F****ive tales of time-travel, vampires, Snow White and Odysseus from the legendary Tanith LeeTanith Lee was one of the 20th century’s most influential writers of fantasy, horror and science fiction. She wrote over 90 novels and 300 short stories, as well as children’s books, poems and several episodes of Blake’s 7. Her many accolades include several World Fantasy Awards (including the Lifetime Achievement Award) and she was the first woman to win the Brit...

Six quirky dramas from in and around a northern market stall“If you want owt - go down the market... They sell everything from pins to pearl earrings, from peaches to pig's trotters, from tripe to tiramisu. See the hanging, marbled haunches of beef down Butchers' Row. Smell the flowers, a fragrant dream. Taste the fresh silvery fish motorwayed down from the North Sea.”Some would say the Market is the last authentic part of the city centre. This nor...

Prize-winning author Adam Nicolson tells the story he was born to write – the real story of England. It is the gentry that has made England what it was and, to a degree, still is. In this vivid, lively book, history has never been more readable.We may well be ‘a nation of shopkeepers’, but for generations England was a country dominated by its middling families, rooted on their land, in their locality, with a healthy interest in turning a profit from their property and a deep distr...

Slipless in Settle is a sentimental journey around club cricket in the north of England, a world far removed from the clichéd lengthening-shadows-on-the-village-green image of the summer game. This is hardcore cricket played in former pit villages and mill towns. Winner of the 2011 MCC Cricket Book of the Year, it is about the little clubs that have, down the years, produced some of the greatest players Britain has ever seen, and at one time spent a fortune on importing the biggest names i...

Longlisted for the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction (now the Bailie Gifford)‘A thrilling and complex book, enlarges our view of Homer … There’s something that hits the mark on every page’ Claire Tomalin, Books of the Year, New StatesmanWhere does Homer come from? And why does Homer matter? His epic poems of war and suffering can still speak to us of the role of destiny in life, of cruelty, of humanity and its frailty, but ...

The second tie-in to ITV drama Victoria unveils the complex, passionate relationship of Victoria and Albert.What happened after the Queen married her handsome prince? Did they live happily ever after, or did their marriage, like so many royal marriages past and present fizzle into a loveless bond of duty? Victoria and Albert were the royal couple that broke the mould – it may have been an arranged match, yet their union was a passionate, tempestuous relationship between two extreme...

*A MULTIPLE AWARD-WINNING SPORTS WRITER*'Hamilton's book is a marvel . . . I'm not sure he could write a dull sentence if he tried' SpectatorOne of Duncan Hamilton's favourite writers on cricket, Edmund Blunden, wrote how he felt going to watch a game: 'You arrive early, earlier even than you meant . . . and you feel a little guilty at the thought of the day you propose to give up to sheer luxury'.Following Neville Cardus's assertion that '...

In summer 2010 Simon Armitage decided to walk the Pennine Way. The challenging 256-mile route is usually approached from south to north, from Edale in the Peak District to Kirk Yetholm, the other side of the Scottish border. He resolved to tackle it the other way round: through beautiful and bleak terrain, across lonely fells and into the howling wind, he would be walking home, towards the Yorkshire village where he was born.Travelling as a 'modern troubadour' without a penny in hi...