Entertainment/Novels - British Isles
Edwin Abbott - Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884) is a novel in which A. Square is a resident of Flatland, where women are straight lines and men have any number of sides
Peter Ackroyd has written several books about the history and culture of London
Hawksmoor (1985) – tells the stories of Nicholas Dyer who builds churches in 18th century London for which he needs human sacrifices, and Nicholas Hawksmoor, a detective in the 20th century, who investigates murders committed in the same churches.
The House of Doctor Dee (1993) – about the Elizabethan alchemist.
Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994) – famous real-life music hall comedian Leno is dragged into the investigation of murders in Victorian London.
Richard Adams
Watership Down (1972) – debut novel. Set in Hampshire. The story concerns a group of anthropomorphised rabbits. Hazel is the leader of the rabbits.
Shardik (1974) – concerns a lonely hunter, Kelderek, who pursues Shardik, a giant bear he believes to embody the Power of God.
The Plague Dogs (1977) – tells of the escape of two dogs, Rowf and Snitter, from an animal testing facility.
Traveller (1988) – the American Civil War is seen through the eyes of Robert E Lee’s favourite horse.
Cecelia Ahern is the daughter of former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.
PS, I Love You (2004) – debut novel. Film adaptation released in 2007.
Where the Rainbow Ends (2004) – second novel. Also known as Love, Rosie or Rosie Dunne.
William Harrison Ainsworth - Rookwood (1834), a gothic romance featuring Dick Turpin
Monica Ali was born in Dhaka, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
Brick Lane (2003) – follows the life of Nazneen, a Bangladeshi woman who moves to Tower Hamlets to marry an older man, Chanu.
In the Kitchen (2009) – follows Gabriel Lightfoot, an executive chef in a London hotel.
Untold Story (2011) – asks what would have happened if Princess Diana had not died in a car accident in Paris in 1997 but had arranged for her own disappearance.
Kingsley Amis
Lucky Jim (1954) – follows the exploits of the eponymous James (Jim) Dixon, a reluctant medieval history lecturer at an unnamed provincial English university. A film adaptation was released in 1957.
Take a Girl Like You (1960) – follows the progress Jenny Bunn, who has moved from the North of England to London to teach primary school children.
Colonel Sun: A James Bond Adventure (1968) – was published under the pseudonym Robert Markham. The first James Bond continuation novel published after Ian Fleming's death.
The Old Devils (1986) – concerns Alun Weaver, a writer from Wales. Won the Booker Prize in 1986.
Martin Amis is the son of Kingsley Amis.
The Rachel Papers (1973) – debut novel. Tells the story of teenager Charles Highway, and his relationship with his girlfriend.
Money (1984) – tells the story of, and is narrated by, John Self, a successful director of commercials who is invited to New York by Fielding Goodney, a film producer, in order to shoot his first film.
London Fields (1989) – murder mystery novel narrated by Samson Young, an American writer living in London.
Time’s Arrow (1991) – recounts the life of a German Holocaust doctor in reverse chronology.
Night Train (1997) – is a parody of American detective novels.
The Pregnant Widow (2010) – is based on the feminist revolution.
Lionel Asbo: State of England (2012) – concerns a yob who wins the National Lottery.
Jeffrey Archer is a former Conservative MP. His books have sold more than 320 million copies worldwide.
Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less (1976) – debut novel. Inspired by Archer’s experience of bankruptcy.
Kane and Abel (1979) – best-selling work. William Lowell Kane is rich and Polish-born Abel Rosnovski had a poverty stricken childhood.
The Prodigal Daughter (1982) – sequel to Kane and Abel. Tells the story of Abel’s daughter, Florentyna.
First Among Equals (1984) – follows the careers and personal lives of four fictional British politicians.
Only Time Will Tell (2011) – is the first part of the seven in the Clifton Chronicles.
Daisy Ashford - The Young Visiters, or, Mr Salteena’s Plan is a novel begun when Daisy was 9 years old in 1890 but it was not published until 1919. Describes the adventures in Edwardian society of Mr Salteena.
Kate Atkinson
Behind the Scenes at the Museum – follows the life of Ruby Lennox. Winner of the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year
Life After Life – winner of the 2013 Costa novel award
A God in Ruins – winner of the 2015 Costa novel award
Edward St Aubyn has written the Patrick Melrose novels which were adapted into a 2018 television miniseries.
Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire in 1775. House in Chawton, near Alton is now a museum. Died in 1817. Buried in Winchester Cathedral. Published six novels.
Sense and Sensibility (1811) Elinor Dashwood marries Edward Ferrars. Her sister, Marianne, marries Colonel Brandon. John Willoughby is in love with Marianne.
Pride and Prejudice (1813) was originally titled First Impressions. The Bennet family live near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire. Five sisters – Elizabeth, Lydia, Kitty, Mary, and Jane. Elizabeth falls in love with Fitzwilliam Darcy. Lydia elopes with George Wickham. Charles Bingley rents Netherfield Park near Longbourn. First line – “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”.
Mansfield Park (1814) The main character, Fanny Price, is sent at an early age from her poor family to live with her rich uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram. Other characters – Henry and Mary Crawford, Edmund.
Emma (1816) The heroine, Emma Woodhouse, marries Mr Knightly. Harriet Smith wants to marry Robert Martin, but Emma thinks she should marry the new vicar, Mr. Elton.
Northanger Abbey (1817, posthumous) Catherine Morland is the heroine. She is excessively fond of reading Gothic novels of which Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho is a favourite. Henry Tilney is a clergyman and is Catherine’s love interest.
