Search results for ""Signal Books Ltd""

Before the end of the present century the population of China – currently around 1.4 billion – is forecast to drop to around half that level as a major and unprecedented demographic crisis begins to bite. Its working-age population has already stopped growing and is now well into a process of contraction. Increasing longevity means that by the 2050s there will be more than 400 million Chinese citizens over the age of 65 – with little provision for their care in a society where a single child is now the norm. The ratio of the retired to those working is steadily rising, putting pressure on families and the public finances. Years of preference for a male child has seen the creation of a skewed sex ratio at birth that already guarantees well over 50 million surplus adult males, unmarried and unhappy, in the coming years. This is more than the entire male population of Germany. The state has previously sought to impose its will on reproduction, but Chinese families experienced a sharply reduced birthrate even before the introduction of the notorious one-child policy. And despite the lifting of restrictions on the number of children allowed, births remain stubbornly low. As Timothy Beardson shows in this timely and fascinating new book, the Chinese people have largely ignored official policy, as trends in urbanization, employment and education alter traditional demographic patterns. China in fact reflects a clearly identifiable shift in the whole world of moving from high to low fertility. This book is the first to examine in detail China’s demographic history and the impending crisis that will see more people in the United States by 2100 than in China. It explains how China’s ageing and shrinking population will affect such widely disparate areas as the ethics of business, artificial intelligence and the combat-worthiness of the military – not to mention China’s overall place in the modern world.

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For nearly fifty years after the end of the Second World War, Albania remained in almost total isolation from the rest of the world. The hard-line communist dictatorship sealed the tiny country's borders in an effort to preserve Albania and the ruling regime from the threat posed by Western Powers and from neighbouring countries and their territorial ambitions. When the communist regime finally collapsed in 1992, Albania emerged into a Balkans ravaged by civil war in neighbouring Yugoslavia, which spread into the regions bordering Albania inhabited by significant ethnic Albanian minorities. As the war ignited in Kosova, tens of thousands of Albanian refugees fled into Albania, which itself was suffering violent internal conflict. Albania had entered the post-communist world in an impoverished and broken state, immersed in civil strife between the new quasi-democratic government and the opposition socialists, which culminated into virtual civil war in 1997 that pitted northerners against southerners with more than 4,000 deaths. Amidst the chaos, the disintegration of Yugoslavia ignited a new Albanian national question that had lain dormant since 1945. There were calls for the creation of a 'Greater Albania' to incorporate Yugoslavia's Albanian minorities within the 'Mother' state, which was to also include an area of north-western Greece which had historically been inhabited by ethnic Albanians known as Chams. The Chams were forced to leave their homeland following three distinct phases: the first during the Balkans Wars 1912-14; the second resulting from the Greek-Turkish population exchanges in the 1920s; the third at the end of the Second World War. The calls for a 'Greater Albania' alarmed Albania's neighbours and the international community, who viewed it as a serious threat to the stability of the entire southern Balkans. This resurgence of pan-Albanian nationalism was, however, far more layered and complex than was understood at the time, even by the various ethnic Albanian groups and their vocal Diaspora. This collection of papers and essays has not previously been published outside select academic outlets. They appear here for the first time with the aim of offering new perspectives on the underlying nature of pan-Albanianism, its aspirations and the post-Cold War dynamics of the Albanian world. These remain serious, unresolved problems in the region at the present time.

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The twentieth anniversary of the Countryside & Rights of Way (CRoW) Act in 2020 provides a good opportunity to look back on the doughty band of campaigners who fought for so long to give ramblers their cherished right to roam. This century-old battle brought to the fore a number of larger-than-life characters who were prepared to go to extreme lengths--in some cases even imprisonment--to reclaim the right of access which were taken from the people by the hated Enclosure Acts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This book describes the life and work of twenty of these "wilderness warriors", retelling the battles they fought against seemingly intractable politicians and the Establishment and includes memories of personal encounters by the author with many of them. From the nature-loving romantic poet John Clare and access pioneers such as Tom Stephenson and Benny Rothman, to present-day activists and writers such as Jim Perrin, Fiona Reynolds and Kate Ashbrook, Walking Class Heroes describes the contributions made by philanthropists, writers and political militants. Their battlegrounds included the Peak District, Dartmoor and Scotland and their tactics encompassed campaigning journalism, legal dexterity and even mass trespass. Some are no longer with us of course, but several others are continuing the fight for the same kind of public access to the countryside currently enjoyed by our neighbours in Scotland and the rest of Europe. Roly Smith was recently described by a reviewer as "one of Britain's most knowledgeable countryside writers". He has written over ninety books on the British countryside and is vice-president of the Outdoor Writers' and Photographers' Guild, having been its president for twelve years, and is also a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers. A journalist by training, Roly was Head of Information Services for the Peak District National Park for thirteen years, where he became known as "Mr Peak District".

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Beatrice Teissier explores Britain's travellers the eyes of visitors, consuls and other observers who travelled from the Black Sea coast to the Caucasus mountain chains, to Chechnya, Dagestan and even the Caspian.

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The Seven Seas is a celebration of the sea, and of the seven oceans on earth, in poetry and painting. The land, the seven continents of our planet, usually takes centre stage with its diverse populations of flora and fauna, and humanity - ourselves. But this book gives first place to the water, the element that covers some seventy per cent of the earth's surface, and the life above and within it. The volume is organised to reveal the nature and character of the seven oceans ('the seven seas', as poets have traditionally called them) and the principal ports that link them as one vast waterway. It contains a series of seven voyages which together comprise one extensive and imaginary tour of the world, encircling the globe three times at different latitudes and visiting both the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans at the northern and southern extremes. After a lively Foreword and a learned Introduction, describing the ocean today and its history, the sea-routes and landfalls of the voyage - and also providing a short account of the arts of poetry and painting - the book is arranged in seven chapters representing each of 'the seven seas' in turn, beginning and ending at Greenwich. The imaginary voyage explores the North Atlantic first, followed by the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, then the Antarctic, before turning northwards again to tour the South Atlantic, passing through the Panama Canal to reach the South and North Pacific, and finally the Arctic Ocean, the Baltic and North Sea, before returning home. Each port of call is characterised in Sandra Lello's delightful illustrations and thoughtful verses from the pen of John Elinger, who are each experienced travellers and cruise-lecturers.

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In Alaskan Lonely Hearts Club one of the UK's best-known travel writers shares his life on the road in 26 A-Z stories recording his very particular engagement with some highly eccentric characters. An eclectic range of destinations sees Paul Gogarty skiing in Algeria, deep sea fishing in Kenya and attending a George Formby ukulele convention in Blackpool. Often hilarious, these tales range from an end-of-the-line bachelor auction in Alaska to attending the Henley-on-Todd Regatta in the parched dustbowl of Alice Springs. A passion for music is a thread running through several of the stories. In 'Caister Soul Weekender' Gogarty checks into an East Anglian static caravan site for three days of dance, Red Bull and camaraderie. After hanging out with country wannabes in Nashville and attending the Delta Blues Festival in Greenville his car breaks down at the very crossroads where bluesman Robert Johnson reputedly sold his soul to the devil in return for guitar mastery. Nor is Gogarty afraid to sign up for the bizarre, whether visiting a homemade Stonehenge, taking an Arctic plunge protected only by swimming trunks, or learning the arcane art of healing and dowsing for hereditary diseases in Basingstoke. This collection showcases the diversity and possibilities of travel writing. More than anything else these tales underline a fascination with people and an openness to experience the world in all its diversity.

