One November morning, Tom Jeffreys set off from Euston Station with a gnarled old walking stick in his hand and an overloaded rucksack. His aim was to walk the 119 miles from London to Birmingham along the proposed route of HS2. Needless to say, he failed. Over the course of ten days of walking, Jeffreys meets conservationists and museum directors, ery farmers and suicidal retirees. From a rapidly changing London, through interminable suburbia, and out into the English countryside, Jeffreys goes wild camping in Perivale, ees murderous horses in Oxfordshire, and gets lost in a land ll site in Buckinghamshire. Signal Failure weaves together poetry and politics, history, philosophy and personal observation to form an extended exploration of people and place, nature, society, and the future. In part, Signal Failure is the story of the author's multiple shortcomings - his inability to understand the city he lives in, to forge a meaningful relationship with his home-county hometown, to emulate those great nature writers he admires so much, to put up a tent or read a map.It is also a wide-ranging critique of humanity's most urgent failures: of capitalism, of community, of the city and the suburbs, of architecture and agriculture, of bureaucratic democracy, and, in the end, of our age-old failure to nd our place in the world we live in.

Anne Dixey - a former BBC journalist who is now a highly respected and well-known feature writer for national newspapers - went to Washington DC when her partner was made Washington correspondent for the Times. This book details her journey through the madness of America.

Was Britain's postwar rebuilding the height of mid-century chic or the concrete embodiment of crap towns? John Grindrod decided to find out how blitzed, slum-ridden and crumbling austerity Britain became, in a few short years, a space-age world of concrete, steel and glass. What he finds is a story of dazzling space-age optimism, ingenuity and helipads - so many helipads - tempered by protests, deadly collapses and scandals that shook the government.

Choose Charming Small Hotels Italy guide to discover your dream place to stay. With this Charming Small Hotels Italy guide, you'll discover dream places to stay that are worth planning your visit around. Here you'll discover a huge selection of truly special places to stay with character, charm and the personal touch from budget to luxury. Charming Small Hotels Italy offers a calm, reasoned evaluation. We go to great pains to try to get under the skin of each hotel; to draw a word-sketch of what the hotel really is and we're not afraid to offer the negative as well as the positive points! Inside our hotel guide you'll find: *Colour photographs and a thoughtful description for each entry. *A genuinely independent review - no hotel pays to be included in our guide. *A unique focus on places with charm and character. We favour places that can offer a genuinely personal welcome. *Every entry is more than just a bed for the night: it's an experience worth going out of your way for. From chic stylish city hotels to contemporary inns, from outstanding B&Bs to captivating country houses we're sure you'll find just the place you're looking for. With each hotel hand-picked by Fiona Duncan, arguably Britain's most respected hotel critic, your visit starts here.

Lonely Planet's local travel experts reveal all you need to know to plan the trip of a lifetime in this latest edition of our guide to China.

Discover China's most popular experiences and best kept secrets from visiting the tea plantations in Hangzhou, to riding the world's highest altitude train like across the Tibetan plateau to Lhasa, and exploring the secretive world of 24 emperors and their thousands of servants in the Forbidden City.

Build a trip to remember with Lonely Planet's China travel guide:

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.

This guidebook presents 25 varied walks exploring London's green and open spaces. Covering both the city centre and the Greater London area, it takes in royal parks, heaths, forests, canals and rivers, including Epping Forest, Hampstead Heath, the World Heritage site of Kew Gardens and Wimbledon Common. Walks range from 4 to 14 miles and most can be accessed by public transport. Alongside detailed route descriptions and OS mapping, the book features practical information on parking, public transport and refreshments. Each walk showcases a particular species of wildlife that you might encounter, and there is fascinating background information the history and conservation of the capital's wild spaces. London is a city of 8 million people and 8 million trees, and its vast open spaces are home to 13,000 species of wildlife. This book is an ideal companion to exploring a greener, more gentle side to the city.