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 Emily (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.
L(eslie) P(oles) Hartley
The Shrimp and the Anemone (1944), The Sixth Heaven (1946) and Eustace and Hilda (1947) – trilogy of novels exploring a brother and sister's lifelong relationship.
The Go-Between (1953) – is a novel about a boy who unwittingly acts as a go-between for a Victorian lady having an illicit affair. The novel begins with the line “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there”. Filmed in 1971 with a screenplay by Harold Pinter.
Paula Hawkins was born in Zimbabwe
The Girl on the Train (2015) – concerns three women (Rachel, Anna, and Megan) and their relationship troubles. Adapted into a 2016 film.
Into the Water (2017) – thriller that opens with a woman bound and drowned at the hands of hostile men.
Zoe Heller
Notes on a Scandal (2003) – concerns a female teacher at a London comprehensive school who begins an affair with one of her underage pupils. Adapted into a 2006 film starring Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett.
The Believers (2008) – depicts the family of a New York lawyer who has suffered a stroke.
James Herriot was the pen name of Alf Wight. He wrote eight books about his experiences as a vet in Yorkshire. The first book was If Only They Could Talk (1970). Adapted into the film and BBC TV series All Creatures Great and Small.
Jack Higgins is the principal pseudonym of UK novelist Harry Patterson.
The Eagle has Landed (1975) – concerns a fictional German plot to kidnap Winston Churchill near the end of the Second World War. Adapted into a 1976 film.
Susan Hill
Mrs De Winter (1994) – is a sequel to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.
James Hilton
Lost Horizon (1933) – describes the Tibetan utopia called Shangri-La.
Goodbye Mr Chips (1934) – is a novella about a schoolteacher named Mr. Chipping at Brookfield School. Adapted into a 1939 film starring Robert Donat.
Barry Hines - A Kestrel for a Knave (1968) was adapted into the 1969 film Kes directed by Ken Loach.
James Hogg was known as ‘The Ettrick Shepherd’.
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) concerns Robert Wringhim, a staunch Calvinist who believes he is guaranteed Salvation and justified in killing those he believes are already damned by God
Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty concerns the young gay protagonist, Nick Guest. Winner of the 2004 Booker Prize.
Winifred Holtby - South Riding is a novel by set in the fictional South Riding of Yorkshire. Published posthumously in 1936.
Anthony Hope
Ruritanian Trilogy (1894-1896):
The Prisoner of Zenda – an Englishman on holiday in Ruritania is persuaded to impersonate his doppelganger King Rudolf V who had been drugged on the eve of his coronation. Filmed in 1937 and 1952 starring Ronald Colman and Stewart Granger respectively as the Englishman (and the King).
Rupert of Hentzau – is a sequel to The Prisoner of Zenda
The Heart of Princess Osra – is a prequel to The Prisoner of Zenda
Nick Hornby
High Fidelity (1995) – concerns Rob Fleming who owns the Championship Vinyl record shop. Filmed in 2000 starring John Cusack and Jack Black.
About a Boy (1998) – documents the friendship between Will Freeman and schoolboy Marcus Brewer.
A Long Way Down (2005) – four strangers happen to meet on the roof of a high building in London on New Year's Eve, each with the intent of committing suicide.
Juliet, Naked (2009) – the title of the novel refers to a record released by Tucker Crowe.
Anthony Horowitz is the author of the James Bond novels Trigger Mortis (2015) and Forever and a Day (2018)
Elizabeth Jane Howard - The Cazalet Chronicles are a series of novels about a middle-class English family beginning with The Light Years (1990).
Richard Hughes - A High Wind in Jamaica (1929). Originally titled The Innocent Voyage. A ship carrying a family of English children is captured by pirates.
Thomas Hughes - Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857) is a semi-autobiographical work set at Rugby School. Set in the 1830s. Flashman is a bully who torments Tom.
Aldous Huxley was the brother of eugenicist Julian Huxley
Crome Yellow (1921) – debut novel. Social satire describing a house party at the country house of Crome.
Antic Hay (1923) – is a comic novel set in London at the end of World War I.
Point Counter Point (1928) – is a complex novel with a number of interlinked story lines and recurring themes.
Eyeless in Gaza (1936) – the title originates from a phrase in John Milton's Samson Agonistes. The novel follows the life of socialite Anthony Beavis.
Island (1962) – last novel. Utopian counterpart to Brave New World. Journalist Will Farnaby is shipwrecked on the fictional island of Pala.
Brief Candles (1930) – is a collection of short stories. Title taken from a speech by Macbeth.
Christopher Isherwood was born in Cheshire. He moved to California and became an American citizen in 1946
Goodbye to Berlin (1939) – is a semi-autobiographical novel based on Isherwood’s time in Berlin during the final years of the Weimar Republic. Adapted into the musical Cabaret (1966) and the film Cabaret (1972).
A Single Man (1964) – depicts one day in the life of an Englishman who is a professor at a university in Los Angeles.
Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan and moved to Britain in 1960 with his parents when he was five. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017.
A Pale View of Hills (1982) – debut novel. Tells the story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman living alone in England. Her older daughter, Keiko, has recently committed suicide.
The Unconsoled (1995) – follows concert pianist Ryder who appears in an unnamed town three days before a concert and finds himself in a strange, dream-like trance.
Howard Jacobson describes himself as “a Jewish Jane Austen”.
Coming from Behind (1983) – debut novel.
The Finkler Question – Sam Finkler is a Jewish philosopher, writer and television personality. Won the Booker Prize in 2010.
J (2014) – is a dystopian novel where the past is not talked about.
E. L. James is the penname of Erika Mitchell.
Fifty Shades of Grey (2011) – details the sadomasochistic affair between fictional characters Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. It has been hugely popular with mature women, as a result the trilogy and books similar to it have been described as ‘mummy porn’.
Fifty Shades Darker – Christian proposes to Anastasia and she accepts.
Fifty Shades Freed – Anastasia adjusts to married life.
Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian – companion novel.
