Argues that it was cooking that caused the transformation of our ancestors from apelike beings to Homo erectus. This title focuses on the idea: the habit of eating cooked rather than raw food permitted the digestive tract to shrink & the human brain to grow, helped structure human society, & created the male-female division of labour. ...

Details:
This sparkling Christmas read

Includes:: Local Hero & A Will & a Way.

Local





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Just how badly do you want to find paradise? When Tom Finn is almost jailed for confronting two burglars in his own home, this taxi driver takes his young family to live on the tropical island of Phuket, Thail&. Phuket is all the Finn family dreamed of ? a tropical paradise where the children swim with elephants, the gibbons sing love songs in the jungle, the Andaman Sea is like turquoise glass & this young family is free to grow. But both man-made disaster & the unleashed forces of nature shatter this tropical idyll for Tom Finn's family. ...

The eagerly-awaited follow-up to her bestselling book Sew!, Cath Kidston (R) Sewing Book is guaranteed to delight fans & excite sewing enthusiasts of every level with over 30 exclusive new projects
- bags, cushions, baby gifts, bathroom tidies & many more ideas
- in a mix of vintage & modern Cath Kidston prints.

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English medieval cathedrals are a living window into the past & are one of the many wonders of the world. But who made them & why? Historian Jon Cannon explores these creations as monuments to history created by a rich brew of rituals, beliefs, personalities & politics. ...

Story of the investigation & trial of the infamous Nevin murder, told by the Garda superintendent in charge of the case, as well as details of his efforts to publicise reports on Judge Donnacha OBuachalla, investigated for his preferential treatment of Catherine Nevin. The trial & conviction of Catherine Nevin for her role the murder of her husband Tom monopolised the attention of the country for weeks. It was the main topic of conversations in pubs, homes & workplaces as newspapers daily carried new & salacious details of the Black Widows scheming, as well as images of her glamorous & expansive wardrobe, on their front pages. In the days before murders became a daily occurrence in Irel&, the allegations of contract killers, extra-marital affairs, fraud & involvement with Republican organisations seemed better suited to the big screen than a small town pub. Pat Flynn led the investigation against Catherine, a woman whom he had encountered several times before these events unfolded. He had previously witnessed her fabricate accusations of sexual abuse against his garda colleagues while she continued to enthral his superior officers & Judge OBuachalla. He describes how holes in her version of the events on the night of the murder were found, along with evidence of how she had been plotting for years to have her husband killed. Flynn also reported Judge O Buachalla for granting Catherine the license for the pub in her sole name through irregular channels, after she had been charged with murder & rumours of an affair between them had become rife. Although OBuachalla was discussed in the D?il & a judicial investigation ordered, the results were never publicised, despite promises to the contrary from the then Minister for Justice, & the judge continued to sit in court. For a man who spent his working life enforcing the law, this could not be allowed to pass without at least an official explanation. Show More Show Less ...

Here is history with everything: romance, violence, eroticism, drama, spectacular personalities in gorgeous settings & on an international stage, God & original research.. A serious & irresistible book.' Duncan Fallowell
- Daily Express. In 1501 a fifteen-year-old Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon, rode out from the magnificent Alhambra Palace in Granada. Ahead lay a journey to distant Engl&, marriage to the Prince of Wales
- & eventually a crucial place in English history, as the first wife of Henry VIII. Bold at war, loved by the people & obstinate under attack, Catherine's battle against divorce & Anne Boleyn changed the life of England forever. Giles Tremlett's new biography is the first in more than four decades dedicated to this tenacious woman & it draws on fresh material from Spanish archives to trace the dramatic events of her life through Catherine's own eyes.

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Married at seventeen to the grandson of a confirmed lunatic & widowed at twenty, Catherine Parr chose a Yorkshire lord twice her age as her second husb&. Caught up in the turbulent terrors of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, she was captured by northern rebels, held hostage & suffered violence at their hands. ...

The daughter of an impoverished aristocrat, Catherine was married aged 16 to Grand Duke Peter, heir to the throne of all the Russias, a feckless teenager with a weakness for drink. Catherine was only able to give him an heir by passing off her lover's son as his own. In 1762, Catherine rode out of St Petersburg at the head of an army to arrest her husb&. Three months later she became sole empress of the largest empire on earth. She was 33 years old. She ruled Russia as a benevolent autocrat for 34 years, fighting the Turks abroad & rebellion at home, & shepherding her people through the upheavals of the French Revolution. She took on many lovers but gave her heart to General Potemkin, the foremost statesman of her time. She died in 1796 aged 67, revered by her people as 'our mother', praised by Voltaire as a philosopher, reviled by her enemies as the Messalina of the North & remembered in history as Catherine the Great. From this extraordinary life of great events, fabulous splendour & barbaric cruelty, Robert K. Massie has woven a thrilling narrative based on impeccable scholarship & a cinematic eye for detail. ...

While it is true that Catherine the Great shocked the Russian court with the number & age of her lovers, there is no truth in the rumour of her death by stallion. Unhappily married to the Grand Duke Peter, she turned her attentions to a certain Sergey Saltykov who fathered the future Tsar Paul I. This biography reveals this extraordinary woman. ...