A small selection - six poems - from Jubilee Lines, a new poetry anthology celebrating the Queen's sixty years on the throne, edited by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. For the full 60 poems, including 20 with added stills and archive film material, visit www.jubileelines.com.

Sixty Years in Sixty Poems: Jubilee Lines (A Selection)

Faber's occasional series of interviews with some of our leading poets, including Emma Jones, Michael Hofmann, David Harsent and Jo Shapcott (winner of the 2010 Costa Book of the Year). The poets talk us through their work, and read a few of the poets as they go along.

The Faber Poetry Podcast

Faber and Faber's monthly podcast, featuring authors in conversation with interviewer George Miller. Available for download, and completely free.

The Faber Books Podcast: Authors in Their Own Words

A series of one-off interviews, usually longer than normal, with some of our favourite Faber authors. Some have a great body of work to talk about, whilst others we capture on fleeting visits to the UK ...

Faber Authors Spotlight

Three recorded extracts from The Waste Land for iPad app - featuring actor Viggo Mortensen, Ted Hughes and T. S. Eliot himself.

The Waste Land Recordings

Klara and the Sun is the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2017.

AVAILABLE TO PREORDER NOW

From the bestselling and Booker Prize winning author of Never Let me Go and The Remains of the Day, a stunning new novel - his first since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature - that asks, what does it mean to love? A thrilling feat of world-building, a novel of exquisite tenderness and impeccable restraint, Klara and the Sun is a magnificent achievement, and an international literary event.

Klara and the Sun Audio Book Extract

The first in Rachel Cusk's critically-acclaimed trilogy, shortlisted for the Folio Prize and the Goldsmith Prize and longlisted for the IMPAC Prize. Read by Kristin Scott Thomas.

Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and lucid, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing over an oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her student in storytelling exercises. She meets other writers for dinner. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her seatmate from the place. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves, their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face great a great loss.

Outline is the first book in a short and yet epic cycle – a masterful trilogy which will be remembered as one of the most significant achievements of our times.

'Outline succeeds powerfully. Among other things, it gets a great variety of human beings down on the page with both immediacy and depth; an elemental pleasure that makes the book as gripping to read as a thriller... A stellar accomplishment.' James Lasdun, Guardian

Outline Audio Book Extract

Set in Rhodesia in the 1960s, almost twenty years before Zimbabwe won independence and ended white minority rule, the novel’s heroine, Tambudzai Sigauke, embarks on her education. On her shoulders rest the economic hopes of her parents, siblings, and extended family, and within her burns the desire for “personhood,” to no longer be part of such an “undistinguished humanity.”

Immediately acclaimed by Alice Walker and Doris Lessing, the book has come to be considered one of Africa’s most important novels of the twentieth century.' Madeleine Thien

Nervous Conditions Audio Book Extract

A magisterial and profoundly perceptive survey of Britain’s post-war role on the global stage, from Suez to Brexit.

In 1962 the American statesman Dean Acheson famously charged that Britain had lost an empire and failed to find a new role. Nearly sixty years later the rebuke rings true again. Britain’s postwar search for its place in the world has vexed prime ministers and government since the nation's great victory in 1945: the cost of winning the war was giving up the empire.

After the humiliation of Anthony Eden’s Suez expedition, Britain seemed for a time to have found an answer. Clinging to its self-image as a great island nation, it would serve as America’s best friend while acknowledging its geography by signing up to membership of the European Union. Never a comfortable balancing act, for forty years it appeared to work. In 2016 David Cameron called the Brexit referendum and blew it up.

Award-winning journalist Philip Stephens paints a fascinating portrait of a nation struggling to reconcile its waning power with past glory. Drawing on decades of personal contact and interviews with senior politicians and diplomats in Britain, the United States and across the capitals of Europe, Britain Alone is a vivid account of a proud nation struggling to admit it is no longer a great power. It is an indispensable guide to how we arrived at the state we are in.

Britain Alone Audio Book Extract

'An immensely engaging writer: wry and witty, and insightful.' Sunday Times

'A vivid and meticulous writer.' Observer

From the widely renowned author Andrew O'Hagan, a heartbreaking novel of an extraordinary lifelong friendship.