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Patagonia is one of the 'final frontiers' on our planet: remote, untamed and much of it inaccessible except on horseback. Though travelled before and sporadically settled, it remains remarkably resistant to human trampling. Divided unequally between Argentina and Chile, Patagonia remains a land of mystery today. The history of those who settled in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries along its Andean frontier is even less known. They are the 'dark horses' of this book.Jon Burrough rode with his gaucho guide for 1,500 kilometres through this land of savage beauty. Dark Horses at the Patagonian Frontier evokes the rawness of the region using extracts from diaries, personal interviews, tales told or recorded, myths and legends--all wound round the narrative thread. Part travel record of a 'third-ager' on horseback (who was to discover he had cancer ten days out) and part history of this truly wild region, the book explores the landscapes and legacy of a pioneer culture. Illustrated with the author's own photographs, it also contains several detailed route and location maps to ensure the reader does not get lost.Dark Horses at the Patagonian Frontier is a tale both of the author's epic journey and of the remarkable pioneers he met and who showed him a hospitality and friendliness which seemed to have no limit.

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Sir Ernest Shackleton, known as a tough polar explorer and inspirational leader, also held the words of poets close to his heart. 'Poetry was his other world and he explored it as eagerly as he did the great Antarctic spaces,' said his friend, Mrs. Hope Guthrie. This new biography reveals another side of Shackleton's story through the poetry he loved. It also includes--for the first time in published form-- all the poems and poetic diary extracts written by the great explorer, each of which sheds light on significant milestones in his life and adventures. Shackleton, who did more than any other explorer to open Antarctica to the popular imagination, used poetry as a tool, to encourage and motivate men who were frequently operating close to their physical and psychological limits. The works of Tennyson, Browning and Robert W. Service were, in his own phrase, 'vital mental medicine' throughout his life. Poems influenced his speeches, his letters to his wife and the way he led his men. These verses, selected from his correspondence and other sources, are linked throughout the book to Shackleton's turbulent and restless life, offering fresh insights into his struggles in the Antarctic, his strained but loving marriage and the magnetic attraction of the polar regions. Shackleton: A life in Poetry is a love story, a new interpretation of a well-known Boy's Own adventure and a poetic exploration.

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Frankfurt is a city that punches well above its weight. Despite its diminutive size--it has fewer than a million inhabitants--it is a financial centre of global importance, named alongside metropolises and capitals such as Tokyo, London, and New York. Yet Frankfurt is a city that is also continually underestimated: many of the millions who visit it on business--both German and from other countries--see little more of it than its airport and its skyscrapers. The city's role in the global financial markets often obscures its importance as a historical and cultural centre, not just for Germany, but for Europe and the West as a whole. In the Middle Ages, Frankfurt was the city in which the Holy Roman Emperors were crowned and in which, at the dawn of the Renaissance, a tradition of printing and publishing was established which lives on in today's Frankfurt Book Fair. The German language's most enduring author, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was born in the city, and the university named for him gave birth to one of the twentieth century's most revolutionary academic developments, the Frankfurt School.Architecturally, too, the city has always been a pioneer: its famous skyline is only the latest and most visible in a series of bold experiments. Frankfurt has always been a capital without a country: the capital of the book trade, the capital of modern social studies, the capital of the Eurozone. Today, it rivals Brussels, Berlin, Paris, and London, and yet retains a deeply provincial, down-to-earth identity interwoven with the thick forests and farming country of its Hessian hinterland. While its population is one of the world's most international, its dialect is one of Germany's most impenetrable. For those looking to do more than just change flights or sign a contract, this cultural guide takes a closer look at Frankfurt, exploring and explaining these dichotomies.

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Elderly British men display a variety of annoying habits. They write letters to the newspapers; they drink too much; they reminisce about the old days; they make lewd comments to younger women; they shout at the television screen; and they go for long walks and get lost. Jeremy Cameron chose the last of these options. Trying to emulate Patrick Leigh Fermor's feat of 1933, he walked from Hook of Holland to Istanbul. Leigh Fermor was a legendary figure. Scholar, multilinguist, beautiful prose stylist, war hero, tough guy, charmer and famous lover: Cameron is none of these things and he also suffers from a heart condition. Rest assured that there will be no tedious details of operations or stoicism in this book. Nor will there be descriptions of understated generosity, quiet irony or British phlegm. The main point of travel is to recognise the virtues of staying at home. When at home, it is not possible to get bogged down in Alpine snow, fall over on one's face on Kosovan tarmac or suffer a comprehensive mugging on deserted roads in Greece. Nor does one have to speak foreign languages, eat foreign food or, above all, drink terrible tea. It is about two thousand miles from Hook of Holland to Istanbul. Thirteen countries lie in wait for the walker. They have many wonderful sights and much fascinating history. Readers will not find them in this book. They will, however, find a number of stories of varying authenticity and some very dubious observations about life. By the time Turkey arrived, Cameron was utterly and completely fed up with the whole process. Never again would he do anything quite so stupid. He is currently walking round all the places in England beginning with the letter Q.

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In 1894, Martin Conway became the first man to walk the Alps 'from end to end' when he completed a 1,000-mile journey from the Col de Tende in Italy to the summit of the Ankogel in Austria. On a midsummer's morning, nearly 120 years later, Simon Thompson followed in his footsteps, setting out to explore both the mountains and the man. A charming rogue who led a 'fantastically eventful' life, according to The Times, Conway was a climber and pioneering explorer of the Himalaya, Spitsbergen, the Andes and Patagonia; a serial pursuer of American heiresses; an historian, collector and Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge; a company director and stock market promoter of dubious gold mines and non-existent rubber forests; the founder of the Imperial War Museum; the first foreigner to see the Russian crown jewels after the revolution; a successful journalist and author of over thirty books; a liberal politician; and a conservative MP. Shortly before he died, he was created 1st Baron Conway of Allington. Conway was a clubbable man who counted Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, J. P. Morgan, John Ruskin, Mark Twain and Edward Whymper among his many friends and acquaintances. An imperialist, a dreamer, a liar and a cheat, Conway 'walked in sunshine all his life', according to contemporaries, but he was also a restless, discontented man, constantly searching for meaning and purpose in his life. And that search that led him back, time and time again, to the Alps. In A Long Walk with Lord Conway, Simon Thompson retraces Conway's long journey over the peaks, passes and glaciers of the Alps and rediscovers the life of a complex and remarkable English adventurer.

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In 1865 the Victorian poet Matthew Arnold rejoiced in the charm of Oxford, 'that sweet City with her dreaming spires'. A century and a half later, That Sweet City offers a visual and poetic tribute to what is still one of the fairest and most enthralling places in the world. Designed in the form of seven walks across and around Oxford, and radiating out into the surrounding countryside, this book evokes the buildings and landscapes, both famous and less well-known, that have witnessed and shaped the city's history. The first sequence of pictures and poems, Seven Sights of Oxford, leads the reader (and walker) from Christ Church Meadow across the High Street to the Radcliffe Camera; thence down Broad Street to St. Giles, the University Parks and Port Meadow. The second, Seven Secret Sights, offers a circular tour of lesser-known landmarks from the Town Hall to Folly Bridge, the Old Railway Bridge and Isis Lock, the re-emergent Radcliffe Campus, Mesopotamia and The Plain. Seven Ages of Oxford, starting with the Saxon Tower of St. Michael's Church in the Cornmarket, and finishing in the University s science area in South Parks Road (via the Castle, Worcester College, Christ Church, the Sheldonian Theatre and the University Museum), provides a short and eclectic history of the city and its ancient University. Other sequences of poems and paintings include Seven Treasures of Oxford (with the Alfred Jewel and the Bodleian Library), Seven Sights around Oxford (with Otmoor, Kelmscott and Blenheim Palace) and Seven Products of Oxford (including marmalade, books and Oxfam). A final walk, Seven Gardens of Oxford, celebrates the diversity of the city s many green spaces. An introduction provides a concise history of Oxford and explains the choice of sights, the structure of the poetry and the inspiration behind the illustrations. Maps make it easy for visitors to follow the walks and find their way around the city. In words and images, That Sweet City evokes a place constantly changing yet timeless in its beauty.

