Originally published in 2005 under the title La Tierra Herida, this book grew out of a series of conversations that took place during the previous summer between Miguel Delibes and his son, Miguel Delibes de Castro. Acknowledged as one of Spain's foremost novelists and essayists of the 20th century, Miguel Delibes won every literary award his country had to offer. In 1975 he was elected into the Spanish Royal Academy and used the occasion of his acceptance speech (later to be published under the title A World that is Dying) to make explicit his growing concerns about the future of the planet. Miguel Delibes de Castro, an internationally recognised research biologist, was for many years the Director of the Biological Station at the world-renowned Donana National Park. He was an adviser to the Spanish delegation at the Rio de Janiero Conference on Biodiversity and was awarded the King James I prize for his efforts in protecting the environment. Father and son, novelist and scientist, each with a life-long commitment to the environment, discuss the environmental changes threatening our planet at the start of the 21st century, and whether or not we can find the means and summon up the will to reverse them. It is the father, speaking here as the anxious citizen, and pessimistic for our future, who asks the layman's questions; it is his son who provides the scientific explanations, and offers whatever cause for optimism there is to be found. Miguel Delibes de Castro has provided a Postscript, written in November 2019, shortly before the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Madrid, which brings events up to date.

The conflict between England and France in the 14th and 15th centuries never ceases to fascinate. This stimulating edited collection, inspired by the Problems in Focus volume originally published in 1971, provides a fresh and accessible insight into the key aspects of The Hundred Years War. With chapters written by leading experts in the field, based on new methodologies and recent advances in scholarship, this book places the Anglo-French wars into a range of wider contexts, such as politics, the home front, the church, and chivalry. Adopting a sustained comparative approach, with attention paid to both England and France, The Hundred Years War Revisited provides a clear and comprehensive synthesis of the major trends in research on the Hundred Years War. Concise and thought-provoking, this is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of medieval history.

The Tour de France began as a newspaper publicity stunt designed to do down a rival sports paper: a circumnavigation of the whole country in six colossal stages would make it the longest, hardest, most heroic cycle-race possible, and thereby seize the public's imagination. The organisers of that first Tour in 1903 could scarcely have foreseen just how fervently the race would grip the nation, still less that they were establishing what was to become the world's greatest - and certainly, toughest - annual sporting event. Every July since 1903, interrupted only by world wars, the finest cyclists have assembled to ride the 2,500 miles of La Grande Boucle. Simply to complete a Tour de France is the ambition of every professional cyclist - and to wear the legendary yellow jersey, if only for a day, is a special honour. Golden Stages, first published in 2003 to celebrate the centenary of the Tour, is now republished, with eight additional chapters, to coincide with the 100th Tour. Each writer has selected and told the story of a particular Stage to examine what it is that makes the Tour such a majestic and moving event, beginning with the first stage of the first Tour in 1903, and ending with that stage in 2012 when Bradley Wiggins effectively secured the first overall win by a British rider. Their accounts show how much has changed in the 100 years - the bicycles, the roads, tactics and organisation. But they also show what has not changed - the extravagant scale of the race, the mystique of the maillot jaune, and the courage of all who compete. Those things have remained the same, and they are vividly portrayed here. This second edition does not ignore the dark period the Tour has gone through in the years since 2003; these are addressed in the new Introduction.

One of THE 10 MUST-READ CYCLING BOOKS OF 2014 according to the influential Peloton magazine. This is the story of Luis Ocana, the champion cyclist whose entire career constantly veered between heroism and tragedy, always missing out the middle way. Born into abject poverty during Spain's 'years of hunger' and brought up in France, throughout his adult life he suffered from the effects of his childhood malnutrition and the perpetual question of self-identity - the common lot of the exile - Spanish or French, or neither one nor the other? Enigmatic and contradictory, Ocana was driven by a fierce pride, and an all-or-nothing scorn for caution and careful calculation which made him one of the most dramatically exciting riders ever.This is a biography that has been a long time in the making. Carlos Arribas, cycling correspondent of the newspaper El Pais, and Spain's foremost cycling author, has spent years compiling the material and admits that, even as a child, he was affected by Ocana's repeated misfortunes.What he has written is more than a conventional biography. He defines it as a 'fictionalised life story', or a 'biographical novel'.All the duly documented facts are there, but to that solid skeleton has been added the flesh and blood of imagined (but totally plausible) conversations, meetings and encounters. These are not mere decoration; they serve perfectly to recreate the emotions and recollections of those who knew him, encountered him, loved him, or coped with him. It also provides a compelling entry into exploring the complex personality of Ocana himself."If I was going to write one story about cycling it would have to be that of Ocana. He was the cyclist who made us fall in love with cycling, who made us sense the truth of this sport: love, happiness and tragedy." Carlos Arribas

