Wyl Menmuir’s The Draw of the Sea is a beautifully written and deeply moving portrait of the sea and the people whose livelihoods revolve around it, examining the ephemeral but universal pull the sea holds over the human imagination. Since the earliest stages of human development, the sea has fascinated and entranced us. It feeds us, sustaining communities and providing livelihood, but it also holds immense destructive power that threatens to destroy all we have created.   It connects us to faraway places, offering the promise of new lands and voyages of discovery, but also shapes our borders, carving divisions between landmasses and eroding the very ground beneath our feet. In this lyrical meditation on what it is that draws us to the waters' edge, author Wyl Menmuir tells the stories of the people whose lives revolve around the coastline and all it has to offer. In twelve interlinked chapters, Menmuir explores the lives of local fishermen steeped in the rich traditions of a fishing community, the beachcombers who wander the shores in search of the varied objects that wash ashore and the stories they tell, and all number of others who have made their lives around the sea. In the specifics of these livelihoods and their rich histories and traditions, Wyl Menmuir captures the universal human connection to the ocean’s edge. Into this seductive tapestry Wyl weaves the story of how the sea has beckoned, consoled and restored him. The Draw of the Sea is a meaningful and moving work into how we interact with the environment around us and how it comes to shape the course of our lives. As unmissable as it is compelling, as profound as it is personal, this must-read book will delight anyone familiar with the intimate and powerful pull which the sea holds over us.

The ketch, "Queequeg" is a one of a kind, handcrafted, wooden piece of sculpture, the culmination of 3000 years of seafaring experience. In these days of lookalike fiber glass boats she is unique. If you once see her, you do not soon forget her This book tells the story of a five year voyage from Maine to Mexico on the Intercoastal Waterway,the Florida Keys and the Bahamas. It documents day by day experiences,including the wonderful people we met, the sights we saw, and several near fatal occurences; the joy ,monotony anxiety and fear that are the lot of the smallboat cruiser. The anxiety and fear overpower the joy for some people and many sailboat owners never get more than a day's sail from their home port All Hail! to those early adventurers and circumnavigators sailing the the uncharted oceans with the most primitive navigation instruments.

Bill Bryson's first travel book, The Lost Continent, was unanimously acclaimed as one of the funniest books in years. In Neither Here nor There he brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia. Fluent in, oh, at least one language, he retraces his travels as a student twenty years before. Whether braving the homicidal motorists of Paris, being robbed by gypsies in Florence, attempting not to order tripe and eyeballs in a German restaurant or window-shopping in the sex shops of the Reeperbahn, Bryson takes in the sights, dissects the culture and illuminates each place and person with his hilariously caustic observations. He even goes to Liechtenstein.

The river of life has followed an unusual course for Mary Stickney. World traveler, artist and writer, she became familiar with American embassies and diplomatic outposts abroad while the wife of a U.S. Foreign Service agricultural scientist. In River of Pearls, she recounts adventures and family life in Southeast Asia during the Viet Nam War era. The story begins in exotic Bangkok, Thailand, and continues to Manila, Bataan, Corregidor and remote mountain villages of the Philippines. The journey also travels to Saigon and Danang, South Viet Nam, as the author spent time there as a civilian with her husband, who was working in a pacification program of the U.S. Agency for International Development. After retuning to America, she found herself suddenly alone, went back to college and shaped a new life and a new career for herself. the wonders, excitement, the sorrows and the surprising joys of exploring far corners of the globe with an open heart and mind. River of Pearls is her second book, following Jungle Paths and Palace Treasures (2001). The danger and romance of the lands comes alive in the book. --The Florida Times-Union ...the adventure of a lifetime, told here in lively, highly readable detail. This book will appeal to a wide audience, both young and old, travel-buffs and armchair globetrotters. --Foreign Service Journal

I can move only with the aid of barrels of anti-inflammatory gel, sticking plasters and real ale anaesthetic. Martin and I descend from hours of walking to the small town of Middleton-in-Teesdale. I walk, stiff legged, into the campsite office and a plump, middle-aged woman looks up from her desk and can see the old timer is in trouble. "Oh, what a shame you weren't here last week," she says, pity radiating from behind her horn-rimmed specs. "You've missed him." I look at her, puzzled. "Elvis!" she explains. "You missed Elvis." Oh God, now I'm hallucinating... In Bothy Tales, the follow-up to The Last Hillwalker from bestselling mountain writer John D. Burns, travel with the author to secret places hidden amongst the British hills and share his passion for the wonderful wilderness of our uplands. From remote glens deep in the Scottish Highlands, Burns brings a new volume of tales - some dramatic, some moving, some hilarious - from the isolated mountain shelters called bothies. Meet the vivid cast of characters who play their games there, from climbers with more confidence than sense to a young man who doesn't have the slightest idea what he's letting himself in for...

