Cunning Folk transports us to a time when magic was used to solve life’s day-to-day problems – as well as some of deadly importance.‘A brilliant book, written with wit and vigour’ MALCOLM GASKILL, author of The Ruin of All Witches‘Absolutely fascinating’ IAN MORTIMER, author of The Time-Traveller’s Guide to Medieval EnglandIt’s 1600 and you’ve lost your precious silver spo...

Magic is ubiquitous across the world and throughout history. Yet if witchcraft is acknowledged as a persistent presence in the medieval and early modern eras, practical magic by contrast – performed to a useful end for payment, and actually more common than malign spellcasting – has been overlooked. Exploring many hundred instances of daily magical usage, and setting these alongside a range of imaginative and didactic literatures, Tabitha Stanmore demonstrates the entrenched nature of 'ser...

**Brought to you by Penguin.Cunning Folk** transports us to a time when magic was used to solve life’s day-to-day problems – as well as some of deadly importance.It’s 1600 and you’ve lost your precious silver spoons, or maybe they’ve been stolen. Perhaps your child has a fever. Or you’re facing trial. Maybe you’re looking for love or escaping a husband. What do you do? In medieval and early modern Europe, your first port of call might well have bee...

Nicolas Hamilton has been exceeding expectations since day one.Born with a form of cerebral palsy, Nicolas was told that he would never walk and would need a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Today he not only walks everywhere but he is the first disabled athlete to ever compete at the top level of British motorsport, The British Touring Car Championship, where he lines up on the grid alongside some of the world's best drivers.Now That I Have...

Brought to you by Penguin.The Book-Makers is a celebration of 550 years of the printed book, told through the lives of eighteen extraordinary men and women who took the book in radical new directions: printers and binders, publishers and artists, paper-makers and library founders. This is a story of skill, craft, mess, cunning, triumph, improvisation, and error.Some of these names we know. We meet jobbing printer (and American Founding Father) Benja...

Brought to you by Penguin.'Beautiful, incredibly painterly and full of breathtaking details. A devastating portrait of a particular place, which draws you in with its brutality and beauty' CARYL LEWIS, author of DRIFTTucked into the Welsh valleys and encircled by silver birch and pine, the village of Cwmcysgod may appear a quiet, sleepy sort of place. But beneath the surface, tensions simmer, hearts ache, and painful truths thr...

Brought to you by Penguin.THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERThe Right have hijacked Englishness. Can it be reclaimed?Today, the only people who dare speak of Englishness are cheerleaders for Brexit, exceptionalism and imperial nostalgia. But there is another England, hiding in plain sight, which is dramatically more inclusive and forward looking. Here, Caroline Lucas delves deep into England's literary history to ...

Brought to you by Penguin.On the 14th of August 1941, a Polish monk named Maximilian Maria Kolbe was murdered in Auschwitz.Kolbe's life had been remarkable. Fiercely intelligent and driven, he founded a movement of Catholicism and spent several years in Nagasaki, ministering to the 'hidden Christians' who had emerged after centuries of oppression. A Polish nationalist as well as a monk, he gave sanctuary to fleeing refugees and ran Poland's largest publishi...

Exploding myths and offering research-backed advice, this book provides a shortcut to decades of gardening experience by explaining the science behind how a garden grows.Why does my cherry tree blossom but never fruit? What's the most effective slug deterrent? Could I breed my own unique variety of flower? The world of gardening can be a mystifying place, with so many instructions to follow and often little explanation as to why.From hands-on advice to an e...

Brought to you by Penguin.London, 2014. Hal Lancaster – twenty-two, gay, Catholic, chops lines of cocaine with his myWaitrose card – is the reluctant heir of his father Henry, the sixteenth Duke of Lancaster. Henry is half tyrant, half martyr, with an investment in his eldest son that has grown into an obsession. While Hal floats between internships and drinking sessions, Henry keeps him in check with passive-aggression, religious guilt, and a cruelty that Hal some...

The story of Christopher Isherwood's life is one of pilgrimage: away from the constraints of inheritance and empire and toward authenticity and spiritual illumination. Isherwood—the author of Goodbye to Berlin, which inspired Cabaret, and A Single Man—was born the heir to a crumbling English estate. He died an icon of gay liberation in California while his partner, Don Bachardy, painted his death portrait.Isherwood began his career depicting the ...

The inspirational and honest first book from S Club legend Rachel StevensWhether as part of the iconic S Club or as a successful solo artist, Rachel Stevens was in the eye of the Noughties pop storm when she was catapulted to fame in her teens. The whirlwind of celebrity life brought glamour, glitz and BRITs, but not everything was as it seemed behind the smile.Constantly stereotyped and controlled within the industry, Rachel privately struggled with her se...