On 5 July 1884, the yacht Mignonette set sail from Southampton bound for Sydney. Halfway through their projected one hundred & twenty day voyage, Captain Tom Dudley & his crew of three men were beset by a monstrous storm off the coast of Africa. After four days of battling towering waves & hurricane gales, their yacht was finally crushed by a ferocious forty foot wave.

The survivors were cast adrift a thousand miles from the nearest landfall in an open thirteen foot dinghy without provisions, water or shelter from the scorching sun. When, after twenty four days, they were finally rescued by a passing yacht, the Moctezuma, only three men were left & they were in an appalling condition. The ordeal that they endured & the trial which followed their eventual return to England held the whole nation
- from the lowliest ship's deckhand to Queen Victoria herself
- spellbound during the following winter.

This is the true story of the voyage & the subsequent court case which outlawed for ever a practice followed since men first put to the ocean in boats: the custom of the sea.





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On 5 July 1884, the yacht Mignonette set sail from Southampton bound for Sydney. Halfway through their projected one hundred & twenty day voyage, Captain Tom Dudley & his crew of three men were beset by a monstrous storm off the coast of Africa. After four days of battling towering waves & hurricane gales, their yacht was finally crushed by a ferocious forty foot wave.

The survivors were cast adrift a thousand miles from the nearest landfall in an open thirteen foot dinghy without provisions, water or shelter from the scorching sun. When, after twenty four days, they were finally rescued by a passing yacht, the Moctezuma, only three men were left & they were in an appalling condition. The ordeal that they endured & the trial which followed their eventual return to England held the whole nation
- from the lowliest ship's deckhand to Queen Victoria herself
- spellbound during the following winter.

This is the true story of the voyage & the subsequent court case which outlawed for ever a practice followed since men first put to the ocean in boats: the custom of the sea.





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Robert Langdon, Harvard Professor of symbology, receives an urgent late-night call while in Paris: the curator of the Louvre has been murdered. Alongside the body is a series of baffling ciphers. Langdon & a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, are stunned to find a trail that leads to the works of Da Vinci ...

Harvard professor Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call while on business in Paris: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been brutally murdered inside the museum. Alongside the body, police have found a series of baffling codes.

As Langdon & a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, begin to sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to find a trail that leads to the works of Leonardo Da Vinci

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Harvard professor Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call while on business in Paris: the elderly curator of the Louvre, Jacques Saunière, has been brutally murdered inside the museum. Alongside the body, police have found a series of baffling codes. As Langdon & a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, begin to sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to find a trail that leads to the works of Leonardo Da Vinci ...

Harvard professor Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call while on business in Paris: the elderly curator of the Louvre, Jacques Saunière, has been brutally murdered inside the museum. Alongside the body, police have found a series of baffling codes. As Langdon & a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, begin to sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to find a trail that leads to the works of Leonardo Da Vinci ...

This journal will be the perfect companion on any trip to the locations visited in The Da Vinci Code.

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They were called the Daffodil Girls, spirited & bright, enduring, loving & dancing their way through the gay & desperate twenties. April, who married the tortured & sexually suspect David Daker, convinced she could blot out his memories of the trenches. May, pregnant by her handsome music-hall star husb&, who refused to settle down & become a family man. March, loved & betrayed by the man who had fathered her child, & who still wanted her, in spite of everything. ...

Twistleton is a village untouched by time, taking its rhythms from the countryside around. Daisy, Jean, Freddie & their friends Aurelia & Laura are devoted to the place, so that when war breaks out Twistleton becomes the embodiment of everything for which they are fighting. For the previous generation the new conflict causes private despair, increased when Twistleton is requisitioned by the Army. Turfed out of their houses, the villagers take refuge at the Hall.

It is here that evacuees from the East End, butler & countryman weld together to fight common enemies, whether drunken troops in the village, the bombs from the air, or rationing & the bitter weather. They all know only victory will do. With death haunting their every moment, love is their one all-too-fleeting consolation

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