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Cathedrals and Castles
by Henry JamesThe American Henry James's descriptions of the countryside, monuments, universities, cathedrals, castles, customs and manners of the English are filled with elegant charm and good humour. Here he delights in the hidden corners of ancient Chester streets, marvels at the drunken jollity of Epsom Derby day and savours the calm shadows of Glastonbury abbey, in a hymn to stained-glass windows, crumbling cottages, Norman towers, weather-beaten gables and the English genius.Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside - but it has profoundly shaped us too.It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and people who live and work on the land - as well as those who are travelling through it.English Journeys celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).
From Dover to the Wen
by William CobbettTouring the southern counties of England by foot and on horseback from the white cliffs of Dover to the heart of the countryside, William Cobbett recorded a swiftly changing way of life with energy, wit, passion and principle. Here he juxtaposes lyrical evocations of oaken wealds, cornfields, rolling downs and shaded lanes with acerbic attacks on the poverty of starving agricultural workers and the corrupt establishment of his day.Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside - but it has profoundly shaped us too.It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and people who live and work on the land - as well as those who are travelling through it.English Journeys celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).
Ripe for the Picking (Windsor Selection Ser.)
by Annie HawesDuring the course of Annie Hawes' new book, local culinary superstar, Ciccio, gradually takes over as Annie's constant companion. How irresistible is a man who first demonstrates his affection and esteem by inviting her into his vineyard to help himmix up cow manure, which she spends the afternoon slapping onto an old pizza oven to improve its insulation, before driving her at terrifying speed to a Herbie Hancock concert? But even with Ciccio's help, the everyday life of Ligurian folk never seems to lose its surreal edge for Annie. How long does she have to stay at Diano San Pietro before it all becomes normal run-of-the-mill stuff and ceases to amaze her? Will she ever manage to go native?
Encore Provence: New Adventures In The South Of France (Compass Ser. #442)
by Peter MayleThe third spellbinding volume in the series begun by A Year in Provence, ENCORE PROVENCE continues the account of an English couple's life abroad. Among other curiosities, explore a school for noses in Haute Provence, the mysterious death of an oversexed butcher, the quest for the finest bouillabaisse and an assortment of the characters who lie in wait in bars and on boules courts. And, of course, the essential importance of lunch. BON APPETIT!'One of the most successful travel books of all time... Mayle created anew travel genre' GuardianDelightful' Washington Post'Engaging, funny and richlyappreciative' New York Times Book Review'Stylish, witty, delightfully readable' SundayTimes
Congo Journey
by Redmond O'HanlonCombining the acute observation of a nineteenth-century missionary, and the wit of a Monty Python player, Redmond O'Hanlon is famous for his adventurous travel. His new challenge is the Congo, the most dangerous and inhospitable jungle in the world.
A South Indian Journey: The Smile of Murugan
by Michael WoodInspired by a temple astrologer (who had accurately predicted his marriage and the birth of his two daughters), the writer and broadcaster Michael Wood travelled on a magical journey through south-east India.
Clear Waters Rising: A Mountain Walk Across Europe
by Nicholas CraneAlone - though he was just married - and on foot, Nicholas Crane embarked on an extraordinary adventure: a seventeen-month journey along the chain of mountains which stretches across Europe from Cape Finisterre to Istanbul. His aim was to explore Europe's last mountain wilderness and to meet the people who live on the periphery of the modern world.
Into the Heart of Borneo (Vintage Departures Ser.)
by Redmond O'Hanlon‘We’ve left a lot of men in Borneo – know what I mean?’ With their SAS trainer’s warnings ringing in their ears, the naturalist, Redmond O’Hanlon, and the poet, James Fenton, set out to rediscover the lost rhinoceros of Borneo. They were loaded with enough back-breaking kit to survive two months in a steaming 95° (in the shade) jungle of creeping, crawling, biting things. O’Hanlon could also rely on his encyclopaedic knowledge of the region’s flora and fauna, and had read-up on how to avoid being eaten by anything (stick your thumbs in a crocodile’s eyes, if you have time). And yet they proceeded to have an adventure that neither O’Hanlon, nor his friend, nor even his guides were remotely prepared for…‘Consistently exciting, often funny, and erudite without ever being overwhelming’ Punch.
