Four families live in a beautiful stretch of English countryside in magnificent listed houses, built for the old aristocracy. They are the new aristocracy and the elite of their village: financiers, business tycoons, lawyers, doctors, magistrates. They leave their rural idyll only to commute first-class to London for meetings, deals and theatre outings or Heathrow flights to winter sun or half-term skiing. They and their children are protected by investments, pensions and expensive securit...

“Australian attempts to convert to renewables basically have no parallel. To make matters worse, not only do policy-makers want to shift to all renewables they want to throw away the fossil fuel back-up power sources. This has not happened anywhere and is madness.”In order to avoid a climate crisis, which never seems to arrive, activists and state governments are about to plunge us all into a very real power crisis. In ten years don't bother to try turning on the lights.Mar...

Beginning in Timaru, reputedly the most activity-challenged place in New Zealand, Lawson travels through Australia and Canada, where he learns to be especially wary of any place named after Queen Victoria or her close relatives. After dropping in on Normal, Illinois and Dead Horse, Alaska – place names in the quiet world are sometimes disarmingly honest – he travels through soothing Switzerland, Milton Keynes, and Belgium, before his journey’s end in EuroDisney, Expo ’92, and Center Parcs:...

On the morning after he has celebrated his 60th birthday party at a celebrity-filled party, Ned Marriott is in bed with his partner, Emma, when there's a knock on the door. Detectives from the London police force's 'Operation Millpond' have come to arrest him over an allegation of sexual assault.Ned is one of the country's best-known historians - teaching at a leading university, advising governments and making top-rating TV documentaries - but this 'historic' claim from someone the...

Enough is Enough revolves around actual events in May 1968. Harold Wilson knows the public thinks he's a slippery liar, the newspapers are out for his blood, and the party which once loved him is now plotting to remove him. Still, he has failed to spot at least two other conspiracies brewing. Bernard Storey, a journalist, stumbles on the rival plots and enters a world of lying and spying, back-stabbing and blackmail, malicious gossip and false intelligence.

Mark Lawson takes an international look at celebrated literary detectives, talking to their creators to explore how mystery fiction reflects society's trends and tensions'Masterly'' Gillian Reynolds, The TelegraphThroughout its long history, crime fiction has broadened our horizons, introducing us to unfamiliar places, people and cultures and showing us new ways of looking at the world. In this fascinating series, Mark Lawson takes...

On the morning after he has celebrated his 60th birthday party at a celebrity-filled party, Ned Marriott is in bed with his partner, Emma, when there's a knock on the door. Detectives from the London police force's 'Operation Millpond' have come to arrest him over an allegation of sexual assault.Ned is one of the country's best-known historians - teaching at a leading university, advising governments and making top-rating TV documentaries - but this 'historic' claim from someone the...

An intriguing murder mystery exploring the desire of the artist to remain illusive and anonymous behind work which is heavily codified and seemingly impenetrable. When a brilliant young art historian flies in the face of the received wisdom regarding the work of the reclusive Anderson Perrine, the artist feels a distinct invasion of his privacy. He sets about laying a series of false trails but her pursuit of him is unrelenting and he is obliged to take radically evasive action. Starring H...

Miles Black is fresh from a country newspaper and a failed engagement looking to break into big city journalist. But the only job he can get is on a weekly suburban giveaway, where journalists are regarded as biddable nuisances.Worse, the beautiful Anne from a rich family is decidedly unimpressed by a dirt-poor suburban journalist.

Why was the partridge in the pear tree? Who was Good King Wenceslas? And what are the pagan origins behind 'The Holly and the Ivy'? Discover the hidden stories behind our best-loved Christmas carols, from their earliest incarnations in the Middle Ages and their banning under the Puritans to the wassailing traditions of the nineteenth century and the carols that united soldiers on the Western Front during the First World War. This fascinating book charts the histor...

Did you know?Wales is the only nation in the United Kingdom not to be represented on the Union Jack.During the First World War, Cardiff was the largest coal port in the world.Guglielmo Marconi sent the first ever wireless communication over open sea – from Wales.The Little Book of Wales is an intriguing, fast-paced, fact-packed compendium of places, people and history in Wales. Here we find out about the cou...

Modular construction can dramatically improve efficiency in construction, through factory production of pre-engineered building units and their delivery to the site either as entire buildings or as substantial elements. The required technology and application are developing rapidly, but design is still in its infancy. Good design requires a knowledge of modular production, installation and interface issues and also an understanding of the economics and client-related benefits which influen...