Darker: Fifty Shades Darker as Told by Christian – companion novel.
Jerome K(lapka) Jerome
Three Men in a Boat (1889) – the men on a boating holiday on the River Thames are Harris, George, and J. The dog is Montmorency. Subtitled To Say Nothing of the Dog. Sequel - Three Men on the Bummel (aka Three Men on Wheels) (1900).
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886) – is a collection of essays
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was a novelist and screenwriter who was born in Cologne, moved to England, then to India and finally to New York where she died in 2013. She is the only person to win a Booker prize and an Oscar.
Heat and Dust (1975) – tells the story of an English woman in colonial India in the 1920s.
Samuel Johnson - The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759) is a fable.
James Joyce, along with Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf, is considered a key figure in the development of the modernist novel. Nora Barnacle was the muse and wife of James Joyce.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) – debut novel. Semi-autobiographical work that traces the religious and intellectual awakening of young Stephen Dedalus.
Ulysses (1922) – chronicles the passage through Dublin by its main character, Leopold Bloom, during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904. His wife is named Molly. The title alludes to the hero of Homer's Odyssey, and there are many parallels between the two works. Ulysses is divided into three parts – The Telemachiad, The Odyssey, and The Nostos. First line: ”Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed”.
Finnegans Wake (1939) – treats, in an unorthodox fashion, the Earwicker family, composed of the father HCE, the mother ALP, and their three children Shem the Penman, Shaun the Post, and Issy. Finnegan is a Dublin hod carrier. Includes the phrase “Three quarks for Muster Mark” which is the origin of the name of the subatomic particle.
Dubliners (1914) – is a collection of 15 short stories.
James Kelman - How Late It Was, How Late is a novel written in a Scottish dialect. Controversial winner of the 1994 Booker Prize.
A(lison) L(ouise) Kennedy - Day is a World War II novel that won the Costa Book of the Year Award in 2007.
Marian Keyes
Watermelon (1995) – debut novel.
Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married (1996) – follows the love life of office worker Lucy Sullivan.
This Charming Man (2008) – concerns politician Paddy de Courcy and the women in his life.
Sophie Kinsella, the pen name of Madeleine Wickham, is best known for writing the Shopaholic novels series of chick lit novels, which focus on the misadventures of Becky Bloomwood.
Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay. Named after the lake in Staffordshire where his parents first met. In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and its youngest recipient to date. Rudyard Kipling’s son, John, was killed on his first day in action at the Battle of Loos in 1915.
The Man Who Would Be King (1888) – is a short story that tells the story of British adventurers Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan in British India who become kings of Kafiristan, a remote part of Afghanistan. Adapted into a 1975 film directed by John Huston.
Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) – first collection of short stories. Some of the stories are set in the Hill Station of Simla, the summer capital of the British Raj.
Captains Courageous (1896) – follows the adventures of Harvey Cheyne, the spoiled son of a railroad tycoon, after he is washed overboard from a transatlantic steamship and saved from drowning by a Portuguese fisherman.
Stalky & Co. (1899) – is a collection of stories about a boarding school. Stalky’s real name is Arthur Corkran.
Kim (1901) – The title character Kim (Kimball O'Hara) is the orphaned son of an Irish soldier. Kim joins a Tibetan lama in the search for the "River of the Arrow". The novel popularized the phrase the ‘Great Game’ for the political and diplomatic confrontation between the British Empire and the Russian Empire territories in Central and South Asia.
Matthew Kneale - English Passengers (2000) is a novel which tells the story of a voyage to look for the Garden of Eden in Tasmania.
Eric Knight - Lassie Come-Home (1943). A rough collie’s journey in an attempt to re-unite with the boy she loves
Hanif Kureishi - The Buddha of Suburbia won the Whitbread Award for the best first novel in 1990. The main character is Karim Amir, a mixed-race teenager who is unsure of his cultural identity.
Philip Larkin
Jill (1946) – is a novel set in wartime Oxford. The protagonist is John Kemp.
A Girl in Winter (1947) – concerns Katherine Lind, a library assistant.
D(avid) H(erbert) Lawrence was born in Eastwood, in Nottinghamshire.
The White Peacock (1911) – debut novel. Set in Nethermere (fictional name for Eastwood).
Sons and Lovers (1913) – tells the story of Paul Morel, a young man and a budding artist in a mining community.
The Rainbow (1915) – follows three generations of the Brangwen family. Prosecuted in an obscenity trial in 1915, as a result of which all copies were seized and burnt.
Women in Love (1920) – sequel to The Rainbow. Follows the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula.
Kangaroo (1923) – is an account of a visit to Australia by an English writer named Richard Lovat Somers and his German wife.
The Fox (1923) – novella set in World War I. Two women working on a farm try to kill a fox.
The Plumed Serpent (1926) – is set in Mexico after the Mexican Revolution.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928/1960) – concerns a young married woman, Constance (Lady Chatterley), whose upper-class husband, Clifford Chatterley, has been paralyzed and rendered impotent. Her sexual frustration leads her into an affair with Oliver Mellors, who is the gamekeeper on Clifford Chatterley's estate, Wragby Hall. Subject of an obscenity trial in 1960. Opening line: “Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically”.
Laurie Lee was brought up in Slad, in Gloucestershire. Best known for the semi-autobiographical trilogy:
Cider with Rosie (1959) – recounts Lee’s childhood in the Slad Valley. Lee is seduced by Rosie Burdock underneath a haywagon after drinking cider.
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) – is a sequel to Cider with Rosie, and deals with Lee leaving home for London and his first visit to Spain in 1935.
A Moment of War (1991) – is the third book in the trilogy. Lee sets out for Spain in December 1937 to join the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.
A Rose for Winter (1955) – documents a trip Lee made to Andalusia 15 years after the civil war.
Doris Lessing was born in Iran in 1919, Her family moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1925, where she remained until moving to England in 1949. She attempted to publish two novels in 1984 under a pseudonym, Jane Somers, to demonstrate the difficulty new authors faced in trying to break into print. Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature.
