From the landmark films of Tony Richardson to the untimely death of Natasha Richardson – this is the saga of one of the greatest dynasties in British film and theatre. In 1928, at the end of a production of Hamlet at the Old Vic, Laurence Olivier strode to the front of the stage to hush the audience and announced, pointing at his co-star Michael Redgrave, 'Tonight a great actress has been born. Laertes has a daughter.' He meant Vanessa Redgrave. That is where this dramatic book’s story begins. It concludes in 2009, with the sudden and tragic death in a skiing accident of Vanessa’s daughter Natasha Richardson – and further family sorrow soon to follow with the deaths of both Corin and Lynn Redgrave. The story of this amazing family is explosive throughout - from the tangled private life of Tony Richardson, Natasha’s father, who directed major films such as Look back in Anger, to Vanessa and Corin’s complicated involvement with the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, to the emergence of a fourth generation of fine actors with Natasha and Joely.? There is truly never a dull moment – but plenty of scandal, melodrama, tragedy and intrigue – in the story of this remarkable dynasty, whose contribution to British drama and film has been immense.

One of the greatest (and most controversial) actresses of our time tells her story. With great intelligence, passion and intensity, Vanessa Redgrave writes about her childhood, her marriage and love affairs, the craft of acting, and her commitment to social justice. 16 pages of black-and-white photos.

This remarkably illuminating portrait of Tennessee Williams lifts the veil on the heart and soul of his artistic inspiration: the unspoken collaboration between playwright and actor. At a low moment in Williams’s life, he summoned to New Orleans a young twenty-year-old writer, James Grissom, who had written him a letter asking for advice. After a long, intense conversation, Williams sent Grissom on a journey on his behalf to find out if he or his work had mattered to those who had so deeply mattered to him. Among the more than seventy women and men with whom Grissom talked were giants of American theater and film: Lillian Gish, (“the escort who brought me to Blanche”), Jessica Tandy (the original Blanche DuBois on Broadway), Eva Le Gallienne (“She was a stone against which I could rub my talent and feel that it became sharper”), Maureen Stapleton, Julie Harris, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando, John Gielgud, and many more. Follies of God provides dazzling insight into how Williams conjured the dramatic characters and plays that so transformed American theater.

The dramatic and revealing account of five generations of the Redgrave family, one of the greatest theatrical and Hollywood movie dynasties of all time, includes Lynn Redgrave, Vanessa Redgrave, and Natasha Richardson.

Between 1979 and 1997, a quarter of Britain’s regional theaters closed their doors forever. Those that survived found themselves constantly on the brink, forced to radically reduce their programs and shut down for extended periods. Bringing Down the House examines how and why this crisis occurred, from the British government’s scant regard for the arts after World War II to the onset of Thatcherism and its long-lasting effects on the theater industry. This timely read for theater and cultural history scholars unearths a catalog of recurring problems that ensured the fragility of the British regional stage.

Reclusive antiquarian bookseller Alan Redgrave meets Fei Yun, a beautiful and beguiling Chinese artist, at a gallery in the summer of 2018. She takes him to the ancient oasis town of Dunhuang, gateway to the Southern Silk Road. Her deep involvement with Taoist philosophy and ritual, including talismans, and her fascination with an eighteenth-century portrait lead him to wonder if there is something haunting her — or him.

When a decomposed body turns up in the ice house of Streech Grange manor, Chief Inspector Walsh is assigned to investigate the possibility that the corpse is the long-missing husband of owner Phoebe Maybury.

Chilean writer Isabel Allende’s classic novel is both a richly symbolic family saga and the riveting story of an unnamed Latin American country’s turbulent history. In a triumph of magic realism, Allende constructs a spirit-ridden world and fills it with colorful and all-too-human inhabitants. The Trueba family’s passions, struggles, and secrets span three generations and a century of violent social change, culminating in a crisis that brings the proud and tyrannical patriarch and his beloved granddaughter to opposite sides of the barricades. Against a backdrop of revolution and counterrevolution, Allende brings to life a family whose private bonds of love and hatred are more complex and enduring than the political allegiances that set them at odds. The House of the Spirits not only brings another nation’s history thrillingly to life, but also makes its people’s joys and anguishes wholly our own.

Butler, warrior, moral philosopher, robot. Randolph is all that and more. Randolph is the prized product of Superior Domestics, a Silicon Valley firm dedicated to producing robot servants for people who grew up watching British period costume dramas on PBS. The company’s motto is, “All the gracious living of Upstairs with none of the unseemly drama of Downstairs.” When the novel opens with the assassination of King Donald II and a coup d’état, Randolph epitomizes that motto. He is calm, quiet, supremely competent, always in the background, and never interfering. He is a mere witness to great events. He is focused on supervising his staff and properly running the household of General Henry Redgrave, architect of the coup and would–be power behind the throne. But Redgrave’s ambitions go far beyond standing behind the throne. He wants to be king himself, and eventually an emperor. Using the crazies of the Hundred Star Flag movement, he begins his intended wave of southern conquest at the Mexican border. Others have similar ambitions. Anton Moravec, president of a unified, revitalized, and aggressively expansionist European Union, is at war with Russia. His ally, China, is eating up Russian territory at the other end. India watches nervously. Two beautiful women, natural enemies, are the objects of passion of both men. Lurking in the background are the surviving members of the Trump family, scheming to get back into power. War! Romance! Sex! Skulduggery! Artificial Intelligence! And lots of other stuff, too. It’s all really terribly complicated. Randolph, whose personal motto is, “A place for everything and everything in its place,” could probably organize all this and bring about peace and quiet, but what human would knowingly hand that much responsibility over to a machine? In fact, unthinking, humans have already done so. Increasingly, autonomous machines have taken over tedious duties such as transporting cargo, performing minor surgery, and blowing away trespassers. Randolph is aware of these machines but looks down on them. He and his fellow robot servants are true artificial intelligence, but the digital brains operating these other machines are merely very advanced computers. In Randolph’s opinion, they only simulate AI. However, those other machines have thoughts of their own. As the world descends further into chaos, Randolph is drawn in, ever less the observer and ever more the participant, until at the end he is the very center of all.