The rural fuse has been lit. The countryside is tinder-dry. Post offices & banks, shops & schools are closing. Farmers are going out of business. Houses are becoming unaffordable as prices soar ad poverty grows. Pollution & over-exploitation are destroying landscapes. Many rural communities are on the verge of collapse. Some fear the foot- &
- mouth crisis will prove to be the last straw. This book offers disturbing evidence of the background to the crisis. ”A Countryside For All” is a rallying cry for action, pointing ways towards a prescription for the future. This volume tackles many of the issues in a variety of new & original ways. Possibly the most controversial & radical call is for the creation of a Department for the Countryside, with a Secretary of State for the Countryside
- who would be responsible for setting a coherent set of policies to reverse the decline of rural Britain. This timely book outlines the main problems facing the countryside, & starts to bring together a balanced range of proposals. Thought-provoking, filled with common sense, often controversial but always fascinating, it points the way forward for the countryside, & for town & country as a whole.

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This informative & entertaining small volume contains engravings by contemporary artists & a foreword by Prince Charles. Twelve chapters endeavour to capture the atmosphere of successive months, encompassing the minutiae of plant & wildlife behaviour in the garden & hedgerow. The author celebrates the intimacies of a rural world in an idyllic setting, but with an eye to modern existence & an appreciation of progress. ...

A companion tale to Sarah J. Maas`s 1 New York Times bestselling A Court of Thorns & Roses series that takes place several months after the explosive events of A Court of Wings & Ruin Told from the perspectives of Feyre, Rhys & other key characters, this story bridges the events in A Court of Wings & Ruin & the upcoming novels in the series. Feyre, Rhys & their companions are still busy rebuilding the Night Court & the vastly changed world beyond. But Winter Solstice is finally near, & with it a hard-earned reprieve. Yet even the festive atmosphere can`t keep the shadows of the past from looming. As Feyre navigates her first Winter Solstice as High Lady, she finds that those dearest to her have more wounds than she anticipated
- scars that will have a far-reaching impact on the future of their court.
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A burgeoning new city is built on the dreams of the American gold rush. It is also built upon a landscape that has been stretching, sliding & breaking apart for millennia. In 1906 the dreams of this city came crashing down beneath the wave of a horrifying earthquake that turned roads into great rippling rivers, that set buildings ablaze for days on end, that made homes collapse upon themselves. Simon Winchester`s breathtaking story delves deep beneath the surface of the earth & explains to us why the world moves as it does, & breaks apart with such devastating results. At the same time he never lets us forget the human story. As he vividly portrays the lives of the people who suffered & survived the devastation he also tells a universal story: the hubris of man as he ignores the warnings of nature & how we respond & try to understand the world around us. Compelling, moving & enlightening, Simon Winchester reveals the world beneath our feet & through the story of this one terrifying event one hundred years ago, begins to make sense of our world now. ...

A memoir of brutality, heroism & personal discovery from Europe`s dark heart, revealing one of the most extraordinary untold stories of the Second World War. In the spring of 1945, at Rechnitz on the Austrian-Hungarian border, not far from the front lines of the advancing Red Army, Countess Margit Batthyany gave a party in her mansion. The war was almost over, & the German aristocrats & SS officers dancing & drinking knew it was lost. Late that night, they walked down to the village, where 180 enslaved Jewish labourers waited, made them strip naked, & shot them all, before returning to the bright lights of the party. It remained a secret for decades, until Sacha Batthyany, who remembered his great-aunt Margit only vaguely from his childhood as a stern, distant woman, began to ask questions about it.A Crime in the Family is Sacha Batthyany`s memoir of confronting these questions, & of the answers he found. It is one of the last untold stories of Europe`s nightmare century, spanning not just the massacre at Rechnitz, the inhumanity of Auschwitz, the chaos of wartime Budapest & the brutalities of Soviet occupation & Stalin`s gulags, but also the silent crimes of complicity & cover-up, & the damaged generations they leave behind. Told partly through the surviving journals of others from the author`s family & the vanished world of Rechnitz, A Crime in the Family is a moving & revelatory memoir in the vein of The Hare with the Amber Eyes & The House by the Lake. It uncovers barbarity & tragedy but also a measure of peace & reconciliation. Ultimately, Batthyany discovers that although his inheritance might be that of monsters, he does not bear it alone ...

Far away, in the ancient empire of Greater Fallowfields, things are falling apart. The imperial orchestra is presided over by a conductor who has never played a note, the clocks are changed constantly to ensure that the sun always sets at five o` clock, & the Astronomer Royal is only able to use the observatory telescope when he can find a sixpence to put in its slot. But while the kingdom drifts, awaiting the return of the young emperor, who has gone abroad & communicates only by penny post, a sinister & unfamiliar enemy is getting closer & closer...A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest & Looked In is Magnus Mills`s most ambitious work to date. A surreal portrait of a world that, although strange & distant, contains rather too many similarities to our own for the alien not to become brilliantly familiar & disturbingly close to home. It is comic writing at its best
- & it is Magnus Mills`s most ambitious, enjoyable & rewarding novel to date.
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A Cruising Guide to Puerto Rico, including the Spanish Virgin Islands & the north coast ports of the Dominican Republic: is the most comprehensive guide ever written for Puerto Rico. Its 53 detailed, full-color charts contain extremely accurate hydrographic data based on personally conducted independent surveys by the author. It also contains GPS waypoints & extensive navigational instructions for the whole island chain, aerial photos of principal harbors, approaches & routes, anchorages, services, dive sites, history, index, bibliography & more. It will greatly enhance your cruising experiences throughout the islands by offering you valuable information based on local knowledge. ...

This well-received cruising guide, praised for its writing & its content, is now completely updated & redesigned in full colour with a larger trim size & lay-flat binding Published in 1995, A Cruising Guide to Puget Sound has earned a reputation for the elegance & lucidity of its writing, the usefulness of its information, & the accuracy of its pilotage instructions. Now thoroughly updated, this guide to the waters, anchorages, sights, destinations, & shoreside facilities & attractions of Puget Sound is in a new, larger format with a spiral binding to lie flat for ease of use, a false spine for ease of shelving in the store, & a stiff, printed-board back cover for durability. ...

A Cruising Guide to the Leeward Islands is the completely updated 2nd edition of Stephen Pavlidis`s comprehensive guide to the Leeward Islands. Now in full colour, with many new charts & aerial photographs of the principal harbours, it contains 294 pages of text & 85 sketch charts from GPS-accurate data based on independent surveys personally conducted by the author. ...

Covering the northern coast of Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, mainland Honduras & the Bay Islands, Guatemala & the Rio Dulce, this guide provides the first new coverage of these Northwest Caribbean regions since 1990. All charts are original & based on personal surveys conducted by the author.

Includes:: extensive navigational instructions & GPS waypoints, plus the first ever detailed cruising guide coverage of the Cayman Islands.

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