London Orbital
by Iain SinclairLondon Orbital is Iain Sinclair's voyage of discovery into the unloved outskirts of the city.Encircling London like a noose, the M25 is a road to nowhere, but when Iain Sinclair sets out to walk this asphalt loop - keeping within the 'acoustic footprints' - he is determined to find out where the journey will lead him. Stumbling upon converted asylums, industrial and retail parks, ring-fenced government institutions and lost villages, Sinclair discovers a Britain of the fringes, a landscape consumed by developers. London Orbital charts this extraordinary trek and round trip of the soul, revealing the country as you've never seen it before.'My book of the year. Sentence for sentence, there is no more interesting writer at work in English'John Lanchester, Daily Telegraph'A magnum opus, my book of the year. I urge you to read it. In fact, if you're a Londoner and haven't read it by the end of next year, I suggest you leave'Will Self, Evening Standard'A journey into the heart of darkness and a fascinating snapshot of who we are, lit by Sinclair's vivid prose. I'm sure it will be read fifty years from now'J. G. Ballard, ObserverIain Sinclair is the author of Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Award); Landor's Tower; White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings; Lights Out for the Territory; Lud Heat; Rodinsky's Room (with Rachel Lichtenstein); Radon Daughters; London Orbital, Dining on Stones, Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire and Ghost Milk. He is also the editor of London: City of Disappearances.
Soldiers of Light
by Daniel BergnerIn this moving and unforgettable narrative journalist Daniel Bergner travels into the heart of Sierra Leone, a country torn apart by war. This is the story of the people he encounters in a realm of fire and jungle as they rebuild their lives: Lamin, who lost his hands to save his daughter; Komba, child soldier and sometime cannibal; Neall Ellis, the mercenary pilot with a conscience; Valentine Strasser the embittered ex-dictator; and the Western outsiders trying to save a land of startling beauty and brutality. Shocking, often heartbreaking yet ultimately hopeful, Soldiers of Light is a story of survival and a haunting work of literary reportage.
Trawler: A Journey Through the North Atlantic
by Redmond O'HanlonRedmond O'Hanlon describes his extraordinary three-week trip on an Orkney trawler as it journeys far into the north Atlantic in search of its catch. Young skipper Jason Schofield has a 2 million pound overdraft on his boat, the Norlantean, which is why he has to go out in a Category One Force 12 hurricane when the rest of the Scottish fleet has run for shelter. O'Hanlon may not be much help when it comes to seamanship - in the words of one of the crew, he doesn't know his arse from his tit - but he is able to wax lyrical on the amazing deep-sea fish to be found north of the Wyville Thomson Ridge: greater argentine, flying squid, blue ling, the truly disgusting hagfish and many other exotics.Combining humour with erudition, O'Hanlon has written a vivid and compulsively readable account of a journey that for sheer terror beats all his previous adventures.
The River at the Centre of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time
by Simon WinchesterSimon Winchester undertakes a journey from the mouth of the Yangste River to its source. This is the story of the river, it's cities and their people, built around the author's own journey to discover something of the essence of China and her people, the Yangtse being her soul and centre
The Venetian Empire: A Sea Voyage
by Jan MorrisFor six centuries the Republic of Venice was a maritime empire, its sovereign power extending throughout much of the eastern Mediterranean – an empire of coasts, islands and isolated fortresses by which, as Wordsworth wrote, the mercantile Venetians 'held the gorgeous east in fee'. Jan Morris reconstructs the whole of this glittering dominion in the form of a sea-voyage, travelling along the historic Venetian trade routes from Venice itself to Greece, Crete and Cyprus. It is a traveller's book, geographically arranged but wandering at will from the past to the present, evoking not only contemporary landscapes and sensations but also the characters, the emotions and the tumultuous events of the past. The first such work ever written about the Venetian ‘Stato da Mar’, it is an invaluable historical companion for visitors to Venice itself and for travellers through the lands the Doges once ruled.
A Year in Provence (Popular Penguins Series)
by Peter MayleThe bestselling, much-loved classic account of an English couple enjoying the fruits of French rural living - an irresistible feast of humour and heart.Peter Mayle and his wife did what most of us only imagine doing when they made their long-cherished dream of a life abroad a reality: throwing caution to the wind, they bought a glorious two hundred year-old farmhouse in the Lubéron Valley and began a new life.In a year that begins with a marathon lunch and continues with a host of gastronomic delights, they also survive the unexpected and often hilarious curiosities of rural life. From mastering the local accent and enduring invasion by bumbling builders, to discovering the finer points of boules and goat-racing, all the earthy pleasures of Provençal life are conjured up in this enchanting portrait.'One of the most successful travel books of all time... Mayle created a new travel genre' GuardianDelightful' Washington Post'Engaging, funny and richly appreciative' New York Times Book Review'Stylish, witty, delightfully readable' Sunday Times'I really loved this book' Julia Child
An Evening of Long Goodbyes: A Novel
by Paul MurrayAcclaimed as one of the funniest and most assured Irish novels of recent years, An Evening of Long Goodbyes is the story of Dubliner Charles Hythloday and the heroic squandering of the family inheritance. Featuring drinking, greyhound racing, vanishing furniture, more drinking, old movies, assorted Dublin lowlife, eviction and the perils of community theatre, Paul Murray's debut novel is a tour de force of comedic writing wrapped in an honest-to-goodness tale of a man- and a family - living in denial . . .
