HAUS PUBLISHING
NEW BOOKS JANUARY – JUNE 2024
PRAISE FOR PETER HENNESSY
‘One of the country’s finest contemporary historians, Hennessy has tracked Westminster like no one else’
Financial Times
‘Hennessy, unique among contemporary historians, understands politics from the inside out’
The Times
‘No current historian is as versed as Hennessy in the internal cogs and springs of the British state, but he also has a keen eye for the luminous face of passing time’
The Observer
‘Hennessy is ... driven by a romantic, almost sensual, fascination with British history, culture, and the quirky intricacies of British democracy and the government machine. His curiosity is insatiable, his memory infinitely capacious’
Spectator
‘What makes him such a deft public historian is the way he stitches patches of rich local colour into a narrative with the widest possible reach’
Guardian
THE BACK OF AN ENVELOPE
A Life in Writing
Peter Hennessy With Polly Coupar-Hennessy£30
24 April 2024
Memoir | Politics
Royal Hardback | 20 illustrations | 512 pp 978-1-913368-85-2
Peter Hennessy's illustrious career spans second post-war to post-Brexit Britain. The Back of an Envelope gives a wealth of anecdote and reflection from this most astute observer of Westminster and the establishment.
As one of Britain’s foremost constitutional experts and contemporary historians, Peter Hennessy has spent his professional life unpacking the arcane world of Whitehall and Westminster.
In this new volume, he brings together selected journalism, unpublished lectures, and new writing alongside personal recollections and reflections on his time observing post-war Britain, how it is governed, and those who do the governing. He reflects on the making and unmaking of prime ministers from Attlee to Truss, life in the House of Lords, and the changing constitutional landscape in the wake of Brexit and in the midst of uncertainty about the Union.
Hennessy looks back at a fascinating career, reflecting on his own experiences bringing to life a cast of characters from a world now largely gone.
Peter Hennessy started his career as a journalist for The Times. His books include the bestselling The Prime Minister, The Secret State, and, most recently, A Duty of Care. He was professor of contemporary British history at Queen Mary, University of London and, since 2010, has been an independent crossbench life Peer.
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THE DERVISH BOWL
The Many Lives of Arminius Vámbéry
Anabel Loyd
£25
15 May 2024
Biography | History
Royal Hardback | 25 Illustrations, 1 Map | 420 pp 978-1-913368-97-5
Who was Arminius Vámbéry? A poverty-stricken, Jewish autodidact; a linguist, traveller, and writer; or a sometime Zionist, inspiration for Dracula’s nemesis, and British secret agent?
Vámbéry wrote his own story many times over. And it was these often highly embroidered accounts of journeys through Persia and Central Asia that saw him acclaimed in Victorian England as an intrepid explorer and daring adventurer. Against the backdrop of the ‘Great Game’, in which Russia and Britain jostled for territory, influence, and control of the borders and gateways to India and its wealth, Vámbéry played the roles of hero and double-dealer, of fascinated witness and Imperialist charlatan.
The Dervish Bowl is the story of these competing narratives, a compelling investigation of the ever-changing persona Vámbéry created for himself, and of the man who emerges from his private correspondence and the accounts of both his friends and his enemies, many of whom were themselves major players in the geopolitical adventures of the volatile nineteenth century – a time when Britain’s ambitions for her empire were at their height, yet nothing and no one was quite as they seemed.
Anabel Loyd has been a regular columnist for the Indian Telegraph for many years. She has lived and worked in India and has a particular interest in the Indian history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
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MY PALESTINE
An Impossible Exile
Mohammad Tarbush
£22
1 May 2024
Memoir | History | Palestine
Royal Hardback | 372 pp | 30 Illustrations
978-1-913368-99-9
‘As impressive a man as the Arab world has to show’
—Edward Said on Mohammad Tarbush
Tarbush was born in British Mandate Palestine. As an infant, he and his family were forced to evacuate their village together with its entire population, after the Zionist victory that led to the establishment of the State of Israel. Now as landless refugees in the West Bank, the family sinks into poverty.
