Last year, Duckworth resurrected the legendary ” Week-End Book”, much to the delight of modern readers. This year we have invited some of the wittiest & most entertaining contemporary writers at work in English to contribute to the ” Week-End Book” tradition, & combined new work with essential material from the original. Clarissa Dickson Wright, chef & countryside campaigner tells us how to make the most of the ever versatile pig. Legendary adventurer & writer Rory Stewart, tells us how to prepare for a long walk. Oscar-winning screenwriter & novelist, Julian Fellowes, explains how to be the perfect guest. All this, plus the rules for human polo, recipes for an ambrosial Sunday brunch, & a complete illustrated guide to that most daunting or sartorial peaks
- the bow tie.
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In this light-hearted coming-of-age tale Craig Weldon, confused & direction less except for his love of the hills, wanders Scotl&, Wales & England having fun outdoors. This is a lively account of hill-walking in all weathers & up & down every possible terrain, braving Welsh farmers, Knoydart rain, the terrors of the Cuillin, & the real ales of Yorkshire. From Sutherland in the Far North to the rolling downs of Gloucestershire, Craig & his friends search out their Weekend Fix. For hill walkers this is an easy guide to the hills, informative & amusing. If you`ve never been on a hill in your life this book will make you think again about the landscape around you, & the challenges to courage, determination & the human spirit to be found only a few miles from home, wherever you live in Britain. ...

Photography is a popular pastime that can be rewarding when done correctly & you don't need a degree to get the most out of your camera. Whether it be an issue of lighting, focus, white balance or photographer positioning, many amateurs make simple mistakes that are easily identified. The Weekend Photographer is a comprehensive guidebook for beginner photographers to easily diagnose their problems & improve their overall technique, all within the time constraints of their weekend! ...

” The Week-End Problems Book” contains hundreds, even thousands, of hours of stimulating puzzlement, with time tests, crosswords, & card problems among many others. It is the perfect companion for rainy weekend afternoons. In selecting these puzzles, Hubert Phillips aimed to `provide maximum entertainment` & they are sure to test even the most astute of 21st-century minds (there is a complete set of solutions for those who find some of the problems a little too taxing). ...

Photographer Toby Mitchell is back with the latest instalment in ` The Weekender` series. & this time we are headed to our second Scandinavian destination, Malmoe, Sweden. Sitting just over `the bridge` from Copenhagen, Toby explore Sweden`s 3rd largest city showing us the best a weekend trip here has to offer. The book will be an eclectic mix of interesting streets, delicious food joints, eye-catching landmarks & fantastic destination spots Malmoe has to offer. Whilst the flow of the book will incorporate the Friday to Sunday trajectory, the mixture of content will mean that a reader is both influenced by Toby`s imagery of the city without explicitly having to follow a specific route but allow them to adventure at will. ...

What would happen if you took some of Britain`s best writing talent, put them on a plane & flew them to one of the most extraordinary & inaccessible places on the planet? What would happen if you took Irvine Welsh from the streets of Edinburgh & showed him a remote, dangerous village in Africa? What would happen if you flew Alex Garland into one of the world`s most hazardous war zones? & how would Tony Hawks react if you dragged him away from his tennis & asked him to write a song with a Sudanese tribesman? With Victoria Glendinning, Andrew O` Hagan, Giles Foden & WF Deedes, these writers have experienced for themselves one of the most beautiful & yet troubled lands in the world
- The Sudan. This remarkable collection of short stories & evocative travel writing is their response
- as diverse & unpredictable as the country itself.

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” The Weeping Goldsmith: Discoveries in the Secret Land of Myanmar” relates how W. John Kress came to appreciate the people & culture of Myanmar through an understanding of their plants, natural habitats, & human-dominated environments. Intertwined with descriptions of the author`s personal experiences & observations are notes on the history, culture, & modern society in Burma. Included are excerpts from his journals written while in the field, which serve as counterpoints to the accounts of earlier plant explorers who visited these places a century ago. ” The Weeping Goldsmith” is a delicate white & yellow-gold flower that defied replication even by an experienced goldsmith, according to legend. By the end of his journey the author grew to understand how politics could interfere with scientific research, leading the author to empathize with the sorrowful goldsmith. ...

If you are unable to protect yourself from a tyrant, how can you protect your family? & how does a proud man live with that knowledge? Reminiscent in part of ” Stasiland” & ” The Bookseller of Kabul”, this is the story of one family`s struggle to survive the iniquities of Saddam Hussein`s savage dictatorship. It is a career-defining book for Wendell Steavenson. In ” The Weight of a Mustard Seed”, Wendell Steavenson tells the story of General Kamel Sachet, a decorated hero of the long Iran-Iraq war & a favourite of Saddam Hussein`s. As Steavenson reveals the emotional & psychological scars the Sachet family suffer as a result of decades spent living with war & repression, she reaches towards the heart of a previously unspoken story of Iraq: a once prosperous nation, reduced by Hussein`s megalomania & paranoia to bankruptcy, corruption & impotence. The result is an intimate, startling & gripping account of the slow destruction of Sachet, his family & his country. ...

Armed with a suitcase & an old laundry bag filled with clothes, Kasienka & her mother head for Engl&. Life is lonely for Kasienka. At home her mother`s heart is breaking & at school friends are scarce. But when someone special swims into her life, Kasienka learns that there might be more than one way for her to stay afloat. The Weight of Water is a startlingly original piece of fiction; most simply a brilliant coming of age story, it also tackles the alienation experienced by many young immigrants. Moving, unsentimental & utterly page-turning, we meet & share the experiences of a remarkable girl who shows us how quiet courage prevails. ...

Listed by the Sunday Times as one of the five best political books of 2015. Welfare states have spread across the globe, transforming modern civilisation. But the take-over is often going badly. In Marseilles, armed drug gangs dominate the social housing estates. In America, an outstandingly rich country, 45 million people are dependent on food stamps. In Britain, the NHS has one of the worst records for cancer care in the advanced world. Many countries are raising more in taxes but nevertheless getting deeper into debt because of their burgeoning welfare states. All around the world, behaviour is being damaged by welfare state dependency while governments become more & more like Big Brother, telling us what we must do. James Bartholomew travelled around the world seeing how cultures & lives are being changed
- seeing what is going wrong but also looking for countries where they are making a better job of it. His book is an unparalleled investigation in which he tells the story of the people & places he visited. He takes the reader on a journey, which

Includes:: burnt-out cars in France, a tough-minded benefits office in Singapore & innovative hospitals in Spain. The narrative is supplemented with many photos & graphs that demonstrate & explain. The book is like a window on the modern world.


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