Search results for ""author tom cox""

The tale of an imaginative childhood set in 1980s Nottinghamshire, from Sunday Times-bestselling author, Tom Cox.Benji is an imaginative eight-year-old boy, living with his parents in a mining village in Nottinghamshire amidst the spoil heaps and chip shops that characterise the last industrially bruised outposts of the Midlands, just before Northern England begins. His family are the eccentric neighbours on a street where all the houses are set on a tilt, slowly subsiding into the excavated space below. Told through Benji’s voice and a colourful variety of others over a deeply joyful and strange twelve month period, it’s a story about growing up, the oddness beneath the everyday, what we once believed the future would be, and those times in life when anything seems possible.1983 is steeped in the distinctive character of a setting far weirder than it might at first appear: from robots living next door, and a school caretake

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'Nozedar is a font of botanical insight'GuardianWITH A FOREWORD BY SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR, TOM COXCelebrate the 10th anniversary of the definitive guide to hedgerow foraging with this special edition of the bestselling The Hedgerow Handbook, by esteemed author Adele Nozedar, featuring a foreword from Tom Cox.The hedgerow is one of the most iconic and distinctive features of the British countryside, so familiar that we often take it for granted. Take a closer look, though, and you'll see that the diversity and variety of plant species that form hedgerows, and the animals and insects that they shelter, are a complete world of delight.Angelica to ash, bird cherry to borage, pineapple weed to plantain and wild garlic to wimberries, The Hedgerow Handbook is a directory of our best known and most useful hedgerow plants, each entry botanically illustrated in colour to help you identify the plant or flower, along with its history and folklore, and its culinary and medicinal uses, from the traditional to the unusual.The ultimate guide for nature-lovers and foragers alike, discover how you can transform wild and natural hedgerow ingredients into fresh and delicious recipes. From Elderflower Champagne and Blackberry Sorbet to Wild Raspberry and Meadowsweet Jam, the hedgerow has more possibilities than you could ever imagine.

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'These stories are a delight' Guardian'Often unnerving, frequently funny and always original, the tangled roots of these haunted stories reach into deep, dark places to unearth an alternative England' Benjamin Myers, author of The Offing 'Everyone should read Help the Witch – funny, odd, moving, haunting . . . Brings so much emotion and humour to horror' Isy SuttieAs night draws through country lanes, and darkness sweeps across hills and darkness sweeps across hills and hedgerows, shadows appear where figures are not; things do not remain in their places; a new home is punctured by abandoned objects; a watering hole conceals depths greater than its swimmers can fathom.Riddled with talismans and portents, saturated by shadows beneath trees and whispers behind doors, these ten stories broaden the scope of folk tales as we know them. Inspired by our native landscapes and traversing boundaries of the past and future, this collection is Tom Cox's first foray into fiction. Funny, strange and poignant, it elicits the unexpected and unseen to raise our hackles and set imaginations whirring.

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The Sunday Times Bestseller: A heartwarming memoir about a man at the mercy of his unpredictable, demanding and endlessly lovable cats.Meet THE BEAR - a cat who carries the weight of the world on his furry shoulders, and whose wise, owl-like eyes seem to ask, Can you tell me why I am a cat, please?Like many intellectuals, The Bear would prefer a life of quiet solitude with plenty of time to gaze forlornly into space and contemplate society's ills. Unfortunately he is destined to spend his days surrounded by felines of a significantly lower IQ . . .RALPH: handsome, self-satisfied tabby, terrified of the clothes horse.SHIPLEY: mouthy hooligan and champion mouser, rendered insensible by being turned upside-down.ROSCOE: fiercely independent kitten, tormented by her doppelganger in the mirror. And then there's Tom, writing with his usual wit and charm about the unexpected adventures that go hand in hand with a life at the beck and call of four cats . . . or three cats and a sensitive poet who just happens to be a foot high and covered in fur.

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As a teenager, Cox dreamed of sporting immortality. For four years he devoted himself to the game of golf. And then, one day, he walked away. But as he got older, those dreams kept coming back. Perhaps it was turning thirty, perhaps it was having his first hole in one, but he decided it was time to start again, to live the dream for real.So he switched off his computer, grabbed his checked trouser and headed for the golf course. To turn pro. The Open Championship was only five of the best rounds of his life away, and given a few warm-up tournaments, how hard could it be?

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Following on from Tom's life with six cats in UNDER THE PAW, he now picks up the story in TALK TO THE TAIL, updating readers on what has happened with his feline friends as well as looking back for more confessions about his animal-loving past. Readers of Tom's previous book will be delighted to read what has happened to his six eccentric cats. Why does Janet keep bringing 1980s sweet wrappers into the house? Will 24-hour surveillance of The Bear, using a state-of-the-art cat GPS system, finally solve the mystery of his wanderlust? Tom also writes about his bumbling forays into the remainder of the animal kingdom. He attempts to overcome his crippling fear of horses with disastrous results, chase ostriches in Kenya, put his hand into a tiger's mouth for 0.9 seconds and he meets his 'alter-doggo' -- the spaniel Tom regularly walks who likes to roll around in dead animals. Where will it all end? Will he give in to temptation and get a dog, a goat or even more cats? With this soppy creature-obsessive, anything is possible.

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Sure, sex is great, but have you ever cracked open a new notebook and written something on the first page with a really nice pen?The story behind Notebook starts with a minor crime: the theft of Tom Cox's rucksack from a Bristol pub in 2018. In that rucksack was a journal containing ten months' worth of notes, one of the many Tom has used to record his thoughts and observations over the past twelve years. It wasn't the best he had ever kept – his handwriting was messier than in his previous notebook, his entries more sporadic – but he still grieved for every one of the hundred or so lost pages.This incident made Tom appreciate how much notebook-keeping means to him: the act of putting pen to paper has always led him to write with an unvarnished, spur-of-the-moment honesty that he wouldn’t achieve on-screen.Here, Tom has assembled his favourite stories, fragments, moments and ideas from those notebooks, ranging from memories of his childhood to the revelation that 'There are two types of people in the world. People who fucking love maps, and people who don't.'The result is a book redolent of the real stuff of life, shot through with Cox’s trademark warmth and wit.

