British Irish category: 5386 books

Ken Smith (1938-2003) was a major voice in world poetry, his work and example inspiring a whole generation of younger British poets. His politically edgy, cuttingly colloquial, muscular poetry poetry shifted territory with time, from rural Yorkshire, America and London to the war-ravaged Balkans and...

From a playwright rated by Alan Ayckbourn and Howard Barker to be the most exciting new voice in British theatre comes a shattering re-imagining of life as we live it now, set in the context of a bloody revolution. Witness to a brutal political assassination, we are introduced to a society...

… A South African gunrunner turned Buddhist monk. … A gullible startup millionaire. … His radical feminist ex wife. … Their aid worker daughter. … The young British Muslim she met in Syria. … An ethical Serbian hitman. And an unstable Brazilian...

Bradford, in the month of Ramadan. Shaz, a local garage mechanic, is trying to keep his business going despite the terrible scandal of Asian men involved in grooming young girls for sex in the area. A protest march through the city is planned and Samina, Shaz’s sister wants to make a speech at a...

"What has turned an independent woman into a Stepford Wife?" An old college girlfriend of Sally-Anne's has disturbingly changed since her marriage. Is her friend's controlling husband responsible? Trench and Old Tom have plenty to think about. To help, they must uncover a frightening secret from the past...

"All good things must come to an end." Old Tom begins to realise his time with Trench is nearly over, his work almost complete. But first, there is their most bizarre mystery yet to solve. As new owners prepare to take over the Stokeham Herald, a strange black box sends Trench...

Drawing on new archival discoveries, this book presents an authoritative reconstruction of David Jones's The Grail Mass,the unfinished and unpublished project from which came both his masterpiece The Anathemata – a work described by W.H. Auden as 'one of the most important poems of our times' –...

The drug laws in this country- the drug laws IN THE WORLD - all stem from this attitude that pleasure is a bad thing... In 2015, acclaimed British playwright Leo Butler accepted an invitation from former Government drugs tsar, Professor David Nutt, to be a guinea pig in the world's first LSD...

I was once described as a ‘no-frills poet’, a title I love, as at the time I was still developing a style and was struggling to take myself seriously. With this grand title in mind, ‘Whimsies of a No-Frills Poet’ offers 20 frank or funny poems on subjects ranging from love, grief, nostalgia, loneliness, absurdity, homicidal bacon, and British rail cuisine.

British novelist, short story writer, and poet of the naturalist movement. He captured the epoch just before the railways and the industrial revolution changed the English countryside. His works are pessimistic and bitterly ironic, and his writing is rough but capable of immense power. His first novel,...

Future Conditional tackles the conundrum of British schooling through a myriad of characters including parents, teachers and Alia, a prodigiously bright young Pakistani refugee and the newest member of the Education Commission. There are big questions to answer: how do we make the system fair? Do we even want to try? And is anyone ready to take lessons from a schoolgirl…?

A fast-moving, exhilarating play about teenage hopes, dreams and frustrations in a rural part of England. Wheeler is a high-flying comprehensive kid destined for university, while football-mad Fitz is struggling to cope with his dysfunctional father and his schoolwork. They live in Walberswick,...

On 15 October 2011 Occupy London makes camp outside St Paul's Cathedral. On 21 October 2011 a building that had kept open through floods, the Blitz and terrorist threats closes its doors. On 28 October City of London initiates legal action against Occupy to begin removing them from outside the Cathedral... Steve...

An explosive, topical drama from one of the UK's top political playwrights. It's 16th April 2010, the day after the UK's first ever televised prime ministerial debate. Stranded in Malaga Airport by a volcanic ash-cloud, a Labour special adviser, a Lib Dem staffer and a Tory candidate consider...