A nature poem for every day of the year, progressing through the months & seasons. Each poem is chosen to chime with the natural world at that time of year, reminding us to connect to the natural world, which can only improve our lives. Spring is a time of hope, a season of new life with William Wordsworth`s daffodils, John Clare`s lambs & Christina Rossetti`s birdsong. Summer shifts into a time of leisure with long idyllic holidays in the countryside. According to Henry James, the two most beautiful words in the English language were `summer afternoon`, a sentiment echoed by Edward Thomas & Emily Dickinson. John Keats, William Blake & W. H. Auden are the poets we associate with autumn & this is possibly the most poetic season. The natural world, & the human one, hold onto the last lingering memories of summer before they turn to face the oncoming hardships of winter. Amy Lowell & George Meredith perfectly frame this time of year with their silver-fringed leaves & crimson berries. Winter can be savoured in poetry, rather than endured; bleak grey days are transformed into a world of glittering frost & snow-blanketed landscapes. Even in the darkest days life continues & soon we can turn our attention to the rebirth of spring. A wonderful collection of big name poets & lesser names, famous odes & some unsung poems that help mark the daily turn of the seasons & all the rituals marking the significant moments of the year (from Candlemas to Christmas). ...

WARTIME BERLIN: The Niemann family
- Karl, Minna & their four children
- live in a quiet, suburban enclave. Every day Karl

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WARTIME BERLIN: The Niemann family
- Karl, Minna & their four children
- live in a quiet, suburban enclave. Every day Karl

...

Fooling around as he loves to do, Tom invents a jam-powered frog, & he & his Aunt Bundlejoy Cosysweet take it out for a spin. When Captain Najork sees them hopping past his window, he & his hired sportsmen jump into their pedal-powered snake & set off in hot pursuit
- bent on revenge after their earlier defeat at womble, muck & sneedball. Events, adventure & sheer craziness conspire to bring Tom & the Captain together at the local girls` boarding school, where Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong Najork is in the middle of a best-of-three arm-wrestling contest against the Headmistress.. .and the Captain is finally reduced to eating swede-&-mutton slump after a very narrow escape indeed.
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India, 1920. Captain Sam Wyndham is visiting the kingdom of Sambalpore, home to diamond mines & the beautiful Palace of the Sun. But when the Maharaja’s eldest son is assassinated, Wyndham realises that the realm is riven with conflict. Prince Adhir was unpopular with religious groups, while his brother – now in line to the throne – appears to be a feckless playboy. As Wyndham & Sergeant ‘ Surrender-not’ Banerjee endeavour to unravel the mystery, they become entangled in a dangerous world. They must find the murderer, before the murderer finds them.‘ An exceptional historical crime novel’C.J. SANSOM‘A thought-provoking rollercoaster’IAN RANKIN‘ Confirms Abir Mukherjee as a rising star of historical crime fiction’ The Times ...

A Nest of Vipers is the twenty-first novel in Andrea Camilleri`s irresistible Inspector Montalbano series. Quite a family, you had to admit! A nest of vipers might be a better description... On what should be a quiet Sunday morning, Inspector Montalbano is called to a murder scene on the Sicilian coast. A man has discovered his father dead in his Vigatan beach house: his body slumped on the dining room floor, his morning coffee spilt across the table, & a single gunshot wound at the base of his skull. First appearances point to the son having the most to gain from his father`s untimely death, a notion his sister can`t help but reinforce. But when Montalbano delves deeper into the case, & learns of the dishonourable life the victim led, it soon becomes clear half of Vigata has a motive for his murder & this won`t be as simple as the Inspector had once hoped... ...

Discover Claudia Roden`s classic recipes in A New Book of Middle Eastern Food. In 1968, Claudia Roden wrote A Book of Middle Eastern Food for readers who had never eaten an aubergine, let alone cooked one. Her expanded edition, A New Book of Middle Eastern Food, quickly followed & became a perennial bestseller. Today, Middle Eastern cuisine is enjoying amazing popularity, largely thanks to her books. In the years since, Claudia Roden has continued to collect recipes & culinary wisdom from the Middle East, talking & eating with locals, tasting their food & watching them cook. Now with a beautiful new cover, this collectable edition of Roden`s timeless work is the ultimate collection of recipes from the exquisite & varied cuisines of the region, ranging from inexpensive peasant fare to elaborate banquet dishes. Praise for Claudia Roden:` Claudia Roden is no more a simple cookbook writer than Marcel Proust was a biscuit baker. She is, rather, memorialist, historian, ethnographer, anthropologist, essayist, poet.. .` Simon Schama ` Beyond the evocative stories & buoyant style.. . there is always information.. . meticulously collected, compellingly assembled, lovingly told.. . informative, delectable & incredibly useful.` Yotam Ottolenghi` Roden`s great gift is to conjure up not just a cuisine but the culture from which it springs` Nigella Lawson` Claudia Roden`s writing has the fascination of her conversation. Her books are treasure-houses of information & mines of literary pleasures` Observer ...

This small chart measures 63x 36cms & covers the English Channel as it was in the 18th century. It not only shows depths, but also details coastal cross sections. Responsible for compiling most of the information here was Astronomer Royal Captain Edmund Halley, whose work with one comet, lead to it being named after him. He also revolutionized cartography with Isolines (the lines connecting points of equal value), more commonly known now as contour lines. ...

A New Map of Wonders charts a course through the realm of the fascinating & awe-inspiring. With the curiosity & enthusiasm of a great explorer, the award-winning Caspar Henderson celebrates & explains the wonder of light & the origins of the universe, the myriad marvels of the human body & the natural world -- & reveals the wonders to come: the technologies that will transform human experience & change what we will find wonderful. Drawing on philosophy & natural history, art & religion, neuroscience & nanotechnology, A New Map of Wonders is a celebration of life -- a rich & inspiring guide, encouraging us to see the world anew. ...

We live in a world that is known, every corner thoroughly explored. But has this knowledge cost us the ability to wonder? Wonder, Caspar Henderson argues, is at its most supremely valuable in just such a world because it reaffirms our humanity & gives us hope for the future. That`s the power of wonder, & that`s what we should aim to cultivate in our lives. But what are the wonders of the modern world? Henderson`s brilliant exploration borrows from the form of one of the oldest & most widely known sources of wonder: maps. Large, detailed mappae mundi invited people in medieval Europe to vividly imagine places & possibilities they had never seen before: manticores with the head of a man, the body of a lion, & the stinging tail of a scorpion; tribes of one-eyed men who fought griffins for diamonds; & fearsome Scythian warriors who drank the blood of their enemies from their skulls. As outlandish as these maps & the stories that went with them sound to us today, Henderson argues that our views of the world today are sometimes no less incomplete or misleading. Scientists are only beginning to map the human brain, for example, revealing it as vastly more complex than any computer we can conceive. Our current understanding of physical reality is woefully incomplete. A New Map of Wonders explores these & other realms of the wonderful, in different times & cultures & in the present day, taking readers from Aboriginal Australian landscapes to sacred sites in Great Britain, all the while keeping sight questions such as the cognitive basis of wonder & the relationship between wonder & science. Beautifully illustrated & written with wit & moral complexity, this sequel to The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is a fascinating account of the power of wonder & an unforgettable meditation on its importance to our future. ...