Some mountains are high; some mountains are hard. Few are both. On the afternoon of 13 July 1977, having become the first climbers to reach the summit of the Ogre, Doug Scott & Chris Bonington began their long descent. In the minutes that followed, any feeling of success from their achievement would be overwhelmed by the start of a desperate fight for survival. & things would only get worse. Rising to over 7, 000 metres in the centre of the Karakoram, the Ogre
- Baintha Brakk
- is notorious in mountaineering circles as one of the most difficult mountains to climb. First summited by Scott & Bonington in 1977
- on expedition with Paul ` Tut` Braithwaite, Nick Estcourt, Clive Rowland & Mo Anthoine
- it waited almost twenty-four years for a second ascent, & a further eleven years for a third. The Ogre, by legendary mountaineer Doug Scott, is a two-part biography of this enigmatic peak: in the first part, Scott has painstakingly researched the geography & history of the mountain; part two is the long overdue & very personal account of his & Bonington`s first ascent & their dramatic week-long descent on which Scott suffered two broken legs & Bonington smashed ribs. Using newly discovered diaries, letters & audio tapes, it tells of the heroic & selfless roles played by Clive Rowland & Mo Anthoine. When the desperate climbers finally made it back to base camp, they were to find it abandoned
- & themselves still a long way from safety. The Ogre is undoubtedly one of the greatest adventure stories of all time.




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This is the story of an arena of crime & degradation, of infamy & human suffering. It is the history of the Old Bailey, an institution as flawed as all man-made attempts at justice are doomed to be. In the beginning there was barbarity & injustice. The court was packed with a restless, muttering mob, eager for the verdicts of ' Guilty' so they could enjoy public executions, hurling abuse & missiles at those with the noose around their neck. Today we fool ourselves that we have evolved beyond barbarism, but are made uneasy by the continuing exposure of miscarriage of justice. If we use the Old Bailey as a yardstick, it is possible to argue that mankind has not made much progress through the centuries. In these pages, we tour the courts of long ago, meeting the Dracula-garbed court chaplains, drunken, brutal judges & cold-blooded hangmen. With wit & skill, Theresa Murphy brings to life a cast of hundreds, from the well-known to the less imfamous, who together make up the harrowing history of the Old Bailey. ...

These are the Faroe Islands as they were some fifty years ago: sea-washed & remote, with one generation still tied to the ocean for sustenance, & a younger generation turning towards commerce & clerical work in the towns. Following the blood, foam & fury of a whale kill, the normally cautious Ketil finds himself caught up in the frenzy of post celebrations, enthusiastically bidding for more meat than he can afford. Thus in his seventieth year, Ketil & his wife, along with their youngest son, struggle to repay their debt. Forced to accept the brutal reality of their precarious existence, they scavenge for driftwood & stranded seals. ...

Growing up on the Cambridgeshire Fens, Will Millard never felt more at home than when he was out with his granddad on the riverbank whiling away the day catching fish. As he grew older his competitive urge to catch more & bigger fish led him away from that natural connection between him, his grandfather & the rivers of his home & into large commercial fisheries catching fish after fish. That is, until the fateful day he let a record-breaking sand eel slip through his fingers & he knew that he had lost the magic of those days down by the river, & that something had to change. Armed with his late grandfather`s well-thumbed fishing encyclopaedia Will set out on a quest to get back to his roots & catch some of our great forgotten fish species, hidden deep in our lost waterways. The Old Man & the Sand Eel is at its heart the story of three generations of men trying to figure out what it is to be a man, a father & a fisherman. It plots Will`s scaly stepping stones back to his childhood innocence & late granddad, & a return to the importance of understanding the truly feral through a child`s eyes, when anything was possible & the wild was everywhere. ...

Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Ernest Hemingway`s magnificent fable The Old Man & the Sea is the story of an old man, a young boy & a giant fish. Here, is a perfectly crafted story, a unique & timeless vision of the beauty & grief of man`s challenge to the elements in which he lives. At the beginning of 1940, Hemingway livied in Cuba with Martha Gellhorn (his third wife)- there, his favourite past-time was to sail & fish on his boat- many academics believe that much of this classic novella comes from his time spent there, so much so, that after his death, his boat was given to the Cuban government. The Old Man & the Sea was Hemingway`s last novel before his suicide in 1960, & the one that won for him the Noble Prize for Literature in 1954. ...

