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 a beautifully packaged gift hardback with foil detailing on the jacket, a ribbon marker & black & white illustrations throughout. The perfect book for all who live in or love this eternal, ever-changing city. Presented as a dust-jacketed hardback with foil detailing on the title, & with a ribbon marker, A London Year is a beautiful as well as engrossing book to dip into everyday for a snapshot of London life through seasons, & throughout history. A perfect gift.

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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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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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A gripping tale of conflict & survival that has inspired millions of young readers & adults alike It`s 1985, & southern Sudan is ravaged by war. Eleven-year-old Salva is forced to flee on foot when his village is attacked. Braving every imaginable hardship
- including killer lions & hungry crocodiles
- Salva becomes one of the `lost boys` of Sudan, travelling the African continent on foot in search of his family & a safe place to stay. Years later, a girl named Nya walks for hours each day to fetch water for her family. The walk is gruelling & leaves no time for school. But there is unexpected hope, as Salva`s story goes on to intersect with Nya`s in an astonishing & moving way.

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In 1894, Martin Conway became the first man to walk the Alps `from end to end` when he completed a 1, 000-mile journey from the Col de Tende in Italy to the summit of the Ankogel in Austria. On a midsummer`s morning, nearly 120 years later, Simon Thompson followed in his footsteps, setting out to explore both the mountains & the man. A charming rogue who led a `fantastically eventful` life, according to The Times, Conway was a climber & pioneering explorer of the Himalaya, Spitsbergen, the Andes & Patagonia; a serial pursuer of American heiresses; an historian, collector & Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge; a company director & stock market promoter of dubious gold mines & non-existent rubber forests; the founder of the Imperial War Museum; the first foreigner to see the Russian crown jewels after the revolution; a successful journalist & author of over thirty books; a liberal politician; & a conservative MP. Shortly before he died, he was created 1st Baron Conway of Allington. Conway was a clubbable man who counted Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, J. P. Morgan, John Ruskin, Mark Twain & Edward Whymper among his many friends & acquaintances. An imperialist, a dreamer, a liar & a cheat, Conway `walked in sunshine all his life`, according to contemporaries, but he was also a restless, discontented man, constantly searching for meaning & purpose in his life. & that search that led him back, time & time again, to the Alps. In A Long Walk with Lord Conway, Simon Thompson retraces Conway`s long journey over the peaks, passes & glaciers of the Alps & rediscovers the life of a complex & remarkable English adventurer. ...