What’s in a Name?

Posted on November 7, 2024 - 10:36 am by Kathryn Blair

What's in a Name?

Ian Moore explains how constructing the title of your book is as important as the work itself, and where he came up with the witty title for the latest instalment in the Juge Lombard series.

By Ian Moore
07 November 2024

Anybody who’s had to go through the personal torture of choosing a baby’s name knows the problem. What does the name mean? Who else has the name? Didn’t you once read something somewhere that…

It’s a situation fraught with anxiety and doubt. This is your baby; this name is for life. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but we fragile, precious authors feel much the same about the titles of our books.

This has been a labour of love, you’ve nurtured it and will, in most instances, cherish it for life. It needs a name though, a title, that will live on. It must delight, intrigue and question. And it’s really difficult to get right.

In many ways authors, as with some parents, are too close to the subject to give a balanced opinion. Personally, I cannot sit down to write a new book without the title already sorted in my head

It may change along the way

It may change again when the thing’s finished. That’s the time when wiser, more focused heads get involved, proffering advice and experience like grandparents at a Christening who whisper, ‘There was a Dominic already in the family, remember? Bad lot that one.’

I’m very proud of the title of Dead Behind the Eyes. It has personal history, it’s relevant to the story on a number of levels, and it’s original.

I have been a stand-up comedian for over twenty-five years, and it’s a hard job. Now look, when I say it’s a hard job, I know it’s not exactly early morning dustbin collection, (which I’ve done), minder to a dodgy businessman, (which I’ve done), or sulphur mining in Indonesia, (which I haven’t done).

So, it’s a hard-ish job, then

Not the stage bit, that, nine times out of ten, is easy. That’s the fun part. No, it’s the budget. Cheap time of the day travel; eating a Ginsters pasty at two in the morning because there’s nothing else; starting work at eleven pm; overnight Megabus coaches; no social life; blokes at the bar saying, ‘’ere’s one you can use!’ and so on.

And every now and then the road gets too hard. You find yourself on stage listless, a parody of your own act, too tired to change gear and generally missing the belief or the energy to do the job.

Audiences don’t always see it, but other comics do and if they’re good friends, they’ll tell you. Actually, if they’re rivals, they’ll tell you too. They’ll take you surreptitiously aside, put a hand on your shoulder and say quietly, ‘Are you OK? You looked Dead Behind The Eyes up there.’

A good friend did that for me

It saved my career. On one level my main character, Matthieu Lombard, is asking himself that question. Sidelined by the magistrature, barely tolerated by distrusting colleagues and grieving over the loss of his wife, he’s reached a point many of us reach in life.

Is this all there is? Will a change of scenery make a difference?

And then a headless corpse washes up on the banks of the river Loire.

Surely this is the spark he needs. His interest should be piqued, the natural curiosity of the investigator and the desire for truth and justice, should now kick in like a jolt of electricity reawakening the Zombie mind…

Well obviously, you’ll have to read the book to find that out, and more besides. I will give this away though; Lombard recognises something of himself in the victim and it hurts. Now how can a headless corpse be Dead Behind The Eyes?M

A HEADLESS MAN. A MISSING GIRL. A LIFE RULED BY SECRETS...

Crime Fiction
Hardback
07 November 2024
ISBN 9780715655498

‘An engrossing, slickly plotted policier that will leave you wanting more’ Tom Benjamin, author of the Daniel Leicester mysteries

When a decapitated body washes up on the banks of the River Loire in the ancient city of Tours, the reluctant juge d’instruction Mattiew Lombard is brought in to lead the investigation.

But when Lombard’s young niece appears, the inquiry changes course. Suddenly immersed in another world – one of eco-terrorism, bio-medical research, French aristocracy and the violent forgotten underbelly of society – Lombard begins to make unexpected connections.

Can the brutal murder of a lonely man really be justified by a noble cause? Or are good intentions hiding darker motives, more cynical and more deadly?

The Importance of Historical Context

Posted on October 8, 2024 - 10:41 am by Kathryn Blair

The Importance of Historical Context

The Prisoner of Measham Hall author Anna Abney explains the fascinating historical context for the latest edition in the highly praised Measham Hall series.

By Anna Abney
08 October 2024

I moved to Belfast from London when I was twenty-one and lived in various parts of Ireland for the following thirteen years. I now have many family ties to Ireland and both my children were born there.

That initial move was revelatory for a young Englishwoman, challenging some of my preconceptions and exposing areas of ignorance about our shared British and Irish history.

So, in writing the third book in the Measham Hall series it was fascinating to research The Williamite Wars, an area that gets little attention from both fiction and non-fiction writers.

The Prisoner of Measham Hall is set in 1690, two years after the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’. The Dutch William of Orange and his English wife, Mary II, have been made joint monarchs of the British Isles and have declared war on France, imposing a huge financial burden on their subjects.

Meanwhile, the deposed Catholic James II has landed with a French army in Ireland

Mary’s estranged father James is hoping to win back the English throne. Initially, he is greeted with great enthusiasm by the Catholic Irish, but William cannot allow his father-in-law to undermine him from Dublin and, not trusting the loyalty of English soldiers, sends over his own army of Dutch troops, led by the highly experienced Duke of Schomburg.

