The cyclist is legendary for his You Tube viral videos like The Ridge, Cascadia & Imaginate: nerve-racking montages of stunts which scale everything from mountain peaks, rooftops, ghost towns & movie sets. His life is one of thrills, bloody spills & millions of online hits. It hasn`t been an easy ride. Doubt, stress & the `what if?` factor circle every trailblazing trick, which require imagination, fearlessness, groundbreaking techniques & an eye for a good camera angle. He has spent his life pushing the extremes; somehow, he`s still around to tell the tale. In this unflinching memoir of mayhem, Danny shares his anarchic childhood on the Isle of Skye & early days as a street trials rider, takes us behind the scenes of his training & videos, shares never-seen-before sketches from his personal notebook, & reveals what it takes to go the next level
- both mentally & physically.
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Paris, near the turn of 1932-3. Three young friends meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir & their friend Raymond Aron, who opens their eyes to a radical new way of thinking...” It`s not often that you miss your bus stop because you`re so engrossed in reading a book about existentialism, but I did exactly that... The story of Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, Heidegger et al is strange, fun & compelling reading. If it doesn`t win awards, I will eat my copy”. (Independent on Sunday). ” Bakewell shows how fascinating were some of the existentialists` ideas & how fascinating, often frightful, were their lives. Vivid, humorous anecdotes are interwoven with a lucid & unpatronising exposition of their complex philosophy... Tender, incisive & fair”. (Daily Telegraph). ” Quirky, funny, clear & passionate... Few writers are as good as Bakewell at explaining complicated ideas in a way that makes them easy to understand”. (Mail on Sunday). ...

Paris, near the turn of 1933. Three young friends meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir & their friend Raymond Aron, who opens their eyes to a radical new way of thinking. Pointing to his drink, he says, ” You can make philosophy out of this cocktail!” From this moment of inspiration, Sartre will create his own extraordinary philosophy of real, experienced life
- of love & desire, of freedom & being, of cafes & waiters, of friendships & revolutionary fervour. It is a philosophy that will enthral Paris & sweep through the world, leaving its mark on post-war liberation movements, from the student uprisings of 1968 to civil rights pioneers. At the Existentialist Cafe tells the story of modern existentialism as one of passionate encounters between people, minds & ideas. From the `king & queen of existentialism`
- Sartre & de Beauvoir
- to their wider circle of friends & adversaries including Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty & Iris Murdoch, this book is an enjoyable & original journey through a captivating intellectual movement. Weaving biography & thought, Sarah Bakewell takes us to the heart of a philosophy about life that also changed lives, & that tackled the biggest questions of all: what we are & how we are to live.


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? By tradition, Moscow is the easternmost bastion of western civilisation. Moscow has stood against invasion & war, pestilence & fire. It has been rejected by its own rulers, & its destruction has been planned by its dreamers & invaders alike. Yet it has survived. How this happened is the story of historical accident, the vagaries of geography & economicsand upon occasion, sheer human will & faith. Moscow is also the object of stereotype, from barbaric oriental capital to Holy city on the Hill. In its secular & religious manifestations it has been the goal of pilgrimage & a city of transcendent aspiration. In the twentieth century it was the headquarters of a class-based pogrom of appalling

Dimensions even as it was proclaimed the capital of global revolution. If Moscow has endured catastrophes barely imagined, it has also been the scene of creative brilliance. It holds a deep contradiction as being both the pilot-boat to hell, & a celestial city of the future. Moscow has bemused visitors, & even the most perceptive of them have fallen victim to their own preconceptions. This is a portrait of Moscow through time. It has one constant, the Kremlin, at once the supreme metaphor of state power but also a symbol of Russian national identity. The tension between Moscow as an urban community & the Moscow of empire & belief is fundamental to the citys narrative. Above it all stands the Kremlin, Moscows arbiter of history. This is also a historical case- study of the growth, development & near-death experiences of a single city to become a living monument to its own survival. It will be of interest to travellers, Urbanists & historians alike.

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For many years Andrew Greig saw the poet Norman Mac Caig as a father figure. Months before his death, Mac Caig`s enigmatic final request to Greig was that he fish for him at the Loch of the Green Corrie; the location, even the real name of his destination was more mysterious still. His search took in days of outdoor living, meetings, & fishing with friends in the remote hill lochs of far North-West Scotl&. It led, finally, to the waters of the Green Corrie, which would come to reflect Greig`s own life, his thoughts on poetry, geology & land ownership in the Highlands & the ambiguous roles of whisky, love & male friendship. At the Loch of the Green Corrie is a richly atmospheric narrative, a celebration of losing & recovering oneself in a unique landscape, the consideration of a particular culture, & a homage to a remarkable poet & his world. ...

The incredible story of the first man to fly to the North Pole & back
- by balloon.
On June 3rd 2000, explorer David Hempleman-Adams

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First published to great acclaim in 1979, At the Pillars of Hercules (a title taken from a certain Soho pub) confirmed Clive James`s place as a writer of immense talent. This new paperback edition is as entertaining & elegant as ever. His main topics are contemporary poetry, aesthetics & the theory & practice of criticism, the popular novel, & the literature of modern history & politics. His discussions range from the legacy of Auden & Larkin to Gore Vidal & Lord Longford. His inimitable wit & candour are ever present. ` The opportunity offered me by the London literary editors
- overqualified, confident, & mischievous to a man, especially the women
- was too good to miss. Anything I felt like throwing into the review, they would print. Over the top was exactly the way they wanted me to go. As long as they understood it themselves, no reference could be too obscure or allusion too fleeting. In those days the reader, if he encountered something on the page that he could not immediately underst&, was still trusted to renew his subscription.. . All you have to remember is that you`re not the whole show.I sometimes still had trouble remembering that, but I like to think, looking back, that solipsism made my admiration for others seem the more selfless
- with the concomitant benefit that I could do a better hatchet job without being thought of as having laid claim to a monopoly of objective truth` Clive James, from the new introduction


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Have you ever tried to `dig a hole to China, ` just so you could see who was on the other side of the world? With At The Same Moment, Around The World readers can compare what is happening in all time zones across the globe at exactly the same time. Watch Benedict drinking hot chocolate in the morning in Paris & Kanka having a little nap in Vietnam. Discover a secret kiss in San Francisco & a baby born in the middle of the night in Peru! Clotilde Perrin takes readers eastward from the Greenwich meridian, from day to night, with each page portraying one of (the original) twenty-four time zones. ...

Paraguay
- the name conjures up everything most exotic & extreme in South America. It`s a place of hellish jungles, dictators,
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For the last thirty years John Lister-Kaye has taken the same circular walk from his home deep in a Scottish glen up to a small hill loch. Each day brings a new observation or an unexpected encounter
- a fragile spider`s web, an osprey struggling to lift a trout from the water or a woodcock exquisitely camouflaged on her nest
- & every day, on his return home, he records his thoughts in a journal. Drawing on this lifetime of close observation, At The Water`s Edge encourages us to look again at the nature around us, to discover its wildness for ourselves & to respect & protect it.

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