Neil MacGregor was Director of the National Gallery, London from 1987 to 2002 and of the British Museum from 2002 to 2015, and Chair of the Steering Committee of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin from 2015 to 2018. His previous books include A History of the World in 100 Objects, Shakespeare's Restless World and Germany: Memories of a Nation, all available in Penguin and now between them translated into more than a dozen languages. In 2010, he was made a member of the Order of Merit, the UK's highest civil honour. In 2015 he was awarded the Goethe Medal and the German National Prize. In 2018 the radio series Living with the Gods received the Sandford Saint Martin Award for Religious Broadcasting.

Neil MacGregor

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Chris Heath

The Pet Shop Boys are one of the most successful and unusual bands of the last five decades. They are the pop duo that proves pop music can be modern, ecstatic and playful as well as serious and intelligent, winning them legions of devoted fans throughout the world. 
 
In 1989, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe invited journalist Chris Heath and photographer Lawrence Watson to shadow them around Hong Kong, Japan and the UK as they embarked on their first-ever tour. This book is the result: an immersive portrait giving access into the duo’s inner sanctum, showing them in brilliantly observed detail as they work, relax, gossip, argue and occasionally try to make sense of what they do. 
 
‘As clear a picture as could be wished for of the seething mass of elegant contradictions that is the 
Pet Shop Boys’ on-the-road experience.’ Independent on Sunday 
 
‘This superbly reported book transcends tired rock journalism cliché. It’s about what it means to be a pop star, what it means to be a Pet Shop Boy… how to love pop, hold it to a higher standard and subvert its expectations.’ 
Laura Snapes

Pet Shop Boys, Literally

Douglas Adams

Two quirky detective stories from Britain's best sci-fi writer and author of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Douglas Adams. 
 
Dirk Gently is a detective - well, a sort of detective. There is a long and honourable tradition of great detectives and Dirk Gently does not belong to it. Dirk Gently calls himself a 'holistic detective' and above all, he believes in 'the interconnectedness of all things'. Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Dirk Gently, however, does not like to eliminate the impossible. 
 
In Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency a simple search for a missing cat reveals two ghosts, a dodo, an Electric Monk, the devastating secret that lies behind the whole of human history and threatens to bring it to a premature close, and, finally, the utterly terrifying reason why Richard MacDuff has had a sofa stuck on his stairs for three weeks. 
 
As The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul opens, a passenger check-in desk at Heathrow Airport shoots up through the roof engulfed in a ball of orange flames. The usual people try to claim responsibility. However, no rational cause can be found for the explosion - it was simply designated an act of God. But, thinks Dirk Gently, which God? And why? What God would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the 15.37 to Oslo? 
 
In these two delightfully odd detective stories, Adams explores once again the realm of the unknown, in the style of science fiction that brought him fame with The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The Dirk Gently Omnibus

John Reader

Baked, Roast, Boiled, Mashed, Steamed, French-Fried... We've probably all tried one or other type, and some of us eat them every day. The potato is one of the most familiar and ubiquitous foods, and part of our sense of humble, even mundane normality. Couch Potato. Cheap as Chips. Mr Potato Head. But the story of the solanum tuberosum is darker - one of struggle, disease, dirt and survival. 
 
Before domestication thousands of years ago, high up on the Andean antiplano, the high alkaloid content of potatoes made them poisonous to humans. But since then, these perfectly formed bundles of nutrition - naturally fat free, consisting mainly of energy giving carbohydrate, but containing protein and half of your RDA of Vitamin C and potassium - have been grown safely and cheaply underground in almost any weather and soil conditions, helping to fuel industrial revolution and population explosions. But their efficiency and versatility have also led to over-reliance and tragedy - most devastatingly, in Ireland. 
 
John Reader follows the potato's fascinating journey, from its origins and evolution in the Andes to its slightly mysterious arrival in Europe, where it became, in Britain, Ireland and throughout Europe, a crucial part of our gastronomic and social fabric. 2008 has been designated International Year of the Potato by the UN, and as global population swells and famine remains a constant risk, Reader asks what role the spud still has to play. Propitious Esculent is a highly readable exploration of the biology, history and social influence of our most humble, versatile foodstuff.

Propitious Esculent

The Potato in World History

Haley Tanner

Vaclav and Lena seem destined for each other. They first meet as children in an English-as-a-second- language class in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Vaclav, who dreams of becoming a famous magician, is precocious and verbal. Lena, struggling with English, takes comfort in the safety of his adoration, his noisy, loving home, and the care of Rasia, his big-hearted mother. Vaclav imagines their story unfolding like a fairy tale, but among the many truths to be discovered in Haley Tanner's wondrous debut is that happily ever after is never a foregone conclusion. 
 
When Lena is not around Vaclav and his parents, her world is unsafe. Her poor language skills isolate her. She lives with a mostly absent, neglectful aunt, and has no connection to her parents, who she believes are still in Russia. Then, one day, Lena does not show up for school. She has disappeared from Vaclav and his family's lives as if by a cruel trick. For the next seven years Vaclav always says goodnight to her, wondering if she is doing the same somewhere. On the eve of Lena's seventeenth birthday he finds out. 
 
Haley Tanner has the originality and verve of a born storyteller, and the boldness to imagine a world in which love can overcome the most difficult circumstances. In Vaclav &amp; Lena she has created two unforgettable young protagonists who evoke the joy, the confusion, and the passion of having a profound, everlasting connection with someone else.

Vaclav and Lena

Charles Handy

Who are the new philanthropists? And how is their philanthropy 'new'? 
 