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In 1895/6 the sixty-year-old Mark Twain set off on a worldwide lecture tour to pay off his debts from a publishing company bankruptcy, notes from which a year later became his final travel book Following the Equator. Two years later he wrote, 'How I did loathe that journey around the world! except the sea-part and India.' Although he was only in India for just over two of the twelve months, his exploits and observations there take up forty per cent of the book-and by common consent are by far the best and liveliest part of it. In The Indian Equator the Mark Twain travel trilogist Ian Strathcarron, his wife and photographer Gillian and his factota Sita follow in his mentor's footsteps, train tracks and boat wakes tracing the route that Twain, his wife Livy, his daughter Clara, his manager Smythe and his bearer Satan took as they crisscrossed the sub-continent. Leaving from the Bombay that was and the Mumbai that is, both writers follow the lecture circuit of old India--including what is now Pakistan--across the plains and cities of the north up to the peaks of the Himalayas by way of Baroda, Jaipur, Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Benares/Varanasi, Calcutta/Kolkata, Darjeeling, Lahore and Rawalpindi. Staying in the same Raj clubs, travelling down the same train lines, meeting the high and mighty and the downtrodden and destitute, Twain and Strathcarron are absorbed by an India that then was and now is 'not for the faint of heart nor mild of spirit nor weak of mind nor dull of sense nor correct of politic'; a rapidly changing yet still deeply traditional society where 'a few hundred million have grabbed the twenty-first century by the whiskers and many more hundred million still tuck the nineteenth century into bed at night'. Mark Twain loved the India of 1896; like his trilogist, he would love it still.

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Joaquim Nabuco, for more than three decades a dominant figure in the literary, intellectual and political life of Brazil, was born in Recife in the country's Northeast in 1849 and died in Washington in 1910. He was what we would now call a public intellectual, indeed given that he spent half his adult life in Europe and the United States a trans-national public intellectual and from a country on the periphery of the world system. Nabuco is best known as the inspirational leader of the campaign in the 1880s for the abolition of slavery in Brazil, which after abolition in the United States and Cuba was the last remaining slave state in the Americas. Eighteen months after slavery was finally ended in 1888 the Brazilian Empire was overthrown and Nabuco, a committed monarchist, believing--wrongly--that his public career was over (from 1899 until his death he was to serve the Republic with distinction as Brazilian minister in London and Brazil's first ambassador to the Washington), devoted himself in 'internal exile' to writing, including a series of newspaper articles on his education, his early intellectual development, his discovery of the world outside Brazil and his life as a young diplomat and politician. These articles, together with some later additions, were published as Minha Formacao (My Formative Years) in 1900. In twenty six chapters Nabuco examines (though not in chronological order): the first eight years of his life in Massangana, a sugar plantation in Pernambuco worked by slaves and his return there, as a student aged twenty, which he claimed determined his decision to devote himself to the abolition of slavery in Brazil; his education in the Law Faculties in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo; the influence of Walter Bagehot s The English Constitution (1867) on his political thinking; his introduction to French literature and history (besides Portuguese he wrote his first poems and plays in French); his first visit to Europe in 1873-4, primarily a Grand Tour of Italy and France but ending in London where, he wrote, he was touched by the beginnings of anglomania (he was to visit and reside in London on seven separate occasions during the next 20 year before his six years as Brazilian minister there); his two years (1876-8) as attache in the Brazilian legations in Washington and London; the beginning of his political career in Pernambuco, contesting and winning election to the Chamber of Deputies in 1878 at the age of 29 and becoming a self-styled 'English liberal in the Brazilian Parliament'; the influence of English and North American abolitionists on his thinking about slavery and abolition; and the eventually successful parliamentary struggle to end slavery. A concluding chapter ('The last ten years 1889-1899') briefly considers his life after the abolition of slavery and the fall of the Empire.

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The Isle of Wight is England's largest island, but its diamond-shape is at most 23 miles long and 13 miles wide. Anchored close to the Hampshire coast, its location has created a sheltered waterway, the Solent, with its own local roadsteads and a unique double tidal system. This geography has shaped the area's history. Southampton's docks, located on Southampton Water to the north-west, had become the country's largest civilian port by the mid-twentieth century. Just north-east across the stretch of water called Spithead is the island city of Portsmouth with its ideal natural harbour. This was an internationally important port for over three hundred years, while the whole area has been places of naval significance on the world stage for even longer. From when Queen Victoria bought Osborne House in 1845 and had it remodelled as an Italianate mansion the Isle of Wight became a hub of Victorian society. The Poet Laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson lived at Freshwater, while Charles Swinburne grew up at Bonchurch, a place where Charles Dickens vacationed. Charles Darwin began his Origin of Species here, and Karl Marx came to restore his health; it was the expanding rail network that brought them there. Mark Bardell explores the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth and the surrounding maritime landscapes, revealing unexpected historical and literary associations. MARITIME LEGACY: seaside resorts and piers; Queen Victoria's bathing machine; tourism, festivals and Cowes Week; the Titanic and Queen Mary. URBAN DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE: military and naval imperatives; Portsmouth Dockyard and the Solent forts; lighthouses and fortifications; Victorian mansions and the first garden suburb in Southsea. WRITERS AND ARTISTS: Portsmouth and Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle; the Isle of Wight and the young Turner's seascapes; J. D. Fergusson and Eric Ravilious, war artists in Portsmouth.

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Lagos is one of the fastest growing cities in the world, expected in some projections to have a population of 25 million by 2025. This will make it the biggest metropolis in sub-Saharan Africa and possibly the world's third largest city. This phenomenal and continuing growth gives it a heady turbulence, especially as it only took on the form of a coherent urban entity in the eighteenth century. After Nigeria's independence Lagos remained both trading hub and, for thirty years, a federal capital and political vortex. Now its driving sense of 'can-do', its outreach and vitality, make it a fulcrum and a channel for commercial and cultural talent. Kaye Whiteman explores a city that has constantly re-invented itself, from the first settlement on an uninhabited island to the creation of the port in the early years of the twentieth century. Lagos is still defined by its curious network of islands and lagoons, where erosion and reclamation lead to a permanently shifting topography, but history has thrust it into the role of a burgeoning mega-city, overcoming all nature's obstacles. The city's melting-pot has fertilised a unique literary and artistic flowering that is only now beginning to be appreciated by a world that has only seen slums and chaos. COLONIAL CITY: Portuguese influences; the 1861 Treaty of Cession and the British colonialists; architectural traces: schools and government buildings; the move towards independence. CITY OF ENTREPRENEURS: trading through the centuries: Sierra Leoneans and Brazilians; traditional markets and modern malls; the Central Business District. THE CITY OF WORDS AND MUSIC: a counterpoint to the alleged philistinism of its businessmen; the views of writers Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe; artist and sculptor Ben Enwonwu; the musical genius Fela Kuti.

