The Ancient Guide to Modern Life, Natalie Haynes ( 2012, paperback)

£10.99

It's time for us to re-examine the past. Our lives are infinitely richer if we take the time to look at what the Greeks and Romans have given us in politics and law, religion and philosophy and education, and to learn how people really lived in Athens, Rome, Sparta and Alexandria. This is a book with a serious point to make but the author isn't simply a classicist but a comedian and broadcaster who has made television and radio documentaries about humour, education and Dorothy Parker.

This is a book for us all. Whether political, cultural or social, there are endless parallels between the ancient and modern worlds. Whether it's the murder of Caesar or the political assassination of Thatcher; the narrative arc of the hit HBO series The Wire or that of Oedipus; the popular enthusiasm for the Emperor Titus or President Obama - over and over again we can be seen to be living very much like people did 2,000 or more years ago.
SKU:
More Details

Regenesis : Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet, George Monbiot (paperback May 2023)

£10.99

From the bestselling author of Feral, a breathtaking first glimpse of a new future for food and for humanityFarming is the world's greatest cause of environmental destruction - and the one we are least prepared to talk about. We criticise urban sprawl, but farming sprawls across thirty times as much land. We have ploughed, fenced and grazed great tracts of the planet, felling forests, killing wildlife, and poisoning rivers and oceans to feed ourselves.

Yet millions still go hungry. Now the food system itself is beginning to falter. But, as George Monbiot shows us in this brilliant, bracingly original new book, we can resolve the biggest of our dilemmas and feed the world without devouring the planet.

Regenesis is a breathtaking vision of a new future for food and for humanity. Drawing on astonishing advances in soil ecology, Monbiot reveals how our changing understanding of the world beneath our feet could allow us to grow more food with less farming. He meets the people who are unlocking these methods, from the fruit and vegetable grower revolutionising our understanding of fertility; through breeders of perennial grains, liberating the land from ploughs and poisons; to the scientists pioneering new ways to grow protein and fat.
SKU:
More Details

The World in 2050: How to Think About The Future, Hamish McRae ( PB May 2023)

£12.99

A bold and illuminating vision of the future, from one of Europe's foremost speakers on global trends in economics, business and societyWhat will the world look like in 2050? How will complex forces of change - demography, the environment, finance, technology and ideas about governance - affect our global society? And how, with so many unknowns, should we think about the future? One of Europe's foremost voices on global trends in economics, business and society, Hamish McRae takes us on an exhilarating journey through the next thirty years. Drawing on decades of research, and combining economic judgement with historical perspective, Hamish weighs up the opportunities and dangers we face, analysing the economic tectonic plates of the past and present in order to help us chart a map of the future. A bold and vital vision of our planet, The World in 2050 is an essential projection for anyone worried about what the future holds.

SKU:
More Details

In Kiltumper: A Year in an Irish garden ( Niall Williams) paperback April 2023

£12.99

When they were in their twenties, Niall Williams and Christine Breen made the impulsive decision to leave New York City and move to Christine's ancestral home in the town of Kiltumper in rural Ireland. In the decades that followed, the pair dedicated themselves to writing, gardening and living a life that followed the rhythms of the earth.

In 2019, with Christine in the final stages of recovery from cancer and the surrounding land threatened by the arrival of turbines, Niall and Christine decided to document a year - in words and Christine's drawings - of living in their garden and in their small corner of a rapidly changing world. Proceeding month by month through the year, this is the story of a garden in all its many splendours, and a couple who have made their life observing its wonders.
SKU:
More Details

In Kiltumper : A Year in an Irish Garden ( Niall Williams,Christine Breen) paperback April 2023

£12.99

'Poignant ... A meditation on life, love and the importance of nature' IRISH TIMESWhen they were in their twenties, Niall Williams and Christine Breen made the impulsive decision to leave New York City and move to Christine's ancestral home in the town of Kiltumper in rural Ireland. In the decades that followed, the pair dedicated themselves to writing, gardening and living a life that followed the rhythms of the earth.

In 2019, with Christine in the final stages of recovery from cancer and the surrounding land threatened by the arrival of turbines, Niall and Christine decided to document a year - in words and Christine's drawings - of living in their garden and in their small corner of a rapidly changing world. Proceeding month by month through the year, this is the story of a garden in all its many splendours, and a couple who have made their life observing its wonders.
SKU:
More Details

Witchcraft in 13 Trials, Marion Gibson ( paperback Sept 2024)

£10.99

We often hear 'witch-hunt' in today's media, and the misogyny that shaped witch trials is all too familiar.

Three women were prosecuted under a version of the 1735 Witchcraft Act as recently as 2018. In Witchcraft, Professor Marion Gibson uses thirteen significant trials to tell the global history of witchcraft and witch-hunts. As well as exploring the origins of witch-hunts through some of the most famous trials from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, it takes us in new and surprising directions.

