Category Archives: Travel Guides
The Bitter Taste of Victory: Life, Love and Art in the Ruins of the Reich
As the Second World War neared its conclusion, Germany was a nation reduced to rubble: 3.6 million German homes had been destroyed leaving 7.5 million people homeless; an apocalyptic landscape of flattened cities and desolate wastelands. In May 1945 Germany surrendered, and Britain, America, Soviet Russia and France set about rebuilding their zones of occupation.
Pondlife: A Swimmer`s Journal
The ponds of Hampstead Heath are small oases; fragments of wild nature nestled in the heart of north-west London. For the best part of his life Al Alvarez – poet, critic, novelist, rock-climber and poker player – has swum in them almost daily. An athlete in his youth, Alvarez, now in his eighties, chronicles what
A Beginner`s Guide to Bearspotting
Stanfords Children`s Book of the Month February 2017Bearspotting is a dangerous business – you ought to take it seriously, you know. So here`s what you need to know for starters – black bears are dangerous and black, brown bears are dangerous and brown. Although sometimes black bears can be a little brown, and brown bears
The Naked Shore: Of the North Sea
Stanfords Adult Book of the Month January 2017Saturnine and quick-tempered, the formidable North Sea is often overlooked – even by those living within a stone`s throw of its steel-grey waters. But as playground, theatre of war and cultural crossing-point, it has shaped the world in myriad ways, forged villains and heroes, and determined the fates
1916: A Global History
The mud-filled, blood-soaked trenches of the Low Countries and North-Eastern Europe were essential battlegrounds during the First World War, but the war reached many other corners of the globe, and events elsewhere significantly affected its course. Covering the twelve months of 1916, eminent historian Keith Jeffery uses twelve moments from a range of locations and
Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary
In 1876 Sophia Duleep Singh was born into royalty. Her father, Maharajah Duleep Singh, was heir to the Kingdom of the Sikhs, a realm that stretched from the lush Kashmir Valley to the craggy foothills of the Khyber Pass and included the mighty cities of Lahore and Peshawar. It was a territory irresistible to the
George & Martha Washington: A Revolutionary Marriage
George and Martha Washington, of Mount Vernon, Virginia, were America`s original first couple. From the 1750s, when young soldier George wooed and wedded Martha Dandridge Custis, a pretty and rich young widow, to the forging of a new nation, Flora Fraser traces the development, both personal and political, of an historic marriage. The private sphere
Man of Iron: Thomas Telford and the Building of Britain
The enthralling Sunday Times-bestselling biography of the shepherd boy who changed the world with his revolutionary engineering and whose genius we still benefit from todayThomas Telford`s name is familiar; his story less so. Born in 1757 in the Scottish Borders, his father died in his infancy, plunging the family into poverty. Telford`s life soared to
The Summer Before the War
It is late summer in East Sussex, 1914. Amidst the season`s splendour, fiercely independent Beatrice Nash arrives in the coastal town of Rye to fill a teaching position at the local grammar school. There she is taken under the wing of formidable matriarch Agatha Kent, who, along with her charming nephews, tries her best to
Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris
Edmund White was forty-three years old when he moved to Paris in 1983. He spoke no French and knew just two people in the entire city, but soon discovered the anxieties and pleasures of mastering a new culture. White fell passionately in love with Paris, its beauty in the half-light and eternal mists; its serenity
The Giraffe`s Neck
Adaption is everything, something Frau Lohmark is well aware of as the biology teacher at the Charles Darwin High School in a country backwater of the former East Germany. A strict devotee of Darwin`s evolution principle, Lohmark views education as survival of the fittest: classifying her pupils as biological specimens and scorning her colleagues for
One Million Tiny Plays About Britain
A Wonder Woman and bride-to-be finds herself worse for wear at the end of a hen night; a funeral director`s love of Manchester United proves unhelpful when talking to the bereaved; two overly-vigilant mothers wrestle with their paranoia in the queue for Santa`s Grotto; a widow recounts her disastrous return to the world of dating
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
For centuries, fame and fortune were to be found in the west- in the New World of the Americas.Today, it is the east which calls out to those in search of riches and adventure. Sweeping right across Central Asia and deep into China and India, a region that once took centre stage is again rising
Umbrella
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2012 For half a century Audrey Death has been in a state of semi-consciousness. Severed from the world of the living after falling victim to Encephalitis lethargica, she has languished in Friern Barnet Mental Hospital. Then, in 1971, maverick psychiatrist Dr Zack Busner arrives. Audrey`s experiences of a bygone
Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas de Quincey
`Life for De Quincey was either angels ascending on vaults of cloud or vagrants shivering on the city streets.` Thomas De Quincey – opium-eater, celebrity journalist, and professional doppelganger – is embedded in our culture. Modelling his character on Coleridge and his sensibility on Wordsworth, De Quincey took over the poet`s former cottage in Grasmere
Zoo Time
Novelist Guy Ableman is in thrall to his vivacious wife Vanessa, a strikingly beautiful red-head, contrary, highly strung and blazingly angry. The trouble is, he is no less in thrall to her alluring mother, Poppy. More like sisters than mother and daughter, they come as a pair, a blistering presence that destroys Guy`s peace of
The Downfall of Money: Germany`s Hyperinflation and the Destruction of the Middle Class
Many theorists believed a hundred years ago, just as they did at the beginning of our twenty-first century, that the world had reached a state of economic perfection, a never before seen condition of beneficial human interdependence that would lead to universal growth and prosperity. And yet the early years of the Weimar Republic in
Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness
`Run until you can`t run anymore. Then run some more. Find a new source of energy and will. Then run even faster.` The words of Scott Jurek, a dominant force – and darling – in the gruelling and growing sport of ultrarunning for more than a decade. In 1999, as a complete unknown, he took
King`s Cross Kid: A Childhood between the Wars
Victor Gregg, born in 1919, has had a rich and fascinating life. `King`s Cross Kid` follows his London childhood from the age of five, when life was so hard that the Salvation Army arranged for young Vic to be taken to the Shaftesbury Home for Destitute Children. Home again a year later, the scallywag years
Hotel Florida: Truth, Love and Death in the Spanish Civil War
Amid the rubble of a city blasted by a civil war that many fear will cross borders and engulf Europe, the Hotel Florida on Madrid`s chic Gran Via has become a haven for foreign journalists and writers. It is here that six people meet and find their lives changed forever. Ernest Hemingway, his career stalled,