Everyone has a Tully Dawson: the friend who defines your life.

In the summer of 1986, in a small Scottish town, James and Tully ignite a brilliant friendship based on music, films and the rebel spirit. With school over and the locked world of their fathers before them, they rush towards the climax of their youth: a magical weekend in Manchester, the epicentre of everything that inspires them in working-class Britain. There, against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded, a vow is made: to go at life differently. Thirty years on, half a life away, the phone rings. Tully has news.

Mayflies is a memorial to youth’s euphorias and to everyday tragedy. A tender goodbye to an old union, it discovers the joy and the costs of love

Mayflies by Andrew O' Hagan Audio Extract

A spoken word short story by Willy Vlautin, frontman of the band Richmond Fontaine, and author of the novels Lean on Pete, Northline and The Motel Life. 

The story features characters from Lean on Pete, and music by Richmond Fontaine. 

A Motorcycle for a Horse by Willy Vlautin

An extract from the audiobook of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, read by Maggie Gyllenhaal.

‘A modern classic.’ Guardian

‘A near-perfect work of art.’ Joyce Carol Oates

I was supposed to be having the time of my life . . .

Working as an intern for a New York fashion magazine in the summer of 1953, Esther Greenwood is on the brink of her future. Yet she is also on the edge of a darkness that makes her world increasingly unreal. Esther’s vision of the world shimmers and shifts: day-to-day living in the sultry city, her crazed men-friends, the hot dinner dances . . .

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath’s only novel, is partially based on Plath’s own life. It has been celebrated for its darkly funny and razor sharp portrait of 1950s society, and has sold millions of copies worldwide.

ONE OF THE BBC'S '100 NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD'

'As clear and readable as it is witty and disturbing.' New York Times Book Review

Reader responses:

'Plath's underrated humour shines through this startling account of 1950s 'normality'.'

'Very readable, often darkly funny, and feels fresh.'

'Plath's masterpiece . . . It's amazing how relevant this book still is.'

'So enthralling . . . So thought provoking, so vivid, that it's thoroughly engrossing.'

'I just couldn't put it down.'

'Ever better than I expected.'

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath – audiobook extract

Hunt, trek, and feast among Neanderthals in this stunning vision of prehistory on the cusp of a new age, from the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies.

This was a different voice; not the voice of the people. It was the voice of other.

When spring comes, the people leave their winter cave, foraging for honey and shoots, bulbs and grubs, the hot richness of a deer's brain. They awaken the fire to heat their naked bodies, lay down their thorn bushes, and share pictures in their minds.

But strange things are happening - inexplicable scents, sounds, and violence - and, suddenly, unimaginable creatures are half-glimpsed in the forest; an upright new people of bone-faces and deerskins. What the early people don't know is that their season is already over ...

'An earthquake in the petrified forests of the English novel.' Arthur Koestler

'A tour de force ... Genius.' Daily Telegraph

'Alarming, eye-opening, desolating, mind-invading and unique.' New Statesman

'Powerful and provocative ... Each time I revisit The Inheritors I find something new.' Penelope Lively

The Inheritors - Audio Book Extract

Experience a shipwrecked sailor's psychic disintegration into 'a naked madman on a rock' by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies.

An hour on this rock is a lifetime.

Christopher Martin, the sole survivor of a torpedoed destroyer, is stranded upon a rock in the middle of the Atlantic. Pitted against him are the sea, the sun, the brutal cold, and the aching terror of his isolation. To drink there is a pool of rainwater; to eat, seaweed and anemones, preyed upon by feathered reptiles. As he descends into the abyss of his consciousness, weathering lightning strikes of memory, Martin must try to assemble the truth of his fate - piece by terrible piece.

'A work of genius.' Philippa Gregory

'The utmost inventiveness ... No reader will forget the world it reveals.' Kingsley Amis

'Wizardry of the first order.' Observer

Pincher Martin - Audio Book Extract

Listen to the essay 'Black British Mothers Matter', written by Baroness Doreen Lawrence and read by Debra Michaels. Introduced by Marcus Ryder.

