About Gabriel García Márquez: Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014) was a short-story writer, novelist, journalist and a screenwriter from Colombia. He was a reporter for a Colombian newspaper, El Espectador, and also a foreign correspondent stationed in New York, Rome, Paris and Barcelona. Marquez is the author of numerous popular novels and short stories. He is well known for his unique literary style known as magical realism, in which he describes reality through magical events and elements. His most popular novels include Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.

Gabriel García Márquez

Kami Garcia

Eric Garcia

Helena Garcia

About Justin Garcia: Dr. Justin R. Garcia is an evolutionary biologist and sex researcher. He is Executive Director &amp; Senior Scientist at the Kinsey Institute. He is also the Scientific Advisor to Match Group and Match.com, where he provides expertise to the company’s annual Singles in America study. His research has been featured in outlets like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, TIME, Cosmopolitan and Vanity Fair.

Justin Garcia

About Héctor García / Hector García: Héctor García is a citizen of Japan, where he has lived for over a decade, and of Spain, where he was born. He is the author of several books about Japanese culture, including two worldwide bestsellers, A Geek in Japan and Ikigai. A former software engineer, he worked at CERN in Switzerland before moving to Japan.

Héctor García

About Eduardo Garcia: Eduardo Garcia has written dozens of stories for the New York Times on how people can reduce their carbon footprint. He has written news stories and features from more than a dozen countries in his more than fifteen years as a journalist. A native of Spain, Eduardo cut his teeth working as a Reuters correspondent in Guatemala, Bolivia, Argentina, Colombia, and Ecuador. Eduardo strives to lead a sustainable lifestyle and believes in using words to empower people.

Eduardo Garcia

Roberto Garcia

Lisa Gabriele

Sarah Gabriel

About Gabriel Weston: Gabriel Weston was born in 1970. She studied English at Edinburgh University before attending medical school in London and becoming a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 2003. Her Sunday Times bestselling debut, Direct Red, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and won the PEN-Ackerley Award for Autobiography, while her novel Dirty Work won the McKitterick Prize. The presenter of several BBC TV series, including Trust Me I’m a Doctor and Incredible Medicine: Dr Weston’s Casebook, she currently works as a part-time surgeon and lives in London with her husband and children.

Gabriel Weston

About Gabrielle Kent: Gabrielle Kent worked as a graphic artist on video games before becoming a senior lecturer in games development. Now a full-time author, her work includes Alfie Bloom - a series about a boy who inherits a castle and a whole load of magical problems, Knights and Bikes - a series based on the video game of the same name, and Rani Reports, featuring a girl who wants to be an investigative journalist and her adventures with her rambunctious Mauritian nani. Gabrielle lives in the North East of England with her husband, daughter and agoraphobic cat.

Gabrielle Kent

About Philip Gabriel: Philip Gabriel is the author of Mad Wives and Island Dreams: Shimao Toshio and the Margins of Japanese Literature and Spirit Matters: The Transcendent in Modern Japanese Literature and has translated many novels and short stories by the writer Haruki Murakami and other modern writers. He is recipient of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature (2001) for his translation of Senji Kuroi’s Life in the Cul-de-Sac, and the 2006 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for his translation of Murakami's Kafka on the Shore.

Philip Gabriel

About Gabriel Tallent: Gabriel Tallent was born in New Mexico and raised on the Mendocino coast. His first novel, My Absolute Darling was a Sunday Times bestseller, a New York Times bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book. It was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. Tallent lives in Salt Lake City with his wife and children.

Gabriel Tallent

About Gabriel Pogrund: Gabriel Pogrund is Whitehall Editor at the Sunday Times. He was named Journalist of the Year at the British Journalism Awards (2023). He won Scoop of the Year at the London Press Club Awards (2022) and was the Laurence Stern Fellow at the Washington Post in 2018.

Gabriel Pogrund

Gabrielle Pinto

About Gabrielle Grillo: Gabrielle Grillo lives in Bordeaux, France and she likes to knit conventional stuff like scarves and cardigans. She discovered the world of strange knits in 2010 and chose to start a Tumblr about it.

Gabrielle Grillo

About Gabriel Weinberg: Gabriel Weinberg is the founder and CEO of the multi-billion dollar internet privacy company, DuckDuckGo. He contributes to a number of publications including Medium and is the co-author of Traction.

Gabriel Weinberg

Gabrielle Mander

Ester García-Cortés / Ester García-Cortes.

