Wilbur Smith has lived an incredible life of adventure, & now he shares the extraordinary true stories that have inspired his fiction. I`ve been writing novels for over fifty years. I was lucky enough to miss the big wars & not get shot, but lucky enough to grow up among the heroes who had served in them & learn from their example. I have lucked into things continuously. I have done things which have seemed appalling at the time, disastrous even, but out of them has come another story or a deeper knowledge of human character & the ability to express myself better on paper & write books which people enjoy reading. Along the way, I have lived a life that I could never have imagined. I have been privileged to meet people from all corners of the globe, I have been wherever my heart has desired & in the process my books have taken readers to many, many places. I always say I`ve started wars, I`ve burned down cities & I`ve killed hundreds of thousands of people
- but only in my imagination! From being attacked by lions to close encounters with deadly reef sharks, from getting lost in the African bush without water to crawling the precarious tunnels of gold mines, from marlin fishing with Lee Marvin to near death from crash-landing a Cessna aeroplane, from brutal school days to redemption through writing & falling in love, Wilbur Smith tells us the intimate stories of his life that have been the raw material for his fiction. Always candid, sometimes hilarious & never less than thrillingly entertaining, On Leopard Rockis testament to a writer whose life is as rich & eventful as his novels are compellingly unputdownable.
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Wilbur Smith has lived an incredible life of adventure, & now he shares the extraordinary true stories that have inspired his fiction. I`ve been writing novels for over fifty years. I was lucky enough to miss the big wars & not get shot, but lucky enough to grow up among the heroes who had served in them & learn from their example. I have lucked into things continuously. I have done things which have seemed appalling at the time, disastrous even, but out of them has come another story or a deeper knowledge of human character & the ability to express myself better on paper & write books which people enjoy reading. Along the way, I have lived a life that I could never have imagined. I have been privileged to meet people from all corners of the globe, I have been wherever my heart has desired & in the process my books have taken readers to many, many places. I always say I`ve started wars, I`ve burned down cities & I`ve killed hundreds of thousands of people
- but only in my imagination! From being attacked by lions to close encounters with deadly reef sharks, from getting lost in the African bush without water to crawling the precarious tunnels of gold mines, from marlin fishing with Lee Marvin to near death from crash-landing a Cessna aeroplane, from brutal school days to redemption through writing & falling in love, Wilbur Smith tells us the intimate stories of his life that have been the raw material for his fiction. Always candid, sometimes hilarious & never less than thrillingly entertaining, On Leopard Rock is testament to a writer whose life is as rich & eventful as his novels are compellingly unputdownable.
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What are the greatest regrets of the dying? At her patients` bedside, witnessing their final moments, this is what Kerry Egan discovers. How do the dying seek to making meaning of their lives, the people & moments that have shaped them; & what are those things above all else that they wish they could have done differently? From stories of families torn apart by war, to making peace with the shame of a long-hidden secret, these are the tales of people who wished they had loved their partners more, cherished their children more, forgiven feuds & betrayals, & those who simply wish they had danced more. This isn`t a book about dying
- it`s a book about living. Each of Egan`s patients taught her something: how to find courage in the face of fear, how to make amends whilst you still can, how to see that the world is not just black & white, & that there can be beauty in the grey. In this deeply moving & illuminating book, Kerry captures the fragility of the human experience, imparting the poignant & profound lessons from the dying, on how to live a life without regrets.
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In On Love, we see Charles Bukowski reckoning with the complications of love & desire. Alternating between the tough & the tender, the romantic & the gritty, Bukowski exposes the myriad faces of love in the poems collected here
- its selfishness & its narcissism, its randomness, its mystery & its misery, &, ultimately, its true joyfulness, endurance & redemptive power. Whether writing about his daughter, his lover, or his work, Bukowski is fiercely honest & reflective, using love as a prism to look at the world & to view his own vulnerable place in it.
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A diverse & entertaining collection of writing examining & celebrating the British Countryside, from falconry to foraging & from the musings of a nighttime angler to tips for seasonal drinking. LAND Stuart Maconie (Radio 2) on hill walking / Wainwright walks Nick Small (CAUGHT BY THE RIVER regular) how to get nature into your garden, no matter how urban it is Richard King (Loops magazine editor) on the Winter Solstice & on the Summer Solstice John Wright (www.wild-food.net/ on the basics of getting started in foraging Bill Drummond (Damsons in Distress) Dan Kieran (Crap Towns/I Fought The Law) on falconry RIVER / INLAND WATERS John Andrews (CAUGHT BY THE RIVER regular) on winter pike fishing Jon Berry (CAUGHT BY THE RIVER regular) writing about the night from a fishermen's perspective, the sounds, shadows, the hallucinatory effects of sleep deprivation when the sun rises COASTLINE Ian Vince (The Lie of the Land) on the Jurassic coast & fossils Martin Noble (British Sea Power) the Exmoor to Dartmoor coastal walk Nick Hand (http://www.slowcoast.co.uk/) on what you see when cycling the entire coastline of the UK Michael Smith (BBC4 Drivetime) on the coastline in the north of England ISLAND LIFE Sarah Boden (The Observer) on fleeing London to move & become a sheep farmer on Eigg ...

