Michel the Giant

We were an army of shadows, of ghosts, walking as if to the beat of some dark psychic mechanism’ The Cuban Revolution changed the course of the twentieth century. Following years of brutal tyranny and poverty, a band of idealistic young people fought against immense odds to overthrow a dictator and emerged victorious. This is […]

‘But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction – what has that got to do with a room of one’s own?’ A Room of One’s Own grew out of a lecture that Virginia Woolf had been invited to give at Girton College, Cambridge in 1928 and became a landmark work […]

‘Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’ Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and […]

‘Witty, stylish and ferociously absorbing’ Observer Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is abandoned on the filthy streets of eighteenth-century Paris as a baby, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human’s. Gradually he learns how to exploit this gift in the art of creating the most […]