Ester García-Cortés

Elizabeth Gabriel

Gabrielle Rifkind

About Gabriel Gatehouse: GABRIEL GATEHOUSE is a journalist and broadcaster. The former International Editor of Newsnight and co-host of Ukrainecast on BBC Sounds, he has reported from almost every recent conflict around the world, from Ukraine to Syria, Libya to Iraq. He has won numerous awards for his journalism, most recently the 2023 Broadcasting Press Guild (for The Coming Storm podcast) and the 2020 Foreign Press Association award for his coverage of the Hong Kong protests. He has reported extensively from the United States on the rise and fall of Donald Trump. His podcast, The Coming Storm, which launched in January 2022 to critical acclaim, was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Journalism.

Gabriel Gatehouse

Gabrielle Marcola

About Gabriele Marcotti: Born in Italy and now living in London, Gabriele Marcotti is a senior writer and analyst for ESPN, World Football Correspondent for The Times and UK correspondent for Corriere dello Sport. His previous books include The Italian Job: A Journey to the Heart of Two Great Footballing Cultures, shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, and Capello: Portrait of a Winner.

Gabriele Marcotti

Adolfo García Ortega

Gabrielle Hatfield

Gabriel Chevallier

Gabrielle Hamilton

About Gabrielle Griffiths: Gabrielle Griffiths grew up in Aberdeenshire and now lives in Brighton. She was a Madeleine Milburn Agency mentee in 2021 and is a graduate of the Curtis Brown Creative novel writing course. Her short fiction has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize.

Gabrielle Griffiths

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Roger Osborne

Spell-binding, horrific, poetic, apocalyptic, heart-rending, disturbing, prophetic, seditious, compelling and utterly fascinating - the dreams of Lucrecia de Leon have lain virtually undisturbed in the archives of the Spanish Inquisition for more than four hundred years. Lucrecia was a nineteen-year-old Madrilena when, in 1587, her dreams began to be recorded and published by a disaffected group of clerics. Over the next three years they transcribed four hundred of Lucrecia's dreams which they considered to be messages from God. The dreams warned of the defeat of the Armada, of the death of King Philip II, of the fall of Spain and of a new beginning under a new king - all told in bold and highly original visions. As some of her prophecies came true and as the Spanish court grew more discontented, she fell foul of the authorities and was arrested by the Holy Order. The Dreamer of the Calle de San Salvador produces thirty-five of Lucrecia's most captivating dreams. The imagery and inventiveness of her visions are astonishing, while the stories that they tell are compelling and of immense historical significance. Roger Osborne weaves a commentary around each dream, which allows us to see the world through the eyes of Lucrecia and helps us to understand the nature of her visions and the time and place she inhabited. This pioneering work shows us what history is like seen from the inside out.

The Dreamer Of Calle San Salvador

Piers Brendon

This illuminating biography of Robert Stephen Hawker (1803-75) unravels fully the famous Cornish parson-poet's rich personality. Drawing on a mass of unpublished material, Piers Brendon re-creates one of the most bizarre of Victorian lives, revealing the mixture of truth, over-simplification and falsehood in the legend which has built up around him. 
 
The popular account depicts Hawker as a youth of wild high spirits who delighted in hoaxes and practical jokes. As an Oxford undergraduate he won the Newdigate Poetry Prize and married his rich 41-year-old godmother. In 1834 he became vicar of Morwenstow and spent the rest of his life in his desolate country parish on the storm-swept coast of north Cornwall. He was a charitable, hard-working Anglo-Catholic but, owing to the remoteness of his position and lack of sympathy from his parishioners, his true genius became warped and he succumbed to wayward eccentricity. 
 
His dress was, to say the least, unorthodox, and he became obsessed with antiquarian lore, lending a haunting reality to the arcane superstitions which he cultivated. He entertained no doubt whatever about the active agency of demons and angels, ghosts and brownies. He talked to birds, invited his nine cats into church and excommunicated one of them when it caught a mouse on Sunday. Out of the timbers of wrecked ships he built a hut, a forbidding sanctuary perched on the high cliff-edge, where he invoked mystic visions and composed romantic poetry. 
 
Piers Brendon here rescues Hawker from legend, and his fascinating book substitutes character for caricature. An even more interesting and idiosyncratic Hawker emerges, scarred and moulded by the stark isolation of his hostile seaboard benefice, a man of remarkable insight and compassion, who submitted in strange ways to his calling, and who, it turns out, proves to have been a true prophet in his yearning exclamation: 'what a life mine would be if it were all written and published in a book.'