In this remarkable and inspiring book, the eminent management writer Charles Handy and his wife Elizabeth, a portrait photographer, have collaborated to portray a new generation of practical philanthropists, men and women who have made their own fortunes and decided to move on from financial success to try to help those in need. They are doing so not simply by giving their money away to charities and agencies but by helping actively, working on the spot with the very people who need their aid, ensuring that the initiatives are sustainable in the longer term. 
 
As in their acclaimed The New Alchemists, the Handys have both interviewed and photographed their subjects in order to tell their inspiring stories; from the Sydney restaurateur Jeff Gambin, who personally helps to cook hot and cold menus for homeless people; to Niall Mellon, a young Irish property developer who is replacing the shacks with breeze-block homes in a South African township; and Sara Davenport, who sold her art gallery and set up the breast-cancer care centre the Haven Trust to offer integrated and holistic treatment and support. 
 
This striking book of words and photographs reveals the energy and inspiration of these new ways of using wealth, revealing the motivations and satisfactions of such direct action.

The New Philanthropists

Adriaan Van Dis

In Repatriated the world is a dangerous place and the bomb is ticking - at home and abroad. 
 
In a seaside town in the Netherlands, Mr Java - a war damaged ex-colonial - drills his son for the future, drawing him deeper and deeper into his delusionary world. As the radio broadcasts news of H bomb tests, Mr Java writes letters of complaint to the authorities, dreams of horses, and stands at the front window, on the look out for special security spies and nuclear holocaust. His wife and her three daughters from a previous marriage in Indonesia form a sort of Greek chorus, providing a sceptical commentary as his obsessions build towards a dark, absurdist climax. 
 
Repatriated is an inventive, blackly funny novel that shows an adolescent boy trying to break free from his parents and finding he cannot escape their past.

Repatriated

Sophie Pinkham

Each time Ukraine has rebuilt itself over the last century, it has been plagued by the same conflicts: corruption, poverty, and most of all Russian aggression. Sophie Pinkham saw all this and more over ten years in Ukraine and Russia, a period that included the Maidan revolution of 2013-14, Russia's annexation of Crimea, and the ensuing war in Donbass. 
 
With a keen eye for the dark absurdities of post-Soviet society, Pinkham presents a dynamic account of contemporary Ukrainian life. She meet a charismatic doctor helping to smooth the transition to democracy even as he struggles with drug dependence; a band of Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian hippies in a Crimean idyll; and a Jewish clarinetist agitating for Ukrainian liberation. These fascinating personalities deliver an indelible impression of a country on the brink. 
 
Black Square is necessary reading for anyone who wishes to learn the roots of the current Russo-Ukrainian war and the personal stories of the people who live it every day.

Black Square

Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine

Harper Lee

'Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.' 
 
Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this classic novel - a black man charged with attacking a white girl. Through the eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Lee explores the issues of race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s with compassion and humour. She also creates one of the great heroes of literature in their father, whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped in prejudice and hypocrisy.

To Kill A Mockingbird

60th Anniversary Edition

Enhanced Edition

50th Anniversary Edition

No other pop group in recent history has faced fame with such intelligence, humour and shrewdness as the Pet Shop Boys. In 1991, the band toured North America for the first time shadowed by journalist Chris Heath and legendary rock photographer Pennie Smith. They visited fourteen cities in one month, confronting the American music industry and colliding with the likes of Liza Minnelli, Steven Spielberg and Axl Rose. This is more than a documentary of a tour; it is an unusually intimate portrait of two maverick British musicians always reluctant to compromise. 
 
‘There was a time when the Pet Shop Boys seemed to exist entirely on radio, television and in magazines. This is the other world of the Pet Shop Boys in concert, travel and backstage, as they bring their art and glamour to America. It’s funny too.’ 
Johnny Marr 
 
‘A brilliant book, to be read over and over again. How could anyone not love these men?’ 
NME

Pet Shop Boys versus America

Susan Orlean

Susan Orlean's collection of profiles ranges from the well-known (Marky Mark) to the unknown (Colin Duffy, a typical American man, aged ten) to the formerly known (the cult sixties girl group the Shaggs). Orlean meets with Cristina Sanchez, Spain's first fully-qualified female matador, Silly Billy, New York's most successful children's clown, an African king who is a New York taxi-driver, and a champion show dog called Biff, who from a certain angle looks like President Clinton. As in her remarkable bestseller The Orchid Thief, soon to be the basis of Spike Being John Malkovich Jonze's new film, starring Meryl Streep and Nicholas Cage, Orlean's eye for the fascinatingly bizarre and her wonderfully witty way with language make her take on the world utterly original and unique.

The Bullfighter Checks Her Make-Up

Nicola Barker

*WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2017* 
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2018* 
*LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018* 
 
A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 
A TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR 
AN INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR 
 
From the internationally acclaimed, Man Booker-shortlisted Nicola Barker comes a new novel, a post-post apocalyptic story that overflows with pure creative talent. 
 
Imagine a perfect world where everything is known, where everything is open, where there can be no doubt, no hatred, no poverty, no greed. Imagine a System which both nurtures and protects. A Community which nourishes and sustains. An infinite world. A world without sickness, without death. A world without God. A world without fear. 
 
Could you...might you be happy there? 
 
H(A)PPY is a post-post apocalyptic Alice in Wonderland, a story which tells itself and then consumes itself. It's a place where language glows, where words buzz and sparkle and finally implode. It's a novel which twists and writhes with all the terrifying precision of a tiny fish in an Escher lithograph – a book where the mere telling of a story is the end of certainty.

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