The Grayles have lived at Hartleap since Canute. They know this and are proud of the fact. Now they stand round the bed of their eldest nanny who is about to slip away.

Ada Stephens - known as Nanny Grayle and well into her nineties - will not go quietly. In the strange clarity which comes with the last remission, she looks at the saddened faces about her and surprises them all. She says that the most adored of her charges, Rufus, is 'tainted' and that his father, the revered war hero 'Beau' Grayle, was 'wicked'. None of them is going to get anything in her will - she has left...

'The fact is that you are surplus and they need an extra body.'

In the uneasy aftermath of war, a group of ordinary British soldiers and their families, on an island off Java face the legacy of hatred and corruption left by the Japanese occupation. With sudden and violent death ever present, they seize their moments of happiness and try above all else to stay alive until the opportunity for release arrives.

Selfishness, sex, greed, fear and revenge, all play their part; so too do the finer instincts of love, loyalty and concern, for people have a way of both hurting and...

Following on from his previous novel, Jericho, and re-evoking the manifold themes and compelling rural French atmosphere of its predecessor, A Period of Adjustment tells the story of James Caldicott. His ruined marriage spurred him on to obey his estranged Brother's letter, which compelled him to take his house in the south of France. Upon discovering the tragic fate of his brother James, William, accompanied by his son Giles, attempts to rebuild his life only to find it being attacked from another, far too personal front.

It is an entertaining read emblazoned with Bogarde's...

With separation from his family looming, the writer William Caldicott needs to find some respite. But when William receives a cryptic letter of farewell from his estranged brother James, further complications are only added. Along with the letter is the key to James' house in France.

Sensing the potentially reformative aspect of such a break, William hesitantly takes the key and begins the search for his brother. He rapidly becomes embedded in the fabric of rural France, learning that rumours travel quicker than him, and that connections and secrets are paramount. He eventually...

Forced into returning to London because of his manager and partner's fast deteriorating health, Bogarde has to re-adapt to life in the West London neighbourhoods that groomed him as an aspiring young actor. But with his fame fading and his own life descending into old age, the entire process becomes rather difficult to endure. He stalks the streets like an 'apologetic turtle' and avoids society, announcing with his effortless wit that he shall, from then on, only do 'matinees' because he is too tired to go out in the evenings. Although this memoir finds Bogarde at his most vulnerable he...

In 1988 Dirk Bogarde returned from two idyllic decades in France to live in England because of his partner's serious illness. Shortly afterwards, the then Literary Editor of the Daily Telegraph, admiring the 'lucid frankness' of Bogarde's memoirs, invited him to review some books for the newspaper. Over the next eight years or so, Bogarde wrote much of the criticism, essays, obituaries, fragments of autobiography and appreciations which are collected in this volume - a body of work that offers fascinating insights into the life, mind and views of one of Britain's most admired authors and...

The fabulous but wavering old Lady Peverill, known as "Cuckoo," lives with her husband, the Napoleon-mad military historian Archie. Dissatisfied with all that surrounds her and overcome by sheer boredom, she ventures down to the lake at the edge of their estate. Pockets filled with stones, she begins to walk tragically into the water only to be rescued by a sparsely clothed twenty-year-old, Marcus Pollock. Feigning that he merely saved her from an 'accident', he is brought back to the villa where he moves in, admired by Archie for his uncanny resemblance to l'Aiglon, Napoleon's only son....

Set in the shadow of Hollywood opulence - the gaudy wastes of Los Angeles - West of Sunset is a sharp and potent satire of movie-making America. However the excessive glitter is embedded in a deeper plot about a successful man's fall from grace.

Hugo Arlington, a celebrated young writer, had the power to destroy people. His widow, Alice, is not the only person to be haunted by his death and life, and gradually the truth about the dangerous games Hugo played comes to light, and the past comes catching up with the present.

West of Sunset is an amusing and rich...