The diary of Antera Duke is one of the earliest and most extensive surviving documents written by an African residing in coastal West Africa predating the arrival of British missionaries and officials in the mid-19th century. Antera Duke (ca.1735-ca.1809) was a leader and merchant in late eighteenth-century Old Calabar, a cluster of Efik-speaking communities in the Cross River region. He resided in Duke Town, forty miles from the Atlantic Ocean in modern-day southeast Nigeria. His diary, written in trade English from 18 January 1785 to 31 January 1788, is a candid account of daily life in an African community during a period of great historical interest. Written by a major African merchant at the height of Calabar's overseas commerce, it provides valuable information on Old Calabar's economic activity both with other African businessmen and with European ship captains who arrived to trade for slaves, produce and provisions. It is also unique in chronicling the day-to-day social and cultural life of a vibrant African community. Antera Duke's diary is much more than a historical curiosity; it is the voice of a leading African-Atlantic merchant who lived during an age of expanding cross-cultural trade. The book reproduces the original diary of Antera Duke, as transcribed by a Scottish missionary, Arthur W. Wilkie, ca. 1907 and published by OUP in 1956. A new rendering of the diary into standard English appears on facing pages, and the editors have advanced the annotation completed by anthropologist Donald Simmons in 1954 by editing 71 and adding 158 footnotes. The updated reference information incorporates new primary and secondary source material on Old Calabar, and notes where their editorial decisions differ from those made by Wilkie and Simmons. Chapters 1 and 2 detail the eighteenth-century Calabar slave and produce trades, emphasizing how personal relationships between British and Efik merchants formed the nexus of trade at Old Calabar. To build a picture of Old Calabar's regional trading networks, Chapter 3 draws upon information contained in Antera Duke's diary, other contemporary sources, and shipping records from the 1820s. Chapter 4 places information in Antera Duke's diary in the context of eighteenth-century Old Calabar political, social and religious history, charting how Duke Town eclipsed Old Town and Creek Town through military power, lineage strength and commercial acumen.

Williams tackles a host of controversial subjects in this collection of nineteen impassioned essays dealing mostly with humanity's abuses of the natural world.

In Funny Thing, Getting Older, one of our most beloved novelists shares his reflections from a lifetime of writing stories about the world. Here, collected for the first time on Michael's 82nd birthday, are his thoughts on nature, childhood, writing, peace and war, and getting older. Some are deeply personal, some political, others in between. And woven in amongst them you will find a play, a poem or two, and even a few stories.

Full of wonder, gentle humour and sharp observation, Funny Thing, Getting Older is a book to treasure.

A story is like a kite. If I make it right, if I fly it right, it will swoop and soar. And it will please my heart when it's up there, floating on the wind.

A personal and powerful essay on loss from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the bestselling author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun. 'Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language' On 10 June 2020, the scholar James Nwoye Adichie died suddenly in Nigeria. In this tender and powerful essay, expanded from the original New Yorker text, his daughter, a self-confessed daddy's girl, remembers her beloved father. Notes on Grief is at once a tribute to a long life of grace and wisdom, the story of a daughter's fierce love for a parent, and a revealing examination of the layers of loss and the nature of grief.

The Editors of Irish Pages - Chris Agee, Cathal O Searcaigh, Kathleen Jamie and Meg Bateman - have assembled a new issue of the journal, entitled "The Anthropocene." It aims to evoke the escalating global ecological crisis in the round, through many of its key components, including climate change, deforestation, the treatment of animals, oceanic pollution and over-fishing, the melting of glaciers, extinctions, land-use, plastic pollution and the waste crisis, the eco-vandalism of mining and the fashion industry, the extermination of indigenous peoples and languages, biodiversity and ecocide generally, and so on - and on. * A certain amount of poetry and prose deals with humanity and human consciousness more generally, in their historical, cultural, psychological, artistic and religious dimensions. * There is also a special section devoted to writing on the Pandemic. * As with other issues, however, there is also work included that does not bear explicitly on the theme of the issue.