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?By tradition, Moscow is the easternmost bastion of western civilisation. Moscow has stood against invasion and war, pestilence and fire. It has been rejected by its own rulers, and its destruction has been planned by its dreamers and invaders alike. Yet it has survived. How this happened is the story of historical accident, the vagaries of geography and economicsand upon occasion, sheer human will and faith. Moscow is also the object of stereotype, from barbaric oriental capital to Holy city on the Hill. In its secular and religious manifestations it has been the goal of pilgrimage and a city of transcendent aspiration. In the twentieth century it was the headquarters of a class-based pogrom of appalling dimensions even as it was proclaimed the capital of global revolution. If Moscow has endured catastrophes barely imagined, it has also been the scene of creative brilliance. It holds a deep contradiction as being both the pilot-boat to hell, and a celestial city of the future. Moscow has bemused visitors, and even the most perceptive of them have fallen victim to their own preconceptions. This is a portrait of Moscow through time. It has one constant, the Kremlin, at once the supreme metaphor of state power but also a symbol of Russian national identity. The tension between Moscow as an urban community and the Moscow of empire and belief is fundamental to the citys narrative. Above it all stands the Kremlin, Moscows arbiter of history. This is also a historical case- study of the growth, development and near-death experiences of a single city to become a living monument to its own survival. It will be of interest to travellers, Urbanists and historians alike.

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Few countries are as marked by their history as the Maltese islands of Malta and Gozo. Each period of Maltas turbulent historynot least its heroic role during the Second World Warhas added to its rich cultural fabric. Deborah Manleys selection of extracts reveals how generations of writers have viewed the landscapes of Malta and Gozo, the people of the islands, the splendours of Valletta and its famous harbour, and the celebrated festas, the village festivals that celebrate the islands Catholic identity. An introduction places these extracts in context, while the anthology also considers how Maltese writers have imagined and depicted their homeland.

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Tokyo is a vibrant city where the cultures of the East and the West are remixed into perceptibly Japanese forms. This book traces the cultural and literary history of Tokyo from an obscure fishing village to one of the largest metropolises in the world.

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No railway journey on Earth can equal the Trans-Siberian between Moscow and Vladivostok. It is not just its vast length and the great variety of the lands and climes through which it passes. It is not just its history as the line that linked the huge territories which are Russia together. It is a dream which calls countless travellers to the adventure of the longest railway in the world. This new edition of a classic anthology takes us through the tremendous achievement of the railways construction across harsh, unsettled lands through the earliest journeys of Western travellers and the trains on which they travelled, and their descriptions of fellow travellers, food, scenery, domestic arrangements, adventures on and off the train, convicts, revolution and war as the train carried them through a lonely, lovely landscape.

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It may not be the longest, deepest or widest river in the world but few bodies of water reveal as much about a nation's past and present, or are suggestive of its future, as England's River Thames. Tales of legendary lock-keepers and long-vanished weirs evoke the distant past of a river which evolved into a prime commercial artery linking the heart of England with the ports of Europe. In Victorian times, the Thames hosted regattas galore, its new bridges and tunnels were celebrated as marvels of their time, and London's river was transformed from sewer to centrepiece of the British Empire. Talk of the Thames Gateway and the effectiveness of the Thames Barrier keeps the river in the news today, while the lengthening Thames Path makes the waterway more accessible than ever before. Through quiet meadows, rolling hills, leafy suburbia, industrial sites and a changing London riverside, Mick Sinclair tracks the Thames from source to sea, documenting internationally-known landmarks such as Tower Bridge and Windsor Castle and revealing lesser known features such as Godstow Abbey, Canvey Island, the Sanford Lasher, and George Orwell's tranquil grave. Paintings, Words and Music: Turner, Tissot, Whistler and Monet; Shakespeare at Southwark, Alexander Pope, Charles Dickens, Jerome K. Jerome, William Morris; Handel's Water Music, the first rendition of Rule Britannia, the Rolling Stones and The Who rocking Eel Pie Island. Power, Politics and Intrigue: Runnymede and Magna Carta, the first English parliament, Whitehall Palace, Cliveden and the Profumo affair, the Houses of Parliament and the brooding headquarters of MI5 and MI6. Trade and Commerce: Eel trapping, osier growing; bargemen, watermen and lightermen; the rise and fall of London's docks; urban regeneration, rural protection.

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In this new, revised edition of his acclaimed history of the city, Jonathan Boardman uncovers Romes multifaceted experience, where each layer of development rests upon the foundation of a pre-existing tradition. In a place where political and religious ideologies have always expressed themselves through art, he also highlights a vibrant popular culture: from gladiatorial shows to the local Roma-Lazio soccer derby.

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This second edition of Nicholas T. Parsons' The Joy of Bad Verse is accompanied by a new and expanded Introduction that considers the remarkable literary phenomenon of bad poetry down the ages and the remarkable chutzpah of its practitioners. It brings the theme up to date with the current eruption of "instapoetry" on Instagram, poetry happenings and other whimsical contributions to the tsunami of verse now washing over social media. This book celebrates such remarkable poets as Julia A. Moore, who was known as "The Sweet Singer of Michigan"; or Solyman Brown, the Laureate of American dentistry; or the Rev. E.E. Bradford whose wonderfully innocent raptures on (preferably naked) pubescent boys were praised by the Westminster Review as wholesome and uplifting. Of course the iconic figure of William McGonagall, "the Scottish Homer", is not neglected. To him and several others such as Martin Tupper, a forerunner of "Thought for the Day" and many an Anglican sermon, biographical sketches are dedicated. The chapter on "Limping Laureates" rescues from deserved obscurity several persons such as Alfred Austin who achieved this poorly remunerated, but sought after, status without actually being any good at writing poetry. In this world of wonders, wooden ideological verse (including the brown-nosing of political monsters in verse) jostles with banality, virtue-signalling and unintentional comedy. Not forgetting the contribution of real poets on an off day (Wordsworth's inimitable tribute to a stuffed owl), which, as the author says, lend a distinction to the genre. Auberon Waugh once lambasted modern poetry because it neither rhymed, scanned nor made sense. But here is a treasure trove of stuff to read out loud, stuff which mostly rhymes, if unfortunately, scans if the author was in the mood, and makes the sort of sense that leaves you gasping for more.

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The most thrilling and controversial cricketer of his generation, Brian Lara is a hero to millions worldwide. A naturally attacking style and limitless scoring arc, allied to phenomenal mental and physical stamina, proved a recipe for some of the biggest and most-compelling innings in cricket history. This new biography charts the influences that shaped Lara as a child batting prodigy, through an astonishing and turbulent career and onto his post-cricket life as businessman, benefactor and national icon. Through in-depth interviews with former international players, coaches, teachers, neighbours, friends and family members, new light is shed on this brilliant but complex man; a true Caribbean hero who still has many chapters to write.

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A garden at the foot of Europe and a crossroads between Spain, Africa and the New World, Andaluca has been a cultural customs house on the border of the Mediterranean and Atlantic civilisations for more than ten thousand years. This book traces its origins from the earliest hominid settlers in the Granada mountains 1.8 million years ago, through successive Phoenician, Greek, Roman and Muslim cultures, and the past five hundred years of modern Castilian rule, up to and including the present day of post-modern novelists in Crdoba and Sevilla, guerrilla urban archaeologists in Torremolinos and Marbella, and underground lo-fi bands in Granada and Mlaga.

