‘Fabulous.’ Dan Richards, author of Holloway ‘Terrifically strange and thrilling.’ Melissa Harrison, author of All Among the Barley 'A modern-day bard.' Madeline Miller, author of Circe This is a book of literary activism – an antidote to the shallow thinking that typifies our age.  In Courting the Wild Twin, acclaimed scholar, mythologist and author of Smoke Hole and Bardskull, Martin Shaw unravels two ancient European fairy tales concerning the mysterious ‘wild twin’ located deep inside all of us. By reading these tales and becoming storytellers ourselves, he challenges us to confront modern life with purpose, courage, and creativity. Martin summons the reader to the ‘ragged edge of the dark wood’ to seek out this estranged, exiled self – the part we generally shun or ignore to conform to societal norms – and invite it back into our consciousness. If there was something we were meant to do with our few, brief years on Earth, we can be sure that our wild twin is holding the key. After all, stories are our secret weapons – and they might just save us.

Bardskull is the record of three journeys made by Martin Shaw, the celebrated storyteller and interpreter of myth, in the year before he turned fifty. It is unlike anything he has written before. This is not a book about myth or narrative: rather, it is a sequence of incantations, a series of battles. Each of the three journeys sees Shaw walk alone into a Dartmoor forest and wait. What arrive are stories - fragments of myth that he has carried within him for decades: the deep history of Dartmoor itself; the lives of distant family members; Arthurian legend; and tales from India, Persia, Lapland, the Caucasus and Siberia. But these stories and their tellers don't arrive as the bearers of solace or easy wisdom. As with all quests, Shaw is entering a domain of traps and tests. Bardskull can be read as a fable, as memoir, as auto-fiction or as an attempt to undomesticate myth. It is a magnificent, unclassifiable work of the imagination.

With potent, lyrical language and a profound knowledge of storytelling, Shaw encourages and illuminates the mythic in our own lives. He is a modern-day bard. Madeline Miller, author of Circe and The Song of Achilles Through feral tales and poetic exegesis, Martin Shaw makes you re-see the world, as a place of adventure and of initiation, as perfect home and as perfectly other. What a gift. David Keenan, author of Xstabeth At a time when we are all confronted by not one, but many crossroads in our modern lives - identity, technology, trust, love, politics and a global pandemic - celebrated mythologist and wilderness guide Martin Shaw delivers Smoke Hole: three metaphors to help us understand our world, one that is assailed by the seductive promises of social media and shadowed by a health crisis that has brought loneliness and isolation to an all-time high. We are losing our sense of direction, our sense of self. We have "networks", not communities. Smoke Hole is a passionate call to arms and an invitation to use these stories to face the complexities of contemporary life, from fake news, parenthood, climate crises, addictive technology and more. Martin asks that we journey together, and let these stories be our allies, that we breathe deeper, feel steadier and become acquainted with rapture. He writes, 'It is not good to be walking through these times without a story or three by your side.' Available now as a podcast! Subscribe to Smoke Hole Sessions to hear amazing conversations between Martin Shaw and some of our most admired writers, actors, comedians, musicians and more, including: Sir Mark Rylance, Tommy Tiernan (Derry Girls), David Keenan (For the Good Times, This is Memorial Device), Jay Griffiths (Wild, Why Rebel), John Densmore (The Doors), Natasha Khan (Bat for Lashes), John Mitchinson (QI, Backlisted podcast) and others. Subscribe to Smoke Hole Sessions * On Apple here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/smoke-hole-sessions/id1566369928 * On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2ISKkqLlP1EzAOni9f9gGt?si=lnq8jApxRlGZ2qpLlQaOSg

