Most Popular Books by David Gilmour

Did Garibaldi do Italy a disservice when he helped its disparate parts achieve unity? Was the goal of political unification a mis-take? The question is asked and answered in a number of ways in this engaging, original consideration of the many histories that contribute to the brilliance--and weakness--of Italy today.

From the 2005 winner of the Governor-General’s Award for Fiction and the former national film critic for CBC television comes a delightful and absorbing book about the agonies and joys of home-schooling a beloved son. Written in the spare elegant style he is known for, The Film Club is the true story about David Gilmour’s decision to let his 15-year-old son drop out of high school on the condition that the boy agrees to watch three films a week with him. The book examines how those pivotal years changed both their lives. From French New Wave, Kurosawa, and New German cinema, to De Palma, film noir, Cronenberg and Billy Wilder, among many others from world cinema, we read about key moments in each film, as the author teaches his son about life and the vagaries of growing up through the power of the movies. Replete with page-turning descriptions of scenes and actors and directors, the narrative is framed with the tender story of his son’s first bittersweet first loves. This is a charming and poignant story about a very special time in a father and son’s relationship. David Gilmour is a novelist who has earned critical praise from literary figures as diverse as William Burroughs and Northrop Frye, and from publications as different as the New York Times to People magazine. The author of six novels, he also hosted the award-winning Gilmour on the Arts. He lives in Toronto with his wife Tina Gladstone.

Unlike France and England, Spain has not been dominated by its capital, and the focus of its history shifts from city to city over the centuries, illuminating different features of the country''s past. Toledo, Cordoba, Seville and Madrid have at various times managed to establish a political and cultural supremacy, Cadiz and Barcelona dominated the economy in the 18th and 19th centuries. Salanca housed one of the great universities of medieval Europe while Santiago became the second religious centre of Christendom. In CITIES OF SPAIN David Gilmour takes us on a journey from Visigothic kingdom and the Cordoban caliphate to the Madrid of today. The portrait of these cities both now and in the heyday reveal both their spirit and their significance, and allowed the reader an intimate view of one of Europe''s most fascinating and intriguing countries.

A major new biography of Rudyard Kipling Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was a unique figure in British history, a great writer as well as an imperial icon whose life trajectory matched that of the British Empire from its zenith to its final decades. Kipling was in his early twenties when his first stories about Anglo-Indian life vaulted him into celebrity. He went on to be awarded the Nobel Prize, and to add more phrases to the language than any man since Shakespeare, but his conservative views and advocacy of imperialism damaged his critical reputation -- while at the same time making him all the more popular with a general readership. By the time he died, the man who incarnated an era for millions was almost forgotten, and new generations must come to terms in their own way with his enduring but mysterious powers. Previous works on Kipling have focused exclusively on his writing and on his domestic life. Here, the distinguished biographer David Gilmour not only explains how and why Kipling wrote, but also explores the themes of his complicated life, his ideas, his relationships, and his views on the Empire and the future. Gilmour is the first writer to explore Kipling''s public role, his influence on the way Britons saw themselves and their Empire. His fascinating new book, based on extensive research (especially in the underexplored archives of the United States), is a groundbreaking study of a great and misunderstood writer.

A sparkling, provocative history of the English in South Asia during Queen Victoria''s reign. Between 1837 and 1901, less than 100,000 Britons at any one time managed an empire of 300 million people spread over the vast area that now includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Burma. How was this possible, and what were these people like? The British administration in India took pride in its efficiency and broad-mindedness, its devotion to duty and its sense of imperial grandeur, but it has become fashionable to deprecate it for its arrogance and ignorance. In this balanced, witty, and multi-faceted history, David Gilmour goes far to explain the paradoxes of the "Anglo-Indians," showing us what they hoped to achieve and what sort of society they thought they were helping to build. The Ruling Caste principally concerns the officers of the legendary India Civil Service—each of whom to perform as magistrate, settlement officer, sanitation inspector, public-health officer, and more for the million or so people in his charge. Gilmour extends his study to every level of the administration and to the officers'' women and children, so often ignored in previous works, and reveals the real trials and triumphs of an imperial ruling class; on the dangerous temptations that an empire''s power encourages; and on relations between governor and governed, between European and Asian. "An arresting and richly detailed portrait of how the British ruled 19th-century India." ― Washington Post Book World "An extraordinarily evenhanded book about the Indian Civil Service and the work and lives of its members." ― Boston Sunday Globe

" [An] elegant biography" of the British statesman''s accomplished and controversial life and career: "A fast-moving, entertaining and finely written story" (Simon Schama, The New Yorker). George Nathaniel Curzon''s controversial life in public service stretched from the high noon of his country''s empire to the traumatized years following World War I. As Viceroy of India under Queen Victoria and Foreign Secretary under King George V, the obsessive Lord Curzon left his unmistakable mark on the era. David Gilmour''s award-winning book—with a new foreword by the author—is a brilliant assessment of Curzon''s character and achievements, offering a richly dramatic account of the infamous long vendettas, the turbulent friendships, and the passionate, risky love affairs that complicated and enriched his life. Born into the ruling class of what was then the world''s greatest power, Curzon was a fervent believer in British imperialism who spent his life proving he was fit for the task. Often seen as arrogant and tempestuous, he was loathed as much as he was adored, his work disparaged as much as it was admired. In Gilmour''s well-rounded appraisal, Curzon emerges as a complex, tragic figure, a gifted leader who saw his imperial world overshadowed at the dawn of democracy. "A Superb New Biography . . . A Tragic Story, Brilliantly Told." —Andrew Roberts, Literary Review

