In this light-hearted book, poet and gardener James Fenton describes a hundred plants he would choose to grow from seed. 'It seemed a simple and interesting idea: what plants would you choose if starting a garden from scratch?' Includes chapters on flowers for colour, size, or exotic interest; herbs and meadow flowers; climbing vines and tropical species; the micro-meadow; raising plants from seed; and a wealth of personal tips and advice. As Fenton writes, 'the emphasis is on childish simplicity of approach, and economy of outlay.' Here is a happy, stylish, thought-provoking exercise in good principles, which exudes that rare thing: common-or-garden sense about gardens.

This volume shares proven strategies for Academic English teaching, research, and development in challenging circumstances. Through original first-hand experiences from around the world, the collection reveals how educators in higher education have responded to the specific needs and challenges of teaching second language learners in turbulent times, as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Organised thematically, the book covers rapid responses to crises, adapting to teaching online, collaborations and online learning communities, and assessment practices. The volume provides original insights and practical suggestions for a range of practices across English for Academic and Specific Purposes that can address new and unfamiliar circumstances, both now and in future challenging times. The collection includes a wealth of effective strategies, varied research methodologies, and resources for practice making it an invaluable reference for practitioners, students, and researchers in the field of academic English, ESL/EFL, and online language instruction.

This volume shares proven strategies for Academic English teaching, research, and development in challenging circumstances. Through original first-hand experiences from around the world, the collection reveals how educators in higher education have responded to the specific needs and challenges of teaching second language learners in turbulent times, as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Organised thematically, the book covers rapid responses to crises, adapting to teaching online, collaborations and online learning communities, and assessment practices. The volume provides original insights and practical suggestions for a range of practices across English for Academic and Specific Purposes that can address new and unfamiliar circumstances, both now and in future challenging times. The collection includes a wealth of effective strategies, varied research methodologies, and resources for practice making it an invaluable reference for practitioners, students, and researchers in the field of academic English, ESL/EFL, and online language instruction.

The Scottish Highlands have a strong appeal to the public imagination. Indeed, as a result of the writings of Sir Walter Scott, they are now symbolic of Scotland as a whole: a land of mountains, glens and lochs, of golden eagles and red deer; a land with a rich cultural history of clans and clanship, of kilts and castles, of crofts, crofting, Highland cows and sheep, of music and dance. But does this imagined landscape relate to the actuality? Is it in fact a wild landscape which has escaped the pressures of the modern world, or does such untrammelled wildness only reside in the mind? The aim of this book is to answer this last question by taking an objective look at the history of the Highland landscape, how it has changed over the centuries and how it is still changing. It challenges the view that the Highlands are, to quote the famous ecologist Frank Fraser Darling, ‘a devastated landscape’ – that is a landscape damaged by centuries of overgrazing and human exploitation. Instead it points out that the evidence suggests that the traditional unwooded Highland landscape of open hill and moor is one of the most natural remaining in northwest Europe, showing only minimal signs of human impact over the millennia; apart, that is, from the areas of human settlement. The occurrence of woodland as only isolated fragments scattered across the land is in fact a key biodiversity feature of the Highlands, distinguishing the far northwest of Britain from most of western Europe, where woodland would undoubtedly be the dominant habitat. There certainly were significantly more trees in the past but the woodland declined naturally over the millennia for a complex variety of reasons. Hence the current approach of putting trees back in the landscape, nowadays termed ‘reforesting’ or ‘rewilding’ is in fact destroying the very essence of the land. Similarly, the current activity of ‘restoring’ peatland can also result in a loss of the naturalness of the landscape. Indeed, loss of natural habitat is seen as a serious global issue, with humans slowly taking over for themselves the whole planet, leaving little space available for the wildness of nature. It is not only reforesting and peatland restoration which is destroying the naturalness of the Highland landscape, but also the continuing encroachment of infrastructure, whether hill tracks, wind turbines, dams, phone masts, ski development, fences, and commercial forestry plantations. At the current rate of attrition, the wild landscape will soon remain only in the imagination, the open hills and moors having been dumped into the dustbin of history. The Highlands, sadly, will be like everywhere else in the world: developed and managed to extinction! Why can we not just let the hills be? After all, this is how they were for thousands of years until landownership entered the Highlands following the Battle of Culloden.

