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 Booth

'The next Bill Bryson.’ New York Times 
 
Michael Booth has had his fill of celebrity chefs and their 'on the table in five minutes' recipes. He wants to learn how to cook properly, so he burns his cookery books and, together with his young family, heads for a new life in Paris - reasoning that, if anyone can be trusted to make food complicated, it's the French. 
 
Embarking on the ultimate foodie's fantasy, he enrols at the world's most famous cooking school, Le Cordon Bleu, where wise and battle-scarred French chefs commence their transformation of him into a professional cook. 
 
Along the way Booth shares the insider tips and secret techniques of classical cuisine. His odyssey takes him from trauma to triumph, ending in the white-hot heat of the Michelin-starred kitchen of the greatest chef in France.

Doing without Delia

Tales of Triumph and Disaster in a French Kitchen

Danielle Allen

'Unbearably moving' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 
 
The story of a young man's coming of age, a tender tribute to a life lost, and a devastating analysis of a broken system. 
 
Aged 15 and living in LA, Michael Allen was arrested for a botched carjacking. He was tried as an adult and sentenced to thirteen years behind bars. After growing up in prison Michael was then released aged 26, only to be murdered three years later. 
 
 
In this deeply personal yet clear-eyed memoir, Danielle Allen reconstructs her cousin's life to try and understand how this tragedy came to pass. We get to know Michael himself through the eyes of a devoted relative, moving from his first steps to his first love through to the day of his arrest, his coming of age in prison, and his attempts to make up for lost time after his release. We learn what it's like to grow up in a city carved up by invisible gang borders; and we learn how a generation has been lost. 
 
 
With honesty and insight, Cuz circles around its subject, exposing it from all angles to reveal the shocking reality of a broken system. The result is a devastatingly powerful yet reasoned tribute to a life lost too soon. 
 
'The book pleads with us to find the moral imagination to break the American pattern of racial abuse. Allen's ambitious, breathtaking book challenges the moral composition of the world it inhabits by telling all who listen: I loved my cousin and he loved me, and I know he'd be alive if you loved him, too' Kiese Laymon

Michael Wolff

From the author of the Sunday Times Number One Bestseller Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House 
 
Rupert Murdoch is one of the greatest deal-makers alive. His companies possess extraordinary political and cultural power. Whether it is the Sun and the rise of Thatcher, BSkyB and the transformation of football, or Fox News and the war on terror, we have been living in the age of Murdoch since the late seventies. But who is he? What drives him? 
 
With unprecedented access to Murdoch and his inner circle, Michael Wolff chronicles the astonishing growth of the mogul’s giant media kingdom. Drawing upon hundreds of hours of interviews he offers us a portrait of a Machiavellian titan; overbearing, but loving, father; love-struck husband; and a cynical and brilliant newsman. The resulting book is unrivalled in its intimacy and candour and tells a tale of business that is both the story of a man’s life, and the story of our times.

The Man Who Owns the News

Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch

Selina Hastings

'Hastings is one of our greatest living biographers' Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph 
 
Sybille Bedford's life contained all the grand feeling and seismic events of the twentieth century: war and peace, love and trauma, friendship and death. Her father died when she was just fourteen and her mother, a great socialite and litterateur, fell victim to a debilitating morphine addiction. A bon viveur, she roamed from country to country in search of fresh experience, with ear and eye attuned to her surroundings, typewriter at the ready. 
 
Full of intense friendships (Aldous Huxley, Martha Gellhorn and Elizabeth Jane Howard among them), a fierce commitment to the craft of writing, as well as an insatiable appetite for love and sex, Sybille Bedford blazed her own path in her life and her art. 
 
