Renowned chef Alessandro Pavoni, of Sydney`s two-chef-hatted Ormeggio at the Spit, hails from Lombardy, home to some of Italy`s most famous dishes, including osso bucco, bollito misto & panettone. In his first cookbook Alessandro reveals the secrets to these traditional classics, along with more than 100 of his treasured family recipes featuring Lombardy`s rich produce
- cave-aged cheeses & cured meats, polenta, tender spit-roasted meat & risotto made from rice grown on the plains of the River Po. Having learnt to cook as a boy standing by his Nonna`s side, Alessandro understood, from an early age, the power of food to nourish & bring joy. This passion continues to inspire him to create delicious, comforting dishes that will bring a little bit of Lombardy into your own home.
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In a unique collaboration between Artangel & Living Architecture, a dwelling was built on top of London`s Queen Elizabeth Hall. The dwelling was a boat, Roi de Belges, inspired by the Thames & by Joseph Conrad`s Heart of Darkness. Writers & artists were given short residencies & wrote about the strange experience of staying in a boat overlooking the river. This book, a collection of their pieces responding to Conrad`s masterpiece, is a result of that collaboration. From Juan Gabriel Vasquez`s meditation on belonging, identity & the otherness of London to Michael Ondaatje`s piercing reflections on history & literature, via Jeanette Winterson`s lyrical, impressionistic musings & Caryl Philips`s supple & poetic observations, this is Joseph Conrad, the Thames & the capital city as you have never experienced them before. ...

For fifteen years, Tim Bradford has meandered round the quiet streets of his North London home, seeking out the ordinary & the extraordinary, the sublime & the ridiculous. A London Country Diary documents his wanderings
- he attempts to rescue a deer in Clissold Park, talks to a magical old man in Holloway, breaks up a fight in Stoke Newington & has issues with foxes in Highbury. & that`s just the beginning. All of life is in these pages. Well, some. OK, just a little bit. But with its idiosyncratic wit & charming illustrations, this book is a timely reminder that you can find beauty, humour & life, wherever you call home.
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London is packed with pubs, but finding a really good one is not always easy. Whether you want to relax in a garden or shelter from rain, marvel at architecture or enjoy a live act, find a convenient meeting point or a place to hide, bring your dog to the pub or stroke the resident cat, it is Herb Lester`s role to anticipate your desires & act as your guide. The 161 tried-&-tested pubs are grouped according to their ambiance, but two useful indexes also list them by their postcodes & alphabetically by their names. The guide comes with a handy fold-out map which also helps to identify their locations. ...

A walking adventure in one of Britain`s most diverse neighbourhoods, NW10. The book comes from an acclaimed blogger, & is accompanied by photos that go with the walks. It shows a microcosm of British urban life. Famous blogger Bidisha says ` Beautifully written, inspiring, intelligent, observant contemporary urban reportage written with great humanity, which really deserves to be published as a complete book as it gives such an insight into modern London.` Louis Theroux says ` It`s inspiring to see how much you are doing to publicize the area in your inimitable honest way.` ...

A London Year is an anthology of short diary entries, one or more for each day of the year, which, taken together, provides an impressionistic portrait of life in the city from Tudor times to the twenty-first century. There are more than two hundred featured writers, with a short biography for each. The most famous diarist of all
- Samuel Pepys
- is there, as well as some of today`s finest diarists like Alan Bennett & Chris Mullin. There are coronations & executions, election riots & zeppelin raids, duels, dust-ups & drunken sprees, among everyday moments like Brian Eno cycling in Kilburn or George Eliot walking on Wimbledon Common. Vividly evoking moments in the lives of Londoners in the past, providing snapshots of the city`s inhabitants at work, at play, in pursuit of money, sex, entertainment, pleasure & power, A London Year is the perfect book for all who live in or love this eternal, ever-changing city.

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One of the most vivid & realised characters of recent fiction, Willie Dunne is the innocent hero of Sebastian Barry`s highly acclaimed novel. Leaving Dublin to fight for the Allied cause as a member of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, he finds himself caught between the war playing out on foreign fields & that festering at home, waiting to erupt with the Easter Rising. Profoundly moving, intimate & epic, A Long Long Way charts & evokes a terrible coming of age, one too often written out of history. ...

This is the story of how, over a period of one hundred & ninety-two days, I was torn away from the life I knew & loved, & dragged down to the depths of despair; of how I endured enforced isolation & near-starvation at the hands of Somali pirates; & of how I made a choice to survive by any & all means that I could muster. In September 2011 Judith Tebbutt & her husband David set out on an adventurous holiday to Kenya. A couple for thirty-three years, they had first met in Zambia: Africa had played a major part in their life together. After a joyous week on safari in the Masai Mara, they flew on to a beach resort forty kilometres south of Somalia. & there, in the early hours of 11 September, tragedy struck them. Judith was torn away from David by a band of armed pirates, dragged over sea & land to a village in the arid heart of lawless Somalia, & there held hostage in a squalid room, a ransom on her head. There, too, she learned the terrible truth that the responsibility of securing her release now rested with her son Ollie. But though she was isolated, intimidated & near-starved, Judith resolved to survive
- walking endless circuits of her nine-foot prison, trying to make her captors see her as a human being, keeping her faith at all times in Ollie. Powerful, moving & at times quite devastating, this is Judith Tebbutt`s story in her own words. It is a memoir of the life she shared with her beloved husb&, an unflinching account of the ordeal that overturned her world, & a testament to the inner resilience & familial love that sustained her through captivity. There is nothing so bad in life as to have no hope
- to believe you have been defeated, to give in to that. Now that I found myself in confinement, four thousand miles from home under a hostile sky, I would not accept that fate for myself.

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This is the story of how, over a period of one hundred & ninety-two days, I was torn away from the life I knew & loved, & dragged down to the depths of despair; of how I endured enforced isolation & near-starvation at the hands of Somali pirates; & of how I made a choice to survive by any & all means that I could muster. In September 2011 Judith Tebbutt & her husband David set out on an adventurous holiday to Kenya. A couple for thirty-three years, they had first met in Zambia: Africa had played a major part in their life together. After a joyous week on safari in the Masai Mara, they flew on to a beach resort forty kilometres south of Somalia. & there, in the early hours of 11 September, tragedy struck them. Judith was torn away from David by a band of armed pirates, dragged over sea & land to a village in the arid heart of lawless Somalia, & there held hostage in a squalid room, a ransom on her head. There, too, she learned the terrible truth that the responsibility of securing her release now rested with her son Ollie. Powerful, moving & at times quite devastating, this is Judith Tebbutt`s story in her own words. ...

Patronising advice by a doctor at a retirement course to `walk a couple of miles a day` challenges architect Sean Rothery to take a proper walk & so, at the age of sixty-five, he sets out to walk the GR5, the Grande Randonee Cinq. From the steely grey North Sea to the intense blue Mediterranean, Sean`s 2, 300km-long route follows a network of old trails, forest paths, canal banks, Alpine valleys & passes. Along the way, he recounts some of his youthful enterprises, including cycling from Dieppe to Rome in the ruins of post-war Europe & a climbing accident in 1967 that saw him challenge another doctor`s prognosis. Ghosts of the past are revisited, most poignantly in the Alps where two friends died in climbing accidents, but also alongside the ruins of First World War trenches. Sketchbook in h&, Sean savours the landscape, history & culture as he passes from one country to another. Every day he looks out for the distinctive red-&-white waymarks of the GR5
- not an easy task, especially when change in the name of progress has cleared swathes of trails. This enthralling diary of a long walk south will have the reader urging the author on to the last step of the way.
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