There is a radical agency in John Moriarty's work that we as readers don't always spot. As our heads spin with mythological cross-referencing, poetical leaps and the philosophical bent, it is clear that there is nothing domestic, nothing tame, about John Moriarty. The power of Moriarty is that he has found a thousand beautiful ways to say something very disturbing: we have to change our lives. In this small book of big thoughts, award-winning author, mythologist and storyteller Martin Shaw situates Moriarty's work with respect to our eco-conscious era and a readership seeking spiritual and philosophical guidance. Moriarty asks of us only one thing - that we move our gaze from seeing to beholding. And there the trouble begins, when we realize there is a world beyond us far bigger than our temporary ambitions. A Hut at the Edge of the Village presents a collection of Moriarty's writings ordered thematically, with sections ranging from place, love and wildness through to voyaging, ceremony and the legitimacy of sorrow. These carefully chosen extracts are supported by an introduction by Martin Shaw and foreword by Tommy Tiernan, a long-time admirer of Moriarty's work. According to Shaw, 'These are not pastoral times we are living in, but prophetic. We are at a moment when the world as we understand it has been turned upside down. The challenge is that there are fewer and fewer people who can interpret such happenings in a deep, soulful way. Moriarty can do that. When culture is in woeful crisis, the insights never come from parliament, senate, or committee; they come from the hut at the edge of the village. Let's go there. There is tremendous, unexpected hope waiting.'

The complete second seaason of the classic 1970s crime series. Bodie (Lewis Collins) and Doyle (Martin Shaw) are two elite officers in the secretive CI5 service, a unit staffed by expert policemen, soldiers and special forces to combat anarchy, terrorism and high-profile crime. In this series, Doyle is assigned to test a new laser-beam rifle, Bodie's girlfriend is critically injured in a terrorist bombing, and the team go up against a rogue agent. Episodes are: 'Hunter/Hunted', 'The Rack', 'First Night', 'Man Without a Past', 'In the Public Interest', 'Rogue', 'Not a Very Civil Civil Servant', 'A Stirring of Dust', 'Blind Run' and 'Fall Girl'.

Reveals myth and "otherness" as keys to restoring self, nature, and society * Shows how myths contain medicine to restore wholeness amidst trauma, exile, sudden life change, disability, illness, death, or grief * Synthesizes lessons from shamanic practice, quantum physics, alchemy, soul poetry, wildness, social justice, and the author's lived experience * Discloses the blessings of outsiderhood and the gifts and insights gained and contributed to culture by those who are marginalized and outcast There is an "other" that lives within each of us, an exiled part that carries wisdom needed for ourselves and the culture at large. Having survived disabling polio as an infant, Daniel Deardorff knows the oppressions of exclusion and outsiderhood. He guides readers on an initiatory journey through ancient myth, literature, and personal revelation to discover our own true identity. These 10,000-year-old stories contain sacred medicine with insights that release imagination and restore wholeness amid trauma, exile, climate chaos, disability, illness, death, and grief. Illustrating how archetypal figures of the Other--the Trickster, Daimon, Not-I, etc.--hold paradox, Deardorff teaches us to reframe disparities of self/other, civilization/ wilderness, form/deformity and transform the experience of being outcast. Synthesizing lessons from shamanic practice, quantum physics, alchemy, social justice, and his own lived experience, Deardorff affirms the disruptive and transgressive forces that break through dogma, conventionality, and prejudice. He discloses blessings of outsiderhood and gifts to culture by those who are marginalized. Through mythmaking (mythopoesis), the experience of Otherness--cultural, racial, religious, sexual, physiognomic--becomes one of empowerment, a catalyst for human liberation.

'Terrifically strange and thrilling. One for all you storytellers.' -Melissa Harrison, author of All Among the Barley The business of stories is not enchantment. The business of stories is not escape. The business of stories is waking up. Courting the Wild Twin is a book of literary activism-an antidote to the shallow thinking that typifies our age. It challenges us to wake up, to revive our 'condition of wondering' and examine our broken relationship with the world. We need to think boldly, wildly and in new ways about ourselves, as individuals and as a collective, to confront modern challenges with purpose, courage and creativity. After all, stories are our secret weapons-and they might just save us. In Courting the Wild Twin, acclaimed scholar and mythologist Martin Shaw unravels two ancient European fairy tales concerning the mysterious 'wild twin' located deep inside all of us. By reading these tales and becoming storytellers ourselves, he challenges us to confront modern life with purpose, courage, and creativity. Shaw summons the reader to the 'ragged edge of the dark wood' to seek out this estranged, exiled self-the part we generally shun or ignore to conform to societal norms-and invite it back into our consciousness. If there was something we were meant to do with our few, brief years on Earth, we can be sure that our wild twin is holding the key.

