“The unsurpassable strangeness of the island resides in the chasmic gulf between the naturally evolved and the negligently created, between Scarp and scrap, between the sublime and the substandard.” - Jonathan Meades Writer, journalist and film-maker Jonathan Meades and photographer Alex Boyd present a unique exploration of 'The Isle of Rust', better known as Lewis and Harris. A decade on from Meades' landmark series 'Off Kilter', described by The Telegraph as 'a masterpiece', Boyd returns to the island, spending two years documenting the stunning landscapes of the Outer Hebrides, a strange, sometimes rusty paradise. Alongside Meades' insightful observations and explorations of the island, Boyd’s photography captures the rugged and austere beauty of the place, from the bays and mountains of Harris, to the moorland shacks of Lewis.

At first glance, Jonathan Meades's 1993 masterpiece is a post-war family saga set in and around the city of Portsmouth. This doesn't come close to communicating the scabrous magnificence of Meades's creation. Pompey is an obscene, suppurating vision of an England in terminal decline. The story begins with Guy Vallender, a fireworks manufacturer from Portsmouth, who has four children by different four different women. There's Poor Eddie, a feeble geek with a gift for healing; 'Mad Bantu', the son of a black prostitute, who was hopelessly damaged in the womb by an attempted abortion; Bonnie, who is born beautiful but becomes a junkie and a porn star; and finally Jean-Marie, a leather-wearing gay gerontophiliac conceived on a one-night stand in Belgium. The narrator is 'Jonathan Meades', cousin to Poor Eddie and Bonnie, who tells the story of how their strange and poisonous destinies intersect. And although there is no richer stew of perversity, voyeurism, corruption, religious extremism and curdled celebrity in all of English literature, there is also an underlying compassion and a jet-black humour which makes Pompey an important and strangely satisfying work of art. Prepare to enter the English novel's darkest ride...

Since the first edition of this book dedicated to differential display (DD) technology was published in 1997, we have witnessed an explosive interest in studying differential gene expression. The gene-hunting euphoria was initially powered by the invention of DD, which was gradually overtaken by DNA microarray technology in recent years. Then why is there still the need for second edition of this DD book? First of all, DD still enjoys a substantial lead over DNA microarrays in the ISI citation data (see Table 1), despite the h- dreds of millions of dollars spent each year on arrays. This may come as a surprise to many, but to us it implies that many of the DNA microarray studies went unpublished owing to their unfulfilled promises (1). Second, unlike DNA microarrays, DD is an "open"-ended gene discovery method that does not depend on prior genome sequence information of the organism being studied. As such, DD is applicable to the study of all living organisms-from bacteria, fungi, insects, fish, plants, to mammals-even when their genomes are not sequenced. Second, DD is more accessible technically and financially to most cost-conscious "cottage-industry" academic laboratories. So clearly DD still has its unique place in the modern molecular biological toolbox for gene expression analysis.

'Ought to become a classic. It is an enshrinement of [Meades's] intense baroque and catholic cleverness' Roger Lewis, The Times 'One of the foremost prose stylists of his age in any register . . . Probably we don't deserve Meades, a man who apparently has never composed a dull paragraph' Steven Poole, Guardian 'There are more gems in this wonderful book than I could cram into a dozen of these columns' Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph 'Such a useful and important critic . . . He is very much on the reader's side, bringing his full wit to bear on every single thing he writes' Nicholas Lezard, Spectator This landmark publication collects three decades of writing from one of the most original, provocative and consistently entertaining voices of our time. Anyone who cares about language and culture should have this book in their life. Thirty years ago, Jonathan Meades published a volume of reportorial journalism, essays, criticism, squibs and fictions called Peter Knows What Dick Likes. The critic James Wood was moved to write: 'When journalism is like this, journalism and literature become one.' Pedro and Ricky Come Again is every bit as rich and catholic as its predecessor. It is bigger, darker, funnier and just as impervious to taste and manners. It bristles with wit and pin-sharp eloquence, whether Meades is contemplating northernness in a German forest or hymning the virtues of slang. From the indefensibility of nationalism and the ubiquitous abuse of the word 'iconic', to John Lennon's shopping lists and the wine they call Black Tower, the work assembled here demonstrates Meades's unparalleled range and erudition, with pieces on cities, artists, sex, England, France, concrete, faith, politics, food, history and much, much more.

