Michael Symmons Roberts’s fourth book of poetry, Corpus, was the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize, and the Griffin International Prize. His sixth collection, Drysalter, was the winner of both the Forward Prize and the Costa Poetry Prize in 2013. He collaborated with Paul Farley on Edgelands (Cape/Vintage) and will do so again in The Deaths of the Poets (Cape, 2017). He has also worked many times with the composer James MacMillan. He has published two novels, and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Michael Symmons Roberts

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Michael Palin

Now Available for pre-order Michael Palin in Venezuela 
 
THE BOOK BEHIND THE HIT DOCUMENTARY 
 
A glimpse of life inside the world’s most secretive country, as told by Britain’s best-loved travel writer. 
 
In May 2018, former Monty Python stalwart and intrepid globetrotter Michael Palin spent two weeks in the notoriously secretive Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a cut-off land without internet or phone signal, where the countryside has barely moved beyond a centuries-old peasant economy but where the cities have gleaming skyscrapers and luxurious underground train stations. His resulting documentary for Channel 5 was widely acclaimed. 
 
Now he shares his day-by-day diary of his visit, in which he describes not only what he saw – and his fleeting views of what the authorities didn’t want him to see – but recounts the conversations he had with the country’s inhabitants, talks candidly about his encounters with officialdom, and records his musings about a land wholly unlike any other he has ever visited – one that inspires fascination and fear in equal measure. 
 
Written with Palin’s trademark warmth and wit, and illustrated with beautiful colour photographs throughout, the journal offers a rare insight into the North Korea behind the headlines.

North Korea Journal

P.G. Wodehouse

Meet the hilarious British dilettante Bertram 'Bertie' Wooster who can't seem to help finding himself in the middle of awkward social situations, calling upon his valet Jeeves to escape embarrassment.

Bertie may be in danger of having his spine severed in five places by that jealous gorilla G. D'Arcy (Stilton) Cheesewright, but, as Jeeves insists, the priorities still have to be observed. And so, thanks to Jeeves, they are throughout this bumper volume, whatever mayhem may be loosed upon the befuddled head and generous heart of Bertram Wilberforce Wooster. Gathered in this volume are three of Wodehouse's hilarious Jeeves and Wooster novels: Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves and Jeeves in the Offing.

The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 4

(Jeeves & Wooster)

Camilla Morton

Make biscuits with Manolo Blahnik or customise your bike with Paul Smith. 
 
Let Charlotte Olympia put a spring in your step and turn a magazine into a millinery with Stephen Jones. 
 
Fashion a Bella Freud jumper or a Topshop Tee, make a Fabergé egg and dress up like Henry Holland. 
 
Let Michael Howells and Christian Lacroix help you create a drama and Nick Knight a cup of tea. 
 
Turn on your imagination and MAKE LIFE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
MAKE LIFE BEAUTIFUL provides a unique glimpse into some of style’s most creative minds with full-colour pictures throughout and a personal introduction from the designers to each of the projects. 
 
Craft has never been so fashionable.

Make Life Beautiful

The Oldest Member's reverence for golf does not cramp his style in telling some of the funniest, tallest and most joyful stories in the whole Wodehouse canon. In this splendid omnibus, introduced by Wodehouse himself, love and the links are inextricably intertwined, in this bumper collection of hilarious short stories that show the course of true love is racing down the middle of the fairway.

The Golf Omnibus

William Morris

Pick up your pencils and make each of these famed William Morris patterns your own. 
 
Taking nature as his inspiration, William Morris created over a hundred intricate and iconic wallpaper, textile and embroidery designs. As much a poet and activist as a designer, today he is considered one of the most outstanding and influential designers of the Arts and Crafts movement of the late nineteenth century. His patterns continue to be made and sold today and can be found all over the country, including at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, London. 
 
Relax and unwind with these beautiful, decorative patterns - and marvel at their timeless appeal.

