Showing 25–36 of 74 resultsSorted by latest
-
£12.99
Artist and wanderer Everett Ruess left home at the age of sixteen to immerse himself in the harsh desert landscapes of the American Southwest. With only his donkeys for company, driven by an insatiable longing for beauty and experience, he ventured ever further from civilisation and into the wilderness of Navajo country. In 1934, at the age of twenty, he vanished without trace in Utah, a disappearance that remains unsolved to this day. Through letters, diary excerpts and poems – charting not only his rugged adventures and his exquisite nature writing but his progression as a writer, and into adulthood – and with commentary by W.L. Rusho, ‘A Vagabond for Beauty’ tells his remarkable story.
-
£12.99
In 1939, Swiss travel writer and journalist Ella K. Maillart set off on an epic journey from Geneva to Kabul with fellow writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach in a brand new Ford. As the first European women to travel alone on Afghanistan’s Northern Road, Maillart and Schwarzenbach had a rare glimpse of life in Iran and Afghanistan at a time when their borders were rarely crossed by Westerners. As the two flash across Europe and the Near East, Maillart writes of comical mishaps, breathtaking landscapes, vitriolic religious clashes, and the ingenuity with which the women navigated what was often a dangerous journey.
-
£20.00
Few fathers and sons can ever have been so close as Winston Churchill and his only son Randolph. Both showed flamboyant impatience, reckless bravery, and generosity of spirit. The glorious and handsome Randolph was a giver and devourer of pleasure, a man who exploded into rooms, trailing whisky tumblers and reciting verbatim whole passages of classic literature. But while Randolph inherited many of his fathers’ talents, he also inherited all of his flaws. Randolph was his father only more so: fiercer, louder, more out of control. Hence father and son would be so very close, and so liable to explode at each other. A revealing new perspective on the Churchill myth, this intimate story reveals the lesser-seen Winston Churchill.
-
£14.99
Welcome to a year of wonder through the English language with Susie Dent, lexicographer extraordinaire and queen of Countdown’s Dictionary Corner. From Turning a Blind Eye (Nelson putting the telescope to his missing eye to ignore the order to stop fighting) to why May Day became a distress call; from stealing someone’s thunder to the real Jack the Lad, from tartle (forgetting someone’s name) to snaccident (unintentionally eating a whole packet of biscuits), this book is her brilliant linguistic almanac full of unforgettable true stories tied to every day of the year. You’ll never be lost for words again!
-
£10.99
‘The Great Successor’ is an irreverent yet insightful quest to understand the life of Kim Jong Un, one of the world’s most secretive dictators. Kim’s life is swathed in myth and propaganda, from the plainly silly – he supposedly ate so much Swiss cheese that his ankles gave way – to the grimly bloody stories of the ways his enemies and rival family members have perished at his command. One of the most knowledgeable journalists on modern Korea, Anna Fifield has exclusive access to Kim’s aunt and uncle who posed as his parents while he was growing up in Switzerland, members of the entourage that accompanied Dennis Rodman on his quasi-ambassadorial visits with Kim, and the Japanese sushi chef whom Kim befriended and who was the first outsider to identify him as the inevitable successor to his father as supreme ruler.
-
£10.99
Wide-ranging, intellectually stimulating, passionately argued, and infused with his characteristic humour, ‘Brief Answers to the Big Questions’, the final book from one of the greatest minds in history, is a personal view on the challenges we face as a human race, and where we, as a planet, are heading next.
-
£8.99
‘We’re spies,’ said Lamb. ‘All kinds of outlandish shit goes on.’ In Slough House memories are stirring, all of them bad. Catherine Standish is buying booze again, Louisa Guy is raking over the ashes of lost love, and new recruit Lech Wicinski, whose sins make him outcast even among the slow horses, is determined to discover who destroyed his career, even if he tears his life apart in the process. Meanwhile, in Regent’s Park, Diana Taverner’s tenure as First Desk is running into difficulties. If she’s going to make the Service fit for purpose, she might have to make deals with a familiar old devil. And with winter taking its grip Jackson Lamb would sooner be left brooding in peace, but even he can’t ignore the dried blood on his carpets. So when the man responsible breaks cover at last, Lamb sends the slow horses out to even thescore.
-
£8.99
‘The Drop’ – Old spooks carry the memory of tradecraft in their bones, and when Solomon Dortmund sees an envelope being passed from one pair of hands to another in a Marylebone café, he knows he’s witnessed more than an innocent encounter. But in relaying his suspicions to John Bachelor, who babysits retired spies like Solly, he sets in train events which will alter lives. ‘The List’ – Dieter Hess, an aged spy, is dead, and John Bachelor, his MI5 handler, is in deep, deep trouble. Death has revealed that the deceased had been keeping a secret second bank account – and there’s only ever one reason a spy has a secret second bank account. The question of whether he was a double agent must be resolved, and its answer may undo an entire career’s worth of spy secrets.
-
£12.99
Dan Snow, Britain’s favourite historian, tells the story of an important event that happened on each day of the year. From the signing of the Armistice treaty at 11 a.m. on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918 to Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat on 1st December 1955, our past is full of all kinds of fascinating turning points. Dan lives and breathes history and this book offers a refreshingly direct way into his vast knowledge.
-
£14.99
‘We’re spies,’ said Lamb. ‘All kinds of outlandish shit goes on.’ In Slough House memories are stirring, all of them bad. Catherine Standish is buying booze again, Louisa Guy is raking over the ashes of lost love, and new recruit Lech Wicinski, whose sins make him outcast even among the slow horses, is determined to discover who destroyed his career, even if he tears his life apart in the process. Meanwhile, in Regent’s Park, Diana Taverner’s tenure as First Desk is running into difficulties. If she’s going to make the Service fit for purpose, she might have to make deals with a familiar old devil. And with winter taking its grip Jackson Lamb would sooner be left brooding in peace, but even he can’t ignore the dried blood on his carpets. So when the man responsible breaks cover at last, Lamb sends the slow horses out to even thescore.
-
£8.99
There has been a whole tradition of books over hundreds of years where a father shares his wisdom with his son. Meanwhile, women have tended to remain silent (a.k.a. bullied into thinking their advice wasn’t worth writing down). Jo Brand’s book puts a stop to all that. Ranging from your family and how to survive it, to what no one tells you about the female body; from how not to fall in love, to heckling as a life-skill, ‘Born Lippy’ gathers together the things Jo’s learnt about the world, the things she wishes she’d known and the things she hopes for the future.
-
£20.00
Elected at 29 as the nation’s youngest mayor, Pete Buttigieg recognised that ‘great cities, and even great nations, are built through attention to the everyday.’ As this title recalls, the challenges were daunting – whether confronting gun violence, renaming a street in honour of Martin Luther King Jr., or attracting tech companies to a city that had appealed more to junk bond scavengers than serious investors. None of this is underscored more than Buttigieg’s audacious campaign to reclaim 1000 houses, many of them abandoned, in 1000 days and then, even as a sitting mayor, deploying to serve in Afghanistan as a Navy officer. Yet the most personal challenge still awaited Buttigieg, who came out in a South Bend Tribune editorial, just before being reelected with 78% of the vote, and then meeting Chasten Glezman, a middle-school teacher, who would become his partner for life.
Pip and Posy The Super Scooter 
