It is with great concern that I must still acquaint your Lordships of the daily complaints I receive of piracies & robberies committed in these parts, insomuch that there is hardly one ship or vessel, coming in or going out of this island that is not plundered.` (Sir Nicholas Lawes, Governor of Jamaica, June 1718) Sir Nicholas Lawes was writing to the British Government during the early 18th century, a time that later became known as the `golden age of piracy`. In the following two centuries fictional works about pirates became increasingly popular, colouring the public perception of this terror of the seas into a romantic, swashbuckling anti-hero who forced prisoners to walk the plank & sought buried treasure where X marked the spot. & yet the reality was far more intriguing & terrible. Ruthless fighters, often horrifically violent, pirates were also outstanding sailors, cunning planners & democratic equal opportunists. Their articles, signed by all crew members (sometimes forcibly), shared the spoils fairly & demanded consideration to each other. Their treatment of prisoners, however, was another matter. In ` The Pirates Pocket-Book`, the true savage story of the pirates comes to light through extracts taken from contemporary books, documents, news articles, witness accounts, & trial reports. From diaries, logbooks, letters & depositions comes the full fascinating take of a pirate`s life & death. The truth about wooden legs, parrots & the `jolly rodger`, treasure maps, pirate attacks & infamous trials, is told through the vivid accounts of those who encountered the pirates personally, as victims, crew members or arresting officers. ...

It's come to my attention that the old girl's a little bit past her best. & I can hardly maintain my reputation as a terror of the high seas with bits falling off the boat all the time, can I? The Pirate Captain is in trouble. Eager to appease his crew with a boat that has a functioning mast, fewer holes & cannons that actually fire, he splashes out on the fancy new Lovely Emma, spending six thousand doubloons he doesn't have. Finding themselves in debt to the beautiful but deadly Cutlass Liz
- or the Butcher of Barbados, as she's otherwise known
- the pirates need to raise some money fast. In a desperate race against time, our heroes embark on an adventure that will take them from the shores of Nantucket to the bright lights of Las Vegas, to the ends of the earth in search of a mythical white whale, & even, perhaps, into the dark depths of madness. But hopefully they'll be home in time for tea.

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` Read him at your peril, avoid him at your loss` Sunday Times Captain Lannec has finally managed to buy his own ship with the financial help of his in-laws, the Pitards
- & they`ve never let him forget it. When his temperamental wife Mathilde insists on coming along on the ship`s first voyage, Lannec becomes increasingly unnerved by her presence, especially when he receives an anonymous note saying he won`t make it back to port. As they hit a storm in the Atlantic, jealousy, spite, snobbery & suspicion are churned up in the boat`s stiflingly close quarters... First published in 1935, The Pitards was one of the first novels Simenon wrote when he shelved his famous Maigret series in order to strike out in a new direction & make a name for himself as a literary writer rather than a creator of genre fiction. This gripping evocation of life at sea revolves around class & the tense unravelling of relationships, powerful themes that Simenon would return to throughout his writing career.
...

In 1934, a group of Ashington miners & a dental mechanic hired a professor from Newcastle University to teach an Art Appreciation evening class. Unable to understand each other, they embarked on one of the most unusual experiments in British art as the pitmen learned to become painters. Within a few years the most avant-garde artists became their friends, their work was taken for prestigious collections & they were celebrated throughout the British art world; but every day they worked, as before, down the mine. ” The Pitmen Painters” premiered at Live Theatre, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in September 2007, before transferring to the National Theatre in 2008. ...

” The Pity of It All” is a passionate & poignant history of German Jews, tracing the journey of a people & their culture from the mid eighteenth century to the eve of the Third Reich. As it is usually told, the story of the Jews in Germany starts at the end, overshadowed by their tragic demise in Hitler`s Reich. Now, in this important work of historical restoration, the acclaimed historian & social critic Amos Elon takes us back to the beginning, chronicling a 150-year period of achievement & integration that at its peak produced a golden age second only to the Renaissance. ...