This is an exclusive extract from the audiobook Black British Lives Matter, a wide-ranging and urgent essay collection highlighting the vital benefits that Black Britons bring to society and the crucial importance of eradicating systemic racism. Edited by Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder and featuring contributions from Doreen Lawrence, David Olusoga, Dawn Butler, Anne-Marie Imafidon and many others. Find out more about the book: faber.co.uk/product/9780571368495-black-british-lives-matter/

Black British Mothers Matter by Baroness Doreen Lawrence (read by Debra Michaels)

Listen to 'Black British Historians Matter' by Lenny Henry and David Olusoga, read by Lenny Henry and Ben Onwukwe.

This is an exclusive extract from the audiobook Black British Lives Matter, a wide-ranging and urgent essay collection highlighting the vital benefits that Black Britons bring to society and the crucial importance of eradicating systemic racism. Edited by Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder and featuring contributions from Doreen Lawrence, David Olusoga, Dawn Butler, Anne-Marie Imafidon and many others. Find out more: faber.co.uk/product/9780571368495-black-british-lives-matter/

Black British Historians Matter by Lenny Henry and David Olusoga

'A Scattering' is the title poem from Christopher Reid's Costa Book award-winning collection of the same name. It's also included in Reid's Selected Poems, which is an essential introduction to the work of a richly resourceful poet engaged in what he himself once described as 'provisional negotiations with untidy life'.

A Scattering: A Poem by Christopher Reid

Costa Award-winning poet Christopher Reid's CV includes the roles of anthologist, editor, publisher and even academic so there are few people better-placed to turn their satirical eye on the world of contemporary poetry - its ambitions, vanities and rivalries. His new book 'Six Bad Poets' charts the criss-crossing fates of six protagonists, all trying to make, cling on to, or re-establish their reputations on London's literary scene. Reid tells their tale in six parts - each of six sestinas - itself a six-times-six verse form. Charles Prime, Antonia Candling, Jonathan Wilderness, Derek Dufton, Jane Steep and Bryony Butters - six recognisable character types, all exhibiting signs of recklessness and fecklessness, finding themselves in exquisitely awkward situations that Reid works into a highly enjoyable farce-in-verse. Part two of this extended interview can be found here: http://snd.sc/1hYHBdd.

Christopher Reid: Six Bad Poets

Thomas Stearns Eliot, poet, critic, publisher, was born in St Louis, Missouri, in 1888 and died in London on 4 January 1965. In 1922, he published The Waste Land, a poem that exerted the single greatest influence on English poetry in the last century, and whose centenary will be marked by publication and events throughout the coming year.

Listen to Edoardo Ballerini read the opening lines from The Waste Land, taken from the audio book of the Centenary Edition available from 6 January 2022.

The Waste Land audio extract read by Edoardo Ballerini

Listen to an extract from the Booker Prize winning Rites of Passage originally read by William Golding in 1989 and re-mastered in 2022.

Rites of Passage by William Golding – Audio Extract

In this extended interview, Australian poet Emma Jones discusses her debut collection 'The Striped World'. She discusses the origins of her writing as well as its themes and ideas, and reads extracts from her poems. 

Emma Jones on The Striped World

German-born poet and translator Michael Hofmann is here in conversation with George Miller. Hofmann reads from his work and reflects on his relationship with his father, the novelist Gert Hofmann.

Michael Hofmann in Conversation

Award-winning poet Jo Shapcott discusses her new collection 'Of Mutability' as well as some of her earlier work. The interview is interspersed with a selection of readings. We spoke to Jo in Summer 2010 and since then 'Of Mutability' has gone on to win the prestigious Costa Book of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for Best Collection at the 2010 Forward Poetry Prizes.

Jo Shapcott on Of Mutability and Other Poems

Exclusively for the Faber website, Norman Lebrecht talks us through Why Mahler?, his fascinating celebration of one of the most important classical composers, and one of the most enduringly popular.

Norman Lebrecht: Why Mahler?

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was the long-awaited first novel from one of today’s most original and electrifying literary voices, Junot Diaz. The book was published early in 2008, which is when we were lucky enough to welcome Junot to the Faber offices, and when he gave this great interview.

Junot Diaz: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

In this extended interview, Sebastian Barry speaks about the many histories of Ireland and, even closer to home, remnants of his own family history to be found in his new book The Secret Scripture in the fictional shape of Roseanne McNulty, one of the novel's two narrators, confined to an asylum for sixty years.  
.

