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The Tale of a Wall: Reflections on Hope and Freedom
by Nasser Abu SrourA Palestinian prisoner’s memoir of thirty years’ captivity, and a love letter to the wall that encircles and comforts him This is the story of a wall that somehow chose me as the witness of what it said and didNasser Abu Srour grew up in a refugee camp in the West Bank, on the outskirts of Bethlehem. As a child, he played in its shadow and explored the little world within the camp. As he grew older, he began questioning the boundaries that limited his existence. Later, sentenced to life in prison, with no hope of parole, he found himself surrounded by a physical wall.This is the story of how, over thirty years in captivity, he crafted a new definition of freedom. Turning to writings by philosophers as varied as Derrida, Kirkegaard and Freud, he begins to let go of freedom as a question that demanded an answer, in order to preserve it as a dream. The wall becomes his stable point of reference, his anchor, both physically and psychologically.As each year brings with it new waves of releases of prisoners, he dares to hope, and seeks refuge in the wall when these hopes are dashed. And, in a small miracle, he finds love with a lawyer from the outside – while in her absence, the wall is his solace and his curse.A testimony of how the most difficult of circumstances can build a person up instead of tearing them down, The Tale of a Wall is an extraordinary record of the vast confinement and power of the mind.
Illuminated: Autism & All The Things I’ve left Unsaid
by null Melanie SykesThe impactful and empowering memoir from Melanie Sykes Melanie Sykes has been a face on our screens, a voice on our radios for nearly thirty years. As a presenter and broadcaster people turned to her for her humour, her honesty and insight. But between all the interviews and chat shows, is a life unseen, a story unsaid. Her journey – from up north to down south, from Manchester to LA and via London, Paris and India, and through the eye of the storm of celebrity culture is a rollercoaster ride. Sex, drugs and rock and roll, certainly, but also brass bands and ice cream vans, broken hearts and healing adventures – a search not for fame but for freedom. Her autism diagnosis in midlife has supercharged that journey – and means this isn’t a story just of breakdown, but of breakthrough. Funny, furious and gloriously frank, this is a book that lifts the lid on being a woman in the media, navigating relationships, and being a neurodivergent person speaking up in a neurotypical world. Illuminated is Melanie, in her own inimitable voice.
Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival
by Alice VincentLONGLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKS ARE MY BAG READERS AWARD FOR NON-FICTION THE TIMES / WATERSTONES TOP 10 BESTSELLER A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE INDEPENDENT, STYLIST, RHS, GARDENS ILLUSTRATED and more Women have always gardened, but our stories have been buried with our work. Alice Vincent is on a quest to change that: to understand what encourages women to go out, work the soil, plant seeds and nurture them, even when so many other responsibilities sit upon their shoulders. To recover the histories that have been lost among the soil and to understand women’s lives, their gardens and what the ground has offered them. Wise, curious and sensitive, Why Women Grow follows Alice in her search for answers, with inquisitive fronds reaching and curling around the intimate anecdotes of others.
Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing In Iraq
by Rory StewartA fascinating insight into the complexity, history and unpredictability of Iraq from Rory Stewart, bestselling author of Politics on the Edge and host of hit podcast The Rest Is Politics.‘Devastating’ - The Sunday Times‘Absolutely absorbing’ - Ken LoachBy September 2003, six months after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the anarchy had begun. Rory Stewart, then a young British diplomat, was appointed as the Coalition Provisional Authority's deputy governor of a province of 850,000 people in the southern marshland region. There, he and his colleagues confronted gangsters, Iranian-linked politicians, tribal vendettas and a full Islamist insurgency.Occupational Hazards is Rory Stewart's inside account of the attempt to rebuild a nation, the errors made, the misunderstandings and insurmountable difficulties encountered. It reveals an Iraq hidden from most foreign journalists and soldiers, a rare and compelling insight that remains just as important today.‘An extraordinarily vivid tale’ - The Guardian‘Wonderfully observed, wise, evocative’ - The Observer
A Chimpanzee in the Wine Cellar
by Patricia Cavendish O'NeilFrom the international best-selling author of A Lion in the Bedroom, Pat Cavendish O'Neill, comes another glimpse into her extravagant and adventurous life ... In 1968, Pat Cavendish O'Neill reluctantly left her magical years in Kenya behind to join her mother in Somerset West, South Africa. She left behind her wonderful friends, a life she loved and, even more heart-breaking, her beloved lioness Tana. However, arriving at her new home on Broadlands Farm, Pat soon found a different channel for her extraordinary gift with animals when she revealed a sharp eye for identifying winning race horses, turning Broadlands into a renowned stud farm. As always, the women attracted a colourful international audience into their extremely lavish lifestyle - champagne and caviar were the order of the day - and Pat and her mother would regularly fly to Australia to bid on some of the world's finest fillies and colts. Pat's fierce of love of animals has resulted in her opening heart and home to a variety of creatures, from monkeys to baboons, birds, sheep, pigs and horses, to a pack of seventeen dogs and a goat all living underfoot. But a rescued chimp named Kalu found his way deepest into her heart. For over 40 years Pat and Kalu have lived at Broadlands together and the one without the other is a picture incomplete. Today, at the age of 87, Pat leads a very different life from the enormous privilege and wealth into which she was born, yet she still remains true to her first love of animals.
This is the Life: Days and Nights in the GAA
by Ciarán MurphyA provocative look at how grassroots GAA interacts with life in Ireland, from the wittiest Gaelic games pundit at work today The GAA is Ireland's largest civil society organisation, woven into the fabric of families and communities - and yet most books about Gaelic games focus on the greatest players and inter-county teams. This is the Life is a book about the 99%: a witty and provocative look at grassroots GAA from the most intelligent and interesting Gaelic games pundit at work today.Ciarán Murphy - of Second Captains and the Irish Times - has an unmatched feel for the timeless elements of this world and a finger on the pulse of change. He looks at the plight of rural clubs that are losing their players to the cities - and he does so not only as a journalist but as a footballer who made the same move himself. He writes about working as an assistant in the clothing shop owned by the family of Jarlath Fallon - both Ciarán's sporting hero and the local postman. And he looks a things we usually prefer not to talk about, like the role of social class in the GAA.This is the Life is a book about the places the GAA comes from, the places it can take a person, and theings that make a local club worth fighting for.
Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-maker and Apprentice to a Butcher in Tuscany
by Bill BufordBill Buford, an enthusiastic, if rather chaotic, home cook, was asked by the New Yorker to write a profile of Mario Batali, a Falstaffian figure of voracious appetites who runs one of New York's most successful three-star restaurants. Buford accepted the commission, on the condition Batali allow him to work in his kitchen, as his slave.He worked his way up to 'line cook' and then left New York to learn from the very teachers who had taught his teacher: preparing game with Marco Pierre White, making pasta in a hillside trattoria, finally becoming apprentice to a Dante-spouting butcher in Chianti.Heat is a marvellous hybrid: a memoir of Buford's kitchen adventures, the story of Batali's amazing rise to culinary fame, a dazzling behind-the-scenes look at a famous restaurant, and an illuminating exploration of why food matters. It is a book to delight in, and to savour.
My Family and Other Seedlings: A Year on a Dorset Allotment
by Lalage SnowA few years ago Lally Snow moved to a Dorset village with her husband and three small children, having spent over a decade as a war photographer, foreign correspondent and film maker living in Kabul. She covered the conflict there as well as other wars from Gaza to Eastern Ukraine, and Iraq.In the late winter of 2021-22, Lally decided to rent an allotment, despite having only a rudimentary knowledge of gardening. She was starting from scratch and setting herself the dual challenge of growing an allotment at the same time as growing a family.This is a heart-warming, wry and at times tearful account of Lally's travails as a mother and novice allotment holder, counterpointing horticultural progress with the perils of parenting. Along the way she reflects on the drudgery of English rural domesticity after a professional life chasing war and adventure, the history of the allotment since Saxon times, and the wonderful moment when gardening becomes fun rather than just feeding a family.
