When the going gets tough, the tough get tougher.The ranks of rugby league around the world have been liberally peppered with hardmen. With violence that would never be tolerated off the footy field, the game has always been rough, tough and dangerous. Stiff-arm tackles, headbutts, spear tackles - all aimed at maiming the opposition players - were once just part of the game. But while the thuggery of old has been cleaned up, the modern game of huge hits at breakneck speed ...

How can a man who achieved so much be so little remembered?Explorer, pioneer aviator, war photographer, naturalist, meteorologist, author, student of the paranormal, and secret agent; loyal lieutenant to Shackleton, Bean and Hearst; the last man from the West to meet with Lenin ... Sir Hubert Wilkins lived many lives - all of them exciting and fantastic. He shot the world's first movie footage from an aircraft (while strapped to its fuselage); and was the first to fly over both pola...

"Cleanness" is the second of the four poems of the Pearl manuscript, a fourteenth century work contemporaneous with Chaucer, Langland and Gower. Cleanness tells several stories, all related by theme–the disastrous consequences of uncleanness, and the good fortune to be had by being clean.The poet carefully constructs a complex accumulation of stories and examples, whose main source is the Old Testament. The three major stories are the Flood, then Sodom and Gomorrah, followed by Bel...

"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is perhaps the best-known Arthurian romance in the English language, praised by Tolkien as ‘the best conceived and shaped narrative poem of the fourteenth century, indeed of the Middle Ages, in English.’Its story is well-known: New Year celebrations at Camelot are disrupted by the fearsome and strange appearance of the Green Knight who challenges Arthur's court to a game consisting of an exchange of blows; the Green Knight’s survival of the beheadi...

A Sweet View explores how writers and artists in the nineteenth century imagined the English countryside as an idyll. The book draws on a very wide range of contemporary sources, and takes in the key makers of the rural idyll, Samuel Palmer, Myles Birket Foster and Richard Jefferies. It also explores the distinctive repertoire of idealized country scenery: the village green, the old country churchyard, hedgerows and cottages.The legacy of the idyll still influences popular ...

How does Dickens make his readers laugh? What is the distinctive character of Dickensian humour? These are the questions explored in this book on a topic that has been strangely neglected in critical studies over the last half century. Dickens's friend and biographer John Forster declared that: 'His leading quality was Humour.' At the end of Dickens's career he was acclaimed as 'the greatest English Humourist since Shakespeare's time.' In 1971 the critic Philip Collins surveyed recent deca...

"Patience" is the third of the four poems of the Pearl manuscript, a fourteenth century work contemporaneous with Chaucer, Langland and Gower, and acknowledged as a minor masterpiece in its own right.The poet’s usage of the word patience reflects two broad senses: that of accepting misfortune and submitting to physical or mental suffering, and that of waiting, holding back, and exercising moderation and self-control. In the opening section of the poem the poet offers a lengthy disc...

‘Lovely pearl, which it pleases a prince to set radiantly in gold so bright….Alas! I lost her in a garden; through the grass to the ground it slipped from me. I languish, grievously wounded by the power of my love for that spotless pearl of mine.’"Pearl" is the first of the four poems of the Pearl manuscript, a fourteenth century work contemporaneous with Chaucer, Langland and Gower. It is widely acknowledged as a masterpiece of medieval English literature. In the poem the...

For students of Middle English, Andrew and Waldron’s The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript has been the key edition of the four Pearl poems for over thirty years. With the changing needs of today's students in mind, the editors produced a complete prose translation of the four poems—the best known of which is "Sir Gawain" and the "Green Knight".The near-literal translations are intended to facilitate understanding of the four poems—to lead readers to, rather than away from, th...

Although running is becoming one of the most popular sports, learning to run properly can take time, energy and consistency.You need to do it regularly to become good at it and until you have achieved a certain level of competence, it is unlikely that you will enjoy it very much, or for very long. For many runners physical and mental barriers can stop progress.This book’s ultimate aim is to help you enjoy to run – to enjoy the feeling of movement, to overcome inertia, to re...

Anyone interested in astronomy battles with the conveniences of modern living – street lights, advertising and security lighting, tall buildings, and even the occasional tree. More than 85% of the population now lives in crowded and light-polluted towns and cities.This book is for those who live in or near towns and cities and own relatively modest equipment, although observers with larger instruments will still find many of the target objects of interest. The book encourages the u...

Alex, his sister Cecilia, and their two cousins Kate and Sam, land on Toronto Islands in two canoes lashed together like a catamaran after crossing Lake Ontario from Hamilton, where they escaped a disaster of a family reunion. Because Cecilia can't stay awake in boats, and was asleep in the canoes before the escape, she only becomes aware of what happened after the landing. In a rage, she demands to be paddled to mainland Toronto so she can fly back to Montreal. Along the way, over a sleep...