A delightfully funny story about friendship and seasonal change from the multi-award-winning Julia Donaldson. Chack the blackbird and Apollo the swallow are friends. But when Apollo tells Chack that he will soon be flying to Africa – Chack doesn't believe him. And when Chack tells Apollo that the blossom on his favourite tree will one day turn into orange berries – Apollo doesn't believe him either! But as the seasons change, Chack and Apollo are both in for a big surprise … Join Chack and Apollo on a round-the-world adventure in this delightfully funny story about friendship and change. From the author of the multi-million-selling The Gruffalo, Julia Donaldson, Follow the Swallow is the perfect book for EVERY season!

"A beautiful, gentle, rhyming exploration of grief and mourning." - Joe Coelho, Waterstones Children's Laureate The Hare-Shaped Hole is a beautiful, touching, and poignant picture book which gently explores themes of grief and loss. Hertle and Bertle were always a pair, though one was a turtle and one was a hare. They were utterly buddies, and best friends forever and whenever you looked, you would find them together... until quite unexpectedly... the end came. When Hertle disappears for good, Bertle can only see a Hertle-shaped hole where his friend should be. He pleads with it, get angry with it, but the hole still won't bring his Hertle back. It seems like hope is lost... until Gerda the kindly bear finds him. She explains that he must fill the hole with his memories of Hertle. And slowly... Bertle begins to feel a little bit better. Powerful and moving text from children's author and poet John Dougherty is paired perfectly with warm illustrations from the wonderfully talented Thomas Docherty in a thoughtful and sensitive approach to this difficult topic. This moving picture book can be used as part of a gentle conversation about death and grief with children.

One night Joe leaves his window open and with a swirl of leaves and a flap of feathers, the Wild invites him outside to explore the night-time city. Joe learns that animals and plants can thrive even in the most built-up environment, and that with a bit of imagination, a city can be full of surprises.

Exploring the controversial history of an aesthetic - realism - this book examines the role that realism plays in the negotiation of social, political, and material realities from the mid-19th century to the present day. Examining a broad range of literary texts from French, English, Italian, German, and Russian writers, this book provides new insights into how realism engages with themes including capital, social decorum, the law and its politicisation, modern science as a determining factor concerning truth, and the politics of identity. Considering works from Gustave Flaubert, Charles Baudelaire, Emile Zola, Henry James, Charles Dickens, and George Orwell, Docherty proposes a new philosophical conception of the politics of realism in an age where politics feels increasingly erratic and fantastical.

This book explores what is at stake in our confessional culture. Thomas Docherty examines confessional writings from Augustine to Montaigne and from Sylvia Plath to Derrida, arguing that through all this work runs a philosophical substratum - the conditions under which it is possible to assert a confessional mode - that needs exploration and explication.
Docherty outlines a philosophy of confession that has pertinence for a contemporary political culture based on the notion of 'transparency'. In a postmodern 'transparent society', the self coincides with its self-representations. Such a position is central to the idea of authenticity and truth-telling in confessional writing: it is the basis of saying, truthfully, 'here I take my stand'.
The question is: what other consequences might there be of an assumption of the primacy of transparency? Two areas are examined in detail: the religious and the judicial. Docherty shows that despite the tendency to regard transparency as a general social and ethical good, our contemporary culture of transparency has engendered a society in which autonomy (or the very authority of the subject that proclaims 'I confess') is grounded in guilt, reparation and victimhood.

Wie ken nie die seun met die goue hare en die wit hoedjie wat op die groot, wit gans oor Lapland sweef nie? Dis Niels Holgersson, natuurlik.

Niels Holgersson bly op ’n plaas in Swede. Hy is ’n klein niksnut. Eendag gebeur iets vreemds met hom. Hy word in ’n kabouter verander en beland op die rug van ’n mak gans. Saam beleef Niels en die gans Maarten groot avonture. Hulle emigreer saam met die wildeganse na Lapland.

Onderweg maak hulle vriende, soos meneer Emerik die ooievaar en Donsie, die grys gans. Maar hulle moet ligloop vir Smirre, die geslepe jakkals ...

Sam is broken-hearted when she hears her favourite pony Mulberry is going to be sold. But Mulberry has decided to be very fussy about the home she goes to and sets about causing some serious mischief! Sam is the only rider who can really talk to Mulberry, and the only one prepared to listen. They want to stay together but is their special bond strong enough to persuade Sam's mum to buy the naughtiest pony at Meadow Vale Stables? A funny, heart-warming story about one girl and her VERY naughty pony.

Anna het 'n lewendige verbeelding met drome wat vir haar werklik voel. Een oggend word sy wakker en besef dat sy haar droom nie kan onthou nie. Saam met haar hond reis sy deur haar drome op soek na die verlore droom. Hulle ontmoet reuse, vampiere, en 'n herhalende droom. Oplaas vind Anna die antwoord: haar droom was nader as wat sy gedink het. Sy klim weer in die snoesige bed en sien uit na nog interessante drome.

