Virginia Woolf, born in 1882, was the major novelist at the heart of the inter-war Bloomsbury Group. Her early novels include The Voyage Out, Night and Day and Jacob's Room. Between 1925 and 1931 she produced her finest masterpieces, including Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando and the experimental The Waves. Her later novels include The Years and Between the Acts, and she also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, journalism and biography, including the passionate feminist essay A Room of One's Own. Suffering from depression, she drowned herself in the River Ouse in 1941.

Virginia Woolf

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Horatio Clare

*A Newstatesman Book of the Year* 
 
‘Nimble, vital, unexpectedly affecting’ Observer 
 
Bestselling travel writer Horatio Clare joins an icebreaker for a voyage through the ice-packs of the far north. 
 
'We are celebrating a hundred years since independence this year: how would you like to travel on a government icebreaker?' 
 
 
A message from the Finnish embassy launches Horatio Clare on a voyage around an extraordinary country and an unearthly place, the frozen Bay of Bothnia, just short of the Arctic circle. Travelling with the crew of Icebreaker Otso, Horatio, whose last adventure saw him embedded on Maersk container vessels for the bestseller Down to the Sea in Ships, discovers stories of Finland, of her mariners and of ice. 
 
 
Aboard Otso Horatio gets to know the men who make up her crew, and explores Finland’s history and character. Surrounded by the extraordinary colours and conditions of a frozen sea, he also comes to understand something of the complexity and fragile beauty of ice, a near-miraculous substance which cools the planet, gives the stars their twinkle and which may hold all our futures in its crystals.

Icebreaker

A Voyage Far North

Danie Couchman

Danie Couchman grew up on the move, her family never staying still long enough for her to say where she&rsquo;s from. At twenty-five, and living in her seventeenth home, she finds herself drowning in the rush of London life, and makes an impulsive decision: to buy a narrowboat and make it her home.Surrounded by an eclectic and itinerant community in the uncharted territory of the capital&rsquo;s urban wilderness, Danie becomes fully immersed in this hidden world. Each day onboard her boat Genesis is an adventure full of disaster and magic. Over five years of living off-grid, nomadic Danie learns to survive the many highs and lows of boat life alone, keeping herself, and her steel home, afloat.A captivating debut, Afloat is the story of a young woman&rsquo;s desire to escape an ever more isolated city existence and reconnect with nature, discovering what is important in life.

Afloat

A Memoir

Kate Moore

This funny and touching book is bursting with more of Felix's adorable escapades, from a run-in with a rosemary plant to a frustrating encounter with a pigeon, but her role at the station goes far beyond all that: when romance blossoms, danger strikes and tragedy befalls the station, she is always there to support her team through all the highs and lows. 
 
Felix's online fame is ever increasing and she has more visitors to greet every day, but there is only so much attention that one cat can handle and isn't long before Felix's colleagues recruit Bolt: a fluffy, springy kitten-apprentice to help shoulder the burden. 
 
But will the two of them get on? And will the diva of Huddersfield station make room for the new kid on the block?

Full Steam Ahead, Felix

Adventures of a famous station cat and her kitten apprentice

Sophie Elmhirst

**THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER** 
**WINNER OF THE NERO AWARDS GOLD PRIZE BOOK OF THE YEAR** 
**A BARACK OBAMA BOOK OF THE YEAR** 
 
An extraordinary true story of shipwreck, survival and love 
 
'An enthralling, engrossing story of survival' Bill Bryson 
‘An absolute jewel of a book’ India Knight 
‘A gripping tale of adventure’ Elizabeth Day 
‘An extraordinary survival story’ Sunday Times 
 
Bored of 1970s suburban life, Maurice and Maralyn plan their escape: sell the house, build a boat, set sail for New Zealand. Then, halfway around the world, their beloved boat is struck by a whale and the pair are cast adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Alone on a tiny raft, their love is put to the test. This is a book about human connection and the human condition; about how we survive – not just at sea, but in life. 
 
