Thursday 3 September 2015

P J Kavanagh

We are sorry to learn of the death of PJ Kavanagh aged 84 on August 26th. 

The Telegraph obituary says "his first literary success came in 1966 with The Perfect Stranger.  Ostensibly an autobiography of his first 27 years, it was informed by the presence of his wife, Sally, who had died suddenly aged only 24, at four in the morning on Midsummer's Day 1958. 'Once you've experienced the infinite significance of another person's life, you feel something of the same for all lives,' he wrote. 'The rest of my life, any sense I can make of it, is a memorial to that.' The book was not sentimental nor self-pitying but vivid, humorous and bent upon describing a world in which the one person who had seemed to make sense of it had been lost. It won the Richard Hillary Memorial Prize."

The book has been in and out of print ever since. In 2009 The Observer wrote "this wonderful memoir is sadly out of print, but it's a great love story, a rites of passage about an aimless young man whose life is transformed by meeting the 'perfect stranger'. Then something happens... A wise, sad, wonderfully written memoir that's ripe for rediscovery. Track down a copy now."

September Publishing have just reissued the book and we are very pleased to have done the large print edition. We have also managed to publish it at the same price as the regular edition, £14.99, something the RNIB is always campaigning for. 

Further details can be found here http://b2l.bz/jfxWAZ

Saturday 25 April 2015

Gallipoli

We are very pleased to announce that we will be publishing Alan Moorehead's classic Gallipoli, with a new introduction by Sir Max Hastings, on May 28th, in large print in both hardback and paperback. 

Prices are still to be decided. We hold World English language rights. This is an exciting new departure for us. So few books are published in large print that we have decided to do our own publishing. 

This book was The Sunday Times book of the year in 1956 and is being comprehensively re-reviewed at the moment. 

Typical of the plaudits are these comments from Germaine Greer in the New Statesman:

"Masterful Gallipoli ... now republished with a thoughtful introduction by Max Hastings ... Alan Moorehead's account of Gallipoli is still the best written. He concentrates on the key players, the commanding officers on both sides and the politicians who were manipulating them."

If you require further information please email: editor@largeprintbookshop.co.uk