Persuasion (1817, posthumous) Anne Elliot is the heroine, and is engaged to Captain Frederick Wentworth. Louisa Musgrove falls off the Cobb (harbour wall) in Lyme Regis.
Lady Susan – is a short epistolary novel, published in 1871. The main character is Lady Susan Vernon, who recently been widowed.
The Watsons – is an unfinished novel, written while she was living in Bath. The Watson family are a widowed clergyman and his six children.
Sanditon – is an unfinished novel. Sanditon is a seaside resort. Charlotte Heywood is the chief character.
Enid Bagnold - National Velvet (1935) tells the story of a teenage girl named Velvet Brown, who rides her horse, named The Piebald, to victory in the Grand National. Filmed in 1944 with Elizabeth Taylor in the lead role and the name of the horse changed to The Pie.
Louise Bagshawe - Career Girls (1995) debut novel (published under her maiden name). She has also published novels under her married name Louise Mensch.
Beryl Bainbridge was nominated five times for the Booker Prize.
The Bottle Factory Outing (1974) – concerns two young women who live in London and work in a wine-bottling factory.
Young Adolf (1978) – 23-year-old Adolf Hitler visits relatives in Liverpool.
An Awfully Big Adventure (1989) – is set among a troupe of actors working at a regional playhouse.
Every Man for Himself – is about the 1912 RMS Titanic disaster. The novel won the 1996 Whitbread Prize.
Master Georgie (1998) – deals with the British experience of the Crimean War through the adventures of George Hardy.
The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress (2011) – unfinished work.
J(ames) G(raham) Ballard was born in Shanghai and moved to Britain at the end of World War II.
Crash (1973) – is a story about car crash sexual fetishism. Made into a film directed by David Cronenberg.
Empire of the Sun (1984) – is a semi-autobiographical account of a young British boy's experiences in Shanghai during Japanese occupation.
The Kindness of Women (1991) – is the sequel to Empire of the Sun.
Iain Banks also writes science fiction novels as Iain M. Banks
The Wasp Factory (1984) – debut novel. Told from the perspective of 16-year-old Frank Cauldhame.
The Crow Road (1992) – is a Bildungsroman that describes Prentice McHoan’s preoccupation with death, sex, drink, and God. Opening line – “It was the day my grandmother exploded”.
Complicity (1993) – Cameron Colley is a journalist on a Scottish newspaper called The Caledonian.
Whit (1995) – Narrated by Isis Whit, a member of a cult in Scotland.
The Quarry (2013) – final novel. Published posthumously in 2013.
Jon Banville - The Sea – tells the story of Max Morden, an art historian, who has recently suffered the death of his wife Anna. Winner of the 2005 Booker Prize.
Pat Barker
Regeneration Trilogy (1991-1995) is a series about the First World War. It is a fictionalised account of the wartime experiences of the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, the psychiatrist W. H. R. Rivers, and the fictional protagonist, Lt. Billy Prior. The novels are – Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road that won the Booker Prize in 1995.
Julian Barnes has also written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh.
Metroland (1980) – debut novel. Account of Christopher Lloyd and his experiences growing up in the suburbs of London.
Flaubert’s Parrot (1984) – Geoffrey Braithwaite looks for a stuffed parrot that inspired Gustave Flaubert.
A History of the World in 10½ Chapters (1989) – is a collection of short stories. The half-chapter, ‘Parenthesis’, is inserted between Chapters 8 and 9.
England, England (1998) – Jack Pitman wants to turn the Isle of Wight into a huge theme park replicating England.
Arthur and George (2005) – is based on the true story of Arthur Conan Doyle trying to clear the name of half-Indian solicitor George Edalji for a crime he did not commit.
The Sense of an Ending – is narrated by Tony Webster. Winner of the Booker Prize in 2011.
Stan Barstow is the author of A Kind of Loving (1960) that was made into a 1962 kitchen sink drama film.
H(erbert) E(rnest) Bates
My Uncle Silas (1939) – is a book of short stories based on Joseph Betts.
Fair Stood the Wind for France (1944) – concerns the crew of a bomber who crash in German-occupied France. The title comes from the first line of Agincourt, a poem by Michael Drayton.
Love for Lydia (1952) – is a semi-autobiographical novel. Concerns the relationship between Lydis Aspen and local reporter Mr. Richardson.
The Darling Buds of May (1958) – is the first of a series of five books about the Larkin family from Kent. Title is a quote from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18. Adapted for television by ITV in 1991 and 2021.
Samuel Beckett won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969.
Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable are a group of novels collectively known as ‘The Trilogy’. Originally published in French from 1951 to 1953.
Max Beerbohm - Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story (1911) is his only novel. It is a satire of undergraduate life at Oxford. Includes the line: "Death cancels all engagements"
Aphra Behn was a prolific dramatist of the Restoration, and is considered one of the first English professional female writers
Love-Letters Between a Noble-Man and his Sister (1684-1687) – is set around the Monmouth Rebellion. It has been attributed to Aphra Behn, but this attribution remains in dispute.
Oroonoko – was published in 1688. Full title Oroonoko: or, The Royal Slave. Oroonoko is the grandson of an African king.
Arnold Bennett was born in Hanley, in the Potteries.
Anna of Five Towns (1902) – tells of Anna Tellwright’s struggle for freedom against her dictatorial father.
The Old Wives’ Tale (1908) – deals with the lives of sisters Constance and Sophia Baines.
The Clayhanger Family (1910-1918) is a series of four novels, set in the "Five Towns", a fictionalised version of the six towns of the Staffordshire Potteries. The novels are: Clayhanger, Hilda Lessways, These Twain, and The Roll-Call
The Card (1911) – follows the rise of Edward Henry Machin to become Mayor of Bursley.