These short stories mark the start of a brilliant and black literary career. A dog who stars in bestial pornographic movies describes the slippery slope towards aniseed addiction in 'Fur and Skin'. 'The Sylvan Life' is a story of rustling, hallucinogenic mushrooms and incest as they proliferate in the New Forest. In 'Spring and Fall' a rich and childless woman offers a sybaritic young boy a clandestine family life which becomes his downfall. The most extraordinary circumstances combine to provide the perfect alibi for a homosexual 'crime passionnel' in 'Oh So Bent', 'The Brute's Price' demonstrates the inadvertent steps an innocent man may take in bringing himself under suspicion of heinous murders on Portland. An injection of the criminal element into the pretensions of suburban Surrey provides the squalid drama of 'Rhododendron Gulch'. In the title story a relentlessly pedantic urge of a lexicographer to discover why his surname is a slang word for 'foot' leads him to a nightmarish revelation. Jonathan Meades has a black imagination. Not content with disarming his readers an outrageous premise, he continues to tease their curiosity from one end of each story to the other. His is the kind of originality that comes along rarely, his characters the sort who lurk and linger round the back alleys of the mind.

'One of the funniest and truest writers we have. No one understands England better than Meades.' Stephen Fry An inventively nasty, gruesomely comic paean to the sylvan heights of Forest Hill and Upper Norwood, a warped map of the death trade's quotidian strangeness. Henry Fowler was twice, long ago, runner-up in the Oil Fuels Guild-sponsored Young Funeral Director of the Year competition. His intense loyalties are to his parents, to his wife and children, to the family firm and the trade it practises, to his native south-east London and to his best friend Curly, traffic wonk and surviving brother of his former best friend who fell to his death at Norwood Junction. Well into middle age, and Henry's life is running smoothly as he always hoped it would. But then: his wife's tennis partner, a celebrity florist and BBC2 star is accidentally beheaded by his electric hedgecutter while crimping a three metre high topiary poodle; Curly, newly married and eager for a child is diagnosed as suffering 'waterworks problems'; and Henry, suddenly doubtful of his wife's fidelity, cuts a lock of his sleeping daughter's hair. The foundations of a world, a family and an identity begin to rock.

'I adore Meades's book . . . I want more of his rule-breaking irreverence in my kitchen' New York Times 'The Plagiarist in the Kitchen is hilariously grumpy, muttering at us "Don't you bastards know anything?" You can read it purely for literary pleasure, but Jonathan Meades makes everything sound so delicious that the non-cook will be moved to cook and the bad cook will cook better' David Hare, Guardian The Plagiarist in the Kitchen is an anti-cookbook. Best known as a provocative novelist, journalist and film-maker, Jonathan Meades has also been called 'the best amateur chef in the world' by Marco Pierre White. His contention here is that anyone who claims to have invented a dish is delusional, dishonestly contributing to the myth of culinary originality. Meades delivers a polemical but highly usable collection of 125 of his favourite recipes, each one an example of the fine art of culinary plagiarism. These are dishes and methods he has hijacked, adapted, improved upon and made his own. Without assuming any special knowledge or skill, the book is full of excellent advice. He tells us why the British never got the hang of garlic. That a purist would never dream of putting cheese in a Gratin Dauphinois. That cooking brains in brown butter cannot be improved upon. And why - despite the advice of Martin Scorsese's mother - he insists on frying his meatballs. In a world dominated by health fads, food vloggers and over-priced kitchen gadgets, The Plagiarist in the Kitchen is timely reminder that, when it comes to food, it's almost always better to borrow than to invent.

`I adore Meades's book . . . I want more of his rule-breaking irreverence in my kitchen.' New York Times `The Plagiarist in the Kitchen is hilariously grumpy, muttering at us "Don't you bastards know anything?" You can read it purely for literary pleasure, but Jonathan Meades makes everything sound so delicious that the non-cook will be moved to cook and the bad cook will cook better.' David Hare, Guardian The Plagiarist in the Kitchen is an anti-cookbook. Best known as a provocative novelist, journalist and film-maker, Jonathan Meades has also been called `the best amateur chef in the world' by Marco Pierre White. His contention here is that anyone who claims to have invented a dish is delusional, dishonestly contributing to the myth of culinary originality. Meades delivers a polemical but highly usable collection of 125 of his favourite recipes, each one an example of the fine art of culinary plagiarism. These are dishes and methods he has hijacked, adapted, improved upon and made his own. Without assuming any special knowledge or skill, the book is full of excellent advice. He tells us why the British never got the hang of garlic. That a purist would never dream of putting cheese in a Gratin Dauphinois. That cooking brains in brown butter cannot be improved upon. And why - despite the advice of Martin Scorsese's mother - he insists on frying his meatballs. Adorned with his own abstract monochrome images (none of which `illustrate' the stolen recipes they accompany), The Plagiarist in the Kitchen is a stylish object, both useful and instructive. In a world dominated by health fads, food vloggers and over-priced kitchen gadgets, it is timely reminder that, when it comes to food, it's almost always better to borrow than to invent.

