`A beautiful book; wise & sharp-eared as its subject`
- Robert Macfarlane` Her softness took my breath away. Deadly beauty. She
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Plop, the Baby Barn Owl, is like every Barn Owl there ever was, except for one thing
- he is afraid of the dark. ” Dark is nasty”
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The subject of myth & superstition, the owl is instantly distinguished by its disconcerting stare & haunting cry. It is a mysterious & fearsome predator, a flawless hunter in the darkest of nights. It stakes out its territory on a perch high above & then, floating on silent wings, swoops down to snatch its unsuspecting prey. But with its wise face & downy plumage, the owl is also among nature`s most photogenic & pleasing creatures. In OWLS 2013, world-renowned nature photographers capture every aspect of this splendid bird in candid & remarkable images. Descriptive captions further reveal the mysterious lives of owls. ...

Owls Do Cry is the story of the Withers family: Francie, soon to leave school to start work at the woollen mills; Toby, whose days are marred by the velvet cloak of epilepsy; Chicks, the baby of the family; & Daphne, whose rich, poetic imagination condemns her to a life in institutions. ` Janet Frame`s first full-length work of fiction, Owls Do Cry, is an exhilarating & dazzling prelude to her long & successful career. She was to write in several modes, publishing poems, short stories, fables & volumes of autobiography, as well as other novels of varied degrees of formal complexity, but Owls Do Cry remains unique in her oeuvre. It has the freshness & fierceness of a mingled cry of joy & pain. Its evocation of childhood recalls Blake`s Songs of Innocence & of Experience, as well as the otherworldly Shakespearean lyric of her title & epigraph, but her handling of her dark material is wholly original` Margaret Drabble ...

In this beautiful follow-up to Our Garden Birds, Our Songbirds & Our Woodland Birds, street artist Matt Sewell captures the world`s most evocative bird: the owl. In his much-loved pop-art watercolours & accompanied with his whimsical descriptions, Matt Sewell expresses the individual characters of owls as never before. From tiny Elf Owls to huge Eagle Owls, from the mysterious creatures of the night to an impossibly fluffy baby owl, they are undoubtedly one of the world`s most intriguing feathered friends. These wise, magical birds are otherworldly in their striking colours & stature, & it`s not just birdwatchers who are obsessed. With 50 h&-selected, h&-painted owls, this is a delightful gift which appeals to owl lovers, bird-watching enthusiasts, children, adults & art & design fans alike. ...

Map No. 164, Oxford, in the Ordnance Survey Landranger series at 1:50, 000 including Bicester, Chipping Norton, Charlbury, Witney, Woodstock, Kidlington, Abingdon, Didcot, Benson, Appleford, Drayton, Grove, Goosey, Dorchester, Burcot, Marcham, Chalgrove, Toot Baldon, Tetsworth, Fyfield, Shellingford, Littleworth, Duxford, Wootton, Cumnor, Wytham, Garsington, Horspath, Tiddington, Warminghall, Horton-cum-Studley, Marston, Eynsham, Stanton Harcourt, Aston, Bampton, North Leigh, Brize Norton, Leafield, Bladon, Yarnton, Islip, Brill, Murcott, Ludgershall, Wendlebury, Charndon, Twyford, Fringford, Somerton, Upper Hayford, Standford St. Martin, Tackley, Great Tew, Spelsbury & Enstone, with the Vale of White Horse & the Thames Path including the E2 European long-distance path. Edition D2; Publication Date: June 2011 This title is also available on our website in a waterproof & tear-resistant version. Maps in this series are only published folded. Stanfords can also print flat versions of Ordnance Survey maps through the OS Select system, centring the map on a location of your choice & with a picture provided by you on the cover. For more information please click on the link at the bottom of this description. About Ordnance Survey ...

` Few cities, ` Jan Morris observes, `have been much more loved, loathed, & celebrated.` This book has become a classic account of the character, history, mores, buildings, climate, & people of one of Britain`s most fascinating cities. `A book of outstanding excellence, with a sweep of knowledge & a distinction of style such as I have never before encountered in a work of this sort.. . Brilliant alike in observation & imagination.. .brings the very stones of Oxford to life` Sunday Telegraph. ...