E(dward) F(rederic) Benson - Mapp and Lucia (1920-1939) is the collective name for a series of comic novels by that have been adapted for television by Channel 4 (1985) and BBC (2014).
Louis de Bernieres was born in London.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin (1994) – concerns an Italian soldier who is part of the occupying force on the Greek island of Cephalonia during World War II. Adapted into a film in 2001.
Birds without Wings (2004) – is set in Turkey during the rise of Kemal Ataturk.
Notwithstanding (2009) – is a collection of short stories revolving around the English village of Notwithstanding.
Maeve Binchy novels have sold more than 40 million copies.
Light a Penny Candle (1982) – debut novel. Follows the friendship between an English girl and an Irish girl.
Circle of Friends (1990) – centres on a group of university students.
Tara Road (1998) – follows the life of Ria Lynch and her unfaithful husband.
R(ichard) D(oddridge) Blackmore
Lorna Doone (1869) – is subtitled A Romance of Exmoor. Set in Devon and Somerset in the 17th century. John Ridd, the son of a farmer who was murdered by the Doone clan, falls in love with Lorna.
The Maid of Sker (1872) – concerns an elderly fisherman and a girl who is washed ashore off the Welsh coast.
William Boyd was born in Ghana to Scottish parents.
A Good Man in Africa (1981) – is set in the fictional African country of Kinjanja. Won the Whitbread Book Award for a first novel.
An Ice-Cream War (1982) – focuses on the East African Campaign fought between British and German forces during World War I.
Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960 (1998) – is a fictitious diary of an abstract expressionist who committed suicide in New York.
Any Human Heart (2002) – is subtitled The Intimate Journals of Logan Mountstuart.
Restless (2006) – is a spy novel. Won the Costa Prize for fiction.
Solo (2013) – is a James Bond continuation novel. The plot centres on Bond's mission to the civil war in the fictional country of Zanzarim – a thinly veiled version of Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War.
Malcolm Bradbury
Eating People is Wrong (1959) – debut novel set in 1950s academia.
The History Man (1975) - the protagonist is the hypocritical Howard Kirk, a sociology professor at the fictional University of Watermouth, which bears a resemblance to Brighton.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Lady Audley’s Secret is an 1862 ‘sensation novel’.
Barbara Taylor Bradford - A Woman of Substance (1979) debut novel. The first of a seven-book saga about the fortunes of a retail empire across three generations, featuring Emma Harte and her family.
John Braine - Room at the Top (1957) debut novel about the rise of Joe Lampton. Adapted into a 1959 film. Sequel Life at the Top.
Anne Bronte was born in 1820. Daughter of Patrick Bronte, an Irish clergyman. Lived with her family at Haworth Parsonage. Sister of Charlotte and Jane (see below). Her brother, Branwell, was a painter and opium addict. Both novels were published under the pen name Acton Bell. Died in 1849.
Agnes Grey (1847) is partly autobiographical. Agnes Grey is a governess.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) the tenant is Helen Graham. Gilbert Markham is the primary narrator. Considered to be one of the first feminist novels.
Charlotte Bronte was born in 1816. Eldest of the three sisters. Novels published under the pen name Currer Bell. She married Arthur Bell Nicholls but died in pregnancy in 1855.
Jane Eyre (1847) Mr. (Edward Fairfax) Rochester was married to Bertha Mason, who is mad, and kept in the attic at Thornfield Hall. He marries Jane Eyre who is governess to Adèle Varens. Opening line is “There was no possibility of talking a walk that day”. Final chapter begins “Reader, I married him” and ends “Amen! Even so come, Lord Jesus”.
Shirley (1849) is set against the backdrop of the Luddite uprisings in the Yorkshire textile industry. Shirley Keeldar is an orphaned heiress. Three of Charlotte’s siblings died while she was writing the novel.
Villette (1853) Lucy Snowe travels to the fictional city of Villette to teach at an all-girls school. Based on a visit by Charlotte Bronte to Brussels.
The Professor was written before Jane Eyre and published posthumously in 1857. Follows the story of William Crimsworth, who becomes a teacher in Brussels.
Emily Bronte was born in 1818. Used the pen name Ellis Bell. Died in 1848.
Wuthering Heights (1847) Cathy Earnshaw marries Edgar Linton. Heathcliff marries Isabella Linton. Mr. Lockwood, who rents Thrushcross Grange, is the first narrator. Nelly Dean is a servant, and the main narrator. Opening line is “1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with”. Last line is “And wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth”.
Anita Brookner - Hotel du Lac centres on Edith Hope, a novelist who is staying in a hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva. Winner of the 1984 Booker Prize.
John Buchan 1st Baron Tweedsmuir was born in Perth. Served as Governor General of Canada (1935-1940).
The Thirty-Nine Steps – is an adventure spy novel that was published in 1915. First novel featuring Richard Hannay, who is on the run from a group of murderers and the police, following the murder of a man named Scudder. Adapted for the screen several times including by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935. The adaptations usually bear little relation to the book apart from the title.
Richard Hannay appears as a major character in four other novels – Greenmantle, Mr Standfast, The Three Hostages and The Island of Sheep.
Sick Heart River – final novel. Published posthumously in 1941.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton was an English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician, who coined such phrases as “the great unwashed” and “pursuit of the almighty dollar”.
Paul Clifford (1830) – is best-known for the opening line “It was a dark and stormy night”.
