Giles Foden’s first novel The Last King of Scotland is told from the point of view of Nicholas Garrigan, a young Scottish doctor, who comes to Uganda when he accepts a position with the Ministry of Health. His arrival in Kampala, the capital city, coincides with Idi Amin’s coup overthrowing President Obote. After a few days he moves out to the bush to begin his assignment but is then called back when Amin is involved in a freak accident featuring his sports car & a cow. Within a few months Garrigan becomes the president’s personal physician & quickly descends into a position where he is squeezed between his duty to his patient & his own government’s attempts to have him help them control Amin. Amin’s character is not a simple one of a monster but is actually often appealing. Garrigan is cast as an average man, like us, who falls under Amin’s spell & suffers a moral slide from the little compromises he makes
- it could happen to nearly anybody. Along the way the reader is treated to a stirring portrait of Africa’s natural, political & social complexity. An amazing story of tropical corruption & an extraordinarily well researched account of Uganda & one of Africa`s most notorious leaders.
...

ENGLAND IS BORN. BBC2`s major TV series THE LAST KINGDOM is based on Bernard Cornwell`s bestselling novels on the making of England & the fate of his great hero, Uhtred of Bebbanburg. The Last Kingdom is the first book in the series. Season 2 of the epic TV series premiers this March. BORN SAXON. RAISED VIKING. IS UHTRED THE HERO THE LAST KINGDOM NEEDS? In a land torn apart by conflict, an orphan boy has come of age. Raised by the Vikings, deadly enemies of his own Saxon people, Uhtred is a fierce & skilled warrior who kneels to no-one. Alfred
- Saxon, king, man of god
- fights to hold the throne of the only land still resisting the pagan northerners. Uhtred & Alfred`s fates are tangled, saoked in blood & blackened b the flames of war. Together they will change history...

...

The story opens on the day that the Western Roman Empire collapses finally in 470AD, as the Last Emperor of Rome is encamped protected by the Nova Invicta Legion. All is lost in the space of a few minutes as a horde of Barbarians sweep through the camp in the fog, kill the Imperial family & take the young Emperor captive. The Roman Empire is in ruins.. . But all is not lost. From the dust of battlefields emerges a small team of invincible warriors
- The Last Legion. Their task is to rescue the Emperor & his enigmatic tutor & to try & resurrect the glory of Rome. All their strength of character & bravery come into play as they guide the last Caesar in a dramatic journey of escape through a devastated Italy & Northern Europe to their ultimate destinies in the land of the Britons...and the beginning of a new legend.
...

Martine is looking forward to the holidays & riding Jemmy, her white giraffe, until an accident sends her & Ben on a journey to the Matobo Hills wilderness in Zimbabwe. It is a lawless l&, where nothing is as it seems. When they uncover a plot in which the fate of a magnificent leopard & the lost treasure of an African King are mysteriously linked, their friendship faces its greatest test. Far from home & the help of Grace & Tendai, & with Gwyn Thomas languishing, under false accusations, in jail, Martine & Ben must use every survival skill they possess. They`ll come face to face with Griffin, Mercy, Mr Ratcliffe (known as Rat), Magnus the hornbill, & a witch doctor, not to mention Khan, the last leopard. They must decide who their friends are, & who are enemies, as they race against time to save the world`s rarest leopard & each other. This third African adventure is written with all the zest & skill that have endeared so many readers to THE WHITE GIRAFFE & DOLPHIN SONG. ...

David Gilmour`s biography of Giuseppe di Lampedusa unearths the life story of the creator of ” The Leopard”, one of the great novels of the twentieth century. A book whose imagery, once tasted, haunts the reader forever. ” The Leopard” describes the golden era of the nineteenth-century Sicily in all its sensual, fading, aristocratic glory. But beneath the surface lurk Sicily`s millenial contagions
- corruption, brutality & inequality. Who wrote this masterpiece, this work of art? the answer is as unlikely as one might hope. This is a fascinating meditation on what it is that makes a writer.
...

