For the last six years of his life, Roger Deakin kept notebooks in which he wrote his daily thoughts, impressions, feelings & observations. Discursive, personal & often impassioned, they reveal the way he saw the world, whether it be observing the teeming ecosystem that was Walnut Tree Farm, thinking about the wider environment, walking in his fields, on Mellis Common or on his travels at home, or contemplating his past & his present life. Notes from Walnut Tree Farm collects the very best of these writings, capturing Roger’s extraordinary, restless curiosity about the natural & human worlds, his love of literature & music, his knack for making unusual & apposite connections, & of course his distinct & subversive charm & humour. Together they cohere to present a passionate, engaged &
- in spite of the worst pressures of contemporary life
- optimistic view of our changing world.

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The world is messing with our minds. Rates of stress & anxiety are rising. A fast, nervous planet is creating fast & nervous lives. We are more connected, yet feel more alone. & we are encouraged to worry about everything from world politics to our body mass index.- How can we stay sane on a planet that makes us mad?
- How do we stay human in a technological world?- How do we feel happy when we are encouraged to be anxious? After experiencing years of anxiety & panic attacks, these questions became urgent matters of life & death for Matt Haig. & he began to look for the link between what he felt & the world around him. Notes on a Nervous Planet is a personal & vital look at how to feel happy, human & whole in the twenty-first century.
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Shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize, Zoe Heller`s Notes on a Scandal is a darkly compelling novel that explores the taboo subject of pupil/teacher relationships, obsession & betrayal. From the first day that the beguiling Sheba Hart joins the staff of St George`s history teacher Barbara Covett is convinced she has found a kindred spirit. Barbara`s loyalty to her new friend is passionate & unstinting & when Sheba is discovered having an illicit affair with one of her pupils, Barbara quickly elects herself as Sheba`s chief defender. But all is not as it first seems in this dark story &, as Sheba will soon discover, a friend can be just as treacherous as any lover.` Brilliant, nasty, gripping` Zadie Smith` Compelling, dark, sexy` Observer` Superbly gripping. One of the most compelling books I`ve read in ages` Daily Telegraph` Deliciously sinister` Daily Mail Zoe Heller is the author of three novels, Everything You Know, Notes on a Scandal, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2003 & The Believers. The 2006 film adaptation of Notes on a Scandal, starring Cate Blanchett & Judi Dench, received four Oscar nominations. She lives in New York. ...

In the past, culture was a kind of vital consciousness that constantly rejuvenated & revivified everyday reality. Now it is largely a mechanism of distraction & entertainment. Notes on the Death of Culture is an examination & indictment of this transformation
- penned by none other than the Nobel winner Mario Vargas Llosa, who is not only one of our finest novelists but one of the keenest social critics at work today. Taking his cues from T S Eliot
- whose treatise Notes Towards the Definition of Culture is a touchstone precisely because the culture Eliot aimed to describe has since vanished
- Vargas Llosa traces a decline whose ill effects have only just begun to be felt. He mourns, in particular, the figure of the intellectual: for most of the twentieth century, men & women of letters drove political, aesthetic, & moral conversations; today they have all but disappeared from public debate. But Vargas Llosa stubbornly refuses to fade into the background. He is not content to merely sign a petition; he will not bite his tongue. A necessary provocateur, here vividly translated by John King, provides an impassioned & essential critique of our time & culture.


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The Second World War is long over but its legacy continues to tear a town
- & a young boy's life
- apart. Knud is growing up

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Description: Arthur Maxley is a tense & listless young man. One day he receives a letter from his long-estranged father. Arthur`s fear & aversion to the man is powerful, yet his compulsion to see his father is irresistible. After their meeting, Arthur is propelled into a night of drinking & spontaneous intimacy with a beautiful young woman. But as the memories of childhood trauma surface & disorientate, Arthur`s night out rises towards the pitch of disaster. ...

From the author of the internationally acclaimed Putin`s Russia & A Russian Diary. Until her murder in October 2006, Anna Politkovskaya wrote for the Russian newspaper Novaya gazeta, winning international fame for her reporting on the Chechen wars &, more generally, on Russian politics & state corruption. Nothing But the Truth is a definitive collection of Anna Politkovskaya`s best writings: a lasting & inspiring book from one fo the greatest reporters of our age. ...

Daddy Bear insists he`s the scariest creature in the forest
- didn`t you know that nothing can frighten a bear?
- but when there`s

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In this moving autobiographical novel, the narrator`s mother, Lucile, raises her two daughters largely alone. A former child model from a large Bohemian family, Lucile is younger & more glamorous than the other mothers: always in lipstick & stylishly dressed, wayward & wonderful. But as the years pass her occasional sadness gives way to overwhelming despair & delusion. This is a story of luminous beauty & rambunctious joy, of dark secrets & silences, revelations &, ultimately, the unknowability of even those closest to us. & in the face of the unknowable, personal history becomes fiction. Nothing Holds Back the Night is universally recognisable & singularly heartbreaking. ...

Takes you on a journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia: into the lives of Hells Angels convinced they are messiahs, professional killers with the souls of artists, bohemian theatre directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, supermodel sects, post-modern dictators & oligarch revolutionaries. This is a world erupting with new money & new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, where life is seen as a whirling, glamorous masquerade where identities can be switched & all values are changeable. It is home to a new form of authoritarianism, far subtler than 20th century strains, & which is rapidly expanding to challenge the global order. An extraordinary book
- one which is as powerful & entertaining as it is troubling
- Nothing is True & Everything is Possible offers a wild ride into this political & ethical vacuum.

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