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£14.99
Across the globe, over 122 million people have been displaced. In a world increasingly divided by borders and nationality, the charity Choose Love was founded to support and provide humanitarian aid to those in need. In this powerful collection, ten acclaimed writers speak to people who have experienced displacement and the UK asylum system, reflecting on pivotal moments in their lives when love was transformed into action. From unexpected friendships to life-changing encounters, these stories reveal the profound impact simple acts of kindness can have on those trying to make a home in a new land. Each one is a testament to the enduring human spirit.
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£16.99
From beloved twice Booker-shortlisted novelist Tim Winton, a memoir in essays about art, landscape, family and the world we need to protect in order to pass it on to our children.
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£22.00
In this rich and engaging collection of essays, Tessa Hadley reflects on a lifetime of reading with the clarity and perceptiveness that have made her one of the most widely loved names in contemporary fiction. She charts her development as a lover of literature from a book-mad childhood shaped by libraries and imaginary worlds, through the long, uncertain years of writing and teaching, to the mature artistic vision that defines her work today. Here, Tessa Hadley turns to writers as varied as George Eliot and George Saunders, Tolstoy and Elizabeth Bowen, and looks closely at a handful of paintings. Throughout, her sharp eye, precise judgement, and instinct for style guides the reader towards the pleasures found in each text, and in a life made richer, deeper, and more fully imagined through art.
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£16.99
In this book, Emily Crane invites us to share her observations on the extraordinary and the everyday: stacks of washing up sit alongside musings on God; hot coffee accompanies thoughts about creativity; and memories of snails in her childhood garden slip in beside notes on writing, and books. We find Nietzsche living in a house-share with Keats, and a grieving Demeter keeps us company on wintry Sunday morning walks. Drawing upon philosophy, literature, mythology and memoir, ‘In Search of Lost Thoughts’ is an antidote to the stresses and distractions of the world we live in. Above all, it is a vivid and striking insight into what it means to be a young woman today.
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£11.99
An illuminating new essay collection from one of the most distinctive, exciting and acclaimed writers of her generation, Zadie Smith.
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£18.99
A call to courage and connection from prize-winning poet and champion for the arts and humanities
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£16.99
Mathematician Terence Tao shows how mathematics has evolved from counting and geometry into a flexible set of tools for understanding an increasingly complex world. He moves effortlessly from children discovering infinity through play, to the numbers that underpin our online lives; from Johannes Kepler using algebra to price a barrel of wine, to curved geometries that explain why GPS works and planes don’t fly in straight lines on a map. Along the way, dice games, insurance policies and financial crises illuminate probability’s promise – and its limits – while deceptively simple rules give rise to chaos, pattern and life itself.
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£12.99
When Delia Smith first began writing, the industrial revolution, two world wars, food rationing and the removal of cookery lessons from schools interrupted those skills being handed down through generations. Her goal then was to help reinstate the basics of cooking and to remove people’s fear. The response was huge change. Her work was so influential that she had her own entry in the dictionary – ‘doing a Delia’. In this book Delia shares with us what she has learned from a long and eventful life, from navigating London as a teenager to watching pasta being made by the Mediterranean sea. She reflects on what it means to be a human person, how goodness and kindness are eclipsed by oppression and confusion and that true politics can only come from the people. Short, moving and powerful, these nine essays will change the way you think about our future.
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£11.99
In this book, inspired by her phenomenally popular Substack newsletter, India Knight explores the essence of what makes a home, debunking intimidating ideas about ‘taste’ and trends, offering practical and reassuring advice for every room, and above all celebrating the joy and comfort that comes from being surrounded by things you love.
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£16.99
We live in uncertain times. But what does uncertainty mean for our ability to act?
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£20.00
What does it mean to truly see the natural world? ‘The Nature of Seeing’ is a celebration of the art and practice of paying close attention. Whether it is the sight of moonlight across a bedroom floor, or an owl as it hunts, or waxcap fungi that erupt across the fields overnight – Mark Cocker encourages us to reclaim our innate gift for wonder and to see the living world in all its infinite detail and mystery. Through a series of diary entries describing his encounters with the natural world, he interrogates how we see and how it affects us at the most profound levels. In precise and lyrical prose, he shows us that seeing is a creative act that can both transform us and change the world we share. Revelatory and profound, ‘The Nature of Seeing’ is the culmination of a lifetime’s love affair with the simple act of looking and all that it reveals.
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£10.00
Napoleon had an orangutan called Rose, who ate turnips at the dinner table and stood when guests came into the room. She was much adored, but could not survive in Paris. A pig can be taught to differentiate between Bach and a brass band. One was once tried for murder: another saved a human’s life. An owl can turn its head two hundred and seventy degrees. They can learn to come at a whistle, and remember the signal for years, if they wish to. The creatures who share our world are stranger, smarter and more miraculous than you would believe. In this delightful collection, Katherine Rundell celebrates twelve vanishing animals, each one a wonder that she inspires us to treasure and fight for with love – because, as she argues so beguilingly: ‘The time to give up is never’.
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£9.99
Harper Lee remains a landmark figure in the American canon – thanks to Scout, Jem, Atticus, and the other indelible characters in her Pulitzer-winning debut, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, as well as for the darker, late-’50s version of small-town Alabama that emerged in ‘Go Set a Watchman’, her only other novel, published in 2015 after its rediscovery. ‘The Land of Sweet Forever’ combines Lee’s early short fiction and later nonfiction in a volume offering an unprecedented look at the development of her inimitable voice.
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£20.00
‘Black Coffee and Red Lipstick’ is a collection of essays that weave ideas about our domestic and daily life – hence the black coffee – with thoughts on style and the way we present ourselves – hence the red lipstick. It combines anecdotes and observations from Alexandra Shulman’s 25 years spent editing British Vogue and her current life as a freelance writer and commentator. She draws on her experiences as a magazine editor but also a mother, daughter, sibling, girlfriend, housekeeper and lover of shopping. Alexandra left her job at Vogue in 2017 to embark on a different way of life and while this is in no way a book of self-discovery it does touch on the question of things or patterns of behaviour that make us who we are?
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£16.99
In the enveloping darkness of the polar night, journalist Ilona Wisniewska travelled to two of the most remote settlements in northern Greenland. She was welcomed into the homes of the Inughuit people and immersed herself into their lives, culture and history. Intertwining narrative and photography, ‘Glimmer: From the Outskirts of Greenland’ is a love letter to the lives of the Inughuit people, exploring the beauty of polar landscapes, the climate catastrophe and the complex international relationships which threaten the indigenous communities of Greenland.
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£10.99
In recent years tech companies have turned attention into a commodity, a resource to be mined and sold. The terms of the deal appear simple: in exchange for our attention we receive information, entertainment, and convenience. But what are the hidden costs? And what happens to our inner lives when we lose the ability to choose how we wish to pay attention? In this essay, at once personal and polemical, meditative and militant, Julia Bell examines the wide ranging and extractive assault on human attention while asking how we might reclaim it.