Why do fewer teenagers in England from disadvantaged backgrounds go to university than young people from better-off families? Once at university, how well do poorer students fare compared with other students - who drops out from university and who gets the best degrees? After university - who secures better jobs and higher pay? What really has been the impact on university entry of the controversial increases in tuition fees in 2006 and 2012, especially for students from poorer families? I...

In this journey of discovery, John Micklewright travels the slow way, on foot, on paths, tracks and byways from the Channel to the Alps – from the coast of Normandy to the flanks of Mont Blanc.The Opening Country is a beautifully written account of his progress through the French countryside, an evocative patchwork of landscape, nature, history, literature, film, and – drawing on his father’s diaries that stretch back to the 1930s – of memoir.Always curious, absorb...

This true and very funny story involving six colleagues, some retired, proves the saying that we never really grow up - we just learn how to behave in public.On a sudden whim six men, mostly writers, decided to embark on a 1 000 kilometre cycle ride down the River Danube believing it would be downhill all the way. This was the first of many assumptions that proved to be not terribly correct.None had cycled since childhood nor even owned a bike.That first hilarious journey o...

“Beautifully written and refreshingly original . . . makes us see [Paris] in a different light.”—San Francisco Chronicle Book ReviewSwapping his native San Francisco for the City of Light, travel writer David Downie arrived in Paris in 1986 on a one-way ticket, his head full of romantic notions. Curiosity and the legs of a cross-country runner propelled him daily from an unheated, seventh-floor walk-up garret near the Champs-Elysées to the old Mon...

The New York Times bestseller: the secrets of the City of Light, revealed in the lives of the great, the near-great, and the forgotten—by the author of the acclaimed The Discovery of France.This is the Paris you never knew. From the Revolution to the present, Graham Robb has distilled a series of astonishing true narratives, all stranger than fiction, of the lives of the great, the near-great, and the forgotten.A young artillery lieutenant, strolling throu...

Acclaimed historian Ross King paints the most nuanced, riveting and humane portrait yet of Claude Monet, arguably the most famous artist of the 20th century.We have all seen—live, in photographs, on postcards—some of Claude Monet's legendary water lily paintings. They are in museums all over the world, and are among the most admired paintings of our time. Yet nobody knows the extraordinarily dramatic story behind their creation. Telling that story is the brilliant ...

As I drew closer to the town of Pont-de- Vaux... I found myself thinking of some of the places Id passed through. There were so many tiny hamlets, villages and larger towns, some vibrant and fine-looking, others lifeless, run down and in dire need of repair. Then there were, of course, the countless numbers of French people who had helped me piece together the jigsaw of roads along my way. The places I was riding through werent quite the same, but there was that unmistakable pungent smell ...

Night trains have long fascinated us with the possibilities of their private sleeping compartments, gilded dining cars, champagne bars and wealthy travellers. Authors from Agatha Christie to Graham Greene have used night trains to tell tales of romance, intrigue and decadence against a rolling background of dramatic landscapes. The reality could often be as thrilling: early British travellers on the Orient Express were advised to carry a revolver (as well as a teapot).In Night ...

A wholly original history of France, filled with a lifetime’s knowledge and passion—by the author of the New York Times bestseller Parisians.Beginning with the Roman army’s first recorded encounter with the Gauls and ending in the era of Emmanuel Macron, France takes readers on an endlessly entertaining journey through French history. Frequently hilarious, always surprising, Graham Robb’s France combines the stylistic versatility...

"Bewes' breezy prose makes him a pleasant traveling companion ... he clearly knows Switzerland inside and out." - The SpectatorIn June 1863 an English lady set off by train on the trip of a lifetime: Thomas Cook's first Conducted Tour of Switzerland. A century and a half later, travel writer Diccon Bewes, author of the bestselling Swiss Watching, decided to go where she went and see what she saw.Guided by her diary, he followed the same route to di...

WINNER OF THE SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2024 CYCLING BOOK OF THE YEARA WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2023: SPORTNOMINATED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023'An absorbing mix of historical sleuthing and travel writing' -The Telegraph'[a] fascinating and often touching book… Wonderful' -The TimesWhen cycling commentator Ned Boulting bought a ...

Patronising advice by a doctor at a retirement course to 'walk a couple of miles a day' challenges architect Sean Rothery to take a proper walk and so, at the age of sixty-five, he sets out to walk the GR5, the Grande Randonée Cinq. From the steely grey North Sea to the intense blue Mediterranean, Sean's 2,300km-long route follows a network of old trails, forest paths, canal banks, Alpine valleys and passes. Along the way, he recounts some of his youthful enterprises, including cycling fro...