From the author of The Savage God, a unique memoir of growing old, and a lesson in not going gently into that good nightThe ponds of Hampstead Heath are small oases; fragments of wild nature nestled in the heart of north-west London. For the best part of his life Al Alvarez – poet, critic, novelist, rock-climber and poker player – has swum in them almost daily.An athlete in his youth, Alvarez chronicles what it is to grow old with humour and fierce...

'In a book this good, in the company of a mind this judicious and fine, the reader is left wanting more' TelegraphPoetry, poker, mountaineering, novels - a sparkling collection of essays from Britain's best-loved man of letters________________________Al Alvarez's writing career has come in many guises. One of the most influential post-war critics, he has written profoundly and eloquently about writers and the...

Josie Dew's love of cycling has taken her across the world, travelling everywhere from Japan and Mexico to Iceland, India and Algeria. In her latest book, she sets off on another quirky and riotous ride, choosing to circumnavigate the coastline of the British Isles. And she discovers that her homeland can be as surprising and full of incident as anywhere she has ever been.Beginning in Portsmouth, Josie sets off in a clockwise direction after a Shetland grandmother warns her that she...

‘A powerful meditation on what it means to belong.’ The Times Literary Supplement ‘Deeply moving.’ David Lammy ‘Honest, poetic and deeply researched excellence.’ Paterson Joseph ‘It took two decades for me to go in search of the parts of myself I had left behind in the Caribbean. What ghosts were waiting for me there? There was a thick, black journal in my flat, stuffed with letters, postcards, handwritten notes and di...

By most people's standards, Josie Dew is hugely adventurous. By American standards, she is completely insane. For Americans drive everywhere: through cinemas, restaurants, banks, even trees. But driving past Josie as she pedalled across America was a new and alarming experience.On her eight-month journey Josie experienced it all; race riots in Los Angeles, impossible heat in Death Valley, Sexual Tantric Seminars in Hawaii. From Utah to the Great Lakes, via improbable places like Zz...

One summer, writer and musician, Jasper Winn set himself an extraordinary task. He would kayak the whole way round Ireland - a thousand miles - camping on remote headlands and islands, carousing in bars and paddling clockwise until he got back where he started. But in the worst Irish summer in living memory the pleasures of idling among seals, fulmars and fishing boats soon gave way to heroic struggles through storm-tossed seas ... and lock-ins playing music in coastal pubs.Circlin...

'A joy. Celebrates the real world and revels in its mad glory' Sue Townsend, Sunday Times_____________________________________All Points North is part-memoir and part-excursion. Charting the rugged and uneven terrain of a writer's formative years - from tax problems to probation to American tours, football to family to running away to Iceland - Simon Armitage explores growing up...

A generous selection from New Zealand's foremost writer of short stories. Peter Simpson in reviewing Owen Marshall's stories in the New Zealand Listener wrote: 'Marshall is held in uncommon affection by New Zealand readers - generally we admire and respect rather than love our writers.' This love is perhaps evoked not just by the superb quality of Marshall's writing but because his stories so precisely capture his fellow New Zealanders and their country. From the ...

From Willingdon to Lyttelton, a memoir about love, learning and the journey to thirtyJoe Bennett is the author of countless columns, over twenty books, and now, at long last, a memoir. From There to Here describes a childhood of fishing, cricket, friends, a dog, some mild molestation and a few deaths. There's the long-haired gloom and vehemence of adolescence. There's love and heartache, an urge to write and a fruitless struggle against teaching for a living. Superbly written, of c...

When Jenny and Robert fall in love in the late 1960s they decide to build a new future together, away from the city. They escape to an isolated sheep farm nestled on a mountainside. It has no running water but it is beautiful and rugged. Their young sons can roam wild. As their flock struggles, money runs low and rain drives in horizontally across the fields, inside the ancient house their marriage begins to unravel. Wilful and romantic, Jenny refuses to abandon her farm. She will bring he...

Alex Horne is not a birdwatcher. But his dad is, so with the prospect of fatherhood looming on his own horizon, Alex decided there was no better time to really get to know both his father and his father's favourite hobby. So he challenged his dad to a Big Year: from 1 January to 31 December they would each try to spot as many birds as possible; the one who spied the most species would be the victor. Along the way Alex would find out what makes his dad tick, pick up a bit of father...

Tick Bite Fever is the unconventional memoir of a very unconventional childhood.In the early Seventies, Dave Bennun's family transplanted themselves from Swindon to the wilds of Kenya. His father, who was a doctor, had lived in Africa before (but had felt it expedient to leave when the South African government realised he was carting explosives around in the boot of his car for the ANC). For Dave, Kenya was bemusingly new. It would be his home for the next 16 years.