Artist and photographer Clare Newton rediscovers and records the faint remnants of old London, only made visible when lit by a fleeting low winter's sun. These images are the conduits through time, analysing the sometimes uncomfortable balance between a struggling heritage to exist and the insatiable appetite of modern regeneration. But deep inside East London also lies a Victorian era. The mother of inventions, which not only stimulated change across the world then but even now their lingering artefacts and sayings effect us even in today's hi-tech social world. Strange but true stories that explain how and where artefacts have come from. Including the roots of 'Sarcasm' or the colour purple, both invented in the east end. Or how Shoreditch got its name. This book arose after many previous years exploration for a large exhibition displayed before the Olympics in London, called Riches Uncovered. The facts of which will be made into a series of photographic studies for all to enjoy and smile over. About Clare Newton In 2001 Clare Newton was awarded the British Female Inventor of the Year, and she has received 5 international awards for innovation. Born in London, her creative talents were expressed at a young age, first painting her bedroom to building wooden aeroplanes. But when she was given her first camera, a little Minolta, at the age of 14, it inspired her to build a dark room in the roof of her parents' house, where she taught herself how to shoot and develop photographs, with neighbours encouraging her with small commissions. She took a degree in art and design in East London and worked as a Graphic & Interior Designer for many years. Photography really took off for her when the Olympics came to London. She made her first large photographic installation in 2009, 'Riches Uncovered', a collection of photographic montages to explain and document East London's disappearing heritage. After this first project she went on to produce numerous extraordinary community art projects, involving hundreds of children and adults. The resulting photographic montages were displayed outdoors in unexpected public places, encouraging all to take part, share and learn about local heritage. Clare believes that it is through the passion of creating participatory public projects, that art can positively affect people in different and personal ways, even drawing communities together. Clare's next endeavour was to create Jump4London - the World's Longest Photograph, with 5,000 people taking part, who appeared to jump simultaneously. Two meters high and one kilometre in length, it was printed on 2.5 tons of specialist photographic material, and documented an important piece of London's history as people celebrated the 2012 Olympic Games. It made a Double Guinness World Record as part of the Cultural Olympiad's World Record London.

This unique book is the first to bring together a group of influential China experts to reflect on their cultural and social encounters while travelling and living in the People's Republic. Filling an important gap, it allows scholars, journalists, and businesspeople to reflect on their personal memories of China. Private experiences-vivid and often entirely unanticipated-often teach more about how a society actually works than a planned course of study can. Such experiences can also expose the sometimes naive misconceptions visitors often bring with them to China. China experts relate stories that are always interesting but also more: they tell not just anecdotes but telling anecdotes. Why are there no campus maps? (Because, if you don't know where you're going and why, you don't need to be here.) What's the allure of Mickey Mouse? (He could break all sorts of rules and get away with it.) What's a sworn brother in China? (Somebody who fights for your honor even when you're not looking.) Covering nearly a half-century from 1971 to the present, these stories open a vivid window on a rapidly evolving China and on the zigzag learning curve of the China trippers themselves.

Imperium is a classic of reportage and a literary masterwork by one of the great writers and witnesses of the twentieth century. It is the story of an empire: the constellation of states that was submerged under a single identity for most of the century-the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. From the entrance of Soviet troops into his hometown in Poland in 1939, to just before the Berlin Wall came down, as the USSR convulsed and died, Kapuscinski travelled thousands of miles and talked to hundreds of ordinary Soviet people about their extraordinary lives and the terror from which they were emerging.