The William Morris Colouring Book

Shelby Lorman

_____________________________ 
We all know a good boy. 
 
 He's a 'Feminist’... in his Tinder bio. 
 He ghosts you, but then feels bad. (For a moment.) 
 He’s not mansplaining, just aggressively clarifying. 
 And he's open to being wrong. Theoretically. 
 
 Ready to call time on rewarding those who clear the low bar of not being outwardly awful? 
 
 Awards for Good Boys explores why so-called and self-proclaimed good boys are actually not that great, and makes literal our tendency to applaud men for doing the absolute least. It will make you cry-laugh, feel validated, and help you unravel your own assumptions about what makes us good. ______________________________ 
'Shelby and her art are extremely my shit. You need this book.' Samantha Irby, author of We Are Never Meeting in Real Life 
 
 ‘A short book of one woman’s opinions. It’s funny, but I prefer when men are funny or else my ego feels bruised.’ Ben from Twitter

Awards for Good Boys

From the viral Instagram account

Edited by the bestselling author of Birdsong and Dr Hope Wolf, this is an original and illuminating non-fiction anthology of writing on the First World War. 
 
A lieutenant writes of digging through bodies that have the consistency of Camembert cheese; a mother sends flower seeds to her son at the Front, hoping that one day someone may see them grow; a nurse tends a man back to health knowing he will be court-martialled and shot as soon as he is fit. 
 
In this extraordinarily powerful and diverse selection of diaries, letters and memories – many of which have never been published before – privates and officers, seamen and airmen, munitions workers and mothers, nurses and pacifists, prisoners-of-war and conscientious objectors appear alongside each other. 
 
The war involved people from so many different backgrounds and countries and included here are, among others, British, German, Russian and Indian voices. Alongside testament from the many ordinary people whose lives were transformed by the events of 1914-18, there are extracts from names that have become synonymous with the war, such as Siegfried Sassoon and T.E. Lawrence. What unites them is a desire to express something of the horror, the loss, the confusion and the desire to help – or to protest. 
 
A Broken World is an original collection of personal and defining moments that offer an unprecedented insight into the Great War as it was experienced and as it was remembered.

A Broken World

Letters, diaries and memories of the Great War

Rob Ryan

A stunningly illustrated fairytale for all ages from internationally-acclaimed papercut artist Rob Ryan – the follow-up to THE INVISIBLE KINGDOM. 
 
This is a story about a young boy who doesn’t want to be King. 
 
What he wants, more than anything, is to be normal. 
 
So one night, he runs away from the palace. He climbs out of his four-poster bed, disappears through a hidden door in the ceiling, creeps down a long-forgotten passageway, opens a small window and leaves behind everything he’s ever known. 
 
At first, the world outside the palace seems a magical place that the King delights in exploring. But with no friends to call on, no money in his pocket, in fact nothing apart from the clothes he is wearing, it isn’t long before the young King realises that life on his own is going to be full of challenges. 
 
Meanwhile, Lord Von Dronus, the most senior of all the King’s courtiers, is determined to find the young King before anyone realises he's disappeared. 
 
Beautiful, touching and surprising, The Kingdom Revealed is about appreciating the everyday and learning what matters most.

The Kingdom Revealed

'Wodehouse would have made an excellent sports writer' Sunday Times 
 
As Wodehouse’s biographer Frances Donaldson observed, it was vitally important to the boy Plum that he was ‘above average at games’. Luckily, he was known at school as ‘a noted athlete, a fine footballer and cricketer [and] a boxer’, and sport inspired much of his earliest writings, as well as some of his very finest and laugh-out-loud funniest. 
 
Wodehouse wrote with trademark wit on a rich range of games – and on cricket and golf, in particular – as well as anyone ever has, bringing a knowledge and a passion born of practice. 
 
 English cricket inspired in Wodehouse what he himself long considered to be his favourite work; and yet America (which he first visited keenly and then came to call home) led him to the love of baseball, and golf – enthusiasms that drew him to new tales for new audiences, including the celebrated golf stories which John Updike described as ‘the best fiction ever done about the sport.’ 
 