The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) – a novel about Pompeii and its inhabitants during the eruption of Vesuvius
The Coming Race or Vril, the Power of the Coming Race (1871) – a novel about a subterranean race and its energy ‘Vril’, which was then used as part of the name of the beef extract foodstuff Bovril.
John Bunyan was a puritan preacher born near Bedford. He was known as the “glorious dreamer” and the “immortal tinker”.
The Pilgrim’s Progress tells the story of Christian, an ordinary man, who makes his way from the ‘City of Destruction’ (earth) to the ‘Celestial City’ (heaven) of Zion via the Slough of Despond. Vanity is a town where Vanity Fair is held. Slough of Despond is a deep bog into which Christian sinks under the weight of his sins and his sense of guilt for them. Opening line is “As I walked through the wilderness of this world”. Full title The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come. Published in 1678. Partly written while Bunyan was in prison as he refused to give up preaching.
Anthony Burgess
Malayan trilogy (The Long Day Wanes) (1956-1959) – first published fiction. Concerns the dying days of Britain's empire in the East. The novels are – Time for a Tiger, The Enemy in the Blanket and Beds in the East.
A Clockwork Orange (1962) – is a dystopian satire. Alex is a gang leader. His friends are known as droogs. The language Nadsat is basically English with some borrowed words from Russian. Adapted into a Stanley Kubrick film in 1971.
Enderby quartet (1963-1984) – comic novels about a reclusive poet and his muse - Inside Mr Enderby, Enderby Outside, The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby's End, and Enderby's Dark Lady, or No End to Enderby.
Nothing Like the Sun (1964) – is a speculative recreation of Shakespeare's love-life.
Earthly Powers (1980) – is a panoramic saga of the 20th century. Kenneth Toomey, aged 81, tells the story of his life.
Fanny Burney - Evelina or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World (1778) follows the title character, the daughter of an aristocrat, as she experiences 18th century society.
Samuel Butler
Erewhon or Over the Range – was published anonymously in 1872. The title is also the name of a country, supposedly discovered by the protagonist, and was meant to be understood as ‘nowhere’ backwards.
The Way of All Flesh (1903) – is a semi-autobiographical novel which attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy. It follows the lives of the Pontifex family.
A(ntonia) S(usan) Byatt is the sister of Margaret Drabble.
Possession – concerns the relationship between two fictional Victorian poets, Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. Winner of the Booker Prize in 1990.
The Children’s Book (2009) – is loosely based on the life of E. Nesbit.
Victor Canning
Mr. Finchley Discovers His England (1934) – debut novel, followed by Mr Finchley Goes to Paris (1938) and Mr Finchley Takes the Road (1940).
Birdcage series of novels – Firecrest (1971), The Rainbird Pattern (1972), The Mask of Memory (1974), Birdcage (1978), The Satan Sampler (1979), Vanishing Point (1982), and Birds of a Feather (1985). The Rainbird Pattern was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock as Family Plot in 1975. It was Hitchcock’s last completed film.
John le Carre was a writer of espionage novels who worked for both MI5 and MI6.
Connie Sachs is a fictional character created by John le Carre. Sachs plays a key supporting role in the Karla Trilogy of novels including Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley's People. Karla is a fictional character in several novels. A Soviet Intelligence officer, he most often appears as a distant antagonist of George Smiley. MI6 is known as ‘The Circus’.
Call for the Dead (1961) – is the first novel featuring George Smiley.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) – British agent Alec Leamas is sent into East Germany for a final mission.
The Looking Glass War (1965) – tells the story of an incompetent British intelligence agency known as ‘The Department’.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974) – George Smiley is brought out of retirement to uncover a mole in MI6. Bill Haydon is the mole.
The Honourable Schoolboy (1977) – George Smiley uses part-time spy Jerry Westerby to attack Karla.
Smiley’s People (1979) – George Smiley investigates the death of one of his old agents: a former Soviet general.
The Russian House (1989) – the title refers to the nickname given to the section of MI6 that was devoted to spying on the Soviet Union.
The Secret Pilgrim (1990) – is the last novel featuring George Smiley.
The Night Manager (1993) – Jonathan Pine, night manager of a luxury hotel in Cairo and former British soldier, is recruited by Angela Burr to infiltrate the inner circle of arms dealer Richard Roper. Adapted into a 2016 BBC series.
The Constant Gardener (2001) – the story follows Justin Quayle, a British diplomat in Kenya, as he tries to solve the murder of his wife Tessa. Adapted into a 2005 film.
The Mission Song (2006) – involves the planning of a Western-backed coup in the province of Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
A Most Wanted Man (2008) – is based on the true story of a Turkish citizen who, after being arrested in Pakistan in 2001, was detained and claims to have been tortured in American military detention camps.
A Delicate Truth (2013) – involves a covert mission in Gibraltar.
Angela Carter
The Bloody Chamber (1979) – is a collection of ten short stories based on fairy tales. The first story, named The Bloody Chamber, is based on Bluebeard.
Nights at the Circus (1984) – tells the story of circus acrobat Sophie Fevvers.
Wise Children (1991) – follows the story of twin sisters Dora and Nora Chance. Last novel.
Barbara Cartland wrote 723 novels and is best known for her romantic novels. She left behind a series of 160 unpublished novels, known as the Barbara Cartland Pink Collection.
Candice Carty-Williams - Queenie (2017) is a novel about the life of Queenie Jenkins, a, troubled British-Jamaican woman.
Bruce Chatwin is a travel writer and novelist.
On the Black Hill (1982) – concerns the lives of twin brothers on their isolated farm on the English-Welsh border.
Utz (1988) – is set in the Cold War, and follows the life of Kaspar Utz, a porcelain collector from Czechoslovakia.