Step inside Louis' life like never before as he turns his critical eye on himself, his home, and family and tries to make sense of our weird and sometimes scary world. His new autobiography is the perfect book for our uncertain times by the hilarious and relatable Louis Theroux. Louis started lockdown with a sense of purpose and determination. Like the generation who survived the Second World War, this was his chance to shine. Then reality set in, forcing him to ask: When did he start annoying his children? Why is home-schooling so hard? Has the kitchen become the new shed, a hideaway for men, where, under the guise of being helpful, you can just drink, listen to music and keep to yourself? And is his drinking really becoming a problem? He also describes his dealings with Joe Exotic and flies to the US to make a documentary on the Tiger King, discusses his Grounded podcast, jumps back into the world of militias and conspiracy theorists as he catches up with past interviewees for his Life on the Edge series, and wonders whether he could get rich if he wrote Trump: The Musical.

“All art,” Oscar Wilde once announced, “is quite useless.” Selected here are some of his finest prose works on the subject of art – useless, illuminating, artificial, uplifting, radical, gorgeous, boring, sublime – and his most brilliant aphorisms on the creative life. Whether lamenting the crass urge to hold art to realist or natural standards or arguing against morality as a guiding principle, Wilde defends the artist while delighting the audience.

Hazel Hendry is a remarkable woman. She worked tirelessly raising money for charities, and particularly for TEARFUND, including walking the form of a cross from John Oa Groats to Lands End and from Ramsgate to Fishguard in Wales. When the Croatian War began, the founder of TEARFUND, George Hoffman, told her, a Hazel, the people of Croatia need your helpa . So she raised money to send over 50 lorries, full of much needed supplies of food, furniture, medical equipment and toiletries, into Croatia. She travelled personally with many of them during and after the war. Hazel delivered aid right to the Front Line risking her life to help people who had lost their homes, livelihoods, and families. This book is about her experiences during those dangerous years, and the people who helped her and those that she helped. It is based on journals which she kept at the time and later recollections of particular people and events. As such, it is a vivid account of how the Croations in the War Zone suffered at the hands of the Chetniks who would attack their villages while leaving neighbouring villages in Croatia where Serbs lived unscathed. Some of the details that she recalls are not for the squeamish, but the way in which her faith supported her throughout this period shines through on every page.

For years, Laurence Bounds has been pestering some of the most patient customer service departments from coffee companies to television studios and shaving companies to travel agents, with his maddening of letters. From HMV to AEG, the Met Office to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - everyone is a target. Discover years of hilarious letters sent from the Etruria Lodge estate by the eccentric but highly-educated, Laurence Bounds (B.A, B.Sc). So who is Laurence Bounds, we hear you ask? A part-time gamekeeper, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Bachelor of Science, inventor of the WaspZapper 838 (TM), producer of the famous Bombardier Potato, founder of The Mobile Judge Programme, dog food pioneer, betting tycoon, playwright supremo, wine magnate, children's life-size Henry VIII doll designer, poet, astrologer, published author and aspiring television producer, to name but a few. Upon buying this educational book, you may learn some of Laurence's tips and become a serial entrepreneur just like him. Discover how to complain the Bounds way, how to communicate effectively with some of the world's biggest companies, and how to deal with organisations when they are not keen on your ideas. Join him on a side-splitting journey, guaranteed to have you in stitches, as you meet his friends, relatives, and his beloved thoroughbred black Labrador, Alexander IX. This is Laurence Bounds, his life in his own words...

A personal and powerful essay from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the bestselling author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun. 'I would like to ask that we begin to dream about and plan for a different world. A fairer world. A world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: we must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently...' What does "feminism" mean today? In this personal, eloquently argued essay - adapted from her much-admired Tedx talk of the same name - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author's exploration of what it means to be a woman now - an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.