"This is a book ripped from the headlines, from Black Lives Matter to recently thriving downtowns stripped of office workers and service workers. Those catching the brunt of it all, those with the steepest hills to climb, may have been fucked at birth. But for everyone, as Maharidge observes, the feeling of safety is folly. A sharp wake-up call to heed the new Depression and to recognize the humanity of those hit hardest." -Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW "Dale Maharidge takes us coast to coast in 2020, down highways along which he first reported decades ago. His honed class awareness-unrivaled among contemporary journalists-reveals that today's confluent health, economic and social crises are the logical conclusion to generations of unvalidated, untreated despair in a wealthy nation. Forget hollow commentary from detached television news studios in New York City. Fucked at Birth is the truth." -Sarah Smarsh, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Dale Maharidge has spent his career documenting the downward spiral of the American working class. Poverty is both reality and destiny for increasing numbers of people in the 2020s and, as Maharidge discovers spray-painted inside an abandoned gas station in the California desert, it is a fate often handed down from birth. Motivated by this haunting phrase-"Fucked at Birth"-Maharidge explores the realities of being poor in America in the coming decade, as pandemic, economic crisis and social revolution up-end the country. Part raw memoir, part dogged, investigative journalism, Fucked At Birth channels the history of poverty in America to help inform the voices Maharidge encounters daily. In an unprecedented time of social activism amid economic crisis, when voices everywhere are rising up for change, Maharidge's journey channels the spirits of George Orwell and James Agee, raising questions about class, privilege, and the very concept of "upward mobility," while serving as a final call to action. From Sacramento to Denver, Youngstown to New York City, Fucked At Birth dares readers to see themselves in those suffering most, and to finally-after decades of refusal-recalibrate what we are going to do about it.

Are there any genuinely wild places left in Britain and Ireland? Or have we tarmacked, farmed and built ourselves out of wildness? In his vital, bewitching, inspiring classic, Robert Macfarlane sets out in search of the wildness that remains.

One summer, writer and musician, Jasper Winn set himself an extraordinary task. He would kayak the whole way round Ireland - a thousand miles - camping on remote headlands and islands, carousing in bars and paddling clockwise until he got back where he started. But in the worst Irish summer in living memory the pleasures of idling among seals, fulmars and fishing boats soon gave way to heroic struggles through storm-tossed seas ... and lock-ins playing music in coastal pubs. Circling the country where he grew up, Jasper reflects on life at the very fringes of Ireland, the nature and lore of its seas, and his own eccentric upbringing - sprung from school at age ten and left free to explore the countryside and its traditional life. Charming, quietly epic, and with an irresistible undertow of wit, Paddle is a low-tech adventure that captures the sheer joy of a misty morning on Ireland's coast. As the sun breaks through, you'll be longing to set off too.

New Directions is delighted to announce beautiful new editions of these three classic Sebald novels, including his two greatest works, The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn. All three novels are distinguished by their translations, every line of which Sebald himself made pitch-perfect, slaving to carry into English all his essential elements: the shadows, the lambent fallings-back, nineteenth-century Germanic undertones, tragic elegiac notes, and his unique, quiet wit.

This summer, here are the only recipes you need...

What is a 'summer kitchen'? In Ukraine, it means a small cooking space located in the veg garden, away from the main house. Calling on fond childhood memories and countless conversations and cooking sessions, Olia Hercules shows how you can truly make the most of summery ingredients to create new, inventive and utterly delicious plates of food. Her recipes include burnt aubergine butter on tomato toast, sourdough garlic buns and poppyseed cake with elderflower and strawberries - each bite more delicious than the last.

As you cook your way through generous salads, moreish mains and sweet delights, you'll discover a way of cooking that is both traditional and contemporary, because these techniques and flavour combinations have been handed down through generations, yet reworked for every home kitchen.

Summer Kitchens also has a detailed chapter on fermentation, preserving and pickling (an ancient practice in Ukraine) that will inspire beginners and frequent picklers alike. It's a gorgeous way to discover sustainable, healthy and delicious food for the summer and beyond.

"Open-hearted and buoyant, the book weaves together her hands-on experiences in Europe and introduces us to a rich cast of people who make, sell and care about these traditions." -Jenny Linford, author of The Missing Ingredient In this delightful, full-color tour of France, England, and Italy, YouTube star Katie Quinn shares the stories and science behind everyone's fermented favorites-cheese, wine, and bread-along with classic recipes. Delicious staples of a great meal, bread, cheese, and wine develop their complex flavors through a process known as fermentation. Katie Quinn spent months as an apprentice with some of Europe's most acclaimed experts to study the art and science of fermentation. Visiting grain fields, vineyards, and dairies, Katie brings the stories and science of these foods to the table, explains the process of each craft, and introduces the people behind them. What will keep readers glued to the book like a suspense novel is Katie's personal journey as an expat discovering herself abroad; Katie's vulnerability will turn readers into fans, and they'll finish the book feeling like they're her best friends, trusted with her innermost revelations. In England, Katie becomes a cheesemonger at Neal's Yard Dairy, London's preeminent cheese shop-the beginning of a journey that takes her from a goat farm in rural Somerset to a nationwide search for innovating dairy gurus. In Italy, Katie offers an inside look at Italian winemaking with the Comellis at their family-owned vineyard in Northeast Italy and witnesses the diversity of vintners as she makes her way around Italy. In France, Katie meets the reigning queen of bread, Apollonia Poilane of Paris' famed Poilane Bakery, apprentices at boulangeries in Paris learning the ins and outs of sourdough, and travels the country to uncover the present and future of French bread. Part artisanal survey, part travelogue, and part cookbook, featuring watercolor illustrations and gorgeous photographs, Cheese, Wine, and Bread is an outstanding gastronomic tour for foodies, cooks, artisans, and armchair travelers alike.