'Selina Hastings' wonderful, gossipy biography is a gem, revealing not just the shy writer, but also the colourful, turbulent 20th-century literary world in which she lived' Sunday Times, Books of the Year 
 
'A wonderful biography' Sara Wheeler, Spectator 
 
'An extraordinary story' The Times 
 
'A richly entertaining biography' Daily Mail, Books of the Year

Sybille Bedford

An Appetite for Life

A.L. Kennedy

Nathan Staples is consumed by loathing and love in roughly equal measures. Frustrated by his life and the way he lives it, he is sustained only by his passionate devotion for his estranged wife and their teenage daughter, Mary. When Nathan contrives to have Mary invited to the island where he lives in retreat, he sets in motion the possiblity of telling her he is her father, and becoming whole and complete and alive again.

Everything You Need

Margaret Forster

In 1831 John Dodgson Carr, son of a Quaker grocer, set off to walk from his home in Kendal to Carlisle, determined to launch a great enterprise. Within 15 years, Carr's of Carlisle had become one of the largest baking businesses in the world -and is a by-word for biscuits to this day. Following his trail to Carlisle (where she herself was born and grew up), Margaret Forster brings 19th-century daily life into vivid focus and charts the rise and rise of a middle-class family like the Carrs, ambitious, innovative yet sternly religious. This is history as it was lived by the men and women both above and below stairs - from the shop floor to the comfortable bourgeois homes of the paternalistic Carrs. We see the conflict between religion and profit, the family feuds and the changing face of a city through this compelling historical narrative, told with Margaret Forster's characteristic blend of scholarship, readability and marvellous attention to the texture of everyday life.

Rich Desserts and Captain's Thin

A Family and Their Times 1831-1931

Walt Bogdanich

Michael Forsythe

**A TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022** 
 
An explosive exposé of a firm whose work has made your world more unequal, more corrupt and more dangerous. 
 
McKinsey & Company have earned billions consulting almost every major corporation in the world - and countless governments, including our own. Shielded by NDAs, their practices have remained vague - until now. 
 
In this propulsive investigation, prize-winning journalists Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe reveal the jaw-dropping reality. McKinsey's work includes ruthless cost-cutting in the NHS, troubleshooting for Big Oil, executing Trump's immigration policies (the ones that put children in cages) as well as advising some of the world's most unsavoury despots. 
 
'A story of secrecy, delusion and untold harm' OBSERVER 
 
'Makes you so angry...the evidence the authors winkle out is astonishing' SUNDAY TIMES 
 
'Panoramic, meticulously reported and ultimately devastating' PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE 
 
'A harrowing account of decades of dishonourable exploits' ECONOMIST

When McKinsey Comes to Town

The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm

Neil Chenoweth

In the summer of 2000, Rupert Murdoch is weeks away from realising his life's dream. Three years ago, he set out to challenge every media group in America and he failed. Now unexpectedly the last wave of the tech stockmarket boom has given him a second chance.  Murdoch's gamble is to change the way the world communicates. His plan will establish himself as the most powerful media figure on the planet and put him in direct conflict with Bill Gates. With time running out, Murdoch must beat Gates to the Premier League television rights, then float the world's biggest satellite platform on Wall Street before the market falls over. Battling cancer, his family fraying while the empire falters, Murdoch will do whatever he must to make this final, greatest gamble work.

Virtual Murdoch

Reality Wars on the Information Highway

Gavin Knight

The Penwith Peninsula in Cornwall is where the land ends. In The Swordfish and the Star Gavin Knight takes us into this huddle of grey roofs at the edge of the sea at the beginning of the twenty-first century. 
 
He catches the stories of a whole community, but especially those still working this last frontier: the Cornish fishermen. These are the dreamers and fighters who every day prepare for battle with the vast grey Atlantic. Cornwall and its seas are brought to life, mixing drinking and drugs and sea spray, moonlit beaches and shattering storms, myth and urban myth. The result is an arresting tapestry of a place we thought we knew; the precarious reality of life in Cornwall today emerges from behind our idyllic holiday snaps and picture postcards. Even the quaint fishermen’s pubs on the quay at Newlyn, including the Swordfish and its neighbour the Star, turn out to be places where squalls can blow up, and down again, in an instant. 
 
