Everyone knows what William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings in 1066, but in recent years is has become customary to assume that the victory was virtually inevitable, given the alleged superiority of Norman military technology. In this new study, underpinned by biographical sketches of the great warriors who fought for the crown of England in 1066, Frank Mc Lynn shows that this view is mistaken. The Battle on Senlac Hill on 14 October was desperately close-run thing, which Harold lost only because of an incredible run of bad fortune & some treachery from the Saxon elite in Engl&. Both William & Harold were fine generals, but Harold was the more inspirational of the two. Making use of all the latest scholarship, Mc Lynn shows that most of our 'knowledge' of 1066 rests on myths or illusions: Harold did not fight at Hastings with the same army with which he had been victorious at Stamford Bridge three weeks earlier; the Battle of Senlac was not won by Norman archery; Harold did not die with an arrow in the eye. ...

This remarkable book combines autobiography with a subtle, almost painterly sense of the ways in which the objects which we surround ourselves, & the places in which we live, build up our private maps of reality & shape our personal mythologies. David Malouf begins by describing in love, evocative detail, the house in Brisbane where he was born & grew up, moving from room to room, always relating the smallest items in it to the life he remembers & his widening perception of the world at large. He moves on to describe life in the Tuscan village where he lived, & the arrival of an Australian Television crew; reflecting on his first visit to India, he touches on the problems of interpreting & evaluating unfamiliar places; back in Australia, he recalls a traumatic wartime journey with his father from Brisbane to Sydney. Funny, humane & beautifully written, this is a unique & extraordinary essay in autobiography. ...

Sam can't believe it when big-mouth Malcolm tells everyone that her dad sings in a male voice choir. Even worse, he's now planning to sing at her school in a fund-raising concert! But it's even worse for her new friend, Eddie. His dad is an Elvis Presley impersonator- Sam's sorry for Eddie, until she hears the REALLY bad news: the two dads are going to perform TOGETHER! ...

' Within the first 15 pages I was carried away by the sheer craziness of it all. Some Minipirates find a baby bear with blue fur inside a walnut shell floating on the ocean towards a giant whirlpool. They rescue him & teach him about knots & waves, & that a good white lie is often considerably more exciting than the truth. Then, when he outgrows their ship to such an extent that he is in danger of sinking it, they abandon him on an island with a bottle of seaweed juice & a loaf of seaweed bread. Thus Bluebear comes to the end of his first life & embarks on his second. By the end of the book, he has expended exactly half of his 27 lives. Again & again, Moers confounds our expectations as the narrative twists & turns, travels backwards & forwards in time. Part science fiction, part fairy tale, part myth, part epic, the book is a satire on all these genres & so constantly satirises itself. Very amusing' Daily Telegraph ...

* Henry V is regarded as the great English hero. Lionised in his own day for his victory at Agincourt, his piety and ...

* Henry V is regarded as the great English hero. Lionised in his own day for his victory at Agincourt, his piety and ...

142 Strand was the home of the brilliant, unconventional young publisher John Chapman. All the daring & avant-garde writers & thinkers of Victorian London gathered here, among them Thomas Carlyle, Dickens, Thackeray, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, & the scientist Thomas Henry Huxley (Darwin ...