Springfield Road: A Poet’s Childhood Revisited (Canons)
by Salena GoddenThis is the story of a home. A story rooted in love. The story of a poet born of an Irish jazz musician and a Jamaican go-go dancer, an absent father and a resilient mother. In Springfield Road, Salena Godden evokes an era when oranges seemed bigger and summers were longer, a world of half-penny sweets, free school milk, hand-me-downs and Thatcher’s Britain, for those too young to remember and for those old enough to know. For Salena, it was a time for learning that life can be brutal with first betrayals and first losses, but also that there are endless riches to uncover in the world. In equal parts powerful, tender and fearless, Springfield Road shows us where, in a world full of shadows, hope is to be found.
My Fishing Life: A Story of the Sea
by Ashley Mullenger'A beautiful, heartfelt love letter to the sea, and a cherished industry. Ash is a force of nature, she's a testament to working hard and dreaming big' Dermot O'LearyAshley Mullenger had never planned to become a fisherman. A chance fishing trip - catching mackerel off the Norfolk coast - was the start of an obsession. One that resulted in a transformation from clean-cut office worker to commercial 'Fisherman of the Year', and proud working owner of two boats, Fairlass and Saoirse, alongside skipper Nigel.This is a memoir of that journey, a life swept up in tides and elements, strength of mind and body, of old ways and new struggles. It's about the bravery of crews, early mornings, weather-beaten characters and those that can sink pints as fast as they can haul pots. These coastal communities and age-old livelihoods are built on trust, courage and skill - but they are also fraying against politics, poverty and climate change. The reality of commercial fishing is rarely seen, but Ashley carries us across the waves and around the UK's waters in vivid detail to show what is really happening at sea to land the fish on our plates.My Fishing Life is both a rallying cry and a love letter, rinsed down with salty humour, to an industry often misunderstood. One woman's unique story of boat, skipper, sea and catch ultimately becomes a transformative view of a world that impacts deeply on us all.
Enchanted Islands: A Mediterranean Odyssey – A Memoir of Travels through Love, Grief and Mythology
by Laura CoffeyEnchanted Islands tells the true story of Laura Coffey's epic journey around the mystical archipelagos of the Mediterranean. Blending memoir, travel and nature writing with tales from The Odyssey, and infused with sharply comic wit, this is a celebration of the redemptive powers of cold-water swimming and luminous star-lit skies.
Inshallah United: A story of faith and football
by null Nooruddean ChoudryLonglisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Awards 2023 Nooruddean Choudry was born in 1979 — the year Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister, Sid Vicious died of a heroin overdose, Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the last Shah of Iran, and Tim Martin opened his first Wetherspoons. Also that year, a local football club lost the Cup Final to Arsenal courtesy of a man named Sunderland. That club would become an all-consuming obsession for young Nooruddean, who would one day become a small brown man and, vitally, also a Red. Inshallah United is the story of the first British-born son of a Pakistani family living in England’s second city. And geography is important, because if it wasn't for his mum and dad settling in Manchester rather than anywhere else in the world, so much of what makes up Nooruddean's identity could have been so different. As it was, he grew up as a Muslim, Manchester United supporting, Morrissey-loving, Maggie-hating, working-class Manc. Inshallah United is about growing up as a strictly halal Stretford Ender; a devout Muslim and diehard Red. It’s about praying five times a day that United would sign Alan Shearer and knock the Scousers off their perch. And it’s a deeply personal account of life as a Muslim Asian Mancunian kid in the late 80s and 90s, bookmarked by the most successful period in Manchester United's history.