Based on immersive research and rich with the voices of a cast of remarkable characters, this is an eye-opening, dramatic, poignant account of life on Britain’s most dangerous stretch of coast. 
 
Praise for Hood Rat 
'A gripping novelistic immersion' Louis Theroux 
'A must-read' Owen Jones 
'Britain's Gomorrah' Independent

The Swordfish and the Star

Life on Cornwall's most treacherous stretch of coast

Clive Stafford Smith

Shortlisted for the 2013 Orwell Prize. 
THE STORY CONTINUES: TWO NEW CHAPTERS FOR THE PAPERBACK EDITION 
 
In 1986, Kris Maharaj, a British businessman living in Miami, was arrested for the brutal murder of two ex-business associates. His lawyer did not present a strong alibi; Kris was found guilty and sentenced to death in the electric chair. 
 
It wasn't until a young lawyer working for nothing, Clive Stafford Smith, took on his case that strong evidence began to emerge that the state of Florida had got the wrong man on Death Row. So far, so good - except that, as Stafford Smith argues here so compellingly, the American justice system is actually designed to ignore innocence. Twenty-six years later, Maharaj is still in jail. 
 
Step by step, Stafford Smith untangles the Maharaj case and the system that makes disasters like this inevitable. His conclusions will act as a wake-up call for those who condone legislation which threatens basic human rights and, at the same time, the personal story he tells demonstrates that determination can challenge the institutions that surreptitiously threaten our freedom.

Injustice

Life and Death in the Courtrooms of America

Annalena McAfee

Tamara Sim, a ruthlessly ambitious young journalist, is thrilled when she is sent to interview veteran war correspondent Honor Tait. Finally - a chance for Tamara to prove that there's more to her than forged expenses claims and the 'what's in/what's out' column she churns out for her tabloid. But Honor isn't an easy subject; cold and evasive to the point of rudeness, it's almost as if she has something to hide. And when Tamara starts to do some digging (not all of it strictly legal) she makes a discovery which has devastating consequences for them both... 
 
In The Spoiler, the former literary editor of the Financial Times and the Guardian offers a first hand glimpse into the world of British journalism.

The Spoiler

Michael Calvin

Thomas Bjørn

Eye-opening contributions from the stars of game make this a powerful, groundbreaking investigation into the mind of the professional golfer. The perfect gift for Father's Day. 
 
* SHORTLISTED FOR THE TELEGRAPH SPORTS BOOK AWARDS * 
 
Professional golf is the most remorseless of sports, unique in the complexity of its demands. Technical perfection must be produced in short, concentrated bursts of synchronised movement. Huge mental strength is required. 
 
Why, then, do we know so little about what it takes to succeed - even survive - at the highest level? 
 
What separates the good from the great? What are the rituals of preparation and execution? 
 
How does an elite team come together? 
 
In a truly groundbreaking exposé of professional golf, Michael Calvin and Thomas Bjorn - captain of the 2018 European Ryder Cup Team - capture the distinctive nature of the game, and the principles and philosophies of players who dominate the world rankings. With unprecedented access to the European Tour players, and in-depth interviews with the European Ryder Cup team, Calvin reveals a sport which operates entirely within the finest margins of excellence.

Mind Game

The Secrets of Golf’s Winners

Jeremy Lewis

Few newspaper editors are remembered beyond their lifetimes, but David Astor is a great exception to the rule. Growing up surrounded by astonishing wealth (the family home was so large it included a miniature railway to transport meals to the dining room) Astor’s early life was far from idyllic. At Oxford he suffered the first of the bouts of depression that were to blight his life, and he became a lost soul for much of the Thirties but when he took the Observer on in 1948 he converted a staid Sunday paper into essential reading. Employing the likes of Kim Philby, Vita Sackville-West, Clive James and Patrick O’Donovan (who became famous for writing his report on Bobby Kennedy’s funeral before it had taken place) he doubled the circulation and created a paper envied and admired.