Extra Virgin: A Young Woman Discovers The Italian Riviera, Where Every Month Is Enchanted
by Annie HawesA small stone house deep among the olive groves of Liguria, going for the price of a dodgy second-hand car. Annie Hawes and her sister, on the spot by chance, have no plans whatsoever to move to the Italian Riviera but find naturally that it's an offer they can't refuse. The laugh is on the Foreign Females who discover that here amongst the hardcore olive farming folk their incompetence is positively alarming. Not to worry: the thrifty villagers of Diano San Pietro are on the case, and soon plying the Pallid Sisters with advice, ridicule, tall tales and copious hillside refreshments ...
The Teatime Islands: Adventures in Britain's Faraway Outposts
by Ben FogleWelcomed with open arms, derided as a pig-ignorant tourist and occasionally mocked mercilessly for his trouble, Ben Fogle visited the last flag-flying outposts of the British Empire.With caution, dignity and a spare pair of pants thrown to the wind, he set out to discover just exactly who would choose to live on islands as remote as these and - more importantly - tried to figure out exactly why. Landing himself on islands so isolated, wind-swept, barren and just damned peculiar that they might have Robinson Crusoe thinking twice, Fogle:- Almost becomes lunch on the appropriately named Carcass Island- Gets deported from Pitcairn for being both a spy and a smuggler- Uncovers the story of the tyrant who became St Helena's most unwilling and least popular guest- And witnesses a shark attack from a respectable distance.Why he went, what he did when he got there and how exactly he got back in one piece makes for an eye-opening but affectionate look into life in these unique, peculiar places.
Let Our Fame Be Great: Journeys among the defiant people of the Caucasus
by Oliver BulloughTwo centuries ago, the Russians pushed out of the cold north towards the Caucasus Mountains, the range that blocked their access to Georgia, Turkey, Persia and India. They were forging their colonial destiny, and the mountains were in their way. The Caucasus had to be conquered and, for the highlanders who lived there, life would never be the same again.If the Russians expected it to be an easy fight, however, they were mistaken. Their armies would go on to defeat Napoleon and Hitler, as well as lesser foes, but no one resisted them for as long as these supposed savages.To hear the stories of the conquest, I travelled far from the mountains. I wandered through the steppes of Central Asia and the cities of Turkey. I squatted outside internment camps in Poland, and drank tea beneath the gentle hills of Israel. The stories I heard amplified the outrages I saw in the mountains themselves. As I set out, in my mind was a Chechen woman I had met in a refugee camp. She lived in a ragged, khaki tent in a field of mud and stones, but she welcomed me with laughter and kindness. Like the mountains of her homeland, her spirit had soared upwards, gleaming and pure. Throughout my travels, I met the same generosity from all the Caucasus peoples.Their stories have not been told, and there fame is not great, but truly it deserves to be.
The Aran Islands (Penguin Modern Classics)
by J. M. Synge Tim RobinsonIn 1907 J. M. Synge achieved both notoriety and lasting fame with The Playboy of the Western World. The Aran Islands, published in the same year, records his visits to the islands in 1898-1901, when he was gathering the folklore and anecdotes out of which he forged The Playboy and his other major dramas. Yet this book is much more than a stage in the evolution of Synge the dramatist. As Tim Robinson explains in his introduction, "If Ireland is intriguing as being an island off the west of Europe, then Aran, as an island off the west of Ireland, is still more so; it is Ireland raised to the power of two." Towards the end of the last century Irish nationalists came to identify the area as the country's uncorrupted heart, the repository of its ancient language, culture and spiritual values. It was for these reasons that Yeats suggested Synge visit the islands to record their way of life. The result is a passionate exploration of a triangle of contradictory relationships – between an island community still embedded in its ancestral ways but solicited by modernism, a physical environment of ascetic loveliness and savagely unpredictable moods, and Synge himself, formed by modern European thought but in love with the primitive.
Arnhem: The Battle for Survival
by John Nichol Tony RennellIn September 1944, a mighty shock force of battle hardened Allied troops dropped from the skies into enemy-occupied Holland in what was hoped would be the decisive final battle of World War II.Landing miles behind the German lines, their daring mission was to secure bridges across the Rhine so that ground forces could make a rapid dash into Nazi Germany. If all went well, the war could be over by Christmas.But what many trusted would be a simple operation turned into a brutal losing battle. Of 12,000 British airborne soldiers, 1,500 died and 6,000 were taken prisoner. The vital bridge at Arnhem they had come to capture stayed resolutely in German hands.But though this was a bitter military defeat for the Allies, beneath the humiliation was another story - of heroism and self-sacrifice, gallantry and survival, guts and determination unbroken in the face of impossible odds.In the two-thirds of a century that have passed since then, historians have endlessly analysed what went wrong and squabbled over who was to blame. Lost in the process was that other Arnhem story - the triumph of the human spirit, as seen through the dramatic first-hand accounts of those who were there, in the cauldron, fighting for their lives, fighting for their comrades, fighting for their honour, a battle they won hands down.