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Recollections of Tartar Steppes, first published in 1863, is a lost classic of women's travel writing that remains one of the earliest and best examples of the genre. In February 1848 the erstwhile English governess Lucy Atkinson set off from Moscow with her new husband Thomas Witlam Atkinson on a journey that would eventually last almost six years and cover more than 40,000 miles through the unknown wastes of Siberia and Central Asia. To add to the challenge, Lucy found soon after setting off out that she was pregnant. Having barely ever ridden in her life, she spent her entire pregnancy on horseback, before giving birth to a son in a yurt in a remote corner of Central Asia. Remarkably, her child survived and for the next five years accompanied his parents wherever they travelled - through the Djungar Alatau Mountains on the borders with China, the Altai Mountains in southern Siberia and then thousands of miles east to Irkutsk, Lake Baikal and the Sayan Mountains. Lucy Atkinson was not simply a passive witness on this remarkable journey, but an active participant, handling horses and camels, organizing Cossack and local guides and learning to shoot for the pot. On several occasions she levelled a rifle to protect her husband when he was threatened by brigands. Throughout this book, based on diaries she kept, she brings to life her remarkable experiences, whether sharing a meal with a Kazakh chieftain, negotiating the hire of reindeer to carry her baby son, or setting off for two weeks in an open rowing boat onto the unpredictable waters of Lake Baikal. During the bitter winters, when the Atkinsons hunkered down in one of the scattered towns of Siberia to avoid the worst of the sub-zero temperatures, she was a sensation at the soirées and parties that punctuated the long, dark evenings. Through her connections to her former employer in St Petersburg she also met with many of the exiled Decembrists and their wives, including Princess Maria Volkonsky and Princess Katherine Troubetskoy. Out of print for many years, this new edition includes a detailed introduction by Nick Fielding and Marianne Simpson - a direct descendant of Lucy Atkinson's brother Matthew - which explains the background to Lucy's travels and the fascinating events that followed her return to London and her husband's death in 1861.

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Discover Oxford's amazing stories, from Z for Zoo (yes, Oxford once had a zoo until three dangerous animals escaped) to A for Answers (there's a quiz question for every letter). Revel in true tales of Oxford's oddballs, pranksters, poets, murderers, explorers, scientists, actors, criminals and politicians (there may be some crossover here). Learn and laugh about Oxford's curious customs and peculiar protocols. Its eccentric academics and funny fellows. Its ancient university and even older town – and how they've often come to blows. Find answers to the following questions: who burned down half of Oxford cooking a pig? Which plant has killed more people than any other, according to Oxford boffins? Who went to sea as a pirate after graduating from Oxford? Which gruesome body part did Lord Nuffield keep pickled in a jar in his bedroom? Which college was put up for sale on eBay by rival students? Taking the reader on a journey through Oxford's colourful past, this book brings to life a city known around the world. With quirky illustrations and comic tales, it offers a reading adventure that's informative and fun.

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The towns of Valencia's long coast and privileged climate, in particular Benidorm, southern Europe's skyscraper capital, are famous beach tourism destinations. Country of fire, fireworks and long meals (often featuring the renowned paella), Valencia is a Mediterranean land where people know how to enjoy life. This book tells the story of today's Spanish provinces of Valencia, Castello and Alacant (Alicante), with their profound Moorish legacy. The Moors designed the intricate system of irrigation that still nourishes Valencia's prosperous horta (market garden). They brought, too, the silk, paper and orange industries. The area is rich in monuments, many from its golden fifteenth century, when the capital became the wealthiest city on the Western Mediterranean. Sails & Winds discusses Sagunt's Roman theatre and castle; Gandia, home to the ill-reputed Borja (or Borgia) family of popes; Elx, embraced by 200,000 palms; and Alcoi, anarchist stronghold. Michael Eaude discusses Valencia's art, literature and architecture: the painters Ribera and light-filled Sorolla; the great medieval poet of anguish Ausias March. Santiago Calatrava's architecture, conjuring the sensation of soaring flight from steel, has given Valencia city its new trophy buildings. Despite the continuing holiday boom, there are still deserted beaches, sinister and beautiful marshland, orange groves and a depopulated mountainous interior. Sails & Winds seeks to explain this contradictory and divided land, its identity pulled between the Spanish state and Catalonia.

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After his walk from Hook of Holland to Istanbul, Jeremy Cameron was at something of a loose end. Various suggestions were made for his future, but they tended toward the dangerous, undignified or embarrassing. He resorted instead to the obvious solution of walking round all the places in England beginning with the letter Q. There are forty-five of them. The plan was to walk to a Q, return home then come back to the same spot and carry on. It might take a couple of years to reach them all. For a while all went well. Then, visiting the doctor for an ingrowing toenail, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. This was very inconvenient. A year or two later, his heart went wrong again as well. This further reduced his progress. When moral turpitude was added into the mix, he was down to a few miles per day. Confronted by risk-filled roads, steep hills, foul weather and an innate ability to get lost, Cameron persisted, ticking off the Qs from Cornwall to County Durham and everywhere in between. By the time he finished, he was five years older. This slowed him down even more. But he eventually reached Quaking Houses, the last of the forty-five, and now he is fulfilled, though still a grumpy old git. Quite Quintessential tells the story of a journey as epic as it was arbitrary and casts light on the strange world of obsessive walking.

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'There are four roads leading to Santiago, which combine to form a single road'So begins The Pilgrim's Guide, the world's first guidebook. Written early in the twelfth century by Benedictine monks, it served travellers taking part in the great pilgrimage of the Middle Ages, to the tomb of the apostle St James, the cousin of Christ, at Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain. The four roads are all in France: from Paris in the north; from Vezelay in Burgundy; from Le Puy-en-Velay in the Massif Central; and from Arles in Provence - all threading their way across the country before joining as a single road in northern Spain. A step-by-step account of these four journeys through medieval France, the Guide's aim was to explain to pilgrims the religious sites they would see on their way to Santiago, but it also offered advice on where to stay, what to eat and drink, and how to avoid dishonest innkeepers and murderous boatmen.Edwin Mullins follows the same four roads as they exist today in the footsteps of those medieval travellers. He explores the magnificent churches, abbeys and works of art which are the proud legacy of the pilgrimage, as well as reconstructing a turbulent period of history that encompassed wars, crusades and the Reconquest of Spain. Many of the buildings and landmarks that sprang up along the pilgrim routes still stand there today, and The Four Roads to Heaven brings to life their historical, architectural and spiritual significance. From imposing Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals to humble pilgrims' hospices, this book looks at the living legacy of one of the great social phenomena of the Middle Ages - the pilgrimage to Santiago. Richly illustrated with Adam Woolfitt's colour photographs, The Four Roads to Heaven offers an invaluable guide - nine hundred years after its predecessor - to the paths still trodden by increasing numbers of pilgrims.

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London was once a city awash with watercourses. Most of these streams and small rivers have long since disappeared underground and their void has been filled by myth, legend and an enduring yet uncertain fascination. The River Effra was one of these vanishings. In its earlier existence above ground it could only ever have been a modest tributary of the Thames, but through a vivid subterranean afterlife it has continued to impose itself on South London's development history and local mythology. Once fringed by willows and water meadows, it was the haunt of salmon, eels and herons until it fell victim to the unregulated development of suburban South London. The Victorian housebuilder and his tenants enthusiastically transformed it from a small river into a large sewer until finally in desperation it was covered up. Yet it still flows...and occasionally floods.River Effra: South London's Secret Spine is the first comprehensive account, beginning with its underlying geology and pre-history and continuing through to the river's ongoing significance today.The machinations of medieval landowners seeking to divert its course are uncovered along with some of the more absurd legends concerning Canute, Queen Elizabeth and others. For the Victorians it was a public health disaster in waiting and its ignominious disappearance underground into London's main drainage system in the 1860s was seen as a triumph of nineteenth-century civil engineering. In the twenty-first century its legacy is being approached anew.Richly illustrated with archival images and crisp contemporary black and white photographs, which combine to reveal its vanished stream, River Effra combines geography and geology with social, environmental and engineering history and sets this alongside a detailed walker's itinerary for anyone needing to follow the ghost of this watercourse from Norwood, through Herne Hill, Dulwich and Brixton to Kennington and Vauxhall.