Leslie Charteris – wrote a series of novels featuring Simon Templar (‘The Saint’) beginning with Meet the Tiger (1928).
G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton converted to Catholicism from High Church Anglicanism. Many of his works include some Christian allegory.
The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) – debut novel.
The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) – is a metaphysical thriller that deals with the threat of anarchy.
Erskine Childers - The Riddle of the Sands is an early spy novel and was published in 1903. While on a sailing trip in the Baltic Sea, two men uncover a secret German plot to invade England.
Winston Churchill - Savrola (1900) is his only major fictional work. Subtitle – A Tale of Revolution in Laurania
John Cleland - Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure was published in 1748. Cleland was arrested due to the erotic content of the novel.
Jonathan Coe
What a Carve Up! (1994) – is a satirical novel and a critique of the premiership of Margaret Thatcher.
The Rotter’s Club (2001) – was inspired by Coe’s experiences at a school in Birmingham in the 1970s. It contains one of the longest sentences in English literature, with 13,955 words.
The Rotter’s Club, The Closed Circle (2004) and Middle England (2018) are a trilogy.
Number 11 (2015) – is an updating of What a Carve Up!
Wilkie Collins collaborated with Charles Dickens on several dramatic and fictional works.
The Woman in White (1860) – is a mystery novel. Art master Walter Hartright is the hero. Anne Catherick is ‘The Woman in White’.
Shirley Conran was married to designer Terence Conran
Lace (1982) – debut novel. Best-seller and the original source for the marketing tag line: "Which one of you bitches is my mother?”
Jilly Cooper was a columnist for The Sunday Times Magazine.
Rutshire Chronicles is a series of romantic novels. Rupert Campbell-Black is a recurring character. Novels include Riders (1985), Rivals, Polo, and Wicked!
Jim Crace - Harvest – tells the story of an English village following the Enclosure Act. It was shortlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize.
Dinah Craik - John Halifax, Gentleman (1856) was adapted into a BBC series in 1974.
Lionel Davidson - Kolmysy Heights (1994) is a spy thriller.
Hunter Davies - Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1965), which was filmed in 1967.
Daniel Defoe wrote many political pamphlets and spent a year in prison.
Robinson Crusoe (1719) – the novel was inspired by Alexander Selkirk, who was rescued in 1709 by Woodes Rogers' expedition after four years on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez off the Chilean coast. The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe – full book title.
A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) – is an account of the Great Plague of London in 1665.
Moll Flanders (1722) – is a picaresque novel of a woman in 17th century England.
Len Deighton wrote a series of four spy novels with the main character being an anonymous secret agent. When the books were adapted into films, the name Harry Palmer was chosen for the spy (played by Michael Caine).
The IPCRESS File (1962) – debut novel. The plot involves mind control during the Cold War. The acronym IPCRESS stands for ‘Induction of Psycho-neuroses by Conditioned Reflex under Stress’.
Horse Under Water (1963) – second Harry Palmer novel. Not adapted to a film.
Funeral in Berlin (1964) – Palmer travels to Berlin to arrange the defection of a Soviet scientist named Semitsa.
Billion Dollar Brain (1966) – Palmer travels to Helsinki. The Brain is a billion dollar super-computer owned by eccentric Texan billionaire General Midwinter.
Game, Set and Match trilogy consists of Berlin Game, Mexico Set, and London Match, all featuring the character of SIS employee Bernard Samson.
Spy Hook, Spy Line, and Spy Sinker is the second trilogy featuring Bernard Samson.
Faith, Hope, and Charity is the third trilogy featuring Bernard Samson.
SS-GB (1978) – is an alternate history novel, set in a United Kingdom fictionally conquered and occupied by Germany during World War II.
R(onald) F(rederick) Delderfield
A Horseman Riding By (1966) is a three novel series - Long Summer Day, Post of Honour and Green Gauntlet. Set in Devon in the early 20th century.
To Serve Them All My Days (1972) – follows the story of a shell-shocked soldier, David Powlett-Jones, after returning from World War I.
God is an Englishman – is a series of novels about Adam Swann, a veteran of the British Army in India.
Monica Dickens - One of the Family (1993) was the last novel written by the great- granddaughter of Charles Dickens.
Benjamin Disraeli served twice as Prime Minister under Queen Victoria.
Vivian Grey (1826) – debut novel. Published anonymously.
Henrietta Temple (1837) – Ferdinand Armine falls in love with the eponymous heroine.
Coningsby (1844) – first of a trilogy of novels (together with Sybil and Tancred). Full title Coningsby, or The New Generation. Political novel set in England following the 1832 Reform Bill. Follows the career of Henry Coningsby, the grandson of Lord Monmouth.
Sybil (1845) – full title Sybil, or The Two Nations. Traces the plight of the working classes of England.
Tancred (1847) – full title Tancred, or The New Crusade. Examines the question of how Judaism and Christianity can be reconciled.
Endymion (1880) – last novel published before his death.
Michael Dobbs - House of Cards (1989) was the first in what would become a trilogy of political thrillers with Francis Urquhart as the central character. House of Cards was followed by To Play the King and The Final Cut.
Roddy Doyle
The Barrytown Trilogy is centred on the Rabbittes, a working-class family from Barrytown in North Dublin. The novel are The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van. The Barrytown Pentalogy includes Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and The Guts (2013), a novel in which the Rabbitte family are 30 years older.
The Commitments (1987) – is about a group of unemployed people who form a soul band. Adapted into a 1991 film directed by Alan Parker.
The Snapper (1990) – revolves around unmarried Sharon Rabbitte's pregnancy.