As the fighting progresses, however, William, partly for PR reasons, also travels to Ireland, heading an army expanded with Danish, Huguenot and English recruits. Between them, these cousins, William and James, will turn Ireland into another bloody battleground in a larger Continental war.

Nicholas Hawthorne, the young heir of Measham Hall, has joined the Jacobite army

Nicolas is now fighting in Ireland, much to his father’s distress. Chapter Three opens on the eve of the Battle of the Boyne, an event that, although dismissed by some of the participants as a ‘skirmish’, sent the defeated James rushing back to France, leaving his troops to fight on without him.

The battle became an iconic emblem of the victory of Protestantism over Catholicism in Ireland and is still controversially celebrated among loyalist communities in Northern Ireland every 12th of July, with bonfires and parades led by the Orange Order (named after William of Orange).

Tackling controversial historical events can be challenging even for a fiction writer and I was conscious of the need to tread softly on such boggy ground, especially when dealing with real people, like the much celebrated Patrick Sarsfield.

I have a tendency to spend more time than is strictly necessary in researching my novels

For this book I was even more assiduous, reading every history book, article and contemporary source I could get my hands on. The Journal of John Stevens was especially helpful in providing an eyewitness account of what it was like to fight in the Williamite War, albeit from the blinkered perspective of a rather arrogant seventeenth-century Englishman.

Although some of his attitudes to the Irish are hard to stomach, Stevens’ observations on the destruction of Limerick and the surrounding countryside are poignant, bringing home the catastrophic nature of the conflict. Stevens’ colonial assumptions and prissy attitude became the inspiration for the character of Francis Bedley, Nicholas’s irksome companion.

The second seige of Limerick would see the Irish Jacobites defeated. The treaty that followed caused a huge exodus of Irish Catholics as 20,000 Jacobite soldiers, known later as ‘The Wild Geese’, left for permanent exile in Europe rather than submit to the Protestant ascendancy.

Emigration has continued to be a feature of Irish life

The war in Ireland had various names, in Irish it was known as Cogadh an Dá Rí – the War of the Two Kings, while modern historians call it The Williamite War, or sometimes The Irish War.

The alternative titles perhaps reflect the different experiences of those involved, along with the shifting perspectives of history on a war that is still an infamous symbol of either triumph or oppression, depending on which side you stand.

While Nicholas is fighting in Ireland, the future of Measham Hall is also under threat and he will be forced to return home to a very different battle …

Return to mysterious Measham Hall in this tale of espionage at the height of the Williamite war

Historical Fiction
Paperback
10 October 2024
ISBN 9780715655498

‘A beautifully crafted work of historical fiction’ AJ West, author of The Spirit Engineer

1690. England is in crisis – the new protestant King William III has embarked on wars in France and Ireland, inflation is rampant and the price of corn is causing riots.

At Measham Hall, Sir William Hawthorne faces a predicament of his own: his loyal steward has died, and he must find another. Meanwhile, Sir William’s heir, Nicholas, is in Ireland fighting against the Williamite troops. But Nicholas is playing a dangerous game as double agent, risking both his love and his life.

When one battle is over, he must return to Measham Hall to fight another and defeat an old foe in a new guise or lose Measham Hall forever…

The Women Who Dared to Be Different

Posted on September 23, 2024 - 11:08 am by Kathryn Blair

The Trailblazing Women Who Dared to Be Different

Firebrands author Joanna Scutts explains why she set out to re-examine the literary canon and highlight the fantastic authors that have been underappreciated and overlooked throughout history.

By Joanna Scutts
23 September 2024

Even a keen and curious reader might be forgiven for assuming that literature, going back a generation or two, never had a place for women. The handful of familiar names – Jane Austen, the Brontës, Woolf – can seem like exceptions proving that rule.

Yet women have always been storytellers, poets and playwrights, the guardians of history and myth, family lore and social ritual. Where they have been excluded, historically, is from education and from power. If they managed to become writers against the odds, they found their reputations and legacies were vulnerable.

Even if they were popular and widely read (and often because they were popular and widely read) their presence, on bookshelves and syllabi, and in the wider cultural consciousness, was often fleeting. Scores of once-famous writers have been lost – overlooked, underestimated, dismissed, neglected and forgotten – in this way, and too many brilliant, funny, weird and incendiary voices remain muted.

Too many brilliant, funny, weird and incendiary voices remain muted

This book sets out to change that, by introducing readers to twenty-five daring women whose work still has the capacity to shake up our expectations and spark new conversations. They produced everything from temple hymns to muckraking journalism, via poetry, memoir, drama, fiction, film and innumerable hybrid literary forms.

In terms of class and occupation, they include aristocrats and bohemians, workers and warriors, immigrants and servants, farmers’ daughters and heiresses. They were married and widowed, mothers and spinsters, straight and queer. Some of these women were in their twenties when they did their best work, but just as many were in their forties or seventies. The variety shows us there is no single way to be a woman writer.

There is no single way to be a woman writer

And even that label should give us pause. I use it because, for the most part, these writers lived and worked in times and places where sex was destiny, and the gender binary was rigidly enforced and violently policed.

For the nonbinary Pauli Murray and the gender-rebellious George Sand, in particular, the label ‘woman writer’ feels neither accurate nor sufficient. It says more about the reception of their work than the way they lived in the world.

