Showing 1–12 of 28 resultsSorted by latest
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£40.00
Cartomania, or the creation and sharing of cartes de visite, was a Victorian phenomenon, a photographic craze that seized the public’s imagination at the beginning of the 1860s and quickly became the decade’s dominant visual medium. Small portraits, often informal and humorous, were exchanged between friends and family members and assembled into albums. This photo-sharing – the Instagram and TikTok of its day – was a new and ground-breaking development of broad social and cultural significance. This book is a treasure trove of fascinating Victorian lives and stories, with idiosyncratic charm for the general reader and a wealth of detail and research for anyone interested in photography or the late nineteenth century.
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£10.99
Cat Munro, aged 39, quits her corporate job in Arizona and – in a bid to conquer her fear of flying – starts flying lessons in a small plane over the desert instead. Her mother, Laura, moves to the Scottish village where she lived when first married to Cat’s violent father and attempts to come to terms with the past. From the excoriating heat of the Arizona desert to the misty flow of a north-west Highland sea-loch, Sharon Blackie’s first novel presents us with the transformative power of landscape, and of storytelling, as Cat learns to finally let herself go and Laura learns how to forgive herself. An honest and moving exploration of the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, The Long Delirious Burning Blue is above all a story of courage, endurance and redemption.
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£18.99
Rory Cellan-Jones knew he was the child of a brief love affair between two unmarried BBC employees. But until his mother died and he found a previously unknown file labelled ‘For Rory’ he had no idea of their beginnings or ending, and why his peculiarly isolated childhood had so tested the bond between him and his mother. ‘For Rory,’ his mother had written on the file ‘in the hope that it will help him understand how it really was’. This is a tender account of what Rory uncovered in the papers, letters and diaries; a relationship between two colleagues (two romantics) and the restrictive forces of post-war respectability and prejudice that ended it. It is also an evocation of the progressive, centrifugal force at the centre of all their lives – the BBC itself.
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£10.99
Rich with a combination of myth, landscape and eco feminism, ‘Hagitude’ reclaims the mid years as a liberating, alchemical moment from which to shift into your chosen, authentic and fulfilling future. Drawing inspiration from mythic figures and archetypes as well as modern mentors, Sharon Blackie plots a liberating new path into elderhood.
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£19.99
Taking its title from the first ever encyclopedia in the English language, ‘All Good Things’ (‘Omne Bonum’) is a compendium of art and photography inspired by both the natural world and human endeavour that will appeal both to Stephen Ellcock’s digital followers and our image-focused, solace-seeking times. Providing meditative focus and visual exhilaration, Ellcock celebrates our humanity and inspires us to wonder once more. Carefully selected quotes from poets from thinkers, writers, and scientists counterpoint the images perfectly and add to the richness of this beautifully produced book.
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£12.99
Grief-stricken and on the verge of a breakdown, Luda Managan and her two teenage children try to make a home for themselves on a collection of harsh and haunted Scottish islands. Luda, a photographer, is mesmerised by the extraordinary magic of the islands but soon finds herself condemned by the local community after publishing images documenting the death of a local child. Alienated, Luda turns her attention to the records from the 17th century island witch-hunts and the fragmented life stories of the executed women. Min, restless and strong, finds comfort in the depths of the North Sea and in an unlikely friendship with the elderly and irreverent local ‘witch’. The only thing that Darcy cares about is getting entry into university – one far away from his mother. Until he meets the wild foundling, Theo.
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£19.99
‘Tender Maps’ is an attempt to define the indefinable, and an exploration of why it is so crucial that we try. From the bluebell woods of Somerset to the freeways of LA, from Istanbul to Nashville, Tbilisi to Venice, Alice Maddicott has journeyed restlessly in search of the thing that meant the most to her: the feeling of a place. But this is more than a travelogue – it’s also a journey of ideas about our experience of place, which encompasses early mapmaking , radical land art, Celtic Christianity, Situationism, children’s literature, and much more.
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£9.99
Three very different mothers all receive the same letter, which accuses their husbands of committing rape 20 years ago. Together they have to work out the right thing to do.
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£11.99
One woman, an unreliable bike and a richly entertaining, stereotype-busting journey of discovery. In 2018 Rebecca Lowe – driven by a desire to experience and understand better the Middle East and Islam – set off on a solo 11,000 kilometre bike ride through Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, the Gulf and to Iran. This is her account of that year long journey, which paints a living portrait of the Middle East through its people, its politics and its history, and challenges much of the perceived wisdom about this region of the world.
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£20.00
This is the story of Ian Marchant’s great (x7) grandfather, Thomas Marchant who left a detailed diary from 1714 to 1728. Life-loving Thomas – who liked a drink and game of cards – feels recognisably Marchant to Ian. Thomas wrote about his family farm and fishponds; about dung, horses and mud, and about the making and drinking of cider. But, as Ian discovers, he was also a Fifteener, a Jacobite sympathiser determined to bring down the monarchy. Ian Marchant tells the story of uncovering a new relative and digs deep into the daily life and political concerns of the 1720s.
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£11.99
Each essay here captures a piece of Polley’s life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory and the embodied reactions of children and women adapting and surviving. The guiding light is the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person she is now. In this book, Polley explores what it is to live in one’s body, in a constant state of becoming, learning, and changing. As she was advised after a catastrophic injury to her head – if we relinquish our protective crouch and run towards the danger, then life can be reset, reshaped and lived afresh.
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£16.99
An extraordinary account of searching for the wildness left in our world spanning continents and geological eras, skies and oceans, animals and birds, and even the planets and stars. With dizzying acuity and insight Roberts paints a portrait of a life and its landscapes, creating precious connections with wild creatures and places, from swans in the Cambrian Mountains to wolves in the Pacific Northwest. By walking at dawn and dusk, in the two lights of awakening and deepening, through the stripped, windswept hills of Wales, and the jungles and savannahs of Africa, he tries to navigate from a soul stripping sense of loss towards hope in the future. In the presence of wild creatures he finds a way back to life.