‘This skilful storytelling drew me in…very touching indeed’ James Rebanks 
‘With the adrenaline kick of Jaws . . . A remarkable portrait of a marriage kept afloat against the odds’ Financial Times 
‘This dramatic, profound human story is so beautifully told. I really could not put it down’ Nina Stibbe 
 
A Guardian, Observer & Waterstones Non-fiction Book of the Year 
 
**READERS ADORE MAURICE & MARALYN** 
‘A riveting tale of survival . . . and of the power of love when all appears lost’ 
‘A mind-blowing story of resilience and love in the face of adversity’ 
‘The very best kind of true story, and beautifully written’ 
‘I couldn’t put this book down’ 
‘I was absolutely hooked from the outset’ 
 
Published as A Marriage at Sea in the USA

Maurice and Maralyn

An extraordinary true story of shipwreck, survival and love

A Whale, a Shipwreck, a Love Story

Julian Sancton

'full of heroism, greed, piracy, sunken treasure and adventure on the high seas... it's even more remarkable because it's true' ERIC SCHLOSSER New York Times bestselling author of Command and Control and Fast Food Nation 
 
'a splendid historical tale that’s been researched meticulously and told exceptionally well' HAMPTON SIDES, New York Times bestselling author of 'The Wide Wide Sea' 
 
'a rousing slice of narrative history, and a rip-roaring tale from bow to stern' TELEGRAPH 
 
The riveting true story of a legendary Spanish galleon that sunk with over $1 billion in gold and silver—and one man’s obsessive quest to find it—from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Madhouse at the End of the Earth 
 
Roger Dooley wasn’t looking for the San Jose. But an accidental discovery in the dusty stacks of a Spanish archive in the 1980s led him to the story of a lifetime—the journey of a ship that had gathered a mountain of riches from the New World for a long-awaited delivery to the King of Spain nearly three centuries earlier. But that ship, the galleon San Jose, never reached its destination. Instead, the Spanish treasure fleet was drawn into a pitched battle with British ships of war off the coast of Cartagena. When the smoke cleared, the San Jose had disappeared into the ocean. 
 
Though a diver at heart, Dooley was an unlikely candidate to find the San Jose. Half Cuban by birth, he lived a life that stretched from the ballfields of Brooklyn to the shores of Castro’s Havana at the dawn of revolution, where he would help birth a fledgling nation’s diving program and make films with Jacques Cousteau, before finding himself placed on an international watch list and barred from the United States. Dooley had little in the way of serious credentials, yet his tenacity and single-minded devotion to finding the San Jose led him to breakthroughs once thought impossible. As he jousted with famous treasure hunters and well-funded competitors, Dooley ultimately homed in on a patch of sea that might contain a three-hundred-year-old shipwreck—or nothing at all. 
 
Neptune's Fortune plunges into a rarified world through the eyes of an idiosyncratic protagonist, one whose work would spark the hopes of presidents and make real the dreams of a nation. This tale of temerity and treasure is a one-of-a-kind story of a lost fortune and the decades-long quest to shine a light on the bounty at the bottom of the sea. 
 
'brilliantly written... if I were to choose one book to exemplify the fascination and folly of treasure-hunting, this would be it' DAVID GIBBINS, author of A History of the World in Twleve Shipwrecks 
 
'a thoroughly engrossing read' SUSAN ORLEAN, bestselling author of The Orchid Thief and The Library Book 
 
'Sancton is a masterful storyteller... Readers are in for a rare treat' SCOTT ANDERSON, New York Times bestselling author of Lawrence in Arabia

Neptune’s Fortune

The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire

Tom Nancollas

If Britain's maritime history were embodied in a single ship, she would have a prehistoric prow, a mast plucked from a Victorian steamship, the hull of a modest fishing vessel, the propeller of an ocean liner and an anchor made of stone. We might call her Asunder, and, fantastical though she is, we could in fact find her today, scattered in fragments across the country's creeks and coastlines. This extraordinary book collects those fragments for a profound and haunting exploration of our seafaring past. 
 
In his moving and original new history, Tom Nancollas goes in search of eleven relics that together tell the story of Britain at sea. From the swallowtail prow of a Bronze Age vessel to a stone ship moored at a Baroque quayside, each one illuminates a distinct phase of our adventures upon the waves; each brings us close to the people, places and vessels that made a maritime nation. Weaving together stories of great naval architects and unsung shipwrights, fishermen and merchants, shipwrecks and superstition, pilgrimage, trade and war, The Ship Asunder celebrates the richness of Britain's seafaring tradition in all its glory and tragedy, triumph and disaster, and asks how we might best memorialize it as it vanishes from our shores.

The Ship Asunder

A Maritime History of Britain in Eleven Vessels

John George Freeman

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 delightful records of their trips contain much that will resonate with the modern traveller, from the eccentricities of fellow passengers and locals to the tender mercies of the British climate. At the same time they offer insights into the experiences particular to a Victorian tourist, and are full of valuable local history on everywhere from Devon and Jersey to Scotland and Wales. 
 
