This second volume of A.H. Tammsaare's monumental pentalogy portrays the education of Indrek who emerges here as the protagonist and will remain so throughout the next three volumes. This is a story of moving to the polyglot city and abandoning the countryside which at that time was the heartland of the Estonian language. This new environment is a vortex of prejudices and national rivalries nevertheless held together in practice by a strange and very human tolerance. Here Tammsaare writes with his trademark wit and deep understanding of human nature, and we find ourselves in the company of a vast gallery of larger-than-life characters who jostle, scheme and argue over both trivialities and the great issues of the human condition. They may do the latter out of their own intellectual narcissism or simply for the joy of debate, but the ensuing dialogues rival those of the great Russian novelists. The boarding school is as dysfunctional as any Dickensian one, but it is a great deal more benevolent. Russians, Germans, Poles, Latvians and Caucasians mix with the Estonian majority, speaking in a mix of Russian, German and Estonian, and somehow compromises are nearly always arrived at in spite of, or possibly because of some extraordinary theatrics, in which Mr Maurus must outperform not only all the other characters in the book but very probably all other celebrated headmasters created by European literature over the centuries. Indrek not only has to come to terms with this world so utterly unsuited to his shy and innocent rural upbringing, but he also has to deal with his first encounters with love and death.

A comprehensive guide to the buildings of South-East Lancashire. The heart is the great industrial city of Manchester, with its proud municipal buildings and pioneering mills and transport structures, offset by some of Britain's most innovative new architecture. Full accounts are given of the suburbs in all their variety, and of the separate City of Salford to the west. North and east of this metropolis are the industrial towns of Bolton, Bury, Rochdale and Oldham, each with its own tradition of civic buildings and crop of talented local architects. Around and between are the high moorland hills and steep Pennine valleys, with constantly surprising juxtapositions of rural, vernacular and industrial buildings. Also distinctive are the little-known late medieval churches and timber-framed country houses, their settings now often green again after the retreat of heavy industry. Each city, town or village is treated in a detailed gazetteer. A general introduction provides a historical and artistic overview. Numerous maps and plans, over 100 new colour photographs, full indexes and an illustrated glossary help to make this book invaluable as both reference work and guide.

A political thriller set mainly in Estonia during the dying days of the Soviet Union, but also in Russia, Finland and Sweden. It follows a group of young pro-independence dissidents who have an elaborate scheme for smuggling copies of KGB files out of the country, and whose fates are entangled, through family and romantic ties, with the security services who are tracking them. It describes the curious minutiae of everyday life, offers wry observations on the period through personal experience, and asks universal questions about how interpersonal relationships are affected when caught up in momentous historical changes. This sometimes wistful examination of how the Estonian Republic was reborn after a long hiatus speaks also of the courage and complex chemistry of those who pushed against a regime whose then weakness could not have been known to them.

A comprehensive guide to the buildings of Cheshire in all their variety, from Pennine villages to coastal plains and seaside resorts. Chester, the regional capital and cathedral city, is famous for its Roman walls and black-and-white timber architecture, its noble Neoclassical monuments, and its unique medieval shopping 'rows' with their upper walkways. But Cheshire is also a major industrial county, with spectacular and internationally significant mills and canal structures. Specialist settlements include the famous railway borough of Crewe, the salt towns of Nantwich, Northwich and Middlewich, and Lord Leverhulme's celebrated garden suburb at Port Sunlight.