It shows us how witchcraft was reimagined by lawyers and radical historians in France, how suspicions of sorcery led to murder in Jazz Age Pennsylvania, the effects of colonialism and Christian missionary zeal on 'witches' in Africa, and how even today a witch trial can come in many guises. Professor Gibson also tells the stories of the 'witches' - mostly women like Helena Scheuberin, Anny Sampson and Joan Wright, whose stories have too often been overshadowed by those of the powerful men, such as King James I and 'Witchfinder General' Matthew Hopkins, who hounded them. Once a tool invented by demonologists to hurt and silence their enemies, witch trials have been twisted and transformed over the course of history and the lines between witch and witch-hunter blurred.

For the fortunate, a witch-hunt is just a metaphor, but, as this book makes clear, witches are truly still on trial.

(paperback end Sept 2024) 

SKU:
More Details

A Thread of Violence, Mark O’Connell ( paperback June 2024)

£16.99

From an award-winning author comes a tale of a notorious double-murder, for readers of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, or Emmanuel Carrere's The Adversary. In 1982 Malcolm Macarthur, the wealthy heir to a small estate, found himself suddenly without money. The solution, he decided, was to rob a bank.

To do this, he would need a gun and a car. In the process of procuring them, he killed two people, and the circumstances of his eventual arrest in the apartment of Ireland's Attorney General nearly brought down the government. The case remains one of the most shocking in Ireland's history.

Mark O'Connell has long been haunted by the story of this brutal double murder. But in recent years this haunting has become mutual. When O'Connell sets out to unravel the mysteries still surrounding these horrific and inexplicable crimes, he tracks down Macarthur himself, now an elderly man living out his days in Dublin and reluctant to talk.

As the two men circle one another, O'Connell is pushed into a confrontation with his own narrative: what does it mean to write about a murderer?
SKU:
More Details

How To Survive A Crisis, David Omand (paperback June 2024)

£10.99

We never know when a crisis might explode. Some 'sudden impact' events, such as terrorist attacks or natural disasters, blow up out of a clear blue sky.

Other 'slow burn' crises smoulder away for years, often with warning signs ignored along the way until, as if from nowhere, the troops storm the palace. In How to Survive a Crisis, Professor Sir David Omand draws on his experience in defence, security and intelligence, including as Director of GCHQ and UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator, to show how you can detect a looming crisis and extinguish it (or at least survive it with minimum loss). Using gripping real-world examples from Omand's storied career, and drawing lessons from historic catastrophes such as Chernobyl, 9/11, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the WannaCry ransomware cyberattack, this empowering book is filled with practical advice on how to survive the multiplying crises of the future.

Not every crisis need tip into disaster - if we have invested in personal, business and national resilience. This is an essential toolkit for our turbulent twenty-first century, as well as an exhilarating read for anyone interested in the state of our world - and how we might improve it. 'Piercingly insightful, brilliantly lucid and illuminating, frightening and wise .

. . From nuclear meltdown to apocalyptic cyber-attacks, from pandemics to the drums of war, here is a remarkable record of how the threads of society can be held firm in the darkest days' Sinclair McKay, author of Berlin'An amazing book.

Timely, essential and important. The brilliantly insightful David Omand draws on his unmatched experience to explore the complexities of crisis. 
SKU:
More Details

Big Caesars and Little Caesars, Ferdinand Mount (paperback from June 2024)

£20.00

Big Caesars and Little Caesars : How They Rise and How They Fall - From Julius Caesar to Boris Johnson.

Who said that dictatorship was dead? The world today is full of Strong Men and their imitators. Caesarism is alive and well. Yet in modern times it's become a strangely neglected subject.

Ferdinand Mount opens up a fascinating exploration of how and why Caesars seize power and why they fall. There is a comforting illusion shared by historians and political commentators from Fukuyama back to Macaulay, Mill and Marx, that history progresses in a nice straight line towards liberal democracy or socialism, despite the odd hiccup. In reality, every democracy, however sophisticated or stable it may look, has been attacked or actually destroyed by a would-be Caesar, from Ancient Greece to the present day.

Marx was wrong. This Caesarism is not an absurd throwback, it is an ever-present danger. There are Big Caesars who set out to achieve total social control and Little Caesars who merely want to run an agreeable kleptocracy without opposition: from Julius Caesar and Oliver Cromwell through Napoleon and Bolivar, to Mussolini, Salazar, De Gaulle and Trump.

The saga of Boris Johnson and Brexit frequently crops up in this author's narrative as a vivid, if Lilliputian instance of the same phenomenon. The final part of this book describes how and why would-be Caesars come to grief, from the Gunpowder Plot to Trump's march on the Capitol and the ejection of Boris Johnson by his own MPs, and ends with a defence of the grubby glories of parliamentary politics and a thought-provoking roadmap of the way back to constitutional government.

