George Orwell, a man fond of a pint, used to write about his fantasy pub, The Moon Under Water, in his Evening Standard columns
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Inspired by George Orwell, Paul Moody & Robin Turner take a nostalgic road trip around Britain in search of the perfect pub. `A deeply satisfying travelogue` Stuart Maconie In 1946, George Orwell, a man fond of a pint, wrote about his favourite pub, The Moon Under Water, in his EVENING STANDARD column. But it didn`t actually exist. It was Orwell`s vision of a perfect pub. Today, Wetherspoons have fourteen Moon Under Waters, & the nation is awash with identikit, high-street lounge bars competing for a dwindling clientele. Paul Moody & Robin Turner`s road trip around Britain, therefore, is not just a search for the perfect pub. It is a deeper investigation into what has happened to British pub culture, once the toast of the world. In fact, it is a search for a kind of life-force kindled by the British public, something the powers-that-be are forever trying to extinguish. Along the way, such luminaries as Pete Brown (`the King of Beer`), Tim Martin (Wetherspoon`s boss), Iain Sinclair, James Dean Bradfield & Paul Kingsnorth are consulted
- along with a host of micro-brewers, landlords, politicians, bloggers & barroom philosophers. What emerges is a picture of the country as seen through a pint glass, a vision that goes to the heart of what it means to be British.
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In 1990 an expedition of Cambridge scientists arrived at the Plains of Nechisar, tucked between the hills of the Great Rift Valley in the Gamo Gofa province in the country of Ethiopia. On that expedition, 315 species of birds were seen; 61 species of mammal & 69 species of butterfly were identified; 20 species of dragonflies & damselflies; 17 reptile species were recorded; three frog species were filed; plants were listed. & the wing of a road-killed bird was packed into a brown paper bag. It was to become the most famous wing in the world. At British Natural History Museum in Tring, the wing set the world of science aflutter. It seemed that the wing was unique, but they questioned, can you name a species for the first time based only on the description of a wing, based on just one wing? After much to & fro, confirmation was unanimous, & the new species was announced, Nechisar Nightjar, Caprimulgus solala, (solus: only & ala: wing). And birdwatchers like Vernon began to dream. Twenty-two years later an expedition of four led by Ian Sinclair set off to try to find this rarest bird in the world. Vernon R.L. Head captivates & enchants as he tells of the adventures of Ian, Dennis, Gerry & himself as they navigate the wilderness of the plains, searching by spotlight for the elusive Nechisar Nightjar. But this book is more than a boy`s own adventure in search of the rarest bird in the world. It is a meditation on nature, on ways of seeing, on the naming of things & why we feel so compelled to label. It is a story of friendships & camaraderie. But most of all it embraces & enfolds one into the curious & eye-opening world of the birdwatcher. For birdwatchers, twitchers, bird lovers, & about-to-become birdwatchers everywhere. ...

` Missing a young girl, Dora Bruder, 15, height 1.55m, oval-shaped face, grey-brown eyes, grey sports jacket, maroon pullover, navy blue skirt & hat, brown gym shoes. All information to M. & Mme Bruder, 41 Boulevard Ornano, Paris.` The author chanced upon this notice in a December 1941 issue of Paris Soir. The girl has vanished from the convent school which had taken her in during the Occupation. She had apparently run away on a bitterly cold night at a time of especially violent German reprisals. Moved by her fate, the author sets out to find all he can about her. Eventually he discovers her name in a list of Jews deported to Auschwitz in September 1942 & what further fragments he is able to uncover about the Bruder family become a meditation on the immense losses of the period
- people lost, stories lost, human history lost. Modiano delivers a moving survey of a decade-long investigation that revived for him the sights, sounds & sorrowful rhythms of occupied Paris. & in seeking to exhume Dora Bruder`s fate, he in turn faces, & must come to terms with, his own family history.
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The Caravan Family are spending their summer in beautiful, sandy Seagull Cove. They are staying in their caravans, right at the edge of the sea, & are going to have the best seaside holiday ever! But a new friend, Benjy, is with them & he`s not very cheery! Will he ruin the children`s holiday, or can they cheer Benjy up & help him enjoy the seaside? ...