Sebastian Barry: The Secret Scripture

In a special two-part interview, George Miller talks to Kazuo Ishiguro about his new book Nocturnes, a collection of longish short stories with related themes of music and night, and ambition and disappointment. Under discussion are the challenges of writing in an unfamiliar form, and Ishiguro's approach to writing comedy. Here's the second part of the interview: https://soundcloud.com/faberbooks/kazuo-ishiguro-on-the-remains.

Kazuo Ishiguro: On Nocturnes and Other Books (Part 1)

In part two of our interview we discuss Kazuo Ishiguro's earlier books, including the Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day and The Unconsoled, which on publication baffled critics but is now viewed as one of the author's greatest achievements. There's discussion too of Ishiguro's childhood and memories of Japan, and what he's working on next. Here's part one of our interview: http://soundcloud.com/faberbooks/kazuo-ishiguro-on-nocturnes.

Kazuo Ishiguro: On The Remains of the Day and Other Books (Part 2)

Viggo Mortensen reads an extract from The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot. Part of The Waste Land app for iPad, now available to download in the App Store: http://bit.ly/kJATn3

Viggo Mortensen reads The Waste Land (The Fire Sermon, extract)

Ted Hughes reads an extract from The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot. Part of The Waste Land app for iPad, now available to download in the App Store: http://bit.ly/kJATn3

Ted Hughes reads The Waste Land (A Game of Chess, extract)

"April is the cruellest month..." In a rare recording from 1933, T.S. Eliot reads an extract from The Waste Land. Part of The Waste Land app for iPad, now available to download in the App Store: http://bit.ly/kJATn3

T.S. Eliot reads The Waste Land (The Burial of the Dead, extract)

Count Arthur Strong is a show business legend, after-dinner speaker and a leading authority on Ancient Egypt, having been stationed there during his nation service. He has countless friends in the showbiz world. People like Barry Cryer, the white haired one with glasses off 'I'm Sorry I Haven't Got A Clue' and 'Jokers Wild'. This is his first volume, of what he believes may be a six-volume collection, of his memoirs and it's available to buy now from Audible: http://bit.ly/1iSoNgT.

The audio version, read by the great man himself, is available now on CD and digital download.

Through It All I've Always Laughed: The Early Years of Count Arthur Strong!

Akhil Sharma was born in New Delhi and emigrated to the US in the late 1970s. Having initially pursued a career in investment banking he came to prominence as a writer in 2001 with his debut novel, An Obedient Father, which won the Hemingway/PEN Award. And in 2007 he was named as one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists. So expectations for what Akhil would do next have been high for some time. Family Life, mirroring events in Akhil's own life - his brother suffered a severe head injury and was left brain-damaged - has been a dozen years in the writing, has undergone many drafts and considerable pruning. But it's now with us and being rapturously received on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Akhil Sharma: Family Life

John Lanchester's previous book on money and banking - the bestselling 'Whoops!' - was described by Will Self as 'the routemap to the crazed world of contemporary finance we've all been waiting for'. If 'Whoops!' was the routemap, then his new book, 'How to Speak Money' is the phrasebook. It shows you it's possible to learn to speak the language of money - possible, desirable and perhaps even necessary if we're to avoid feelings of complete helplessness and bafflement when confronted with the big financial forces that shape our lives.

John Lanchester: How to Speak Money

Welcome to the first of three podcasts from Faber this Autumn focusing on major new works of history. In the next two months we'll hear from Helen Castor and Jenny Uglow but today we're in conversation with Dan Jones, who completes a three-volume study of medieval Britain with The Hollow Crown, in which he charts the turbulent downfall of the Plantagenets and the rise of the Tudors. As Dan says himself, it's a story that's 'big, bloody and thrilling'.

Dan Jones: The Hollow Crown

Our latest Faber Podcast is about a building – The Old Vic theatre on London’s South Bank, and the subject of a new book by journalist and writer Terry Coleman, whose many previous books include the authorised life of Laurence Olivier. Dating back almost two centuries the Old Vic is an institution that holds a place in national cultural life with few rivals – all the more surprising when you bear in mind it’s not a state-funded enterprise. The Old Vic has had to forge its own identity over the years, and the story Terry tells is full of highs and lows, triumphs and disasters, characters much larger than life – on and off-stage. ‘Theatre thrives on legends,’ he writes, and that is abundantly so in the case of the Old Vic.