Nick Ostler`s The Last Lingua Franca looks at the rise & fall of world languages, prompting the quesiton ”in the twenty-first century, can we really take the dominance of English for granted?”. In their time, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit & Persian have each been world languages, sweeping the globe for centuries at a time. & yet they have all been displaced, just as Nicholas Ostler predicts English will be. What forces drive these linguistic currents? What characteristics do lingua francas share? & most importantly, how do they lose their power? In this revelatory book, Ostler explores the rise of a linguistic diversity that we could never before have imagined. ...

In this provocative & persuasive new book, Nicholas Ostler challenges our assumption that English will continue to dominate as the global lingua franca. Drawing on his encyclopaedic knowledge of world languages & their history, Ostler reveals that just as past great languages like Latin & Sanskrit have died out, so English will follow. The influence of English now is hard to exaggerate
- it is the world's preferred medium for business, science & entertainment, & is claimed to be a basic educational tool like mathematics or computing. So is it here to stay? For the last four centuries, the dominant world power has been English-speaking, but the global balance of power is shifting. & in countries like Brazil, Russia & China, English plays no part in the national tradition. Although globalization has helped the rise of English, trade, migration, economic development & technological innovation are now changing the way we access & use language. Ostler shows how we are headed towards a much more multilingual & diverse future. & as English retreats, no single language will take its place. We can embrace this future but first we need to accept it: the last competitive advantage of native English-speakers will soon be consigned to history.
...

Iain Sinclair has been documenting the peculiar magic of the river-city that absorbs & obsesses him for most of his adult life. In The Last London, he strikes out on a series of solitary walks & collaborative expeditions to make a final reckoning with a capital stretched beyond recognition. Here is a mesmerising record of secret scholars & whispering ghosts. Of disturbing encounters. Night hospitals. Pits that become cameras. Mole Man labyrinths. & privileged swimming pools, up in clouds, patrolled by surveillance helicopters. Where now are the myths, the ultimate fictions of a many times revised city? Travelling from the pinnacle of the Shard to the outer limits of the London Overground system at Croydon & Barking, from the Thames Estuary to the future ruins of Olympicopolis, Sinclair reflects on where London begins & where it ends. A memoir, a critique, a love letter, The Last London is a delirious conclusion to a truly epic project. ...

A New Statesman Book of the Year London. A city apart. Inimitable. Or so it once seemed. Spiralling from the outer limits of the Overground to the pinnacle of the Shard, Iain Sinclair encounters a metropolis stretched beyond recognition. The vestiges of secret tunnels, the ghosts of saints & lost poets lie buried by developments, the cycling revolution & Brexit. An electrifying final odyssey, The Last London is an unforgettable vision of the Big Smoke before it disappears into the air of memory. ...

THE NEW YORK TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER A hero can`t always be good... Joe Rickman, head of clandestine operations in the Middle East, has been kidnapped, & with him top secret CIA information that could prove disastrous in the wrong hands. Mitch Rapp must find Rickman at all costs. But something doesn`t add up & he soon suspects something even more sinister is afoot. With elements inside his own government working against him, Rapp will have to make to make a tough call between playing the hero & playing nice. Or will he be stopped dead before he can succeed?AMERICAN ASSASSIN, book one in the series, is soon to be a MAJOR MOTION PICTURE starring Dylan O` Brien (Maze Runner), Taylor Kitsch (True Detective) & Michael Keaton. Praise for the Mitch Rapp series ` Sizzles with inside information & CIA secrets` Dan Brown `A cracking, uncompromising yarn that literally takes no prisoners` The Times ` Vince Flynn clearly has one eye on Lee Child`s action thriller throne with this twist-laden story... instantly gripping` Shortlist ` Action-packed, in-your-face, adrenalin-pumped super-hero macho escapist fiction that does exactly what it says on the label` Irish Independent ` Mitch Rapp is a great character who always leaves the bad guys either very sorry for themselves or very dead` Guardian ...