Charles Foster wanted to know what it was like to be a beast: a badger, an otter, a deer, a fox, a swift. What it was really like. & through knowing what it was like he wanted to get down & grapple with the beast in us all. So he tried it out; he lived life as a badger for six weeks, sleeping in a dirt hole & eating earthworms, he came face to face with shrimps as he lived like an otter & he spent hours curled up in a back garden in East London & rooting in bins like an urban fox. A passionate naturalist, Foster realises that every creature creates a different world in its brain & lives in that world. As humans, we share sensory outputs, lights, smells & sound, but trying to explore what it is actually like to live in another of these worlds, belonging to another species, is a fascinating & unique neuro-scientific challenge. For Foster it is also a literary challenge. Looking at what science can tell us about what happens in a fox`s or badger`s brain when it picks up a scent, he then uses this to imagine their world for us, to write it through their eyes or rather through the eyes of Charles the beast. An intimate look at the life of animals, neuroscience, psychology, nature writing, memoir & more, it is a journey of extraordinary thrills & surprises, containing wonderful moments of humour & joy, but also providing important lessons for all of us who share life on this precious planet. ...

Charles Foster wanted to know what it was like to be a beast: a badger, an otter, a deer, a fox, a swift. What it was really like. & through knowing what it was like he wanted to get down & grapple with the beast in us all. So he tried it out; he lived life as a badger for six weeks, sleeping in a dirt hole & eating earthworms, he came face to face with shrimps as he lived like an otter & he spent hours curled up in a back garden in East London & rooting in bins like an urban fox. A passionate naturalist, Foster realises that every creature creates a different world in its brain & lives in that world. As humans, we share sensory outputs, lights, smells & sound, but trying to explore what it is actually like to live in another of these worlds, belonging to another species, is a fascinating & unique neuro-scientific challenge. For Foster it is also a literary challenge. Looking at what science can tell us about what happens in a fox`s or badger`s brain when it picks up a scent, he then uses this to imagine their world for us, to write it through their eyes or rather through the eyes of Charles the beast. An intimate look at the life of animals, neuroscience, psychology, nature writing, memoir & more, it is a journey of extraordinary thrills & surprises, containing wonderful moments of humour & joy, but also providing important lessons for all of us who share life on this precious planet. ...

Having learnt Aikido with the Tokyo riot police (ANGRY WHITE PYJAMAS) & hunted for the world`s longest snake in the jungles of the Far East (BIG SNAKE), Robert Twigger now turns his attention to other traditionally male pursuits & pastimes (some of which are fairly close to home, some of which are more extreme), & looks at the questions these raise about masculinity & the role of man in modern society. BEING A MAN features Twigger participating in, & writing on: the informal rules & thrill seeking of solo climbing, bullfighting in Spain, the `illicit pleasure of buying my first gun`, & the rules of survival with a tribe of Naga headhunters
- the sort of activities & pursuits often scorned in the modern, interiorised office-based world.
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Bindy, aged 15, has known her best friend Janie since they were babies & they`ve been inseparable ever since. But now the unthinkable has happened
- Janie`s attaching herself to a different crowd at school & she`s acting as if she doesn`t want to know Bindy any more. The new crowd is loud, bitchy, interested in boys & clothes, rebellious, daring. All the things Bindy isn`t. Added to which, things aren`t great at home. Bindy`s mother who left the family years ago is now trying to forge a closer relationship with her children. Bindy`s brother doesn`t want to know
- which leaves Bindy stuck in the middle. & Bindy`s dad has started dating Janie`s mum. This is a book about being yourself, even if other people think you should be someone different. It`s also about how to renegotiate the relationships around you when circumstances change.