Toe hy 21 jaar gelede vir die eerste keer in Parys aankom, sou die kunstenaar Louis Jansen van Vuuren hom nooit kon indink dat hy eendag ’n château in die Franse platteland sou besit nie.

In Amper Frans vertel hy op skreesnaakse wyse hoe hy alles wat Frans is ontdek en beproef het – daar is neusoptrekkerige kelners, statige hertoginne, etlike botsings met die berugte Franse burokrasie en natuurlike talle faux pas in sy gebrekkige Frans. Om die vervalle château saam met sy lewensmaat, Hardy Olivier, in ’n boetiekhotel te omskep het groot geduld en uithouvermoë geverg. Talle lesse is op die harde manier geleer. Een daarvan is dat vier verwarmers geensins genoeg is om ’n hele château te verhit nie en dit sal jou dae lank sonder elektrisiteit laat.

Louis vertel ook van kaskenades met hulle gaste en hul eie avonture soos hulle die land platry agter vlooimarkte en avontuur aan. Hy vermeng stories oor hul lewe in Frankryk met brokkies geskiedenis en fassinerende inligting oor eg Franse tradisies.

Dit is ’n moet vir Frankofiele!

Jan Morris (then James) first visited Trieste as a soldier at the end of the Second World War. Since then, the city has come to represent her own life, with all its hopes, disillusionments, loves and memories. Here, her thoughts on a host of subjects - ships, cities, cats, sex, nationalism, Jewishness, civility and kindness - are inspired by the presence of Trieste, and recorded in or between the lines of this book. Evoking the whole of its modern history, from its explosive growth to wealth and fame under the Habsburgs, through the years of Fascist rule to the miserable years of the Cold War, when rivalries among the great powers prevented its creation as a free city under United Nations auspices, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere is neither a history nor a travel book; like the place, it is one of a kind. Jan Morris's collection of travel writing and reportage spans over five decades and includes such titles as Venice, Coronation Everest, Hong Kong, Spain, Manhattan '45, A Writer's World and the Pax Britannica Trilogy. Hav, her novel, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

A SUNDAY TIMES NATURE BOOK OF THE YEAR *UPDATED EDITION FEATURING EXTRA MATERIAL* A nature diary by award-winning novelist, nature writer and hit podcaster Melissa Harrison, following her journey from urban south London to the rural Suffolk countryside. 'A writer of great gifts.' ROBERT MACFARLANE 'The journal of a writer to compare to Thomas Hardy. Melissa Harrison is among our most celebrated nature writers.' JOHN CAREY, THE TIMES A Londoner for over twenty years, moving from flat to Tube to air-conditioned office, Melissa Harrison knew what it was to be insulated from the seasons. Adopting a dog and going on daily walks helped reconnect her with the cycle of the year and the quiet richness of nature all around her: swifts nesting in a nearby church; ivy-leaved toadflax growing out of brick walls; the first blackbird's song; an exhilarating glimpse of a hobby over Tooting Common. Moving from scrappy city verges to ancient, rural Suffolk, where Harrison eventually relocates, this diary - compiled from her beloved Nature Notebook column in The Times - maps her joyful engagement with the natural world and demonstrates how we must first learn to see, and then act to preserve, the beauty we have on our doorsteps - no matter where we live. A perceptive and powerful call-to-arms written in mesmerising prose, The Stubborn Light of Things confirms Harrison as a central voice in British nature writing.

’n Grieselrige reis na die plekke waar van Suid-Afrika se bekendste moorde gepleeg is asook ’n hele aantal minder bekendes.

Maak kennis met die moordenaars en die doodgewone gemeenskappe waar slagoffers van die vroegste tye tot die onlangse verlede wreed aan hul einde gekom het.

