Category: Books, Writing and Language
In 1831, Reverend Jackson Whitehead served as chaplain aboard the HMS Pica, which accompanied the Beagle on its second survey expedition. Whitehead was a keen collector of fauna as well as a typography enthusiast. Upon realising that the majority of both ships' crews were either committed atheists or bu ...Show more
Category: Books, Writing and Language
New essays by the Orange and Pulitzer Prize winning author of Gilead, Home and Lila. In this collection, Marilynne Robinson, one of today's most important thinkers - admired by President Obama, and so many others - impels us to action and offers us hope.Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in ...Show more
Category: Books, Writing and Language
The gripping and elegiac stories of eight lost books, and the mysterious circumstances behind their disappearances. They exist as a rumour or a fading memory. They vanished from history leaving scarcely a trace, lost to fire, censorship, theft, war or deliberate destruction, yet those who seek them are ...Show more
Category: Books, Writing and Language
How do you clothe a book? In this deeply personal reflection, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri explores the art of the book jacket from the perspectives of both reader and writer. Probing the complex relationships between text and image, author and designer, and art and commerce, Lahiri delve ...Show more
Category: Science
Swearing, it turns out, is an incredibly useful part of our linguistic repertoire. Not only has some form of swearing existed since the earliest humans began to communicate, but it has been shown to reduce physical pain, help stroke victims recover their language, and encourage people to work together a ...Show more
Category: Books, Writing and Language
The long-awaited guide to writing long-form nonfiction by the legendary author and teacherDraft No. 4 is a master class on the writer's craft. In a series of playful, expertly wrought essays, John McPhee shares insights he has gathered over his career and has refined while teaching at Princeton Universi ...Show more
Category: Autobiography and Biography
From the award-winning, best-selling writer: a deeply moving tale of a father and son's transformative journey in reading-and relivin -Homer's epic masterpiece. "My favourite classicist once again combines meticulous literary investigation with warm and wrenching human emotion - books like these are why ...Show more
Category: Gardening and Nature
'A magical book: an inimitable fusion of ornithology, literary anthology and autobiography.' Tom HollandWhen Alex Preston was 15, he stopped being a birdwatcher. Adolescence and the scorn of his peers made him put away his binoculars, leave behind the hides and the nature reserves and the quiet companio ...Show more
Category: Books, Writing and Language
Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King's advice is grounded in the vivid memories from childhood through his emergence a ...Show more
Category: Books, Writing and Language
A flock of geese,a murder of crows, a parliament of owls: thsee are some of the bird collective nouns you may already know. But have you heard of a bouquet of pheasants, a chime of wrens or a circus of puffins? Then turn the pages of this book to discover a collection of lesser-known and sometimes more ...Show more
Category: Books, Writing and Language
When Nell Stevens was given the opportunity to spend three months in a location of her choice in order to write her novel, she was determined to rid herself of all distractions. So Nell decided to travel to Bleaker Island (official population: two) in the Falklands where she would write 2,500 words a da ...Show more
Category: History, Politics and Society
1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear traces Shakespeare's life and times from the autumn of 1605, when he took an old and anonymous Elizabethan play, The Chronicle History of King Leir, and transformed it into his most searing tragedy, King Lear. 1606 proved to be an especially grim year for ...Show more