When our women’s literary canon contains just a handful of names, it’s easy to think that only a certain kinds of women can write. Money makes it possible and children, surely, make it impossible.

But here we have Kay Boyle and Lucille Clifton, both mothers of six, and both prolific, prize-winning, politically active writers: perennially short of cash, yet humane and courageous in their art throughout their lives.

Here too we have writers like Mary Borden and Mary Heaton Vorse, witnesses to war and political violence, challenging the notion of what women “should” write about. History acts on them all, but for some more dramatically than others.

The biographical details of Olympe de Gouges, caught up in the throes of the French Revolution, or of Juana Manuela Gorriti, fleeing across borders amid the turbulence of nineteenth-century Latin American politics, themselves read like stories. My title is borrowed from Woolf, a term she used in A Room of One’s Own for women of the nineteenth century who dared to be writers.

A firebrand is a burning piece of wood

A firebrand originally named a burning piece of wood, used to light a path or ignite a blaze – a term dating back to the era of one of my earliest subjects, the fourteenth-century poet and feminist foremother Christine de Pizan.

Later, it came to describe, figuratively, a person who lit a trail, like Christine herself (straight to hell, her critics said.) Taken together, these profiles demonstrate the breadth and scope of women’s writing and of women’s identities throughout literary history. Nobody here is a writer you should read, a missing link in a secure chain of “great” literature. I don’t think that’s how it works.

Rather, they’re collected here for what they can spark in us, their newest readers. For how they might open us up to new subjects, experiences and styles, and help us look at the past in new ways—if nothing else, putting paid to our assumptions about silent, cloistered women. In that spirit, this book is an invitation to the pleasure of discovery, to what I hope is a rich, rewarding literary feast

In twenty-five witty and vibrant biographical essays, Firebrands introduces us to the brilliant and complex women writers that every discerning reader should know about

Essay Collection
Hardback
26 September 2024
ISBN 9780715655269

‘Scutts’ companionable and sprightly volume of literary women deftly questions the gatekeeping terms of the literary canon, delivering profound insights with a lightness of touch’ Catherine McCormack, author of Woman in the Picture

From Murasaki Shikibu, the Japanese author of one of the world’s earliest novels, and Christine de Pizan, a poet in the royal court of medieval France, to Harriet Jacobs, who drew the world’s attention to the horrors of slavery through her own experience, Firebrands explores the lives and works of twenty-five extraordinary women writers.

Joanna Scutts guides the reader through the centuries and across the world, hailing the fascinating lives and astonishing literary achievements of these women who dared to write against the odds. Brilliantly researched and fiercely uncompromising, Firebrands is a reminder to all of us to question what – and who – is considered part of the canon.

The Early Bird Catches the Boat to Egg Island

Posted on September 10, 2024 - 2:30 pm by Kathryn Blair

The Early Bird Catches the Boat to Egg Island

Jonathan Hollins recounts his adventures on Egg Island, cataloguing the species that call the northern shore of St Helena home, and staying downwind of the signature scent

By Jonathan Hollins 04 September 2024

There’s a reason Egg Island glows like the summit of Everest in the sunlight. And it isn’t snow.

It’s bird shit.

Or to put a more genteel gloss on it: guano.

Such was guano’s value, and the abundant fertility bound within its fishy phosphates that it was nicknamed ‘white gold’.

On the offshore islets of Namibia some 1,000 miles across the Atlantic – and before the advent of artificial fertilizers – gun battles were fought over the possession of the thick deposits left by millennia of abluting seabirds.

But on Egg Island, shaped like the protruding knee of a Titan on the northern shore of St Helena, it was a more placid affair: men on ropes chipping off stalactites of guano from the nests of brown noddies and dropping them into the cutters below.

The practice of harvesting guano has now stopped because Egg Island is a nesting site of international importance. And the reason for that is blessed absence of rats and cats.

And the reason for that is blessed absence of rats and cats

Setting aside the colonies of cliff dwelling noddies and the occasional magnificent long-tailed tropic bird, the majority of the nests belong to the charming and diminutive Madeiran storm petrels: ‘stormies’ to their friends.

The first challenge is always to get on the island. I was visiting in a purely veterinary capacity at the request of seabird guru Annalea Beard, herself birdlike in stature and wholly at ease with her feathered friends.

Johnny Herne, a local ‘Saint’ boatowner and a masterful helmsman, backed the stern of his vessel with meticulous care, his eyes pinned to the near vertical but jagged, seaworn rockface as he countered the surge of the sea with gentle thrusts of forward and reverse on the propellers.

Only in the scant few seconds when the rise of the water, the stern, and a set of particularly grippy ledges all co-align in perfect harmony is the leap made. At the urgent command of the crewman, we sprang across the gap and latched onto the rockface with steely decisiveness: hesitation is a recipe for dousing and a potential encounter with propeller blades. Sometimes I truly bless my simian roots. From there it’s a steep rock hopping climb up the Titan’s thigh to the knee.

From there it’s a steep rock hopping climb up the Titan’s thigh to the knee

A rounded summit with a large gun emplacement, its dismounted cannon pointing impotently out to sea beside a cocoa-stone bread oven hosting not loaves but an angry tropic bird incubating her eggs.