The Grass is Singing (1950) – debut novel. Deals with the racial politics in Southern Rhodesia in the 1940s.
The Golden Notebook (1962) – tells the story of writer Anna Wulf, and the notebooks in which she records her life.
Children of Violence (1952-1969) – is a series of five novels: Martha Quest, A Proper Marriage, A Ripple from the Storm, Landlocked and The Four-Gated City, the last of which is a dystopian novel set in London.
Alfred and Emily (2008) – final work. Part fiction and part memoir, the book is based on the lives of Lessing's parents.
Andrea Levy
Small Island – follows a group of Jamaican immigrants who adjust to life in Britain in 1948. Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2004.
The Love Song – tells the story of a slave girl who lives on a sugarcane plantation in Jamaica.
C(live) S(taples) Lewis - The Screwtape Letters (1942) is a work of Christian satire. The story takes the form of a series of letters from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew, a junior tempter named Wormwood.
Marina Lewycka is of Ukrainian origin, and now lives in England.
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (2005) – debut novel.
Two Caravans (2007) – concerns migrant labourers working in England’s agricultural industry.
Penelope Lively was born in Cairo. She is a writer of fiction for both children and adults.
The Road to Lichfield (1977) – debut novel for adults.
According to Mark (1984) – concerns biographer Mark Lamming, who is writing a book about Gilbert Strong.
Moon Tiger – tells the story of a woman's tempestuous life as she lies dying in a hospital bed. Won the Booker Prize in 1987.
Richard Llewellyn - How Green Was My Valley (1939) tells the story of the Morgans, a poor but respectable mining family of the South Wales valleys, through the eyes of the youngest son, Huw Morgan. Adapted into a 1941 film directed by John Ford which beat Citizen Kane, Sergeant York and The Maltese Falcon for the Best Picture Academy Award.
David Lodge - The Campus Trilogy (1975-1988) satirises academic life. The novels in the trilogy are Changing Places, Small World, and Nice Work.
Malcolm Lowry - Under the Volcano (1947) tells the story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul in Mexico.
Eimear McBride - A Girl is a Half-formed Thing is a debut novel which tells the story of a young woman's relationship with her brother, and the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumour. Winner of the 2014 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Patrick McCabe
The Butcher Boy (1992) – tells the story of Francie Brady, a schoolboy from a small town in Ireland.
Breakfast on Pluto (1998) – concerns an Irish girl named Pussy, who searches for her biological mother.
Tom McCarthy - C (2010) is a novel that tells the story of a boy named Serge Carrefax.
Ian McEwan
The Cement Garden (1978) – debut novel.
The Child in Time (1987) – tells the story of Stephen Lewis, a successful children's book author whose daughter goes missing.
Enduring Love (1997) – Jed, who suffers from a delusional disorder, wreaks havoc in Joe’s life.
Amsterdam – is the story of a euthanasia pact between two friends. Won the 1998 Booker Prize.
Atonement (2001) – chronicles a crime and its consequences over the course of six decades. Adapted into a 2007 film directed by Joe Wright.
Saturday (2005) – covers one day in the life of a London neurosurgeon. The day is 15 February 2003, the day of the demonstration against the invasion of Iraq.
On Chesil Beach (2007) – Edward and Florence spend their honeymoon at a hotel at Chesil Beach, but their marriage is later annulled for lack of consummation.
Solar (2010) – tells the story of Michael Beard, a physicist who pursues a solar-energy based solution for climate change.
The Children Act (2014) – centres of Fiona Maye, a High Court Judge specialising in Family Law.
Alexander McCall Smith was born in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
44 Scotland Street (2005- ) – is a series of novels chronicling the lives of the residents of a fictitious building in a real street in Edinburgh.
Andy McNab is the pen name of Steven Mitchell, a former soldier in the British Army
Nick Stone Missions (1998 - ) are a series of action thriller novels, based on McNab’s own experiences in the SAS.
H(erman) C(yril) McNeile - Bulldog Drummond (1920) the first novel in a series about a First World War veteran who becomes a gentleman adventurer. McNeile wrote the novels under the pseudonym Sapper.
A(rchibald) G(ordon) Macdonell - England, Their England (1933) is a satirical comic novel of 1920s English urban and rural society by a Scottish writer. It is particularly famed for its portrayal of village cricket.
Colin MacInnes - Absolute Beginners is a novel that deals with life in West London in 1958. Adapted into a 1986 musical film.
Compton Mackenzie was one of the co-founders of the National Party of Scotland.
Monarch of the Glen (1941) – is a comic novel set in the fictional Scottish castle of Glenbogle.
Whisky Galore (1947) – the cargo vessel SS Cabinet Minister, containing thousands of cases of whisky, is wrecked off the islands of Great Todday and Little Todday. In real life, the ship was SS Politician which was sunk in 1941. Filmed in 1949 as Whisky Galore!
Alistair MacLean
HMS Ulysses (1955) – debut novel. Follows an Arctic convoy to Murmansk in World War II.
The Guns of Navarone (1957) – is set against the campaign to capture the Italian-held Greek islands in the Aegean Sea in 1943. Navarone is a fictional island. Its sequel is Force 10 from Navarone (1968).
The Satan Bug (1962) – concerns the theft of a virus that would destroy all human life. Originally published under the pseudonym Ian Stuart.
Ice Station Zebra (1963) – is a Cold War thriller. An American submarine is sent to rescue survivors of a fire at a British meteorological station in the Arctic.
Where Eagles Dare (1967) – follows a team of parachutists raiding a castle in the German Alps in World War II.
Olivia Manning - Fortunes of War is a series of six novels consisting of The Balkan Trilogy (1960-1965) and The Levant Trilogy (1977-1980). The novels describe the experiences of Harriet and Guy Pringle in World War II and are based on Manning's personal experiences during the war.
Hilary Mantel is best-known for her series of historical novels about Thomas Cromwell.
Every Day is Mother's Day (1985) – debut novel.
William Somerset Maugham was born at the British Embassy in Paris.