Dutch sportswriter, Nando Boers, and Pedro Horrillo, a Spanish cyclist riding for the Dutch Rabobank team, conceived the idea at the end of 2008 to correspond regularly via email throughout the coming season. They would exchange thoughts about the racing, the results and events in the cycling world. The correspondence, starting early in 2009 begins in that fashion - two friends swapping stories and experiences. Then in May everything changes, utterly: Horrillo crashes, horrifically, in the Giro d'Italia, tumbling 80 metres down a cliff face. Miraculously, after days in a coma, he survives but he will never race again. The correspondence is eventually resumed, and continues in fits and start over the next three years. Boers, infinitely patient and encouraging, is able to cope with long periods of silence from his friend. He understands the psychological healing will take longer than the physical. Then in 2012, Horrillo is able to confront his demons, returning to the scene of his crash where 'my first life ended and my second life began' and describing it in one beautiful, final letter. 'Amigo, here is the story of my pilgrimage to Italy.When you've read this, hopefully you'll understand that I feel free and relieved. ' The book includes 12 pages of black and white photographs by Timm Kolln.

Adrian Bell (1901-1980) was born in Lancashire and grew up in London but wished for a life in the open air. In 1920 he apprenticed himself to a West Suffolk farmer, an experience that would inspire him to farm on his own. His celebrated trilogy Corduroy (1930), Silver Ley (1931) and The Cherry Tree (1932) grew out of that same raw material, and Corduroy (reissued here with an introduction by his son, the journalist Martin Bell) remains his most admired work. 'There is a vitality and freshness of manner about this modern pastoral which carries one easily along through a pleasant maze of turnips, mangolds, and the yearly routine of a Suffolk farm. As the seasons change and the crops come and go, the green young apprentice is gradually initiated into the mysteries of coaxing a hazardous living from the soil.' Spectator

Adrian Bell (1901-1980) was born in Lancashire and grew up in London but wished for a life in the open air. In 1920 he apprenticed himself to a West Suffolk farmer, an experience that would inspire him to farm on his own. His celebrated trilogy Corduroy (1930), Silver Ley (1931) and The Cherry Tree (1932) grew out of that same raw material. The Cherry Tree (1932) finds Bell back at the helm of the Silver Ley farm whose running he took over in the second panel of the trilogy. The farming business remains in a parlous state beset by high costs, and Bell is forced to scale back his ambitions for crop-growing while continuing to breed cattle and horses. But perhaps the greatest upheaval the book describes is the tale of how he 'wearied of solitude and married a wife.'

Adrian Bell (1901-1980) was born in Lancashire and grew up in London but wished for a life in the open air. In 1920 he apprenticed himself to a West Suffolk farmer, an experience that would inspire him to farm on his own. His celebrated trilogy Corduroy (1930), Silver Ley (1931) and The Cherry Tree (1932) grew out of that same raw material. Silver Ley takes up at the conclusion of Bell's apprenticeship, whereupon he persuaded his parents to acquire a nearby farm of 50 acres where he could into practice what he had learned of farming. However Bell was living through straitened post-war times that presented a challenge to even the most seasoned agricultural hands, and he had to endure seven lean years, though his commitment to the task he set himself never dimmed.

J. B. Wadley's career as a cycling journalist spanned more than 40 years and encompassed every aspect of the sport. The first British writer to cover the Tour de France and the great one-day Classics, his were the words that first put us in among the continental peloton. But he was equally at home among crack-of-dawn time-trialists, trackmen, randonneurs and record-breakers. His enthusiasm embraced them all, and he wrote about each aspect of cycle sport with an authority and an inimitable eye-witness style that never failed to convey its particular drama. All of this is reflected in this selection of his work, drawn from his early days as a young reporter with The Bicycle, through the years when he edited Sporting Cyclist and then International Cycle Sport, to his last major book, My 19th Tour de France.

Adrian Bell's travels through East Anglia and lowland Britain reflect a world on the brink of change. Published in 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, his down-to-earth descriptions of the countryside were shaped by his own life working the land. Whether it be hedgerow flowers, a livestock auction, traditional farmyard, village forge, wheelwright's shop, the arrival of the tractor in the harvest field, the work of the ploughman, shepherd or woodman, Men and the Fields captures the character of rural life before modern agriculture altered the landscape and changed forever the way we eat and live.This new edition restores the original colour lithographs and black and white line drawings by John Nash that appeared in the first edition.

The conflict between England and France in the 14th and 15th centuries never ceases to fascinate. This stimulating edited collection, inspired by the Problems in Focus volume originally published in 1971, provides a fresh and accessible insight into the key aspects of The Hundred Years War. With chapters written by leading experts in the field, based on new methodologies and recent advances in scholarship, this book places the Anglo-French wars into a range of wider contexts, such as politics, the home front, the church, and chivalry. Adopting a sustained comparative approach, with attention paid to both England and France, The Hundred Years War Revisited provides a clear and comprehensive synthesis of the major trends in research on the Hundred Years War. Concise and thought-provoking, this is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of medieval history.