Jonathan Cape fiction by James Joyce and T. E. Lawrence. After Cape's death, the firm later merged successively with three other London publishing houses. In 1987 it was taken over by Random House. Its name continues as one of Random House's British imprints. Herbert Jonathan Cape was born in London on 15 November 1879, the youngest of the seven children of Jonathan Cape, a clerk from Ireby in what is now Cumbria, and his wife Caroline, "née" Page. He received a basic schooling and in his early teens he was taken on by Hatchards bookshop in Piccadilly as an errand-boy. Four years
The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul is a biography of the Nobel Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul by Patrick French. It was published in 2008 (by Picador in the UK and Knopf in the USA). The title is a quotation from Naipaul's book "A Bend in the River". "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." French deals with Naipaul's family background and his life from his birth in 1932 until his second marriage