A take-no-prisoners approach to life has seen Paul Carter heading to some of the world's most remote, wild and dangerous places as a contractor in the oil business. Amazingly, he's survived (so far) to tell these stories from the edge of civilization. He has been shot at, hijacked and held hostage; almost died of dysentery in Asia and toothache in Russia; watched a Texan lose his mind in the jungles of Asia; lost a lot of money backing a scorpion against a mouse in a fight to the death, and been served cocktails by an orangutan on an ocean freighter. And that's just his day job. Taking postings in some of the world's wildest and most remote regions, not to mention some of the roughest rigs on the planet, Paul has worked, got into trouble, and been given serious talkings to, in locations as far-flung as the North Sea, Middle East, Borneo and Tunisia, as exotic as Sumatra, Vietnam and Thailand, and as flat-out dangerous as Columbia, Nigeria and Russia, with some of the maddest, baddest and strangest people you could ever hope not to meet.

In this series of deft and beautifully written essays, conservationist Stephen Spear and journalist Janice Riley chronicle a year of cultivating blueberries on Cape Cod's Hokum Rock Farm. Spear's family has owned the farm since 1973 and began cultivating blueberries exclusively in 1986, selling thousands of pints each season. The photographs and stories, a blend of nature writing, personal reflection, and practical knowledge, inspire thoughts on the reasons farming is important and the ways we find meaning in the natural world. Learn about the history of blueberry cultivation, the biodiverse flora and fauna on the farm, and facts about blueberries. Also try out the mouth-watering recipes such as lemon pound Bundt cake with blueberries, easy graham crust blueberry pie, and blueberry-cranberry cobbler. Fans of stories about the natural world, farming, or simply Cape Cod, will appreciate this celebration of blueberries and a life lived close to the earth.

Pakistan's largest city is a sprawling metropolis of 20 million people. A place of political turbulence, where lavish wealth and absolute poverty sit side by side, and where the lines between idealism and corruption can quickly blur. Through the stories of those who know the city best - including a journalist, an activist, and an ambulance driver - Samira Shackle paints a vivid, vibrant and often violent portrait of Karachi over the past decade: a period during which the Taliban arrived in Pakistan, adding to the daily perils of its residents and pushing their city into the international spotlight. Nuanced and fast-paced, Karachi Vice is an immersive, electrifying journey around one of the most compelling cities in the world.

The Beagle Diary was used to write Darwin's famous book 'Voyage of the Beagle' (1839). The narrative of the surveying voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle between the years 1826 and 1836. Darwin describes each day of the voyage, some in intimate detail, during the Beagle's circumnavigation of the globe.

Adam Thorpe's home for the past 25 years has been an old house in the Cévennes, a wild range of mountains in southern France. Prior to this, in an ancient millhouse in the oxbow of a Cévenol river, he wrote the novel that would become the Booker Prize-nominated Ulverton, now a Vintage Classic.

In more recent writing Thorpe has explored the Cévennes, drawing on the legends, history and above all the people of this part of France for his inspiration. In his charming journal, Notes from the Cévennes, Thorpe takes up these themes, writing about his surroundings, the village and his house at the heart of it, as well as the contrasts of city life in nearby Nîmes. In particular he is interested in how the past leaves impressions - marks - on our landscape and on us. What do we find in the grass, earth and stone beneath our feet and in the objects around us? How do they tie us to our forebears? What traces have been left behind and what marks do we leave now?

He finds a fossil imprinted in the single worked stone of his house's front doorstep, explores the attic once used as a silk factory and contemplates the stamp of a chance paw in a fragment of Roman roof-tile. Elsewhere, he ponders mutilated fleur-de-lys (French royalist symbols) in his study door and unwittingly uses the tomb-rail of two sisters buried in the garden as a gazebo. Then there are the personal fragments that make up a life and a family history: memories dredged up by 'dusty toys, dried-up poster paints, a painted clay lump in the bottom of a box.'

Part celebration of both rustic and urban France, part memoir, Thorpe's humorous and precise prose shows a wonderful stylist at work, recalling classics such as Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE The original bestseller from the beloved author of UNDERLAND, LANDMARKS and THE LOST WORDS - Robert Macfarlane travels Britain's ancient paths and discovers the secrets of our beautiful, underappreciated landscape 'The Old Ways confirms Macfarlane's reputation as one of the most eloquent and observant of contemporary writers about nature' Scotland on Sunday Following the tracks, holloways, drove-roads and sea paths that form part of a vast ancient network of routes criss-crossing the British Isles and beyond, Robert Macfarlane discovers a lost world - a landscape of the feet and the mind, of pilgrimage and ritual, of stories and ghosts; above all of the places and journeys which inspire and inhabit our imaginations. 'Sublime... It sets the imagination tingling, laying an irresistible trail for readers to follow' Sunday Times 'Read this and it will be impossible to take an unremarkable walk again' Metro 'He has a rare physical intelligence and affords total immersion in place, elements and the passage of time: wonderful' Antony Gormley