This book is all about creating beautiful & delicious food...without stress & without fuss. Marco Pierre White serves up more than 100 recipes & shows the home cook how to get big flavours from store-cupboard ingredients. The book has sections for starters shellfish fish meat poultry desserts & Marco uses bottles jars & packets to make divine sauces syrups & dressings. Olive oil honey mustard soy sauce vinegar Hellmanns Heinz & Knorr
- they are all on the lists of ingredients here. & the three main ingredients of Marco Made Easy are: Simple Fast & Fun. Itll take longer to wash the dishes he says than it will to make them. Tomato ketchup helps to make Salmon Ketchup; that bottle of Lea & Perrins brings life to the sauce for peppered steak; & beef casserole is transformed by a can (or two) of Guinness mixed with a carton of prune juice. Desserts too require little skill. Jamaican Mess made with bananas shop-bought custard & Carnation caramel sauce
- is creamy rich & swee. Who could say no? Beautiful photographs of each stunning dish enable the reader to copy the master chefs presentation: you dont need to be an artist. As Marco says of this revolutionary cook book Its for anyone who loves food but hates aggro.

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This book is all about creating beautiful & delicious food...without stress & without fuss. Marco Pierre White serves up more than 100 recipes & shows the home cook how to get big flavours from store-cupboard ingredients. The book has sections for starters shellfish fish meat poultry desserts & Marco uses bottles jars & packets to make divine sauces syrups & dressings. Olive oil honey mustard soy sauce vinegar Hellmanns Heinz & Knorr
- they are all on the lists of ingredients here. & the three main ingredients of Marco Made Easy are: Simple Fast & Fun. Itll take longer to wash the dishes he says than it will to make them. Tomato ketchup helps to make Salmon Ketchup; that bottle of Lea & Perrins brings life to the sauce for peppered steak; & beef casserole is transformed by a can (or two) of Guinness mixed with a carton of prune juice. Desserts too require little skill. Jamaican Mess made with bananas shop-bought custard & Carnation caramel sauce
- is creamy rich & swee. Who could say no? Beautiful photographs of each stunning dish enable the reader to copy the master chefs presentation: you dont need to be an artist. As Marco says of this revolutionary cook book Its for anyone who loves food but hates aggro.

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In September 1298 the rival Italian republics of Genoa & Venice fought a fierce sea battle at Curzola off the rocky coast of southern Dalmatia. Against the odds the Venetians led by Admiral Andrea Dandolo son of the Doge were defeated. Among the thousands of Venetians captives was one Marco Polo gentleman merchant of Venice & sometime traveller to East Asia. Incarcerated in a Ligurian fastness he told his story to a fellow-prisoner a writer of romances named Rustichello of Pisa. The account of his travels that Marco Polo dictated to Rustichello in captivity
- Il Milione
- would be exceptionally widely read & would stimulate European interest in the East & its riches. Marco Polo: from Venice to Xanadu is Laurence Bergreens thrilling & masterly reconstruction of the life & wanderings of one the great adventurers of world history. Between 1271 & 1275 Marco Polo accompanied his father Niccolo & uncle Maffeo on a journey east from Acre into central Asia along the Silk Route eventually reaching China & the court of the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire Kublai Khan. Entering the service of the Khan he travelled extensively in the Mongol Empire. The three Venetians returned home by sea in 1292-5 calling at Sumatra & southern India before reaching Persia & making the last part of their journey to Venice overl&. Three years later came that fateful encounter with the Genoese fleet in the Adriatic...

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What could be more fun than a masked Mardi Gras ball at a so-called haunted mansion? But things start to turn spooky when the revelers are tormented by strange apparitions... Could the ghost stories really be true? But when an antique tiara snatched Nancy is convinced the crook is another guest
- not a ghoul. Can she uncover the culprit before it's too late?
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The battle of El Alamein saw the shattering of Germanys hopes for victory in North Africa & from this point on the end was inevitable. In the six months that passed before the final surrender there was much hard fighting as the defeated German & Italian armies sought to hold off the encroaching Eighth Army. Rommel his health suffering fought a number of major actions during this campaign before his forces settled into the pre-war French defensive position the Mareth Line. All the way he was pursued by an increasingly confident Eighth Army under the command of General Montgomery although he was unable to outflank the retreating German & Italian forces decisively & Rommel was even able to divert forces to inflict a sharp defeat on the newly arrived US forces at Kasserine Pass in February 1943. This was one of Rommels last acts in the Desert War as his health problems forced his return to Germany shortly afterwards. The stage was now set for the last great battle of the Desert War as the veteran formations of the British Eighth Army took on their foes in the Afrikakorps for one last time in the major set-piece battle for the Mareth Line. ...