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In 1802 William Wordsworth, the great Romantic poet, gazed over London and claimed "Earth has not anything to show more fair". Two centuries after his famous sonnet "Upon Westminster Bridge", That Mighty Heart offers a visual and poetic tribute to a city that today has even stronger claims to be one of the greatest in the world. Designed in the form of seven walks across and around London, and radiating out in all directions from the heart of the city, this book portrays in paint and verse the buildings, parks and sights, both famous and less well-known, that have shaped its history, and contribute to its continuing fascination. The first sequence of poems and paintings focuses on Westminster, taking the reader (and walker) from Westminster Bridge via the Houses of Parliament to Buckingham Palace. The second follows a route through the Kensington area, including Harrods, the Royal Albert Hall and Kensington Palace. The third takes in the British Museum and Covent Garden. The fourth threads its way through the heart of London, from Piccadilly Circus to The Old Bailey, via Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery and Cleopatra's Needle. The fifth crosses the City of London, finishing at the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. The sixth follows the towpath westwards along the south bank of the Thames: Southwark Cathedral and the Shard, the Globe Theatre and the Festival Hall, the Imperial War Museum and the London Eye. The final sequence takes in memorable outlying sites like Hampton Court, Kew Gardens Highgate Cemetery Canary Wharf, Brick Lane, the EIIR Olympic Park and Greenwich. The Introduction provides a concise description of London today and brief history of this remarkable city. Simple and clear maps make it easy for visitors to follow the walks and find their way around London. In words and images That Mighty Heart evokes a place which has gradually changed over the centuries, and yet remains timeless in its beauty and interest.

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The Scottish Highlands form the highest mountains in the British Isles, a broad arc of rocky peaks and deep glens stretching from the outskirts of Glasgow, Perth and Aberdeen to the remote and storm-lashed Cape Wrath in Scotland's far northwest. The Romans never conquered the region - according to the historian Tacitus, the Highland warrior chieftain Calgacus dubbed his people 'the last of the free' - and in the Dark Ages the island of Iona became home to a Celtic Church that was able to pose a serious challenge to the Church of Rome. Few travellers ever ventured there, however, disturbed by the tales of wild beasts, harsh geography and the bloody conflicts of warring families known as the clans. But after the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie at the Battle of Culloden the influence of the clans was curbed and the Scottish Highlands became celebrated by poets, writers and artists for their beauty rather than their savagery. In the nineteenth century, inspired by the travel reportage of Samuel Johnson, the novels of Walter Scott, the poems of William Wordsworth and the very public love of the Highlands espoused by Queen Victoria, tourists began flocking to the mountains - even as Highlanders were being removed from their land by the brutal agricultural reforms known as the Clearances. With the popularity of hiking and the construction of railways, including the famed West Highland line across Rannoch Moor, the fate of the Highlands as one of the great tourist playgrounds of the world was sealed. Andrew Beattie explores the turbulent past and vibrant present of this landscape, where the legacy of events from the first Celtic settlements to the Second World War and from the construction of military roads to mining for lead, slate and gold have all left their mark.

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Miami, or 'Sweet Water' in the Creek Indian language, is one of the newest cities in the United States. While northern Florida was fought over by European powers and finally taken by the Americans as part of the slave-worked plantation South, Miami lay largely ignored and populated by more alligators than humans until its incorporation as a city in 1896. The driving force was Henry Flagler, who brought his railroad down to Miami and from there to Key West and trade with Cuba. Once settled, 'Tin Can' tourists from the North, Midwest and South rode their Model-T Fords down to Florida and Miami and the boom in land sales began. After the Prohibition period and the heyday of the bootleggers, a new but still segregated Miami emerged from the Second World War. Miami Beach became a tourist mecca and once Disney World opened in Orlando, millions passed through Miami to reach it and Florida and Miami entered a new era of growth and development. It was Fidel Castro, however, who created present-day Miami by exiling over a million of Cuba s middle class. Showing enormous entrepreneurial skill and an exuberant taste for life, Cubans and more recently, Brazilians, Venezuelans and Colombians created the first Latin and 'tropical' city in the US. Anthony P. Maingot explores the momentous history and vibrant culture of this most cosmopolitan city. With the highest percentage of foreign-born residents in the US, Miami is a melting-pot of music, dance, visual arts, cuisine sports and political argument. Maingot reveals how this unique cultural mix keeps the new city humming and ensures the perpetuation of its tropical joie de vivre. * City of migrants and tourists: 'capital of Latin America and the Caribbean'; Little Havana and Little Haiti; exiles and entrepreneurs; the world s biggest cruise ship hub. * City of crime: the Prohibition boom; Al Capone, Meyer Lansky and the mob; Miami Vice and modern-day drug crime. * City of culture: art deco architecture; the Latin recording industry; writers of the Caribbean diaspora; centre of performing arts.

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Sir Learie Constantine was an extraordinary figure by any yardstick. One of the greatest and most popular of all West Indian cricketers, he left the game to become, among other things, a barrister, cabinet minister, diplomat, broadcaster, author and journalist. The first black man to enter the House of Lords, he was a tireless campaigner for racial equality and West Indian self-government whose forthright response to racial discrimination led to a celebrated legal case that laid the foundations for Britains first Race Relations Act. Above all, however, he was an immensely popular public figure throughout his life.

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George Borrow - brilliant linguist, expert on gypsy culture and author of "Wild Wales" (1862) - remains an enigmatic character whose fiction and travel writing mix autobiography and invention. From 1835 to 1840, he worked as an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society, attempting to distribute Protestant Testaments in fiercely Catholic Spain. The outcome of this controversial and risky enterprise is - though not the one that his employers expected - as "The Bible in Spain", an account of his wanderings published in 1843. The book, a classic of travel and observation, has been in print ever since. A century and a half later, Borrow enthusiast Guy Arnold followed in the footsteps of the restless and eccentric Bible salesman, tracing his route through Spain and Portugal. Visiting the same places, staying where possible in the same inns, and taking the same roads, Arnold explored the varied landscapes and cities of the Iberian Peninsula in a journey that took him through Madrid, Lisbon, Toledo, Seville, Cadiz, Salamanca and Segovia as well as many small towns and villages. Braving blisters, angry dogs and over-inquisitive hoteliers, Arnold walked over a thousand kilometres, taking buses and trains where Borrow had used horses, mules and carriages. In the course of his journey, he looked at cathedrals and churches, palaces and convents, castles and ruins. He also encountered a broad cross section of humanity, Spanish and foreign, on the long road. "In the Footsteps of George Borrow" brings to life the scenery and culture of Spain as well as the complex personality of the man who described it in the 1830s. In the course of his travels, Guy Arnold considers Borrow's ambiguous religious beliefs, his avowed taste for the social lowlife and his mysterious liaison with a widow from Norfolk. He also compares modern Spain with that of Borrow's time and finds - civil war and brigandage apart - that much remains surprisingly the same.

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Squeezed between more powerful France and Spain, Catalonia has endured a violent history. Its medieval empire that conquered Naples, Sicily and Athens was crushed by Spain. Its geography, with the Pyrenees falling sharply to the rugged Costa Brava, is tormented, too. Michael Eaude traces this history and its monuments: Roman Tarragona, celebrated by the poet Martial; Greek Empuries, lost for centuries beneath the sands; medieval Romanesque architecture in the Vall de Boi churches (a World Heritage Site) and Poblet and Santes Creus monasteries. He tells the stories of several of Catalonia's great figures: Abbot Oliva, who brought Moorish learning to Europe, the ruthless mercenary, Roger de Flor, and Verdaguer, handsome poet-priest. Catalonia is famous today for its twentieth-century art. This book focuses on the revolutionary Art Nouveau buildings (including the Sagrada Familia) of Antoni Gaudi. It also explores the region's artistic legacy: the young Picasso painting Barcelona's vibrant slums; Salvador Dali, inspired by the twisted rocks of Cap de Creus to paint his landscapes of the human mind; and Joan Miro, discovering the colours of the red earth at Montroig. This book talks about: mountains and mediterranean: Pyrenean peaks with calm lakes, birds of prey and deep valleys; Montserrat, where Himmler searched for the Holy Grail; the Costa Brava, its virgin beauty still visible alongside the resorts of the package-holiday boom; the rice fields and bird life of the wild Ebro Delta. It also talks about revolution and war, looking at anarchism, revolution and Civil War (covered by both Orwell and Hemingway), then forty years of Franco's dictatorship. It illuminates the self-confidence of modern Catalonia: linguistic revival, Barcelona Football Club, popular music, the cuisine of Ferran Adria; and, cava sparkling wine.

