Power is a fickle mistress, likely to flit about the room and rest at random moments with unexpected allies. Its path is hard to track. Does it lie with the person that everyone talks about, waits for, looks at: a prime minister with an iconic handbag, an iconic hairdo, a woman that cameras permanently train their lens on – a woman undergoing minor eye surgery? Or does it lie in the eye of the beholder, with the unseen watcher, the photographer / sniper? ‘Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder – a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time’ said Susan Sontag. Perhaps, ultimately, power remains with she who watches the watcher. She whose opinion can become a dagger flying straight to the heart. She whose words can capture the crucial moment that everyone else missed, the ‘one easy wink of the world’s blind eye’. Read more…
Power. It can be so deadly in the wrong hands, and who else knows how to spin a tale around that than our authors? The month’s theme draws on the power play that so often drives the narrative in the literature that has us gripped, frightened and thanking a higher power that Oliver Cromwell isn’t our boss.
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We’re thrilled to present the stunning cover design for Hilary Mantel’s The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, out on the 25th September this year.