No city preserves the memory & signature of so many men. The past & the dead have here as it were, a corporate life... Edward Thomas is now best known for the poetry he wrote between 1914 & his untimely death at Arras in 1917. But during his lifetime his reputation was based on the extraordinary body of travel writing, reviews, & critical books he produced against intense deadline pressures in order to feed his growing family. His travel books, most notably Oxford & The South Country have had an enduring appeal for all lovers the English countryside. Through these & his later poems, Thomas has come to be regarded as the quintessential English writer. & yet he was Welsh, observing & loving England as a semi-outsider. Oxford, published three years after he completed his degree, was Thomas's first major commission. In it, he gives an evocative account of Oxford's architecture, history, & customs, drawing on personal memories of undergraduate life at Lincoln College. His prose was written to accompany the paintings of Fulleylove, who shared his interest in juxtaposing Oxford's grandeur with the ordinary details of domestic life. Between them, the artist & the writer catch the beauty of this city within the heart at a pivotal moment in pre-war history, & give it to us as though it could last forever in that form. In a Critical Introduction, Lucy Newlyn examines the importance of Oxford as a historical record. But she also argues that it is a piece of vivid experimental prose, in which much of Thomas's later greatness is anticipated. Her analysis of his prose style shows how Thomas tries out the voices of the past, defining his own particular brand of Modernism by creating a kind of bricolage through allusion & imitation. Running steadily beneath the text's elaborate ventriloquism is the quiet ruminative voice of the authentic Thomas, edging ever closer to the simple speech rhythms of his lyric poems. This is the first critical edition of Oxford, giving long overdue credit to the book as an early masterpiece in the Thomas oeuvre. ...

Oxford started as an Anglo-Saxon border outpost, with a bridge replacing the `oxen ford` from which it takes its name. It became a centre for trade & religion & developed one of the oldest universities in Europe from the late twelfth century. Since the Middle Ages its individual colleges have gone on building--chapels, halls, accommodation, libraries--in an extraordinary variety of styles from Gothic to Brutalist. Oxford also has many churches, a Covered Market, an extraordinary museum of Natural History in soaring iron, glass & stone, & a flamboyant neo-Jacobean Town Hall. In such a place, suggested W.B. Yeats, `one almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking`. Nevertheless, Oxford has become a busy modern city. For much of the twentieth century the car industry, established in Cowley by William Morris (Lord Nuffield), dominated local life. Today there are cinemas, theatres, innumerable restaurants, shopping centres, an ice-rink, business & technology centres, close links to London by bus & train. Amidst the expanding city Oxford University retains its academic excellence, its student exuberance & its physical beauty. And it has been joined by a notably successful second university, Oxford Brookes. Martin Garrett discusses the literature Oxford has generated: from Chaucer to Lewis Carroll, Wilde, Evelyn Waugh, Barbara Pym, Tolkien & C.S. Lewis & Iris Murdoch. There are also chapters on architecture, on religion, on theatre, film & art--including Oxford`s great museum of art & history the Ashmolean--and on leisure pursuits (punting & rowing, gardens, student pranks, city fairs & carnival). A chapter on commerce focuses on Victorian shops, Cornmarket & the Morris Motor Works, while a brief social history

Includes:: the former Oxford Castle & a gallery of dons as rulers--visionary or ignorant, charismatic or dull. Garrett looks at social change, especially the transformation in the position of Oxford women, & considers the city`s darker side of crime. A final chapter explores its rich surroundings: the countryside where Matthew Arnold`s `black-winged swallows haunt the glittering Thames`, the baroque grandeur of Blenheim Palace, the ancient windswept Ridgeway & White Horse.

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This is a new edition in the AA's ground-breaking series of street atlases. It is fully revised & updated for 2007. Street-by-Street Oxford Midi has been fully updated with a stylish new cover design, in a handy glovebox size. The maps clearly show AA recommended restaurants, pubs, hotels, one-way streets & car parks. Featuring a clever use of colour to ensure they can be read under street lighting, these maps are all you need to keep you on the move. ...