Rana Jawad, a British-Lebanese journalist who has reported from Tripoli for the BBC for seven years, found herself the last British journalist reporting from inside Tripoli early in 2010. Defiant & terrified in turns, she went into hiding & bravely issued the series of anonymous Tripoli Witness blogs that have become famous among anyone following the course of the insurgency. The raw blog accounts published here are accompanied by a short introductory pieces as well as a series of opening essays of what it was like to live in Gaddafi`s Libya. Paul Kenyon, the acclaimed Panorama Presenter who was recently awarded for his BBC documentary on Libya, introduces Rana`s work & gives an insight into this remarkable young journalists`s brave reporting through harrowing times. ...

It has been called a ” Noble Possession”, abused as ”A Nest of Corsairs” & extolled as ” The Pearl of the Mediterranean”. This city of Tripoli, one of the oldest on both the Mediterranean & the fringes of the Sahara, & never deserted, has meant many different things to many different people over the past 2, 500 years. To its first outside visitors, the trading Phoenicians, it was a safe haven & a market. To its later Roman colonizers it was an outlet for the low grade pastoral produce of its Saharan hinterl&. Under Muslim Arab rule it became a wealthy transit market, trading with three continents, while under its Turkish & Karamanli rulers, it was notorious for its corsair galleys that preyed on the merchant shipping of the Central & Eastern Mediterranean. After the Napoleonic Wars the city took on a new role as a base for the trans-Saharan exploration & penetration of inner Africa, with British pioneers followed by Germans, French & Italians. In 1911 Italy invaded this last remaining Turkish possession in North Africa, soon transforming a neglected exiles` outpost into an imposing capital symbolizing Fascist imperial pretensions. Tripoli`s fall to the British Eighth Army in January 1943 was seen as a turning point in World War Two, while in 1951 its role as joint capital of the newly-independent Kingdom of Libya marked the start of Africa`s post- colonial era. Oil found in Libya in the 1950s & 1960s made Tripoli rich
- & a prize that fell in 1969 to the rising forces of Arab nationalism personified by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. During his 42 years of eccentric rule, Tripoli was transformed into a mega-city, one hundred times greater in extent & population that it had been a century earlier. But by 2015 continuing post-Gaddafi anarchy & depleting oil reserves made the city`s future seem as precarious & uncertain as ever it had been. Mixing personal observation & research with accounts from foreign travellers & residents, John Wright reveals the reality of this unique, remarkable & ever-vibrant city: a city with special social, cultural & linguistic ”flavours” that not even visitors from other parts of the Arab World can always understand or define.
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Nabbing flights for less than a fiver, Andrew Fraser took off on a month long jaunt around ten European cities for GBP144. In this entertaining account of his trip, he not only describes what he saw, but also how he did it, coaching aspiring travellers in how to create their own dream travel itineraries on flights which cost less than an airport latte. Join him on a bargain journey to some of Europe`s weirdest, least visited backwaters, while also learning how to plan a ten-city adventure of your own. Andrew Fraser travelled 6, 928 miles at an average cost of 2p per mile. Now you can, too. This unique title
- the only one available that explains how to travel so far for so little
- takes in some of Europe`s least discovered cities, including Skopje, Girona, Thessaloniki, Gdansk, Warsaw & Wroclaw, as well as giving an entertaining overview of some more familiar places, such as Barcelona, Rome & Brussels. It tells you how to book secret five star hotels for three star prices with no mystery about where you are going to stay, how to travel the world cheaply from your local airport, & how to save a fortune & create an adventure by abandoning the notion of the linear return flight. Uncovering the little known travel gems which you can fly to for under a tenner, it is also an often surreal, idiosyncratic & funny account of one man`s adventures on the move, from attending an octopus autopsy in Barcelona to unearthing uncomfortable secrets in Europe`s new Capital of Culture & discovering hip Warsovian apartments which straddle the worlds of Molotov & Madonna. What`s more, it`s a cultural, gastronomic & historical tour of some of Europe`s most thrilling but least known cities. Andrew Fraser is former Travel Editor & Deputy Editor of Attitude magazine, & former Chief Writer of OK! Magazine. He has had a love of the obscure, a love of bargains, & a love of travel since he was a strange eight year-old-boy locked in his bedroom obsessing over maps of Narnia-esque towns, cities & regions on the red side of the European map, which he was told he would never be able to visit. When the Berlin wall fell in 1989, he rushed to Prague, Bratislava & Budapest where he enjoyed the greatest adventure of his life so far, costing little more than pennies. Now in 2016, the internet & low cost airlines, have brought back those halcyon days of cheap travel bliss & Andrew Fraser`s mission in life is to transport you to places beyond your wildest dreams for less than the cost of your airport latte. Come join him.