Hawker Of Morwenstow

Portrait of an Eccentric Victorian

Bill Clegg

What makes one of the most gifted, charismatic and successful literary agents in New York fall into full-blown crack-addiction: a collapse that would cost him his business, his home, many of his friends and - very nearly - his life? 
 
In his utterly compulsive narrative, Bill Clegg leads us through the grimiest back-rooms of Manhattan's underbelly, through scenes of blank-eyed sex and squalor, into the febrile paranoia of a mind gone out of control.

Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man

A Memoir

Laura Beatty

Mrs Langtry - born a provincial in 1853, died rich and lonely in 1929 - was surrounded by scandal, luxary and gossip; but this new book goes beyond these outward trappings to lift the masks that Oscar Wilde, her friend and mentor, taught her to wear. It is not so much a life as a series of lives - each one distinct from the next - as Lillie reinvented herself. At its centre are the love letters written by Lillie to Arthur Jones, her childhood friend and secret lover, at the time of her fall from Society, her near-bankruptcy, and the birth of her illegitimate daughter at a hidden address in Paris. Laura Beatty captures exactly the spirit of the age, and reveals a passionate woman for whom the charge of opportunism was by no means the whole story.

Lillie Langtry

Manners, Masks and Morals

Norman Longmate

In a brilliantly imaginative blend of military, social and diplomatic history, Norman Longmate retells our island story from the perspective of its defenders, in a narrative which stretches from the Celtic tribes who unsuccessfully fought against Ceasar to the great seabourne defence against the Armada of Philip of Spain. 
 
He has gone back to the original sources and investigated the original battlegrounds and weak spots in Britain's defences. But the real strength of his book is its seamless narrative of history, which uncovers the truth behind the legends. A mass of solidly researched fact, not readily found elsewhere, is seasoned with lively, humorous and occassionally gruesome anecdote. 
 
The result, providing at once an invaluable sourcebook for the specialist and an enthralling narrative for the general reader, is by far the most comprehensive and accessible history of England versus invasion ever published.

Defending The Island

From Caesar to the Armada

Norma Clarke

Dr Johnson's friendships with the leading women writers of the day was an important feature of his life and theirs.  He was willing to treat women as intellectual equals and to promote their careers: something ignored by his main biographer, James Boswell. Dr Johnson's Women investigates the lives and writings of six leading female authors Johnson knew well:  Elizabeth Carter, Charlotte Lennox, Elizabeth Montagu, Hester Thrale, Hannah More and Fanny Burney.  It explores their relationships with Johnson, with each other and with the world of letters.  It shows what it was like to be a woman writer in the 'Age of Johnson'. It is often assumed that women writers in the eighteenth century suffered the same restrictions and obstacles that confronted their Victorian successors.  Norma Clarke shows that this was by no means the case.  Highlighting the opportunities available to women of talent in the eighteenth century, Dr Johnson's Women makes clear just how impressive and varied their achievements were.

Dr Johnson's Women

Francine Du Plessix Gray

Donatien Alphonse Francois, Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), one of the most perplexing personalities of Western culture, has been called 'the freest spirit who ever lived' and 'a frenetic and abominable assemblage of all crimes and obscenities'. Yet scant attention has been given to the two women who were the catalysts of his fate: his loyal, tolerant wife, Renee-Pelagie, and his vindictive mother-in-law, Madame de Montreuil. This groundbreaking account vividly brings to life these two dynamic women and the complex bonds they evolved with the rakish Marquis, as they dedicated themselves to protecting, curbing and, ultimately, confining him.                                                                                                                             Francine du Plessix Gray draws on thousands of pages of correspondence between the magnetic, aristocratic Marquis de Sade and his plain, bourgeois wife, to explore in historical and psychological detail what it was like to live with this maverick adventurer and man of letters in the decades before the French Revolution. She brilliantly recreates the extravagant hedonism and corruption of late-18th-century France, the ensuing Terror, and the oppression of the Napoleonic regime under which de Sade spent his last years.

At Home With The Marquis De Sade

Alison Weir

More than four hundred years ago, seven people were beheaded in the Tower of London. Three had been queens of England. The others were found guilty of treason. Why were such important people put to death? 
 