What It Takes: My Playbook On Life And Leadership
by Sarina WiegmanWinning strategies of one of football’s most successful coaches
Invisible Warfare: How Does a Book Defeat an Empire?
by Liao YiwuAs a writer, poet, musician and dissident, Liao Yiwu is one of the most important chroniclers and analysts of contemporary China. In his books, he draws on his own experiences of imprisonment and mistreatment at the hands of the Chinese state to criticise abuses of power and give a voice to the downtrodden and disenfranchised. In this powerful memoir, Liao Yiwu reflects on his own journey from imprisonment in Sichuan to his current life in Berlin, where he now works as a full-time writer. As China’s presence and influence on the international stage grows, this small book is a poignant reminder of the human cost of authoritarianism and of the power of the written word to bear witness to evil.
Parcels in the Post: Growing Up With Fifty Siblings
by Fiona NearyWelcome to the house of fun. It's the early 1980s and Fiona Neary and her family have recently moved back from England to the family farm. Fiona's huge-hearted mum decides to take in foster children – a decision that will change all their lives. Over the next decade, a procession of faces passes through the house. Every child has their own story, and each story claims a little piece of Fiona's heart. Some stay a few weeks; some months, and then years. All these children, as well as Fiona and her family, must pass through a chaotic system: where a judge's decision can alter a child's life, for better or worse; where emergency placements can break up siblings; where the foster family are often left in the dark and with little back-up. Filled with pathos and humour, Parcels in the Post is both a memoir of a loving household and snapshot of the fostering system in Ireland, from someone at the very heart of it all.
Thorns, Lust and Glory: The betrayal of Anne Boleyn
by Estelle ParanqueA queen on the edge.Anne Boleyn has mesmerised the English public for centuries. Her tragic execution, orchestrated by her own husband, never ceases to intrigue. How did this courtier's daughter become the queen of England, and what was it that really tore apart this illustrious marriage, making her the whore of England, an abandoned woman executed on the scaffold? While many stories of Anne Boleyn's downfall have been told, few have truly traced the origins of her tragic fate.In Thorns, Lust and Glory, Estelle Paranque takes us back to where it all started: to France, where Anne learned the lessons that would set her on the path to becoming one of England's most infamous queens. At the court of the French king as a resourceful teenage girl, Anne's journey to infamy began, and this landmark biography explores the world that shaped her, and how these loyalties would leave her vulnerable, leading to her ruin at the court of Henry VIII.A fascinating new perspective on Tudor history's most enduring story, Thorns, Lust and Glory is an unmissable account of a queen on the edge.
A Flat Place: Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2024
by Noreen MasudSHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD 2024SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024SHORTLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2024SHORTLISTED FOR THE ONDAATJE PRIZE 2024BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 ACCORDING TO THE GUARDIAN, SUNDAY TIMES, NEW YORKERRaw and radical, strange and beguiling - a love letter to Britain's breathtaking flatlands, from Orford Ness to Orkney, and a reckoning with the painful, hidden histories they contain'Expansive and arresting' Financial Times'Sharp, subtle and very moving' Robert MacfarlaneNoreen Masud has always loved flat landscapes - their stark beauty, their formidable calm, their refusal to cooperate with the human gaze. They reflect her inner world: the 'flat place' she carries inside herself, emotional numbness and memory loss as symptoms of childhood trauma. But as much as Britain's landscapes provide solace for suffering, they are also uneasy places for a Scottish-Pakistani woman, representing both an inheritance and a dispossession.Pursuing this paradox across the wide open plains that she loves, Noreen weaves her impressions of the natural world with the poetry, folklore and history of the land, and with recollections of her own early life, rendering a startlingly strange, vivid and intimate account of a post-traumatic, post-colonial landscape - a seemingly flat and motionless place which is nevertheless defiantly alive.'Beautifully written and elegantly constructed' Kamila Shamsie'A Flat Place reminds us that there is hope in the smallest of gestures' Sara Ahmed
The Diaries of Franz Kafka
by Franz KafkaAvailable for the first time in English, the complete, uncensored diaries of one of the twentieth century’s most influential writers 'The writing glimmers with sensitivity, and openness to the world' - The Wall Street JournalDating from 1909 to 1923, Franz Kafka’s Diaries contains a broad array of writing, including accounts of daily events, assorted reflections and observations, literary sketches, drafts of letters, records of dreams, and unrevised texts of stories. This volume makes available for the first time in English a comprehensive reconstruction of Kafka’s handwritten diary entries and provides substantial new content, restoring all the material omitted from previous publications — notably, names of people and undisguised details about them, a number of literary writings, and passages of a sexual nature, some of them with homoerotic overtones.By faithfully reproducing the diaries’ distinctive — and often surprisingly unpolished — writing as it appeared in Kafka’s notebooks, translator Ross Benjamin brings to light not only the author’s use of the diaries for literary invention and unsparing self-examination but also their value as a work of genius in and of themselves.