When travel journalist Sophie Campbell squeezed into heels & a hat to investigate the English social season, she got more than she bargained for. Why, she wondered, were events such as the Chelsea Flower Show, the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, The Derby at Epsom, Royal Ascot, the Henley Royal Regatta, Wimbledon Fortnight & Glorious Goodwood so formal, so fashionable & so famous? Her hectic & sometimes hilarious journey through the English summer proved as exotic as any tribal rite of passage as she swam the River Thames in the dark, partied with owners & trainers at Ascot, camped out for Wimbledon, joined Irish Travellers at The Derby, infiltrated the parents` stand at the Eton v Harrow cricket match & got caught using a mobile in the Stewards` Enclosure at Henley. En route she found a fascinating & surprisingly complex social structure dating back to the time of the Stuart monarchs & involving fashion, food, art & the marriage market. The English summer will never be the same again. ...

” For millennia, the passing seasons & their rhythms have marked our progress through the year. But what do they mean to us now that we lead increasingly atomised & urban lives & our weather becomes ever more unpredictable or extreme? In this splendidly rich & lyrical celebration of the English seasons, Nick Groom investigates the trove of strange folklore & often stranger fact they have accumulated over the centuries & shows how tradition & our links with nature still have a vital role to play in all our lives.” ...

Written for dinghy sailors, windsurfers, motor boaters, jet skiers & yacht sailors, whether prospective or practising, The Seaway Code sets out the technicalities of sailing & driving a craft, & a grounding in safety measures, custom & practice, legal requirements & weather & water conditions. The book covers the background sailors should be familiar with before they venture out onto the water & ties in with the seamanship aspects of basic training contained in the courses provided by the Royal Yachting Association. It is designed to be accessible to teenage readers as well as adults. ...

`[ Seaweed] is like dynamite
- [it has] fiber, nutrients, all the minerals, [it] aids digestion
- unbelievable` Jamie Oliver

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Every living thing has two bodies. To be an animal is to be in the possession of a physical body, a body which can eat, drink & sleep; it is also to be integrated within a local ecosystem which overlaps with ecosystems which are larger & further away. To be a living thing is to exist in two bodies. You breathe something in, & what you breathe out is something else. Your first body is the place you live in, made out of your own personal skin. Your second body is not so solid as the other one, but much larger. This second body is your own literal & physical biological existence
- it is a version of you. It is not a concept, it is your own body. The language we have at the moment is weak: we might speak vaguely of global connections; of the emission & circulation of gases; of impacts. & yet, at some microscopic or intangible scale, bodies are breaking into one another. The concept of a global impact is not working for us, & in the meantime, your body has already eaten the distance. Your first body could be sitting alone in a church in the centre of Marseille, but your second body is floating above a pharmaceutical plant on the outskirts of the city, it is inside a freight container in the docks, & it is also thousands of miles away, on a flood plain in Bangladesh, in another man`s lungs. every animal body implicated in the whole world. Even the patient who is anaesthetized on an operating table, barely breathing, is illuminated by surgeon`s lamps which are powered with electricity trailed from a plant which is pumping out of its chimneys a white smoke that spreads itself out against the sky. It is understandably difficult to remember that you have anything to do with this second body
- your first body is the body you inhabit in your daily life. However, you are alive in both. You have two bodies. In this timely & elegant essay, Daisy Hildyard attempts to capture the second body by looking at it as a part of animal life. She meets Richard, a butcher in Yorkshire, & sees pigs turned into boiled ham; & Gina, an environmental criminologist, who tells her about leopards & silver foxes kept as pets in luxury apartments. She speaks to Luis, a biologist, about the origins of life; & talks to Nadezhda about fungi in an effort to understand how we define animal life. In her own interactions with other animals, she examines how humans & animals engage with one another, or fail to. Eventually, her second body comes to visit her first body when the river flooded her home last year. THE SECOND BODY is a brilliantly lucid account of the dissolving boundaries between all life on earth.

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