{"title":"Richard Bradford","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRichard Bradford\u003c\/strong\u003e explores the intricate lives of influential figures with a sharp eye for detail and narrative depth. His works blend biography and cultural analysis, offering readers a compelling look at the passions and complexities that shape remarkable individuals.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFrom probing examinations of literary icons to vivid portrayals of desire and ambition, Bradford's writing invites reflection on both personal and artistic legacies. His books engage those interested in the intersections of life, art and history.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"devils-lusts-and-strange-desires-by-richard-bradford-9781448218226","title":"Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNOMINATED FOR THE H.R.F. KEATING AWARD, 2022.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e‘My New Year’s Eve Toast: to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle – may they never give me peace’\u003c\/em\u003e – Patricia Highsmith (New Year’s Eve, 1947).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eMade famous by the great success of her psychological thrillers, \u003cem\u003eThe Talented Mr Ripley\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eStrangers on a Train\u003c\/em\u003e, Patricia Highsmith is renowned as one of the most influential and celebrated modern writers. However, there has never been a clear picture of the woman behind the books.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe relationship between Highsmith’s lesbianism, her fraught personality – by parts self-destructive and malicious – and her fiction has been largely ignored by biographers in the past. As an openly homosexual writer, she penned the seminal lesbian love story \u003cem\u003eCarol\u003c\/em\u003e, for which she is venerated in modern times as a radical exponent of the LGBTQ+ community.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAlas, her status as an LGBTQ+ icon is undermined by her excessive cruelty towards and exploitation of her friends and many lovers. In this biography, Richard Bradford brings his sharp and incisive style to one of the greatest and most controversial writers of the twentieth century. He considers Highsmith’s bestsellers in the context of her troubled personal life; her alcoholism, licentious sex life, racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and abundant self-loathing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46804668219628,"sku":"9781448218226","price":27.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/17091893482703.jpg?v=1757418743"},{"product_id":"the-life-of-the-author-john-milton-by-richard-bradford-9781119621560","title":"The Life of the Author: John Milton","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Life of the Author: John Milton\u003c\/em\u003e offers an expansive biography of John Milton, including an assessment of his poetry and prose and an account of the ways in which he has been presented over the past three and a half centuries. It is written by a leading scholar in the field.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt is hard to overstate the role that John Milton played in the historical, political, and literary controversies of seventeenth-century England; his writings and very life challenged the status quo. Living through one of the most tumultuous periods in British history, Milton was involved at every turn. Struggling to reconcile his private beliefs with his involvement with a radical political experiment, a republic which involved the killing of the monarch, his star rose and fell several times during his life. Married three times and struck blind at a cruelly early age, he was a famed pamphleteer and political activist whose revolutionary political credos placed him in mortal danger after the Restoration. Milton’s varied life makes for fascinating reading, but it also produced some of the most important poetry in the English language. \u003cem\u003eParadise Lost\u003c\/em\u003e, the only poem in English recognised as an epic, challenged conventional thinking on widespread topics from religion and gender equality to the fundamental question of why we behave as we do.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis fascinating new biography is divided into two parts. The first separates the man from the myth, and elucidates the complicated details of Milton’s life from his early years as a literary artist uncertain of his destiny, through his work as a propagandist for the Cromwellian republic, to his rewriting of the Old Testament story of the Fall as a poetic allegory of more recent history. The second part looks at how biographers and critics from the seventeenth century to the present day have distorted and manipulated the personality of Milton to suit their biases. Balancing accessibility with academic rigour, this volume:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cul\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003eExamines the significant aspects of Milton’s life and work, including his poetry and prose, his government writings, his travels, and his final years.\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003eExplores Milton’s Protestant and republican influences in \u003cem\u003eParadise Lost, Paradise Regained\u003c\/em\u003e, and his other literary works.\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003eHighlights the differences and similarities between Milton’s poetry and political prose.\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003eFollows the history of biographical and critical presentations of Milton from the seventeenth century onwards, including his adoption as a hero of Romanticism and his survival in the twentieth century as, allegedly, a sceptical humanist.\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003eAddresses modern critiques of Milton in Marxism, Feminism, and other branches of Theory.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Life of the Author: John Milton. Poet and Revolutionary\u003c\/em\u003e is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students, university lecturers, and academic researchers in relevant fields, particularly seventeenth-century poetry and history, as well as literary biography and the history of criticism.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47464402288876,"sku":"9781119621560","price":52.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781119621560-the-life-of-the-author-john-milton.jpg?v=1775048529"},{"product_id":"orwell-by-richard-bradford-9781448217687","title":"Orwell","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eOrwell: A Man of Our Time\u003c\/em\u003e offers a vivid portrait of the man behind the writings, and places him and his work at the centre of the current political landscape.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eOne of the most enduringly popular and controversial writers of the twentieth century, George Orwell’s work is as relevant today as it was in his own lifetime. Possibly, in the age of Brexit, Trump, and populism, even more so. ‘Doublethink’ features in \u003cem\u003eNineteen Eighty-Four\u003c\/em\u003e and it is the forerunner to ‘Fake News’. He foresaw the creation of the EU and, more significantly, predicted that post-Imperial xenophobia would cause Britain to leave it. His struggle with his own antisemitism could serve as a lesson to today’s Labour Party, and while the Soviet Union is gone, China has taken its place as a totalitarian superpower.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAside from his importance as a political theorist and novelist, Orwell’s life is fascinating in its own right. Caught between uncertainty and his family’s upper middle-class complacency, Orwell grew to despise the class system that spawned him despite finding himself unable to fully detach himself from it. His life thereafter mirrored the history of his country; like many from his background, he devoted himself to socialism as a salve to his conscience. In truth, he reserved as much suspicion and distaste for the ‘proles’ as he did pity. He died at the point when Britain’s status as an Imperial and world power had waned, but his work remains both prescient and significant.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47536873898220,"sku":"9781448217687","price":42.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781448217687-orwell.jpg?v=1776389682"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.pro\/collections\/richard-bradford.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}