The Van (1991) – Jimmy Rabbitte and his friend Bimbo Reeves buy a fish and chip van.
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha – recounts a year in the life of 10-year-old Dublin boy Paddy Clarke. Winner of the 1993 Booker Prize.
The Woman Who Walked into Doors (1996) – tells the story of Paula Spencer, who is abused by her husband.
The Last Roundup (1999-2010) is a series of three novels that follow the life of Henry Smart. The novels are A Star called Henry, Oh, Play That Thing! and The Dead Republic.
The Deportees and Other Stories (2007) – first short story collection.
Margaret Drabble
The Millstone (1965) – tells the story of Rosamund Stacey, who becomes pregnant after a one-night stand and decides to give birth to her child and raise it herself.
Jerusalem the Golden (1967) – Clara moves to London and yearns to part of a bohemian family that she meets. Title taken from a hymn of the same name.
Helen Dunmore
Zennor in Darkness (1993) – debut novel. Set in the village of Zennor in Cornwall during World War I
Lawrence Durrell was born in India. Brother of Gerald Durrell.
The Alexandria Quartet (1957-1960) is a series of four novels (Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea. The first three novels recount various aspects of a complex story of passion and deception from differing points of view, which concludes in Clea, which is set six years later. Set in Alexandria before and during World War II.
Justine – is narrated by an unnamed Irishman (referred to as Darley in the other novels) who falls in love with Justine, a married woman.
Balthazar – Balthazar is a doctor and mystic.
Mountolive – David Mountolive is an English ambassador.
Clea – relates subsequent events from the first three novels.
Constance and Sebastian are two of the novels in The Avignon Quintet (1974-1985).
George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans.
Adam Bede (1859) – debut novel. Tells the story of Hetty Sorrel.
The Mill on the Floss (1860) – details the lives of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, a brother and sister growing up on the river Floss near the village of St. Oggs, evidently in the 1820s. Dorlcote Mill is on the River Floss.
Silas Marner (1861) – Silas is a linen weaver in a small religious community, Lantern Yard.
Romola (1863) – is set in Florence in the 15th century.
Felix Holt, The Radical (1866) – centres on an election at the time of the 1832 Reform Act.
Middlemarch (1872) – is set in a fictional provincial town in England, based on Coventry. The central character, Dorothea Brooke, is an ardent and idealistic young woman who yearns for knowledge and to help others. Subtitled A Study of Provincial Life.
Daniel Deronda (1876) – last novel. Set in Victorian society. Gwendolen Harleth is the heroine.
Lucy Ellmann - Ducks, Newburyport. A finalist for the 2019 Booker Prize, runs more than a thousand pages, mostly consisting of a single sentence that is 426,100 words long.
Ben Elton has written 17 novels including Stark, Gridlock, Popcorn, High Society, The First Casualty, and Inconceivable.
Nicholas Evans - The Horse Whisperer (1995) – best-selling debut novel adapted into a 1998 film.
Bernardine Evaristo - Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives of 12 characters in the United Kingdom over the course of several decades. Joint winner of the 2019 Booker Prize.
John Meade Falkner - Moonfleet (1898) is a story of smuggling in 18th-century England.
J(ames) G(ordon) Farrell is best-known for the Empire Trilogy of novels which deal with the consequences of British colonial rule:
Troubles (1970) – concerns the arrival of the English Major Brendan Archer at the Majestic Hotel in Ireland in 1919. Awarded the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010
The Siege of Krishnapur – concerns the siege of the fictional town of Krishnapur, during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Awarded the Booker Prize in 1973.
The Singapore Grip (1978) – is a satirical novel about Japan’s occupation of Singapore during World War II.
Sebastian Faulks
A Trick of the Light (1984) – debut novel.
The Girl at the Lion D’or (1989) – second novel. First book in the France Trilogy. Set in Brittany in 1936.
Birdsong (1993) – second book in the France Trilogy. Stephen Wraysford is a British soldier on the front line during World War I. Written to increase awareness of the effects of World War I on soldiers.
Charlotte Grey (1999) – third book in the France Trilogy. The title character becomes an agent of Britain's Special Operations Executive assigned to work with the French Resistance in Vichy France.
Devil May Care (2008) – is a James Bond continuation novel.
Jeeves and the Wedding Bells (2013) – is a tribute to P.G. Wodehouse.
Helen Fielding
Bridget Jones’s Dairy (1996) – chronicles a year in the life of Bridget Jones, a thirty-something single working woman living in London.
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (1999) – is a sequel to Bridget Jones's Diary.
Henry Fielding
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, often known simply as Tom Jones, is a comic novel published in 1749, Tom Jones is discovered as a baby on the property of a very kind, wealthy landowner, Squire Allworthy.
Pamela, by Samuel Richardson, inspired Henry Fielding to write two parodies: Shamela (1741), about Pamela's true identity; and Joseph Andrews (1742), about Pamela’s brother.
Penelope Fitzgerald
The Golden Child (1977) – debut novel. Set in an unnamed museum.
Offshore – follows a group of houseboat owners on the Thames at Battersea. Awarded the Booker Prize in 1979.
The Blue Flower (1995) – her final novel is based on the life of the life of the 18th century German poet and philosopher Friedrich von Hardenberg before he became famous under the name Novalis.
Ian Fleming was a naval intelligence officer. He wrote 12 full-length Bond novels. Lived at Goldeneye in Jamaica.
James Bond's parents are Andrew Bond, a Scotsman, and Monique Delacroix, from Canton de Vaud, Switzerland. Their nationalities were established in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The Bond family motto is “The World is not Enough”.
