GIVING UP THE GHOST: A memoir

Product Information

A nation of wheeler dealers: Half who sold a car online did so to an online buying service... and three-quarters were HAPPY with the experience! We see the ugly face of contemporary Britain in the people on the beaches abusing exhausted refugees even as they scramble to the shore. It makes one ashamed. Banged Up review: This prison 'experiment' is just a shabby excuse to torment celebs, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS How Viking runes can transform your life: A fascinating new book claims an ancient runic calendar is the...

A Memoir of My Former Self by Hilary Mantel review – B-sides

Travis Barker LEAKS name of the son he is expecting with wife Kourtney Kardashian... and reveals the due date too (it's sooner than you think)

Christina Aguilera transforms into her Burlesque costar Cher while Justin and Hailey Bieber are Flintstones as they join stars on Halloween eve Hilary Mantel has said she feels “ashamed” by the UK government’s treatment of migrants and asylum seekers and is intending to become an Irish citizen to “become a European again”. Nations are built on wishful versions of their origins: stories in which our forefathers were giants, of one kind or another. This is how we live in the world: romancing. Once the romance was about aristocratic connections and secret status, the fantasy of being part of an elite. Now the romance is about deprivation, dislocation, about the distance covered between there and here: between, let’s say, where my great-grandmother was and where I am today. The facts have less traction, less influence on what we are and what we do, than the self-built fictions. When we die, we enter into fiction. Ask two family members to tell you about someone recently gone to see what I mean The eldest daughter was the same age as me,’ says Mantel. ‘She knew I existed but I did not know she did. By that time my father had died. She helped fill in some of the missing years.’

The other marital battle zone that haunts the creator of Wolf

Inch by inch. Inch by inch forward. Never mind if he calls you an eel or a worm or a snake. Head down, don’t provoke him. His nose is clotted with blood and he has to open his mouth to breathe. His father’s momentary distraction at the loss of his good boot allows him the leisure to vomit. "That’s right," Walter yells. "Spew everywhere." Spew everywhere, on my good cobbles. "Come on, boy, get up. Let’s see you get up. By the blood of creeping Christ, stand on your feet."'We publish a Literature Newsletter when we have news and features on UK and international literature, plus opportunities for the industry to share. Asked about whether Britain’s “soft power” could be sustained, she said: “Our present government sends mixed signals – boasting of ‘global Britain’, while at the same time diminishing the country’s standing by cutting foreign aid, as if this was a broken little country that couldn’t afford to keep its promises.”