This rollicking anthology, selected, edited and introduced by the novelist Richard T. Kelly, offers a vivid picture of Wodehouse at play – in the ring, at the crease, on the tee – which is guaranteed to please any sporting crowd. Beginning with early journalism, taking in extracts from novels and short stories in their entirety, it all adds up to a medal-winning collection.

Above Average at Games

The Very Best of P.G. Wodehouse on Sport

Patricia Volk

Patricia Volk’s glittering memoir, written with charm, panache and wit, juxtaposes the lives of two women – the iconoclastic fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli and the author’s own mother – to tell the story of how young Patricia fashioned herself into a woman. 
 
Patricia Volk’s mother Audrey was an upper-middle class New Yorker, a great beauty, a perfectionist, and a polished hostess who believed in women doing things the proper way. 
 
The iconoclastic Italian fashion designer, Elsa Schiaparelli, on the other hand, never found a rule she didn’t want to break. One of fashion’s most radical provocateurs, she was a cultural revolutionary who embodied the ‘daring’. 
 
For Patricia, who read Schiap’s 'scandalous' autobiography, Shocking Life, at a tender age, these two women offered fabulously contrasting lessons in everything from fashion, make-up, lingerie, family and entertaining, to love, sex, superstition and gambling – lessons that would stay with her for the rest of her life. 
 
Moving seamlessly between the Volks’ 1950s Manhattan home and Schiap’s astonishing life in New York, Rome and Paris (among pals like Dali, Duchamp, Picasso), The Art of Being a Woman weaves Audrey’s notions of female domesticity with Schiap’s groundbreaking creative vision to tell the witty, wise and utterly delightful story of how a young girl learned that there is more than one way to be a woman.

The Art of Being a Woman

My Mother, Schiaparelli, and Me

Zoe Williams

Whether we have children or not we all want the future to be fairer and happier; and Zoe Williams believes that we need to make that happen collectively. 
 
GET IT TOGETHER is a rousing call to arms for us all to play our part in creating a more equal society. 
 
Zoe believes that it’s not enough to sit back and watch as our NHS slides away from us; as the young and low earners are forced out of London; as hundreds of thousands of people nationally drift into poverty; as education becomes increasingly divided and as the wealthiest five people in Britain earn more than the poorest 20%. 
 
Zoe will address key questions including: has the NHS had its day; has an immigrant stolen your job; have you ever wondered why you can't afford a house; and who got us into this mess anyway? She will then offer up, in answer, a combination of fact, opinion and debate that will be as inspiring as it is important. 
 
Zoe Williams brings together here all the arguments that occupy the current political landscape and shows us that on all levels, it’s lunacy to be anything other than left-wing unless you’re actually already an oligarch. She offers us the debate in a truly entertaining way - she’s pacey, conversational and funny. This is a road map for a better future that will be a major part of the debate in the run up to the election next May.

Get It Together

Why We Deserve Better Politics

Susanna Hislop

***AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4*** 
 
Travel the night sky and discover the stories in the stars. 
 
‘What a beautiful book it is! A treasured possession.’ Mary Beard 
 
'No astronomy book can claim to be as beautiful as the night sky, but Stories in the Stars comes closest!' Tristan Gooley 
 
Look up: above us is a jet-black canvas pricked with white dots, and a carnival of animals, mythical creatures, gods and goddesses in its shining constellations. 
 
Here, Susanna Hislop – writer and stargazer – and Hannah Waldron – international artist – leap between centuries, cultures and traditions to present a whole universe of stories in all their blazing glory. 
 
Stories in the Stars is an imaginative and whimsical exploration of each of the night sky’s 88 constellations: a playful and stunningly illustrated compendium.

Stories in the Stars

An Atlas of Constellations

Sanna Annukka Ltd

E.T.A. Hoffmann

Hoffmann's classic Christmas fairy tale, immortalised by Tchaikovsky's ballet, is brought to life by the gorgeous contemporary artwork of Finnish illustrator, Sanna Annuka. 
 
