Showing 49–60 of 134 resultsSorted by latest
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£20.00
In 1938, Jewish families are scrambling to flee Vienna. Desperate, they take out adverts offering their children into the safe keeping of readers of a British newspaper, the Manchester Guardian. The right words in the right order could mean the difference between life and death. Eighty-three years later, Guardian journalist Julian Borger comes across the advert that saved his father, Robert, from the Nazis. Robert had kept this a secret, like almost everything else about his traumatic Viennese childhood, until he took his own life. Drawn to the shadows of his family’s past and starting with nothing but a page of newspaper adverts, Borger traces the remarkable stories of his father, the other advertised children and their families, each thrown into the maelstrom of a world at war.
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£16.99
In the winter of 2020, Annabel Abbs experienced a series of bereavements. As she grieved, she kept busy by day, but at night sleep eluded her. And yet her sleeplessness led to a profound and unexpected discovery: her Night Self. As the night transformed into a place of creativity and liberation, Annabel found she wasn’t alone. Drawing on the latest science, which shows we are more imaginative, open-minded and reflective at night, Annabel set out to discover the potential of her Night Self. ‘Sleepless’ follows her journey, from midnight hikes to starlit swims, from Singapore, the brightest city on Earth, to the darkest corner of the Arctic Circle, and finally to that most elusive of places – sleep.
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£20.00
The world of 1907 is poised between the old and the new: communist regimes will replace imperial ones in China and Russia; the telegraph is transforming modern communication and the car will soon displace the horse. Kassia St Clair traces the fascinating stories of two interlocking races – setting the derring-do (and sometimes cheating) of one of the world’s first car races against the backdrop of a larger geopolitical and technological rush to the future, as the rivalry grows between countries and empires, building up to the cataclysmic event that changed everything – the First World War. ‘The Race to the Future’ is the incredible true story of the quest against the odds that shaped the world we live in today.
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£25.00
The untold history of the Western invasion of Soviet Russia – and the tragedy it created. In the closing months of WW1, with the world exhausted by a long, brutal war, 15 nations cobbled together an army of nearly 200,000 men and embarked on one of the most extraordinary and ambitious military ventures of the twentieth century. The Intervention in Russia’s civil war was spearheaded by Britain, her colonial forces and allies. It was designed to stop the Bolsheviks in their tracks, reinstate conservative regimes in the Russian Empire and ensure that Germany did not fill the power vacuum which the Russian Revolution had created. 18 months later – after a long and bloody conflict between the Reds and the Whites, the execution of the former tsar and his family, and brutal famine – the British, American and French forces marched out again, surrendering to the unstoppable force of Soviet power.
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£20.00
Mixing thoughtful, original and contemporary pieces with trailblazers from the past, this is a gloriously eclectic celebration of self-expression. Maya Angelou’s perfectly fitting dress made her feel like a sunbeam. Zadie Smith’s wardrobe differs depending on whether she’s in London or New York, while Joan Didion always followed the same packing list. Beau Brummell and Luke Edward Hall consider colour in an outfit like an artist does a painting; Nora Ephron knows that ‘everything matches black, especially black’. Bella Freud and Jarvis Cocker found inspiration at jumble sales; designer Harris Reed in the gender-fluidity of Orlando. Oscar Wilde understood that proportions were everything.
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£25.00
Sport is an enduring element of British life and culture. In all its variety, it touches on so many significant aspects of past and present: national identity, class, gender, the relationship between country and town, the rise of commerce, the evolution of ethical debate. Our sporting arenas have witnessed triumphs and heartbreaks that have become part of the national narrative. For a country so obsessed with the invention, playing and watching of sport, the story of how it has come to reflect us remains untold. David Horspool tracks each game as a driver of social change: horse-racing’s obsession with blood and money turned an aristocratic pastime into a national sport; boxing promoted opportunity for ethnic minorities, while simultaneously enforcing a regime of discrimination; golf rehearsed a perennial battle over Britain’s landscape; and more.
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£25.00
As well as her celebrated career as a novelist, Hilary Mantel long contributed to newspapers and journals, unspooling stories from her own life and illuminating the world as she found it. This strand of her writing was an integral part of how she thought of herself. ‘A Memoir of My Former Self’ collects the finest of this writing over four decades. Mantel’s subjects are wide-ranging. She discusses nationalism and her own sense of belonging; our dream life flopping into our conscious life; the mythic legacy of Princess Diana; the many themes that feed into her novels – revolutionary France, psychics, Tudor England – and other novelists, from Jane Austen to V.S. Naipaul. She writes about her father and the man who replaced him; she writes fiercely and heartbreakingly about the battles with her health she endured as a young woman, and the stifling years she found herself living in Saudi Arabia.
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£14.99
Susie Dent, Britain’s cleverest lexicographer, linguistic expert and much-loved national treasure, explores all the very best red herrings, cock and bull stories, white elephants and nine-day wonders in the English language. There are enough stories to furnish a hundred conversations in a wonderful collection for everyone who loves words.
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£25.00
‘The Right to Rule’ is the full story of what has just happened in British politics, and how it has shaped Westminster and, by extension, the nation.
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£16.99
When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and inhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave – only to discover that the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a sinister conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle: as each inhabitant confronts the wonder and mystery around them, they begin to realise that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.
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£25.00
Join us on another unforgettable adventure through the extraordinary life and strong opinions of Miriam Margolyes.
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£10.99
What if you still had so many more strange questions about the universe? And what if Randall Munroe, former NASA roboticist and XKCD creator, were prepared to move mountains, fill the solar system with soup and alter the space-time continuum to answer them? Whether it’s how to make a lava lamp out of lava or feeding the inhabitants of New York to a T. Rex, welcome to the weird, wonderful (and sometimes terrifying) world of ‘What If? 2.
