Search results for ""Author Bella Bathurst""

An exciting new edition of Bella Bathurst’s epic story of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ancestors and the building of the Scottish coastal lighthouses against impossible odds. ‘Whenever I smell salt water, I know that I am not far from one of the works of my ancestors,’ wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in 1880. ‘When the lights come out at sundown along the shores of Scotland, I am proud to think they burn more brightly for the genius of my father!’ Robert Louis Stevenson was the most famous of the Stevensons, but not by any means the most productive. The Lighthouse Stevensons, all four generations of them, built every lighthouse round Scotland, were responsible for a slew of inventions in both construction and optics, and achieved feats of engineering in conditions that would be forbidding even today. The same driven energy which Robert Louis Stevenson put into writing, his ancestors put into lighting the darkness of the seas. The Lighthouse Stevensons is a story of high endeavour, beautifully told; indeed, this is one of the most celebrated works of historical biography in recent memory.

Read more less

'By the summer of 1998, it had become clear that there was something wrong with my hearing. It didn't happen suddenly but softly, so softly I almost wasn't aware of it happening; sound seemed to have stolen away ...' For twelve years, Bella Bathurst was deaf. She missed the punchlines and the jokes, avoided busy restaurants and raucous parties, and grew her hair long to cover hearing aids. But then, twelve years later, pioneering surgery on her ears gave her the chance to hear again. Sound is the extraordinary story of Bella's journey into deafness and back to hearing. Mixing memoir with interviews with soldiers, sign language experts, musicians and mental health workers, Bella explores what it means to live with and without sound, and in the process uncovers a hidden world of sense and connection. If sight gives us the world, then hearing - or our ability to listen - gives us each other. Warm, wry and honest, this is a story not just for the one in six of us with hearing loss, but for everyone who ever listened. Published in partnership with the Wellcome Collection. Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we think and feel about health. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life and art. Wellcome Collection exhibitions, events and books explore a diverse range of subjects, including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology, identity and death. Wellcome Collection is part of Wellcome, a global charitable foundation that exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive, funding over 14,000 researchers and projects in more than 70 countries. wellcomecollection.org

Read more less

'A priceless portrait of one of the least understood and frequently most vilified of people: farmers. It should really be read by all in this country who buys food - i.e. everyone.' Daily Mail 'Highly researched and deeply thoughtful ... Bathurst peers under the bonnet of these lives and reveals things that rarely make it into print.' James Rebanks, The Times 'A fine achievement: describing the indescribable' Rosamund Young, author of The Secret Life of Cows We think we know what makes Britain's countryside: drystone walls, stiles, sheep on a distant hillside. But for many of us, farmers themselves - the men and women who shape, maintain and care for that land - often remain a mystery: familiar but unpredictable, a secretive industry that's still visible from space. In Field Work, Bella Bathurst journeys through Britain to talk to those on the far side of the fence. From fruit farmers to fallen stock operators, from grassy uplands to polytunnels, she creates a portrait of modern Britain, exposing in the process the inextricable bonds that exist between land and the people who farm it. As farmers find themselves torn between time-honoured methods and modern appetites, these raw, wise and funny accounts reveal an ancient way of life changing beyond recognition.

Read more less