The island is not a hangout for the nasally sensitive. It steams and welters in the heat and humidity, enveloping the hapless visitor in a miasmic wave of ammonia and last year’s fish paste, potent enough to tear up the eyes. For now, I was the hapless visitor – and yet despite this noxious onslaught I was relishing every moment.

The stormies’ nests are strewn over the summit, in areas so dense that every footstep must be chosen with extreme care. Some of the nests are natural, under the cover of shattered rocks, others are small villages of roofed flowerpots with rock porches created by the conservation team to encourage breeding.

Each has a house number on the underside of the lid. It was nesting time, and the pair of us worked our way through the villages, checking for eggs, fluffy newly hatched chicks and adults, calling out ring numbers when found, ringing when not. For this, Annalee is an adept, wielding pliers with surgical delicacy around legs as thin and brittle as matchsticks. But my skill, DNA blood sampling, was equally as fine.

Stormies are the great acrobats of the sea, skimming the crests and troughs of the waves with unparallelled agility on tiny, parchment-thin wings, their chocolate brown bodies no bigger than a thumb. Imagine the basilic vein under the wing, like a thread pulled from a blue towel and the smallest vein I have ever sampled.

Imagine the basilic vein under the wing, like a thread pulled from a blue towel and the smallest vein I have ever sampled

The trick is not to use an unwieldy syringe, but to pierce the vein with a fine-gauge needle after plucking a few downy feathers and clarifying the skin with spirit. The resultant bleb of blood is drawn up using the natural suction of a capillary tube.

I then transferred the blood to labelled vials by delicately blowing down the tube, taking great care not to create a bewildering scientific paper by adding my own DNA. The vials contained the best preservative of all: absolute alcohol. That’s 99.8% ethanol, which knocks every fermented beverage known to man into a cocked hat.

Why go to such bother? Because the days of yore when naturalists would run around with nets and guns, bag a specimen, preserve it by drying, stuffing and glueing, measure up its distinguishing characteristics then stick it in a reference collection, have been trounced by DNA analysis. DNA rips away ambiguity.

It deciphers the biological palimpsest and reads the hidden text. There’s a fair chance that the St Helena petrel is a separate species, and that would be a scientific breakthrough. But the debate still rages on.

But the debate still rages on

‘That’s it,’ said Annalee, rummaging in her pack for the radio. ‘I’ll call up the boat then we’ll send off the samples and see if they can make head or tail of them.’ It was our third set, including a previous evening of mist netting when we had collected data from over a hundred birds. ‘Maybe this time we can say whether they are definitively a different species.’

We both accomplished the leap down into the open stern of the boat without too much loss of dignity. Meanwhile Johnny had been fishing and his tub was full of grouper and yellow fin tuna, both excellent eating.

‘Help yourself to dinner,’ he shouted generously over the roar of the engine as he gunned the vessel away from the rocks. But even as he said it, I could see that a speedboat was heading straight for us, and it wasn’t sparing the outboards. At the last moment, as if to avert a collision, it slewed sideways to a perfect halt, raising a curtain of spray. It was the skilful handling of Craig Yon, owner of a local dive business.

‘Joe, you have to come quickly, you have to save my dog. She’s dying. Please, please come now.’ Craig had the unflappable disposition of a marine, but his dogs were his passion.

‘Of course, Craig, or course.’ I clambered across the divide and Craig tore me back along the coast to Jamestown.

Never a dull moment for an island vet.

Enjoy more adventures with animals on the South Atlantic Islands

You can enjoy more fascinating tales of island vetting in his hugely entertaining and affectionate memoir, Vet at the End of the Earth – out now.

Memoir
Paperback
368 pages
ISBN 9780715655542

‘A delightful, fascinating and entertaining book’ – Dr Hilary Jones MBE

The role of resident vet in the British Overseas Territories of the Falklands, St Helena, Tristan da Cunha and Ascension encompasses the complexities of caring for the world’s oldest land animal – a 200-year-old giant tortoise – and MoD mascots at the Falklands airbase; pursuing mystery creatures and invasive microorganisms; relocating herds of reindeer; and rescuing animals in extraordinarily rugged landscapes, from subtropical cloud forests to volcanic cliff faces…

This is for the matriarchs

Posted on July 18, 2024 - 11:48 am by Kathryn Blair

This is for the matriarchs

Becoming a Matriarch author Helen Knott examines the legacy of motherhood and the different pathways parents lay for their children.

By Helen Knott
18 July 2024

When I was a little girl, Mama would buy log home magazines, and we would lose ourselves in the construction of elaborate floor plans for our dream house.

My brothers and I claimed rooms in dozens of log homes that never existed. Little did we know that we, her children, were her ultimate blueprints for the future.

In his famous poem Harlem, American poet Langston Hughes asks, ‘What happens to a dream deferred?’

Those who came before us made sacrifices to give us all this room to dream

When I look back at the women I belong to, whose limitations arose from intergenerational trauma, gender-based restrictions and the racial prejudices of their time, I know that a dream deferred gets passed on to the children.

Those who came before us made sacrifices to give us all this room to dream.

Four women. Four generations. Four babies. I have one. He is a beautiful, well-rounded one. I have a son, and his name is Mathias.

I am the firstborn and only daughter of Shirley. I am the firstborn of the many granddaughters of Junie. I am the great-granddaughter of Nina.