Liza of Lambeth (1897) – debut novel. Depicts the life and death of Liza Kemp.
Of Human Bondage (1915) – is a semi-autobiographical novel that deals with the life of the main character Philip Carey, who was orphaned and brought up by his pious uncle.
The Moon and Sixpence (1919) – is based on the life of Paul Gauguin.
Cakes and Ale (1930) – is narrated by William Ashenden, who is asked by Amy Driffield to write the biography of her deceased husband. The title is taken from a line spoken by Toby Belch in Twelfth Night.
The Razor’s Edge (1944) – tells the story of Larry Darrell, an American pilot traumatized by his experiences in World War I.
Daphne Du Maurier was the granddaughter of George Du Maurier.
Jamaica Inn (1936) – tells the story of Mary Yellan, who was brought up on a farm in Helford but has to go and live with her Aunt Patience after her mother dies. Patience's husband, Joss Merlyn, is the keeper of Jamaica Inn.
Rebecca (1938) – depicts an unnamed young woman who marries wealthy widower Maxim de Winter before discovering that both he and his household are haunted by the memory of his late first wife, the title character. Mrs Danvers is the housekeeper of the West Country estate Manderley, that burns down. Opening line “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again“. Adapted into a 1940 Alfred Hitchcock film.
Frenchman’s Creek (1941) – tells the story of a love affair between an impulsive English lady, Dona, Lady St. Columb, and a French pirate, Jean-Benoit Aubery.
My Cousin Rachel (1951) – tells the story of Philip Ashley, who has been brought up by his cousin Ambrose in a large house in Cornwall.
George Du Maurier - Trilby (1894). Trilby O’Ferrall is the heroine of the novel. One of the characters is Svengali, a rogue and hypnotist.
David Mitchell
number9dream (2001) – is set in Japan and narrates 19-year-old Eiji Miyake's search for his father, whom he has never met.
Cloud Atlas (2004) – contains six interconnected nested stories set in six different eras in time.
Nancy Mitford was the eldest of the Mitford sisters.
The Pursuit of Love (1945) – focuses on the romantic life of Linda Radlett, as narrated by her cousin, Fanny Logan.
Love in a Cold Climate (1949) – Fanny Logan narrates the story of Polly, to whom Fanny is distantly related. The title is a phrase from George Orwell's novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying.
Nicholas Montserrat - The Cruel Sea (1951) follows the lives of sailors on the HMS Compass Rose escorting convoys across the Atlantic during World War II.
John Mortimer was a barrister who wrote a series of novels about Horace Rumpole. a London barrister who often defended underdogs. Rumpole of the Bailey (1978) was adapted into a television series by Thames Television, with Leo McKern playing the lead role.
Charade (1947) – debut novel.
Paradise Postponed (1985) – is set in an English village that sees many changes following the end of World War II.
Penelope Mortimer (née Fletcher) - The Pumpkin Eater (1962) is a semi-autobiographical novel. She was married to John Mortimer.
Kate Mosse is best-known for the three novels known as the Languedoc Trilogy (2005-2012) - Labyrinth, Sepulchre, and Citadel.
Labyrinth – the setting jumps between modern and medieval France and follows two women who are searching for the Holy Grail.
Sepulchre – is based in two time periods, 1891 and 2007, and features the occult and tarot readings.
Citadel – is the name of a cell of Maquis resistance fighters in World War II.
The Winter Ghosts (2009) – is the story of Freddie Watson, and is both a love story and a ghost story.
Chris Mullin - A Very British Coup (1982). Labour leader Harry Perkins becomes Prime Minister and promotes a number of policies that are unpopular with MI5. Adapted as a series on Channel 4 in 1988. Mullin was MP for Sunderland South (1987-2010).
Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin. She was made a Dame for services to literature in 1987.
Under the Net (1954) – debut novel. Tells the story of a struggling young writer, Jake Donaghue.
The Bell (1958) – is set in the home of an Anglican lay religious community situated next to a convent belonging to an enclosed community of Benedictine nuns.
A Severed Head (1961) – is a story of marriage and adultery in a group of middle-class people.
The Sea, the Sea – tells the story of a playwright who becomes obsessed with his first love when he meets her many years later. Awarded the Booker Prize in 1978.
The Book and the Brotherhood (1987) – is the story of a group of Oxford graduates who are going to write a book about Marxism.
V(idiadhar) S(urajprasad) Naipaul was born in Trinidad. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001.
A House for Mr Biswas (1961) – is an imagined version of his father's life as fashioned from childhood memories. It is the story of Mohun Biswas, a Trinidadian who sets the goal of owning his own house.
A Bend in the River (1979) – is set in an unnamed African country after independence. Narrated by Salim, an ethnically Indian Muslim and a shopkeeper.
Thomas Nashe - The Unfortunate Traveller is a picaresque novel published in 1594
PH Newby - Something to Answer For won the inaugural Booker Prize in 1969.
David Nicholls
Starter for Ten (2003) – is set in 1985 and tells the story of first year student Brian Jackson who attempts to get onto University Challenge. Adapted into a 2006 film.
The Understudy (2005) – tells the story of Stephen McQueen, who is understudy to BAFTA-winning actor Josh Harper.
One Day (2009) – covers the lives of Dexter and Emma on St Swithin's Day for 20 years.
Us (2014) – covers the breakup and reunion of the Petersen family.
David Nobbs – wrote a series of novels about Sunshine Desserts executive Reggie Perrin which he adapted for television beginning with The Death of Reginald Perrin (1975) (aka The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin)
Edna O'Brien - The Country Girls (1960-1964) is a trilogy. It consists of the novels: The Country Girls, The Lonely Girl, and Girls in Their Married Bliss. All three novels were banned by the Irish censorship board.
Flann O’Brien is the pen name of Brian O’Nolan.
At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) – follows the life of a student who is writing three stories that become intertwined with each other. The title is derived from an ancient ford on the River Shannon.