On Christmas Eve, Fritz and Marie excitedly await the arrival of Godfather Drosselmeier and the marvellous gifts he brings for them every year. When Marie discovers a curious nutcracker doll among the presents, she suddenly finds herself caught up in an age-old battle before being transported to a magical world of sugar-frosted castles, chocolate kings, and true love. 
 
Sanna Annukka is familiar to many from her collaborations with Marimekko and her artwork for Keane's album, Under the Iron Sea. The Nutcracker is her third book project. This cloth-bound edition combines the charm of Hoffmann's original nineteenth-century tale with the freshness of Sanna Annuka's gorgeous illustrations. 
 
A beautiful gift to give and receive.

The Nutcracker

Shaun Usher

______________________ 
A richly illustrated and wonderfully eclectic collection of THE WORLD'S GREATEST SPEECHES - THE OLD, THE NEW AND THE UNSPOKEN - from the author of the international bestseller, Letters of Note. 
 
 Discover speeches that altered the course of history, like NELSON MANDELA’s on the day he became South Africa’s first black President, and outpourings of much-needed change, such as the impassioned, impromptu appeal for women’s rights from SOJOURNER TRUTH, an African-American woman born into slavery. Expect the gloriously unexpected, as KERMIT THE FROG takes to the podium, and celebrate lives well-lived, including TILDA SWINTON’s tribute to ‘every alien’s favourite cousin’, DAVID BOWIE. 
 
 While some speeches are heard by millions, some remain unspoken: the secret draft prepared for QUEEN ELIZABETH II during a military exercise for World War III, and PRESIDENT NIXON’s chilling public announcement should NEIL ARMSTRONG and BUZZ ALDRIN become stranded on the Moon. 
 
 Surprising, inspiring and shocking; moving, comforting and enlightening. 
 
SPEECHES OF NOTE: seventy-five extraordinary ways to step into someone else’s shoes. 
 
FEATURING: 
 
Malala Yousafzai * Tilda Swinton * Albert Einstein * Nick Cave * Queen Elizabeth II * Kermit the Frog * Pablo Picasso * Harvey Milk * J. M. Barrie * General Dwight D. Eisenhower * Meghan Markle * Sojourner Truth * Salman Rushdie * Panti Bliss * Nelson Mandela * Robert F. Kennedy * Virginia Woolf * Richard Nixon * Socrates * Nelson Mandela * Mark Twain * Marie Curie * George Bernard Shaw * Susan Sontag 
 
AND MANY, MANY MORE

Speeches of Note

A celebration of the old, new and unspoken

Ndaba Mandela

‘You empower yourself and then you reach out to others.’ 
 
Uplifting life lessons from one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known... through the eyes of the grandson whose life he changed forever. 
 
In his book Going to the Mountain, Ndaba Mandela shares the story of his coming-of-age alongside South Africa’s rebirth. It is a remarkable journey, and one that took him from the violent, segregated Soweto ghettos to his grandfather’s presidential home. 
 
As a young boy, Ndaba was constantly shunted from place to place. But at eleven years old he was unexpectedly invited to live with his grandfather, Nelson Mandela, even though he had met him only once before, during a prison visit. And, slowly, they built a relationship that would affect both of them profoundly. 
 
Ndaba's teenage years were complicated, but as he approached his twenty-first birthday, Mandela decided that Ndaba was finally ready to ‘go to the mountain’ – a test of courage during which you become a man. At the end of this gruelling ritual journey, the elders of the Mandelas’ tribe gathered and Ndaba’s grandfather was there, as ever, to share his greatest life lessons. 
 
From Nelson Mandela, Ndaba learned the spirit of endurance, the triumph of forgiveness, the power of resistance and the beauty of reconciliation. And as Mandela grew older, Ndaba had the chance to repay his grandfather’s love and support by demonstrating the ways in which he’d understood all that he had taught him. 
 
Intimate and inspirational, Going to the Mountain is a powerful reminder of how one person can impact profoundly on another, and a testament to the awesome power within us to change ourselves and our world.

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