Category Archives: Travel Guides
A World on Fire
`No two nations have ever existed on the face of the earth which could do each other so much good or so much harm` – President Buchanan, State of the Nation Address, 1859. “A World on Fire” tells, with extraordinary sweep, one of the least known great stories of British and American history. As America
The Making Of The British Landscape
Packed with over 250 maps and photographs, compellingly written and argued, in The Making of the British Landscape, Francis Pryor will permanently change the way you see your surroundings.From our suburban streets which still trace the boundaries of long vanished farms to the Norfolk Broads, formed when medieval peat pits flooded – evidence of man`s
Secret Son
Casablanca’s stinking alleys are the only home that nineteen-year-old Youssef El-Mekki has ever known. Raised by his mother in a one-room home, the film stars flickering on the local cinema’s screen offer the only glimmer of hope to his frustrated dreams of escape. Until, that is, the father he thought dead turns out to be
Dinner With Mugabe
Heidi Holland’s penetrating, timely portrait of Robert Mugabe is the psychobiography of a man whose once brilliant career has ruined Zimbabwe and cast shame on the African continent. Holland`s tireless investigation begins with her having dinner with Mugabe, the freedom fighter, and ends in a searching interview with Zimbabwe`s president more than 30 years later.
Perfume – The Story of a Murderer
Survivor, genius, perfumer, killer: this is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He is abandoned on the filthy streets of Paris as a child, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human`s. Soon, he is creating the most sublime fragrances in all the city. Yet there is
Running the Show
In “Running the Show”, the British Empire of old is re-examined, with Stephanie Williams looking at the men governing the Empire in the nineteenth century, how they were chosen and controlled, and just how they managed to do it.From Fiji to the Falkland Islands, from Malaysia to Australia and South Africa, from Lagos to Ottawa,
The Junior Officer`s Reading Club – Killing Time and Fighting Wars
The Junior Officers’ Reading Club is the story of how modern soldiers are made, from the testosterone-heavy breeding ground of Sandhurst to the twin nightmares of Iraq and Afghanistan. Drawing on soldier-writer Patrick Hennessey’s experiences as an officer in the Grenadier Guards while on active service in the Middle East, the author shows the realities
Nocturne – A journey In Search Of Moonlight
For many of us the moon, and the chill light it casts, are things we either ignore or take for granted. It wouldn`t enter our heads therefore to set off around the world in search of moonlight. But, as James Attlee`s eccentric quest proves, we couldn`t be more wrong. From Normandy to Naples, Wales to
Ghost Milk
In Ghost Milk Iain Sinclair exposes the dark underbelly of the Olympics 2012. Burrowing under the perimeter fence of the grandest of Grand Projects – the giant myth that is 2012`s London Olympics – Ghost Milk explores a landscape under sentence of death and soon to be scorched by riots. This is a road map
Who Will Write Our History
In 1940 the Jews in Warsaw were forced to live in horrendous conditions in a crowded ghetto where many people were killed. Emanuel Ringelblum began an underground organisation recording their lives to ensure that their history would be written if he was killed. The secret group named Oyneg Shabes gathered photographs, letters, papers, poems and
Haunted England – The Penguin Book of Ghosts
In “Haunted England”, county by county, are the nation`s most fascinating supernatural tales and bone-chilling legends: from a ghostly army marching across Cumbria to the vanishing hitchhiker of Bluebell Hill, from the gruesome Man-Monkey of Shropshire to the phantom congregation who gather for a `Sermon of the Dead`.England`s past echoes with stories of unquiet spirits
Pakistan: A Hard Country
“Pakistan: A Hard Country” looks to demystify and analyse a country often reported in the media, but little understood by the general public.In the wake of Pakistan`s development of nuclear weapons, unpoliceable border areas, shelter of the Afghan Taliban and Bin Laden, and the spread of terrorist attacks by groups based in Pakistan to London,
How the Dead Live
“How the Dead Live” – Booker nominee Will Self`s hilarious novel about the afterlife. “Scathingly entertaining”. (“The Times”). “Lily is a colossal heroine, a nighttown Molly Bloom…What begins as a satiric novel of ideas ends as a surprisingly moving elegy”. (“Guardian”). Scabrous, vicious and unpleasant in life, Lily Bloom has not been improved by death.
Pathfinders – The Golden Age of Arabic Science
In “Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science”, Jim al-Khalili celebrates the forgotten pioneers who helped shape our understanding of the world. For over 700 years the international language of science was Arabic. Surveying the golden age of Arabic science, Jim Al-Khalili reintroduces such figures as the Iraqi physicist Ibn al-Haytham, who practised the modern
Mao`s Last Dancer
Raised in a desperately poor village during the height of China`s Cultural Revolution, Li Cunxin`s childhood revolved around the commune, his family and Chairman Mao`s Little Red Book. Until, that is, Madame Mao`s cultural delegates came in search of young peasants to study ballet at the academy in Beijing and he was thrust into a
Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad
Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad is the true story of two women who share laughter and tears, and swap their confidences, dreams and fears. May`s a tough-talking, hard-smoking, lecturer in English. She`s also an Iraqi from a Sunni-Shi`ite background living in Baghdad, dodging bullets before breakfast, bargaining for high heels in bombed-out bazaars and
Strangers
`He was haunted by a feeling of invisibility, as if he were a mere spectator of his own life, with no one to identify him in the barren circumstances of the here and now.` Paul Sturgis is a retired banker manager who lives alone in a dark little flat. He walks alone and dines alone,
Great Railway Bazaar
The Great Railway Bazaar is Paul Theroux`s classic and much-loved homage to train travel. The Orient Express; The Khyber Pass Local; the Delhi Mail from Jaipur; the Golden Arrow of Kuala; the Trans-Siberian Express; these are just some of the trains steaming through Paul Theroux`s epic rail journey from London across Europe through India and
Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes
“The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes” by Arthur Conan Doyle are the complete adventures of the original and best detective, containing four novels and fifty-six short stories about the most engaging detective of all time, with a foreword by crime writer Ruth Rendell. The detective Sherlock Holmes – who continues to enthral millions in film and
Night
Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity: the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity and