I am here at this moment in time, standing at an intersection of dreams and prayers

I am a living memory of these women. I am their dreams and hopes bound in flesh and bone. I am here at this moment in time, standing at an intersection of dreams and prayers.

I am stepping into a place that these women cleared for me throughout many generations through seemingly small but deliberate and meaningful actions.

However, the clearing of space is not always gentle or peaceful.

Sometimes change is a quick and brutal flooding that carries away the things we thought we knew.

Sometimes we are stripped down to nothing and find ourselves in a foreign emotional landscape. Other times we cling to what we know and recreate the geography of our childhoods in different ways.

Sometimes change is a quick and brutal flooding that carries away the things we thought we knew

When we enter new territory, our own humanness becomes evident through the errors we make and the time that we spend lost. The women before me broke trail for me, but they also left barricades and pathways that led only in circles.

The maps and dreams of my mother and grandmother were half-formed, and I have inherited these patterns.

I have spent much of my life in circles. I have broken trail and grabbed my own mother’s hand to lead her to a space so that she could have her own dreams.

Since my early twenties, I have understood that a part of my purpose here is to heal the emotional wounds and behaviours that haven’t healed in the generations before me. I am consciously creating maps that will be inherited by my son.

Death has shaped me just as birth has

My time here is limited because just as we are brought into this world, we are called back into the spirit world. The two women who primarily raised me up are gone now.

Death has shaped me just as birth has.

Because they were, I am.

I write this in memory of the women who came before me.

I write this to honour their love, sacrifices and hardships.

I write this because their birth was my birth, and their death was my death.

This is a record of maps and dreams.

This is for the matriarchs.

This article was adapted from the introduction to Becoming a Matriarch.

An inspiring exploration of womanhood, grief, addiction and trauma from an Indigenous perspective

Memoir
Paperback
25 July 2024
ISBN 9780715655498

‘A masterpiece of grief and joy, loss and rediscovery, flight and return, and, above all, a paean to the beautiful, eternal and all-encompassing power of matriarchy’ Dr Gabor Maté, author of The Myth of Normal

All her life, Helen Knott has been surrounded by strong women. She has looked to the women in her family and the larger Indigenous community for guidance, absorbed their stories and admired their independence. But Helen’s path hasn’t been easy and when her mother and grandmother died within six months of each other, she drew upon lessons from her ancestors and the land to discover her inner power and refashion her future.

Exploring their struggles and her own with young motherhood, daughterhood, grief and sobriety, Knott offers an inspiring meditation on how we repair ourselves in the face of tragedy, trauma and injustice; on what it is to be a woman – and become a matriarch.

The Evolving Union of Human and Machine

Posted on July 17, 2024 - 5:48 pm by Kathryn Blair

The Evolving Union of Human and Machine

As Ray Kurzweil continues to explore the potential future relationship between humanity and AI, we revisit his seminal works that predicted the current changing landscape.

By Duckworth Books
17 July 2024

It seems that the hottest trending topic of 2024 is AI.

From ChatGPT and Midjourney, to the TikTok algorithm, to the development of self-driving cars, the ways in which AI is currently being used and possibly could be used is being explored, debated, ridiculed, and potentially regulated.

Numerous tech companies are incorporating it into their user experience, with Apple most recently announcing the release of Apple Intelligence as part of iOS18, generative AI that intertwines with, to quote Apple CEO Tim Cooke, the ‘user’s personal context to deliver truly helpful intelligence’.*

It is timely then, to reissue two groundbreaking titles from the world’s preeminent AI futurist.

It is timely to reissue two groundbreaking titles from the world's preeminent AI futurist

Described by Bill Gates as ‘the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence’, Ray Kurzweil is a computer scientist, prize winning author, and advocate for futurist and transhumanist movements, with a thirty-year track record of accurate predictions.

A pioneer in his field, he is credited with inventing text-to-speech synthesizers, has worked with Stevie Wonder to create music synthesizers that mimic real instruments, and was personally hired by Google co-founder Larry Page to work as a principal researcher and AI Visionary within the company.

His hugely influential work, The Singularity is Near, published by Duckworth in 2006, was the radical, original vision of the future of human-machine civilization.

The Singularity is Near is the radical, original vision of the future of human-machine civilization

Kurzweil’s innovative vision of the future, that the limitations of our biology will be overcome when human consciousness is able to meld with intelligent technology, has shaped the current conversations about AI, and has been a fundamental influence for tech companies across the globe.

In addition to our reissue of The Singularity is Near, we are also reissuing How to Create a Mind, a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilisation: reverse-engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines.

Kurzweil mediates on the development of pattern recognition, where creativity and love exist within the brain, and what consciousness really means in the development of AI systems. He envisions a disease-free future in which the problems of aging have become obsolete.

Kurzweil’s innovative vision of the future is that the limitations of our biology will be overcome when human consciousness is able to meld with intelligent technology

While we have not yet reached this future, Kurzweil has a strong belief that we will. Only the passage of time will tell, but given Kurzweil’s track record for predictions, some version of this potential future seems likely.

These two books, stunningly reimagined, are for readers who have been interested in AI but are unsure where to begin, for readers who have always been meaning to get around to reading Kurzweil, for the AI fanatics, for the AI sceptics, for fans of smart thinking non-fiction.