Beautifully illustrated throughout with John’s original drawings, this is a fascinating and uniquely personal historical artefact, as well as an enchanting and frequently hilarious evocation of a distant but still wholly recognisable Britain.

Three Men and a Bradshaw

Clare Hammond

In 2016, while working as a journalist in Yangon, Clare Hammond discovered an obscure map that showed a web of new railways spanning the length and breadth of the country - railways not shown on any other publicly available maps. She was determined to uncover the railways' origins, purpose, and most of all, the silence that surrounded them. She would spend three months travelling on these mysterious railways, and the next five years piecing their story together. 
 
Her journey would take her from Myanmar's tropical south to the embattled mountain towns that border India and China. In dilapidated carriages, along tracks in disrepair, through contested ethnic states and former sites of forced labour, visiting temples, tea shops and festivals, Clare encountered a colourful and contradictory Myanmar through the stories of its people. Simultaneously a lush and evocative travelogue, an unsparing account of Myanmar's recent history, and an astonishing, conversation-shifting engagement with Britain's colonial legacy, On the Shadow Tracks is that rare and necessary thing: a book that finds and tells the truth.

On the Shadow Tracks

A Journey through Occupied Myanmar

Robert Pirsig

Acclaimed as one of the most exciting books in the history of American letters, this modern epic became an instant bestseller upon publication in 1974, transforming a generation and continuing to inspire millions. A narration of a summer motorcycle trip undertaken by a father and his son, the book becomes a personal and philosophical odyssey into fundamental questions of how to live. Resonant with the confusions of existence, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a touching and transcendent book of life.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

40th Anniversary Edition

Mike Carter

A broken heart and a moment of drunken bravado inspires middle-aged, and typically rather cautious, journalist Mike Carter to take off on a life-changing six month motorcycle trip around Europe. Never mind that he hadn't been on two wheels since an inglorious three-month teenage chapter involving a Lambretta, four crashes and an 18-month ban for drink-driving, a plan had begun to loosely form... 
 
And so, having completed a six day residential motorcycle course and hastily re-mortgaged his flat, Mike sets off alone, resolving to go wherever the road takes him and enjoy the adventure of heading off into the unknown. He ends up travelling almost 20,000 miles and reaching the four extremes of Europe: the Arctic Circle in the north, the Mediterranean coast in the south, the Portuguese Atlantic to the west and the Iraqi border of Turkey in the east. 
 
But really it's a journey inwards, as, on the way, Mike finds his post-divorce scars starting to heal and attempts to discover what he, as a man in his forties who hasn't quite found his place in the world, should be doing. Self-deprecating, poetic and utterly engaging, his is a heroic journey taken for the rest of us too scared to leave our 9 to 5 office-bound existence.

Uneasy Rider

Travels Through a Mid-Life Crisis

Fred Dibnah

David Hall

Britains favourite steeplejack and industrial enthusiastic, the late Fred Dibnah, takes us back to the 18th century when the invention of the steam engine gave an enormous impetus to the development of machinery of all types. He reveals how the steam engine provided the first practical means of generating power from heat to augment the old sources of power (from muscle, wind and water) and provided the main source of power for the Industrial Revolution.    In Fred Dibnahs Age of Steam Fred shares his passion for steam and meets some of the characters who devote their lives to finding, preserving and restoring steam locomotives, traction engines and stationary engines, mill workings and pumps. Combined with this will be the stories of central figures of the time, including James Watts -  inventor of the steam engine - and Richard Trevithick who played a key role in the expansion of industrial Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Fred Dibnah's Age Of Steam

Shane Spall

Shane and Tim Spall are on the second leg of a very big adventure, taking their Dutch barge The Princess Matilda around the coast of Britain. 
 
From Matilda’s winter berth in Cardiff, Shane and Tim follow the Welsh coast, before ambitiously deciding to visit the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland. Along the way they cross Cardigan Bay in the company of a pod of dolphins, meet the king and queen of Piel Island, get lost in shipping lanes near Liverpool, successfully cross the notorious Irish Sea (twice!), accidentally sail through an army firing range, and experience the matchless beauty of Scotland’s Caledonian canal. Emerging into the North Sea at Inverness, they set a course down the east coast for London, back where their journey began. 
 