In the first novel, Casino Royale, the 00 concept is introduced and, in Bond's words, means: ‘that you've had to kill a chap in cold blood in the course of some assignment.’ His 00 number (007) was awarded him because he twice killed in fulfilling assignments. In the second novel, Live and Let Die, the 00 number designates a past killing; not until the third novel, Moonraker, does the 00 number designate a licence to kill.
SMERSH is a Soviet counterintelligence agency that was featured in Ian Fleming's early James Bond novels and films as 007's nemesis. СМЕРШ (SMERSH) is an acronym of two Russian words, which means ‘Death to Spies’.
Giles Foden - The Last King of Scotland (1998) is written as the memoir of a fictional Scottish doctor working for Ugandan President Idi Amin.
Ken Follett
Eye of the Needle (1978) aka Storm Island – spy thriller set during WWII.
Triple (1979) – a Mossad operation to obtain nuclear materials.
The Key to Rebecca (1980) – spy thriller in North Africa during WWII.
The Man from St. Petersburg (1982) – a Russian Prince comes to England for diplomatic talks just prior to WWI.
Ford Madox Ford
The Good Soldier (1915) – chronicles the expatriate lives of a British couple and an American couple. Set just before World War I.
Parade’s End (1924-1928) – is a tetralogy of novels that chronicle the life of Christopher Tietjens, a member of the English gentry, around the time of World War I.
E(dgar) M(organ) Forster was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 16 separate years
Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) – debut novel. Follows the story of Lilia, a young English widow. The title comes from a line in Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism.
The Longest Journey (1907) – follows Rickie Elliott from Cambridge to a career as a struggling writer and then to a post as a schoolmaster.
A Room with a View (1908) – is set in Florence. Lucy Honeychurch is touring Italy with her cousin.
Howards End (1910) – is a story of class struggle featuring the Wilcox family. Howards End is the name of a house. Epigraph to Howards End: ‘Only connect.’.
A Passage to India (1924) – is set during the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. When Adela Quested and her elderly companion Mrs Moore arrive in the Indian town of Chandrapore, they quickly feel trapped by its insular and prejudiced 'Anglo-Indian' community. Determined to escape the parochial English enclave and explore the 'real India', they seek the guidance of the charming and mercurial Dr Aziz, a cultivated Indian Muslim.
Maurice – is a homosexual love story. Published posthumously in 1971.
Frederick Forsyth
The Day of the Jackal (1971) – debut novel. A French paramilitary organisation hires an assassin to kill Charles de Gaulle. Adapted as a film in 1973.
The Odessa File (1972) – a reporter attempts to track down an ex-Nazi SS officer.
The Dogs of War (1974) – is set in fictional African country of Zangaro.
The Fourth Protocol (1984) – the title refers to the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which contained four secret protocols.
The Negotiator (1989) – the son of the US president is kidnapped while spending a year studying abroad at Oxford University.
The Phantom of Manhattan (1999) – is intended as a sequel to the musical The Phantom of the Opera.
The Cobra (2010) – is about the international cocaine trade.
John Fowles
The Collector (1963) – debut novel. Follows a lonely young man, Frederick Clegg, who kidnaps a female art student in London.
The Magus (1965) – tells the story of Nicholas Urfe, an Oxford graduate who is teaching English on a small Greek island.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) – title character is Sarah Woodruff. Set in Lyme Regis, where Fowles spent most of his life.
John Galsworthy won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932.
The Forsyte Saga is a series of three novels – Man of Property (1906), In Chancery (1920), and To Let (1921). Chronicles the lives of the upper middle class Forsyte family. Adapted as a television series in 1967.
A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter are sequels to The Forsyte Saga.
Alex Garland is a novelist, film director and screenwriter.
The Beach – is based on a community of backpackers in Thailand. Adapted into a 2000 film directed by Danny Boyle.
Elizabeth Gaskell is often referred to as Mrs Gaskell. She married William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister, and they settled in Manchester.
Mary Barton (1848)– subtitled A Tale of Manchester Life. Concerns the working classes in Victorian Manchester.
Cranford (1851-1853) – is based on the town of Knutsford in Cheshire. The novel first appeared in Household Words, a magazine edited by Charles Dickens.
Ruth (1853) – the title character is an orphan working in a sweatshop.
North and South (1854-1855) – Margaret Hale, from southern England, moves to Milton (based on Manchester) and witnesses the industrial revolution and poverty.
Sylvia's Lovers (1863) – is set in Monkshaven against the background of pressganging. The heroine is Sylvia Robson.
Wives and Daughters: An Everyday Story – was incomplete when Gaskell died suddenly in 1865.
Stella Gibbons – Cold Comfort Farm is a comic novel with heroine Flora Poste. Graceless, Aimless, Feckless and Pointless are the cows at the farm in the village of Howling.
William Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983.
Lord of the Flies (1954) – focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves. The ‘Lord of the Flies’ is a pig’s head. The boys include Ralph, Piggy, Jack, Roger, and Simon.
To the Ends of the Earth is a trilogy of nautical novels, consisting of Rites of Passage (1980), Close Quarters (1987) and Fire Down Below (1989).
Rites of Passage – is an account of a voyage to Australia in the early 19th century by a group of British migrants. It is in the form of a journal written by Edmund Talbot. Awarded the Booker Prize in 1980.
The Inheritors – concerns the extinction of the last remaining tribe of Neanderthals at the hands of the more sophisticated Homo sapiens.
Pincher Martin – concerns a delusional naval lieutenant who believes himself to be the sole survivor of a ship which sinks in the North Atlantic.