David Astor

Horatio Clare

'Magnificent' Robert Macfarlane 
 
Winner of the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year 
 
Our lives depend on shipping but it is a world which is largely hidden from us. In every lonely corner of every sea, through every night, every day, and every imaginable weather, tiny crews of seafarers work the giant ships which keep landed life afloat. These ordinary men live extraordinary lives, subject to dangers and difficulties we can only imagine, from hurricanes and pirates to years of confinement in hazardous, if not hellish, environments. Horatio Clare joins two container ships on their epic voyages across the globe and experiences unforgettable journeys. As the ships cross seas of history and incident, seafarers unfold the stories of their lives, and a beautiful and terrifying portrait of the oceans and their human subjects emerges. 
 
'Tremendous' The Times

Down To The Sea In Ships

Of Ageless Oceans and Modern Men

Jeffrey Sachs

One of the world's most brilliant economists and the bestselling author of The End of Poverty and Common Wealth, Jeffrey Sachs has written a book that is essential reading for everyone. 
 
In this time of crisis, The Price of Civilization sets out a bold and provocative, yet responsible and achievable, plan; and reveals why we must - and how we can - change our economic culture in this time of crisis. 
 
This is a masterful roadmap for prosperity, a programme designed to bridge divides and provide a way forward that we - and our leaders - ignore at our peril.

The Price of Civilization

Economics and Ethics After the Fall

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita can predict the future. 
 
From international terrorism to corporate fraud, from climate change to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita has been predicting the future for decades. Using Game Theory (a theory based on the rationale that everyone acts in their own self-interest) he can foretell and even engineer events. His forecasts, for everyone from the CIA to major international companies, have an extraordinary 90% success rate. 
 
In this fascinating and immensely readable book he explains how you can use Game Theory to your own advantage - to win a legal dispute, advance your career and even get the best possible price for your car. Prediction will change your understanding of the world - both now and in the future.

Prediction

How to See and Shape the Future with Game Theory

Carmen Callil

'A triumphant family memoir' Hallie Rubenhold 
'Powerfully told...an impressive work' The Times 
'Oh Happy Day gives a voice to the voiceless' Australian Book Review 
 
In this remarkable book, Carmen Callil discovers the story of her British ancestors, beginning with her great-great grandmother Sary Lacey, born in 1808, an impoverished stocking frame worker. Through detailed research, we follow Sary from slum to tenement and from pregnancy to pregnancy. We also meet George Conquest, a canal worker and the father of one of Sary's children. George was sentenced - for a minor theft - to seven years' transportation to Australia, where he faced the extraordinary brutality of convict life. 
 
But for George, as for so many disenfranchised British people like him, Australia turned out to be his Happy Day. He survived, prospered and eventually returned to England, where he met Sary again, after nearly thirty years. He brought her out to Australia, and they were never parted again. 
 
A miracle of research and fuelled by righteous anger, Oh Happy Day is a story of Empire, migration and the inequality and injustice of nineteenth-century England. 
 
'A remarkable tale...drawing chilling parallels to the inequalities of our times' Observer

Oh Happy Day

Those Times and These Times

Charles Rangeley-Wilson

‘A wonderful and important book, that from its first pages draws the reader along on a fascinating, gripping, often funny journey.’ Robert Macfarlane, bestselling author of Underland. 
 
An idiosyncratic history of our island story told through five iconic fish 
 
 On these rain-swept islands in the North Atlantic man and fish go back a long way. Fish are woven through the fabric of the country’s history: we depend on them – for food, for livelihood and for fun – and now their fate depends on us in a relationship which has become more complex, passionate and precarious in the sophisticated 21st Century. 
 
 
In Silver Shoals Charles Rangeley-Wilson travels north, south, east and west through the British Isles tracing the histories, living and past, of our most iconic fish – cod, carp, eels, salmon and herring – and of the fishermen who catch them and care for them. 
 
