Timothy West

A handbook for aspiring actors by two of the best-known names in British theatre and television. It offers practical advice and do's and don'ts to anyone thinking of taking up acting. The authors are passionate about actor training, know the profession inside out and have more than a hundred years' experience between them... Writing alternately throughout the book-and sometimes offering radically different opinions-they cover over sixty topics including: Drama...

In this widely acclaimed collection of short stories, the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending addresses the most poignant aspect of the human condition: growing old.
"A master at work…. Sweet, sour, bitter, wistful, ruminative, comic, elegiac … A joy to read." —San Francisco Chronicle
The characters in The Lemon Table are facing the ends of their lives—some...

Barchester Towers, Trollope's most popular novel, is the second of the six Chronicles of Barsetshire. The Chronicles follow the intrigues of ambition and love in the cathedral town of Barchester. It is the behavior of the individuals within a power structure that interests him. In this novel Trollope continues the story of Mr. Harding and his daughter, Eleanor, adding to his cast of characters that oily symbol of progress, Mr. Slope; the hen-pecked...

Evil Morgoth rules over a vast military power from his fortress of Angband. Ulmo, the Lord of Waters, opposes him. Central to this enmity of the gods is the city of Gondolin, built and peopled by Noldorin Elves who rebelled against their rule and fled to Middle-earth. Into this world comes Tuor, cousin of Túrin. Guided unseen by Ulmo, Tuor sets out from the land of his birth on the fearful journey to Gondolin. The story -- only ninety-five pages...

From the company that brought Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel in the Crown, comes an adaptation that faithfully realizes Dickens' scathing portrait of Victorian industrial society. Local MP and schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind raises his children, Louisa and Tom, in the utilitarian fashion, stressing reason and fact and dismissing imagination and emotion. Under his influence, Louisa grows cold while Tom turns to a secret life of drinking and gambling....

Lynne Truss debuted in America as a guffaw-inducing grammarian, but her UK audience has known her for years as a critically acclaimed novelist. Tennyson's Gift is an imaginative cocktail of Victorian seriousness and farce that re-imagines the world of the nineteenth-century English poet laureate, placing him in the midst of eccentric company that includes Lewis Carroll. Going Loco features a critic trying to write a definitive account of the doppelganger...

Lucy Honeychurch and her nervous chaperone embark on a grand tour of Italy. Alongside sweeping landscapes, Lucy encounters a suspect group of characters (socialist Mr. Emerson and his working-class son George, in particular) who both surprise and intrigue her. When piqued interest turns to potential romance, Lucy is whisked home to England, where her attention turns to Cecil Vyse. But now, with a well-developed appetite for adventure, will Lucy make...

The tale of Beren and Lúthien was part of The Silmarillion, the myths and legends of the First Age of Middle Earth. Essential to the story is the fate that shadowed the love of Beren and Lúthien: for Beren was a mortal man, but Lúthien was an immortal elf. Her father, a great elvish lord in deep opposition to Beren, imposed on him an impossible task that he must perform before he might wed Lúthien. This leads to the heroic attempt of Beren and...

It's Paris in 1913 and in the months leading up to the World War, beautiful young widow Louise Creteur arrives at the Villa Des Roses to work as a chambermaid. But the 'Villa' turns out to be a dilapidated old mansion run by an eccentric British couple. Inhabiting the crumbling manor is a colorful assortment of odd balls, opportunists and lost souls. All are presided over by Ella, the gossipy cook, who secretly spies on everyone in the house. Louise...