Collapsing stock markets, melting ice caps, floods, tornadoes, terrorism.. . When it comes to bad news, we`ve never had it so good. Perhaps it is time to be a little more optimistic? That`s what Laurence Shorter decided. & that`s why he set himself the challenge of meeting the world`s most cheerful people. Surely with the help of Desmond Tutu, Richard Branson & Bill Clinton, Laurence can find the secret to inner happiness. But first things first
- how on Earth is he going to get to meet them?
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It is 1988 & Hargeisa waits. Whispers of revolution travel on the dry winds but still the dictatorship remains secure. Soon, & through the eyes of three women, we will see Somalia fall. Nine-year-old Deqo has left the vast refugee camp she was born in, lured to the city by the promise of her first pair of shoes. Kawsar, a solitary widow, is trapped in her little house with its garden clawed from the desert, confined to her bed after a savage beating in the local police station. Filsan, a young female soldier, has moved from Mogadishu to suppress the rebellion growing in the north. & as the country is unravelled by a civil war that will shock the world, the fates of the three women are twisted irrevocably together. Intimate, frank, brimming with beauty & fierce love, The Orchard of Lost Souls is an unforgettable account of ordinary lives lived in extraordinary times. ...

Shortlisted for a 2018 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award. In the summer after leaving school, a young botanist sets out to fulfil a childhood dream
- to find every species of orchid native to the British Isles. He has just a few months to complete his quest
- no one has ever done it before within one growing season- & it will require ingenuity, stamina & a large dose of luck. Like Two Owls at Eton & My Family & Other Animals, The Orchid Hunter I is a charming account of a precocious adolescent`s obsession with the natural world. As he battles the vagaries of the British climate in his clapped-out car, feverishly chasing each emerging bloom, Leif Bersweden takes the reader on a remarkable botanical journey. This study of the 52 native species is a fantastic gateway into the compendious world of orchids
- one that will open your eyes to the rare hidden delights to be found on the doorstep. Leif`s enthusiasm for his quest is infectious, as is the quiet conviction with which he keeps at it, showing how plant hunting can be the ultimate mindful activity.


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In the summer after leaving school, a young botanist sets out to fulfil a childhood dream -- to find every species of orchid native to the British Isles. He has just a few months to complete his quest
- no one has ever done it before within one growing season
- & it will require ingenuity, stamina & a large dose of luck. As he battles the vagaries of the British climate, feverishly chasing each emerging bloom, Leif Bersweden takes the reader on a remarkable botanical journey. This study of the 52 native species is a fantastic gateway into the compendious world of orchids
- one that will open your eyes to the rare hidden delights to be found on our doorstep. --

Includes:: an essential guide to finding all 52 British orchids --




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From the author of ` Britons`, the story of the exceptional life of the intrepid Elizabeth Marsh -- an extraordinary woman of her time who was caught up in trade, imperialism, war, exploration, migration, growing maritime reach, & new ideas. Linda Colley`s new book breaks the boundaries between biography, family stories & global history. This is a book about a world in a life. An individual lost to history, Elizabeth Marsh (1735-85) travelled farther, & was more intimately affected by developments across the globe, than the vast majority of men. Conceived in Jamaica & possibly mixed-race, she was the first woman to publish in English on Morocco, & the first to carry out extensive overland explorations in eastern & southern India, journeying in each case in close companionship with an unmarried man. She spent time in some of the world`s biggest ports & naval bases, Portsmouth, Menorca, Gibraltar, London, Rio de Janeiro, Calcutta & the Cape. She was damaged by the Seven Years War & the American Revolutionary War; & linked through her own migrations with voyages of circumnavigation, & as victim & owner, she was involved in three different systems of slavery. But hers is a broadly revealing, not simply an exceptional, life. Marsh`s links to the Royal Navy, the East India Company, empire & international trade made these experiences possible. To this extent, her career illumines shifting patterns of British & Western power & overseas aggression. The swift onset of globalization occurring in her lifetime also ensured that her progress, relationships & beliefs were repeatedly shaped & deflected by people & events beyond Europe. While imperial players like Edmund Burke & Eyre Coote form a part of her story, so do African slave sailors, skilled Indian weavers & astronomers, ubiquitous Sephardi Jewish traders, & the great Moroccan Sultan, Sidi Muhammad, who schemed to entrap her. Many modern biographies remain constrained by a national framework, while global histories are generally impersonal. By contrast, in this dazzling & original book, Linda Colley moves repeatedly & questioningly between vast geo-political transformations & the intricate detail of individual lives. This is a global biography for our globalizing times. ...