The Third Policeman – is narrated by a scholar of de Selby, a fictional philosopher. It was published posthumously, in 1967
Joseph O’Neill - Netherland (2008) is a novel that concerns Hans van den Broek, who is living in New York in the aftermath of 9/11 and who takes up cricket.
George Orwell was born in India. Pen name of Eric Arthur Blair. He served as a policeman in Burma, and later served in the Home Guard. Died of tuberculosis aged 46.
Burmese Days (1934) – debut novel. Set in 1920s British Burma. The central character is John Flory, a timber merchant who is disillusioned with the expatriate community.
A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935) – tells the story of Dorothy Hare who suffers an attack of amnesia.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) – concerns Gordon Comstock's romantic ambition to defy worship of money and social status.
Coming Up for Air (1939) – insurance salesman George Bowling attempts to recapture his childhood by returning to his birthplace.
Animal Farm (1945) – is a satire on the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. The pigs Napoleon and Snowball lead the animals' revolt against the human farmer, Mr. Jones of Manor Farm. Boxer is a carthorse. Last line: “But already it was impossible to say which was which”.
Nineteen Eighty-Four – was written on the Scottish island of Jura. Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, is a province of Oceania. The protagonist is Winston Smith, and his lover is Julia. Room 101 is the basement torture chamber in the Ministry of Love. Big Brother is the leader of the Party. Opening line: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen...”. Final novel, published in 1949. The Last Man in Europe was an early title.
David Peace
Red-Riding Quartet (1999-2003) comprises the novels Nineteen Seventy-Four, Nineteen Seventy-Seven, Nineteen Eighty and Nineteen Eighty-Three. The books deal with police corruption and are set against a backdrop of the Yorkshire Ripper murders.
GB84 (2004) – is based on events during the 1984-85 miners’ strike.
The Damned Utd (2006) – is a biographical novel set during Brian Clough’s brief spell as manager of Leeds United in 1974.
Red or Dead (2013) – details Bill Shankly's period as manager of Liverpool.
Thomas Love Peacock was a friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Headlong Hall (1815) – debut novel. Concerns the conversations of a group of eccentrics at a country house.
Nightmare Abbey (1818) – satirises trends in contemporary English literature. Set in a mansion in Lincolnshire.
Crotchet Castle (1831) – has a similar plot to Headlong Hall, with a different group of eccentrics.
Stef Penney - The Tenderness of Wolves is a novel set in Canada. Won the Costa Book of the Year Award in 2006.
Sarah Perry - The Essex Serpent (2016) is a novel that tells the story of a Victorian wife, and was inspired by the myth of a sea-serpent.
Rosamunde Pilcher wrote under the pen name Jane Fraser early in her career.
The Shell Seekers (1987) – focuses on an elderly British woman, Penelope Keeling, who relives her life in flashbacks, and on her relationship with her adult children.
September (1990) – Violet Aird watches over a series of troubled characters.
Anthony Powell
A Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume cycle of novels, inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin. One of the longest works of fiction in literature, it was published between 1951 and 1975. The sequence is narrated by Nick Jenkins in the form of his reminiscences.
A Question of Upbringing – first novel in A Dance to the Music of Time.
Hearing Secret Harmonies – final novel in A Dance to the Music of Time.
Afternoon Men (1931) – debut novel.
J(ohn) B(oynton) Priestley - The Good Companions (1929) focuses on the trials and tribulations of a concert party, the ‘Good Companions’ of the title, in England between World War I and World War II.
Miss Read was the pen name of Dora Jessie Saint. She is best known for two series of novels set in the British countryside – the Fairacre novels and the Thrush Green novels.
Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) is a prequel to Jane Eyre. It tells the story of Antoinette Cosway, a white Creole heiress, from the time of her youth in Jamaica, to her unhappy marriage to an English gentleman.
Samuel Richardson was best known for his three epistolary novels:
Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded (1740) – follows the story of Pamela Andrews, a maidservant who marries her employer, Mr. B.
Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1748) – tells the story of Clarissa Harlowe, a young and virtuous woman who ends up falling victim to Robert Lovelace.
(The History of) Sir Charles Grandison (1753) – follows the story of Harriet Byron who is kidnapped by Sir Hargrave Pollexfen and rescued by Sir Charles Grandison.
Sally Rooney
Conversations with Friends (2017) – debut novel. The four friends are Frances, Bobbi, Melissa, and Nick.
Normal People (2018) – concerns the relationship between Connell and Marianne, who attend the same school and the same university.
Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021) – follows the lives and loves of a quartet of young friends in Ireland.
J.K. Rowling is the pen name of Joanne Rowling.
The Casual Vacancy (2012) – is set in a West Country town called Pagford and begins with the death of Parish Councillor Barry Fairbrother.
Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay.
Grimus (1975) – debut novel. Follows a man named Flapping Eagle who receives the gift of immortality after drinking a magic fluid.
Midnight’s Children – is set around independence and the partition of India. The story is told by Saleem Sinai, born at the exact moment when India became an independent country. Awarded the Booker Prize in 1981, the "Booker of Bookers" Prize in 1993 and the best all-time Booker Prize winner in 2008
The Satanic Verses (1988) – was inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Some Muslims considered it to be blasphemous and Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the death of Rushdie.
The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995) – traces four generations of the family of the narrator, Moraes Zogoiby.
Shalimar the Clown (2005) – is set in a small town in Kashmir. The title refers to a character in the story who performs a tightrope act.
The Enchantress of Florence (2008) – concerns the visit of a European to the Mughal emperor Akbar's court and his claim that he is a long lost relative of Akbar.
Siegfried Sassoon
Sherston Trilogy (1928-1936) is a semi-autobiographical trilogy consisting of Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, and Sherston's Progress. They are named after the protagonist, George Sherston.
Paul Scott is best known for The Raj Quartet (1966-1975), a four-volume novel sequence about the concluding years of the British Raj in India –
The Jewel in the Crown – is set in 1942 in the fictional city of Mayapore. Daphne Manners comes to India and meets Hari Kumar. Ronald Merrick is the local police superintendent put in charge of the case after Daphne Manners is raped.
