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Arcadian Nights

Ebook: August 11, 2016
Hardback: September 24, 2016
Paperback: May 26, 2022

Arcadian Nights

John Spurling

Category: Historical Fiction,

Ancient as they are, the Greek myths still resonate at the core of our literature and culture, and may well reveal more about human nature and the world we have created than we like to believe.

From the garden of his house in the Peloponnese overlooking the gulf of Argos, award-winning playwright and novelist John Spurling draws on a lifetime’s engagement with the classics and with Greek culture to reanimate the characters of Apollo, Herakles, Theseus, Perseus and Agamemnon, along with the gods, demi-gods, monsters and mortals who shaped their destinies. Gripping, spirited and sometimes grisly, Spurling’s fresh interpretations of these timeless tales bring both their heroes and their context vividly to life.

Reviews

  • 'Arcadian Nights is a brilliant, riveting book that leaves its competitors behind, blinking into the distance, as surely as Theseus left Ariadne' TLS

  • 'This book shines... seamlessly interweaving personal and historical perspectives... Arcadian Nights is good fun' Historical Novels Review

  • 'Classicists and non-classicists alike will love Arcadian Nights... a great book' Oxford Today

  • 'The Greek myths are dusted off from old college readers like Edith Hamilton's Mythology and given new life in this fantastic collection... Well-written, Arcadian Nights will be difficult to put down' New York Journal of Books

  • 'An excellent read that examines the intricacies of storytelling and the complexities of human nature' Helena Gumley-Mason, The Lady

  • 'Spurling is a first-rate storyteller and this collection should delight everyone from the scholar of Greek myths to one reading them for the first time' We Love This Book

Deeper Into the Wood

Ebook: May 27, 2021
Hardback: June 3, 2021
Paperback: May 19, 2022

Deeper Into the Wood

Ruth Pavey

Category: Memoir & Biography,

In the late 1990s, Ruth Pavey bought four acres of scrub land above the Somerset Levels. She devoted the next two decades to improving the land into a lush wood; a haven for birds, insects and all manner of wildlife. Beneath the shade of the trees, she now reflects on the fate of her wood.

Deeper Into the Wood recounts a year in the life of an amateur naturalist working with wildlife experts to interpret the language of the land with the aim of preserving the wood for generations to come. Lyrically told stories of local people and regional history are accompanied throughout by Ruth’s beautifully hand-drawn illustrations.

Reviews

  • ‘A wonderfully personal evocation of the joys, hard work and meaning of creating a wood for wildlife, written with sensitivity and care. A delightful read’ Stephen Moss, author of The Robin: A Biography

  • ‘A rare treat of a book that warms as it informs and leads us deep into the character of one small pocket of England. Ruth Pavey writes with wit, passion and precious little sentimentality' Tristan Gooley, author of The Secret World of Weather

  • ‘Wonderful... how love for a small woodland and respect for its local history can enhance wildlife and enrich the human spirit’ Nick Davies, author of Cuckoo: Cheating by Nature

  • ‘Ruth Pavey spins a delicate web between the many branches of her little Somerset wood. Her closely observed changes of wildlife and the changing seasons, echo a growing awareness and concern for life on Earth itself. The author’s growth and metamorphosis into an amateur naturalist who has learnt to read the language of trees is profoundly inspirational’ Gabriel Hemery, author of The New Sylva

  • ‘Inquisitive and generous. Pavey shares the love of her wood, past and present, through a fascinating weave of its natural and cultural histories. This book is as companionable as it is interesting' Patrick Baker, author of The Unremembered Places

A Woman in Your Own Right

Ebook: March 3, 2022
Hardback:
Paperback: March 3, 2022

A Woman in Your Own Right

Anne Dickson

Category: Psychology & Philosophy, Memoir & Biography,

‘The classic assertiveness bible’ GUARDIAN

Do you struggle to state what you want (or don’t want)? Do tricky conversations go wrong? Does it seem easier to suffer in silence? This book has the solutions you need.

