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. ...

Discover 1, 000 cool stickers featuring awesome safari animals, like lions, elephants, giraffes, cheetahs, & more. You`ll also find skill-building puzzles & mazes, spelling & pattern games, drawing activities, photos, facts, & other activities that will keep you entertained (and learning) for hours on end. National Geographic Kids Sticker Activity Books are loaded with fun. ...

Peter Hopkirk’s “ On Secret Service East of Constantinople” tells the history, in thrilling style, of the least-remembered front of the First World War, the German-Turkish attempt to weaken the British & Russian empires in Central Asia & India. Here, told in epic detail & for the first time, is the true story behind John Buchan’s classic wartime thriller “ Greenmantle”, recounted through the adventures & misadventures of the secret agents & others who took part in it. It is an ominously topical tale today in view of the continuing turmoil in the volatile region where the “ Great Game” has never really ceased. Peter Hopkirk is a veteran journalist & is widely recognized as an authority on the complex history of Central Asia. This is one of several books he has written on the region. ...

Why do we keep sheep? Alex Linden ruminates as he watches his sheep ruminating. Naive & inexperienced, he has ditched his doctoral studies in order to move to a fully working farm in the country with his family, where he is tasked with the responsibility of caring for a herd of sheep. Linden records his new life in his diary, as he tries to manage life on the farm, the ever-escaping sheep & the trials & tribulations that come with being a shepherd
- shearing, lambing & confronting the slaughterhouse. As time passes & he gradually settles into the rhythm of shepherding, his naivete fades away & is replaced with stark realisations about what is now his everyday life. He finds himself applying his experiences of animal husbandry to consider our place
- as individuals & as a collective organism
- in the universe. Is he really the one caring for the sheep, or are they the ones keeping him? Linden finds both companionship in his flock & a sound, if complex, moral framework for examining the lives we lead. The result is a sensitive & entertaining meditation on the small wonders in our world. Translated by Frank Perry.


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Longlisted for the 2015 Thwaites Wainwright Prize
- Silbury Hill in Wiltshire has inspired & perplexed people for generations.
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Stalin was the unchallenged dictator of the Soviet Union for so long that most historians have dismissed the officials surrounding him as mere yes-men & political window dressing. On Stalin`s Team overturns this view, revealing that behind Stalin was a group of loyal men who formed a remarkably effective team with him from the late 1920s until his death in 1953. Drawing on extensive original research, Sheila Fitzpatrick provides the first in-depth account of this inner circle & their families, vividly describing how these dedicated comrades-in-arms not only worked closely with Stalin, whom they both feared & admired, but also constituted his social circle. Readers meet the wily security chief Beria, whom the rest of the team quickly had executed following Stalin`s death; Stalin`s number-two man, Molotov, who continued on the team even after his wife was arrested & exiled; the charismatic Ordzhonikidze, who ran the country`s industry with entrepreneurial flair; Andreev, who traveled to provincial purges while listening to Beethoven on a portable gramophone; & Khrushchev, who finally disbanded the team four years after Stalin`s death. Among the book`s surprising findings are that Stalin almost always worked with the team on important issues & that after his death the team managed a brilliant transition to a reforming collective leadership. Taking readers from the cataclysms of the Great Purges & World War II to the paranoia of Stalin`s final years, On Stalin`s Team paints an entirely new picture of Stalin within his milieu--one that transforms our understanding of how the Soviet Union was ruled during much of its existence. ...