Alison Weir's gripping book tells their stories: from the former friend betrayed by a man set on being king, to the young girl killed after just nine days on the throne. Traitors of the Tower is a short, sharp shot of royal revenge from the master of popular history and one of Britain's top-selling historians, Alison Weir. 
 
'Weir provides immense satisfaction. She writes in a pacy, vivid style, engaging the heart as well as the mind' Independent

Traitors of the Tower

Marsha Keith Schuchard

Much has been written about the work of William Blake and some of the religious beliefs that influenced him, but there is a secret history which, until now, has been kept deep beneath the surface in the mystical underground of England in the eighteenth-century. Here, leading Blake scholar Marsha Keith Schuchard reveals an altogether more intriguing and controversial picture of the poet and artist. 
 
The discovery of Blake family documents took Schuchard on a journey of detection that led her to a cast of radical characters including Cagliostro, Zinzendorf and the mystic Swedenborg, and to a world of waking visions, sexual-spiritual experimentation, kabbalistic magic, tantric sex and free love. 
 
Why Mrs Blake Cried offers a new insight into the work of Blake and takes us on an extraordinary journey through secret societies and ancient rituals.

Why Mrs Blake Cried

William Blake and the Erotic Imagination

Roberto Calasso

In books lauded as brilliant, exhilarating and profound, Roberto Calasso has revealed the unexpected intersections of ancient and modern through topics ranging from Greek and Indian mythology to what a legendary African kingdom can tell us about the French Revolution.  In this first translation of his most important essays, Calasso brings his powerful intellect and elegant prose style to bear on the essential thinkers of our time, providing a sweeping analysis of the current state of Western culture.'Forty-nine steps' refers to the Talmudic doctrine that there are forty-nine steps to meaning in every passage of the Torah.  Employing this interpretative approach, Calasso offers a 'secret history' of European literature and philosophy in the wake of Nietzsche, Marx and Freud.  Calasso analyses how figures ranging from Gustav Flaubert, Gottfried Benn, Karl Kraus and Martin Heidegger to Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht and Theodor Adorno have contributed to, or been emblematic of, the current state of Western thought.  This book's theme, writ large, is the power of the fable - specifically, its persistence in art and literature despite its exclusion from orthodox philosophy. In its breadth and the nature of its concerns, The Forty-nine Steps is a philosophical and literary twin to the widely praised Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony.  Combining erudition with engaging prose and original insights, Calasso contributes a daring new interpretation of some of the most challenging writers of the past 150 years.

The Forty-Nine Steps

Frances Woodsford

Dear Mr Bigelow is an enchanting selection of weekly 'pen-pal' letters written between 1949 and 1961 from an unmarried woman working at the Pier Approach Baths in Bournemouth, to a wealthy American widower, living on Long Island, New York. Frances Woodsford and Commodore Paul Bigelow never met, and there was no romance - she was in her forties when he died aged ninety-seven - yet their epistolary friendship was her lifeline. 
 
The 'Saturday Specials' as Frances dubbed them, are brilliantly-packed missives, sparked with comic genius, from post-war England. We follow her travails at the Baths (and her ghastly boss Mr Bond); the hilarious weekly Civil Defence classes as the Cold War advances; her attempts to shake off Dr Russell, an unwanted suitor; life at home with Mother, and Mac, her charming ne'er-do-well brother; and escapades in their jointly-owned car, a 1934 Ford 8 called Hesperus. 
 
Most importantly, we get to know Frances - and her deep affection for Mr Bigelow. She started to write to him as a way of thanking his daughter for the clothes and food parcels she sent. But what had begun as a good turn offered Frances the chance to escape a trying job, and to expound with elegance, wit and verve on topical subjects from home and abroad, bringing us a beady commentary on her life and times that leaps vividly from the page. Her letters to Mr Bigelow during his final illness are a tender and moving farewell, a touching conclusion to a unique record.

Dear Mr Bigelow

A Transatlantic Friendship

Lauren Redniss

'21st-century genius' Elle 
 
A howling wind, a thunderstorm, the beating sun – it’s with the elements that nature shows its true force and wonder. 
 
In Thunder and Lightning, Guggenheim fellow and Pulitzer nominee Lauren Redniss draws a new account of the weather. She has travelled from the frozen archipelagos of the Arctic Ocean to the ‘absolute desert’ of Atacoma, Chile, to show us the elements at their most extreme. Along the way, through interviews and research, she has unearthed curious stories of exploration, savagery and coincidence – stories which show us how weather has shaped humanity, intervened in the course of history, and how mankind, in turn, has tried to bend the weather to its ends. 
 