Globalisation is widely understood as a set of processes driven by technological, economic and cultural change. Few have successfully defined the changing character and role of politics in global change. Political institutions such as the nation-state have been seen as undermined by globalisation, or needing to respond to it. This book clarifies the tensions which global change has provoked in our understanding of politics. Politics and Globalisation suggests that globalisation is a process which is politically contested and even politically constituted. The volume presents five key intellectual and political contests in globalisation: * the extent and political significance of globalising changes in economy and society * how and how far the relations and forms of nation-state organisation are transformed * whether the given concepts and methods of political science as a discipline can be applied to global and regional politics, and whether they require radical reformulation; * the role and significance of ethical questions in global change * whether global change is constituted by, or denies, radical political agency

Globalization is widely understood as a set of processes driven by technological, economic and cultural change. Few have successfully defined the changing character and role of politics in global change. Political institutions such as the nation-state have been seen as undermined by globalization, or needing to respond to it. This book clarifies the tensions which global change has provoked in our understanding of politics. It suggests that globalization is a process which is politically contested and even politically constituted. The volume presents five key intellectual and political contests in globalization: the extent and political significance of globalizing changes in economy and society; how and how far the relations and forms of nation-state organization are transformed; whether the given concepts and methods of political science as a discipline can be applied to global and regional politics, and whether they require radical reformulation; the role and significance of ethical questions in global change; and whether global change is constituted by, or denies, radical political agency. The book brings together experts in the fields of political science and international rela

Songs of Praise was first published in 1925, and is still an immensely popular hymnbook, particularly in schools. The compilation falls into two parts: Book 1 contains hymns grouped by subject and theme, together with a selection of verses, canticles and doxologies; Book 2 contains general hymns listed alphabetically by first line.

Genocide and International Relations lays the foundations for a new perspective on genocide in the modern world. Genocide studies have been influenced, negatively as well as positively, by the political and cultural context in which the field has developed. In particular, a narrow vision of comparative studies has been influential in which genocide is viewed mainly as a 'domestic' phenomenon of states. This book emphasizes the international context of genocide, seeking to specify more precisely the relationships between genocide and the international system. Shaw aims to re-interpret the classical European context of genocide in this frame, to provide a comprehensive international perspective on Cold War and post-Cold War genocide, and to re-evaluate the key transitions of the end of the Second World War and the end of the Cold War.

Genocide and International Relations lays the foundations for a new perspective on genocide in the modern world. Genocide studies have been influenced, negatively as well as positively, by the political and cultural context in which the field has developed. In particular, a narrow vision of comparative studies has been influential in which genocide is viewed mainly as a 'domestic' phenomenon of states. This book emphasizes the international context of genocide, seeking to specify more precisely the relationships between genocide and the international system. Shaw aims to re-interpret the classical European context of genocide in this frame, to provide a comprehensive international perspective on Cold War and post-Cold War genocide, and to re-evaluate the key transitions of the end of the Second World War and the end of the Cold War.

This ambitious book rewrites the terms of debate about globalization. Focusing on two major new concepts--the unfinished global-democratic revolution and the global-Western state--Martin Shaw evaluates global change, considering the radical implications for social, political and international theory, and offering a fundamental critique of modern social thought and mainstream global theory. Required reading for sociology, politics and international relations, Theory of the Global State offers a historical, theoretical and political framework for understanding state and society in the emerging global age.

