The year is 2014. The Republicans have re-conquered the White House, the Conservatives have just won a second term at Westminster & hardliners dominate Russia. In a small corner of north-western Europe, the Scots have just narrowly voted for independence, a decision they immediately regret.

Following the referendum, George Wallace, friend & Senior Special Adviser to Scotland

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Half a century after his death, Lt Col. Robert Blair Mayne is still regarded as one of the greatest soldiers in the history of military special operations. He was the most decorated British soldier of the Second World War, receiving four DSOs, the Croix de Guerre & the Légion d ...

Rold Harris has put together a fantastic collection of the very best animal stories that will capture the imagination of all animal lovers. Read about a hamster with an extraordinary talent for escaping from its cage, the daring rescue of a seal pup, how a tortoise helps a man win the heart of the woman he loves, the bravery & loyalty of an Alsatian dog, & what happens wehn Toad, Ratty, & Mole set off on a journey in their caravan.

Contributions from Lynne Reid Banks, Ben Blathwayt, Aidan Chambers, Roald Dahl, Colin Dann, Adele Geras, Kenneth Grahame, Gene Kemp, Dick King-Smith, Rudyard Kipling, Norman Lindsay, Jack London, Michael Morpurgo, & Anna Sewell.

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With over 7 million viewers, Rolf on Art was watched by more people than any other BBC arts programme in 2001. In his own inimitable way Rolf brought the lives & works of the some of the worlds best-loved artists to life, exploring their methods & techniques & then painting his own pictures in their style. Now, in this book to accompany his new series, you can share Rolfs boundless enthusiasm at first-hand by looking over his shoulder as he produces a series of paintings to demonstrate his own easy-to-follow painting methods in close-up detail. Containing all his paintings from the series as well as many previously unseen originals, the book will delight anyone who is interested in art & inspire amateur artists everywhere. Applying that first stroke of paint may seem a very frightening step but it doesnt have to be. In Rolfs own words, Anyone can do it, so let him show you how & share his excitement at the endless possibilities painting offers. ...

Airman, war hero, immigrant, law student, diplomat, novelist & celebrity spouse, Romain Gary had several lives thrust upon him by the history of the twentieth century, but he also aspired to lead many more. He wrote more than two dozen books & a score of short stories under several different names in two languages, English & French, neither of which was his mother tongue. Gary had a gift for narrative that endeared him to ordinary readers, but won him little respect among critics far more intellectual than he could ever be. His varied & entertaining writing career tells a different story about the making of modern literary culture from the one we are accustomed to hearing.

Born Roman Kacew in Vilna (now Lithuania) in 1914 & raised by only his mother after his father left them, Gary rose to become French Consul General in Los Angeles & the only man ever to win the Goncourt Prize twice.

This biography follows the many threads that lead from Gary



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Sam has waited all his life for the man he knows waits for him somewhere. When he visits the island of Skate to do some work for Denton, a mysterious young aristocrat, he is taught how to submit to other men; acting out an elaborate fantasy in which the young men become wrestling slaves as in ancient Rome & Denton their master.

At first, Sam is reluctant, but before long he is submerged in a world where sex & status are interwoven. He must learn how to win & how to lose. If he is to have his beautiful prize

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Completing the 8 volume Everyman Signet Shakespeare contains Shakespeare series, this final volume contains Shakespeare's four Last Plays
- THE TEMPEST, PERICLES, THE WINTER'S TALE & CYMBELINE. The beautifully produced, single-column text of the plays, with the Signet footnotes, is supplemented with bibliographies, a detailed chronology of Shakespear's life & times, & a substantial introduction in which Professor Tony Tanner discusses each play individually while setting each in context.
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The winner of a 1989 Somerset Maugham Award, Romantic Affinities is a kaleidoscopic series of portraits from an era of tumultuous change in Europe as it was experienced & communicated by the writers of the age. These include not only the more familiar ' Romantic' figures, such as Coleridge & Shelley, Byron & Goethe, but also Chenier, H-lderlin, Hoffman, Madame de Sta-l, Pushkin & many others. Set against the background of the initial liberal dawning the French Revolution seemed to herald, the disillusion that set in after its descent into terror, & the decades of warfare that followed, Christiansen draws on a wealth of scholarship ranging over many related aspects of music, architecture, & politics as he presents fresh perspectives on poetry & prose long defined narrowly as Romanticism. ...

When the author, a wounded veteran of 21, arrived in Rome in 1944, the question most Italians asked him was: ' What took you so long?' What indeed? Were the Allied High Command to blame? Were the generals incompetent? Was the Anzio landing itself a tactical error? In 1956 Raleigh Trevelyan published, as The Fortress, the diaries he had surreptitiously kept in the Anzio trenches &, as a result, made contact with a number of Germans who had been only yards away from him twelve years earlier. Now that statesmen & generals have published their memoirs & official histories of the war have been written, it seems possible at long last to attempt an answer. This is a remarkable book, bringing together the skill & insight of an accomplished historian, the narrative drive of a gifted storyteller, & the rage & terror of a man experiencing at first hand the momentous events from Anzio to Monte Cassino & on to Rome. The reader follows the fate of the 'poor bloody infantry' on both sides of the line; sees a group of Romans adapting to the idea that the Germans are still there; penetrates the secrets of the Vatican; watches the Allied & German generals on the spot fight with their High Commands & hears what Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt & Stalin thought about it at the time. ...

In 1875, a few years after Italian unification, General Garibaldi, the
legendary military hero of the Risorgimento, left his
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