Tim and Shane aren’t the amateur sailors they once were, but things still don’t always go to plan. It’s not easy navigating our dangerous coastal waters, and crashing waves and strong tides can be terrifying. But it’s exhilarating too, and the realisation of a dream they have had for a very long time. 
 
It’s a slow journey, but a satisfying one, visiting fishing villages and ports, and exploring Britain’s windswept coast. Along the way they meet brave lifeboat crews, lockkeepers, fishermen and a whole host of people who make their living or their leisure on the water. The Princess Matilda Comes Home is a funny and warm hearted story about sharing a great adventure with someone you love.

The Princess Matilda Comes Home

Malcolm Gladwell

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
'A parable written for the age of technological disruption . . . brilliantly told' Sunday Times 
 
The international bestselling author returns with an exploration of one of the grandest obsessions of the twentieth century 
 
'The Bomber Mafia is a case study in how dreams go awry. When some shiny new idea drops from the heavens, it does not land softly in our laps. It lands hard, on the ground, and shatters.' 
 
In the years before the Second World War, in a sleepy air force base in central Alabama, a small group of renegade pilots put forth a radical idea. What if we made bombing so accurate that wars could be fought entirely from the air? What if we could make the brutal clashes between armies on the ground a thing of the past? 
 
This book tells the story of what happened when that dream was put to the test. The Bomber Mafia follows the stories of a reclusive Dutch genius and his homemade computer, Winston Churchill's forbidding best friend, a team of pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard, a brilliant pilot who sang vaudeville tunes to his crew, and the bomber commander, Curtis Emerson LeMay, who would order the bloodiest attack of the Second World War. 
 
In this tale of innovation and obsession, Gladwell asks: what happens when technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war? And what is the price of progress?

The Bomber Mafia

A Tale of Innovation and Obsession

A Story Set in War

Martin Buckley

In this exciting and unusual travel book, Martin Buckley journeys through many places, from Benbecula to Rarotonga, from Sudan to New Zealand, from Corsica to Tucson, Arizona - but the country he explores is a romantic and dangerous place that seduces all who travel there - the sky. 
 
Three years ago, Martin Buckley gained a pilot's licence, and set off to 'hitch-hike' by plane around the world. His encounters with a range of sometimes eccentric and always obsessive pilots led to aid flights through war zones in a UN Cessna, aerobatics in a jet fighter, chasing goats across snowy mountains by helicopter and touching the edge of the stratosphere in a Learjet. 
 
The result is a wholly original travel book, free-spirited and often very funny, weaving a bird's-eye view of aviation's peculiar history into the narrative and offering intimate insights into the passion and perils of the pilot's seat.

Absolute Altitude

A Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Sky

Jeremy Clarkson

Everyone knows that Jeremy Clarkson finds the world a perplexing place - after all, he wrote a bestselling book about it. Yet despite the appearance of The World According To Clarkson, things don't seem to have improved much. However, Jeremy is not someone to give up easily and he's decided to have another go. 
 
In And Another Thing, our exasperated hero discovers that: 
 
 He inadvertently dropped a bomb on North Carolina 
 
 We're all going to explode at the age of 62 
 
Russians look bad in Speedos. But not as bad as we do. 
 
 No one should have to worry about being Bill Oddie's long lost sister 
 
He should probably be nicer about David Beckham 
 
Thigh-slappingly funny and - as ever - in your face, Jeremy Clarkson bursts the pointless little bubbles of the idiots while celebrating the special, the unique and the sheer bloody brilliant ...

And Another Thing

The World According to Clarkson Volume 2

William Langewiesche

<a href="https://shop.penguin.co.uk/collections/book-bundles-modern-classics/?&amp;utm_source=Penguin.co.uk&amp;utm_medium=Linked_text&amp;utm_campaign=Penguin_Modern_Classics_Series_26_06">Choose 3 timeless classics for only £21 over on the Penguin Shop</a>

In the essays collected here William Langewiesche considers how flying has altered not only how we move about the earth, but also how we view our world and our place in it. With vivid descriptions of the aesthetics and excitement of flight, Langewiesche also writes of the risks that go with this beauty: the perils of air traffic control, and the dangers of nervous passengers and bad weather. 
 
Full of spare and elegant prose, Aloft is a fascinating journey into the new, profound dimension that flight has added to the human experience.