Despite advances in gender equality in education, the workplace and the home, many women and girls still find it a challenge to speak up and be heard. Assertiveness – defined by psychologist and assertiveness trainer Anne Dickson as ‘clear, honest and direct communication’ – is an art, which can be learned. Instead of being governed by the desire to please (the Compassion Trap) assertiveness teaches us to take charge of our feelings and behaviours.

In her pioneering handbook, now fully updated, Dickson draws on her long experience of in-person training to give all women the practical skills and tools we need to assert what we feel and want, manage difficult conversations, avoid being sidetracked, say ‘No’, and find self-acceptance.

Reviews

  • 'The classic assertiveness bible... You might be better off with A Woman in Your Own Right than any of the modern girlboss manuals that claim to be able to transform you wholesale into a kickass corporate woman' Rhiannon Lucy Cosslet, Guardian

  • 'We’ve made giant strides towards equality over the decades, but... this advice is even more pertinent today' Linda Kelsey, Daily Mail

  • 'As important as it ever was’ Angela Neustatter

  • 'The bible for anyone who wants to get their voice heard… invaluable' Lesley Garner

The Shadowy Third

Ebook: February 25, 2021
Hardback: February 25, 2021
Paperback: February 17, 2022

The Shadowy Third

Julia Parry

Category: Memoir & Biography,

Uncovering the hidden love triangle between novelist Elizabeth Bowen and the author’s grandparents – the critically acclaimed biography with never-before-seen letters detailing the affair.

For readers who were swept up in Laura Cumming’s On Chapel Sands, Daniel Mendelsohn’s An Odyssey and Francesca Wade’s Square Haunting.

A death in the family delivers Julia Parry a box of letters. Dusty with age, they reveal a secret love affair between the celebrated novelist Elizabeth Bowen and the academic Humphry House – Julia’s grandfather.

So begins a life-changing quest to understand the affair, which had profound repercussions for Julia’s family, not least her grandmother, Madeline. Julia traces these three very different characters through 1930s Oxford and Ireland, Texas, Calcutta in the last days of Empire, and on into World War II. With a supporting cast that includes Isaiah Berlin and Virginia Woolf, The Shadowy Third opens up a world with complex attitudes to love and sex, duty and ambition, and to writing itself.

Reviews

  • ‘It’s very epistolary and very beautiful, particularly with Bowen’s letters which are astonishingly beautiful, complex and intense. It’s like reading one of Elizabeth Bowen’s great novels' RSL Christopher Bland Prize

  • 'A fascinating and moving portrait of love, loyalty and infidelity’ Sarah Waters

  • 'Marvellous, gently elegiac, beautifully written, and fascinating' John Banville, New York Review of Books

  • 'Bowen fans will be in her debt' Peter J. Conradi

  • 'As literary discoveries go, it’s a big one' Sunday Times

  • 'An essay of rare sensitivity and intelligent reflection' Telegraph

  • 'Fascinating and poetic' Irish Times

  • ‘A judicious moment-by-moment account of these complicated characters' Spectator

Angela Merkel

Ebook: March 9, 2017
Hardback: August 11, 2016
Paperback: October 21, 2021

Angela Merkel

Matthew Qvortrup

Category: Memoir & Biography,

The definitive biography of perhaps the most respected political figure in the world – updated to include her final months in office

Matthew Qvortrup’s insightful biography of Angela Merkel is essential reading for anyone interested in current affairs, the fate of Europe, or simply the story of a truly remarkable woman. Updated to within a month from when Merkel steps down as German chancellor.

Based on over 14 years of in-depth research, Angela Merkel tells the story of the political titan’s astonishing rise from obscurity to become the most influential leader in Europe today. It follows the German Chancellor’s journey to prominence and power from a bleak childhood in East Germany, and offers an unprecedented understanding of her inimitable personality and perspective, explaining how her unique qualities have made Merkel perhaps the most respected political figure on the world stage today.