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Trisil
- Knuts Fjellverden area in Norway in a series of GPS compatible recreational Turkart maps at 1:50, 000 with cartography
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” Tristes Tropiques” begins with the line `I hate travelling & explorers`, yet during his life Claude Levi-Strauss travelled from wartime France to the Amazon basin & the dense upland jungles of Brazil, where he found `human society reduced to its most basic expression`. His account of the people he encountered changed the field of anthropology, transforming Western notions of `primitive` man. ” Tristes Tropiques” is a major work of art as well as of scholarship. It is a memoir of exquisite beauty & a masterpiece of travel writing: funny, discursive, movingly detailing personal & cultural loss, & brilliantly connecting disparate fields of thought. Few books have had as powerful & broad an impact. ...

Laurence Sterne`s The Life & Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a huge literary paradox, for it is both a novel & an anti-novel. As a comic novel replete with bawdy humour & generous sentiments, it introduces us to a vivid group of memorable characters, variously eccentric, farcical & endearing. As an anti-novel, it is a deliberately tantalising & exuberantly egoistic work, ostentatiously digressive, involving the reader in the labyrinthine creation of a purported autobiography. This mercurial eighteenth-century text thus anticipates modernism & postmodernism. Vibrant & bizarre, Tristram Shandy provides an unforgettable experience. We may see why Nietzsche termed Sterne `the most liberated spirit of all time`. ...

A single Yes, a single No, a Too Soon or a Too Late makes that hour irrevocable for hundreds of generations while deciding the life of a single man or woman, of a nation, even the destiny of all humanity. Five vivid dramatizations of some of the most pivotal episodes in human history, from the Fall of Constantinople to Scott`s doomed attempt to reach the South Pole, bringing the past to life in brilliant technicolor. Contents: Foreword The Field of Waterloo The Race to Reach the South Pole The Conquest of Byzantium The Sealed Train (Lenin`s journey across Europe before the Russian Revolution) Wilson`s Failure (Woodrow Wilson & Versailles) ...

Robbie Marshall had it all
- love, children & a successful business. So why did he trade it all in for the saddle of a Triumph
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Understanding the modern city & the powerful forces within it is the life`s work of Harvard urban economist Edward Glaeser, who at forty is hailed as one of the world`s most exciting urban thinkers. Travelling from city to city, speaking to planners & politicians across the world, he uncovers questions large & small whose answers are both counterintuitive & deeply significant. Should New Orleans be rebuilt? Why can`t my nephew afford an apartment in New York? Is London the new financial capital of the world? Is my job headed to Bangalore? In Triumph of the City, Glaeser takes us around the world & into the mind of the modern city -- from Mumbai to Paris to Rio to Detroit to Shanghai, & to any number of points in between -- to reveal how cities think, why they behave in the manners that they do, & what wisdom they share with the people who inhabit them. `A masterpiece` Steven D. Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics `A brilliant read: persuasive & provocative` Time Out ` Replete with lightly borne learning, this is a tremendous book` Bryan Appleyard, Literary Review ` Fascinating` Sunday Telegraph ` Comprehensive, compelling & strongly recommended” Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist & Adapt `A hymn to the city` Metro ...

Chris Boardman is the 2017 winner of the Cross Sports Cycling Book of the Year for his autobiography Triumphs & Turbulence. ` The true inspiration was that Olympic gold won by Chris Boardman in Barcelona... I was so in awe of Chris Boardman` Sir Bradley Wiggins You may know him as the much-loved co-presenter of ITV`s Tour de France coverage or enjoyed his BBC Olympic coverage, but beyond the easy charm Chris Boardman is one of our greatest, most inspiring cyclists. Boardman`s lone achievements in the 80s & 90s
- Olympic track gold, the world hour record, repeatedly claiming the yellow jersey in the Tour de France
- were the spark that started the modern era for British cycling. His endeavours both on & off the bike have made him the founding father of current golden generation
- without him there would simply be no Hoy, Wiggins or Cavendish. It is a story full of intrigue: from Olympic success, to the famous duels with Graeme Obree & the insanity of the Tour de France. Chris became a legend for his combination of physical ability & technical preparation, almost single-handedly taking British cycling from wool shirts & cloth caps into the era of marginal gains. Indeed, after his career on the bike ended, a new chapter began as the backroom genius behind GB cycling. As head of the R&D team known as The Secret Squirrel Club, Chris has been responsible for the technical innovations that made the difference in 2012 & developed Boardman Bikes, which has become the country`s bestselling premium bike range.


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