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Have you ever moved house, over a distance of 350 miles, with four cats? If you haven't, and are thinking about it, I'll give you some advice: don't. If you really must move, try to get the cats to arrange their own transport. Focus on yourself instead. You'll have plenty to think about as it is, and the cats will only get in the way with their sarcasm and hairballs. I moved from Norfolk to Devon with four cats and it felt like such an impossible ordeal, part of me believes that I actually died somewhere along the way and am now living in some kind of afterlife: very much like real life, but a little slower moving, and with slightly clearer air. "That's just the West Country," I've been told, but I can't be 100% certain.

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'Always engaging, charming, funny and often moving . . . It made me want to pull on my stoutest boots and follow in his footsteps' Stephen Fry'Beautiful, funny, fascinating, impossible-to-categorise . . . Like going on a great ramble with a knowledgeable, witty, engaging friend. Tom Cox brings magic to the most mundane of subjects' Marian Keyes'Sheer bloody genius . . . I loved it. Then I loved it more' John Lewis-Stempel, author of MeadowlandA hill is not a mountain. You climb it for you, then you put it quietly inside you, in a cupboard marked ‘Quite A Lot Of Hills’ where it makes its infinitesimal mark on who you are.Ring the Hill is a book written around, and about, hills: it includes a northern hill, a hill that never ends and the smallest hill in England. Each chapter takes a type of hill – whether it’s a knoll, cap, cliff, tor or even a mere bump – as a starting point for one of Tom’s characteristically unpredictable and wide-ranging explorations.Tom’s lyrical, candid prose roams from an intimate relationship with a particular cove on the south coast, to meditations on his great-grandmother and a lesson on what goes into the mapping of hills themselves. Because a good walk in the hills is never just about the hills: you never know where it might lead.

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Few things tell us more about ourselves than the music we listen to, a fact that Tom Cox has demonstrated brilliantly in his acclaimed Observer column, The Lost Tribes of Pop. Extended from that column, Cox's beautifully illustrated book presents a unique and hilarious vision of the current pop climate, via the people who really make it what it is: the fans. From Dave, the Old School Goth, and Charlie, the iPod Twit, to Nancy, the Rave Mom, and Margot, the First-time Gigger, Lost Tribes is an endlessly entertaining and curious mix of social stereotypes, in all their flawed, obsessive, identity-searching glory. Some are idiotic. There are plenty of books about people behind the music. The Lost Tribes of Pop is different: it's a book about the people in front of it. It's the work of a major writing talent, and a must-have for any music fan.

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'Always engaging, charming, funny and often moving . . . It made me want to pull on my stoutest boots and follow in his footsteps' Stephen Fry'Beautiful, funny, fascinating, impossible-to-categorise . . . Like going on a great ramble with a knowledgeable, witty, engaging friend. Tom Cox brings magic to the most mundane of subjects' Marian Keyes'Sheer bloody genius . . . I loved it. Then I loved it more' John Lewis-Stempel, author of MeadowlandA hill is not a mountain. You climb it for you, then you put it quietly inside you, in a cupboard marked ‘Quite A Lot Of Hills’ where it makes its infinitesimal mark on who you are.Ring the Hill is a book written around, and about, hills: it includes a northern hill, a hill that never ends and the smallest hill in England. Each chapter takes a type of hill – whether it’s a knoll, cap, cliff, tor or even a mere bump – as a starting point for one of Tom’s characteristically unpredictable and wide-ranging explorations.Tom’s lyrical, candid prose roams from an intimate relationship with a particular cove on the south coast, to meditations on his great-grandmother and a lesson on what goes into the mapping of hills themselves. Because a good walk in the hills is never just about the hills: you never know where it might lead.

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Villages are full of tales: some are forgotten while others become a part of local folklore. But the fortunes of one West Country village are watched over and irreversibly etched into history as an omniscient, somewhat crabby, presence keeps track of village life.In the late sixties a Californian musician blows through Underhill and writes a set of haunting folk songs that will earn him a cult following. Two decades later, some teenagers disturb a body on the local golf course. In 2019, a pair of lodgers discover a one-eyed rag doll hidden in the walls of their crumbling home. Connections are forged and broken across generations, but only the landscape itself can link them together. A landscape threatened by property development and speckled by the pylons whose feet have been buried across the moor.Tom Cox’s masterful debut novel synthesises his passion for music, nature and folklore into a psychedelic and enthralling exploration of village life and the countryside that sustains it.

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'Glorious – funny and wry and wise, and utterly its own lawmaker' Robert Macfarlane'A rich, strange, oddly glorious brew' GuardianLonglisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize 201821st-Century Yokel is not quite nature writing, not quite a family memoir, not quite a book about walking, not quite a collection of humorous essays, but a bit of all five.Thick with owls and badgers, oak trees and wood piles, scarecrows and ghosts, and Tom Cox's loud and excitable dad, this book is full of the folklore of several counties – the ancient kind and the everyday variety – as well as wild places, mystical spots and curious objects. Emerging from this focus on the detail are themes that are broader and bigger and more important than ever.Tom's writing treads a new path, one that has a lot in common with a rambling country walk; it's bewitched by fresh air and big skies, intrepid in minor ways, haunted by weather and old stories and the spooky edges of the outdoors, restless and prone to a few detours, but it always reaches its destination in the end.

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