A book of exquisite beauty, with each illustration etched and coloured by hand, Thunder and Lightning informs, charms and transports. A combination of art and cultural history, from an uncategorisable and unique creative spirit, it will leave readers looking at the wind, the sun and the rain with new eyes.

Thunder and Lightning

Weather Past, Present and Future

Harvey Pitcher

This is a book on the Russian Revolution with a difference. It unites the formal history and the individual memoir by telling the story of 1917 in the words of eyewitnesses who say history in the making. They witnessed two revolutions - the overthrow of Tsarism in March and the Bolshevik seizure of power in November - and described them with an immediacy that later accounts never achieve. 
 
These witnesses are British and American rather than Russian: as outsiders, they could see more of the game. They include diplomats, newspaper correspondents, the military, businessmen, even the occasional English governess. There are also adventurous young American radicals like John Reed, author of Ten Days That Shook the World, and unexpected figures like Arthur Ransome, who married Trotsky's secretary and later wrote such children's classic as Swallows and Amazons. Their brilliant journalism has been unread since 1917, while many other eyewitness accounts are published here for the first time. Harvey Pitcher skilfully weaves their accounts into a vivid and absorbing narrative, treating the witnesses' often conflicting views of the Revolution with impartiality and leaving readers free to form their own judgements. 
 
In a new Afterword to the Pimlico edition, Harvey Pitcher relates the events of 1917 to what is happening in Russia today.

Witnesses Of The Russian Revolution

Miriam Schneir

Here are the essential historical writings of feminism. Many of the works, long out of print or forgotten in what Miriam Schneir describes as a male-dominated literary tradition, are finally brought out of obscurity and into the light of contemporary analysis and criticism. Included are more than forty selections, covering 150 years of writing on women's struggle for freedom - from Mary Wollstonecraft and George Sand to Emma Goldman and Clara Zetkiln.

The Vintage Book Of Historical Feminism

David Kynaston

The City of London. Vol IV: A Club No More is the fourth and final volume of David Kynaston's epic history of the square mile in the modern era. This lively and informative book takes the story from the post-war era, when the City was hemmed in by bombsites and austere Chancellors, through to very recent developments, such as the "Big-Bang" deregulation of 1986. This is as much a social history as a financial study, with interesting discussions of the changing class and complexion of the City, and with fascinating details on the early computerisation of the big companies. As with earlier volumes Kynaston's style is that of an anecdotal storyteller. Colourful characters, dramatic boardroom struggles and heated exchanges between politicians and bankers dominate the pages.

The City Of London Volume 4

Henry Hampton

Steve Fayer

Sarah Flynn

In this monumental volume, Henry Hampton and Steve Fayer draw upon nearly one thousand interviews with civil rights activists, politicians, reporters, Justice Department officials, and hundreds of ordinary people who took part in the struggle, weaving a fascinating narrative of the civil rights movement told by the people who lived it.

Voices Of Freedom

An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement From the 1950s Through the 1980s

Rosemary Ashton

They were the most remarkable couple in London: the great sage Carlyle, with his vehement prophecies, and his witty, sardonic wife Jane.  It was a strong, close, mutually admiring yet often mutually antagonistic partnership, fascinating to all who observed it. The Carlyles lived at the heart of English life in mid-Victorian London, but both were outsiders, a largely self-educated Scottish pair who took a sometimes caustic look at the society they so influenced - Carlyle through his copious writings, and both through their network of acquaintances and correspondents.  Carlyle's fame was confirmed by his Sartor Resartus of 1843, The French Revolution, his lectures on heroes and hero-worship and by his radical account of contemporary industrial Britain in Past and Present, 1843.  Both husband and wife were great letter-writers, Carlyle commenting on the matters of the day, dashing off pen portraits of those he met and Jane with her brilliant stories and her sharp, dry humour.  Yet despite her brilliance, Jane suffered, especially from Carlyle's infatuation with the lion-hunting Lady Ashburton, and the tensions in their marriage grew.  The letters they wrote, both to each other and to others, make theirs the most well-documented marriage of the nineteenth century and give us an unequalled portrait of a famously unhappy marriage. This moving and vivid biography describes their relationship with each other, from their first meeting in 1821 to Jane's death in 1866, and also their relationship with the world outside.  Rosemary Ashton's inimitable blend of rigorous scholarship, warm sensitivity and lively wit makes this not only a portrait of a marriage but a picture of a whole age, elegant, erudite and entertaining.