Reviews

  • 'An excellent book... from leader of Germany to leader of Europe, to leader of the west, a clear picture of Merkel emerges’ Simon Kuper, Financial Times

  • 'Qvortrup's biography reads like an Icelandic saga... a complex life, full of little and greater mysteries' The Times

  • 'A well-written and informative tribute to an extraordinary leader' Booklist

  • ‘An absorbing, wide-ranging and detailed account of European power struggles over the last 50 years’ Marxist Review

  • 'Qvortrup's portrait is affectionate and detailed' Herald Scotland

  • 'Necessary reading for anyone who wants to broaden his or her perspective on the world today' Kirkus

  • 'A sympathetic, engaging and informative political biography of one of Europe's foremost contemporary leaders' Aviel Roshwald, Professor, Department of History, Georgetown University

  • 'Written in a lively and engaging style, Angela Merkel is a joy to read. It is an extraordinary and incisive book' Arend Lijhart, Research Professor, Emeritus of Political Science, University of California, San Diego

  • 'Qvortrup masterfully weaves together the key episodes of this turbulent life and most unlikely political career' Ludger Helms, Professor, University of Innsbruck and author of Presidents, Prime Ministers and Chancellors

  • 'In a world full of disappointing national leaders, Matt Qvortrup provides us with an insightful, revealing, vivid reading of a leading woman who tops them all' Amitai Etzioni, author of The Active Society

Contraptions

Ebook:
Hardback: November 29, 2021
Paperback:

Contraptions

William Heath Robinson

A timely new edition featuring the brilliant work from among the most inventive minds in illustration and cartoon wizardry.

Heath Robinson was one of Britain’s most successful graphic artists. His work has had a huge influence on comic art in this country, but also on the image and self-image of the British.

As the champion of pragmatic man, Heath Robinson presented a vision of the British as an unflappable, ingenious and slightly demented breed of inventors that persists to the present day. The British are still a nation of garage-haunting amateur engineers who will recognise the inhabitants of Heath Robinson’s world, with their pot bellies and pots of tea, archaic faces and sturdily commonsensical approach to the problems of existence.

How to hunt tigers by elephant, how to get an even tan, rise with the sun or put out a chimney fire, these and many more pressing questions are answered in the pages of Contraptions.

With illustrations salvaged from the family archives and commentary by Heath Robinson expert, Geoffrey Beare, Contraptions is the best possible introduction to the work of one of Britain’s great comic talents.

Reviews

  • 'Your absurd, beautiful drawings... give me a peculiar pleasure of the mind like nothing else in the world' H. G. Wells, in a letter to Heath Robinson in 1914

Rest in Pieces

Ebook: October 6, 2016
Hardback: September 25, 2014
Paperback: October 28, 2021

Rest in Pieces

Bess Lovejoy

Category: History,

In the long run, we’re all dead. But for some of the most influential figures in history, death marked the start of a new adventure. The famous deceased have been stolen, burned, sold, pickled, frozen, stuffed, impersonated and even filed away in a lawyer’s office. Their fingers, teeth, toes, arms, legs, skulls, hearts, lungs and nether regions have embarked on voyages that criss-cross the globe and stretch the imagination.

Counterfeiters tried to steal Lincoln’s corpse. Einstein’s brain went on a cross-country road trip. And after Lord Horatio Nelson perished at Trafalgar, his sailors submerged him in brandy – which they drank. From Mozart to Hitler, Rest in Pieces connects the lives of the famous dead to the hilarious and horrifying adventures of their corpses and traces the evolution of cultural attitudes towards death.

Reviews

  • 'A historically beguiling, stranger-than-fiction compendium' Elle

  • 'Deliciously morbid and delightfully macabre... required reading for those of us who intend, one day, to die' Ben Schott, author of Schott's Original Miscellany

  • 'If really, we're all sitting in the undertaker's waiting room, then Rest in Pieces is the perfect easy read, preparation for the moment when the nurse steps out of the shadows and quietly calls your name' Simon Winchester, bestselling author of Skulls and The Professor and the Madman

  • 'There is something here to dismay everyone' Times Literary Supplement

  • 'A tasty, sharp, wonderfully unusual book. I enjoyed it like a jar of perfect dill pickles: when the mood strikes, nothing else will satisfy' Mary Roach, author of Gulp and Stiff

