Category Archives: Travel Guides
The English Seaside
There is a powerful sense of place at the seaside. You know what to expect. Fishing villages usually have a pier, boats, lobster pots, and masses of seagulls while resort towns have esplanades, piers, grand hotels and gardens. Certain seaside towns have just about everything: Weymouth, for example, has a grand parade of hotels, a
Stonehenge and Avebury – Exploring the World Heritage Site
Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Sites on a large double-sided map from the English Heritage presenting each site on one side of the map at 1:10,000 annotated with extensive archaeological and tourist information and accompanied by historical notes, colour photos and a time line. The archaeological remains, various tourist facilities and local footpaths, etc are
The English Railway Station
The railway station is one of England`s most distinctive and best-loved building-types. Yet over the past century the nation`s stations have often been overlooked or dismissed, and have suffered accordingly. Today a new interest in railways – fuelled by the need for sustainability, by a growing awareness of the realities of transport economics and by
Move Along, Please
At 10.41am on a Tuesday morning in September, Mark Mason boards the number 1A bus at Land`s End in Cornwall. Forty-six buses and eleven days later he disembarks at John O`Groats in Scotland. Move Along Please is his account of that gruelling 1100-mile odyssey; a paint-by-bus-numbers portrait of Britain. Along the way he visits everywhere
Aerofilms: A History of Britain from Above
Aerofilms Ltd was born on 9 May 1919. An unprecedented business venture, it hoped to marry the still fledgling technology of powered flight to the discipline of photography. Its founders were Claude Grahame-White, an internationally-famous English aviation pioneer, and Francis Lewis Wills, a trained architect who had flown as an observer for the Royal Naval
Three Men and a Bradshaw
Wryly humorous and quintessentially British, Three Men and a Bradshaw collects the previously unpublished holiday journals of John Freeman, who travelled Britain with his brothers during the 1870s. Each year the trio would settle upon a destination, buy their tickets and set off – armed, of course, with their trusty Bradshaw`s Descriptive Railway Hand-book. John`s
London`s West End Cinemas
The history of London s West End cinemas dates back more than one hundred years. This book details all of them, in chronological order, totalling well over one hundred. The best of the West End s cinemas were outfitted to a very high standard to match their role as showcases for new films, hosting press
Magdalena: River of Dreams
A captivating new book ‘“ from the winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Into the Silence ‘“ that illuminates Colombia`s complex past, present, and future through the story of the great Rรญo Magdalena.Travellers often become enchanted with the first country that captures their hearts and gives them license to be free. For Wade Davis,
The Secret Network of Nature: The Delicate Balance of All Living Things
Did you know that trees can make clouds?Or that a change in wolf population can alter the course of a river?Or that earthworms give wild boar directions?The natural world is a web of intricate connections, many of which go unnoticed by humans. But it is these connections that maintain nature’s finely balanced equilibrium, and tinkering
The Hidden Landscape
`I travelled to Haverfordwest to get to the past. From Paddington Station a Great Western locomotive took me on a journey westwards from London further and further back into geological time, from the age of mammals to the age of trilobites…Under the River Severn and into Wales, I was back before the time of the
The Battle of London 1939-45: Endurance, Heroism and Frailty Under Fire
The definitive social history of London in the Blitz, which transformed life in the capital beyond recognition.For Londoners the six long years of the Second World War were a time of almost constant anxiety, disruption, deprivation and sacrifice. The Blitz began in earnest in September 1940 and from then on, for prolonged periods, London was
In Praise of Walking: The New science of How We Walk and Why It`s Good For Us
Walking upright on two feet is a uniquely human skill. It defines us as a species.It enabled us to walk out of Africa and to spread as far as Alaska and Australia. It freed our hands and freed our minds. We put one foot in front of the other without thinking – yet how many
1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A Memoir
In his widely anticipated memoir, Ai Weiwei – one of the world`s most famous artists and activists – tells a century-long epic tale of China through the story of his own extraordinary life and the legacy of his father, Ai Qing, the nation`s most celebrated poet.Hailed as “the most important artist working today” by the
Origins: How The Earth Made Us
Why do so many of us eat cereal for breakfast?Is it because we like the taste? Or because 20 millions years ago, a certain species of plant colonised the same hospitable land that humanity did?Why is the world the way it is? If we follow chains of explanation as far back as they go –
The Reinvention of Humanity: A Story of Race, Sex, Gender and the Discovery of Culture
`The Reinvention of Humanity` tells the story of a small circle of renegade scientist-explorers who changed something profound: what it means to be normal.In the early twentieth century, these pioneering anthropologists, most of them women, made intrepid journeys that overturned our assumptions about race, sexuality, gender and the nature of human diversity. From the Arctic
How To Stop Brexit (And Make Britain Great Again)
Keep calm – but do not carry on. There is nothing remotely inevitable about Brexit – except that it will be deeply damaging if it happens. Extricating Britain from Europe will be the greatest challenge this country has faced since the Second World War. And as negotiations with the EU expose the promises of the
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future
Shortlisted for the 2021 Wainwright Prize for Writing on Global ConservationChosen by Bill Gates anmd Barack Obama as a Summer 2021 read.”Important, necessary, urgent and phenomenally interesting” Helen MacDonald The author of the international bestseller The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity`s transformative impact on the environment, asking: can we save nature in time?Elizabeth Kolbert has
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
In this classic text, Jane Jacobs set out to produce an attack on current city planning and rebuilding and to introduce new principles by which these should be governed. The result is one of the most stimulating books on cities ever written. Throughout the post-war period, planners temperamentally unsympathetic to cities have been let loose