Terry Coleman: The Old Vic

In this two-part Faber Podcast we talk to David Harsent about his eleventh poetry collection 'Fire Songs'. The poems in 'Fire Songs' are full of haunting imagery and writing of sheer visceral power, and part one of the interview focuses on the themes of Fire, War and its aftermath, and the Rat – an ineradicable creature, ‘survivor of Fire and Flood’ that remains unscathed after the Apocalypse with designs on inheriting the Earth. In part two Harsent discusses poems written in response to his experience of living with tinnitus, and concludes with a discussion of religion, in particular the disquieting figure of trickster Christ. Part two also has a complete reading of the first of the 'Fire Songs'.

David Harsent: Fire Songs (Part 1)

In this two-part Faber Podcast we talk to David Harsent whose eleventh poetry collection 'Fire Songs' was published in August. Writing about his previous collection, 'Night', Fiona Sampson in the Independent wrote: ‘Truly significant poets write like no one else, and David Harsent is both sui generis, and unsurpassed.’ Part one of this interview focused on the themes of Fire, War and its aftermath, and the Rat, an ineradicable creature that occupies the margins of our dreams. In part two Harsent discusses his experience of living with tinnitus, and concludes with a discussion of religion, in particular the disquieting figure of trickster Christ. Part two also includes a complete reading of the first of the 'Fire Songs'.

David Harsent: Fire Songs (Part 2)

This is the story of Joan of Arc as you have never heard it before, told by Helen Castor, author of the acclaimed bestseller and BBC documentary series She-Wolves. Instead of the icon, she gives us a living, breathing young woman; a roaring girl fighting the English, and taking sides in a bloody civil war that was tearing fifteenth-century France apart. In this podcast interview she discusses how she came to write the book, and her attempt to retell the story stripped of the myths and legends.

In Helen Castor's book she gives us a portrait of a 19-year-old peasant who hears voices from God; a teenager transformed into a warrior leading an army to victory, in an age that believed women should not fight. And it is also the story behind the myth we all know, a myth which began to take hold at her trial: that of the Maid of Orleans, the saviour of France, a young woman burned at the stake as a heretic, a woman who five hundred years later would be declared a saint.

Joan and her world are brought vividly to life in Helen Castor's refreshing new take on the medieval world. 

Helen Castor: Joan of Arc

In this edition of the Faber Podcast we talk to Australian novelist and long-time New York resident Peter Carey. His new book Amnesia is the story of a young female hacker - Gaby - whose Angel Worm virus creates havoc in the Australian prison system, and consequently also in the US, making her Public Enemy Number One. This 30-minute interview covers everything from US/Australian relations (especially post-1975 and America's role in the removal of the Gough Whitlam government), new forms of protest, activism and hacking, and those rumours that Carey was asked to ghost-write the Julian Assange story.

Peter Carey: Amnesia

Recorded at the London Review Bookshop in May 2011. Discussing 'the good of the novel' is a panel of writers, publishers and critics, featuring James Wood, Lee Brackstone, Frances Wilson and Amit Chaudhuri. The discussion is chaired by Ray Ryan, co-editor of the book, The Good of the Novel, published by Faber and Faber. 

James Wood on The Good of the Novel

In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness.

In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This sentimental bird is drawn to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him.

As weeks turn to months and the pain of loss gives way to memories, the little unit of three starts to heal.

In this extraordinary debut - part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief - Max Porter's compassion and bravura style combine to dazzling effect. Full of unexpected humour and profound emotional truth, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent.

Max Porter reads from Grief is the Thing with Feathers

It's 1803, and Darcy and Elizabeth have been blissfully married for six years. But a murderer in their midst has other ideas ... 'Death Comes to Pemberley' is a brilliant new 'sequel' to Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' - but one with a deadly twist. In this extended interview, P. D. James shares her appreciation for Austen, and discusses the challenge of taking such a beloved work of fiction in a wholly unexpected direction ... 
.