Aloft

Welcome back to Clarkson’s Farm. 
The spring crop failed. Farming sheep, pigs and cows was hardly more lucrative (better off breeding ostriches…) 
 
But in the face of uncooperative weather, bureaucracy, and the world’s persistent refusal to recognise his genius, our hero’s not beaten yet. Not while the farm shop’s still doing a roaring trade in smelly candles, he isn’t. 
 
Misery loves company and in girlfriend Lisa, Farm Manager Kaleb, Cheerful Charlie and Gerald his Head of Security Jeremy’s got the best. And it’s hard to feel too gloomy with a JCB telehandler, a crop-spraying hovercraft and a digger in the barn.

Diddly Squat: Home to Roost

Matthew Crawford

Why We Drive is a rebellious and daring celebration of the human spirit and the competence of ordinary people by the bestselling author of The Case for Working with Your Hands. 
 
Once we were drivers on the open road. 
 
Today we are more often in the back seat of an Uber. 
 
As we hurtle toward a 'self-driving' future, are we destined to become passengers in our own lives too? 
 
In Why We Drive, the philosopher and mechanic Matthew Crawford celebrates the risk, skill and freedom of driving. He reveals what we are losing to technology and government control in the modern world, and speaks up for play, dissent and occasionally being scared witless. 
 
'Fascinating... A pleasure to read' Sunday Times 
 
'Persuasive and thought-provoking... A vivid and heartfelt manifesto' Observer

Why We Drive

On Freedom, Risk and Taking Back Control

Michael Holroyd

Michael Holroyd confronts an army of automobiles in this charming book. Weaving together memoir and historical anecdote, he traces his relationship with cars through a lifetime of biography. 
 
Learning to drive was no easy matter for Michael: the lessons required military precision when practising how to get in and out of his car correctly. His biographical subjects also had their difficulties: Bernard Shaw drove with reckless gusto when overtaking his eightieth year; Vita Sackville-West’s car became a chamber for sudden romantic assignations and getaways; while Augustus John and his family careered through vulnerable villages as the poor vehicle, piled high with bohemian friends, stuttered and jerked along in first gear. 
 
Wry, thoughtful and very funny, On Wheels is an elegy to the glamour of the car. Subtle and perceptive, Michael Holroyd finds surprising ways to understand the past and challenge our view of the future.

On Wheels

Jody Rosen

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2023** 
 
'Full of delightful anecdotes and interviews and fascinating historical tales' Mail on Sunday 
 
A panoramic portrait of the wonderous vehicle whose passenger is also its engine. 
 
A toy, a tool, a liberator, or complete nuisance: the bicycle has been many things to many people over the decades, yet it endures as the most popular form of transport in the world. How has such a simple machine achieved so much? 
 
Combining history, travelogue and memoir, Jody Rosen reshapes our understanding of this ubiquitous vehicle from its invention in 1817 to its present-day renaissance as a 'green machine'. Readers meet unforgettable characters: women's suffragists who steered bikes to the barricades in the 1890s, a Bhutanese king who races mountain bikes in the Himalayas, astronauts who ride a floating bicycle in zero gravity. 
 
By examining the bicycle's past and peering into its future, Two Wheels Good forms a joyful ode to an engineering marvel of global importance. 
 
'Funny, precise, surprising' Adam Gopnik 
 
'Love for two-wheeled transport runs through every sentence' Economist 
 
'Wry, rich, deeply researched' Patrick Radden Keefe

Two Wheels Good

The History and Mystery of the Bicycle

William Queen

When veteran law-enforcement officer and lifelong motorcycle lover William Queen penetrated the San Fernando chapter of the notorious Mongols, he was at the mercy of psychopaths who sought to have him prove his fealty by any means necessary, from selling and doing drugs to arms trafficking, driving getaway cars and, in one shocking instance, stitching up the face of a Mongol 'ol' lady' after a brutal beating at the hands of her boyfriend. 
 
Yet despite the constant criminality of the gang, Queen came to see the genuine camaraderie they shared. When his lengthy undercover work totally isolated Queen from his relatives and friends, the Mongols felt like the only family he had left. Under and Alone is a breathless, adrenalin-charged read that puts you on the street with some of the most dangerous men in America.