In 2001, Rory Stewart set off from Herat to walk to Kabul via the mountains of Ghor in central Afghanistan. Caught between hostile nations, warring factions & competing ideologies, at the time, Afghanistan was in turmoil following the US invasion. Travelling entirely on foot & following the inaccessible, mountainous route once taken by the Mohgul Emperor, Babur the Great, Stewart was nearly defeated by the extreme, hostile conditions. Only due to the help of an unexpected companion & the generosity of the people he met on the way, did he survive to report back with unique insight on a region closed to the world by twenty-four years of war. This is literary travel writing, but with a greater element of adventure & danger. It is an account of what it is like to travel painfully & slowly on foot in an alien & hostile landscape. Stewart`s moving, sparsely poetic account of his walk across Afghanistan has been immediately hailed as a classic. The Places In Between won the Royal Society of Literature Oondatje Award & the Spirit of Scotland Award, & was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize & the Scottish Book of the Year Prize. ...

The Plagiarist in the Kitchen is an anti-cookbook. Best known as a provocative novelist, journalist & film-maker, Jonathan Meades has also been called `the best amateur chef in the world` by Marco Pierre White. His contention here is that anyone who claims to have invented a dish is delusional, dishonestly contributing to the myth of culinary originality. Meades delivers a polemical but highly usable collection of 125 of his favourite recipes, each one an example of the fine art of culinary plagiarism. These are dishes & methods he has hijacked, adapted, enhanced upon & made his own. Without assuming any special knowledge or skill, the book is full of excellent advice. He tells us why the British never got the hang of garlic. That a purist would never dream of putting cheese in a Gratin Dauphinois. That cooking brains in brown butter cannot be enhanced upon. & why
- despite the advice of Martin Scorsese`s mother
- he insists on frying his meatballs. Adorned with his own abstract monochrome images (none of which `illustrate` the stolen recipes they accompany), The Plagiarist in the Kitchen is a stylish object, both useful & instructive. In a world dominated by health fads, food vloggers & over-priced kitchen gadgets, it is timely reminder that, when it comes to food, it`s almost always better to borrow than to invent.

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The Plague is Albert Camus` world-renowned fable of fear & courage. The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift & horrifying death. Fear, isolation & claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, & a few, like Dr Rieux, resist the terror. An immediate triumph when it was published in 1947, The Plague is in part an allegory of France`s suffering under the Nazi occupation, & a story of bravery & determination against the precariousness of human existence. ”A matchless fable of fear, courage & cowardice”. (Independent). ” Magnificent”. (The Times). Albert Camus was born in Algeria in 1913. He studied philosophy in Algiers & then worked in Paris as a journalist. He was one of the intellectual leaders of the Resistance movement &, after the War, established his international reputation as a writer. His books include The Plague, The Just & The Fall, & he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. Camus was killed in a road accident in 1960. ...

Twenty years ago, the search for planets outside the Solar System was a job restricted to science-fiction writers. Now it`s one of the fastest-growing fields in astronomy with thousands of exoplanets discovered to date, & the number is rising fast. These new-found worlds are more alien than anything in fiction. Planets larger than Jupiter with years lasting a week; others with two suns lighting their skies, or with no sun at all. Planets with diamond mantles supporting oceans of tar; possible Earth-sized worlds with split hemispheres of perpetual day & night; waterworlds drowning under global oceans & volcanic lava planets awash with seas of magma. The discovery of this diversity is just the beginning. There is a whole galaxy of possibilities. The Planet Factory tells the story of these exoplanets. Each planetary system is different, but in the beginning most if not all young stars are circled by clouds of dust, specks that come together in a violent building project that can form colossal worlds hundreds of times the size of the Earth. The changing orbits of young planets risk dooming any life evolving on neighbouring worlds or, alternatively, can deliver the key ingredients needed to seed its beginnings. Planet formation is one of the greatest construction schemes in the Universe, & it occurred around nearly every star you see. Each results in an alien landscape, but is it possible that one of these could be like our own home world? ...

In the last 40 years the planets have been revealed in their full glory, unmasked by a fleet of satellites & interplanetary probes. & the closer we look, the more astonishing they are: Mars` deserts were once home to rivers & oceans; on Jupiter wind speeds reach 10, 000 kph (6, 000 mph) & storms rage for centuries; Saturn is surrounded by a swarm of 34 moons; & diamonds are believed to rain from Neptune`s blue skies. Moving out from the Sun, every planet & moon is visited in a journey that takes us a full light year into space, out to the fringes of the solar system where the Sun is no longer the brightest star in the sky. With 200 spectacular images, The Planets follows the tracks of robotic rovers over Mars, plunges through Titan`s atmosphere on the back of the Hugyens probe, smashes into a comet with Deep Impact, & voyages to the edge of our solar system to discover the frozen planets that lurk beyond the orbit of Pluto. ...