P. D. James: Death Comes to Pemberley

Jenny Agutter reads from the audiobook of P.D. James' The Mistletoe Murder. 

As the acknowledged 'Queen of Crime', P. D. James was frequently commissioned by newspapers and magazines to write a special short story for Christmas. Four of the best of these have been drawn from the archives and published here. P. D. James's prose illuminates each of these perfectly formed stories, making them ideal reading for the darkest days of the year. While she delights in the secrets that lurk beneath the surface at family gatherings, her Christmas stories also provide tantalizing puzzles to keep the reader guessing. 

P. D. James embraces the challenge of the short-story form, and ingeniously weaves the strands of plot, setting, characterisation and surprise to create a satisfying whole within only a few thousand words. 

From the title story about a strained country-house party on Christmas Eve, to another about an illicit affair that ends in murder, and two cases for James's poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh, each treats the reader to James's masterfully atmospheric storytelling, always with the lure of a mystery to be solved.

Jenny Agutter reads from P. D. James' The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories

The Sunday Sessions consists of twenty-six poems, the contents of two tapes recorded by Philip Larkin in Hull in February 1980, and contains some of his best known and well-loved poems. Only recently rediscovered, the tapes were originally published as a bestselling Faber audiobook, and are now being released as a special vinyl edition to reflect Larkin’s own love of record collecting. Beautifully designed in homage to the great jazz records of the fifties and sixties, and produced on heavyweight vinyl, the release is an unmissable treat for Larkin fans and vinyl enthusiasts alike.
Available to buy here: http://bit.ly/ApHMEi


Philip Larkin reads The Sunday Sessions (Toads)

Stewart Lee's previous book How I Escaped My Certain Fate drew on three live shows to deconstruct the nature of stand-up comedy. With its heavy use of footnotes there was a nod in structure to T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. For his new book, the slimmer volume Stewart Lee! The 'If You Prefer a Milder Comedian Please Ask for One!' EP, Lee draws inspiration from The Specials' 1980 five-track EP The Special AKA Live!, live material surplus to any long player. This new book is based on just one stand-up show, in which Stewart Lee examines the mechanics of comedy and the stand-up's craft, as he explains in this interview with comedy critic and Resonance FM DJ Ben Thompson.

If You Prefer a Milder Comedian - Stewart Lee: The Podcast

Hannah Sullivan reads 'You, Very Young in New York' from her debut collection, THREE POEMS.

Hannah Sullivan reading 'You, Very Young in New York'

A clip of Academy Award-winning actor Jeremy Irons reading T. S. Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' from a landmark recording released April 2018.
https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571342709-the-poems-of-t-s-eliot-read-by-jeremy-irons.html

Jeremy Irons reading T. S. Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' - Clip

Read here by Lyndsey Marshal, this is Liz Lochhead's contribution to 'Jubilee Lines', Carol Ann Duffy's anthology of poems marking 60 years of the Queen's reign. It's a poem about 1966, capturing the age of Vidal Sasson, Mary Quant and emerging feminism. With a poem for each of the years of the Queen's reign, Jubilee Lines offers both a unique portrayal of the times in which we have lived, and an essential portrait of today. The poems celebrate the way we speak, the way we chronicle, the way we love and fight, honour and remember.

1966 | Photograph, Art Student, Female, Working Class by Liz Lochhead

Read by Lyndsey Marshal, 'Margaret Kirk née Baxter' is Jackie Kay's contribution to Jubilee Lines, a new poetry anthology edited by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, marking the Diamond Jubilee. With a poem for each of the years of the Queen's reign, Jubilee Lines offers both a unique portrayal of the times in which we have lived, and an essential portrait of today. The poems celebrate the way we speak, the way we chronicle, the way we love and fight, honour and remember.

1999 | Margaret Kirk née Baxter by Jackie Kay

Read by Samantha Bond, 'World Events' is Ruth Fainlight's contribution to Jubilee Lines, a new poetry anthology edited by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, marking the Diamond Jubilee. With a poem for each of the years of the Queen's reign, Jubilee Lines offers both a unique portrayal of the times in which we have lived, and an essential portrait of today. The poems celebrate the way we speak, the way we chronicle, the way we love and fight, honour and remember.