When the teenage Palestinian refugee announced to his parents that he wanted to take a bus to visit relatives in Jordan for a few days, little did they know he would actually set off on a one-year hitchhiking journey to Europe, where he would eventually become a highly successful international banker and a key behind-thescenes promoter of the Palestinian cause.
In My Palestine, Tarbush combines poignant personal memoir with incisive political and economic commentary on the tumultuous events that shaped the history of Israel, Palestine, and the modern Middle East.
Mohammad Tarbush (1948-2022) was born Beit Nattif, near Jerusalem. In 1988, he became managing director at Deutsche Bank then at UBS. He is the author of several books including Reflections of a Palestinian. His writings on Palestine have appeared in the Guardian, and Financial Times, among others.
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NORTHERN IRELAND AND THE UK CONSTITUTION
Lisa Claire Whitten£7.99
28 March 2024
Politics | Law
A-Format Paperback | 120 pp | Diagrams, maps
978-1-913368-95-1
Series: Haus Curiosities
Co-published with The Constitution Society
A comprehensive yet accessible introduction to Northern Ireland's constitutional history.
Since the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, the constitutional position of Northern Ireland within the Union has endured an unusual level of attention.
Lisa Claire Whitten has written a concise history of Northern Ireland through its pivotal moments: the 1920–72 Unionist-led governments, the following thirty years of bitter conflicts, the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, and the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. Considering each of the moments in the broader setting of UK constitutional norms and narratives, she addresses the exceptional constitutional characteristics of Northern Ireland and the ways in which these have often resulted in ‘blindspot’ analyses of the Union.
This short book also considers the implications of Brexit and the constitutional impacts and shifts it has brought to Northern Ireland and discusses the possible constitutional repercussions.
Lisa Claire Whitten is a research fellow at Queen's University Belfast. Prior to entering academia, Whitten held a variety of posts in the public sector including working in Westminster and in the Office of the Northern Ireland Executive in Brussels.
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THE NOBLE ARMY
The Modern Martyrs of Westminster Abbey
James Hawkey, Anthony Ball
Tricia Hillas, David Hoyle
David Stanton, Bashar Warda
£7.99
20 June 2024
Religion | Christianity
A-Format Paperback | 90 pp
978-1-914979-01-9
Series: Haus Curiosities
In July 1998, ten statues of martyrs of the twentieth century were unveiled surmounting the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey. Ten figures were identified from different continents and different churches: victims of Nazi and Bolshevik oppression, state-sponsored violence, and religious hatred, these images stand as a testimony to the bloodshed of the twentieth century. Some, such as Oscar Romero and Martin Luther King, are famed across the world. Others are less known.
The Noble Army offers reflections on each of these ten lives and explores the questions surrounding their choices, and tells us the stories behind them.
These statues were intended to represent those millions of individuals who suffered for their faith in Christ in the twentieth century. These reflections culminate in a chapter on the contemporary reality of Christian marginalisation and persecution, written by Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil, Iraq.
James Hawkey is canon theologian of Westminster Abbey, and a visiting professor in theology at King’s College London.
Contributors: Anthony Ball, Tricia Hillas, David Hoyle, David Stanton, and Bashar Warda.
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DICKENS'S KENT
Peter Clark£9.99
12 June 2024
Travel | Literature | Kent
B-Format Paperback with flaps | 140 pp
5 Illustrations, 1 Map 978-1-914982-11-8
Imprint: Armchair Traveller
Few novelists have written so intimately about a city as Charles Dickens wrote about London, but he was intimately connected to Kent more than any other part of Britain. Perhaps Kent meant more to him than the capital.
He had an idyllic childhood in Chatham and Kent features in his first works of fiction, Sketches by Boz and The Pickwick Papers, and in his favourite novel, David Copperfield. In his last ten years he wrote two novels with strong Kentish themes, Great Expectations and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He had his honeymoon outside Gravesend, and often spent the summer months in Broadstairs. In 1856 he bought Gad’s Hill Place, near Rochester, and died there in 1870.
Dickens’s Kent begins with the description of a walk from London to Dickens's main residence, Gad’s Hill Place, before taking the reader to areas in Kent most closely associated with his life and work – the Medway Towns and their surroundings, Thanet and East Kent, and finally Staplehurst, the scene of the railway accident that nearly killed him.