The Day of the Scorpion – concerns the Laytons, an old Raj family from the hill station of Pankot.
The Towers of Silence – takes its title from the raised structures where dead bodies are left to be picked clean by carrion birds.
A Division of the Spoils – is set in 1945 and 1947. The British depart in haste from India and witness the violent partition of India and Pakistan.
Staying On – focuses on Tusker and Lucy Smalley, who are briefly mentioned in the latter two books of The Raj Quartet. Awarded the Booker Prize in 1977.
Walter Scott
St Ronan’s Well (1824) – is the only novel by Scott with a contemporary setting.
Will Self
Dr Zack Busner, a London based psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, is a recurring character in numerous short stories and novels written by Will Self.
Cock and Bull (1992) – debut novel.
Great Apes (1997) – chimpanzees become self-aware and humans become the equivalent of chimps.
The Book of Dave (2006) – tells the story of an angry and mentally ill London taxi driver named Dave Rudman.
Umbrella (2012) – Zack Busner brings a patient back to consciousness using the drug L-Dopa.
Tom Sharpe moved to South Africa in 1951 but was arrested for sedition in 1961 and deported.
Riotous Assembly (1971) – debut novel. Set in the fictional town of Piemburg. Saririses the inhumanity of South Africa’s apartheid era.
Indecent Exposure (1973) – sequel to Riotous Assembly.
Porterhouse Blue (1974) – tells the story of Skullion, the Head Porter of Porterhouse, a fictional college of Cambridge University.
Grantchester Grind (1995) – follows on from the story in Porterhouse Blue.
Blott on the Landscape (1975) – MP Sir Giles Lynchwood tries to ensure that a motorway is constructed in part of rural England. Blott is a gardener who opposes his plans.
Wilt (1976) – Henry Wilt teaches literature to construction apprentices, and is married to Eva. Spawned four sequels: The Wilt Alternative, Wilt on High, Wilt in Nowhere and The Wilt Inheritance.
Neville Shute was a writer and aeronautical engineer who emigrated to Australia.
A Town Like Alice (1950) – tells the story of Englishwoman Jean Paget who falls in love with an Australian man, Joe Harman, who she first met at a prisoner of war camp in Malaya. Alice refers to the town of Alice Springs.
On the Beach (1957) – deals with a group of people in Melbourne waiting for the arrival of radiation following a nuclear war.
Alan Sillitoe
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) – debut novel. Conveys the attitudes and situation of Nottingham factory worker Arthur Seaton, faced with the inevitable end of his youthful philandering. Adapted into a 1960 film starring Albert Finney.
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1959) – concerns the rebellion of a boy named Smith who is confined in Ruxton Towers borstal and has a talent for running. Adapted into a 1962 film starring Tom Courtenay.
Ali Smith
The Accidental – follows a middle-class English family who are visited by an uninvited guest, Amber, while they are on holiday. Won the 2005 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award.
How to Be Both – a girl from Cambridge becomes obsessed with an Italian renaissance artist. Won the 2015 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.
Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer (2016-2020) – seasonal ‘state of the nation’ works.
Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle (1949) concerns the Mortmain family who are struggling to live in genteel poverty in a decaying castle. Opening line: “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink”.
Zadie Smith
White Teeth (2000) – debut novel. Centred on the families of two wartime friends – Bangladeshi Samad Iqbal and the Englishman Archie Jones.
The Autograph Man (2002) – concerns Alex-Li Tandem, who buys and sells autographs for a living and is obsessed with celebrities.
On Beauty – follows the lives of the Belsey family who live near Boston. Won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2006. The book is loosely based on Howards End by E. M. Forster.
NW (2012) – follows four different characters living in northwest London (the NW postcode area).
Swing Time (2016) – tells the story of two mixed race girls who can tap dance.
Tobias Smollett is best known for picaresque novels.
The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) – tells the story of Roderick "Rory" Random, the son of a Scottish gentleman and a lower-class woman.
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751) – follows the adventures of a young country gentleman.
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771) – is an epistolary novel. Humphrey Clinker is a stableman at an inn.
C(harles) P(ercy) Snow was a physical chemist who also served in several civil service positions.
Strangers and Brothers (1940-1970) – is a series of eleven novels following the life and career of the narrator, Lewis Eliot.
Corridors of Power (1964) – is a novel in the Strangers and Brothers series. Its title has become a household phrase referring to the centres of government and power after Snow coined it in an earlier novel, Homecomings (1956).
Muriel Spark
Memento Mori (1959) – is centred around Dame Lettie Colson, who receives a number of phone calls with the message “Remember you must die”.
The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960) – tells the story of Dougal Douglas who moves from Scotland to Peckham and causes mayhem.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) – follows six girls who are assigned Jean Brodie as their teacher at an Edinburgh school. Adapted into a 1969 film starring Maggie Smith.
Howard Spring - Fame is the Spur (1940) covers the rise of the socialist labour movement in Britain. The title comes from John Milton's poem Lycidas.
Laurence Sterne was an Anglican cleric, born in Clonmel in County Tipperary.
Tristram Shandy – is Tristram's narration of his life story. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759. Full title – The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy – is based on Sterne’s European travels in 1765. The narrator is the Reverend Mr. Yorick.
Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh. Died in Samoa, aged 44
The Body Snatcher (1881) – is a short story is based on characters in the employ of Robert Knox, around the time of the Burke and Hare murders.
Treasure Island (1883) – was originally titled The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys. Narrated by Jim Hawkins. Ben Gunn is a pirate, Long John Silver is a one-legged cook aboard the Hispaniola who owns the Spyglass Inn, and the parrot is Captain Flint.
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) – concerns a lawyer named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll and the evil Edward Hyde.
David Storey was the son of a coal miner. Played rugby league for Leeds
This Sporting Life (1960) – tells the story of rugby league player, Frank Machin. Adapted into a 1963 film starring Richard Harris.
Saville – centres on a boy growing up in a Yorkshire mining village. Won the Booker Prize in 1976.