1963 | World Events by Ruth Fainlight

Read here by Lyndsey Marshal, '1977 (I am quite sure of this)' is Imtiaz Dharker's contribution to 'Jubilee Lines', a new anthology of sixty poems published to mark the Diamond Jubilee. With a poem for each of the years of the Queen's reign, Jubilee Lines offers both a unique portrayal of the times in which we have lived, and an essential portrait of today. The poems celebrate the way we speak, the way we chronicle, the way we love and fight, honour and remember.

1977 | 1977 (I am quite sure of this) by Imtiaz Dharker

Read here by Dan Stevens, 'Winged Back' is Dannie Abse's contribution to 'Jubilee Lines', a new anthology of sixty poems published to mark the Diamond Jubilee. With a poem for each of the years of the Queen's reign, Jubilee Lines offers both a unique portrayal of the times in which we have lived, and an essential portrait of today. The poems celebrate the way we speak, the way we chronicle, the way we love and fight, honour and remember.

1953 | Winged Back by Dannie Abse

In this exclusive chapter extract from the recently released Beastie Boys Book audiobook, Michael 'Mike D' Diamond describes the experience of seeing Black Flag at the Peppermint Lounge in 1981, a gig that would be a catalyst for a number of bands forming, including the Beastie Boys.

Michael Diamond reads an exclusive extract from Beastie Boys Book

Faber Members Event 20/11/18. Josh Cohen discussions presentations of families in Sally Rooney's Conversation with Friends, as part of Faber Members' Literature & Psychoanalysis series.

Faber Members Presents: Literature & Psychoanalysis - Josh Cohen on Conversations with Friends

The Harvest Moon by Ted Hughes, taken from Poems for Children, read by the author.

Ted Hughes' poetry for children is as rich, powerful and magical as anything he wrote. This new recording consists of a collection of the children's poems of Ted Hughes, introduced and selected by acclaimed writer Michael Morpurgo, and read by both Morpurgo and actor Juliet Stevenson.
For more information on the audiobook: http://faber.co.uk/work/poems-for-children/9780571259496/

The Harvest Moon by Ted Hughes

Simon Armitage, the UK's new Poet Laureate, reads 'Last', a poem from his new book, Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic, which brings together work from across his writing career. This is an extract from the audiobook edition of Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic, available from all good audiobook retailers now.

Simon Armitage reads his poem 'Last'

Ilya Kaminsky reads We Lived Happily During the War, from Deaf Republic.

We Lived Happily During the War
BY ILYA KAMINSKY

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
 
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
 
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
 
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.
 
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
 
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
 
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
 
lived happily during the war.

Ilya Kaminsky – We Lived Happily During The War

Simon Hall reads from the opening of his history book Ten Days in Harlem: Fidel Castro and the Making of the 1960s.

Rising star Simon Hall captures the spirit of the 1960s in ten days that revolutionised the Cold War: Fidel Castro's visit to New York. 

'Hall has captured this catalytic moment like no one before. Anyone interested in the "Global Sixties" must read Ten Days in Harlem.' Van E. Gosse, Professor of History, Franklin & Marshall College 

New York City, September 1960. Fidel Castro - champion of the oppressed, scourge of colonialism, and leftist revolutionary - arrives for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. His visit to the UN represents a golden opportunity to make his mark on the world stage. Fidel's shock arrival in Harlem is met with a rapturous reception from the local African American community. He holds court from the iconic Hotel Theresa as a succession of world leaders, black freedom fighters and counter-cultural luminaries - everyone from Nikita Khrushchev to Gamal Abdel Nasser, Malcolm X to Allen Ginsberg - come calling. Then, during his landmark address to the UN General Assembly - one of the longest speeches in the organisation's history - he promotes the politics of anti-imperialism with a fervour, and an audacity, that makes him an icon of the 1960s. 

In this unforgettable slice of modern history, Simon Hall reveals how these ten days were a foundational moment in the trajectory of the Cold War, a turning point in the history of anti-colonial struggle, and a launching pad for the social, cultural and political tumult of the decade that followed.

Ten Days in Harlem by Simon Hall:  Prologue

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