SKU:
More Details

Rogues, Patrick Radden Keefe ( paperback July 2023)

£10.99

'Eminently bingeable, religiously fact-checked and seductively globetrotting . . .

A preternaturally attentive reporter at work' - The Observer' A new book by Keefe means drop everything and close the blinds; you'll be turning pages for hours . . .
From the prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain, twelve enthralling stories of skulduggery and intrigue by one of the most decorated journalists of our time. Patrick Radden Keefe's work has been recognised by prizes ranging from the National Magazine Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US to the Orwell Prize and the Baillie Gifford in the UK, for his meticulously reported, hypnotically engaging work on the many ways people behave badly. Rogues brings together a dozen of his most celebrated articles from the New Yorker.

As Keefe observes in his preface: 'They reflect on some of my abiding preoccupations: crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial.' Keefe explores the intricacies of forging $150,000 vintage wines; examines whether a whistleblower who dared to expose money laundering at a Swiss bank is a hero or a fabulist; spends time in Vietnam with Anthony Bourdain; chronicles the quest to bring down a cheerful international black-market arms merchant; and profiles a passionate death-penalty attorney who represents the 'worst of the worst', among other bravura works of literary journalism. The appearance of his byline in the New Yorker is always an event; collected here for the first time readers can see how his work forms an always enthralling yet also deeply human portrait of criminals and rascals, as well as those who stand up to them.
SKU:
More Details

Fake Heroes, Otto English ( paperback May 2024)

£18.99

Fake Heroes : Ten False Icons and How they Altered the Course of History

From the author of the fascinating and readable Fake History, Otto English, comes a shocking yet hilarious look at ten of the greatest liars from our past, examining these previously unquestioned idols and exposing what they were trying to hide.

Was Che Guevara really a revolutionary hero? Should Mother Teresa be honoured as a saint? Is Henry V actually England's greatest king? And why does JFK's legend continue to grow? Having exposed some of the greatest lies ever told in Fake History, journalist Otto English turns his attention to some of history's biggest (and most beloved) figures. Whether it's virtuous leaders in just wars, martyrs sacrificing all for a cause, or innovators changing the world for the better, down the centuries supposedly great men and women have risen to become household names, saints and heroes.

But just how deserving are they of their reputations? Exploring everything from Captain Scott's reckless hunt for glory and Andy Warhol's flagrant thievery to Coco Chanel's murky Nazi past, Otto English dives into the hidden lives of some of history's most recognisable names.

SKU:
More Details

Gaffs : Why No One Can Get a House, and What We Can Do About it by Rory Hearne (Author)

£9.99

The book that has been waiting to be written - how Ireland's housing policy has locked an entire generation out of the housing market and what we should do about it. Millennials are the first generation in Ireland to be worse off than their parents. Trapped in a game of rental roulette, stuck living at home as adults, and many on the brink of homelessness, the Irish housing crisis has defined the lives of an entire generation - and it is set to continue.

With housing costs in Ireland the highest in the EU, the property ladder has been kicked from under thousands. So how did we get here ... and how do we break the cycle? In Gaffs, housing expert Rory Hearne urges us to think about the people behind the statistics, and shows us that there is a way towards a future where everyone has access to a home.
SKU:
More Details

White Holes, Carlo Rovelli ( hardback Oct 2023)

£14.99

White Holes : Inside the Horizon

 A mesmerizing trip to the strange new world of white holes, from Carlo Rovelli, the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on PhysicsLet us journey into the heart of a black hole. Let us slip beyond its boundary, the horizon, and tumble - on and on - down this crack in the universe. As we plunge, we'll see geometry fold, we'll feel the equations draw tight around us.

Eventually, we'll pass it: the remains of a star, deep and dense and falling further far. And then - the bottom. Where time and space end, and the white hole is born .

. . With lightness and magic, here Carlo Rovelli traces the ongoing adventure of his own cutting-edge research, of the uncertainty and joy of going where we've not yet been.

Guiding us to the edge of theory and experiment, he invites us to go beyond, to experience the fever and the disquiet of science. Here is the extraordinary life of a white hole.

SKU:
More Details

Emperor of Rome, Mary Beard (paperback July 2024)

£30.00

In her international best-seller SPQR, A History of Ancient Rome,  Mary Beard told the thousand-year story of ancient Rome.

Now, she shines her spotlight on the emperors who ruled the Roman empire, from Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BCE) to Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE). Emperor of Rome is not your usual chronological account of Roman rulers, one after another: the mad Caligula, the monster Nero, the philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Beard asks bigger questions: What power did emperors actually have? Was the Roman palace really so bloodstained?Emperor of Rome goes directly to the heart of Roman (and our own) fantasies about what it was to be Roman, offering an account of Roman history as it has never been presented before.

SKU:
More Details

A Line in the Sand, James Barr ( paperback 2012)

£10.99

A fascinating insight into the untold story of how British-French rivalry drew the battle-lines of the modern Middle East. In 1916, in the middle of the First World War, two men secretly agreed to divide the Middle East between them. Sir Mark Sykes was a visionary politician; Francois Georges-Picot a diplomat with a grudge.