Graham Swift
Waterland (1983) – is a family story set in The Fens.
Last Orders – tells the story of a group of war veterans who travel from London to Margate to scatter the ashes of Jack Dodds into the sea. Winner of the 1996 Booker Prize.
Jonathan Swift was Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin
A Tale of a Tub (1704) – is a satire that examines the morals and ethics of the English. Full title is A Tale of a Tub. Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind.
The Battle of the Books – depicts a literal battle between books in the King's Library in St James's Palace. Published as part of the introduction to A Tale of a Tub.
An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1712) – is a satirical essay defending Christianity.
Gulliver’s Travels – is a satire published in 1726. Narrated by Lemuel Gulliver. Lilliputians are a race of tiny people. Brobdidnagians are a race of giants. One of the conflicts in the book is between Lilliputians who preferred cracking open their soft-boiled eggs from the little end, and Blefuscans who preferred the big end. Laputa is a flying island. Japan is the only real place visited by Gulliver. Houyhnhnms are a race of intelligent horses. Yahoos are creatures that resemble humans.
A Modest Proposal (1729) is a satirical essay written and published anonymously. Swift suggests that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies.
Elizabeth Taylor - At Mrs. Lippincote's (1945) was the first of her 12 novels.
William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta where his father worked for the East India Company.
The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844) – is about a member of the Irish gentry trying to become a member of the English aristocracy. Adapted into a 1975 Stanley Kubrick film.
Vanity Fair (1847-1853) – follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Emmy Sedley during and after the Napoleonic Wars. The title comes from The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. Subtitled A Novel Without a Hero.
Pendennis – follows the life of Arthur Pendennis (known as ‘Pen’) and paints a portrait of England in the 1830s and 1840s.
The Newcomes – tells the story of Colonel Thomas Newcome, and his son, Clive.
D(onald) M(ichael) Thomas - The White Hotel (1981) concerns the erotic fantasies and case history of an imagined female patient of Sigmund Freud.
Flora Thompson - Lark Rise to Candleford is a trilogy of novels about the English countryside. The novels are Lark Rise (1939), Over to Candleford (1941), and Candleford Green (1943). Follows the life of follows the life of Laura Timmins who moves from her childhood hamlet of Lark Rise to the nearby village of Candleford Green.
Colm Toibin
The Master (2004) – is a fictional account of portions in the life of author Henry James. Awarded the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2005.
Brooklyn (2009) – is a portrait of a recently widowed mother of four in Wexford. Adapted into a 2015 film.
The Testament of Mary (2012) – is written from the point of view of Mary, mother of Jesus, reflecting on her son's life.
Paul Torday - Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2007) – is a debut novel. Adapted into a film starring Ewan McGregor in 2011.
Rose Tremain - The Road Home – concerns an immigrant looking for work in London. Winner of the 2008 Orange Prize.
Robert Tressell - The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (1914) is a semi-autobiographical novel by Robert Noonan, written under a pen name. It follows a house painter's efforts to find work in the fictional English town of Mugsborough.
Anthony Trollope
The Chronicles of Barsetshire (1855-1867) is a series of six novels set in the fictitious English county of Barsetshire and its cathedral town of Barchester. The novels concern the dealings of the clergy and the gentry.
The Warden – is the first novel in The Chronicles of Barsetshire. The title character is Septimus Harding.
Barchester Towers – second novel in The Chronicles of Barsetshire.
Palliser novels are a series of six novels, also known as the ‘Parliamentary Novels’. The common thread is the wealthy aristocrat and politician Plantagenet Palliser and (in all but the last book) his wife Lady Glencora.
Can You Forgive Her? (1865) – is the first of the Palliser novels.
The Way we Live Now (1875) – is a satirical novel inspired by the financial scandals of the early 1870s. It is one of the last Victorian novels to have been published in monthly parts.
Joanna Trollope is known for her novels depicting British country life, that are known as ‘Aga sagas’. Some of Joanna Trollope's historical novels are re-edited as Caroline Harvey.
Parson Harding’s Daughter (1979) – the title character, Caroline Harding, travels to India to marry a man she has not seen for eight years.
A Village Affair (1989) – concerns an affair between a married woman and the daughter of a landowner.
Keith Waterhouse - Billy Liar (1959) is about William Fisher, aged 19, who spends his time indulging in fantasies and dreams of life as a comedy writer. It was adapted into a play, and a film starring Tom Courtenay.
Sarah Waters is known for novels set in Victorian society and featuring lesbian protagonists.
Tipping the Velvet (1998) – debut novel. Tells the story of a woman named Nan who falls in love with a male impersonator and follows her to London.
Affinity – tells the story of a woman who becomes obsessed with a female spiritualist.
Fingersmith – concerns the plan of a petty thief and a con man to share in the inheritance of a rich lady, who the con man will marry.
The Night Watch – follows a group of people in blitz-ravaged London in the 1940s.
The Little Stranger (2009) – is a ghost story set in Warwickshire. First novel to feature a male narrator.
Evelyn Waugh worked as a newspaper correspondent and reported from Abyssinia at the time of the 1935 Italian invasion. He converted to Catholicism in 1930. Father of Auberon Waugh.
Decline and Fall (1928) – debut novel. Satire lampooning British society in the 1920s. Tells the story of Paul Pennyfeather, a student at Scone College, Oxford.
Vile Bodies (1930) – satarises the Bohemian socialites in London after World War I.
Black Mischief (1932) – was inspired by the coronation of Haile Selassie. It is set on the fictional African island of Azania where Emperor Seth tries to modernize his Empire.
A Handful of Dust (1934) – tells the story of Tony Last, country squire, who joins an expedition to the Brazilian jungle, only to find himself trapped as the prisoner of a maniac. The title is an allusion to lines in T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land.
Scoop (1938) – William Boot becomes a foreign correspondent when the editors of the Daily Beast mistake him for a novelist who shares his surname. The novel is partly based on Waugh's own experience working for the Daily Mail, when he was sent to cover Mussolini's expected invasion of Abyssinia.