96 Facts About Taylor Swift: Quizzes, Quotes, Questions and More!
by Arie KaplanThe ultimate Taylor Swift fact and activity book for children!Discover everything any young Taylor Swift fan needs to know in this jam-packed guide, full of facts, quizzes and questions. Plus there are bonus journal pages to fill in.Did you know . . .?Taylor grew up on a Christmas-tree farmShe can play the piano, banjo and ukulele as well as the guitar!She won a poetry competition when she was 10This bumper illustrated book is perfect for any Swiftie!
The Lessons: How I learnt to Manage My Mental Health and How You Can Too
by Nile Wilson'If you want to develop real strength and resilience, read this book.' Tom DaleyNile Wilson has always been one of life's winners; a charismatic young man with an Olympic bronze medal in the Horizontal Bar at just 21 years old. But after a serious neck injury, forcing him to retire early and miss taking part in the Tokyo Olympics, Nile's world fell apart.Swamped with depression, anxiety and addictive behaviours, his mental health went over a cliff. Over the past few years, Nile has had to face down his demons and accept his new reality, and this is the book he wish he'd been given before it all began.Based on 15 hard-won lessons, Nile will guide you through the tools that have helped him come to back from the brink and find, for the first time, a sense of inner calm and renewed purpose. From recognizing destructive patterns, redefining success and managing self-talk, The Lessons will inspire and guide you through the ups and downs of life, and help you to build resilience and self-belief, no matter what.
Say Nothing: A True Story Of Murder and Memory In Northern Ireland
by null Patrick Radden KeefeTHE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING ONE OF DUA LIPA'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR ‘The best book I’ve read for a while, it’s fantastic’ John Oliver ‘A must read’ Gillian Flynn One night in December 1972, Jean McConville, a mother of ten, was abducted from her home in Belfast and never seen alive again. Her disappearance would haunt her orphaned children, the perpetrators of this terrible crime and a whole society in Northern Ireland for decades. In this powerful, scrupulously reported book, Patrick Radden Keefe offers not just a forensic account of a brutal crime but a vivid portrait of the world in which it happened. The tragedy of an entire country is captured in the spellbinding narrative of a handful of characters, presented in lyrical and unforgettable detail. A poem by Seamus Heaney inspires the title: ‘Whatever You Say, Say Nothing’. By defying the culture of silence, Keefe illuminates how a close-knit society fractured; how people chose sides in a conflict and turned to violence; and how, when the shooting stopped, some ex-combatants came to look back in horror at the atrocities they had committed, while others continue to advocate violence even today. Say Nothing deftly weaves the stories of Jean McConville and her family with those of Dolours Price, the first woman to join the IRA as a front-line soldier, who bombed the Old Bailey when barely out of her teens; Gerry Adams, who helped bring an end to the fighting, but denied his own IRA past; Brendan Hughes, a fearsome IRA commander who turned on Adams after the peace process and broke the IRA’s code of silence; and other indelible figures. By capturing the intrigue, the drama and the profound human cost of the Troubles, the book presents a searing chronicle of the lengths that people are willing to go to in pursuit of a political ideal, and the ways in which societies mend – or don’t – in the aftermath of a long and bloody conflict.