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In 1866, worn out by fighting in the American Civil War, the writer Samuel Hazard arrived in Cuba to begin work on a guidebook to the island. Over a period of several months, as his health recovered, he travelled throughout what was then still a Spanish colony, observing and recording daily life. The result is one of the most complete and evocative portrayals of colonial Cuban life, written in the decade when the first concerted struggle for independence was already under way. Hazard's sympathies were clearly with the pro-independence "patriots", but his main aim was to produce a complete overview of the island's sights and customs, aimed at visitors. He is informative on hotels, restaurants, and transport and sightseeing, but is also intrigued by the people he meets and the idiosyncrasies of Cuban social life. Illustrated with hundreds of the author's own sketches, "Cuba with Pen and Pencil" takes the reader through the historic fortresses and mansions of Havana, the tropical city of Santiago de Cuba and the plantations and mountains of the island's countryside. With a keen and often quirky eye for detail, Hazard explores the sugar industry - still largely powered by slave labour - and Cuba's other economic activities. He describes the island's flora and fauna, its varied topography, and its varied social life, ranging from upper-class balls to slave compounds. First published in 1871 and now reissued with an introduction by acclaimed historian Richard Gott, "Cuba with Pen and Pencil" is a unique portrait of an island and a society on the eve of fundamental and historic change.

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Due South catalogues moments in time experienced during a journey to Antarctica, the last great wilderness. As selected artist with the British Antarctic Survey, my work is an attempt to present the reality of Antarctica, not simply a visual record, but an account of the emotions and fleeting thoughts of life in the 'freezer'. Increasingly I became aware of the great migration of life at the margin. The vast movement of wildlife within the air and the sea, dictated by the seasons and by the great exodus of life to the north with the first storms of winter. The confrontation with the sublime on such a scale was only possible due to that 'silent sea' of the inner self, into which one could retreat for shelter and reflection. And so it was that I turned to the sketch book and journal. Illustrated with photographs and line drawings, Due South is an evocative and personal account of an individual's encounter with Antarctica. Published to coincide with exhibitions at the Natural History Museum (24 February-1 August 2004) and the Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum (23 January-6 March 2005), it mixes text and image to recreate the extreme experience of the Antarctic landscape.

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"No city preserves the memory and signature of so many men. The past and the dead have here as it were, a corporate life..." Edward Thomas is now best known for the poetry he wrote between 1914 and his untimely death at Arras in 1917. But during his lifetime his reputation was based on the extraordinary body of travel writing, reviews, and critical books he produced against intense deadline pressures in order to feed his growing family. His travel books, most notably Oxford and The South Country have had an enduring appeal for all lovers the English countryside. Through these and his later poems, Thomas has come to be regarded as the quintessential English writer. And yet he was Welsh, observing and loving England as a semi-outsider. Oxford, published three years after he completed his degree, was Thomas's first major commission. In it, he gives an evocative account of Oxford's architecture, history, and customs, drawing on personal memories of undergraduate life at Lincoln College. His prose was written to accompany the paintings of Fulleylove, who shared his interest in juxtaposing Oxford's grandeur with the ordinary details of domestic life. Between them, the artist and the writer catch the beauty of this "city within the heart" at a pivotal moment in pre-war history, and give it to us as though it could last forever in that form. In a Critical Introduction, Lucy Newlyn examines the importance of Oxford as a historical record. But she also argues that it is a piece of vivid experimental prose, in which much of Thomas's later greatness is anticipated. Her analysis of his prose style shows how Thomas tries out the voices of the past, defining his own particular brand of Modernism by creating a kind of "bricolage" through allusion and imitation. Running steadily beneath the text's elaborate ventriloquism is the quiet ruminative voice of the authentic Thomas, edging ever closer to the simple speech rhythms of his lyric poems. This is the first critical edition of Oxford, giving long overdue credit to the book as an early masterpiece in the Thomas oeuvre.

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"The spread of the towns, the disforesting of the hills, and other causes are conspiring to destroy many of the conditions which made the Riviera of former days so happy a resort for the lovers of Nature. But there will always be much to observe and much to study in so favoured a region." Quirky, erudite and eminently readable, the fifty-four essays comprising Riviera Nature Notes give an astonishingly clear picture of plant and animal life in the South of France at the turn of the twentieth century--not to mention a fascinating insight into the social mores of the time. A hundred years later the book is as fresh, topical and inviting as when it was first published. Preferring to remain anonymous as a naturalist, not only out of modesty but to guard the integrity of his liturgical writings, its clergyman author speaks of olives and pines, myrtles and figs, mosquitoes and rare butterflies--to name but a few of his subjects--with such passion and verve as to bring the land from the Ligurian coastline to the Maritime Alps vividly alive. Published first at the expense of Sir Thomas Hanbury, master of the famed gardens at La Mortola, Italy and benefactor of the Royal Horticultural Society's sixty-acre estate at Wisley, a second edition incorporated photographs taken by the temperamental and extravagant heiress Ellen Wilmot, in many ways a greater figure in the plant world than her close contemporary Gertrude Jekyll. Our anonymous author moved in the best horticultural and botanical circles, wore his learning lightly, and unusually for the time, spoke to the common man and the general reader on equal terms. With an engaging, sometimes acerbic, always entertaining and informative voice speaking effortlessly across the years, he will once again garner admirers among nature lovers, gardeners and travellers alike.

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Scholar, reverend, politician, and perhaps aristocrat... James Arthur Stanley Harley was certainly a polymath. Born in a poor village in the Caribbean island of Antigua, he went on to attend Howard, Harvard, Yale and Oxford universities, was ordained a priest in Canterbury Cathedral and was elected to Leicestershire County Council. He was a choirmaster, a pioneer Oxford anthropologist, a country curate and a firebrand councillor. This remarkable career was all the more extraordinary because he was black in an age - the early twentieth century - that was institutionally racist. Pamela Roberts' meticulously researched book tells Harley's hitherto unknown story from humble Antiguan childhood, through elite education in Jim Crow America to the turbulent England of World War I and the General Strike. Navigating the complex intertwining of education, religion, politics and race, his life converged with pivotal periods and events in history: the birth of the American New Negro in the 1900s, black scholars at Ivy League institutions, the heyday of Washington's black elite and the early civil rights movement, Edwardian English society, and the Great War. Based on Harley's letters, sermons and writings as well as contemporary accounts and later oral testimony, this is an account of an individual's trajectory through seven decades of dramatic social change. Roberts' biography reveals a man of religious conviction, who won admirers for his work as a vicar and local councillor. But Harley was also a complex and abrasive individual, who made enemies and courted controversy and scandal. Most intriguingly, he hinted at illicit aristocratic ancestry dating back to Antigua's slave-owning past. His life, uncovered here for the first time, is full of contradictions and surprises, but above all illustrates the power and resilience of the human spirit.