Thomas And Jane Carlyle

Portrait of a Marriage

Jane Juska

As a result of what she calls 'the only stroke of genius I've ever had', Jane Juska placed a personal ad in a newspaper, that began: 'Before I turn 67 - next March - I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like.' The response was overwhelming, and it changed Jane's life. She told all in A Round-Heeled Woman, which Lynne Truss called 'the best book about sex I have read', and which shocked some, amused many and became a bestseller. 
 
Five years later, Jane has, like it or not, become a kind of icon for the post-menopause generation. She's a friend and confessor to women of all ages with poignant, tragic or enchanting stories - unaccompanied women, alone for now but searching for sex and romance. And despite her success, Jane herself is still looking for a man to keep her company - not a husband, not even a partner, but the perfect lover, described by Katharine Hepburn as one who 'lives nearby and visits often'. 
 
So the story continues, looking around at her generation, back to her youth, and forward to... whatever grabs her fancy. And like many unaccompanied women, Jane's also in search of a better place to live. Her current tiny apartment doesn't allow for much in the way of romance, let alone the giant toy box she wants to fill for her granddaughter, born on her birthday and now just two, who's brought another kind of love to her life. But as a sporadic earner on a teacher's pension, she can never afford the dream house. 
 
So the search continues, for love, friendship, sex, a roof over her head - it's what keeps this seventy-two year old author young, and will keep readers wonderfully entertained in this funny, deft and touching memoir.

Unaccompanied Women

Ronald Lewin

'This anthology is... a distillation of what the fighters put down at the time or in retrospect to tell others (or perhaps convince themselves) what it was all about. Here are the words of the wise, the witty, the nonchalant, the devil-may-care: the poets and the prodigals.' From the Editor's Foreword 
 
On land, the Second World War provided an infinite variety of experience, often under stresses as great as human beings have endured. Reactions are correspondingly various - from the comic to the appalled. 
 
Here are the testimonies of those who fought in all the great campaigns - in Europe, Africa and the Far East. Here too are the words of prisoners, partisans, saboteurs and soldiers in private armies. 
 
This is the third volume in the unique Freedom's Battle trilogy, which provides intensely vivid accounts of war at sea, in the air and on land. Far better than any single narrative, the extracts build up a complete picture of the War as it was experienced by the men and women who actually fought in it.

The War on Land

1939-45

Edward Posnett

‘An exceptional first book; Harvest is a subtle, fascinating braiding of travel, cultural and natural history … It is a pleasure and an education to journey with him in these pages’ Robert Macfarlane 
 
In a centuries-old tradition, farmers in northwestern Iceland scour remote coastal plains for the down of nesting eider ducks. 
 
High inside a vast cave in Borneo, men perched atop rickety ladders collect swiftlets’ nests, a delicacy believed to be a cure for almost anything. 
 
Eiderdown and edible birds’ nests: both are luxury products, ultimately destined for the super-rich. To the rest of the world these materials are mere commodities but to the harvesters they are all imbued with myth, tradition, folklore and ritual, and form part of a shared identity and history. 
 
These objects are two of the seven natural wonders whose stories Harvest tells: eiderdown, vicuña wool, sea silk, vegetable ivory, civet coffee, guano and edible birds’ nests. Harvest follows their journey from the wildest parts of the planet, traversing Iceland, Indonesia, and Peru, to its urban centres, drawing on the voices of the gatherers, shearers and entrepreneurs who harvest, process and trade them. 
 
Blending interviews, history and travel writing, Harvest sets these human stories against our changing economic and ecological landscape. What do they tell us about capitalism, global market forces and overharvesting? How does a local micro-economy survive in a hyper-connected world? 
 
Harvest makes us see the world with wonder, curiosity and new concern. It is an original and magical new map of our world and its riches.

Harvest

The Hidden Histories of Seven Natural Objects

Jack Fairweather

A gripping account of the moral and political challenges posed by the Iraq war from the Costa Award winning author of The Volunteer. 
 
When Tony Blair plunged Britain into war he thought that, shortly thereafter, Iraq would emerge as a peaceful democracy. Instead the invasion sparked the worst foreign policy disaster since the Suez crisis in 1956. 
 