Brideshead Revisited (1945) – follows the life of Charles Ryder, and his friendship with the Flytes, a family who live in a mansion called Brideshead Castle. Sebastian Flyte has a teddy bear named Aloysius. Adapted into a 1981 TV serial produced by Granada Television.
Love Among the Ruins: A Romance of the Near Future (1953) – is a satire set in a dystopian Britain.
Sword of Honour (1965) is a trilogy of novels that parallel Waugh’s experiences during World War II. The novels are Men at Arms, Unconditional Surrender and Officers and Gentlemen. The protagonist of the trilogy is Guy Crouchback, heir of a declining aristocratic English Roman Catholic family.
Fay Weldon
Life and Loves of a She Devil (1983) – tells the story of a highly unattractive woman named Ruth who goes to great lengths to take revenge on her husband, Bobbo, and his attractive lover, Mary Fisher. Adapted into a 1986 BBC series.
The Bulgari Connection (2000) – became notorious for its commercial tie-in with the jewellery company Bulgari.
H(erbert) G(eorge) Wells
Love and Mr Lewisham (1900) – tells the story of the title character, a schoolteacher who marries Ethel Henderson.
Kipps (1905) – tells the story of Arthur Kipps, an orphan who unexpectedly inherits a fortune, and climbs the social ladder before losing everything. Adapted into the musical Half a Sixpence. Subtitle is The Story of a Simple Soul.
The History of Mr Polly (1910) – is a comic novel. Alfred Polly marries his cousin Marian Larkins and sets up a draper’s shop.
Irvine Welsh is a Scottish writer whose work is mainly set around Leith, Edinburgh where he was born.
Trainspotting (1993) – debut novel. Tells the story of a group of heroin addicts who engage in destructive activities in an economically depressed area of Edinburgh. The novel’s protagonist is Mark “Rent Boy” Renton. Adapted into a 1996 Danny Boyle film.
Filth (1998) – follows the story of sociopathic policeman Bruce Robertson. Crime, published in 2008, is a sequel to Filth.
Porno (2002) – is a sequel to Trainspotting, with the pornography business as the backdrop.
Skagboys (2012) – is a prequel to Trainspotting that introduces the characters and follows them as they fall into heroin addiction.
Mary Wesley - The Camomile Lawn (1984) is a novel about wartime London and Cornwall as seen through the eyes of five cousins.
Rebecca West was an author, journalist, and travel writer.
The Return of the Soldier (1918) – debut novel. Captain Chris Baldry returns from World War I suffering from shell shock.
Dennis Wheatley wrote thrillers and occult novels in a series of linked works. Background themes included the French Revolution (the Roger Brook series), Satanism (the Duke de Richleau series), World War II (the Gregory Sallust series) and espionage (the Julian Day novels).
Antonia White - Frost in May (1933) – is a semi-autobiographical novel set in a convent school.
T(erence) H(anbury) White - The Once and Future King – is a series of novels based upon Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory about the legendary British King Arthur. The first book in the series is The Sword in the Stone (1938) which was freely adapted as a Disney animation in 1963.
Leonard Wibberley - The Mouse That Roared (1955) is a Cold War satirical novel which launched a series of satirical books about an imaginary country in Europe called the Duchy of Grand Fenwick: The Mouse on the Moon (1962), The Mouse on Wall Street (1969), and The Mouse That Saved the West (1981). The original book was turned into a film starring Peter Sellers in 1959.
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) – is Wilde’s only published novel. Dorian Gray is the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward.
Nigel Williams - The Wimbledon Trilogy (1990-1993) consists of The Wimbledon Poisoner, They Came from SW19, and East of Wimbledon
Henry Williamson - Tarka the Otter (1927) describes the life of an otter in the area of the River Taw and River Torridge in North Devon.
Jeanette Winterson - Oranges are not the Only Fruit (1985) – debut novel. It is a bildungsroman about a lesbian girl who grows up in an English Pentecostal community.
P(elham) G(renville) Wodehouse is best-known for his stories about Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves, and the novels set at Blandings Castle.
Bertie (full name Bertram Wilberforce Wooster) is a member of the Drones Club. Jeeves’s first name is Reginald. Oswald Mosley is parodied as Sir Roderick Spode, who is leader of The Black Shorts. Gussie Fink-Nottle studies newts.
Extricating Young Gussie – is a short story published in 1915, and is the first story featuring Jeeves and Wooster.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen – is a novel published in 1974, and is the last book featuring Jeeves and Wooster.
A series of stories take place at Blandings Castle in Shropshire, a fictional location that is the seat of Lord Emsworth, and home to many of his family. Empress of Blandings is a Berkshire sow.
Psmith is a recurring character in several novels. He is an Old Etonian who wears a monocle, and added the P to his name because there are “too many Smiths”.
Mr. Mulliner is a recurring character who drinks at the Angler’s Rest pub. He is a raconteur who tells stories about the members of his family.
Ellen Wood - East Lynne (1861) is a novel by Ellen Price, better known as Mrs. Henry Wood.
Virginia Woolf was a member of the Bloomsbury Group and founded the Hogarth Press with her husband, Leonard. She was the sister of the artist Vanessa Bell. Woolf suffered from mental illness and drowned herself in the River Ouse at Lewes in 1941.
The Vovage Out (1915) – debut novel.
Mrs Dalloway (1925) – details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional high-society woman in post-World War I England.
To the Lighthouse (1927) – centres on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920.
Orlando: A Biography (1928) – is a semi-biographical novel based in part on the life of Woolf's intimate friend Vita Sackville-West.
Flush: A Biography (1933) – Flush was the cocker spaniel owned by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Between the Acts (1941) – final novel.
P(ercival) C(hristopher) Wren - Beau Geste (1924) is a novel in which the three Geste brothers (Michael ‘Beau’, John and Digby) individually leave England to join the French Foreign Legion after Beau is thought to have stolen a family jewel known as the ‘Blue Water’. Sequels: Beau Sabreur and Beau Ideal.