The classic guide to climbing in the Peak District, featuring over 1500 climbs. Informative diagrams (drawings of the rock faces with the routes superimposed) accompany detailed route descriptions. Covers the Chew Valley, Longdendale, Kinder, Chee Dale, the Lower Wye, Matlock, the Roaches, the Eastern Edges, Cove Dale & Manifold Valley. For convenience the guide is arranged by theme: novice rock, classic sandstone, classic gritstone, Sport rocks, boulders, etc. There is even a section on families & picnics. ...

This is a year of Sicilian life, its seasons & its sacred festivals, its gorgeous fruits & demanding family life, its casual assassinations & village feasts, its weather & the neighbours. It chronicles a life divided between an apartment in the city of Palermo with the weekends & summer devoted to sustaining life in an old family farm. What makes this journal truly exceptional is that Mary Simeti is both an outsider, (an American who had studied medieval history & worked as a volunteer on a social welfare programme) & an insider. For this journal was written after twenty years of immersion in Sicilian life, as wife to a Sicilian, mother to two Sicilian teenagers, as gardener, cook & carer for a suspicious mother-in- law. ...

Weaving together natural history & investigative reporting with mythological & cultural material, On Rare Birds tells the compelling stories of ten rare or extinct bird species
- from the tragic demise of the once-abundant Passenger Pigeon to the shooting death of the last Carolina Parakeet in the wild, & from the startling natural defences of the wilful Nightjar A” to the diverse cultural significance of the Kingfisher. Some stories bear sad witness to precious species we have lost, but they are all fascinating & often heartwarming or humorous depictions of the unique lives & loves of birds. On Rare Birds is a visually stunning volume illustrated by author Anita Albus`s own superb artwork & by images ranging over five centuries. It will delight anyone who loves birds, laments the depletion of their populations by human hands, & cares about the survival of those species that still stand a chance. With knowledge, devotion, & a true artist`s eye, Albus explains in graceful, precise prose why the decline of these bird species is a great loss both to the natural world &, unavoidably, to culture. With each species lost, a world is lost to human understanding-to our arts, our mythology, & our environment.
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” This little body of thought, that lies before me in the shape of a book, has existed thousands of years, nor since the invention of the press can anything short of an universal convulsion of nature abolish it” On Reading, Writing & Living with Books is part of ` Found on the Shelves`, published with The London Library. The books in this series have been chosen to give a fascinating insight into the treasures that can be found while browsing in The London Library. Now celebrating its 175th anniversary, with over 17 miles of shelving & more than a million books, The London Library has become an unrivalled archive of the modes, manners & thoughts of each generation which has helped to form it. ...

In this history of roads & what they have meant to the people who have driven them, one of Britain`s favourite cultural historians reveals how a relatively simple road system turned into a maze-like pattern of roundabouts, flyovers, & spaghetti junctions. Using a unique blend of travel writing, anthropology, history & social observation, he explores how Britain`s roads have their roots in unexpected places, from Napoleon`s role in the numbering system to the surprising origin of sat-nav. Full of quirky nuggets of history, such as the day trips organised to see the construction of the M1 & the 2.5m Mills & Boons used to build the M6 Toll Road, On Roads also celebrates innovators whose work we take for granted, such as the designers of the road sign system. On subjects ranging from speed limits to driving on the left, & the `non-places where we stop to the unwritten laws of traffic jams, these hidden stories have never been told together, until now. ...