They drew a line in the sand from the Mediterranean to the Persian frontier, and together remade the map of the Middle East, with Britain's 'mandates' of Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq, and France's in Lebanon and Syria. Over the next thirty years a sordid tale of violence and clandestine political manoeuvring unfolded, told here through a stellar cast of politicians, diplomats, spies and soldiers, including T. E.

Lawrence, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle. Using declassified papers from the British and French archives, James Barr vividly depicts the covert, deadly war of intrigue and espionage between Britain and France to rule the Middle East, and reveals the shocking way in which the French finally got their revenge. 'The very grubby coalface of foreign policy ...

I found the entire book most horribly addictive' Independent 'One of the unexpected responses to reading this masterful study is amazement at the efforts the British and French each put into undermining the other' Spectator
SKU:
More Details

The Secret Lives of Numbers, Kitagawa and Revell ( hardback August 2023)

£20.00

The Secret Lives of Numbers : A Global History of Mathematics & its Unsung Trailblazers

by Kate Kitagawa (Author) , Timothy Revell (Author)

  Mathematics shapes almost everything we do. But despite its reputation as the study of fundamental truths, the stories we have been told about it are wrong. In The Secret Lives of Numbers, historian Kate Kitagawa and journalist Timothy Revell introduce readers to the mathematical boundary-smashers who have been erased by history because of their race, gender or nationality.


From the brilliant Arabic scholars of the ninth-century House of Wisdom, and the pioneering African American mathematicians of the twentieth century, to the 'lady computers' around the world who revolutionised our knowledge of the night sky, we meet these fascinating trailblazers and see how they contributed to our global knowledge today. Along the way, the mathematics itself is explained extremely clearly, for example, calculus is described using the authors' home baking, as they pose the question: how much cake is in our cake? This revisionist, completely accessible and radically inclusive history of mathematics is as entertaining as it is important.

Paperback END August 2024 

SKU:
More Details

The Wizard of the Kremlin, Giulano Da Empoli ( hardback Jan 2024)

£16.99

THE INTERNATIONAL SENSATION - a stunning work of political fiction about the rise to power of Putin's notorious spin doctor'A great book, casting light on the creatures that crawl and slither behind the Kremlin's walls, on the mineral hardness of Putin, on the chaos engine that is his way of hurting us' John Sweeney'An acute and timely dissection of Russian power, told through the eyes of a shadowy political advisor to Putin' Financial Times'A fictional wandering through the dark corridors of the Kremlin' The Times, Biggest Books of the Season__________They call him the Wizard of the Kremlin. Working at the heart of Russian power, the enigmatic Vadim Baranov-Putin's chief spin doctor-has used his background in experimental theatre and reality TV to turn the entire country into an avant-garde political stage. Here truth and lies, news and propaganda, have become indistinguishable.

But Vadim is growing increasingly entangled in the dark secret workings of the regime he has helped build, and now he is desperate to get out... Propelling the reader from the fall of the Soviet Union to the invasion of Ukraine, this breathless story of politics and power has become an international sensation.
SKU:
More Details

Living the Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron ( paperback Jan 2024)

£18.99

LIVING THE ARTIST'S WAY is a Six-Week Artist's Way Program that explores the fourth essential Artist's Way tool of guidance. Bestselling author Julia Cameron has inspired millions through creative recovery with her essential tools including Morning Pages, Artist Dates, Walks, and now, Writing for Guidance. Through the practice of morning rituals and the faith of listening, Julia takes us further and shows how we can set the stage to receive guidance in both our lives and creative art.

Writing about how she uses these tools to handle doubts in her life, Living the Artist's Way reveals a personal side and shares Julia's pathway toward a happier, lighter life. Grounding and reassuring, guidance can quell our doubts and fears, and lead us to our inner wisdom and authentic selves. Living the Artist's Way is an invitation to seek the answers to navigate all areas of our lives, by tapping into our own wisdom and ultimately, guiding ourselves back to creativity.
SKU:
More Details

The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, Martin Wolf ( paperback Feb 2024)

£12.99

From the author of The Shifts and the Shocks, and one of the most influential writers on economics, a reckoning with how and why the relationship between democracy and capitalism is coming undone We are living in an age when economic failings have shaken faith in global capitalism. Political failings have undermined trust in liberal democracy and in the very notion of truth. The ties that ought to bind open markets to free and fair elections are being strained and rejected, even in democracy's notional heartlands.

Around the world, democratic capitalism, which depends on the determined separation of power from wealth, is in crisis. Some now argue that capitalism is better without democracy; others that democracy is better without capitalism. This book is a forceful rejoinder to both views.