The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old And New (Canons #56)
by Annie DillardAnnie Dillard has spent a lifetime examining the world around her with eyes wide open, drinking in all things intensely and relentlessly. Whether observing a sublime lunar eclipse or a moth consumed in a candle flame, the trembling of lily pads on a pond or hundreds of red-winged blackbirds taking flight, Dillard's awe at the fragility of the natural world rejuvenates and inspires pleasure and heartache. Precise in language and deeply meditative in spirit, this is a landmark collection from one of America's masters.
I Seek a Kind Person: My Father, Seven Children and the Adverts that Helped Them Escape the Holocaust
by Julian Borger'A powerful, eloquent and deeply affecting book. I loved it' EDMUND DE WAAL'Tender, evocative and deeply moving' JONATHAN FREEDLAND'Profound, elegiac and fascinating... I zipped through it' PHILIPPE SANDS'Compelling' DAILY MAIL, BOOK OF THE WEEK'I SEEK A KIND PERSON WHO WILL EDUCATE MY INTELLIGENT BOY, AGED 11.' In 1938, Jewish families are scrambling to flee Vienna. Desperate, they take out adverts offering their children into the safe keeping of readers of a British newspaper, the Manchester Guardian. The right words in the right order could mean the difference between life and death.Eighty-three years later, Guardian journalist Julian Borger comes across the advert that saved his father, Robert, from the Nazis. Robert had kept this a secret, like almost everything else about his traumatic Viennese childhood, until he took his own life. Drawn to the shadows of his family's past and starting with nothing but a page of newspaper adverts, Borger traces the remarkable stories of his father, the other advertised children and their families, each thrown into the maelstrom of a world at war.From a Viennese radio shop to the Shanghai ghetto, internment camps and family homes across Britain, the deep forests and concentration camps of Nazi Germany, smugglers saving Jewish lives in Holland, an improbable French Resistance cell, and a redemptive story of survival in New York, Borger unearths the astonishing journeys of the children at the hands of fate, their stories of trauma and the kindness of strangers.I Seek a Kind Person is a gripping family memoir of grief, courage and hope, connecting us with multiple generations, distant continents and the hidden histories of our almost unimaginable past.
The Memory Keeper: A Journey Into the Holocaust to Find My Family
by Jackie KohnstammMax and Mally, two out of millions murdered in the Holocaust, are deported in 1942 from Berlin to Theresienstadt – where they will starve to death. Decades later, in London and on a whim, their granddaughter, Jackie googles their names to find two commemorative stones recently placed outside their old home. The discovery compels her to open a long-closed cupboard of haunting family papers, piece together the story of the family she never knew and find her place in it. With searing prose and meticulous detective work, Jackie Kohnstamm offers a gripping and poignant portrait of an ordinary family and reveals a remarkable story of loss, discovery and memory.
The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz: A Powerful True Story of Hope and Survival
by null Thomas Geve‘We felt an urge to document what we had witnessed. If we who had experienced it, I reasoned, did not reveal the bitter truth, people simply would not believe the extent of the Nazis’ evil. I wanted to share our life, the events and our struggle to survive.’ Thomas Geve was just 15 years old when he was liberated from Buchenwald concentration camp on 11 April 1945. It was the third concentration camp he had survived. Upon arrival at Auschwitz- Birkenau, Thomas was separated from his mother and left to fend for himself in the men’s camp of Auschwitz I, at the age of 13. During the 22 months he was imprisoned, he was subjected to, and forced to observe first-hand, the inhumane world of Nazi concentration camps. On his eventual release Thomas felt compelled to capture daily life in the death camps in more than eighty profoundly moving drawings. Infamous scenarios synonymous with this dark period of history were portrayed in poignant but simplistic detail with extraordinary accuracy. Despite the unspeakable events he experienced, Thomas decided to become an active witness and tell the truth about life in the camps. He has spoken to audiences from around the world and continues to raise awareness about the Holocaust. The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz presents a rare living testimony through the eyes of a child who had the unique ability to observe and remember every detail around him and chose to document it all.