*Tim Cooke as quoted in ‘Introducing Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that puts powerful generative models at the core of iPhone, iPad, and Mac’.

From the world's preeminent AI futurist: his radical and influential original vision of the shared destiny of humans and machines

The Singularity is Near
ISBN 9780715654521

‘Startling in scope and bravado’ The New York Times

In his now-classic and hugely influential exploration of the evolving union of human and machine, world-renowned inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil foresees the dawning of a new civilisation where humans will transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity by combining our aptitudes with the vastly greater capacity, speed and knowledge-sharing abilities of Artificial Intelligence. This melding of human and machine is what he terms ‘the singularity’.

How to Create a Mind
ISBN 9780715654538

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Kurzweil sets out how the brain functions, how the mind emerges from the brain, and the implications of vastly increased and evolving intelligence in addressing the world’s problems. He thoughtfully examines emotional and moral intelligence and the origins of consciousness and envisions the radical – arguably inevitable – future of our merging with the intelligent technology we are creating, aka ‘the singularity’.

How weeds connect us: a journey through the understorey of time

Posted on June 12, 2024 - 11:09 am by Kathryn Blair

How weeds connect us: a journey through the understorey of time

Author Anna Chapman Parker divulges how a historic painting opened her eyes to the nature all around us and how it shaped her journey towards writing Understorey.

By Anna Chapman Parker
12 June 2024

It began as a way of drawing nothing – as near as I could get to that. I always kept a notebook and pen in my bag. My children were very young, I was rarely alone, and I felt an urgent need to find a still and focused space of my own, however briefly.

We’d head out and there would be some hiatus when I wasn’t needed, and I’d grab my chance. No time to think about it or search around for a subject – just drop down and draw whatever was growing through the ground.

The drawings became more sustained as my children grew, sometimes done alone, or with barely a glance at my increasingly independent companions.

It began as a way of drawing nothing – as near as I could get to that

Beyond a vague curiosity, though, the plants still didn’t mean much to me; I recognized few by name, and that was a relief. My lack of knowledge precluded any sense of having to care about them. They were simply something to latch on to, pulling me from myself and out on to the page. My sketchbook became a kind of room of my own, peopled with an assortment of weedy inhabitants I didn’t have to talk to.

The shift began with a six-hundred-year-old bindweed. One day in London I’d wandered into the National Gallery, and, finding myself in the galleries of early Italian paintings – among the glowing, gilded rows, cerulean blue, dark umber, venetian red – I realized I was looking at the ground in the paintings more than at the figures.

My sketchbook became a kind of room of my own, peopled with an assortment of weedy inhabitants I didn’t have to talk to

The plants were everywhere – dotted all over the dry ochre earth, emerging from the cracks in every rock, creeping out, even, from the edges of the picture frames.

Piero della Francesca, The Baptism of Christ, 1437: I didn’t know the story, but here at the protagonists’ feet was a cluster of weeds as intimately familiar as my own hand. They were lightly and deftly drawn, picked out in olive green: grasses, some vague wispy flowers, and the heart-shaped leaves of the bindweed at the end of my own street.

It was this encounter with painted weeds, the same flora I knew, observed half a millennium ago, which marked the beginning of a new way of relating to the plants.

Weeds were no longer accidental green stuff that didn’t matter, they were a living constancy, a kind of wild connective tissue across time and place. I wanted to know them better.

What were these plants that accompany every walk outside, yet pass beneath our notice? When and how did they emerge, flower, subside and disappear through the course of a year? And what constituted a weed, anyway?

Weeds were no longer accidental green stuff that didn’t matter... I wanted to know them better

In answer – I set out very simply to observe and record the plants I found over the course of a year. Along the weed-lined pavements, carpark edges, parks, and roadside verges near my home, I began to draw and write down what I saw.

I live in a small town in the north of England, not a rural idyll; you could find most of the plants I’ve recorded within a short walk of almost any front door.

As I went out and looked at them, the plants linked me to other eyes looking at the same shapes across the centuries, like Piero’s bindweed, illustrations in medieval manuscripts, early photographic experiments, more recent and contemporary artworks too. I included some of these images and observations alongside my own.

You could find most of the plants I’ve recorded within a short walk of almost any front door

I began my year of weeds with the intention of studying plants. But as my notes and drawings accumulated, I realised that as much as I was learning about the plants themselves, I was learning more about how to encounter them; how I might attend to those encounters.

Looking back now at those sixteenth-century weeds in Piero’s painting; I see why the artist might have included them in his narrative. The weeds do more than fill an unused corner of the ground: they cement the figures in a place that’s real, that’s resolutely familiar and connects us all.

Even as we spray our streets with pesticides and concrete over our front gardens, these most resilient and prolific of plants will find a way through the slightest of gaps and might offer us hope.

A beautiful and highly original artist's diary of a year spent observing wild plants

Memoir/Nature/Art
Hardback
Available now
ISBN 9780715655207

‘This tranquil, meditative book is all about the quiet pleasure of examining something closely in order to truly appreciate it’ Daily Mail

In Understorey, artist and writer Anna Chapman Parker records in prose and stunning original line drawings a year spent looking closely at wild plants. Meditating too on how they appear in other artists’ work, from a bramble framing a sixth-century Byzantine manuscript to a kudzu vine installation in modern Berlin, she explores the art of paying attention even to the smallest things.

