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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A skinny Jewish kid from Philadelphia training to fight & likely die in the U.S. invasion of Japan in 1945, Stanley Weiss came home to the death of his loving but weak father, who left his mother penniless. Vowing on the spot not to let his insecurities limit him as they had his father, Weiss pledged that his mother would never have to worry. Later, a humiliation suffered at the hands of his wealthy girlfriend`s famous father ignited in him a determination to better himself in every way & live life to the fullest. Inspired by a Humphrey Bogart movie, Weiss moved to a foreign country to hunt for treasure
- where Rule Number One was ” Don`t Die.” Along the way, his zest for living has taken him from the company of legendary artists & poets in Mexico, to writers & beatniks in 1960s San Francisco & Hollywood; from drunken nights with a notorious spy to friendships with three of the men who played James Bond; from glamorous parties in Gstaad & Phuket to power politics in London & Washington, DC.A story of growth, tenacious focus, & good humor, it stretches from the days of ” Don`t Die” to Weiss` response when asked why business executives were interested in preventing nuclear war: ” Being dead is bad for business.” For those who believe the world is shaped by ordinary people who push themselves to do extraordinary things, Stanley Weiss` story will inspire & surprise while reminding us all that being dead is bad for business
- & being boring is bad for life.

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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. ...

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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Tough, light, & waterproof summit map of Beinn Alligin from Harveys at 1:12, 500, ideal for mountaineering under poor weather conditions. The cartography is clear & easy to read, with topography shown through spot heights, contour lines at 15m intervals, & index contours at 75m intervals. The map is GPS compatible, with the National Grid overprinted on the cartography.A variety of symbols are used to show terrain detail, such as caves/mines, major & climbing crags, shafts, sinkholes, cairns, & large boulders. Rights of way including tracks & footpaths are prominently highlighted. The map comes in a clear plastic wallet & is printed on Polyethylene, making it tear-resistant, waterproof & lighter than other laminated maps. To see the other titles in this series please click on the series link. ...

A detailed topographic map of Beinn Dearg & Loch Fannich from the Ordnance Survey Explorer series, covering Ullapool. Edition A1; Publication date September 2007 About this series: These highly detailed maps show all the administrative boundaries, settlements as small as isolated farms, the road network down to unfenced roads & country tracks, & field boundaries (hedges & drystone walls) which make navigation across the countryside much easier. Steep gradients on roads are indicated. Various landmarks, e.g. powerlines, archaeological sites, windmills, churches & lighthouses are shown & additional graphics indicate natural terrain features such as cliffs, scree, mud & vegetation variations. The contour interval is 5 metres in the lower parts of the country & 10 metres in the uplands, & spot heights are marked. Each map covers an area of 30 x 20km (i.e. approx. 19 x 12 miles), with some double-sided maps covering more, as indicated in the individual descriptions. The maps are fully GPS compatible, with the National Grid shown at 1km intervals & latitude & longitude indicated by margin ticks at 1'. The Explorer series has replaced the earlier, green-cover Pathfinder maps. The Explorer series is now complete & covers all of Engl&, Wales & Scotl&. Some sheets for popular areas like the National Parks are still branded as Outdoor Leisure (OL) maps, but are now included in this series as the cartography is the same as that in the Explorer Maps. The Explorer maps offer a substantial improvement on the Pathfinder series, with greater use of colour, larger area per map, & stronger emphasis on information for ramblers & tourists. This series is ideal for walking & other outdoor pursuits & each map shows a large amount of information for ramblers & tourists. Public rights of way are shown (except in Scotland), together with other routes with public access: National Trails & Recreational Paths, permitted paths & bridleways, & selected cycle routes. Open access land created under the Countryside & Rights of Way Act 2000 is marked. Tourist information

Includes:: caravan & camp sites, Park & Ride locations, recreation/leisure/sport centres, museums, historic buildings, English Heritage & National Trust sites, rural pubs, etc. The map legend is in English only, except for the tourist information content which is also in French & German.

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