 
In the company of trawlermen, longshoremen, conservationists and anglers Charles goes to sea in a trawler, whiles away hot afternoons setting eel nets, tries to bag his first elusive carp and drifts for herring on Guy Fawkes night as fireworks starburst the sky. 
 
 
Underscoring this journey is a fascinating historical exploration of these creatures that have shaped our island story. We learn how abundant and valued these fish were centuries before our current crisis of over-fishing: we learn how eels built our monasteries, how cod sank the Spanish Armada, how fish and chips helped us through two World Wars. 
 
 
Of course there is a deeper environmental dimension to the story, but Charles' optimistic perspective is this: no one is more invested in fish than the fishermen whose lives depend on them. If we can find a way to harness that passion then the future of fish and fishermen in Britain could be as extraordinary as its past.

Silver Shoals

Five Fish That Made Britain

Colin Grant

Discover the definitive biography of Marcus Garvey 
 
 'Grant is an accomplished storyteller and writes with an elegance leavened by wit and cynicism that makes this book eminently readable' Guardian 
 
 At one time during the first half of the twentieth century, Marcus Garvey was the most famous black man on the planet. Hailed as both the 'black Moses' and merely 'a Negro with a hat', he masterminded the first International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World, began the Universal Negro Improvement Association and captivated audiences with his powerful speeches and audacious 'Back to Africa' programme. But he was to end his life in penury, ignominy and friendless exile, after serving jail time in both the US and Jamaica. 
 
With masterful skill, wit and compassion, Colin Grant chronicles Garvey's extraordinary life, the failed business ventures, his misguided negotiations with the Ku Klux Klan, the two wives and the premature obituaries that contributed to his lonely, tragic death. This is the dramatic cautionary tale of a man who articulated the submerged thoughts of an awakening people. 
 
'Engrossing...Writing in a concise, expressive style...drawing on gargantuan research ...Grant show's Garvey's heady triumphs and crushing disappointments, his complexity and his paradoxes' Independent on Sunday

Negro with a Hat: Marcus Garvey

'[A] vivid, inquiring memoir... A properly soul-searching book' Observer 
 
The powerful and emotive memoir about one man’s relationship with his father and the stigma around mental illness, from the acclaimed author and human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith. 
 
A leading campaigner for justice, human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith has spent a lifetime getting to know his clients – from detainees in Guantánamo Bay to prisoners facing execution on Death Row – and finding out 'what makes them tick'. 
 
Yet closer to home, there was a man whose mind has always remained off limits: his own father. 
 
But when Clive inherited more than 3,000 of his letters, he could finally start to piece together the obsessive personality behind them. 
 
Drawing on the life of a client with his own mental health issues, The Far Side of the Moon is an unforgettable memoir and a meticulous critique of our social and justice systems.Just how much has Clive's father's unspoken struggle shaped his own life? 
 
PRAISE FOR CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH 
 
‘Superbly written’ John Grisham on Injustice 
 
‘Remarkable’ Observer 
 
‘An empowering read for anyone who cares about the human implementation of justice’ Colin Firth on Injustice

The Far Side of the Moon

Trials of My Father

Robert A Caro

Robert A. Caro is one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation, whose landmark biographies are widely hailed as masterpieces. 
 
This is the captivating account of his life as a writer, describing the sometimes staggering lengths to which he has gone in order to produce his books and offering priceless insights into the craft of non-fiction writing, be it the pursuit of truth, the writer's process, the art of interviewing or the creation of literature. 
 
Including several of Caro's most famous speeches and interviews as well as new material, this is the self-portrait of a man who knows the meaning and importance of great story-telling - and, like all his books, is an utterly riveting example of that too.

