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.

...

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.

...

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.
...

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. ...

A Long Way Down
- Nick Hornby`s hilarious bestseller now a major motion picture starring Pierce Brosnan. ` Can I explain why I
...

Irene Bobs loves fast driving. Her husband is the best car salesman in rural south eastern Australia. Together with Willie, their lanky navigator, they embark upon the Redex Trial, a brutal race around the continent, over roads no car will ever quite survive.A Long Way from Home is Peter Carey`s late style masterpiece; a thrilling high speed story that starts in one way, then takes you to another place altogether. Set in the 1950s in the embers of the British Empire, painting a picture of Queen & subject, black, white & those in-between, this brilliantly vivid novel illustrates how the possession of an ancient culture spirals through history
- & the love made & hurt caused along the way.
...

Irene Bobs loves fast driving. Her husband is the best car salesman in rural south eastern Australia. Together they embark upon the Redex Trial, a brutal car race around the continent, over roads no car can ever quite survive. Set during the 1950s in the dying embers of the British Empire, A Long Way from Home is a thrilling high-speed story, illuminating a country`s relationship with its own ancient culture, & the love made & hurt caused along the way. ...

Leah Chishugi grew up in eastern Congo but, aged seventeen, she moved to Kigali, the Rwandan capital, to work as a model. She married & had a son. Then in 1994 she was caught up in the horrific conflict, & escaped only after being left for dead under a pile of corpses. She fled with her son to Uganda, then South Africa where she was miraculously reunited with her husband whom she believed dead. Leah finally settled in the UK where she was granted asylum & became a nurse. After her mother died, Leah decided to set up a charity to help the women & children of eastern Congo
- victims of continuing war atrocities. A LONG WAY FROM PARADISE is a deeply courageous narrative of one woman`s survival of personal trauma & finding a greater purpose in life through devotion to the service of others.
...