A lyrical celebration of birdsong, and the rekindling of a deep passion for nature.'At this time of year, blackbirds never simply fly: instead, like reluctantly retired officers, they're always "on manoeuvres", and it's easy to see from their constant agitation that for them every flower bed is a bunker, every shed a redoubt and every hedge-bottom a potential place of ambush'As the world went silent in lockdown, something else happened; for the first time, ...

Features prizewinning prose writers Tim Cooke on 'dark play' at the Ogmore edgelands; Hattie Morrison on the erasure of women from the history of the Welsh woollen industry; Costa-winning poet Jonathan Edwards' story of a private moment amid a public tragedy in rock history. Plus Steven Lovatt in Hungary and preview poems from the Welsh presses.

'If the mountains secluded Wales from England, the long coastline was like an open door to the world at large.' – Jan Morris The history of Wales as a destination and confection of English Romantic writers is well-known, but this book reverses the process, turning a Welsh gaze on the rest of the world. This shift is timely: the severing of Britain from the European Union asks questions of Wales about its relationship to its own past, to the British state, to Europe and beyond, while the pr...

A moving, powerful quest for belonging through the forsaken landscapes of BritainWhen Steven Lovatt’s grandmother died, he lost not only a beloved family member but also his last link to the way of life she had represented: rooted in place, socially democratic, ecologically rich. Cut loose from the past and confronted with a present missing even the birds of his childhood, Steven’s mind cracked.Drawing on field work, local library archives and oral history,...

Brought to you by Penguin.Birdsong in a Time of Silence is the story of a man rediscovering his passion for birdsong and nature. Narrated against the backdrop of the current pandemic, the book opens by acknowledging the new awareness of birds and birdsong that was made possible by the coincidence of spring and the experience of lockdown. Starting with a portrait of the blackbird - most prominent and articulate of the early spring singers - the book proceed...

*Shortlisted for the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize*A Times and Sunday Times Book of the YearA Wall Street Journal Book of the YearA Spectator Book of the YearA Times Literary Supplement Book of the YearA New Yorker Book of the YearSome called it a craze. To others it was a cult. Join prize-winning historian Kathryn Hughes to discover how Britain fell in love with ca...

From the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series, a masterful autobiographical novel about the injustices of the prison system and the humanity that flourishes despite itJimmy Monroe is serving a twenty-year sentence for robbery. Terror and chaos reign in the prison, where corrupt, racist guards mete out capricious punishments like time in "the hole," where inmates' sense of reality slips away in total darkness. When a fire breaks out amid these mounting i...

Brought to you by Penguin.Our estate was built on land claimed from fields – we were at the foot of those rolling Kilpatrick hills, but over the roof of the school you could see more green fields and woods. I felt grateful to be on the edge of all that countryside – there was a magnetic pull towards what I thought that wild was, or could be. ‘One day, I’m going to walk to those hills and woods,’ I’d think to myself.Soon, it would become a sanct...

Daring, honest, and written with the comic scrutiny and unqualified affection that marks Franzen's fiction, The Discomfort Zone tells of the formation of one young mind in the crucible of an everyday American family.

Brought to you by Penguin.In a hyper-competitive world obsessed with rankings, super-wealth and greatness, how can we live up to democratic ideals of equality?Erica Benner has spent a lifetime thinking about these questions from different angles in different countries - from post-war Japan, where democracy was imposed on a defeated country, to post-communist Poland, with sudden gaps of wealth and security, and the US and South Africa with their legacies of ...

‘A feast for mind and soul, a treasure trove of insights into the enigmatic and enchanting world of the birds we share our lives with but barely notice. I have learnt so much. Every page is a thrill. Bird School has opened my eyes' Isabella Tree, author of WildingStep into the hide for a glorious new encounter with the British wildClose to Adam Nicolson’s home in Sussex, there is a forgotten field overrun by bracken and th...

Brought to you by Penguin.As a child, Chris Thorogood dreamed of seeing Rafflesia - the plant with the world's largest flowers. He crafted life-size replicas in an abandoned cemetery, carefully bringing them to life with paper and paint. Today he is a botanist at the University of Oxford's Botanic Garden and has dedicated his life to studying the biology of such extraordinary plants, working alongside botanists and foresters in Southeast Asia to document t...