic read, full of juicy details and hilarious anecdotes about the great minds of the twentieth century. Insight into our world: shines a light on readers, writers, publishers, booksellers, magazine editors - and holds them up for scrutiny.

'Hugely enjoyable' AN Wilson, Sunday Times 'Thoughtful, entertaining and enjoyable' Michael Gove, Book of the Week, The Times Inspired by William Makepeace Thackeray, the first great analyst of snobbery, and his trail-blazing The Book of Snobs (1848), D. J. Taylor brings us a field guide to the modern snob. Short of calling someone a racist or a paedophile, one of the worst charges you can lay at anybody's door in the early twenty-first century is to suggest that they happen to be a snob. But what constitutes snobbishness? Who are the snobs and where are they to be found? Are you a snob? Am I? What are the distinguishing marks? Snobbery is, in fact, one of the keys to contemporary British life, as vital to the backstreet family on benefits as the proprietor of the grandest stately home, and an essential element of their view of who of they are and what the world might be thought to owe them. The New Book of Snobs will take a marked interest in language, the vocabulary of snobbery - as exemplified in the 'U' and 'Non U' controversy of the 1950s - being a particular field in which the phenomenon consistently makes its presence felt, and alternate social analysis with sketches of groups and individuals on the Thackerayan principle. Prepare to meet the Political Snob, the City Snob, the Technology Snob, the Property Snob, the Rural Snob, the Literary Snob, the Working-class Snob, the Sporting Snob, the Popular Cultural Snob and the Food Snob.

'Taylor's magnificent new novel is Spinal Tap for literary types . . . thoroughly entertaining, knowledgeable romp through the fear and loathing of rock's golden age. Beautifully written and consistently funny, it is also a poignant account of one man's search for his own identity' Mail on Sunday'A dazzling rollercoaster homage to an era both bacchanalian and oddly innocent' GuardianYou may remember the Helium Kids. Back in their late '60s and early '70s heyday they appeared on Top of the Tops on 27 separate occasions, released five Billboard-certified platinum albums, played sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden and were nearly, but not quite, as big as the Beatles and the Stones. Three decades later, in the big house on the outskirts of Norwich, Nick Du Pont is looking back on the rollercoaster years he spent as their publicist in a world of licensed excess and lurking tragedy. What follows is not only the story of a rock band at a formative time in musical history, when America was opening up to English music and huge amounts of money and self-gratification were there for the taking. For the tale is also Nick's - the life and times of a war-baby born in a Norwich council house, the son of an absconding GI, whose career is a search for some of the advantages that his birth denied him. It is at once a worm's eye of British pop music's golden age and a bittersweet personal journey, with cameo appearances from everyone from Elvis and Her Majesty the Queen Mother to Andy Warhol.'Rock and Roll is Life' is a vastly entertaining, picaresque and touching novel inspired by the excess and trajectories of the great '60s and '70s supergroups, and of the tales brought back from the front line by a very special breed of Englishmen who made it big in the States as the alchemists and enablers, as well as the old making way for the new in the era of the baby boomers. At its heart is one man's adventure, and the poignancy of the special relationships that dominate his life.

The Booker Prize–nominated author of Derby Day delivers a sumptuous cultural history as seen through the lives of four enigmatic women. Who were the Lost Girls? Chic, glamorous, and bohemian, as likely to be found living in a rat-haunted maisonette as dining at the Ritz, Lys Lubbock, Sonia Brownell, Barbara Skelton, and Janetta Parlade cut a swath through English literary and artistic life at the height of World War II. Three of them had affairs with Lucian Freud. One of them married George Orwell. Another became the mistress of the King of Egypt. They had very different—and sometimes explosive—personalities, but taken together they form a distinctive part of the wartime demographic: bright, beautiful, independent-minded women with tough upbringings who were determined to make the most of their lives in a chaotic time. Ranging from Bloomsbury and Soho to Cairo and the couture studios of Schiaparelli and Hartnell, the Lost Girls would inspire the work of George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, and Nancy Mitford. They are the missing link between the Lost Generation and Bright Young People and the Dionysiac cultural revolution of the 1960s. Sweeping, passionate, and unexpectedly poignant, this is their untold story.

The essential backstory to the creation and meaning of one of the most important novels of the twentieth century―and now the twenty-first. Since its publication nearly seventy 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 Nineteen Eighty-Four 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. D.J. 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 climate where truth, surveillance, censorship, and critical thinking are contentious, Orwell’s work is necessary. Written with resonant and reflective analysis, On Nineteen Eighty-Four is both brilliant and remarkably timely. Praise for On Nineteen Eighty-Four “A lively, engaging, concise biography of a novel.” ― Kirkus Reviews “The fascinating origins and complex legacy of this enduring masterwork are chronicled in [this] arresting new book.” ― BookPage “Brisk [and] focused. . . . Taylor here covers the highlights, giving both an overview of Orwell’s career and a survey of his greatest literary achievement.” ― Wall Street Journal “Taylor is an accomplished literary critic and he illuminates Orwell’s work in the context of his life, elegantly and expertly charting his course from Grub Street to bestsellerdom.” ― The Guardian