An exhilarating novel of erotic and psychotic extremes from one of Canada’s best fiction writers. Everyone would agree that Darius Halloway was the most civilized of men, a professor of French literature, a connoisseur of ideas and women and wine, a perfect guest at life’s dinner party. Darius himself would have agreed, until Emma, waifish and insatiable,walks out the door, leaving her empty clothes hangers rattling in his closet. For a little while, it’s not so bad. He thinks she must come back, and other women find his melancholy quite compelling. But then the sparrows of insomnia start picking at the inside of his skull. Life’s little aggravating moments seem to require him to seek direct retaliation. Soon all his smoothness and cleverness is directed toward wreaking the most elaborate revenge… and getting away with it. Until the ultimate retaliation arises, and there he is, in the most damning of situations, with his nerves on fire and his heart in his throat…finally not thinking of Emma. From the Hardcover edition.

David Gilmour''s biography of Giuseppe di Lampedusa unearths the life story of the creator of The Leopard, one of the great novels of the twentieth century. A book whose imagery, once tasted, haunts the reader forever, The Leopard describes the golden era of nineteenth-century Sicily: its sensual, fading, aristocratic glory and its corruption, brutality, and inequality lurking beneath the surface. Who wrote this masterpiece, this work of art? The answer is as unlikely as one might hope. A fascinating meditation on what it is that makes a writer.

Like a tourist visiting his own life, David Gilmour’s narrator journeys in time to reexamine those critical moments that created him. He revisits the terrible hurt of a first love, the shock of a parent’s suicide, the trauma of a best friend’s bizarre dissembling, and the pain and humiliation of unrelenting jealousy, among other rites of passage. Set within an episodic narrative arc stories about the profound effect of Tolstoy, of the Beatles, of the cult of celebrity, of the delusion of drugs, and of the literary life on the winding road of the narrator’s progress. This compelling and deeply interesting picaresque novel is a creative tour de force from the hand of one of our master storytellers. The Perfect Order of Things breaks new fictional ground and is an astonishing story of a life lived fully and with breathtaking passion. David Gilmour is a novelist who has earned critical praise from literary figures as diverse as William Burroughs and Northrop Frye, and from publications as different as the New York Times to People magazine. The author of six novels, he also hosted the award-winning Gilmour on the Arts. In 2005, his novel A Perfect Night to Go to China won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. His next book, The Film Club, was a finalist for the 2008 Charles Taylor Prize. It became an international bestseller, and has sold over 200,000 copies in Germany and over 100,000 copies in Brazil. He lives in Toronto with his wife.

An immersive portrait of the lives of the British in India, from the seventeenth century to Independence Who of the British went to India, and why? We know about Kipling and Forster, Orwell and Scott, but what of the youthful forestry official, the enterprising boxwallah, the fervid missionary? What motivated them to travel halfway around the globe, what lives did they lead when they got there, and what did they think about it all? Full of spirited, illuminating anecdotes drawn from long-forgotten memoirs, correspondence, and government documents, The British in India weaves a rich tapestry of the everyday experiences of the Britons who found themselves in "the jewel in the crown" of the British Empire. David Gilmour captures the substance and texture of their work, home, and social lives, and illustrates how these transformed across the several centuries of British presence and rule in the subcontinent, from the East India Company''s first trading station in 1615 to the twilight of the Raj and Partition and Independence in 1947. He takes us through remote hill stations, bustling coastal ports, opulent palaces, regimented cantonments, and dense jungles, revealing the country as seen through British eyes, and wittily reveling in all the particular concerns and contradictions that were a consequence of that limited perspective. The British in India is a breathtaking accomplishment, a vivid and balanced history written with brio, elegance, and erudition.

Pink Floyd''s David Gilmour''s No. 1 Album Luck and Strange is, in his own words, his strongest work to date. Here, captured by the camera of Polly Samson, is the magic and playfulness of the creative process of bringing this work to life, both in the studio and on stage at breathtaking venues including the Circus Maximus in Rome.

From a Governor General’s Award–winning author comes a heart-rending novel about family, children and the end of life. Over the course of one Saturday night, a man and his half-sister meet at her request to spend the evening preparing for her assisted death. They drink and reminisce fondly, sadly, amusingly about their lives and especially her children, both of whom have led dramatic and profoundly different lives. Extraordinary is a powerful consideration of assisted suicide, but it is also a story about family—about how brothers and sisters turn out so differently; about how little, in fact, turns out the way we expect. In the end, this is a novel about the extraordinary business of being alive, and it may well be David Gilmour’s very best work of fiction to date.

BACK ON TUESDAY is the savagely funny story of Eugene H., a failed, womanizing writer from Toronto. After a nasty flare-up with his ex-wife, he snatches their five-year-old daughter from school and flees to Jamaica. Over the next eighteen hours he muddles over his life, fumes, plots, drinks rum, regrets, reminisces, encounters a young woman with grey eyes, a coffin maker, a black Napoleon on his motorcycle…and a host of other creatures from the Jamaican night.

Lost Between Houses is about a turbulent year in the life of Simon Albright, a fifteen-year-old private school boy struggling to be his sophisticated mother''s best friend, the rebel his girlfriend adores and the son his father respects. Which is a hard act to pull off when your mother is distracted, your girlfriend too beautiful and your father in and out of a mental institution. Lost Between Houses unfolds with mingled sarcasm, grief and awe, and grips the reader until its startling climax. From the Hardcover edition.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1876. The Antigonos publishing house specialises in the publication of reprints of historical books. We make sure that these works are made available to the public in good condition in order to preserve their cultural heritage.