Are YOU the ultimate map-reader? Do you know your trig points from your National Trails? Can you calculate using contours? & can you fathom exactly how far the footpath is from the free house? Track down hidden treasures, decipher geographical details & discover amazing facts as you work through this unique puzzle book based on 40 of the Ordnance Survey`s best British maps. Explore the first ever OS map made in 1801, unearth the history of curious place names, encounter abandoned Medieval villages & search the site of the first tarmac road in the world. With hundreds of puzzles ranging from easy to mind-boggling, this mix of navigational tests, word games, code-crackers, anagrams & mathematical conundrums will put your friends & family through their paces on the path to becoming the ultimate map-master! ...

1640s, The New World In the remote winter landscape a brutal massacre & the kidnapping of a young Iroquois girl violently re-ignites a deep rift between two tribes. The girl`s captor, Bird, is one of the Huron Nation`s great warriors & statesmen. Years have passed since the murder of his family, & yet they are never far from his mind. In the girl, Snow Falls, he recognizes the ghost of his lost daughter, but as he fights for her heart & allegiance, small battles erupt into bigger wars as both tribes face a new, more dangerous threat from afar. Travelling with the Huron is Christophe, a charismatic missionary who has found his calling among the tribe & devotes himself to learning & understanding their customs & language. An emissary from distant lands, he brings much more than his faith to this new world, with its natural beauty & riches. As these three souls dance with each other through intricately woven acts of duplicity, their social, political & spiritual worlds collide
- & a new nation rises from a world in flux.
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The Orient Express is a name synonymous with luxury train travel in Europe. In 1883, the first train with its gleaming livery ...

Central Asia is a vibrant mixture of civilizations & tongues; united by Islam, diversified by differing histories, cultures & languages. Iran, Turkey & Afghanistan & their neighbours are famed for their literature & their multi-hued arts & crafts, but few realize how alive, how close to the surface, are their powerful & enduring traditions. The Orient in a Mirror counterpoints the colour photographs of Roland & Sabrina Michaud with reproductions of 14th- to 19th-century central Asian miniatures. The two art forms enhance one another, providing a multifaceted insight into the glories of the region
- from glimpses of students & solemn mullahs to Afghan horsemen, in a plethora of exotic beauty & colour. This book was acclaimed on first publication in 1980 but was long out of print. It is now republished in a revised & expanded form, with twice as many images.
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The Orientalist unravels the mysterious life of a man born on the border between West & East, a Jewish man with a passion for the Arab world. Tom Reiss first came across the man who called himself ` Kurban Said` when he went to the ex-USSR to research the oil business on the Caspian Sea, & discovered a novel instead. Written on the eve of the Second World War, Ali & Nino is a captivating love story set in the glamorous city of Baku, Azerbaijan`s capital. The novel`s depiction of a lost cosmopolitan society is enthralling, but equally intriguing is the identity of the man who wrote it. Who was its supposed author? & why was he so forgotten that no one could agree on the simplest facts about him? For five years, Reiss tracked Lev Nussimbaum, alias Kurban Said, from a wealthy Jewish childhood in Baku, to a romantic adolescence in Persia on the run from the Bolsheviks, & an exile in Berlin as bestselling author & self-proclaimed Muslim prince. The result is a thoroughly unexpected picture of the twentieth-century
- of the origins of our ideas about race & religious self-definition, & of the roots of modern fanaticism.
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