Sixty years after the first ascent of Mount Everest this unique book of letters celebrates in a very personal way this most majestic of mountains. With exclusive access to the private archives of pioneering New Zealand climber George Lowe this is a welcome tribute to an unsung hero. The conquest of Everest in the summer of 1953 was one of the twentieth-century's greatest triumphs of exploration. George Lowe's exploits on the mountain would become legendary. He was one of the lead climbers forging the route up Everest's Lhotse Face without oxygen & later cutting steps for his partners up the summit ridge. In this touching book a trove of unpublished letters from the Lowe collection are brought together for the first time to describe the day-by-day moments of this historic expedition as never before. In clear & elegant prose this is a unique testimony of a superlative human achievement. ...

This revised edition of Tolkiens famous illustrated letters from Father Christmas to his children

Includes::

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The first ever B-format edition of Tolkiens complete Father Christmas letters including a new introduction & rare archive materials. Every December an envelope bearing a stamp from the North Pole would arrive for J.R.R. Tolkiens children. Inside would be a letter in strange spidery handwriting & a beautiful coloured drawing or some sketches. The letters were from Father Christmas. They told wonderful tales of life at the North Pole: how all the reindeer got loose & scattered presents all over the place; how the accident-prone Polar Bear climbed the North Pole & fell through the roof of Father Christmass house into the dining-room; how he broke the Moon into four pieces & made the Man in it fall into the back garden; how there were wars with the troublesome horde of goblins who lived in the caves beneath the house! Sometimes the Polar Bear would scrawl a note & sometimes Ilbereth the Elf would write in his elegant flowing script adding yet more life & humour to the stories. No reader young or old can fail to be charmed by the inventiveness & authenticity of Tolkiens Letters from Father Christmas. To mark ten years since the publication of the complete edition of Tolkiens Letters from Father Christmas in 1999 this new edition is the first time the letters have been available in B format. ...

Two people. An unforgettable moment. One extraordinary love story. In Chicago Illinois two people are about to lock eyes across a crowded dance floor. The following moment will spark the love story of a lifetime! The year is 1944 & America has just entered the war. Young men & women are being drafted in to fight with their allies on Europes distant shores. Throughout America sweethearts are saying their last goodbyes. Liz Stephens is already betrothed to budding US politician Dalton Harris but when she meets GI Morgan Mc Clain she feels an instant & intense connection. But then he dances with her flirtatious best friend Betty & Liz is left feeling like just another soldiers fancy. Betty is mesmerized by Morgan & begs Liz to write letters for her to post to him overseas. Liz reluctantly agrees in the end anxious to retain a connection to him. As the last searing days of World War II loom a correspondence begins that will alter the course of their lives forever. ...

Hernan Cortess Cartas de Relacion written over a seven-year period to Charles V of Spain provide an extraordinary narrative account of the conquest of Mexico from the founding of the coastal town of Veracruz until Cortess journey to Honduras in 1525. Pagdens English translation has been prepared from a close examination of the earliest surviving manuscript & of the first printed editions & he also provides a new introduction offering a bold & innovative interpretation of the nature of the conquest & Cortess involvement in it. J. H. Elliots introductory essay explains Cortess conflicts with the Crown & with Diego Velazquez the governor of Cuba. ...

Harry Lamin was born in Derbyshire in 1877 & left school at thirteen to work in the lace industry but by December 1916 he had been conscripted into the 9th Battalion York & Lancaster Regiment & sent to war. Harrys letters home to his family describe the conflict with a poignant immediacy even ninety years on detailing everything from the action in battle to the often amusing incidents of life amongst his comrades. Throughout the letters Harrys tone is unwaveringly stoical uncomplaining & good-humoured. Letters From The Trenches" is a fitting tribute to the unsung heroes of the Great War who fought & endured & returned home & the one in six who did not. The letters describe the war through the eyes of those who really lived it bringing the horrors & triumphs to life for the twenty-first-century reader. Edited by Harrys grandson Bill " Letters From The Trenches" tells the moving story of a brave selfless & honourable man who endured everything that the war could throw at him & still came up smiling." ...

This is the moving story of a brave selfless & honourable man who endured everything the war could throw at him. Harry Lamin was born in 1877 & left school at thirteen to work in the lace industry but by December 1916 he had been conscripted & eventually joined the 9th Battalion York & Lancaster Regiment & was sent to war. Harry's letters home to his family describe the conflict with a poignant immediacy detailing everything from the action in battle to the often amusing incidents of life amongst his comrades. This recording is unabridged. Typically abridged audiobooks are not more than 60 per cent of the author's work & as low as 30 per cent with characters & plotlines removed. ...

With the first publication in this edition of all the surviving letters of Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) readers will for the first time be able to follow the thoughts ideas & actions of one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century in his own words. This first volume encompasses his youth his experience in World War I & his arrival in Paris. The letters reveal a more complex person than Hemingways tough guy public persona would suggest: devoted son affectionate brother infatuated lover adoring husband spirited friend & disciplined writer. Unguarded & never intended for publication the letters record experiences that inspired his art afford insight into his creative process & express his candid assessments of his own work & that of his contemporaries. The letters present immediate accounts of events & relationships that profoundly shaped his life & work. A detailed introduction notes chronology illustrations & index are included. ...

Nancy Mitford & Evelyn Waugh were two of the twentieth century's most amusing & gifted writers who matched wits & traded literary advice in more than five hundred letters over twenty-two years. Dissecting their friends criticizing each other's books & concealing their true feelings beneath a barrage of hilarious & knowing repartee they found it far easier to conduct a friendship on paper than in person. This correspondence provides a colorful glimpse into the literary & social circles of London & Paris during the Second World War & for twenty years after. ...

In the period covered by this richly detailed collection which brings the poet to the age of forty T.S. Eliot was to set a new course for his life & work. Forsaking the Unitarianism of his American forebears he was received into the Church of England & naturalised as a British citizen
- a radical & public alteration of the intellectual & spiritual direction of his career. The demands of Eliots professional life as writer & editor became more complex & exacting during these years. The celebrated but financially-pressed periodical he had been editing since 1922
- The Criterion"
- switched between being a quarterly & a monthly before being rescued by the fledgling house of Faber & Gwyer. In addition to writing numerous essays & editorials lectures reviews introductions & prefaces his letters show Eliot involving himself wholeheartedly in the business of his new career as a publisher. His Ariel poems " Journey of the Magi" (1927) & "A Song for Simeon" (1928) established a new manner & vision for the poet of " The Waste Land" & " The Hollow Men". These are also the years in which Eliot published two sections of an exhilaratingly funny savage jazz-influenced play-in-verse
- " Fragment of a Prologue" & " Fragment of an Agon"
- which were subsequently brought together as " Sweeney Agonistes". In addition he struggled to translate the remarkable work " Anabase" by St. John Perse which was to be a signal influence upon his own later poetry. This correspondence with friends & mentors vividly documents all the stages of Eliots personal & artistic transformation during these crucial years the continuing anxieties of his private life & the forging of his public reputation."




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