Peter Clark is a writer and translator, and research associate at SOAS, University of London. He worked in the overseas service of the British Council for over thirty years, has translated novels and history from Arabic, and written books on Istanbul and Marmaduke Pickthall. He is the author of Dickens's London and Churchill’s Britain.
» NEW IN PAPERBACK
RILKE’S VENICE
BIRGIT HAUSTEDT
£9.99 PAPERBACK
11 MAPS
978-1-909961-63-0
DICKENS ’ S LONDON
PETER CLARK
£9.99 PAPERBACK
10 ILLUSTRATIONS & MAPS
978-1-909961-67-8
KAFKA ’ S PRAGUE
KLAUS WAGENBACH
£9.99 PAPERBACK
50 B&W ILLUSTRATIONS
978-1-909961-65-4
BORGES IN SICILY
ALEJANDRO LUQUE
£10.99 PAPERBACK
21 B&W PHOTOGRAPHS
978-1-909961-62-3
HEMINGWAY IN ITALY
RICHARD OWEN
£9.99 PAPERBACK
978-1-909961-70-8
DH LAWRENCE IN ITALY
RICHARD OWEN
£9.99 PAPERBACK
978-1-909961-72-2
LITERARY TRAVEL
Dear Leonard Cohen,
Could I ask you something, just between us? How was it that you never changed your name? You could have been Lawrence Cole. You could have been Lindsay Kohl, or Lionel Cone. Or you could have dropped your last name and been Lenny Norman. Jewish entertainers do that one all the time, drop their last name, go by their middle name. But you, no, you couldn’t do that. Sound less Jewish? Sound more like a showbiz guy? Not you, you had to be authentic, you had to sound like an accountant or a dentist. I'm joking, really, kind of. But not completely, not entirely. And now it’s a little on the late side to do anything about it, isn’t it? You see, I too am Leonard Cohen. And this has been a problem.
So begins the story of an everyman Leonard Cohen, a would-be artist, a wouldbe lover, a would-be tragic figure. Or perhaps the ‘would-be’ doesn't really apply, perhaps he is all of these things. Yet he is a man haunted by the greatness of his namesake. He struggles to compete. He struggles not to be defeated. He struggles to accept his fate, to be more than a punchline in his own mind. He struggles, in particular, to write one song that would be as great as the least of the great Leonard Cohen’s songs.
At the center of Leonard’s life is Daphne. In their meeting, a contemporary fable of Daphne and Apollo plays out, the birth of love out of lust. But even with Daphne, Leonard is shadowed by the ‘other’ Leonard Cohen. The ancient myth haunts the fated lovers, and the ‘nobody’ Leonard Cohen’s life becomes at once a mystery, a miracle, and a myth on its own terms.
Once upon a time, Apollo fell hard for Daphne, who turned herself into a laurel tree. No less a fate awaits the protagonists of this slender yet universal novel, where art, love, and fame all fatefully intertwine.
Jeffrey Lewis has won a string of awards for his novels including the Independent Publishers Gold Medal for Literary Fiction, the Independent Publishers Gold Medal for General Fiction, and the ForeWord Book of the Year Silver Medal for Fiction. His Bealport: A Novel of a Town was a 2019 Maine Literary Awards finalist. He has also received two Emmy Awards and been nominated twelve times for his work as a television writer and producer, most notably for Hill Street Blues. He is also the author of Berlin Cantata, The Inquisitor’s Diary, The Meritocracy Quartet, and Land of Cockaigne.
Praise for Jeffrey Lewis
‘Lewis is a master’ Washington Post
‘[Lewis] is an attentive and welcoming storyteller with a fine Old New England sensibility’
David Milch, creator of Deadwood
LEONARD COHEN
A Novel
Jeffrey Lewis
£14.99
6 April 2024
Literary Fiction
Demi Hardback | 146 pages 978-1-913368-92-0
‘[Lewis] has been painstakingly, novel by novel, constructing an oeuvre that puts him in the ranks of the country’s must-read authors’
Peter Davis, author and Academy Award-winning director
‘Jeffrey Lewis has won Emmy Awards for TV screenwriting and he translates those skills into a figure-skating literary voice’
Morning Sentinel
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