As soon as men began to write, they made Helen of Troy their subject; for close on three thousand years she has been both the embodiment of absolute female beauty & a reminder of the terrible power that beauty can wield. Because of her double marriage to the Greek King Menelaus & the Trojan Prince Paris, Helen was held responsible for an enduring enmity between East & West. For millennia she has been viewed as an exquisite agent of extermination. But who was she?

Helen exists in many guises: a matriarch from the Age of Heroes who ruled over one of the most fertile areas of the Mycenaean world; Helen of Sparta, the focus of a cult which conflated Helen the heroine with a pre-Greek fertility goddess; the home-wrecker of the Iliad; the bitch-whore of Greek tragedy; the pin-up of Romantic artists.

Focusing on the



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The Nautilus, a strange building shaped like the chambered shell of the same name, was built in South London in the early 1930s. Designed on Modernist & Utopian principles, it was a haven for a floating community of cosmopolitan refugees, intellectuals & artists. Now, at the end of the century, only two of the original inhabitants still occupy their chambers
- Celeste Zylberstein, joint architect with her late husband of the Nautilus, & Francis Campion, an elderly poet. Gus Crabb, a dealer in bric-a-brac, is the only other resident until, to the Nautilus, like a hermit crab seeking a home, comes Rowena Snow. Of Indian/ Scottish parentage, orphaned, without family or friends, Rowena is in search of her own Utopia
- or the Heligoland of her childhood imagination.

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On 29 March 1912, as Scott & his two companions lay dying in their tent, elsewhere on the polar ice-cap six members of his ill-fated expedition were fighting for their lives. This was the so-called Northern Party, h&-picked by Scott to undertake his most significant programme of scientific research. The unsung hero of this group was Dr Murray Levick, whose attention to diet & mental & physical fitness played a major part in their survival. The doctor was a sensitive recorder & a talented photographer, it is on his previously unpublished diaries, monographs, photographs & sketches that this book is based. The six men were landed by Terra Nova in January 1911 at Cape Adare, 450 miles north of Scott's base camp at Cape Evans. They spent nearly a year there, living in a rudimentary hut, surveying & collecting specimens from the beautiful but inhospitable bay & shoreline fringed by inaccessible mountains. They were then dropped off mid-way between the two Capes to continue their work. The ship was due to pick them up on 17 February 1912. A month later she still hadn't come, & the men were forced to face the Antarctic winter in an igloo dug out of a snowdrift on ' Inexpressible Island'. After spending six-&-a-half months entombed in their underground ice-cave, in conditions of unimaginable physical & mental hardship, ...

Hell's Gorge traces a heroic dream that spanned four centuries: to build a canal linking the Atlantic & Pacific oceans. The ...

Hell's Gorge traces a heroic dream that spanned four centuries: to build a canal linking the Atlantic & Pacific oceans. The ...

Welcome to the Hell's Kitchen Cookbook, & to the culinary expertise of Gary Rhodes & Jean-Christophe Novelli from TV's hottest reality show.
Tantalised by the delicious recipes? Fascinated by the tears, tempers & tantrums of the ktchen? Watched mouth watereing as novices were beaten, whipped & pressure cooked into cordon-bleu-standard chefs in a matter of weeks? Now the Hell's Kitchen Cookbook brings the inferno right into your own home:
- A selection of stunning recipes from Gary Rhodes & Jean-Christophe Novelli adapted to use at home.
- The contestants' signiture dishes so you can serve up your very own King Prawn Rockefella courtesy of Terry.
- The highs & lows of the show relived.
- Useful hints & tips to help you brush up your basic cookery skills.
So why not stun friends & family with your own devilishly delicious combinations.





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Christopher Parnell was on holiday with his family in Bali when the unthinkable happened. His holiday complex was raided & police claimed to have uncovered 12.5kg of hashish. Parnell & a travelling companion were immediately arrested. His companion, who knew of the hidden drugs in Parnell's apartment, was later released & left Bali as soon as the charges against him were dropped. While Parnell awaited trial, his friend signed a statutory declaration to say that the drugs had belonged to him. He admitted he had been afraid to face Indonesian justice but believed the mix up would be rectified & Parnell released. Instead, Parnell was sentenced to the death penalty. That sentence was later reduced to 20 years & a fine of US$30, 000. Over the next 11 years, Parnell was subjected to unthinkable sessions of torture. Left to starve & fight every day for his survival, Parnell became a man forced to eat everything from cockroaches to human flesh. Prepare yourself for a journey into a world where murder, torture & fights to the death are day-to-day occurrences: where the guards turn a blind eye to the lethal weapons prisoners carry & use almost daily. HELL'S PRISONER is a powerful story of one man's battle to survive in some of the world's most cruel & inhumane prisons, surrounded by murders & sadistic violent criminals. It is an incredible tale of fatalism & bureaucracy, of corruption & the horrors of prison, but most of all it is a no-holds-barred account of what the human spirit can endure. ...