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. ...

Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway`s magnificent fable is the story of an old man, a young boy & a giant fish. It was The Old Man & the Sea that won for Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here, in a perfectly crafted story, is a unique & timeless vision of the beauty & grief of man`s challenge to the elements in which he lives. Not a single word is superflous in this widely admired masterpiece, which once & for all established his place as one of the giants of modern literature. ...

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 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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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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The Old Vic, one of the world`s great theatres, opened in 1818 with rowdy melodrama & continued with Edmund Kean in Richard III howled down by the audience. One impresario, among the first of thirteen to go bankrupt there, fled to Milan & ran La Scala. In 1848 a chorus girl tried to murder the leading lady. In 1870 the Vic became a music hall, then a temperance tavern &, from 1912, under Lilian Baylis, both an opera house & the home of Shakespeare. By the 1930s great actors were happy to go there for a pittance
- John Gielgud, Charles Laughton, Peggy Ashcroft, & Laurence Olivier. The Vic considered itself a national theatre in all but name. After the second world war the Royal Ballet & the English National Opera both sprang from the Vic, & the National Theatre, at last established in 1963 under Olivier, made its first home there. In 1980 the Vic was saved from becoming a bingo hall by a generous Toronto businessman. Since 2004 Kevin Spacey, Hollywood actor & the winner of two Oscars, has led a new company there, & toured the world.
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In The Old Ways Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge home to follow the ancient tracks, holloways, drove
- roads & sea
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