The Old & Wise Pens Set by Kikkerland comprising of 2 black ink biros. The set features two different types of classic walking stick designs, complete with wooden handle contrasts & silver decorative collar. made from plastic & metal. Just twist the handles to reveal the pen & start writing... ...

This collection of rare & vintage postcards offers a unique look at a vanished China & its storied capital. Comprising 355 black-&-white & h&-tinted Beijing photography postcards that span the period from the last years of Imperial China to the Japanese invasion of 1937, it is a treasure trove for buffs of Beijing history, collectors, Sinophiles, & anyone fascinated by people & cultures from times past. Readers will enjoy the wide selection of images showing different aspects of the life of old Peking from the arrival of a camel train at a city gate to h&-coloured views of the Forbidden City & an array of vendors, street performers, officials, gentry, commoners, & foreign tourists. Several chapters present the city`s distinctive Beijing architecture its walls & gates, towers, fountains, temples, pagodas, memorial arches, & public or imperial buildings, including the Summer & Winter Palaces & the Ming Tombs. Other chapters of Chinese photography look at the Manchu rulers, street life, the Legation Quarter & Western presence, & the Great Wall. Included are some rare scenes depicting the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion & 1911 revolution Manchu fashion, colourful means of transportation, & the coming of the railroad. Of particular note are images of the Empress Dowager, the child emperor Puyi, & other personalities at the Manchu Court. The book also

Includes:: eight colour postcards of paintings by the famous artist Carl Wuttke & rare cards showing etched drawings of the Old Summer Palace now only a field of ruins. The author, who was born & lived in China before 1949, has written an informative introduction to each chapter as well as a general introduction to classical Beijing. A foreword by historian & Beijing expert Susan Naquin situates this collection at once as a precious record of old Peking & a revealing snapshot of Western views of China in the first golden age of tourism. Old Beijing: Postcards from the Imperial City offers a visual time capsule of both Beijing`s history & traditional Chinese culture in a unique & revealing postcard format.

...

Olivia is thirty-two & living back home with her mother in Caprock, small-town Texas. Her therapist is a girl she went to high school with; her promising career in journalism has dwindled to nothing, & she spends her days hawking jewellery in a Mall following a favour from a friend. Life is back on an even-keel after her descent into drug abuse, but it`s a far cry from the one she imagined.. . Then, under pressure to take up a hobby, she decides to try urban exploration. Soon she`s poking through derelict homes, churches & schools across North Texas. But Olivia knows her therapist would disapprove. What began as a harmless distraction soon becomes a lucrative business as she collects & sells antique fittings & fixtures online. Her new-found freedom starts to spiral out of control. Victimless trespass is fast evolving into criminal behaviour, & the path her rehabilitation is taking leads Olivia to question her own moral code. She`s not supposed to withhold information from her therapist
- yet she does. Nor is she supposed to be stashing money in a secret account when she owes so much to so many
- & although she`s supposedly prohibited from communicating with people from her past, old friends keep showing up, making demands & threats. To add to it all, her baby sister has turned up pregnant, the question of their absent fathers has once more been unearthed, & her prescribed medication is inducing an unnatural detachment that makes her feel as though she`s not present in her own life. Tackling difficult subjects with a warmth & humour, & creating an unforgettable protagonist, Jen Waldo brings an electrifying tone to fiction
- she is an astonishing new American voice who will stop you in her tracks.


...

Olivia is thirty-two & living back home with her mother in Caprock, small-town Texas. Her therapist is a girl she went to high school with; her promising career in journalism has dwindled to nothing, & she spends her days hawking jewellery in a Mall following a favour from a friend. Life is back on an even-keel after her descent into drug abuse, but it`s a far cry from the one she imagined.. . Then, under pressure to take up a hobby, she decides to try urban exploration. Soon she`s poking through derelict homes, churches & schools across North Texas. But Olivia knows her therapist would disapprove. What began as a harmless distraction soon becomes a lucrative business as she collects & sells antique fittings & fixtures online. Her new-found freedom starts to spiral out of control. Victimless trespass is fast evolving into criminal behaviour, & the path her rehabilitation is taking leads Olivia to question her own moral code. She`s not supposed to withhold information from her therapist
- yet she does. Nor is she supposed to be stashing money in a secret account when she owes so much to so many
- & although she`s supposedly prohibited from communicating with people from her past, old friends keep showing up, making demands & threats. To add to it all, her baby sister has turned up pregnant, the question of their absent fathers has once more been unearthed, & her prescribed medication is inducing an unnatural detachment that makes her feel as though she`s not present in her own life. Tackling difficult subjects with a warmth & humour, & creating an unforgettable protagonist, Jen Waldo brings an electrifying tone to fiction
- she is an astonishing new American voice who will stop you in her tracks.