 A War of Choice is a compelling and authoritative portrayal of Britain's war in Iraq. At the outset, Blair insisted that Britain went to war to influence American decision-making. Based on over three hundred interviews, A War of Choice gives the inside story of Blair's war cabinet, Whitehall power struggles and intrigue at the White House, and traces the evolution of the special relationship, from the secret deals struck by Blair, to Brown's desperate bid to save his premiership, which brought already-strained relations with America to the verge of collapse. 
 
 A story of hubris and honour, betrayal and the ultimate sacrifice, A War of Choice provides powerful insight into one of Britain’s most controversial conflicts. 
 
‘A timely work that offers a considered appraisal of what went wrong’ Times Literary Supplement

A War of Choice

The British in Iraq 2003-9

Marina Warner

Entrancing, multi-layered and as wittily subversive as fairy tales themselves, this beautifully illustrated work explores and illuminates the unfolding history of famous fairy tales and the contexts in which they flourished. It also lifts the curtain on the tellers themselves - from ancient sibyls and old crones to the more modern Angela Carter and, of course, Walt Disney. A brilliant compendium of folklore, fairytales and learning which reveals unexpected links and histories behind some of our oldest and most-loved tales.

From The Beast To The Blonde

On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers

Angelica Malin

Thirty women, from Megan Barton-Hanson and Shaparak Khorsandi to Shon Faye and Stephanie Yeboah write on what single womanhood in the modern age means to them. 
 
 
Have you ever worried about going on holiday alone? 
 
Felt queasy at the thought of Valentine's Day without a date? 
 
Thought to yourself, "I want what she has?" 
 
This book is the tonic you need. 
 
 
ANGELICA MALIN - MEGAN BARTON HANSON - ANNIE LORD - STEPHANIE YEBOAH - SHAPARAK KHORSANDI - POORNA BELL - CHARLIE CRAGGS - REBECCA REID - ASHLEY JAMES - CHANTÉ JOSEPH - ROSIE WILBY - SALMA EL-WARDANY - NATALIE BYRNE - SHON FAYE - VENUS LIBIDO - JESSICA MORGAN - FRANCESCA SPECTER - SHANI SILVER - RACHEL THOMPSON - BELLA DEPAULO - MIA LEVITIN - FELICITY MORSE - KETAKI CHOWKHANI - LUCIE BROWNLEE - CHLOE PIERRE - SOPHIA MONEY-COUTTS - NICOLA SLAWSON - RAHEL AKLILU - SOPHIA LEONIE - ROSE STOKES - MADELEINE SPENCER 
 
Curated by journalist and author Angelica Malin, Unattached explores the nuances of being single today through the voices of thirty women; with personal essays reflecting both the unique challenges (hello, going to a wedding alone), and the glorious benefits (goodbye, joint bank account). 
 
Unattached shines a light on brilliant women stepping into their power, owning being alone, and reveals the true depth of female potential when we choose to go against what society expects of us and revel in our own strength.

Unattached

Empowering Essays on Singlehood

Laurens Van Der Post

From the beginning, Lauren Van Der Post has been aware of a dimension in life far longer and more significant than the outer eventfulness of everyday living. His perception of life's mysterious power began with the Bushman, the first people of his native Africa, and grew in the universal imagery of dreams, the fertile legends and stories of ancient civilization, the intuitive teaching of prophets, poets and other pioneers of human awareness. In this book he has brought together two of his most deeply felt and far reaching essays, and has extended their message with great imaginative insight, exploring the potential in all men and women to acquire self-knowledge and to live life according to its fundamental precepts.

The Voice of the Thunder

Dan Hancox

"Those who do not move, do not notice their chains." - Rosa Luxemburg 
 
In this considered and polemical piece, Dan Hancox examines a world in which our fates are no longer governed by elected representatives with shirts and ties, but abstract finance. Where the problem is not so much false consciousness as blurred consciousness. He examines the 'spectacle of capitalism' that has stymied political activism for so long and how the closing months of 2010 saw a surge in rage that continues as the youth of Britain is waking up from its malaise in the face of provocation and the cuts programme. 
 
Beginning in the stifling kettle on Westminster Bridge, Hancox weaves on-the-ground reportage with political theory to describe and explain the growth of movements like UK Uncut, the University for Strategic Optimism and other actions to create a better society. An anthem for kettled youth, this ebook is a stake in the ground signalling the rebirth of the curiosity of a generation breaking free of its shackles. 
 