Valuing nature: Siddarth Shrikanth on the cause for optimism

Posted on May 16, 2024 - 3:43 pm by Kathryn Blair

Valuing nature: Siddarth Shrikanth on the cause for optimism

The Case for Nature author Siddarth Shrikanth explains how changes in policy have led to positive outcomes for environmental causes across the globe.

By Siddarth Shrikanth
16 May 2024

The message at the heart of The Case for Nature is simple: that nature is priceless, but that we need to find and refine the ways in which we value the Earth’s life support systems.

As the book is released in paperback this month, the ideas in it continue to be brought to life by policymakers, entrepreneurs, scientists, and activists. Despite the disappointments and false starts, there was plenty of cause for hope and optimism over the past year.

There was plenty of cause for hope and optimism over the past year

Policy is one realm that has seen progress. Modern markets don’t come into existence on their own; they are created and regulated by governments and other independent bodies.

On one hand, we have seen the continued growth of regulated markets that demonstrate the potential for policy to direct economic incentives towards sustainable outcomes, effectively pricing externalities and encouraging investments in natural assets.

The new set of policies on biodiversity net gain (BNG), introduced in England just months ago, exemplifies this vision.

Policy is one realm that has seen progress

Mostly unheralded elsewhere, BNG shifts the longstanding, substantial mitigation banking markets from merely offsetting environmental harm to actively enhancing biodiversity by mandating that housing or infrastructure developers both compensate for damage and create at least a 10% “net gain” in biodiversity.

While implementation challenges remain, this first-of-its-kind market for nature uplift is already inspiring similar efforts elsewhere and adding further momentum to the rewilding movement in the UK, which remains one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth.

Globally, efforts to combat deforestation are showing results. Countries including Indonesia and Brazil have made substantial reductions in deforestation, driven mostly by enforcing existing laws rather than creating new ones.

The EU’s stringent new trade regulations are set to require that suppliers demonstrate that the products they sell into the single market are deforestation-free.

Globally, efforts to combat deforestation are showing results

In all these cases, regulators are merely tweaking the rules that govern markets for commodities like palm oil, beef, or timber, and implicitly valuing the other, non-extractive services that nature provides: carbon storage, water cycling, and so on.

New requirements for corporates to disclose their nature impacts are also a step in the right direction.

The landscape-scale public-private partnerships I wrote about are also expanding. Blue Forest, a US nonprofit which uses innovative financial tools to restore ecosystems by connecting investors and beneficiaries of wildfire prevention, is scaling up across the US and looking further afield.

Many of the city governments I mentioned have continued to expand their efforts to restore nature, improve their resilience to flooding and extreme heat, and enable healthier, happier lives for residents.

New requirements for corporates to disclose their nature impacts are also a step in the right direction

More broadly, the conversation on nature is broadening to include the food system, which depends ultimately on soil health and ecosystem services like pollination and water availability to feed the world.

The past year has seen renewed efforts by large companies, governments, and entrepreneurial ventures to accelerate the adoption of regenerative agricultural practices, which work with rather than against nature to bring life back to degraded soils and wean global agriculture off its dependence on fossil fuel-derived chemical inputs.

While there is a long way to go, farmers are recognizing the benefits these practices can bring not just to biodiversity on their land but to their bottom lines and the resilience of their operations in a rapidly changing climate.

Reconnecting with nature cannot be separated from reconnecting with each other

The Case for Nature is about embracing both the economic and intrinsic arguments for protecting and restoring nature. Those intrinsic arguments are just as strong as they have always been.

I have been heartened by the number of events, experiences, and conversations I’ve been a part of that have focused on how we relate to the natural world and the philosophies and worldviews that might guide us now.

Reconnecting with nature cannot be separated from reconnecting with each other and with a wider sense of shared responsibility and belonging.

As we look ahead to the future, I’m hopeful that we can continue charting a path forward that values the natural systems that sustain us within the economic systems that too often constrain us, while seeing ourselves as less separate from the rest of nature and daring to reimagine our very relationship with the natural world.

A positive manifesto for regenerating our planet through the power of natural capital

Business/environment
Paperback
Available now
ISBN 9780715655306

’Eloquent, informed and inspiring: a must-read for all those who care about the planet’ – Isabella Tree, Sunday Times-bestselling author of Wilding

The Case for Nature sets out with powerful clarity how protecting nature is both the right thing to do, and in our economic interests; how, taking a cue from a range of indigenous worldviews, nature must be woven into our modern societies, not set apart. Siddarth Shrikanth, an expert in green investing, introduces the pioneers of the nature-positive revolution, and gives us the tools to understand how we can work with, not against, our living planet.

River East, River West shortlisted for the Women’s Prize 2024

Posted on April 24, 2024 - 10:25 am by Kathryn Blair

river east river west women's prize shortlist

River East, River West shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024

We are ecstatic to announce that River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure has been selected for the much-awaited Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024 shortlist!

We asked Aube what the achievement means to her as a debut author.

