Showing 73–84 of 132 resultsSorted by latest
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£12.99
How did descendants of Viking marauders come to dominate Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East? It is a tale of ambitious adventures and fierce freebooters, of fortunes made and fortunes lost. The Normans made their influence felt across all of western Europe and the Mediterranean, from the British Isles to North Africa, and Lisbon to the Holy Land. In ‘Empires of the Normans’ we discover how they combined military might and political savvy with deeply held religious beliefs and a profound sense of their own destiny. For a century and a half, they remade Europe in their own image, and yet their heritage was quickly forgotten – until now.
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£12.99
Sydney Kentridge carved out a reputation as South Africa’s most prominent anti-apartheid advocate – his story is entwined with the country’s emergence from racial injustice and oppression. He is the only lawyer to have acted for three winners of the Nobel Peace Prize – Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Chief Albert Lutuli. Already world-famous for his landmark cases including the Treason Trial of Nelson Mandela and the other leading members of the ANC, the inquiry into the Sharpeville massacre, and the inquest into the death of Steve Biko, he then became England’s premier advocate. Through the great set-pieces of the legal struggle against apartheid – cases which made the headlines not just in South Africa, but across the world – this biography is a portrait of enduring moral stature.
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£16.99
Write this down: Cara Romero wants to work. Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life. Over the course of twelve sessions, Cara recounts her tempestuous love affairs, her alternately biting and loving relationships with her neighbor Lulu and her sister Angela, her struggles with debt, gentrification and loss, and, eventually, what really happened between her and her estranged son, Fernando. As Cara confronts her darkest secrets and regrets, we see a woman buffeted by life but still full of fight.
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£10.99
Surprisingly little has been written about second-generation Bloomsbury who tantalised the original ‘Bloomsburies’ at Gordon Square parties with their captivating looks and provocative ideas. ‘Young Bloomsbury’ introduces us to an extraordinarily colourful cast of characters, including novelist and music critic Eddy Sackville-West, ‘who wore elaborate make-up and dressed in satin and black velvet’; sculptor Stephen Tomlin; and writer Julia Strachey. Talented and productive, these larger-than-life figures had high-achieving professional lives and extremely complicated emotional lives.
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£16.99
Lena has her life mapped out. While her sister obsesses about fortune-telling gypsies and marriage, Lena studies the way the heart works. She isn’t going to let being a girl stop her from becoming one of Poland’s first female doctors. But the world has other plans for Lena. Instead of university she finds herself a reluctant army wife, lonely and unmoored by the emotions of motherhood. And as she tries to accept a different future from the one she wanted, the threat of global war becomes reality. Lena must face just how unpredictable life can be. Deemed Enemies of State by the invading Soviets, she and her family are exiled from their Polish village to a work camp in the freezing hell of Siberia. It’s here, despite the hunger and back-breaking work, Lena learns something remarkable; it is possible to fall in love even at the edge of life.
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£9.99
Sven grows up in 1890s Stockholm, going from one dead-end factory job to another, before working as a live-in nanny for his sister, Olga. She senses his dissatisfaction and prompts him to take action. So, obsessed since boyhood with the romance of the Far North, Sven accepts a contract with a mining company on Spitzbergen, a sparsely inhabited icy world of mountains, polar bears, arctic foxes and rare and valuable minerals. There, digging for coal, Sven is badly injured in a shaft collapse and is disfigured. After he recovers as much as he ever will, feeling more of an outcast than ever, Sven remains in Svalbard over winter, when the mines close, hoping to study with the local trappers and learn their trade. On this isolated, rugged island, he creates a unique family of his own, planning never to return to regular society until the Second World War forces his hand.
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£12.99
Britain didn’t just put the empire back the way it had found it. In ‘Uncommon Wealth,’ Kojo Koram traces the tale of how after the end of the British empire an interconnected group of well-heeled British intellectuals, politicians, accountants and lawyers offshored their capital, seized assets and saddled debt in former ‘dependencies’. This enabled horrific inequality across the globe as ruthless capitalists profited and ordinary people across Britain’s former territories in colonial Africa, Asia and the Caribbean were trapped in poverty. However, the reinforcement of capitalist power across the world also ricocheted back home. Now it has left many Britons wondering where their own sovereignty and prosperity has gone.
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£12.99
Could you surf down an erupting volcano? Why don’t penguins’ feet freeze? Are you breathing the same air as Leonardo da Vinci? Are there any green mammals? If you’ve ever wondered why tigers have stripes and pineapples have spikes, how to escape quicksand, what would happen if the moon vanished, and why cats (nearly) always land on their feet – you’ve come to the right place.
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£20.00
A gripping account of an Ivy League activist-turned-fugitive and his clandestine effort to subvert the North Korean regime, a heart-pounding tale of a self-taught operative and his high-stakes attempt to change the world.
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£20.00
A fascinating history of stones and the surprising ways they have – and continue to – shape, influence and inspire us, in a beautiful volume.
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£25.00
Ronald Blythe lives at the end of an overgrown farm track deep in the rolling countryside of the Stour Valley, on the border between Suffolk and Essex. His home is Bottengoms Farm, a sturdy yeoman’s house once owned by the artist John Nash. From here, Blythe has spent almost half a century observing the slow turn of the agricultural year, the church year, and village life in a series of rich, lyrical rural diaries. Beginning with the arrival of snow on New Year’s Day and ending with Christmas carols sung in the village church, ‘Next to Nature’ invites us to witness a simple life richly lived. With gentle wit and keen observation Blythe meditates on his life and faith, on literature, art and history, and on our place in the landscape.
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£10.99
As Hitler prepared to invade Poland during the sweltering summer of 1939, men and women from across London’s museums, galleries and archives formulated ingenious plans to send the nation’s highest prized objects to safety. Using stately homes, tube tunnels, slate mines, castles, prisons, stone quarries and even their own homes, a dedicated bunch of unlikely misfits packed up the nation’s greatest treasures and, in a race against time, dispatched them throughout the country on a series of top-secret wartime adventures. ‘National Treasures’ highlights a moment from our history when an unlikely coalition of mild-mannered civil servants, social oddballs and metropolitan aesthetes became the front line in the heritage war against Hitler.