The forerunner to The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion fills in the background which lies behind the more popular work, and gives the earlier history of Middle-earth, introducing some of the key characters. The tales of The Silmarillion are set in an age when Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in Middle-Earth, and the High Elves made war upon him for the recovery of the Silmarils, the jewels containing the pure light of Valinor. Included on the recording are several shorter works. The Ainulindale is a myth of the Creation and in the Valaquenta the nature and powers of each of the gods is described. The Akallabeth recounts the downfall of the great island kingdom of Numenor at the end of the Second Age and Of the Rings of Power tells of the great events at the end of the Third Age, as narrated in The Lord of the Rings.

This ambitious book rewrites the terms of debate about globalization. Focusing on two major new concepts--the unfinished global-democratic revolution and the global-Western state--Martin Shaw evaluates global change, considering the radical implications for social, political and international theory, and offering a fundamental critique of modern social thought and mainstream global theory. Required reading for sociology, politics and international relations, Theory of the Global State offers a historical, theoretical and political framework for understanding state and society in the emerging global age.

In this beautifully illustrated gift edition, you'll discover more than 240 mythological tales from around the world, featuring gods, heroes, princesses, villains, magicians and monsters, as well as animals with extraordinary powers. Let this collection guide you through stories from every corner of the globe, from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome through the Vikings to the Slavic East, Japan and China and the Americas. Each culture is rich in folklore and magical tales, and this book offers a fascinating introduction to them all. This is a radical collection of stories, filled with voltage. Whether ninety or nine, there's something in these tales that wants to speak directly to you. From tales of creation and the first humans to apocalyptic battles at the end of time, explore the most thrilling tales in all mythology: thunder god Thor losing his hammer, Theseus callously abandoning Ariadne after defeating the Minotaur, Hindu god Shiva destroying his rival Kama with a blast of flame, Egyptian goddess Isis forcing the sun god to reveal his name ... and much more.

The most famous, complete, and widely used anthology first published in 1928. With its breadth of material, notes on sources, extended introduction and indexes, it is indispensable both as a choral collection and as a standard reference book.

Political Racism conceptualizes a distinctive form of racism - intentional, organized hostility mobilized by political actors - and examines its role in the Brexit conflict and in the rise of a new nationalist politics in the UK. In a compelling analysis the book argues that Powellite anti-immigrant racism, reinterpreted in numerical terms, was combined with anti-East European and anti-Muslim hostility to inform the Vote Leave victory. This type of racism, which has a special significance in societies where racism has been delegitimized, is shown to have further shaped the form of EU withdrawal and also the government's post-Brexit policies.

The revolt against white rule in Rhodesia nurtured incipient local feminisms in women who imagined independence as a road to gender equity and economic justice. But the country's rebirth as Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe's rise to power dashed these hopes. Using history, literature, participant observation, and interviews, Carolyn Martin Shaw surveys Zimbabwean feminisms from the colonial era to today. She examines how actions as clearly disparate as baking scones for self-protection, carrying guns in the liberation, and feeling morally superior to men represent sources of female empowerment. She also presents the ways women across Zimbabwean society--rural and urban, professional and domestic--accommodated or confronted post-independence setbacks. Finally, Shaw offers perspectives on the ways contemporary Zimbabwean women depart from the prevailing view that feminism is a Western imposition having little to do with African women. The result of thirty years of experience, Women and Power in Zimbabwe addresses the promises of feminism and femininity for generations of African women.

Political Racism conceptualizes a distinctive form of racism - intentional, organized hostility mobilized by political actors - and examines its role in the Brexit conflict and in the rise of a new nationalist politics in the UK. In a compelling analysis the book argues that Powellite anti-immigrant racism, reinterpreted in numerical terms, was combined with anti-East European and anti-Muslim hostility to inform the Vote Leave victory. This type of racism, which has a special significance in societies where racism has been delegitimized, is shown to have further shaped the form of EU withdrawal and also the government's post-Brexit policies.