Over the course of a year, Esther Rutter - who grew up on a sheep farm in Suffolk, and learned to spin, weave and knit as a child - travels the length of the British Isles, to tell the story of wool's long history here.She unearths fascinating histories of communities whose lives were shaped by wool, from the mill workers of the Border countries, to the English market towns built on profits of the wool trade, and the Highland communities cleared for sheep farming; and finds traditi...

In her twenties, Esther Rutter suffered an acute mental breakdown while living in Japan. Sectioned and held in a Japanese psychiatric institution until she could be flown home under escort, her recovery only began when she took a job in the Lake District at Dove Cottage, the home of William and Dorothy Wordsworth.Like Dorothy and William before her, whose search for Dove Cottage was borne out of the dislocation they experienced during their childhood, Esther realised that she was l...

Lady Hale is an inspirational figure admired for her historic achievements and for the causes she has championed. Spider Woman is her story.As 'a little girl from a little school in a little village in North Yorkshire', she only went into the law because her headteacher told her she wasn't clever enough to study history. She became the most senior judge in the country but it was an unconventional path to the top.How does a self-professed 'girly swo...

"A lively survey…her research and insights make us conscious of how we, today, use books."—John Sutherland, The New York Times Book ReviewTwo centuries before the advent of radio, television, and motion pictures, books were a cherished form of popular entertainment and an integral component of domestic social life. In this fascinating and vivid history, Abigail Williams explores the ways in which shared reading shaped the lives and literary culture of the e...

UPDATED WITH A NEW CHAPTER ON THE 2024 ELECTIONA GUARDIAN AND DAILY TELEGRAPH POLITICS BOOK OF THE YEAR'BRILLIANT' ANDREW MARR'MAJESTIC' GUARDIAN'ESSENTIAL' JON SOPEL'A CRACKING READ' FINANCIAL TIMES'A SHARP INSIDER ACCOUNT' NEW STATESMANThe full inside story of fourtee...

'Superb' Sunday Times'Revolutionary' Alice Roberts'Hugely important' Jim Al-Khalili_______________A radical retelling of the history of science that foregrounds the scientists erased from historyIn this major retelling of the history of science from 1450 to the present day, James Poskett explodes the myth that science began in Europe.The blinkered Western gaze focusing...

'BEAUTIFULLY, A BOOK ABOUT BIRDS' The Sunday Times | 'ENGAGING AND EYE-OPENING' The CountrymanUncover the life of owls through this beautiful guide to these secretive and charismatic birds from the bestselling author of The Robin, The Wren, and The Swan.Owls are among the most mysterious birds in the world. Their hauntingly beautiful calls and mostly nocturnal habits have long ca...

As featured on BBC News and TIME'The potential of seaweed, or marine algae, to transform our world is huge… excellent book' New ScientistThe seaweed revolution is a fresh hope for tomorrow.Seaweed develops in water everywhere, from the eternal glaciers to lagoons heated by the sun, from seas saturated with salt to the fresh water of our rivers. Yet we only know how to cultivate a few dozen varieties, at most. Incredibly diver...

'This book brings history alive' BERNADINE EVARISTOWITH A FOREWORD FROM ZADIE SMITH'Black England is a book that will be relevant for ever' BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH----------------The idea that Britain became a mixed-race country after 1945 is a common mistake. Georgian England had a large and distinctive Black community. Whether prosperous citizens or newly freed slaves, they all ran the risk of kidnap an...

'Richardson writes beautifully about his return to the land, about listening to the soil and about understanding the ancient world.' - The SpectatorEach new field is hope, each old one reality.There are things below the surface that pull people together in a shared love of history, landscape and the hope that, this time, something incredible will be unearthed.When a travel writer is stuck on home soil in the middle of a pandemic he tries ...

**LONGLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR ILLUSTRATIVE BOOKSAn illustrated natural history of British native trees, by a celebrated botanical artist and her forester brother-in-law**Our trees are among our greatest national treasures, and yet today many people have forgotten their names, their identifying features and the stories we used to tell about them. In Overleaf, the botanical painter Susan Ogilvy and the forester Richard Ogilvy reacquaint us with the trees ...

‘Windswept is a wonderful work, prose painted in bold, bright strokes like a Scottish Colourist's canvas’ ROBERT MACFARLANE‘An instant classic of British nature-writing’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPHA few years ago, Annie Worsley traded a busy life in academia to take on a small-holding or croft on the west coast of Scotland. It is a land ruled by great elemental forces – light, wind and water – that hold sway over how land forms, wher...