Oldcastle Books: 197 books

Married to Genius considers the emotional and artistic commitment in the marriages of nine modern writers, Tolstoy, Shaw, Conrad, Joyce, Woolf, Mansfield, Lawrence, Hemmingway and Scott Fitzgerald. The book reveals the way these major writers attempted to integrate life and art and to resolve the conflict between domestic and creative fulfilment.

A new, updated edition puts all the Doctors under the microscope—including Matt Smith—with facts, figures and opinions on every Doctor Who story televised Doctor Who has seen many ups and downs in its long and colorful history, and this guide tracks all of them. From humble beginnings in November...

Detailing the nuts and bolts of the job of script editing, this book looks at what's required and expected, how script editors assess a script, their approach to working with writers and producers, and their input during rewrites and pre-production, up to a project's completion. It also examines the...

The lowdown on not only getting a thriller feature script on the page, but also getting it in front of producers and investorsFrom premise to resolution, this book guides writers through the craft of thriller writing, citing classic thrillers such as Psycho, The Shining, The Sixth Sense, and Fatal...

Eddie is a strange man with an extraordinary talent that makes him the 'performer' he is. Eddie administers Death. His subjects, he explains, are not afraid, but are thrilled and transported. To Eddie, Death is completion, and he finds fulfilment, satisfaction, and pride in each job he carries out....

Winston Churchill was a soldier, writer, and politician and, after World War II, he became one of the world's greatest statesmen. But his reputation rests on his role as a war leader and, in particular, on the period between May 1940 and July 1941, when Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany. Since...

Western civilization began with the Greeks. From the highpoint of the 5th century BC through the cultural triumphs of the Alexandrian era to their impact on the developing Roman empire, the Greeks shaped the philosophy, art, architecture, and literature of the Mediterranean world. Beginning with the...

From the beginnings of Chinese prehistory right through to internet censorship, a comprehensive introduction to the sprawling history of this enormous countryAn absorbing introduction to more than 4,000 years of Chinese history, this book tells the stories of the tyrants, despots, femmes fatales,...

Now in paperback, a history of a neglected yet vital aspect of World War I historyImages of World War I in the popular consciousness normally involve the bloody attrition of trench warfare, the miles of mud, the shattered earth, and the tangled miles of barbed wire. However there was another significant...

The chance discovery of a 30-year-old porn film leads back to the film’s maker, Tim Purdom, and the London of the late 50s and early 60s. Purdom was a pioneer of the British blue movie as well as a figure on the periphery of the Profumo sex scandal. He directed 8 films—but who was directing him,...

The ghost of a poor Afghan returns to haunt the doctor who once amputated his hand. A mysterious and malignant force inhabits a room in an ancestral home and attacks all who sleep in it. A man who desecrates an Indian temple is transformed into a ravening beast. A castle in the Tyrol is the setting...

So who was Jack the Ripper? No-one in the annals of crime is capable of arousing such passionate debate as the perpetrator of the Whitechapel Murders in 1888. Was he a demented Royal, a Masonic assassin, a sexually-frustrated artist, a member of the Czarist secret police, a crazed reformist or even...

The world of Freemasonry exerts a powerful influence on the modern imagination. In an age when perceived notions of history are being increasingly questioned and re-examined it is perhaps inevitable that secretive societies such as the Freemasons find themselves at the center of considerable speculation...

Alchemy has traditionally been viewed as 'the history of an error', an example of medieval gullibility and greed, in which alchemists tried to turn lead into gold, create fabulous wealth and find the elixir of life. But alchemy has also been described as 'the mightiest secret that a man can possess',...