  • 'The world is awash with legendary body parts, from Einstein's brain to Napoleon's most intimate organ, and this wildly entertaining account proves that the fate of the grisly relics tells us a huge amount about history - and ourselves' Tony Perrottet, author of Napoleon's Privates

  • 'Marvelously macabre... A fascinating foray into the way of all flesh' Kirkus Reviews

How the Chicken Crossed the World

Ebook: June 16, 2016
Hardback: May 7, 2015
Paperback: June 16, 2016

How the Chicken Crossed the World

Andrew Lawler

Category: Popular Science,

Queen Victoria was obsessed with them. Socrates’ last words were about them. Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur made their scientific breakthroughs using them. Hailed as a messenger of the gods, powerful sex symbol, gambling aid, all-purpose medicine and handy research tool, the humble chicken has been also cast as the epitome of evil, and the star of the world’s most famous joke.

Beginning with the discovery that the chicken’s unlikely ancestor is the T. Rex, How the Chicken Crossed the World tracks the chicken from its original domestication in the jungles of Southeast Asia some 10,000 years ago to today’s Western societies where it became the most engineered of animals, to the uncertain future of what is now humanity’s single most important source of protein. In a masterful combination of historical sleuthing and journalistic exploration on four continents, Lawler reframes the way we feel and think about all domesticated animals and even nature itself.

Reviews

  • 'Setting the record straight, Lawler's latest tome recasts the chicken as a "feathered Swiss Army knife" - a bird that has fuelled cultural, economic and scientific growth for several thousand years' Guardian

  • 'Lawler's book goes a long way toward restoring chickens to their respected position within human history and our modern world. Both chickens and people will benefit as a result' Science

  • 'Science journalist Adrian Lawler explores the chicken's multipronged place in human civilization in his rip-roaring, erudite How the Chicken Crossed the World' Nature

Queen of Heaven

Ebook: November 25, 2021
Hardback:
Paperback: November 25, 2021

Queen of Heaven

Catherine Clover

Category: Historical Fiction,

The White Tower. A terrible vision. Her home invaded and precious documents stolen.

Lady Isabelle must flee her pursuers, posing as a young male scholar in the New College of St Mary in Oxford. But when she learns she is with child it won’t be long until she is discovered amongst their ranks. Can she bring herself to love an infant conceived in evil? And will she ever be reunited with her beloved Richard, or will Sir Henry Lormont’s dagger find him first?

This deftly plotted 15th century novel traverses the well-trodden pilgrimage routes from Oxford to Rome encountering lepers, assassins, sea rovers and historical figures Lady Margaret Beaufort and Edmund Tudor along the way. Superbly researched by a scholar of the period, Clover blends history with the riveting story of a woman who overcomes the restrictions placed on her sex to create a page-turning novel.

When In Doubt Be Nice

Ebook: June 30, 2020
Hardback:
Paperback:

When In Doubt Be Nice

Peter Mead

Peter Mead’s spectacular career in advertising began when he joined the despatch department of a large agency straight from school at the age of 16.

He fell in love with the business and his ambition and drive led him in 1977 to co-found Abbott Mead Vickers, which grew into one of the industry’s most respected and highly awarded agencies. In 1995 AMV BBDO became the largest advertising agency in the UK, a position it has held ever since.

When in Doubt Be Nice begins with the most important business lessons Peter has learnt from his years at the cutting edge of advertising, and tells how he became one of the legends of the industry. It reveals the secrets of his success, his beliefs about the right way to do business and the values on which he built his remarkable career, including the benefits of behaving not simply as a leader to those who work closely with him, but also as a guide and mentor.

Written with modesty and wit, it is an inspiring insight into the mind of a great businessman who used intuitive flair and an understanding of how those around him think to build and run an extraordinarily successful advertising agency.

Reviews

  • 'Wise words.' – FINANCIAL TIMES

  • 'The best and wisest book on advertising I've ever read.' – BERNARD BARNETT, former editor of Campaign

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