The botanical history of Britain and North West Europe has a dark and a light side. Plants have been used as weapons to harm people, taken deliberately as addictive drugs and also employed as tools in witchcraft and used as magical amulets. Yet many of these same plants have been medicinally vital to numerous European communities; as the author notes, frequently the only difference between a benevolent medicine and a poison is dosage. In this book, which is richly illustrated with modern c...

The gnarled, immutable yew tree is one of the most evocative sights in the British and Irish language, an evergreen impression of immortality, the tree that provides a living botanical link between our own landscapes and those of the distant past. This book tells the extraordinary story of the yew’s role in the landscape through the millennia, and makes a convincing case for the origins of many of the oldest trees, as markers of the holy places founded by Celtic saints in the early medieva...

The story of a tragedy never forgotten, and a community who came together to mourn a generation of childrenIn October 1966, a small Welsh mining village was hit by disaster. Heavy rain had been pounding the village for days and over time filled a tip containing coal waste, situated high above the village. Within minutes, the coal tip had slid down the mountain, engulfing a farm, several houses and a school, and ultimately killing 28 adults and 116 children. It was ...

The story of a tragedy never forgotten, and a community who came together to mourn a generation of childrenIn October 1966, a small Welsh mining village was hit by disaster. Heavy rain had been pounding the village for days and over time filled a tip containing coal waste, situated high above the village. Within minutes, the coal tip had slid down the mountain, engulfing a farm, several houses and a school, and ultimately killing 28 adults and 116 children. It was ...

The author of The Drunken Botanist "offers practical and tantalizing composite views of toxic, irritating, prickly, and all-around ill-mannered plants" ( Booklist ).American Horticultural Society Book Award WinnerChosen One of the Best Gardening Books of the Year by the Washington Post and National Pub...

In 1980, nine-week-old Azaria Chamberlain was taken by a dingo from her family's tent near Uluru in Australia's remote Northern Territory. Her body was never found. In a terrible miscarriage of justice, her mother Lindy was wrongfully convicted of her daughter's murder and sentenced to life in prison. It was seven years before the conviction was overturned. This is the true story behind a tragedy whose echoes reverberated around the world."This is the story of a little girl who liv...

Poisons permeate our world. They are in the environment, the workplace, the home. They are in food, our favorite whiskey, medicine, and well water. They have been used to cure diseases as well as incapacitate and kill. They smooth wrinkles, block pain, stimulate and enhance athletic ability. In this entertaining and fact-filled book, science writer Peter Macinnis considers poisons in all their aspects. He recounts stories of the celebrated poisoners in history and literature, from Nero to ...

As seen on This Time with Alan Partridge on BBC One.THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERPraise for Nomad:'Funniest book of the year' Sunday Telegraph'Alan Partridge's Nomad is almost certainly the funniest book ever written' Caitlin Moran'Sensationally funny. What brilliant writing' Richard Osman'Sensational' Jenny Colgan'Hilarious' Jon Ronson'Brilliantly...

A lost classic of Western herbalism-rediscovered and restored with 200 full-color images.Herbalist to King Charles I, John Parkinson (15671650) was a master apothecary, herbalist, and gardener. Famous in his own lifetime for his influential books, his magnum opus, the Theatrum Botanicum, was published in 1640 and ran to 1,766 large pages. The sheer scope and size was perhaps to prove the book’s downfall, because while it was much revered-and plagiarized-i...

A hilarious compendium of all that's weird and wonderful about life in the British Isles - the eccentric, bizarre bureaucracy and outright oddity reported over the last year by the nation's newspapers, including: Guardian headline, 'Man with false leg hit with toilet lid.'; The Astrological Magazine, 'announces that it is to cease due to unforeseen circumstances.' Jack Crossley spent some 40 years in Fleet Street and has compiled this laugh-out-loud collection of anecdotes and strange goin...

The third volume of Michael Palin's celebrated diaries.TRAVELLING TO WORK is a roller-coaster ride driven by the Palin hallmarks of curiosity and sense of adventure. Michael was not the BBC's first choice for the travel series AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, but after its success, the public naturally wanted more.Palin, however, had other plans. There was his film AMERICAN FRIENDS, a role in Alan Bleasdale's award-winning drama GBH, the staging of his West End...

Learn how to cultivate your own magical garden, begin your journey with folk herbalism, and awaken to your place in nature through practical skills from an experienced Appalachian forager and witch.Witchcraft is wild at heart, calling us into a relationship with the untamed world around us. Through the power of developing a relationship with plants, a witch—beginner or experienced—can practice their art more deeply and authentically by interacting ...