The Shell Country Alphabet: The Classic Guide to the British Countryside
by Geoffrey Grigson Sophie GrigsonIn the 1960s Geoffrey Grigson travelled around England writing the story of the secret landscape that is all around us, if only we take the time to look and see. The result is a book that will take you on an imaginative journey, revealing hidden stories, unexpected places and strange phenomena. From green men, ice-scratches, cross-legged knights and weathercocks to rainbows, clouds and stars; from place-names and poets to mazes, dene-holes and sham ruins, via avenues, dewponds and village greens, The Shell Country Alphabet will help you discover the world that remains, just off the motorway.'Geoffrey Grigson resurrected the minor, the provincial and the parochial ... [he was] an erudite and unrivalled topographer ... ardent in promoting informed awareness of the distinctiveness of place' Toby Barnard'An anthologist of genius' P.J. Kavanagh
Come What May: The Autobiography
by Dónal Óg CusackDónal Óg Cusack has been one of Ireland's leading hurlers for the past decade, winning five Munster titles and three All-Ireland medals with Cork, and establishing himself as one of the game's most compelling and articulate figures. In this book, he tells the story of his life and extraordinary career.'This is not simply one of the best and most readable sports books to be published anywhere this year, it is one of the best and most important books to be published in Ireland this year' Sunday Tribune'Certain to become a sports classic' The Times'Certainly the book of the year' Irish Times'The engine of the book is truthfulness: raw, compelling and uncomfortable' Sunday Times
Domestic Manners of the Americans (Mobi Classics Series)
by Fanny Trollope Pamela Neville-SingtonWhen Fanny Trollope set sail for America in 1827 with hopes of joining a Utopian community of emancipated slaves, she took with her three of her children and a young French artist, leaving behind her son Anthony, growing debts and a husband going slowly mad from mercury poisoning. But what followed was a tragicomedy of illness, scandal and failed business ventures. Nevertheless, on her return to England Fanny turned her misfortunes into a remarkable book. A masterpiece of nineteenth-century travel-writing, Domestic Manners of the Americans is a vivid and hugely witty satirical account of a nation and was a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic.
Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent: Volume 2 (Cambridge Library Collection - Latin American Studies)
by Jason Wilson Alexander Humboldt Malcolm NicolsonOne of the greatest nineteenth-century scientist-explorers, Alexander von Humboldt traversed the tropical Spanish Americas between 1799 and 1804. By the time of his death in 1859, he had won international fame for his scientific discoveries, his observations of Native American peoples and his detailed descriptions of the flora and fauna of the 'new continent'. The first to draw and speculate on Aztec art, to observe reverse polarity in magnetism and to discover why America is called America, his writings profoundly influenced the course of Victorian culture, causing Darwin to reflect: 'He alone gives any notion of the feelings which are raised in the mind on first entering the Tropics'.
Connemara: A Little Gaelic Kingdom
by Tim RobinsonThe triumphant conclusion to Tim Robinson's extraordinary Connemara trilogy, which Robert Macfarlane has called 'one of the most remarkable non-fiction projects undertaken in English'. Robinson writes about the people, places and history of south Connemara - one of Ireland's last Gaelic-speaking enclaves - with the encyclopaedic knowledge of a cartographer and the grace of a born writer. From the man who has been praised in the highest terms by Joseph O'Connor ('One of contemporary Ireland's finest literary stylists''), John Burnside ('one of the finest of contemporary prose stylists'), Fintan O'Toole ('Simply one of the best non-fiction prose writers currently at work') and Giles Foden ('an indubitable classic'), among many others, this is one of the publishing events of 2011 and the conclusion of one of the great literary projects of our time.'He is that rarest of phenomena, a scientist and an artist, and his method is to combine scientific rigour with artistic reverie in a seamless blend that both informs and delights.' John Banville, Guardian'A masterpiece of travel and topographical writing, and an incomparable and enthralling meditation on times past ... This perfectly pitched work opens readers up to the world around them' Sunday Times'Anyone willing to get lost in this book will be left with indelible mental images of places they may never have visited but will now never forget' Dermot Bolger, Irish Mail on Sunday'Will endure into the far future ... He knows this world as no one else does, and writes about it with awe and love, but also with measured grace, an artist's eye and a scientist's sensibility' Colm Toibin, Sunday Business Post Books of the Year'Robinson is a marvel ... the supreme practitioner of geo-graphy, the writing of places' Fintan O'Toole, Observer Books of the Year