The form of this extraordinary bronze lamp, the most elaborate of several produced by Riccio (Andrea Briosco), is based on a Roman sandal, and its surface is covered with intricate reliefs modelled with a goldsmith’s refinement and crisp detail. The subjects evoke the populace of classical art and poetry, including a Nereid and Triton, Pan, harpies and innumerable putti, along with goats, musical instruments, shells, masks and garlands. Inspired by the Roman half-boot, the lamp is designed as a bizarre shoe balanced on a pyramidal base, and, as Ian Wardropper discusses in his essay, it would have provided its owner with much pleasure and intellectual stimulation. Early in its history, the lamp is known to have belonged to a series of distinguished Paduan collectors. Paired with Wardropper’s essay is a beautiful poem by James Fenton.

In the aftermath of the massacre of a clan, an epic story of self-sacrifice and revenge unfolds as a young orphan discovers the shattering truth behind his childhood. Sometimes referred to as the Chinese Hamlet and tracing its origins to the 4th century BC, The Orphan of Zhao was the first Chinese play to be translated in the West. James Fenton's adaptation of The Orphan of Zhao premiered with the RSC at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon in November 2012.

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to some of the greatest poets of our literature. A painter, poet and engraver William Blake (1757-1827) was born in London. Poetical Sketches, his first volume of poetry, was published in 1783 and was followed by several of his best known works: Songs of Innocence (1789), The Book of Thel (1789), The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93), Songs of Experience (1794) and Jerusalem (1804-20).

Winner of both the Queen's Gold Medal and the Whitbread Prize for Poetry, James Fenton has given readers some of the most memorable lyric verse of the past decades, from the formal skill that marked his debut, Terminal Moraine, to the dramatic and political monologues of The Memory of War and Children in Exile, through to the unforgettable love poems of Out of Danger and his most recent work: Poems is an essential selection by, as Stephen Spender put it, 'a brilliant poet of technical virtuosity'. Don't talk to me of love. I've had an earful And I get tearful when I've downed a drink or two. I'm one of your talking wounded. I'm a hostage. I'm maroonded. But I'm in Paris with you. From 'In Paris With You' by James Fenton

W. H. Auden was born in York in 1907. His first full-length collection, Poems, was published by T. S. Eliot at Faber and Faber in 1930. The many volumes he published thereafter included poetry, plays, essays and libretti, and his ceaseless experimentation, consummate craftsmanship and originality established him as one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century. He died in 1973.

Here is the most important autobiography from Renaissance Italy and one of the most spirited and colorful from any time or place, in a translation widely recognized as the most faithful to the energy and spirit of the original.
Benvenuto Cellini was both a beloved artist in sixteenth-century Florence and a passionate and temperamental man of action who was capable of brawling, theft, and murder. He counted popes, cardinals, kings, and dukes among his patrons and was the adoring friend of--as he described them--the "divine" Michelangelo and the "marvelous" Titian, but was as well known for his violent feuds. At age twenty-seven he helped defend the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome, and his account of his imprisonment there (under a mad castellan who thought he was a bat), his escape, recapture, and confinement in "a cell of tarantulas and venomous worms" is an adventure equal to any other in fact or fiction. But it is only one in a long life lived on a grand scale.
Cellini's autobiography is not merely the record of an extraordinary life but also a dramatic and evocative
account of daily life in Renaissance Italy, from its lowest taverns to its highest royal courts.

Josef Vadassy, a Hungarian refugee and language teacher living in France, is enjoying his first break for years in a small hotel on the Riviera. But when he takes his holiday photographs to be developed at a local chemists, he suddenly finds himself mistaken for a Gestapo agent and a charge of espionage is levelled at him. To prove himself innocent to the French police, he must discover which one of his fellow guests at his pension is the real spy. As he desperately tries to uncover the true culprit's identity, Vadassy must risk his job, his safety and everything he holds dear.

A completely new selection of D. H. Lawrence's poetry
Published as part of a series of new editions of D. H. Lawrence's works, this major collection presents the fullest range of the author's poetry available today. Selected by prize-winning poet and scholar James Fenton, these lush, evocative poems offer a direct link to the genius of one of the twentieth century's most provocative writers.

This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature.

This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature.

This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature.

This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature.

"Listen to what they did."
"Don't listen to what they said."
"What was written in blood"
"Has been set up in lead."
--from "Blood and Lead"
The leading poet of his generation, James Fenton has over the course of his career built a body of work breathtaking in its range and sensibility. From the passionate political poems that launched him into fame to the intimate illuminations of love--and loss of love--in his later work, Fenton's poetry has always been marked by formal daring, wit, and an abiding empathy for the victims of war and political oppression. With selections from all of his published work since "The Memory of War," the entire text of his libretto "The Love Bomb," and new, previously uncollected poems, "Selected Poems "is an imaginative and formal tour de force.