Under and Alone

Infiltrating the World's Most Violent Motorcycle Gang

Mark Vanhoenacker

**Sunday Times Bestseller** 
**Book of the Week on Radio 4** 
 
'A beautiful book about a part of the modern world which remains genuinely magical’ Mark Haddon 
 
'One of the most constantly fascinating, but consistently under-appreciated aspects of modern life is the business of flying. Mark Vanhoenacker has written the ideal book on the subject: a description of what it’s like to fly by a commercial pilot who is also a master prose stylist and a deeply sensitive human being. This is a man who is at once a technical expert – he flies 747s across continents – and a poet of the skies. This couldn’t be more highly recommended.' Alain de Botton 
 
Think back to when you first flew. When you first left the Earth, and travelled high and fast above its turning arc. When you looked down on a new world, captured simply and perfectly through a window fringed with ice. When you descended towards a city, and arrived from the sky as effortlessly as daybreak. 
 
In Skyfaring, airline pilot and flight romantic Mark Vanhoenacker shares his irrepressible love of flying, on a journey from day to night, from new ways of mapmaking and the poetry of physics to the names of winds and the nature of clouds. Here, anew, is the simple wonder that remains at the heart of an experience which modern travellers, armchair and otherwise, all too easily take for granted: the transcendent joy of motion, and the remarkable new perspectives that height and distance bestow on everything we love. 
 
‘A beautiful, contemplative book… What Skyfaring gives is something we need: elevation; another perspective… Normally when I find a volume where prose style and subject matter fuse so pleasingly, I tear through it in a day. Here, I found myself pausing on almost every page, as I absorbed its detail or phrasing.’ Nicholas Lezard, Guardian 
 
**A 2015 Book of the Year – The Economist, The New York Times, GQ and more**

Skyfaring

A Journey with a Pilot

Robert Penn

The bicycle is one of mankind's greatest inventions - and the most popular form of transport in history. Robert Penn has ridden one most days of his adult life. In his late 20s, he pedalled 40,000 kilometres around the world. Yet, like cyclists everywhere, the utilitarian bikes he currently owns don't even hint at this devotion. Robert needs a new bike, a bespoke machine that reflects how he feels when he's riding it - like an ordinary man touching the gods. 
 
It's All About the Bike is the story of a journey to design and build a dream bike. En route, Robert explores the culture, science and history of the bicycle. From Stoke-on-Trent, where an artisan hand builds his frame, to California, home of the mountain bike, where Robert tracks down the perfect wheels, via Portland, Milan and Coventry, birthplace of the modern bicycle, this is the narrative of our love affair with cycling. It's a tale of perfect components - parts that set the standard in reliability, craftsmanship and beauty. It tells how the bicycle has changed the course of human history, from the invention of the 'people's nag' to its role in the emancipation of women, and from the engineering marvel of the tangent-spoked wheel to the enduring allure of the Tour de France. It's the story of why we ride, and why this simple machine remains central to life today.

It's All About the Bike

The Pursuit of Happiness On Two Wheels

Richard J. King

Sailing on a boat by yourself out at sea and out of sight of land can be exhilarating or terrifying, compelling or tedious - sometimes it can be all of these things just in one morning. It is an adventure at odds with our normal, sociable lives, carried out floating on a medium wholly inimical to our existence. But the deep ocean is also a remarkable place on which to think. 
 
Richard King's enormously engaging and curious new book is about the debt we owe to solo sailors: women and men, young and old, who have set out alone. Spending weeks and months alone, slowly, quietly and close to the ocean surface is to create the world's largest laboratory: an endlessly changing, capricious and startling place in which to observe oneself, the weather, the stars and myriad sea creatures, from the tiniest to the most massive and threatening. 
 
This is a book for anyone who is fascinated by sailing, solitude and the vast seas that cover so much of our planet.

Sailing Alone

A History

Volume 4 in the bestselling World According to Clarkson series 
 
Jeremy Clarkson had a dream. A world where the nonsensical made sense, the idiotic was abolished and the sheer bloody brilliant was embraced. In How Hard Can It Be? our hero embarks on a quest to set the world to rights. Again. 
 
En-route he discovers how rhubarb will become the new crack, that a comb over will end anyone's quest for global domination and what unites a Filipino chambermaid in Abergavenny with Prince Andrew. 
 
For anyone who's ever woken up and thought the time has come to stop the nonsense and celebrate the sensational, read on. Because seriously, how hard can it be? 
 
Jeremy Clarkson began his writing career on the Rotherham Advertiser. He now writes for the Sun and the Sunday Times and is the tallest person working in British television.

How Hard Can It Be?

