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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Peter Firstbrook

Peter Firstbrook spent many months in Kenya researching the history of Barack Obama's family. Peter is the only person to have traced Obama's roots from the present back through more than twenty generations, thanks to the Luo tribe's remarkable oral tradition. 
 
Seen though the eyes of the Obama family this will be the story of an African dynasty going back over 400 years. It is a truly astonishing drama culminating in the inauguration of Barack Obama on 20 January 2009, watched by Obama's African family on a flickering television clustered under a group of trees in the twilight of Kobama village in Kenya. A very special hundred or so men, women and children amongst billions all around the world who viewed the momentous event of the swearing in of the first black President of the United States. 
 
This book establishes the early ancestry of the Obama family in the Alego region, telling the story of farmers and fishermen, of love and tribal warfare, of families lost and found. It traces the Obama roots from famous tribal warriors in the seventeenth century to the first encounters with the white man in the early 1900s; generation by generation we follow the family through colonial rule and the fight for Kenyan independence, including the Mau Mau and the relationship of Barack Obama's father with President Kenyatta. 
 
This is a book about a family whose destiny is unknown to them. It is a true testament to the belief that any person can make their mark in the world no matter how humble their origins.

The Obamas

The Untold Story of an African Family

Graeme Garden

Barry Cryer

Hello there! You'll have had your tea? Dougal here. Well, here we go, with our wee book. It's a collection or pot pourri (I've no idea what Hamish means by that - it sounds like something to do with the Pope) of our activities or 'doings' in the village we call home, because that's exactly what it is. 
 
Together with our housekeeper, Mrs Naughtie, and of course, the Laird who lives up at the big hoose and shoots grouse and other bottles of whisky, these are the actual scripts of our wee show which we performed on the wireless, when most of you were probably in bed! 
 
Hamish and I have known each other all our lives - well, not yet, obviously! We have a very close relationship and also with each other. Mrs Naughtie been with us since we first met her at the Krankie Arms, where she was working as part-time barmaid and bouncer. 
 
In addition to the scripts you'll find all kinds of other things tucked away under its kilt. There's a hectic social life in the village. You'll visit the 'bide a wee' café, proud possessor of three Michelin tyres. You'll have a conducted tour of the big hoose by Big Tam, our local guide (not during opening hours). You'll marvel at the site of the Battle of Auchtermuchty, now allotments. You'll peek into the Laird's social diary in 'oot and aboot' (40p at the post office). And a great deal more. 
 
Well, I hope this wee note will make you hurry to the till and spend the terrible amount of money these wee books cost these days. But then again this particular wee book is Scotland's answer to Richard and Judy! Hurrah! 
 
Away now ...

The Doings of Hamish and Dougal

You'll Have Had Your Tea?

Stewart McCartney

In 1841 John Timbs wrote a book called Popular Errors Explained. It went on - with Timbs' other great series 'Curiosities of ...' - to become one of the great popular books of the 19th century, running into many editions and selling hundreds of thousands of copies. Some say the popularity of his one hundred and fifty volumes led him to outsell a certain Mr Dickens. 
 
Stewart McCartney, under the Timb's title of Popular Errors Explained has created a new book, capturing the zeal and enthusiasm of the original, to be 'agreeable, by way of abstract and anecdote so as to become an advantageous and amusing guest at any intellectual fireside.' 
 
The book has completely new material - around 200 or so 'popular errors' from science and literature, history, sport, popular culture and so on. Each entry will have that eyebrow raising 'I didn't know that!' or 'Surely that cannot be true!' feel. Every one will explode a commonly held misbelief.

Popular Errors Explained

Neville Peat

Sir Ernest Shackleton could never have imagined his name being closely associated with whisky, certainly not in the title of a book. Rarely did he consume strong drink. On his expeditions, he tolerated a ‘mild spree’ at times of celebration. But that was all. Drinking to excess appalled him. From an early age, growing up in a teetotal home, he was wary of alcohol. How, then, must he have felt about signing an order for twenty-five cases of whisky — 300 bottles — for his 1907–09 British Antarctic Expedition? 
 
Shackleton’s Whisky follows the story of the Rare Old Highland Whisky taken south on his Nimrod expedition. It celebrates the extraordinary achievements of men exploring an extraordinary place. It dips into the human-interest stories of polar life in the ‘heroic era’ of Antarctic exploration. Shackleton once wrote of his interest in documenting ‘the little incidents that go to make up the sum of the day’s work, the humour and the weariness, the inside view of men on an expedition’. Here is one such account, based largely on what he wrote and said about the expedition and also on what the members of his expedition wrote, for most participants kept a diary or journal. 
 
Antarctic exploration and whisky, in their own way, are both steeped in history, maturity, endurance, character, and technology. Both have a worldwide following, millions of fans. Their pathways coincided on the British Antarctic Expedition 1907-09. With the recovery 100 years later of three cases of Scotch from icy entombment under the hut at Cape Royds and the subsequent return of three bottles to Scotland for sampling, analysis and a near-magical replication, the relationship of whisky and Antarctic exploration came sharply into focus, making a unique odyssey to the end of the Earth and back.

Shackleton's Whisky

The extraordinary story of an heroic explorer and twenty-five cases of unique MacKinlay's Old Scotch

Alison Maloney

Pope Gelasius, who canonized St George in 494, described him as one of those 'whose names are rightly reverenced among us, but whose actions are known only to God.' The story of England's Patron Saint is so encased in myth and legend that the truth of his remarkable life is unknown to the great majority of us. 
 
In many ways the attitude of the English, reflects the many contradictions in the story of St George and the growth of his legend worldwide. A Christian martyr, murdered by a Roman emperor in Palestine, he is a legendary dragon-slayer who saved a virgin princess from sacrifice - but not before insisting her entire town converts to Christianity. Yet he is also the model for mythical Islamic hero Al Khidr. He is the Patron Saint of England but never set foot on English soil and the legend of his knightly deeds came from the imagination of a bishop in Italy. 
 
In recent years, through national pride more than religious fervour, the popularity of St George's Day has risen sharply, with more parades, parties and pub get-togethers than we saw in the latter half of the twentieth century.

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