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The Queen's Diamond Jubilee, the Olympics & last year's Royal wedding are events that should have created a wave of patriotism across the l&. But Britannia no longer rules the waves & a land once typified by its self-assurance & enterprise is now weighed down by the history of its decline from greatness
- afraid even to celebrate its past glories, achievements seemingly tainted by jingoism & colonialism. Nor are its peers afraid to exploit such weaknesses. David Cameron's veto of a European treaty to save the Euro unleashed a torrent of anti-British invective that was more than simply cosmetic; President Obama has seemingly gone out of his way to demonstrate how little weight the so-called special relationship carries with him. Britain even faces challenges from within, with the Scottish Parliament pressing for an end to the Union. With Britain's values & status maligned & the subject of sneers, no wonder its people are in the midst of an identity crisis. Spurred on by the vexed question of what Britishness actually means, Whittle sets out to examine what, if anything, is actually wrong with being British? More than that, Being British is a humorous & anecdote-packed celebration at the Britain of today, covering some of our greatest national institutions, habits & characters. This is a landmark book as Britain struggles to cement its place in the twenty first century.
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Don`t care about ecology? This book is for you. Morton sets out to show us that whether we know it or not, we already have the capacity & the will to change the way we understand the place of humans in the world, & our very understanding of the term `ecology`. A cross-disciplinarian who has collaborated with everyone from Björk to Hans Ulrich Obrist, Morton is also a member of the object-oriented philosophy movement, a group of forward-looking thinkers who are grappling with modern-day notions of subjectivity & objectivity, while also offering fascinating new understandings of Heidegger & Kant. Calling the volume a book containing `no ecological facts`, Morton confronts the `information dump` fatigue of the digital age, & offers an invigorated approach to creating a liveable future. ...

Being Here is the first book to survey the entire span of Vincent O` Sullivan`s poetry, from Bearings (1973) to new poems first published in this volume. On display is the full range of the wit, intellectual agility & arresting beauty of one of New Zealand literature`s finest poets. Vincent O` Sullivan is one of New Zealand`s leading writers, author of the biography of John Mulgan, Long Journey to the Border, the novels Let the River Stand & Believers to the Bright Coast, & many plays & collections of short stories & poems. He is joint editor of the five-volume Letters of Katherine Mansfield & has edited a number of major anthologies. He lives in Dunedin. ...

A collection of stories about & from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Swaziland & Mozambique since 1960, is a vibrant collection, chosen to reflect lived experience of these places in these times
- surely the most exciting & most productive period in the history of Southern Africa & its literature. This collection was first published in 19 & has become a favourite of teachers & students. It has now been updated, & also contains teaching suggestions & new points for discussion.
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. .. I am Miss Nobody. Rosalind hates her new secondary school. She`s the weird girl who doesn`t talk. The Mute-ant. & it`s easy to pick on someone who can`t fight back. So Rosalind starts a blog
- Miss Nobody; a place to speak up, a place where she has a voice. But there`s a problem... Is Miss Nobody becoming a bully herself?
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Simon Callow plunges headlong into Wagner`s world to discover what it was like to be Wagner, & to be around one of music`s most influential figures. A hundred & thirty-five years after his death, Richard Wagner`s music dramas stand at the centre of the culture of classical music. They have never been more popular, nor so violently controversial & divisive. His music is still banned in Israel
- the only classical composer whose music is banned in the western world. His ten great mature masterpieces constitute an unmatched body of work, created against a backdrop of poverty, revolution, violent controversy, critical contempt & hysterical hero-worship. As a man, he was a walking contradiction, aggressive, flirtatious, disciplined, capricious, heroic, visionary & poisonously anti-Semitic. At one point, he had four lengthy operas written with no hope of being performed when, as if in a fairy-tale, he was rescued by a beautiful young king with limitless wealth which he bestowed on the composer. When one of those works, Tristan & Isolde, was at last performed, it revolutionised classical music at a stroke. Finally he fulfilled his lifelong dream of creating a vast epic to rival the work of the great Greek playwrights, a music drama in four massive segments, ushering gods & dwarves, heroes & thugs, dragons & rainbows onto the stage, the apotheosis of German art as he saw it, so extreme in its demands that he had to train a generation of singers & players to perform it, & erect a custom-built theatre to house it. Wagner died, exhausted, after creating one final piece
- Parsifal
- that seems to point to an even more radical new future for music. Simon Callow recalls the intellectual & artistic climate in which Wagner worked, recording the almost superhuman effort required to create his work, & evoking the extraordinary effect he had on people
- this composer like no other who ever lived, extreme in everything, creator of the most sublime & most troubling body of work ever known.



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