'Ought to become a classic. It is an enshrinement of [Meades's] intense baroque and catholic cleverness' Roger Lewis, The Times 'One of the foremost prose stylists of his age in any register . . . Probably we don't deserve Meades, a man who apparently has never composed a dull paragraph' Steven Poole, Guardian 'There are more gems in this wonderful book than I could cram into a dozen of these columns' Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph 'Such a useful and important critic . . . He is very much on the reader's side, bringing his full wit to bear on every single thing he writes' Nicholas Lezard, Spectator This landmark publication collects three decades of writing from one of the most original, provocative and consistently entertaining voices of our time. Anyone who cares about language and culture should have this book in their life. Thirty years ago, Jonathan Meades published a volume of reportorial journalism, essays, criticism, squibs and fictions called Peter Knows What Dick Likes. The critic James Wood was moved to write: 'When journalism is like this, journalism and literature become one.' Pedro and Ricky Come Again is every bit as rich and catholic as its predecessor. It is bigger, darker, funnier and just as impervious to taste and manners. It bristles with wit and pin-sharp eloquence, whether Meades is contemplating northernness in a German forest or hymning the virtues of slang. From the indefensibility of nationalism and the ubiquitous abuse of the word 'iconic', to John Lennon's shopping lists and the wine they call Black Tower, the work assembled here demonstrates Meades's unparalleled range and erudition, with pieces on cities, artists, sex, England, France, concrete, faith, politics, food, history and much, much more.

Jonathan Meades has an obsessive preoccupation with places. He has spent thirty years constructing sixty films, two novels and hundreds of pieces of journalism that explore an extraordinary range of them, from natural landscapes to man-made buildings and 'the gaps between them', drawing attention to what he calls 'the rich oddness of what we take for granted'. This book collects fifty-four pieces and six film scripts that dissolve the barriers between high and low culture, good and bad taste, deep seriousness and black comedy. Meades delivers what he calls 'heavy entertainment' - strong opinions backed up by an astonishing depth of knowledge. To read Meades on places, buildings, politics or cultural history is an exhilarating workout for the mind. He leaves you better informed, more alert, less gullible.

A collection of previously unpublished postcards from the former Eastern Bloc - sinister, funny, poignant and surreal, they depict the social and architectural values of the period. Brutal concrete hotels, futurist TV towers, heroic worker statues - this collection of Soviet era postcards documents the uncompromising landscape of the Eastern Bloc through its buildings and monuments. They are interspersed with quotes from prominent figures of the time, that both support and confound the ideologies presented in the images. In contrast to the photographs of a ruined and abandoned Soviet empire we are accustomed to seeing today, the scenes depicted here publicise the bright future of communism: social housing blocks, Palaces of Culture and monuments to Comradeship. Dating from the 1960s to the 1980s, they offer a nostalgic yet revealing insight into social and architectural values of the time, acting as a window through which we can examine cars, people, and of course, buildings. These postcards, sanctioned by the authorities, intended to show the world what living in communism looked like. Instead, this postcard propaganda inadvertently communicates other messages: outside the House of Political Enlightenment in Yerevan, the flowerbed reads `Glory to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union'; in Novopolotsk, art school pupils paint plein air, their subject is a housing estate; at the Irkutsk Polytechnic Institute students stroll past a five metre tall concrete hammer and sickle.

Is it possible to get paid to exist? To live in a way where you can't tell the difference between when you're working and when you're playing? Yes, it is. The author explains, "The 'zero' part means that when you do what you love, 'work' no longer feels like work. I personally can no longer tell the difference between when I'm working and when I'm playing. Here's what in the book: (1) My Story of Liberation. Why I was fed up with "mind renting" and what I did to stop it. (2) My Journey to Getting Paid to be Me. I detail my most important strategies for getting paid to do what I love. I've used these strategies to gain over 10,000 subscribers, write for a top-50 blog, and create a full time income online. (3) Zero Hour Case Studies. I get inside the minds of six other renegades who have found ways to get paid to be who they are. You learn their best tips, and what they would change if they could to start all over again. (4) Your Paid-to-Exist Secret Weapon. I show you how you can find the intersection between what you're good at, what you're passionate about, and what people will pay you to do. (5) Why the World Needs You to Do What You Love. Why we desperately need your contribution. A call to living on your own terms and creating your own game. With this book, I didn't hold back or keep any secrets. Everything I've done to create success for myself is inside.