It analyses how the marriage between capitalism and democracy has become so fraught and yet insists that a divorce would be an almost unimaginable calamity. Martin Wolf, one of the wisest public voices on global affairs, argues that for all its recent failings - slowing growth, increasing inequality, widespread popular disillusion - democratic capitalism, though inherently fragile, remains the best system we know for human flourishing. Capitalism and democracy are complementary opposites: they need each other if either is to thrive.

Wolf's superb exploration of their marriage shows us how citizenship and a shared faith in the common good are not romantic slogans but the essential foundation of our economic and political freedom.
SKU:
More Details

Poverty Creek Journal : On Life and Running by Thomas Gardner (paperback Feb 2024)

£8.99

SKU:
More Details

Love in a Time of Hate : Art and Passion in the Shadow of War, 1929-39 by Florian Illies

£10.99

1930s Europe - as the Roaring Twenties wind down and the world rumbles towards war, the great minds of the time have other concerns. Jean-Paul Sartre waits anxiously in a Parisian café for his first date with no-show Simone de Beauvoir. Marlene Dietrich slips from her loveless marriage into the dive bars of Berlin.

Father and son Thomas and Klaus Mann clash over each other's homosexuality. And Vladimir Nabokov lovingly places a fresh-caught butterfly at the end of Verá's bed. Little do they all know, the book burning will soon begin.

Love in a Time of Hate skilfully interweaves some of the greatest love stories of the 1930s with the darkening backdrop of fascism in Europe, in an irresistible journey into the past that brings history and its actors to vivid life. Original and absorbing.
SKU:
More Details

Foreign Bodies, Simon Schama (paperback Feb 2024)

£12.99

Cities and countries engulfed by panic and death, desperate for vaccines but fearful of what inoculation may bring. This is what the world has just gone through with Covid-19. But as Simon Schama shows in his epic history of vulnerable humanity caught between the terror of contagion and the ingenuity of science, it has happened before.    Characteristically, with Schama the message is delivered through gripping, page-turning stories set in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: smallpox strikes London; cholera hits Paris; plague comes to India.

Threading through the scenes of terror, suffering and hope – in hospitals and prisons, palaces and slums – are an unforgettable cast of characters: a philosopher-playwright burning up with smallpox in a country chateau; a vaccinating doctor paying house calls in Halifax; a woman doctor in south India driving her inoculator-carriage through the stricken streets as dead monkeys drop from the trees. But we are also in the labs when great, life-saving breakthroughs happen, in Paris, Hong Kong and Mumbai.   At the heart of it all, an unsung hero: Waldemar Haffkine.

A gun-toting Jewish student in Odesa turned microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute, hailed in England as ‘the saviour of mankind’ for vaccinating millions against cholera and bubonic plague in British India while being cold-shouldered by the medical establishment of the Raj. Creator of the world’s first mass production line of vaccines in Mumbai, he is tragically brought down in an act of shocking injustice.  Foreign Bodies crosses borders between east and west, Asia and Europe, the worlds of rich and poor, politics and science.

‘This splendid and often moving work of history… Schama has a gift for combining novelistically colourful detail, serious analysis and wryly amusing asides’ Daily Telegraph

SKU:
More Details

Homelands, Timothy Garton Ash ( paperback March 2024)

£10.99

Homelands : A Personal History of Europe - Updated with a New Chapter

Reissued with a new chapter post Ukraine conflict 

A Financial Times Best Book of 2023**'A moving love letter to Europe' Lea Ypi, author of FreeDrawing from the people who lived it, Homelands explores how Europe slowly recovered and rebuilt from World War Two. And then faltered. Timothy Garton Ash, our greatest writer about Europe, has spent a lifetime studying Europe and this deeply felt book is full of vivid experiences: from his father's memories of D-Day and his own surveillance at the hands of the Stasi to interviewing Albanian guerrillas in the mountains of Kosovo and angry teenagers in the poorest quarters of Paris, as well as advising prime ministers, chancellors and presidents.

Homelands is at once a living, breathing history of a period of unprecedented progress, a clear-eyed account of how so much then went wrong and an urgent call to the citizens of this great old continent to understand and defend what we have collectively achieved. 'The right book for Europe, at the right time' Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny

SKU:
More Details

Ravenous.: How to get ourselves and our planet into shape. Henry Dimbleby

£10.99

A Waterstones Best Book of 2023'Brilliant - a must read' Tim Spector

Ravenous is a truly important book ... we need a food revolution to ensure children don't go hungry, eat right, and reach their potential' Tom KerridgeThe food system is no longer simply a means of sustenance. It is one of the most successful, most innovative and most destructive industries on earth.

It sustains us, but it is also killing us. Diet-related disease is now the biggest cause of preventable illness and death in the developed world - far worse than smoking. The environmental damage done by the food system is also changing climate patterns and degrading the earth, risking our food security.

In Ravenous, Henry Dimbleby takes us behind the scenes to reveal the mechanisms that act together to shape the modern diet - and therefore the world. He explains not just why the food system is leading us into disaster, but what can be done about it.

