Twenty-two-year-old Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. But whereas Miu is glamorous & successful, Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat & heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel. Surprised that she might, after all, be a lesbian, Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire & should she ever tell Miu how she feels for her. rustrated in his own love for Sumire, K consoles himself by having an affair with the mother of one of his pupils. Then a desperate Miu calls from a small Greek island & asks for his help, & he discovers something very strange has happened to Sumire. ...

When Sidney Wignall set off on a climbing expedition to the Himalayas in the 1950s, he little imagined he would become embroiled in an extraordinary, life-threatening adventure that would involve both Indian & Chinese governments at the highest level. In 1955, the Indian Nehru Government was desperate to keep on good terms with the new communist China & so ignored mounting evidence of a Chinese military build-up in Tibet. As Indian concerns grew, a number of Indian army officers devised a plan for an investigative climbing expedition to cross the frontier into Tibet. The risks were enormous. The brutal methods of the Chinese Government were well known & Tibet had only recently been conquered. Sidney Wignall agreed to help them. Betrayed by one of the many spies operating on the frontier, his group was captured, interned in appalling conditions, & interrogated by some of the most senior Chinese officers in Tibet. All the time, Sidney Wignall watched & noted. Finally, as international pressure grew, his group was released to walk through Nepal back to India. But the Chinese had no intention that they should get back alive. The group was abandoned at the foot of one of the highest passes in the Himalayas, a pass never before climbed in winter. Starving, exhausted, physically broken, their journey back in atrocious conditions is one of mountaineering's great epics. ...

The Number One Russian bestseller When most people think of the word spy, they imagine gadgets
- laser pens & exploding cigarette
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A pundit (or pandit) is a Hindu Brahmin who has memorised a substantial portion of the Hindu scriptures. In the second half of the nineteenth century, however, the term was used to denote native surveyors, who explored regions to the north of India for the British Raj. The British initially sent army officers to map these countries, but the task was fraught with danger. In the 1860s, Captain Thomas Montgomerie realised that the solution was to train natives from Indian border states to be surveyors, & have them explore the region covertly. These men, known as pundits, were disguised as traders or lamas (holy men). This is the first book devoted to these servants of the Raj who managed to map the Himalayas, Tibet & surrounding areas with remarkable precision, thereby helping the British to consolidate their rule in the Indian sub-continent. ...

Whales are among the largest, most intelligent, deepest diving species to have ever lived on our planet. We have hunted them for thousands of years & scratched their icons into our mythologies. They simultaneously fill us with waves of terror, awe & affection
- yet we know hardly anything about them. Whales tend to only enter our awareness when they die, struck by a ship or stranded in the surf. They evolved from l&-roaming, dog-like creatures into animals that move like fish, breathe like us, can grow to 300, 000 pounds, live 200 years & roam entire ocean basins. Yet despite centuries of observing whales, we know little about their evolutionary past. In this remarkable new book, the Smithsonian`s star palaeontologist Nick Pyenson takes us to the ends of the earth & to the cutting edge of whale research as he searches for the answers to some of our biggest questions about these graceful giants. His rich storytelling takes us deep inside the Smithsonian`s unparalleled fossil collection, to frigid Antarctic waters, & to the arid desert of Chile, where scientists race against time to document the largest fossil whalebone site on earth. Spying on Whales is an illuminating story of scientific discovery that brings readers closer to the most enigmatic & beloved animals of all time.
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”I cannot think of a better biography of a spy chief”. (Richard Davenport-Hines, The Spectator). The extraordinary story of the most highly decorated British spymaster of the Cold War, Sir Maurice Oldfield. Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (commonly known as the SIS or MI6), he was the first Chief to be named & pictured in the press, & often alleged by them to be the model for the screen versions of both Ian Fleming`s M & John Le Carre`s George Smiley. This major study of Oldfield`s life portrays one of the UK`s most important & complex spies of the Cold War era. He was the first Chief of MI6 that hadn`t come from an upper-class background or studied at Eton or Oxbridge. Rather, he was a farmer`s son from a provincial grammar school who found himself accidentally plunged into the world of espionage by the outbreak of the Second World War. Oldfield was our man in Washington at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis & the assassination of JFK, & was largely responsible for keeping Britain out of the Vietnam War. This is the fascinating life story of Maurice Oldfield, written by his nephew Martin Pearce, who remembers asking his uncle what he did for a job.` Oh it`s quite boring really, dear boy. I`m a kind of security guard at embassies, ` was the reply... ...

We are able to source a wide range flags in many sizes, sewn or printed on 100% Ministry Of Defence Standard Woven & Knitted Polyester. Flags are supplied with rope & toggle. If you would like more information, have a custom size request or cannot find a desired product, please email us at maritime@stanfords.co.uk. We will be glad to help! ...

We are able to source a wide range flags in many sizes, sewn or printed on 100% Ministry Of Defence Standard Woven & Knitted Polyester. Flags are supplied with rope & toggle. If you would like more information, have a custom size request or cannot find a desired product, please email us at maritime@stanfords.co.uk. We will be glad to help! ...

Despite the British being early abolitionists, a significant slave trade remained down the east coast of Africa through the mid-1800s. What further undermined the British Empire was that many of the vessels involved in the trade were themselves British ships. The Royal Navy`s response was to dispatch a squadron to patrol Africa`s coast. Following what began as a simple policing action, this is the story of the four Royal Naval officers who witnessed how rampant the slave trade remained & made it their personal mission to end it. When the disruption of the trade ships started to step on the toes of the wealthy merchant class, the campaign was cancelled. However, in the end a coalition of naval officers & abolitionists forced the British government`s hand into eradicating the slave trade entirely. Squadron grew from historian John Broich`s passion to hunt down first-hand accounts of this untold story. Through research from archives throughout the UK, Broich tells a tale of defiance in the face of political corruption, while delivering thrills in the tradition of high-seas heroism. If it weren`t a true story, Squadron would be right at home alongside Patrick O` Brian`s Master & Commander series. ...

There's changing your outlook, & then there's seeing the world in a whole new way. The Square Earth globe is a study in whimsy, not to mention contradiction: after all, a globe is defined as a spherical object, while a cube is anything but. But that's part of the fun
- this globe is all about suspension of disbelief. Detach it from its stand & hold it in your hands. Be reminded that no matter how much we know, the world is still full of mystery.
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