By Aube Rey Lescure
24 April 2024

Dear Readers,

When I set out to write River East, River West six years ago, I was in my mid-twenties, living in a shoebox studio by the Atlantic Ocean in Boston, and determined to make my greatest love – writing – a full-time career. I read voraciously while drafting my manuscript, and many literary luminaries whose work electrified me – Ann Patchett, Zadie Smith, Tayari Jones, Barbara Kingsolver – are writers honoured by the Women’s Prize.

Many literary luminaries whose work electrified me – Ann Patchett, Zadie Smith, Tayari Jones, Barbara Kingsolver – are writers honoured by the Women’s Prize

To be shortlisted today for my first published novel is a gift that moves me beyond words: it gives me strength to continue pursuing this art, and is also a testament of the trust that readers, judges, and my incredible publishing team have placed in me. I am so grateful to Duckworth Books and the whole team at this small but mighty independent publishing house who have championed this book with their whole hearts.

To be shortlisted today for my first published novel is a gift that moves me beyond words

As a multicultural writer whose family is spread across Europe and Asia, it’s always been my dream for River East, River West to be published in the UK and reach many readers and many countries – the Women’s Prize shortlisting now makes that a reality. I am humbled to have my book recognized this year alongside writers I admire deeply, and look forward to conversing with them and readers and booksellers on many future UK visits.

Thanks all!

Aube

A darkly glittering literary debut that traces a mixed family’s troubled trajectory through developing China

Literary fiction
Hardback
Available now
ISBN 9780715655009

Paperback
Available from 2 May 2024
ISBN 9780715655627

A mesmerising reversal of the east–west immigrant narrative set against China’s economic boom, River East, River West is a deeply moving exploration of race, identity and family, of capitalism’s false promise and private dreams.

Shanghai, 2007: feeling betrayed by her American mother’s engagement to their rich landlord Lu Fang, fourteen-year-old Alva begins plotting her escape. But the exclusive American School – a potential ticket out – is not what she imagined.

Qingdao, 1985: newlywed Lu Fang works as a lowly shipping clerk. Though he aspires to a bright future, he is one of many casualties of harsh political reforms. Then China opens up to foreigners and capital, and Lu Fang meets a woman who makes him question what he should settle for…

What's in a Name?

It may change along the way

So, it’s a hard-ish job, then

A good friend did that for me

A HEADLESS MAN. A MISSING GIRL. A LIFE RULED BY SECRETS...

The Importance of Historical Context

Meanwhile, the deposed Catholic James II has landed with a French army in Ireland

Nicholas Hawthorne, the young heir of Measham Hall, has joined the Jacobite army

I have a tendency to spend more time than is strictly necessary in researching my novels

Emigration has continued to be a feature of Irish life

Return to mysterious Measham Hall in this tale of espionage at the height of the Williamite war

The Trailblazing Women Who Dared to Be Different

Too many brilliant, funny, weird and incendiary voices remain muted

There is no single way to be a woman writer

A firebrand is a burning piece of wood

In twenty-five witty and vibrant biographical essays, Firebrands introduces us to the brilliant and complex women writers that every discerning reader should know about

The Early Bird Catches the Boat to Egg Island

And the reason for that is blessed absence of rats and cats

From there it’s a steep rock hopping climb up the Titan’s thigh to the knee

Imagine the basilic vein under the wing, like a thread pulled from a blue towel and the smallest vein I have ever sampled

But the debate still rages on

Enjoy more adventures with animals on the South Atlantic Islands

This is for the matriarchs

Those who came before us made sacrifices to give us all this room to dream

I am here at this moment in time, standing at an intersection of dreams and prayers

Sometimes change is a quick and brutal flooding that carries away the things we thought we knew

Death has shaped me just as birth has

An inspiring exploration of womanhood, grief, addiction and trauma from an Indigenous perspective

The Evolving Union of Human and Machine

It is timely to reissue two groundbreaking titles from the world's preeminent AI futurist

The Singularity is Near is the radical, original vision of the future of human-machine civilization

Kurzweil’s innovative vision of the future is that the limitations of our biology will be overcome when human consciousness is able to meld with intelligent technology

From the world's preeminent AI futurist: his radical and influential original vision of the shared destiny of humans and machines

How weeds connect us: a journey through the understorey of time

It began as a way of drawing nothing – as near as I could get to that

My sketchbook became a kind of room of my own, peopled with an assortment of weedy inhabitants I didn’t have to talk to

Weeds were no longer accidental green stuff that didn’t matter... I wanted to know them better

You could find most of the plants I’ve recorded within a short walk of almost any front door

A beautiful and highly original artist's diary of a year spent observing wild plants

Valuing nature: Siddarth Shrikanth on the cause for optimism

There was plenty of cause for hope and optimism over the past year

Policy is one realm that has seen progress

Globally, efforts to combat deforestation are showing results

New requirements for corporates to disclose their nature impacts are also a step in the right direction

Reconnecting with nature cannot be separated from reconnecting with each other

A positive manifesto for regenerating our planet through the power of natural capital

River East, River West shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024

Many literary luminaries whose work electrified me – Ann Patchett, Zadie Smith, Tayari Jones, Barbara Kingsolver – are writers honoured by the Women’s Prize

To be shortlisted today for my first published novel is a gift that moves me beyond words

A darkly glittering literary debut that traces a mixed family’s troubled trajectory through developing China

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