BRAIN SHOTS is the pre-eminent source for high quality, short-form digital non-fiction. The Summer of Unrest series brings together stellar writers to explore the issues surrounding the austerity measures in the UK, uprisings in the Middle East and the nature of the protest movements springing up all over the world.

Summer of Unrest: Kettled Youth

The Battle Against the Neoliberal Endgame

Toni Morrison

An incisive and thought-provoking collection of essays on a defining American experience, curated by the Nobel-prize winning author of Beloved. 
 
 
Toni Morrison contributes an introduction and brings together thirteen essays, all written especially for this book, by distinguished academics - black and white, male and female - on one of the grimmest and most revealing moments of American history: the O J Simpson case. 
 
Together these keen analyses of a defining American moment cast a chilling gaze on the script and spectacle of the insidious tensions that rend American society, even as they ponder the proper historical, cultural, political, legal, psychological, and linguistic ramifications of the affair.

Birth Of A Nation-Hood

Gaze, Script, and Spectacle in the O J Simpson Case

Richard Pipes

One of the most enduring dreams is of a Utopian society in which all possessions are held in common ownership, and there is never a quarrel over "mine" and "thine". As Professor Pipes argues in this book, such a dream has never been translated into reality in the secular world, despite the best efforts of socialist and communist ideologues. Acquisitiveness is deeply ingrained in all living creatures and all societies for both economic and psychological reasons. Where there are no guarantees of property there are no limits to state authority and no regulatory bodies of law, and hence no guarantee of individual liberty, or "civil rights". Herein lies the crux of the author's argument.

Property And Freedom

Marc Hamer

Longlisted for the Wainwright Book Prize 2019 
 
A calming, life-affirming book about the British countryside, the cycle of nature, solitude and contentment, by a brilliant new nature writer who spent time homeless as a young man, sleeping in the hedgerows he now knows so well. 
 
Although common, moles are mysterious: their habits are inscrutable, they are anatomically bizarre, and they live completely alone. Marc Hamer has come closer to them than most, both through his long working life out in the Welsh countryside, and his experiences of rural homelessness as a boy. 
 
Over the years, Marc has learned a great deal about these small, velvet creatures who live in the dark beneath us, and the myths that surround them, and his work has also led him to a wise and uplifting acceptance of the inevitable changes that we all face. In this beautiful and meditative book, Marc tells his story and explores what moles, and a life in nature, can tell us about our own humanity and our search for contentment. 
 
How to Catch a Mole is a gem of nature writing, beautifully illustrated by Joe McLaren, which celebrates living peacefully and finding wonder in the world around us.

How to Catch a Mole

And Find Yourself in Nature

George Orwell

With an introduction by Kamila Shamsie 
 
‘Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.’ 
 
GEORGE ORWELL is one of the world’s most famous writers and social commentators. Through his writing he exposed the unjust sufferings of the poor and unemployed, warned against totalitarianism and defended freedom of speech. 
 
This selection, from both his novels and non-fiction, charts his prescient and clear-eyed thinking on the subject of FREEDOM. It ranges from pieces on individual liberty, society and technology, to political liberty, revolution and the importance of free speech. Orwell's ambition to create a fairer and more egalitarian society is essential inspiration as we strive for freedom and equality in today's world. 
 
'If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.'

Orwell on Freedom

Tom Brokaw

In this superb book, Tom Brokaw goes out into America, to tell through the stories of individual men and women the story of a generation - America's citizen heroes and heroines who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America.  This was a generation united by common values - by duty, honour, courage, service and love of family and country. Here you'll meet people like Charles Van Gorder, who set up during D-Day a MASH-like medical facility in the middle of the fighting, and then came home to create a clinic and hospital in his hometown.  You'll hear ex-President George Bush talk about how, as a Navy Air Corps combat pilot, one of his assignments was to read the mail of the enlisted men under him, to be sure no sensitive military information would be compromised.  You'll meet Trudy Elion, winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine, one of the many women in this book who found fulfilling careers in the changed society as a result of the war.  And you'll meet Martha Putney, one of the first black women to serve in the newly formed WACs. In the spirit of Band of Brothers, The Greatest Generation tells the stories of ordinary men and women caught up in extraordinary events - individuals united by a common purpose - working, living and dying in the service of their country.

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