Showing 17–32 of 32 resultsSorted by latest
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£22.00
The discoveries of the Enlightenment unsettled as much as they excited. New truths challenged longstanding beliefs. Rationalism jarred with superstition. Which voices would be heard in this ferocious battle for certainty? From the chaos, three women and their hoaxes rose as symbols of terror and fascination. But were the lies surrounding Fanny Lynes, Mary Bateman and Mary Willcocks entirely of their own making? Why were the public transfixed? Questioning culpability and complicity, Pelling’s engrossing history of this great age of the hoax reveals a veiled world of moral panic, tall tales and true crime, and holds a mirror to our own turbulent relationship with truth.
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£16.99
Mary Beard points to the surprising connections between antiquity and the present. From revolutionaries to dictators, Bob Dylan to Beyoncé, she joins forces with the varied modern characters who have been transfixed by the ancient world. It’s not compulsory, she argues, to be excited by antiquity, but it’s a shame not to be. After half a century teaching and studying classics, she fills the book with lively stories, curious facts and some good gossip. This book explains why the deep past does really affect us all.
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£11.99
In 2010, two decades after the Cold War, ten Russian spies were arrested in the US following a ten-year FBI operation. Among them were three couples who had lived as Americans for years, and one agent who had nearly forgotten Russian. They had hidden their true identities from their children, neighbours and even their partners. Moscow expert Shaun Walker captures the untold history of Russia’s deep cover spy programme, from the ‘great illegals’ of the 1920s and 1930s to the twenty-first century, when agents maintained their fake identities and loyalties after the fall of the Soviet Union.
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£25.00
This is Alan Bennett’s fourth collection of diaries and prose. Covering the turbulent years 2016 to 2024, the diaries take us through lockdown, Brexit, the reign of Johnson, the rise of Trump and the death of the Queen. In between, we take the train with him back and forth to Yorkshire, celebrate the herons, the newts and the street fairs, and lament the scarcity of curlews, the closure of the last local bank and the deteriorating welfare state. There is the premiere of Allelujah!, the revived Talking Heads, the publication of two Sunday Times bestsellers and the filming of The Choral. 2024 is the year that Alan turns ninety; he reflects on old age and the importance of luck. He looks back to childhood and recalls an idyllic wartime month as an evacuee.
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£18.99
British food is usually seen as a dire affair – if people think of it at all, they picture fish and chips, tea and cakes, stiff sandwiches and limp vegetables. But the truth is that British food today is one of the world’s most innovative and diverse cuisines, and Ben Benton is setting out to catalogue the best dishes from across the country – from the Black Isle to the Balti Triangle, Liverpool to Land’s End. Whether sampling seafood on the coast of Northern Ireland or jollof rice in an Essex carpark, join Ben on a journey across Britain like no other.
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£11.99
How do you know if something is true? And once you get there how do you convince others? For over two thousand years, scientific progress has relied on different methods of establishing fact from fiction. From the medieval Islamic world to the recent pandemic, the reasoning went: achieve logical perfection, and you would be rewarded with ultimate, universal truth. But there is far more to proof than axioms, theories and laws: when demonstrating that a new medical treatment works, persuading a jury of someone’s guilt, or deciding whether you trust a self-driving car or a financial transaction, the weighing up of evidence is far from simple. Bestselling author, statistician and epidemiologist Adam Kucharski ranges across science, politics, philosophy and economics, to explore how truth emerges – and why it falters.
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£25.00
Ancient woods are Britain’s richest habitats: rare fragments of our landscape that teem with life from soil to canopy. They live in our collective imagination as quiet places, best left pristine and untouched. But their story has always been one of interdependence with people. Now, as ever, these woods – including remnants of the primeval ‘wildwood’ – need the thoughtful intervention of humans to survive. With the benefit of over twenty years’ experience rehabilitating ancient woodland – from the Lakes to the Peak District, by way of suburban London’s hidden gems – Luke Barley brings us deep into this hidden world to reveal majestic oaks, freshly coppiced hazels, endangered limes, and the passionate individuals tending them for future generations.