The World According to Clarkson Volume 4

James Davidson

With over six thousand miles of rugged coastline, nowhere in Scotland is more than forty-five miles from tidal waters, and seven of the biggest towns and cities are seaports. No wonder then that the sea has shaped Scotland, and in turn the Scots have helped to shape maritime history, trade and communications. 
 
Scots and the Sea is a unique and compelling account of a small, sparsely populated country's relationship with the most powerful force on earth. It is a celebration of the courage and endurance of fishermen and their families, the selfless bravery of lifeboat volunteers and the individual brilliance of leaders like Admiral Cochrane, who helped establish free nations across the globe. The illicit activities of scoundrels like Captain Kidd also provide a taste of the darker side of the story. 
 
Scotland's proud maritime tradition is traced through this volume, which examines the development of trade, the founding of a Scottish merchant navy and the pressures towards Union with England. It explores ports, harbours and shipyards, and outlines the vital role Scotland has played in shipbuilding and marine engineering - from the galleys and longships of early history to clippers, steamships, ocean liners, hovercraft and oil rigs. Also recounted are the exploits and achievements of Scots in all these fields, including those of James Watt, William Symington, Henry Bell and Robert Stevenson. Finally, it takes a look into the future, where Scottish research into wave and tidal power could become vital in providing a source of sustainable energy. 
 
Over the years, many Scots have made their living and their fortune from the sea, others have lost their lives to it – Scots and the Sea is a tribute to all of them.

Scots And The Sea

A Nation's Lifeblood

Ted Simon

In the late '70s Ted Simon rode 63,000 miles over four years through fifty-four countries in a journey that took him around the world. 
 
 Through breakdowns, prison, war, revolutions, disasters and a Californian commune, he travelled into the depths of fear and reached the heights of euphoria. 
 
 He met astonishing people and was treated as a spy, a welcome stranger and even a god. For Simon the trip became a journey into his own soul, and for many others - including bikers Charley Boorman and Ewan McGregor - it provides an inspiration they will never forget. 
 
 Brought up in England by a German mother and a Romanian father, Ted Simon found himself impelled by an insatiable desire to explore the world. It led him to abandon an early scientific career in favour of journalism, and he has worked for several newspapers and magazines on Fleet Street and elsewhere. Ted Simon is also the author of Riding Home and The Gypsy in Me.

Jupiter's Travels

Michael Williams

This beautifully-packaged book will take the reader on the slow train to another era when travel meant more than hurrying from one place to the next, the journey meaning nothing but time lost in crowded carriages, condemned by broken timetables. On the Slow Train will reconnect with that long-missed need to lift our heads from the daily grind and reflect that there are still places in Britain where we can stop and stare. It will tap into many things: a love of railways, a love of history, a love of nostalgia. 
 
This book will be a paean to another age before milk churns, porters and cats on seats were replaced by security announcements and Burger King. These 12 spectacular journeys will help free us from what Baudelaire denounced as 'the horrible burden of time.' 
 
Updated for the paperback.

On The Slow Train

Twelve Great British Railway Journeys

David Rooney

‘Vivid and compelling’ John Lancaster 
‘A delectable serving of escapist nostalgia’ The Times, Book of the Week 
 
 A non-stop flight across the Atlantic might seem routine today. But it is only possible because of those who went first. 
 
Newfoundland, 1919. Buffeted by winds, an unwieldy aircraft – made mainly from wood and stiff linen – struggled to take off from the North American island’s rocky slopes. Cramped side by side in its open cockpit were two men, freezing cold and barely able to move, but resolute. They had a dream: to be the first in human history to fly, non-stop, across the Atlantic Ocean. But there were three other teams competing against them, and as the waves raged a few miles below, memories of wartime crashes resurfaced . . . 
 
Mining letters, diaries and evocative unpublished photographs, David Rooney’s deeply researched account of this audacious contest shows how it was the airmen’s thrilling wartime experiences that ultimately led them to the ‘Big Hop’, and brought old friends together for one more daring adventure. 
 
‘An excellent book… The Big Hop consists of colourful biographical sketches of the aviators who took part in the competition and thrilling accounts of their efforts’ Daily Mail 
 
‘The Big Hop is a glorious romp through an overlooked part of aviation history, stuffed full of intriguing characters and white-knuckle courage’ Sunday Times

The Big Hop

The first flight across the Atlantic and the ordinary heroes who risked their lives for it

The First Non-stop Flight Across the Atlantic and Into the Future

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