Notting Hill Editions

‘Ways of Telling isn't like any other book. Is it social reportage, the eye at the keyhole, the ear at the door? It is its own thing.’ Margaret Atwood‘I couldn’t love it more. After the very first story I had a huge wide grin on my face. More more more! Every single story could be an award-winning short film. I love, love, love it.’ Carey Mulligan‘An extraordinary book. Xandra Bingley's darting, curious eyes miss nothing and we follow them with her at a headlong speed. I wish I could write like that.’ Harriet Walter‘Fractured, haunting, intimate and totally original, Ways of Telling knocked the breath out of me. It’s dangerously exact, wilfully ambitious, wild in its scope and perfect in its precision.’ Olivia Laing‘The pieces in this book are just the right size to blow one’s mind in a train or on a tram: they have a most unusual delicacy, wit and freshness, and their physical world is powerfully seductive.’ Helen GarnerFrom the bestselling author of Bertie, May & Mrs Fish comes a remarkable collection of stories. As a bystander at Princess Diana’s funeral, a fan at a James Brown concert, a passenger on a Welsh bus and a patient in a hectic hospital, Xandra Bingley’s vivid portraits of everyday experience remind us of the fleeting and mysterious transience of life.

In the late 1800s, Sigmund Freud began to develop radical theories about sexuality, dreams and childhood experiences. Not only were his ideas revolutionary, but they also initiated a new discipline with various – often competing – schools of thought. In this groundbreaking book, Andrew Jamieson unpacks ten of psychotherapy’s most profound principles and illuminates them through the biographies of twenty remarkable people. From Pablo Picasso’s chaotic life, which illustrates Freud’s concept of the unconscious, to the origins of Nelson Mandela’s compassion, which exemplify Carl Jung’s notion of individuation; from John Bowlby’s attachment theory, as seen through the lives of Virginia Woolf and Franz Kafka, to Melanie Klein’s views on the relationship between love and hate, as revealed through the experiences of Cary Grant, On the Couch throws new light on the motivations and desires of some of our most memorable personalities. Other lives examined include Josephine Baker, Nicolaus Copernicus, Charles Darwin, Viktor Frankl, Ernest Hemingway, Burt Hellinger, Emma Jung, Angela Merkel, Marilyn Monroe, Vladimir Putin, Ludwig Wittgenstein and W. B. Yeats.

From the New York Times?bestselling author of The Unspeakable and The Problem with Everything comes a new collection of unputdownable essays.?For the last five or six years, on many afternoons around 4 or 5 p.m., I?ve been overcome with the sensation that my life is effectively over. Note the personal touch here. This is not a sensation of the world ending, which has been in vogue for quite some time now, and maybe for good reason. It?s a distinct feeling of being at the end of my days. My time, while technically not ?up,? is disappearing in the rearview mirror. The fact that this feeling of ambient doom tends to coincide with the blue-tinged, pre-gloaming light of the late afternoon lends to the whole thing a cosmic beauty, as devastating as it is awe-inspiring. As such, I?ve dubbed this the catastrophe hour.?Written between 2016 and 2023, these essays are classic Daum, showcasing the author?s wit, her intellect, and her uncanny ability to throw new light on even the most ubiquitous of subjects. Delving into divorce, dating, music, friendship, beauty, aging, death and money, Daum?s unflinching honesty and exacting observations secure her reputation as one of our most important and enduring essayists.