SKU:
More Details

Four Shots in the night, by Henry Hemming ( hardback March 2024)

£22.00

HOW THE DEATH OF A SPY IN THE IRA LED TO ONE OF THE BIGGEST MURDER INVESTIGATIONS IN BRITISH HISTORY.

'Henry Hemming wears his extensive research very lightly and manages to shape a great narrative from a complex and dark episode from our recent history. An important and skilfully crafted book.' JOHN O'FARRELL.

On 26th May 1986, the body of an undercover British agent was found by the side of a muddy lane, with a rope tied around its wrists and tape over each eye.

Years later, it was reported that this murder might have been carried out by another undercover British agent, known as 'Stakeknife'. In 2016, a detective began to investigate this case, and would soon find himself running the largest murder investigation in British history. In a compulsive blend of investigative journalism and true crime thriller, Henry Hemming exposes the parallel worlds of the IRA and British intelligence through the lives of those inextricably bound up in both.

He reveals the bravery of those who were crucial in ending the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the bloodiest and longest-running conflict in recent British history, and the determination of one detective in his dogged search for justice and the truth.

SKU:
More Details

Reeling in the Queers : Tales of Ireland’s LGBTQ Past by Paraic Kerrigan ( 6 June 2024)

£14.99

Amidst the moments of seismic change in LGBTQ history in Ireland lie the stories of ordinary people, who did extraordinary things to change queer Ireland and Irish culture.

Marking 50 years of the founding of an LGBTQ rights movement in Ireland, REELING IN THE QUEERS explores the lesser-known stories of the fight for LGBTQ rights . . . beyond decriminalization and Marriage Equality. Uncovering fourteen key moments that reflect the changing social and cultural landscape of Ireland, this book tells the story of the collective gains, losses, devastation and community rising from the ashes of defeat.

These stories, from across the island of Ireland – and beyond! – will celebrate a strong community and its allies, providing an exchange across generations. It is a hugely enjoyable and insightful read for those who lived through this history and for those who enjoy its benefits today. Bringing even more to life the great big gay tapestry in Ireland, to enable young queer Irish people to access their own important history, the light, the dark and the brilliance of all of it.

SKU:
More Details

To The End of the Earth, John C McManus ( HARDBACK, 2023)

£32.00

To the End of the Earth: The US Army and the Downfall of Japan, 1945

The dawn of 1945 finds a US Army at its peak in the Pacific. Allied victory over Japan is all but assured. The only question is how many more months - or years - of fight does the enemy have left.

John C. McManus's magisterial series, described by the Wall Street Journal as being 'as vast and splendid as Rick Atkinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning Liberation Trilogy,' returns with this brilliant final volume.

On the island of Luzon, a months-long stand-off between US and Japanese troops finally breaks open, as American soldiers push into Manila, while paratroopers capture nearby Corregidor. The Philippines are soon liberated, and Allied warlords turn their eyes to Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Japanese home islands themselves.

Readers will walk in the boots of American soldiers and officers, braving intense heat, rampant disease, and a by-now suicidal enemy, determined to kill as many opponents as possible before defeat. At the same time, this outstanding narrative lays bare the titanic ego and ambition of the Pacific War's greatest general, Douglas MacArthur, and the complex challenges he faced in Japan's unconditional surrender and America's lengthy occupation.

SKU:
More Details

Island Infernos, John C McManus (HARDBACK, 2021)

£33.00

Island Infernos : The US Army's Pacific War Odyssey, 1944

After some two years at war, the Army in the Pacific held ground across nearly a third of the globe, from Alaska's Aleutians to Burma and New Guinea. The challenges ahead were enormous: supplying a vast number of troops over thousands of miles of ocean; surviving in jungles ripe with dysentery, malaria, and other tropical diseases; fighting an enemy prone to ever-more desperate and dangerous assaults. Yet the Army had proven they could fight. Now, they had to prove they could win a war.

Brilliantly researched and written, Island Infernos moves seamlessly from the highest generals to the lowest foot soldiers and in between, capturing the true essence of this horrible conflict. A sprawling yet page-turning narrative, the story spans the battles for Saipan and Guam, the appalling carnage of Peleliu, General MacArthur's dramatic return to the Philippines, and the grinding jungle combat to capture the island of Leyte. This masterful history is the second volume of John C. McManus's trilogy on the US Army in the Pacific War, proving McManus to be one of our finest historians of World War II.

SKU:
More Details

Fire and Fortitude, John C McManus ( SIGNED PAPERBACK)

£19.99

  One Signed Copy Left  

Out here, mention is seldom seen of the achievements of the Army ground troops,' wrote one officer in the fall of 1943, 'whereas the Marines are blown up to the skies.' Even today, the Marines are celebrated as the victors of the Pacific. Yet the majority of fighting and dying in the war against Japan was done not by Marines, but by unsung Army soldiers.