Divorced at ten a mother at thirteen & three times a widow. The extraordinary true story of the Red Queen Lady Margaret Beaufort matriarch of the Tudors. Born in the midst of the Wars of the Roses Margaret Beaufort became the greatest heiress of her time. She survived a turbulent life marrying four times & enduring imprisonment before passing her claim to the crown of England to her son Henry VII the first of the Tudor monarchs. Margarets royal blood placed her on the fringes of the Lancastrian royal dynasty. After divorcing her first husband at the age of ten she married the kings half-brother Edmund Tudor becoming a widow & bearing her only child the future Henry VII before her fourteenth birthday. Margaret was always passionately devoted to the interests of her son who claimed the throne through her. She embroiled herself in both treason & conspiracy as she sought to promote his claims allying herself with the Yorkist Queen Elizabeth Woodville in an attempt to depose Richard III. She was imprisoned by Richard & her lands confiscated but she continued to work on her sons behalf ultimately persuading her fourth husband the powerful Lord Stanley to abandon the king in favour of Henry on the eve of the decisive Battle of Bosworth. It was Lord Stanley himself who placed the crown on Henrys head on the battlefield. Henry VII gave his mother unparalleled prominence during his reign. She established herself as an independent woman & ended her life as regent of England ruling on behalf of her seventeen-year-old grandson Henry VIII. ...

Margaret Mellis (1914-2009) was an artist of diverse skills: a painter a maker of collages & reliefs & a sculptor. She was a key figure in British Modernism & with her first husband the author & critic Adrian Stokes was pivotal in establishing the influential artists colony in St Ives. Surprisingly relatively little has been written about Mellis. This book which incorporates groundbreaking new research is the first comprehensive monograph on this important artist. After first meeting Adrian Stokes in Paris Mellis moved to London to be near him & studied with Stokes at the Euston Road School. The pair married in 1938 & moved to Cornwall in 1939 where they set up house in Carbis Bay. Here they entertained some of the leading literary & artistic luminaries of the day. During her St Ives period Mellis work developed from painting to collage & relief under the tutelage of Ben Nicholson & Naum Gabo. She returned to a more realistic form of painting when her marriage came to an end & she left Cornwall in 1946. Following a period in France with the artist Francis Davison whom she married in 1948 the couple settled in Suffolk in 1950. Here Mellis continued her exploration into colour & form. The shifts & developments within her oeuvre brought in large-scale abstract paintings in the 1960s & culminated in an extended series of dynamic & original constructions made from driftwood which first began to appear in 1980. Skillfully unravelling the complexities of Mellis oeuvre in the context of her fascinating life Andrew Lambirth presents an unrivalled account of a truly remarkable artist & woman. Including a wealth of visual material which illustrates Mellis unique vision Margaret Mellis combines insightful analysis with outstanding imagery & as such is essential reading for anyone interested in Modern British Art. ...

Margaret Rutherford was without a doubt one of Britain's best-loved comic actresses. But behind the kindly serene front Rutherford presented to the world lay a life of trauma & repeated nervous breakdown
- the legacy of the legacy of family tragedy that saw her father murder her grandfather during a bout of mental illness & her depressive mother later kill herself. Andy Merriman's acclaimed biography intrigued & shocked readers with these revelations when it was published in hardback. Now out in paperback it is also a portrait of one of our most individual actresses. Rutherford appeared in such thoroughly English classics as Blithe Spirit The importance of Being Earnest Passport to Pimlico & I'm All Right Jack! But above all she was Miss Marple in four films
- & entirely created for the screen the role of Agatha Christie's elderly & fearless private detective that subsequent actresses like Joan Hickson & Geraldine Mc Ewan have continued. Rutherford first played Miss Marple at the age of 70 & insisted on wearing her own clothes to feel right in the part. Above all this was a vulnerable woman whom no-one failed to like & respect notable again & again for quiet acts of kindness whose life story has great appeal to everyone who appreciates both classic English comedy & simple human decency.

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MARGARET THATCHER is one of the towering politicians of the twentieth century. In terms of influence & recognition she ranks with Winston Churchill & remains probably the most important British leader for fifty years. She opened up the She was a formidable & largely self-trained orator & this volume collects together her greatest & most famous speeches alongside some of her most memorable"es as well as the cream of her interviews. ...

Not For Turning is the first volume of Charles Moore's authorized biography of Margaret Thatcher the longest serving Prime Minister of the twentieth century & one of the most influential political figures of the postwar era. Charles Moore's biography of Margaret Thatcher published after her death on 8 April 2013 immediately supersedes all earlier books written about her. At the moment when she becomes a historical figure this book also makes her into a three dimensional one for the first time. It gives unparalleled insight into her early life & formation especially through her extensive correspondence with her sister which Moore is the first author to draw on. It recreates brilliantly the atmosphere of British politics as she was making her way & takes her up to what was arguably the zenith of her power victory in the Falklands. (This volume ends with the Falklands Dinner in Downing Street in November 1982.). Moore is clearly an admirer of his subject but he does not shy away from criticising her or identifying weaknesses & mistakes where he feels it is justified. Based on unrestricted access to all Lady Thatcher's papers unpublished interviews with her & all her major colleagues this is the indispensable fully rounded portrait of a towering figure of our times. ...