This book portrays in a manner best described as verbal slapstick the childhood and schooldays of Bernard Carter, set in and around a new post-war estate in Derby where during both day and night the street became the main playground. This title provides a humorous look at childhood and schooldays in the 1950s on a Derby estate, based on actual events. It covers timeless scenarios we can all relate to in some part, regardless of which decade you were born in. Few people owned cars in the ea...

Delightful accounts and keen observations taken during walks and journeys capturing month by month the essence of the seasonal changes taking place over a year in the countryside. This eclectic collection of short narratives also encompasses some interesting character portrayals ranging from an impoverished tin miner, to an Earl and his family seat, along with personal recollections and a goodly dose of nostalgia.These imaginatively written narratives have been likened to `a series...

The creation of the Yugoslav state at the end of the First World War brought together the half-assimilated remains of several societies in various stages of development, each with centuries of rule by foreign powers. It was not until the Second World War when a fresh start was made under a new revolutionary regime that Yugoslavia made substantial economic headway and progressed from an underdeveloped country to a medium rank level of development.First published in 1982, The Eco...

Roger Deakin set out in 1996 to swim through the British Isles. The result a uniquely personal view of an island race and a people with a deep affinity for water. From the sea, from rock pools, from rivers and streams, tarns, lakes, lochs, ponds, lidos, swimming pools and spas, from fens, dykes, moats, aqueducts, waterfalls, flooded quarries, even canals, Deakin gains a fascinating perspective on modern Britain. Detained by water bailiffs in Winchester, intercepted in the Fowey estuary by ...

Paul O'Grady is one of Britain's very best loved entertainers. He is known and adored by millions, whether as the creator of the acid-tongued Blonde Bombsite, Lily Savage, or the presenter of the fantastically successful, award-winning Paul O'Grady Show on Channel 4.Now, in his own unique voice, Paul O'Grady tells story of his early life in Irish Catholic Birkenhead that started him on the long and winding road from mischievous altar boy to national treasure. It is a brill...

An author's walk "from source to sea along the Ouse in Sussex is a meandering, meditative delight" drawing on history, literature, and the river itself ( The Guardian, UK).In To The River, author Olivia Laing embarks on a weeklong, midsummer odyssey along the banks of the River Ouse in Sussex, England, from its source near Haywards Heath to the sea, where it empties into the Channel at Newhaven. More than sixty years after Virginia Woolf drowned he...

'A simply astonishing achievement. The quality, depth, emotional power and terrifying honesty of Alan Davies's story-telling take the breath away' Stephen Fry'This hugely affecting book is brave, insightful and, at times, funny about things it is hard to be funny about' Jo BrandThe story of a life built on sand. In the rain.In this compelling memoir, comedian and actor Alan Davies recalls his boyhood with vivid insight and devastati...

The dazzlingly funny second volume of Danny Baker's memoirs: the television years.Since my first book was published I have had countless friends and family members get in touch to say how come I hadn't included this story or that tale. Was I ashamed of being shot twice, once up the arse, in Jamaica Road? How long should a man live with such a secret? If by retrospectively dropping my trousers every few pages I can reveal a fuller picture of myself during these year...

'I had been mistaken for him so many times that when I heard he had died it was as if part of myself had died too.'Kevin Thunder grew up with a double - a boy so uncannily like him that they were mistaken for each other at every turn. As children in 1960s Dublin , one lived next to Bram Stoker's house, haunted by an imagined Dracula, the other in the more refined spaces of Palmerston Park. Though divided, like the city itself, by background and class, they shared the same smell, th...

'Evocatively written and charming' - Countryfile'The January Man is a book that makes you want to pull on your boots, grab a map and get out there' - Country LifeThe January Man is the story of a year of walks that was inspired by a song, Dave Goulder's 'The January Man'. Month by month, season by season and region by region, Christopher Somerville walks the British Isles, following routes that con...

This page-turner with a difference by multimillion copy bestselling author Paul Sussman is a must-read for anyone looking for something original.'More than lives up to its promise... it's the first novel Sussman ever wrote, yet the things that made him such a distinctive writer - his boundless imagination, his love of the bizarre, his ability to keep a complex plot bowling along - are already firmly in place. The book is as darkly funny as it is or...

This volume is a much-needed new selection of Seamus Heaney's work, taking account of recent volumes and of the author's work as a translator, and offering a more generous choice from previous volumes. Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996 comes as close to being a 'Collected Poems' as its author cares to make it. It replaces his New Selected Poems 1966-1987, giving a fuller selection from each of the volumes represented there and adding large parts of those that...