The sense of place was of the utmost importance for Dickens, & nowhere is more synonymous with his name than London. The most splendid of all his characters, the city was the subject of scrupulous research: Dickens spent several hours a day exploring its streets & inhabitants. The pieces collected here reveal London to be the primary inspiration for one of the geniuses of English literature. ...

Few novelists have written so intimately about a city as Charles Dickens wrote about London. A near-photographic memory made his contact with the city indelible from a very young age & it remained his constant focus. In the first half of this book Peter Clark illuminates the settings of Dickens`s London scenes as they feature in his writing. Outside London, Kent meant more to Dickens than any other part of Britain. He had an idyllic childhood in Chatham & Kent features in his first works of fiction
- Sketches by Boz & The Pickwick Papers & in his favourite novel, David Copperfield. In his last ten years he wrote two novels with strong Kentish themes
- Great Expectations & The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He had his honeymoon outside Gravesend, & often spent the summer months in Broadstairs. Returning from one of his regular visits to Europe, he was in a railway accident at Staplehurst; an event that left a psychological mark on him for the rest of his life. In 1856 he bought Gad`s Hill Place, near Rochester, & eventually died there. The second half of this book takes the reader to the places Dickens knew & imaginatively wove into the tapestry of his stories: Chatham & Rochester, Canterbury & Dover.

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Few novelists have written so intimately about a city in the way that Charles Dickens wrote about London. A near photographic memory made his contact with the city indelible from a very young age & it remained his constant focus. Virginia Woolf maintained that, `we remodel our psychological geography when we read Dickens`, as he produces `characters who exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild yet extraordinarily revealing remarks`. But the `character` he was drawn back to throughout his novels was London itself, all aspects of the capital from the coaching inns of his early years to the taverns & watermen of the Thames; these were the constant cityscapes of his life & work. Based on five walks through central London, Peter Clark illuminates the settings of Dickens` greatest works, his life, his journalism & his fiction. He also explores ` The First Suburbs` (Camden Town, Chelsea, Greenwich, Hampstead, Highgate & Limehouse) as they feature in Dickens` writing. ...

Over 200 stunning archive photographs, most of which have never been published before, illustrate this mesmerising guide ...

One of the titles in the topographic survey of the Svalbard group published in a colour version, available for the western coast, central & southern part of Spitzbergen, plus two small islands of Svenskøya & Kongsøya. The map has contours at 25-metre intervals, bold relief shading & spot heights, & shows settlements, roads & tracks, working & disused mines, airfields, lighthouses & radio beacons, etc. A grid gives UTM co-ordinates plus latitude in steps of 10` & longitude in 20’. The rest of Spitzbergen, Nordaustlandet, Edgeøya & other small islands are covered by black & white maps with contours only. Most of these maps show no geographical names, as indicated in the individual descriptions of each title. ...

” Confirms Harris` undisputed place as our leading master of both the historical & contemporary thriller”. (Daily Mail). There was a time when Cicero held Caesar`s life in the palm of his h&. But now Caesar is the dominant figure & Cicero`s life is in ruins. Cicero`s comeback requires wit, skill & courage. & for a brief & glorious period, the legendary orator is once more the supreme senator in Rome. But politics is never static. & no statesman, however cunning, can safeguard against the ambition & corruption of others. ” The finest fictional treatment of Ancient Rome in the English language”. (Scotsman). ...

Literacy, long upheld as a standard bearer for progress, is not always a force for good. Had Stalin`s mother never sent him to the seminary he never would have learned to read & so never discovered the works of Marx or Lenin. Instead he probably would have ended up like his father
- a cobbler by trade & a drunk by vocation. Throughout the twentieth century dictators subjected captive audiences to soul-killing prose on a massive scale. They published theoretical works, spiritual manifestos, poetry collections, memoirs & even romance novels. Armed with nothing but a darkly humorous wit, Daniel Kalder journeys long into the literary night to discover what their tomes reveal about the dictatorial soul. From the staggeringly vile & incompetent Mein Kampf, & the `miracles` wrought by former librarian Mao`s Little Red Book, up to the ongoing exploits of North Korea`s Kim dynasty, Dictator Literature is an unforgettable look at the power of the pen.
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The dictator who grew so rich on his country`s cocoa crop that he built a 35-storey-high basilica in the jungles of the Ivory Coast. The austere, incorruptible leader who has shut Eritrea off from the world in a permanent state of war & conscripted every adult into the armed forces. In Equatorial Guinea, the paranoid despot who thought Hitler was the saviour of Africa & waged a relentless campaign of terror against his own people. The Libyan army officer who authored a new work of political philosophy, The Green Book, & lived in a tent with a harem of female soldiers, running his country like a mafia family business. & behind these almost incredible stories of fantastic violence & excess lie the dark secrets of Western greed & complicity, the insatiable taste for chocolate, oil, diamonds & gold that have encouraged dictators to rule with an iron h&, siphoning off their share of the action into mansions in Paris & banks in Zurich & keeping their people in dire poverty. ...

The dictator who grew so rich on his country`s cocoa crop that he built a 35-storey-high basilica in the jungles of the Ivory Coast. The austere, incorruptible leader who has shut Eritrea off from the world in a permanent state of war & conscripted every adult into the armed forces. In Equatorial Guinea, the paranoid despot who thought Hitler was the saviour of Africa & waged a relentless campaign of terror against his own people. The Libyan army officer who authored a new work of political philosophy, The Green Book, & lived in a tent with a harem of female soldiers, running his country like a mafia family business. & behind these almost incredible stories of fantastic violence & excess lie the dark secrets of Western greed & complicity, the insatiable taste for chocolate, oil, diamonds & gold that have encouraged dictators to rule with an iron h&, siphoning off their share of the action into mansions in Paris & banks in Zurich & keeping their people in dire poverty. ...

What did dictators eat? Sometimes simply obscene amounts of the best their nations could offer, but more often their despots` humble origins, or embarrassing medical conditions, or simple lack of interest in or time for food meant their tastes were surprisingly unpretentious
- ranging from human flesh, to raw garlic salad, to Quality Street. Dictators Dinners is an investigation into what some of the world`s most notorious 20th century despots have enjoyed most at their dinner table, & with whom. Here we learn of their foibles, their eccentricities & their frequent terror of poisoning
- something no number of food tasters was ever able to assuage. For a selection of 25 former national figureheads across the world, each section
Includes:: an outline of the dictator`s history, a short essay on their particular eating habits, table manners, digestive systems, one or two of their favourite recipes.


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