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It's a cool July day. A young girl is tired of window-shopping in Oxford Street, when a white rabbit runs past her looking at his watch. "Oh dear! Oh dear! It's 3 o'clock already. I shall be too late!" Without thinking, she chases after the rabbit and they disappear down the escalator into Oxford Street Underground station. As the girl steps onto an Underground train, something remarkable happens and an adventure begins that takes her back in time to meet the characters of Wonderland. In a tale that links the world of Lewis Carroll with today's London Underground, the reader is transported to be a special guest at a mad tea-party, to do battle with the Red Queen and her Guards, chase round the London Underground system and fight the terrifying Jabberwock. The first underground railway in the world opened in London in 1863 just a year after Lewis Carroll first told Alice Liddell the story that became Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Did Carroll travel on those underground steam trains? Did he tell stories as he went? Here, Carroll has begun a new tale about the Wonderland characters going on a day-trip to London. With the story unfinished, the Hatter, the March Hare, the Dormouse and all are left stranded in the Underground, waiting to be rescued by a modern-day Alice. But will Alice ever come? Peter Lawrence pays tribute to Carroll's imagination and verbal brilliance with this modern adaptation of the author's much-loved characters and themes. Illustrated by award-winning wood engraver Andrew Davidson, Alice's Adventures on the London Underground will appeal to the many readers of Carroll's classic stories.

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The Oxford academic and foreign correspondent James Pettifer has been an international authority on and historian of modern Greece and its Balkan neighbours for over thirty years. At the same time, he has been an eye-witness to many of the events that led to the ex-Yugoslav Wars. This book, bringing together some of his most important papers and reports, explores the evolution of the Macedonian crisis, the chaos and anarchy in Albania linked to the war in Kosovo, and the recent debt crisis in Greece. It also analyses the region's turbulent history with seminal papers on historiography and the evolution of British foreign policy towards Greece and the wider region in the twentieth century, the nature of Montenegrin identity at the time of independence, and the changing role of Albania in the Balkans. The key paper on the emergence of the New Macedonian Question, which has set the parameters for all later analysis, is also included in this collection The end of the Cold War after 1990 was expected to herald an era of stability and liberal democratic development, but in reality the Southern Balkans have experienced intermittent crises during these years, from the implosion of impoverished Albania and the gradual collapse of Yugoslavia into fragmentation and violent conflict, to the chain of events in Greece that led to the post-2010 financial crisis and the ensuing imposition of international control over the economy. These issues have emerged against the background of deteriorating relations with Turkey and an alarming climate of militarization and instability throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. This collection, which includes material hitherto difficult to access, will be an essential tool for all students of the history, international relations and contemporary politics of an increasingly critical region on the interface of Europe and the Middle East.

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The Eleanor Crosses begins in November 1290 with the untimely death in a Lincolnshire village of Queen Eleanor of Castile, beloved consort of King Edward I of England. A sombre journey of more than 200 miles must follow, to transport the queen's body to Westminster for burial -- the devastated king leading the way, walking beside the coffin of his all but constant companion during 36 years of marriage. With seasonal conditions adding even more miles to the cortege's route, the king determines that this journey will never be forgotten. He envisages a building project of unprecedented scale and imagination: the construction of an elaborate stone cross at the journey's start and at all eleven nightly stopping places, ending at the Thames-side village of Charing, in what is now the centre of London... Duly built, these crosses served as focal points for prayers for the queen's departed soul. They were also artistic masterpieces, the fruit of the skills of the finest craftsmen of the age. Today only three of the original twelve survive, but each cross has had its own story. Together they reveal much about major changes at key periods in British history, religious conflict, civil war and world war, as well as shifts in attitudes to the past. In The Eleanor Crosses, Decca Warrington tells this tale of survival and continuity over seven centuries, and also offers a new perspective on the remarkable life and death of the nowadays little-known queen whose legacy they are -- Eleanor of Castile, the woman who won the heart of one of England's most forceful and charismatic kings.

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At the beginning of the fourteenth century, anarchy in Italy led to the capital of the Christian world being moved from Romefor the first and only time in history. It was a critical moment, and it resulted in seven successive popes remaining in exile for the next seventy years. The city chosen to replace Rome was Avignon. And depending on where you stood at the time they were seventy years of heaven, or of hellopinions invariably ran to extremes, as did the behaviour of the popes themselves.

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The Great Steppe stretches from the Volga River and the Caspian Sea in the west to the easternmost limits of Djungaria in Western China. Sometimes referred to as the biggest field in the world, this vast region is as mysterious today as it was a thousand years ago. Despite modern development it remains little visited and little known. This was once a land of nomads, barren and harsh at its centre, but with rich grasslands fed by the many rivers flowing from the surrounding mountains. It was home to a society that kept no records other than the epic poems and songs celebrating the stories of its great batyrs (warriors). Whatever is known of this society survives within local culture - desecrated as it is by years of Soviet cultural vandalism - or in the voices of outsiders who occasionally passed through. Usually they were on their way elsewhere - to India, China, Tibet - but occasionally there were visitors who took more than a passing interest in the lives of the steppe nomads. Their findings and impressions are collected in this book. Edited and told with relish by Nick Fielding, these are the stories of early papal emissaries like Friar William of Rubruck and Jean de Piano Carpini, sent to negotiate with the Mongols, and the merchant adventurers like Andrew Jenkinson and Jonas Hanway who tried to capture the Silk Road trade. Later came the early scientists and geographers associated with Peter Simon Pallas and the Russian explorers exemplified by Chokan Walikhanov and Petr Petrovich Semenov. Thomas and Lucy Atkinson became the earliest British visitors to spend time in the steppe. They were followed by military adventurers such as Captain Fred Burnaby and James Abbott, and journalists including the great Aloysius MacGahan and David Ker, the original purveyor of 'fake news'. Besides Lucy Atkinson there were other determined women travellers including Adéle Hommaire de Hell and the remarkable Marie de Ujfalvy-Bourdon, both of whom documented life in the Great Steppe. Cambridge scientist William Bateson spent 18 months traversing the steppes looking for snail shells in the 1880s, and by the end of the 19th century the first tourists - some, like R L Jefferson, on bicycle - were arriving, to be followed by mining engineers and agricultural merchants. All have a tale to tell.

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National Parks are Britain's breathing spaces - protected areas enjoyed by the millions of visitors attracted every year by their tranquillity, beauty and landscape. Fifteen National Parks cover a significant share of Britain's total land area - 10 per cent of England, 20 per cent of Wales, and 7 per cent of Scotland. Yet despite their importance, few people today are aware of the campaign in the 1930s and 1940s to establish National Parks. And fewer still know the name of the man who was its principal driving force. John Dower was an architect, a planner, a prodigious walker, an accomplished writer and, above all, a fighter. Fight for It Now is the first biography to be written about him, and the title reflects his one great objective and the increasing urgency of attaining it as his health declined. Drawing on extensive national archives and his private papers and letters, the book describes Dower's early work with pressure groups like the Friends of the Lake District and the Council for the Protection of Rural England, and then his subsequent move during the Second World War to an influential position inside government, focusing on post-war reconstruction. While German bombs were falling on British cities, it was part of Dower's job to quarter the English countryside and identify potential areas for National Parks. Dower's most influential contribution was his 'one-man White Paper' National Parks in England and Wales published at the end of the war in 1945. The 'Dower Report' addressed key questions on the criteria for selecting National Parks, where they should be located, who they were for, and how they should be administered, and it paved the way at last for the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act. While overcoming opponents both outside and inside government, Dower wrote continuously as though his project could only be hammered out at white heat. And all the while, the one struggle he knew he could not win was the tuberculosis that eventually killed him, at the tragically early age of forty-seven.

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