Composed during the fourteenth century in the English Midlands Sir Gawain & the Green Knight" describes the events that follow when a mysterious green-coloured knight rides into King Arthurs Camelot in deep mid-winter. The mighty knight presents a challenge to the court: he will allow himself to be struck by one blow on the condition that he will be allowed to return the strike on the following New Years Eve. Sir Gawain takes up the challenge decapitating the stranger
- only to see the Green Knight seize up his own severed head & ride away leaving Gawain to seek him out & honour their pact. Blending Celtic myth & Christian faith " Gawain" is among the greatest Middle English poems: a tale of magic chivalry & seduction."
...

A dazzling retelling of one of the greatest Arthurian legends. A magical story from the tales of the Knights of the Round Table. Here are thrills & enchantment chivalry & courage a challenge & a quest. Its hero is the greatest of all King Arthur's knights Sir Gawain. His adversary is the fearsome Green Knight who rides into Camelot one New Year's Eve with a challenge that strikes dread into Arthur's court. ...

This is an insightful & fascinating portrait into the life of one of cinemas greatest actors. Born Maurice Micklewhite son of a Billingsgate fish porter & a charlady Michael Caines life has been an extraordinary rollercoaster: from washing dishes & fighting on National Service to winning two Oscars & being knighted by the Queen. With more than eighty films to his name he has starred in some of the classics of modern cinema: as an action anti-hero in Get Carter a Cockney lothario in Alfie & a disillusioned alcoholic academic in Educating Rita. He is an enduring model of British cool. This authorised biography charts the amazing highs & lows in his turbulent ride to fame fortune & respect. This recording is unabridged. Typically abridged audiobooks are not more than 60 per cent of the authors work & as low as 30 per cent with characters & plot lines removed. ...

Get ready for more brilliant page-turning fantasy from master Garth Nix. On the fourth day there was war! Pick up with Arthur Penhaligon as his Keys to the Kingdom adventures continue in the mysterious House. Following their adventures in the Border Sea Arthur & Leaf head for home. But only Leaf gets through the Front Door. Arthur is blocked because someone -- or something -- has assumed his identity & is taking over his life. Before Arthur can take action he is drafted by Sir Thursday & forced to join the Glorious Army of the Architect. The Army has its headquarters in the Great Maze a defensive area of the House. Half of the Maze has already been dissolved by Nothing & hordes of Nithlings emerge regularly to attack the rest. If the Nithling invasion can overcome the Army & the Great Maze the House will be lost & the whole universe with it. While Leaf tries to banish Arthur's doppelganger on earth Arthur must survive his basic training avoid getting posted to the Front & work out how he can free Part Four of the Will & gain the Fourth Key from Sir Thursday. If the latest strongest & most dangerous Nithling offensive doesn't break through first! ...

Sir Walter Winterbottom was arguably the most influential man in modern English football. He is known as the first England team manager but more than that he was an innovator of modern coaching sports administrator & a man ahead of his time; a man who had a profound effect on English football & who laid the foundations for England's success in 1966. Walter managed them all from Lawton to Charlton & inspired many to become coaches: Ron Greenwood Bill Nicholson Jimmy Hill & Bobby Robson were amongst his disciples & took his gospel to the clubs they managed. Born in 1913 Winterbottom started out as a teacher & physical education instructor playing amateur football in his spare time. He was soon signed up by Manchester United playing his first game 1936 & winning promotion to the First Division in 1938. A spinal ailment curtailed his career but during World War II he served as an officer in the Royal Air Force before the FA appointed him as national director of coaching & England team manager in 1946. He remains the ony manager to have taken the national side to more than two World Cup finals & was created an OBE in 1963 & a CBE in 1972 before being knighted in 1978. Walter died in 2002 but his legacy continues to inspire many in football today especially with the opening of the new St George's Park football academy. With interviews & insight from top football names this book
- written by Winterbottom's son-in-law
- also draws on personal diaries photographs & letters. However this is more than just a biography of one man
- it's the story of how modern football came about.


...

There are some books you never forget. Some stories that can change your world. This is one of them. Author Nora Sutherlin thought she knew everything about being pushed to your limits. But in a world where passion is pain nothing is ever that simple. Now Nora must face up to the choices she has made...and to the man she left behind. This story is about discovering who you really are...and who you want to be. The Siren" is a love story that will leave you bruised shaken & begging for more." ...

Norman Douglas one of the 20th centurys great travellers in Italy was for most of his life inextricably passionately connected to the Bay of Naples. This breathtaking sweep of sea & coastline
- dominated by Vesuvius & with Pozzuoli & Sorrento standing sentinel
- was Douglas first experience of Italy. It was here on the island of Capri that he died some 55 years after first buying a villa in Naples. Siren Land" Douglas first travel book is a homage to a part of the world that captivated him more than any other. Weaving the myths of the Sirens into the landscape & history of the region Douglas writes with knowledge & an irrepressible exuberance of the past & the present of legends & archaeology folklore & daily life patron saints local ghosts wine & the wind. As the summer draws to a close Douglas prose becomes suffused with a melancholy tinged with excitement at what still remains to be discovered: relics of Roman rule of old Hellas or medieval romance... These are the delights of Siren Land. What makes " Siren Land" exceptional is the quality of the telling. Weaving scholarship impressions fact & fantasy into an intricate fabric as enchantingly entertaining & full of human interest as the best of fairy tales or ancient myths. One of the most memorable books of its genre
- Mark Holloway in his introduction to " Siren Land"."


...

Mystery & adventure for four young detectives in Ancient Roman times... It's summer in the Bay of Naples
- time for fun & relaxation.
...

When Winston Niles Rumfoord flies his spaceship into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum he is converted into pure energy & only materializes when his waveforms intercept Earth or some other planet. As a result he only gets home to Newport Rhode Island once every fifty-nine days & then only for an hour. But at least as a consolation he now knows everything that has ever happened & everything that ever will be. He knows for instance that his wife is going to Mars to mate with Malachi Constant the richest man in the world. He also knows that on Titan -- one of Saturn's moons -- is an alien from the planet Tralfamadore who has been waiting 200 000 years for a spare part for his grounded spacecraft... ...

A fascinating account from award-winning author Adam Nicolson of the history of Nicolsons own national treasure his family home: Sissinghurst. Sissinghurst is world-famous as a place of calm & beauty a garden slipped into the ruins of a rose-pink Elizabethan palace. But is it entirely what its creators intended? Has its success over the last thirty years come at a price? Is Sissinghurst everything it could be? The story of this piece of land an estate in the Weald of Kent is told here for the first time from the very beginning. Adam Nicolson who now lives there has uncovered remarkable new findings about its history as a medieval manor & great sixteenth-century house from the days of its decline as an eighteenth-century prison to a flourishing Victorian farm & on to the creation by his grandparents Vita Sackville-West & Harold Nicolson of a garden in a weed-strewn wreck. Alongside his recovery of the past Adam Nicolson wanted something else: for the land at Sissinghurst to live again to become the landscape of orchards cattle fruit & sheep he remembered from his boyhood. Could that living frame of a mixed farm be brought back to what had turned into monochrome fields of chemicalised wheat & oilseed rape? Against the odds he was going to try. This paperback edition will be fully updated to cover the first year of Adam Nicolsons endeavour to revive the estate & return it to the glories of its past. More than just a personal biography of a place this book is the story of taking an inheritance & steering it in a new direction just as an entrepreneur might take hold of a company or just as all of us might want to take our dreams & make them real. ...