Oliver Goldsmith - The Vicar of Wakefield (1766). The vicar is Dr. Charles Primrose, who is married to Deborah and lives in a country parish.
Graham Greene described himself as a “Catholic agnostic”.
The Man Within (1929) – debut novel.
Brighton Rock (1938) – is set in Brighton in the 1930s. Spicer is killed by antihero Pinkie Brown. Filmed in 1947 and 2010.
The Confidential Agent (1939) – D is sent from a nameless country to England to buy coal.
The Power and the Glory (1940) – tells the story of a Roman Catholic priest in the state of Tabasco in Mexico during the 1930s.
The Heart of the Matter (1948) – details a moral crisis for Henry Scobie, and is set in West Africa during World War II.
The End of the Affair (1951) – concerns the relationships between writer Maurice Bendrix, Sarah Miles, and her husband, civil servant Henry Miles.
The Quiet American (1955) – narrated in the first person by journalist Thomas Fowler, the novel depicts the breakdown of French colonialism in Vietnam.
Our Man in Havana (1958) – is set in Cuba during the regime of Fulgencio Batista. James Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman, meets Hawthorne, who offers him work for the British secret service. Filmed in 1959 with Alec Guinness as Wormold.
The Comedians (1966) – is set in Haiti under the rule of "Papa Doc" Duvalier.
Travels with my Aunt (1969) – follows the travels of Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager, and his eccentric Aunt Augusta.
The Honorary Consul (1973) – is set in Argentina. The honorary consul is Charles Fortnum.
The Human Factor (1978) – is an espionage novel concerning Maurice Castle, who works for MI6.
Walter Greenwood - Love on the Dole (1933) follows the Hardcastle family from Salford that suffer mass unemployment in the 1930s. Filmed in 1941.
George and Weedon Grossmith - Dairy of a Nobody (1888-1892) is a novel written by the Grossmith brothers. Charles Pooter is the supposed author and leading character. First serialised in Punch magazine.
Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003). The title refers to an observation by Sherlock Holmes in the short story The Adventure of Silver Blaze. The central character, Christopher John Francis Boone, suffers from Asperger’s. The chapter numbers are prime numbers.
H(enry) Rider Haggard lived in South Africa for seven years and was a pioneer of the lost world literary genre.
King Solomon's Mines (1885) – tells of a search of an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain for the missing brother of one of the party.
She (1886) – subtitle is A History of Adventure. The title character is a white queen in the African interior known as ‘She’ or ‘She who must be obeyed’.
Allan Quatermain (1887) – is a sequel to King Solomon's Mines.
Eric Brighteyes (1891) – concerns the adventures the eponymous Viking in 10th century Iceland.
Ayesha: the Return of She (1905) – sequel to She.
Radclyffe Hall - The Well of Loneliness is a lesbian novel. Following a campaign by the Sunday Express, the book was ruled obscene in a trial held in 1928. Its editor James Douglas wrote, "I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel."
Thomas Hardy was a Victorian novelist and poet. Many of his novels are set in Wessex. His funeral took place at Westminster Abbey. His heart was buried at Stinsford in Dorset with his wife Emma, and his ashes were buried in Poets' Corner.
Desperate Remedies (1871) – first novel to be published. Released anonymously.
Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) – the plot concerns the activities of a group of church musicians, one of whom, Dick Dewy, becomes romantically entangled with a new school mistress, Fancy Day. Title taken from a song in As You Like It.
Far From the Madding Crowd (1874) – tells the story of Bathsheba Everdene and her relationships with William Boldwood, Gabriel Oak (a shepherd), and Sergeant Frank Troy. Title taken from Grey’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard.
The Return of the Native (1878) – takes place entirely in the environs of Egdon Heath. Diggory Venn is a reddleman; he travels the country marking flocks of sheep with a red mineral called ‘reddle’.
The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) – is subtitled The Life and Death of a Man of Character. Michael Henchard is the title character. Casterbridge is based on Dorchester.
The Woodlanders (1887) – concerns the efforts of a woodsman, Giles Winterborne, to marry his childhood sweetheart, Grace Melbury.
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) – is subtitled A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented. Title character is Tess Durbeyfield, who is hanged for murder. Set in an impoverished rural England, Thomas Hardy's fictional Wessex, during the 1870s.
Jude the Obscure (1895) – last completed novel. The hero Jude Fawley is a lower-class young man who dreams of becoming a scholar. Christminster is modelled on Oxford.
Wessex Tales – is a collection of short stories.
Joanne Harris spent 15 years as a teacher of modern languages.
Chocolat (1999) – tells the story of Vianne Rocher who opens a chocolaterie in a small French village. Adapted into a 2000 film starring Juliette Binoche
Blackberry Wine (2000) – is a magical realism novel. The main character is Jay Mackintosh, a writer suffering from writer’s block.
Five Quarters of the Orange (2001) – has two alternating timelines following the life of Framboise Dartigen.
The Lollipop Shoes (2007) – is a sequel to Chocolat.
Robert Harris
Fatherland (1992) – is set in a world in which Nazi Germany won World War II. The story's protagonist is an officer of the Kripo, the criminal police, who is investigating the murder of a Nazi government official.
The Ghost (2007) – a dead man has been ghosting the autobiography of a recently unseated British prime minister called Adam Lang, a thinly veiled version of Tony Blair.
An Officer and a Spy (2013) – tells the true story of French officer Georges Picquart from 1896–1906, as he struggles to expose the truth about the doctored evidence that sent Alfred Dreyfus to Devil's Island.
Munich (2017) – is a novel about the meeting between Chamberlain and Hitler in 1938.