Working

Researching, Interviewing, Writing

Lindsey Hilsum

The gripping life story of the great war correspondent Marie Colvin told by one of her closest friends 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD 
WINNER OF THE JAMES TAIT BLACK AWARD 
 
Marie Colvin was glamorous, hard-drinking, braver than the boys, with a troubled and rackety personal life. She reported from the most dangerous places in the world and her anecdotes about encounters with figures like Colonel Gaddafi and Yasser Arafat were incomparable. She was much admired, and as famous for her wild parties as for the extraordinary lengths to which she went to tell the story. 
 
Fellow foreign correspondent Lindsey Hilsum draws on unpublished diaries and interviews with friends, family and colleagues to produce a story of one of the most daring and inspirational women of our times. 
 
A Sunday Times Book of the Year 
'A stunningly good biography' WILLIAM BOYD

In Extremis

The Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin

Geoffrey Robertson

Geoffrey Robertson QC has been at the centre of internationally high-profile legal cases for over three decades. From representing Princess Diana to Salman Rushdie, to his involvement in the celebrated criminal trials of Oz magazine and Gay News, Robertson is an unfailing champion of human rights, justice, freedom and democracy. In this captivating memoir, Robertson reveals what draws him to each case, his ingenious analysis and interpretation of the courtroom proceedings, and the legal and civic consequences – wrapping each case into a thrilling, rollercoaster sequence of events. 
 
Entertaining, scandalous and hugely insightful, The Justice Game provides a piercing behind-the-scenes look into courtroom cases, the practice of the law and the never-ending fight in striving to narrow the gap between the law and justice. A highly recommended read for those interested in current affairs, criminal and public law, legal history and the British legal system. 
 
‘This wonderful book...reads like a John Grisham, infused with moral anger’ Independent

The Justice Game

Adam Smyth

The Book-Makers is a celebration of 550 years of the printed book, told through the lives of eighteen extraordinary men and women who took the book in radical new directions: printers and binders, publishers and artists, paper-makers and library founders. This is a story of skill, craft, mess, cunning, triumph, improvisation, and error.Some of these names we know. We meet jobbing printer (and American Founding Father) Benjamin Franklin. We watch Thomas Cobden-Sanderson conjure books that flicker between the early twentieth century and the fifteenth. Others have been forgotten. We don't remember Sarah Eaves, wife of John Baskerville, and her crucial contribution to the history of type. Nor Charles Edward Mudie, populariser of the circulating library – and the most influential figure in book publishing before Jeff Bezos. Nor William Wildgoose, who meticulously bound Shakespeare’s First Folio, and then disappeared from history.The Book-Makers puts people back into the story of the book. It takes you inside the print-shop as the deadline looms and the adrenaline flows – from 1492 Fleet Street to 2023 New York. It’s a story of contingencies and quirks, of successes and failures, of routes forward and paths not taken. The Book-Makers is a history of book-making that leaves ink on your fingers, and it shows why the printed book will continual to flourish.

The Book-Makers

A History of the Book in 18 Remarkable Lives

Geoffrey Miller

Why do we buy? What is it that governs our choice of car? How does advertising really work? And what can the story of Aladdin teach us about today's world? 
 
In this brilliantly original, provocative and witty book, Geoffrey Miller - acclaimed author of The Mating Mind - takes us on a journey through the surreal wonderlands of marketing, advertising, and media to explore the hidden instincts behind our choices. Combining this with the latest developments in evolutionary psychology, genetics and consumer research, he explains why we buy what we buy and how we can escape the excesses of twenty-first century consumerism.

Must-Have

The Hidden Instincts Behind Everything We Buy

Douglas Rushkoff

Douglas Rushkoff was mugged outside his apartment on Christmas Eve, but when he posted a friendly warning on his community website, the responses castigated him for potentially harming the local real-estate market. When did these corporate values overtake civic responsibilites? 
 
Rushkoff examines how corporatism has become an intrinsic part of our everyday lives, choices and opinions. He demonstrates how this system created a world where everything can be commodified, where communities have dissolved into consumer groups, where fiction and reality have become fundamentally blurred. And, with this system on the verge of collapse, Rushkoff shows how the simple pleasures that make us human can also point the way to freedom.