John C. McManus, one of the most highly acclaimed historians of World War II, takes readers from Pearl Harbor - a rude awakening for a ragtag militia woefully unprepared for war - to Makin, a sliver of coral reef where the Army was tested against the increasingly desperate Japanese. In between were nearly two years of punishing combat as the Army transformed, at times unsteadily, from an undertrained garrison force into an unstoppable juggernaut, and America evolved from an inward-looking nation into a global superpower.

At the pinnacle of this richly told story are the generals: Douglas MacArthur, a military autocrat driven by his dysfunctional lust for fame and power; Robert Eichelberger, perhaps the greatest commander in the theater yet consigned to obscurity by MacArthur's jealousy; Vinegar Joe Stillwell, a prickly soldier miscast in a diplomat's role; and Walter Krueger, a German-born officer who came to lead the largest American ground force in the Pacific.

Enriching the narrative are the voices of men otherwise lost to history: the uncelebrated army grunts who endured stifling temperatures, apocalyptic tropical storms, rampant malaria and other diseases, as well as a fanatical enemy bent on total destruction.

This is an essential, ambitious book, the first of two volumes, a compellingly written and boldly revisionist account of a war that reshaped the American military and the globe, and continues to resonate today.

SKU:
More Details

A Memoir of My Former Self, Hilary Mantel (paperback June 2024)

£12.99

Here we meet not just Mantel the Cromwell-catcher, but Mantel the quill-sharp critic of contemporary life' The Times

'If you don't mean your words to breed consequences, don't write at all.' A Memoir of My Former Self collects the finest of this writing over four decades. Mantel's subjects are wide-ranging. She discusses nationalism and her own sense of belonging; our dream life flopping into our conscious life; the mythic legacy of Princess Diana; the many themes that feed into her novels - revolutionary France, psychics, Tudor England - and other novelists, from Jane Austen to V. S. Naipaul. She writes about her father and the man who replaced him; she writes fiercely and heartbreakingly about the battles with her health she endured as a young woman, and the stifling years she found herself living in Saudi Arabia.

Here, too, is a selection of her film reviews - from When Harry Met Sally to RoboCop - and, published for the first time, her stunning Reith Lectures, which explore the process of art bringing history and the dead back to life.

Compelling, often very funny, always luminous, it is essential reading from one of our greatest writers. 'A smart, deft, meticulous, thoughtful writer, with such a grasp of the dark and spidery corners of human nature' Margaret Atwood'

SKU:
More Details

Co-Intelligence : Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick (paperback April 2024)

£16.99

'Co-Intelligence is the very best book I know about the ins, outs, and ethics of generative AI. Drop everything and read it cover to cover NOW' Angela Duckworth

Consumer AI has arrived. And with it, inescapable upheaval as we grapple with what it means for our jobs, lives and the future of humanity.

Cutting through the noise of AI evangelists and AI doom-mongers, Wharton professor Ethan Mollick has become one of the most prominent and provocative explainers of AI, focusing on the practical aspects of how these new tools for thought can transform our world. In Co-Intelligence, he urges us to engage with AI as co-worker, co-teacher and coach. Wide ranging, hugely thought-provoking and optimistic, Co-Intelligence reveals the promise and power of this new era.

SKU:
More Details

Cairn, Kathleen Jamie ( Paperback June 2024)

£9.99

'This marvel of a book is a profound meditation on the precariousness of the planet... these pieces kept bringing tears to my eyes, catching me offguard ... it is what art or, in this case, wonderful writing can do.' Kate Kellaway, Observer

Cairn: A marker on open land, a memorial, a viewpoint shared by strangers.

For the last five years poet and author Kathleen Jamie has been turning her attention to a new form of writing: micro-essays, prose poems, notes and fragments. Placed together, like the stones of a wayside cairn, they mark a changing psychic and physical landscape. The virtuosity of these short pieces is both subtle and deceptive.

Jamie's intent 'noticing' of the natural world is suffused with a clear-eyed awareness of all we endanger. She considers the future her children face, while recalling her own childhood and notes the lost innocence in the way we respond to the dramas of nature. With meticulous care she marks the point she has reached, in life and within the cascading crises of our times.

Cairn resonates with a beauty and wisdom that only an artist of Jamie's calibre could achieve.

SKU:
More Details

The Invisible Doctrine, George Monbiot ( hardback May 2024)

£12.99

The Invisible Doctrine : The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How It Came to Control Your Life)

The #1 Sunday Times bestseller*

'This book is dynamite – shining a spotlight on the evils of neoliberalism, shattering the myth that ‘there is no alternative’, and laying the foundations for a new politics' - Caroline Lucas

How can you fight something if you don’t know it exists? We live under an ideology that preys on every aspect of our lives: our education and our jobs; our healthcare and our leisure; our relationships and our mental wellbeing; the planet we inhabit – the very air we breathe. So pervasive has it become that, for most people, it has no name. It seems unavoidable, like a natural law.