...

Calabria. A dramatic peninsula of rugged mountains & windswept coastlines facing Sicily
- `the most beautiful kilometre in Italy`
-

...

Jerusalem street plan from Carta combining a very detailed plan of the Old City with, on the reverse, a plan of the city’s central districts, both indexed & highlighting various places of interest. On one side a very clear street plan at approx. 1:2, 700 shows the Old City. Numerous places of worship, institutions & sites are named, & symbols indicate locations of various facilities including drinking water fountains, public toilets, car parks, taxi stations, hotels & youth hostels, etc, as well as viewpoints from the Old City walls & Stations of the Cross along the Via Dolorosa. Accompanying index lists sites & institutions. On the reverse is a street plan of Jerusalem’s central districts extending from the western side of the Old City & Mount Zion to the institutions around the Knesset, the Israel Museum & the Hebrew University. The plan shows the stops of the light railway line, one way streets & car parks, locations of selected hotels, etc. The index is accompanied by a list of sites of interest with contact details. All place names are in the Latin alphabet only. ...

The magic of the old Covent Garden Market is evoked through Peter Ackroyd`s introduction & Clive Boursnell`s marvellous photographs, taken over the course of numerous & extended visits to Covent Garden in the 1960s & 1970s. The book

Includes:: a preface by Clive Boursnell & the words of some of the market people whom the photographer interviewed at the time.

...

A 105km / 65 miles long-distance hiking route crossing the Pyrenees along the ancient shepherd tracks from la Seu d’ Urgel in Spain, across Andorra, to Auzat in France, presented by Editorial Alpina on a contoured & GPS compatible maps at 1:40, 000. Topography is very clearly presented by contours at 20m intervals, with additional relief sharing, plenty of spot heights, plus colouring for woodlands. The main route is prominently highlighted, with two more strenuous variants in Andorra. The map also indicates locations recommended as stopovers, plus both along the paths & elsewhere shows hotels, campsites, mountain refuges & other accommodation options, information centres, car parks, climbing sites, & various other places of interest. The map has a UTM & its legend

Includes:: English. The accompanying booklet – in French, Spanish & Catalan only – provides a breakdown of the whole route into recommended stages, &

Includes:: contact details for various useful organizations. To see the list of all the maps from Editorial Alpina covering long-distance hiking routes please click on the series link.



...

Cuba dominates the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico, fixed between the great continents to the north & to the south, & has long served as a bridge between the Old World & the New. First visited by Christopher Columbus in 1492, its history of interaction with the Old World of Europe is among the longest in the Americas, & its architecture bears testament to this: Cuba is home to some of the most ancient cities & towns in the western hemisphere. As a result, the country once known as the pearl of the Antilles, stands now as a treasure chest of alluring historic architecture seasoned by European precedents mixed with colonial & Caribbean spice & boasts an extraordinary number of UNESCO Cultural Heritage sites, from the historic center of Old Havana with its original city walls & the Castillo de la Real Fuerza the oldest extant colonial fortress in the Americas to the sixteenth-century city of Trinidad, within the central Cuban province of Sancti Spiritus, recognized by historians & scholars as a triumph of historic preservation & whose maze of pastel mansions & churches forms one of the best collections of colonial architecture to be found anywhere. From Old Havana to Santiago de Cuba, Old Cuba offers an intimate look at the historic architecture the houses, apartments, monuments, charming public spaces, & centuries-old churches of this storied country. ...

The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41), with its combination of the sentimental, the grotesque & the socially concerned, & its story of pursuit & courage, which sets the downtrodden & the plucky against the malevolent & the villainous, was an immediate popular success. Little Nell quickly became one of Dickens` most celebrated characters, who so captured the imagination of his readers that while the novel was being serialised, many of them wrote to him about her fate. Dickens was conscious of the `many friends` the novel had won for him, & `the many hearts it turned to me when they were full of private sorrow`, & it remains one of the most familiar & well-loved of his works. ...