Life Inc

How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back

Henry Mance

A far-reaching, urgent, and thoroughly engaging exploration of our relationship with animals - from the acclaimed Financial Times journalist. 
 
This might be the worst time in history to be an animal. But is there a happier way? 
 
Factory farms, climate change, deforestation and pandemics have made our relationship with the other species unsustainable. In response, Henry Mance sets out on a personal quest to see if there is a fairer way to live alongside the animals we love. He goes to work in an abattoir and on a farm to investigate the reality of eating meat and dairy. He explores our dilemmas around over-fishing the seas, visiting zoos and owning pets, and he meets the chefs, activists, scientists and tech visionaries who are redefining how we think about animals. 
 
A Times Book of the Year

How to Love Animals

And Protect Our Planet

In a Human-Shaped World

Daisy Hay

*Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize* 
 
In late eighteenth-century London, a group of extraordinary people gathered around a dining table once a week. 
 
The host was Joseph Johnson, publisher and bookseller and he was joined at dinner by a shifting constellation of great minds including William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Henry Fuseli, Anna Barbauld and Mary Wollstonecraft. 
 
Johnson's years as a maker of books saw profound change in Britain and abroad. In this remarkable portrait of a revolutionary age, Daisy Hay captures a changing nation through the stories of the men and women who wrote it into being, and whose ideas still influence us today. 
 
'Rich in period and personal detail' Guardian 
 
'Hugely engrossing' Sunday Times

Dinner with Joseph Johnson

Books and Friendship in a Revolutionary Age

Emily P Webber

The story of the last generation of British miners: fathers and sons, brothers and comrades, big hitters and broken men, strikers and scabs. 
 
'A compelling, unflinching account…full of tales of tragedy, gallows humour and camaraderie’ The Times 
 
What happened to Britain's last generation of miners? Combining new personal interviews with extensive archival research, Emily P. Webber illuminates the extraordinary history of the industry once considered the backbone of Britain. 
 
By situating the miners’ strike of 1984–85 in a longer history of the coalfields, we can understand why miners and their families fought so hard against pit closures, and what happened after the pit wheels stopped turning. Vivid, evocative and richly alive with minute detail, Mining Men explores what the mining industry once meant to its workers and their communities, and what Britain lost when it was gone. 
 
'Fascinating... An engaging history of post-war British mining' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Absorbing and enjoyable...an illuminating peek into the lives of those who risked everything to warm our hearths' The Herald

Mining Men

Britain’s Last Kings of the Coalface

Gordon Brown

Former Prime Minister and the country’s longest-serving Chancellor, Gordon Brown has been a guiding force for Britain and the world over three decades. This is his candid, poignant and deeply relevant story. 
 
In describing his upbringing in Scotland as the son of a minister, the near loss of his eyesight as a student and the death of his daughter within days of her birth, he shares the passionately-held principles that have shaped and driven him, reminding us that politics can and should be a calling to serve. Reflecting on the personal and ideological tensions within Labour and its successes and failures in power, he describes how to meet the challenge of pursuing a radical agenda within a credible party of government. 
 
He explains how as Chancellor he equipped Britain for a globalised economy while swimming against the neoliberal tide and shows what more must be done to halt rising inequality. In his behind-the-scenes account of the financial crisis and his leading role in saving the world economy from collapse, he addresses the question of who was to blame for the crash and why its causes and consequences still beset us. 
 
From the invasion of Iraq to the tragedy of Afghanistan, from the coalition negotiations of 2010 to the referendums on Scottish independence and Europe, Gordon Brown draws on his unique experiences to explain Britain’s current fractured condition. And by showing us what progressive politics has achieved in recent decades, he inspires us with a vision of what it might yet achieve today. 
 
Riveting, expert and highly personal, this historic memoir is an invaluable insight into our times.

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