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£12.99
This year, as they have for millennia, many people around the world will set out on pilgrimages. But these are not only journeys of personal and spiritual devotion – they are also political acts, affirmations of identity and engagements with deep-rooted historical narratives. Kathryn Hurlock follows the trail of pilgrimage through nineteen sacred sites – from Tai Shan to Jerusalem, Amritsar to Buenos Aires – revealing the many ways in which this ancient practice has shaped our religions and our world. Pilgrimages have transformed the fates of cities, anointed dynasties, provided guidance in hard times and driven progress in good. Filled with fascinating insights, this book unveils the complex histories and contemporary endurance of one of our most fundamental human urges.
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£11.99
In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished. Progress requires the ability to see promise rather than just peril in the creation of new ideas and projects, and an instinct to design systems and institutions that make building possible. In a book exploring how we can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and how we can adopt a mindset directed toward abundance, and not scarcity, to overcome them.
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£12.99
In ‘Tracks on the Ocean’, Sara Caputo tells how our journeys around the globe became fixed lines on maps – and how journey lines themselves reshaped maps and the way that we view the world. From Captain Cook’s route across the South Seas to the disorientating power of digital technology, the tracks we’ve left on the oceans – trading, exploring and conquering – are a hidden record of humanity’s impact on the planet. Revealing their histories, Caputo uncovers a fascinating new history of maritime travel and modernity. Weaving human history, cartography, literature and climate science, ‘Tracks on the Ocean’ reveals how, on the path to discovery, we have changed the world.
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£10.99
When Orlando Whitfield first meets Inigo Philbrick, they are students dreaming of dealing art for a living. Their friendship lasts for fifteen years until one day, Inigo – by then the most successful dealer of his generation – disappears, accused of a fraud so gigantic and audacious it rocks the art world to its core. A sparklingly sharp memoir of greed, ambition and madness, ‘All That Glitters’ will take you to the heart of the contemporary art world, a place wilder and wealthier than you could ever imagine.
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£11.99
The Balfour Declaration of 1917 promised the Jews a homeland where the Palestinians already lived. Despite constant bloodshed and uprisings, that impossible arrangement continued until 1948 when it was ended by what Israelis call the War of Independence and the Palestinians the Nakba, or Tragedy. Worse was to follow with conclusion of the Six Day War in 1967 and Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, previously respectively under Jordanian and Egyptian rule. Since then, the Palestinian story has been one of occupation and resistance. In this book, Professor Khalidi provides a thorough overview of this enduring and controversial conflict.
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£11.99
From the Battle of Catterick (AD 598) to the premiership of Tony Blair, one of Britain’s bestselling authors, Simon Jenkins, weaves together a strong narrative with all the most important and interesting dates in our history in a text that is as characteristically stylish as it is authoritative.
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£11.99
Even small children know there are infinitely many whole numbers – start counting and you’ll never reach the end. But there are also infinitely many decimal numbers between zero and one. Are these two types of infinity the same? Are they larger or smaller than each other? Can we even talk about ‘larger’ and ‘smaller’ when we talk about infinity? Eugenia Cheng reveals the inner workings of infinity. What happens when a new guest arrives at your infinite hotel – but you already have an infinite number of guests? How does infinity give Zeno’s tortoise the edge in a paradoxical foot-race with Achilles? And can we really make an infinite number of cookies from a finite amount of cookie dough? Wielding an armoury of inventive, intuitive metaphor, he draws beginners and enthusiasts alike into the heart of this mysterious, powerful concept to reveal fundamental truths about mathematics.
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£12.99
Why is North Korea, a geographical, ethnic and cultural mirror of its capitalist neighbour, ten times poorer than South Korea? ‘Why Nations Fail’ analyses the root of the problems facing some nations, and why they are so difficult (though not impossible) to overcome.
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£12.99
Describing the experiences of 20 ordinary people from around the world, all now known, the author explores the everyday aspects of war: not only the tragedy and horror, but also the absurdity, monotony and even beauty.