Octogenarian Anthony Smith`s journey was originally inspired by both the Kontiki Expedition of Thor Heyerdahl (who he knew) & the incredible story of the survivors of a 1940 boat disaster, who spent 70 days adrift in the Atlantic, eventually reaching land emaciated & close to death. While this might sound like a voyage no-one would wish to emulate, to octogenarian Anthony Smith it sounded like an adventure, & he placed a typically straightforward advertisement in the Telegraph that read ” Fancy rafting across the Atlantic? Famous traveller requires 3 crew. Must be OAP. Serious adventurers only.” In his inimitable style, Smith details their voyage & the hardships they endured with a matter-of-fact air that makes his story seem all the more impressive. His advanced age allows him a wider perspective not only on the journey but on life itself, & his never-say-die attitude to the difficulty of the journey is inspirational. ` Old men ought to be explorers` said T.S. Eliot, & this book certainly gives a compelling argument in his favour. It is both a great story (a huge storm on the final night of the voyage almost wrecked them on a reef) & a call to action for the older generation
- do not go quietly, says Anthony Smith, but seek out adventure as long as you are able.
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Mysteries! There is no such thing as a mystery in connection with any crime, provided intelligence is brought to bear upon its investigation. So says a rather down-at-heel elderly gentleman to young Polly Burton of the Evening Observer, in the corner of the ABC teashop on Norfolk Street one afternoon. Once she has forgiven him for distracting her from her newspaper & luncheon, Miss Burton discovers that her interlocutor is as brilliantly gifted as he is eccentric
- able to solve mysteries that have made headlines & baffled the finest minds of the police without once leaving his seat in the teahouse. As the weeks go by, she listens to him unravelling the trickiest of puzzles & solving the most notorious of crimes, but still one final mystery remains: the mystery of the old man in the corner himself. The Old Man in the Corner is a classic collection of mysteries featuring the Teahouse Detective
- a contemporary of Sherlock Holmes, with a brilliant mind & waspish temperament to match that of Conan Doyle`s creation.

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The Old Patagonian Express is Paul Theroux’s record of his train journey down the length of North & South America in the 1970’s, from an icy Massachusetts to Argentina’s arid southern tip, via pretty Central American towns, the ancient Inca city of Machu Picchu & a meeting with Jorge Luis Borges in Buenos Aires. Sweating & shivering his way along the railway, as temperatures & altitudes plummet & climb, Theroux sharply describes the people he meets & the world he observes, in a journey that quite literally takes him to ‘the end of the line’. ...

The Japanese manufacture myths as efficiently as they do televisions, & are as adept at selling them to men who visit their country. Since it is men who write most books on Japan, those myths are perpetuated in the West. Women, though, do not count in that most foreign of countries, & no one is interested in selling myths to them. Harriet Sergeant, who lived in Tokyo for six years, took advantage of this to slip behind the scenery. In this book she provides a glimpse of backstage Japan. From her early collision with a sumo wrestler in a public swimming bath, Harriet confronts Japan head on, to the mixed consternation & amusement of her Japanese friends. They show her the country as it really is, frequently as unpalatable as dried octopus, but yielding some unforgettable experiences
- & acquaintances. There is Yuno, the professional gambler, who introduces Harriet to the gangster underworld with its labyrinthine tentacles of power; the old people of the Kobokan Community Centre, some of whom can remember vividly the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923; the beer-swilling Buddhist priest with an unorthodox taste in bathroom furniture; & Midori, the troubled young woman caught between East & West.
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A beautiful new edition of a classic work of landscape history, in which Alfred Watkins introduced the idea of ancient `ley lines` criss-crossing the English countryside. First published in 1925, THE OLD STRAIGHT TRACK described the author`s theory of `ley lines`, pre-Roman pathways consisting of aligned stone circles & prehistoric mounds, used by our Neolithic ancestors. Watkins`s ideas have intrigued & inspired generations of readers
- from historians to hill walkers, & from amateur archaeologists to new-age occultists. This edition of THE OLD STRAIGHT TRACK, with a substantial introduction by Robert Macfarlane, will appeal to all who treasure the history, contours & mystery of Britain`s ancient landscapes.
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