But trace it back to its roots, and we discover that it is neither inevitable nor immutable. It was conceived, propagated, and then concealed by the powerful few. Our task is to bring it into the light—and to build a new system that is worth fighting for.  Neoliberalism. Do you know what it is?

SKU:
More Details

Opus : dark money, a secretive cult, and its mission to remake our world, Gareth Gore ( hardback October 2024)

£25.00

A thrilling exposé revealing how Opus Dei — a secretive, ultra-conservative Catholic sect — pushed its radical agenda within the Church and around the globe, using billions of dollars siphoned from one of Europe’s largest banks. For over half a century, Banco Popular was one of the most profitable banks in the world — until one day in 2017, when the Spanish bank suddenly collapsed overnight. When Gareth Gore was dispatched to report on the story, he uncovered one of the most brazen cases of corporate pillaging in history, perpetrated by a group of men sworn to celibacy and self-flagellation.

Drawing on unparalleled access to bank records, insider accounts, and exclusive interviews with whistleblowers from within Opus Dei, Gore reveals how money from the bank was used to lure unsuspecting recruits — some of them only children — into a life of servitude. He also tracks the ascent of Opus Dei around the globe, exposing its role in bankrolling many right-wing causes, including the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.

In Opus, Gore tells a shocking story of money and power that spans decades and continents. Documenting Opus Dei’s secret history for the first time, this thrilling work of investigative storytelling raises important questions about the dark forces that shape our society.

SKU:
More Details

The Psychology of Secrets : My Adventures with Murderers, Cults and Influencers, BY Andrew Gold

£20.00

Take a deep dive into the bizarre psychology of secrecy with Andrew Gold, award-winning investigative journalist and host of Heretics.

We all keep secrets. 97 per cent of us are hiding a secret right now, and on average we each hold thirteen at any one time. There’s a one-in-two chance that those secrets involve a breach of trust, a lie or a financial impropriety.

They are the stuff of gossip, of novels and of classic dramas; secrets form a major part of our hidden inner lives. Andrew Gold knows this better than anyone. As a public figure, he has found himself the unwitting recipient of hundreds of strangers' most private revelations.

This set him on a journey to understand this critical part of our societies and lives. Why do we keep secrets? Why are we fascinated by those of others? What happens to our mind when we confess?Drawing from psychology, history, social science, philosophy and personal interviews, The Psychology of Secrets is a rollicking journey through the history of secrecy. --'Andrew Gold is - but should not be - one of our culture’s best kept secrets.

He is a truly edgy journalist, broadcaster and writer' - David Baddiel, bestselling author of The God Desire

SKU:
More Details

Nuclear War, A Scenario, by Annie Jacobsen ( hardback March 2024)

£20.00

The Sunday Times bestselling edge-of-your-seat exploration of what would happen in the event of nuclear war, perfect for readers of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. *

Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2024*' One of the most successful non-fiction books of 2024.

Nuclear war begins with a blip on a radar screen. This is a minute-by-minute account of what comes next. It has to be read to be believed. There is only one scenario other than an asteroid strike that could end the world as we know it in a matter of hours: nuclear war.

Until now, no one outside official circles has known exactly what would happen if a rogue state launched a nuclear missile at the Pentagon. Second by second and minute by minute, these are the real-life protocols that choreograph the end of civilization as we know it. Decisions that affect hundreds of millions of lives need to be made within six minutes, based on partial information, in the knowledge that once launched, nothing is capable of halting the destruction.

Based on dozens of new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, been privy to the response plans, and taken responsibility for crucial decisions, this is the only account of what a nuclear exchange would look like. Nuclear War is at once a compulsive non-fiction thriller and a powerful argument that we must rid ourselves of these world-ending weapons for ever. '

'At once methodical and vivid' The Economist* A New York Times bestseller (March 2024) and a Sunday Times bestseller (April 2024)

Paperback 9781804996003 from July 2025.

SKU:
More Details

Not the End of the World, by Hannah Ritchie

£10.99

Surprising facts, dangerous myths and hopeful solutions for our future on planet Earth.

We are bombarded by doomsday headlines that tell us the soil won't be able to support crops, fish will vanish from our oceans, that we should reconsider having children. But in this bold, radically hopeful book, data scientist Hannah Ritchie argues that if we zoom out, a very different picture emerges.

The data shows we've made so much progress on these problems, and so fast, that we could be on track to achieve true sustainability for the first time in history. Packed with the latest research, practical guidance and enlightening graphics, this book will make you rethink almost everything you've been told about the environment, from the virtues of eating locally and living in the countryside, to the evils of overpopulation, plastic straws and palm oil. It will give you the tools to understand what works, what doesn't and what we urgently need to focus on so we can leave a sustainable planet for future generations.

These problems are big. But they are solvable. We are not doomed.

SKU:
More Details