Book Club - New releases from British authors

Ahead of summer vacation, check out BHT’s roundup of the most exciting new releases from British authors.

The Movie Lover’s Guide to London

By Charlotte Booth and Brian Billington 

Do you want to follow in the footsteps of Paddington, James Bond, and Dorian Gray? Do you want to kiss in front of the blue door? Or look for the tomb of the resurrected Lord Blackwood? Or do you want to know where Richard Burton lived? Or where you can actually buy jewellery that was in the movies? 

If you do, then you're in the right place. 

London has been a draw for filmmakers for decades, and this book guides you through the locations, in the shadow of some of your favourite movies. 

Take a tour by movie, go on a movie pub crawl, a leisurely stroll through cemeteries with connections to the movies or create your own tour by postcode. This book will allow you to visit new parts of London but with the familiarity of a well-loved film. 

With more than 500 movie locations from 91 films covering more than six decades of movie making and more than 100 images, this book will have something for everyone and will show you London in a new, sparkling, glamourous light. 

Letters to Penweth: Exemplifying 19th century Cornish Life 

By Neal Moss

Set at least fifty years after the adventures of Cornwall’s most famous son, Poldark, this absorbing tale of life on the farm is ultimately one of a mother’s desire to see her children flourish and follow their dreams.

Though to many Penweth is just another farm, to those who live and work there, it is a family home. Surrounded on three sides by the mesmeric sea, it sits hunkered down upon a Cornish headland; it belongs there, as do its inhabitants.

But things are changing for the family at Penweth. While his sister, Mary, sees a bright future for herself on the farm, Thomas, who is not yet a man but neither in boyhood, is tormented by two loves, his family and the sea.

With Thomas threatening to throw his sister’s plans into disarray, and wider changes occurring that risk altering their peaceful lives forever, will the family’s unconditional love for one another, tested and strained to the limit, still be given without hesitation?

Writing with depth and an appreciation of the intricacies that embody familial life, Neal Moss weaves a compelling and character-driven narrative in a historical version of Cornwall that is very much his own.

A must-read for all fans of family sagas (historical or otherwise), letters to Penweth is a prime candidate for book club reading and discussion.

Tudor Children 

Nicholas Orme 

What was it like to grow up in England under the Tudors? How were children cared for, what did they play with, and what dangers did they face?

In this beautifully illustrated and characteristically lively account, leading historian Nicholas Orme provides a rich survey of childhood in the period. Beginning with birth and infancy, he explores all aspects of children’s experiences, including the games they played, such as Blind Man’s Bluff and Mumble-the-Peg, and the songs they sang, such as “Three Blind Mice” and “Jack Boy, Ho Boy.” He shows how social status determined everything from the food children ate and the clothes they wore to the education they received and the work they undertook.

Although childhood and adolescence could be challenging and even hazardous, it was also, as Nicholas Orme shows, a treasured time of learning and development. By looking at the lives of Tudor children we can gain a richer understanding of the era as a whole.

Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman 

By Lucy Worsley

Christie herself once proclaimed “Nobody in the world was more inadequate to act the heroine than I was.”

Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was “just” an ordinary housewife when clearly she wasn’t?  Her life is fascinating for its mysteries and its passions and, as Lucy Worsley says, "She was thrillingly, scintillatingly modern."  She went surfing in Hawaii, she loved fast cars, and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology.

So why - despite all the evidence to the contrary - did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure? 

She was born in 1890 into a world that had its own rules about what women could and couldn’t do. Lucy Worsley’s biography is not just of a massively, internationally successful writer. It's also the story of a person who, despite the obstacles of class and gender, became an astonishingly successful working woman.

With access to personal letters and papers that have rarely been seen, Lucy Worsley’s biography is both authoritative and entertaining and makes us realize what an extraordinary pioneer Agatha Christie was - truly a woman who wrote the twentieth century.