Mood is a phenomenon whose study is inherently interdisciplinary. While it has remained resistant to theorisation, it nonetheless has a substantial influence on art, politics and society. Since its practical omnipresence in every-day life renders it one of the most significant aspects of affect studies, it has garnered an increasing amount of critical attention in a number of disciplines across the humanities, sciences and social sciences in the past two decades. Mood: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, New Theories provides a comprehensive theoretical and empirical exploration of the phenomenon of mood from an interdisciplinary angle. Building on cutting-edge research in this emerging field and bringing together established and new voices, it bridges the existing disciplinary gap in the study of mood and further consolidates this phenomenon as a crucial concept in disciplinary and interdisciplinary study. By combining perspectives and concepts from the literary studies, philosophy, musicology, the social sciences, artistic practice and psychology, the volume does the complexity and richness of mood-related phenomena justice and benefits from the latent connections and synergies in different disciplinary approaches to the study of mood.

"Alterities" marks an advance to a new stage in critical theory. Dealing with literature from Shakespeare and Donne to Calvino with philosophy from the medieval to the contemporary with cinema from popular to art-film and with political theory from Marx to Lyotard, Baudrillard, and Badiou, Thomas Docherty intervenes in the major contemporary cultural debates to propose and practise a new literary criticism, with theoretical foundations rooted in a postmodern ethics, ecopolitics, and an austere attention to the radical difficulties of art.

Mood is a phenomenon whose study is inherently interdisciplinary. While it has remained resistant to theorisation, it nonetheless has a substantial influence on art, politics and society. Since its practical omnipresence in every-day life renders it one of the most significant aspects of affect studies, it has garnered an increasing amount of critical attention in a number of disciplines across the humanities, sciences and social sciences in the past two decades. Mood: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, New Theories provides a comprehensive theoretical and empirical exploration of the phenomenon of mood from an interdisciplinary angle. Building on cutting-edge research in this emerging field and bringing together established and new voices, it bridges the existing disciplinary gap in the study of mood and further consolidates this phenomenon as a crucial concept in disciplinary and interdisciplinary study. By combining perspectives and concepts from the literary studies, philosophy, musicology, the social sciences, artistic practice and psychology, the volume does the complexity and richness of mood-related phenomena justice and benefits from the latent connections and synergies in different disciplinary approaches to the study of mood.

Aesthetic Democracy argues that art and the aesthetic in general are the founding condition of the possibility of establishing social and political democracy. The book examines contemporary criticism and finds that it is historically shaped by colonialism, and that it sets up an opposition of east and west that shapes all contemporary cultural politics. The author argues for a way of outwitting this potentially dangerous struggle of east and west grounded in an aestheticism and a validation of sensory experience. Docherty proposes a new model of cultural critique, based on a revitalized and positively valorized notion of "hypocrisy," whose roots lie in Machiavelli, but whose contemporary strength lies in its potential for an ethical encounter with alterity as such.

Contemporary criticism of Donne has tended to ignore the historical culture and ideology that conditioned his writings, reinforcing the traditionally accepted model of the poet as a humanist of ethical, cultural and political individualism. In this title, first published in 1986, Thomas Docherty challenges this with a more rigorously theoretical reading of Donne, particularly in relation to the specific culture of the late Renaissance in Europe. Docherty locates Donne's poetry at the crux of the various scientific, legal, domestic and rhetorical discourses that surrounded and informed it. With a broadly post-structuralist approach, this reissue will benefit literature students with an interest in the wider study and context of John Donne's work.

Contemporary criticism of Donne has tended to ignore the historical culture and ideology that conditioned his writings, reinforcing the traditionally accepted model of the poet as a humanist of ethical, cultural and political individualism. In this title, first published in 1986, Thomas Docherty challenges this with a more rigorously theoretical reading of Donne, particularly in relation to the specific culture of the late Renaissance in Europe. Docherty locates Donne's poetry at the crux of the various scientific, legal, domestic and rhetorical discourses that surrounded and informed it. With a broadly post-structuralist approach, this reissue will benefit literature students with an interest in the wider study and context of John Donne's work.

This book deals with the arguments over postmodernism. Going beyond the post-structuralist controversy in its interdisciplinary scope, postmodernism questions the fundamental civil, political, ethical and cultural criteria which make criticism and theory available, legitimate, or, indeed, impossible. Yet since the key texts are widely scattered, the broad range of arguments remain relatively unknown.

This reader provides a selection of articles and essays by leading figures in the postmodernism debate.

From post-truth politics to "no-platforming" on university campuses, the English language has been both a potent weapon and a crucial battlefield for our divided politics. In this important and wide-ranging intervention, Thomas Docherty explores the politics of the English language, its implication in the dynamics of political power and the spaces it offers for dissent and resistance. From the authorised English of the King James Bible to the colonial project of University English Studies, this book develops a powerful history for contemporary debates about propaganda, free speech and truth-telling in our politics. Taking examples from the US, UK and beyond - from debates about the Second Amendment and free-speech on campus, to the Iraq War and the Grenfell Tower fire - this book is a powerful and polemical return to Orwell's observation that a degraded political language is intimately connected to an equally degraded political culture.

Oxford Reading Tree Story Sparks is an emotionally-engaging fiction series that will fire children's imaginations and develop their comprehension skills. The variety of authors and illustrators broadens children's reading experience, with something to appeal to every child. The titles at Oxford Levels 1+ to 5 are phonically decodable with some extra high-interest words to expand children's vocabularies and enrich the stories. All the books in the series are carefully levelled, making it easy to match every reader to the right book. This pack contains six books, one of each of the following titles: Pip, Lop, Mip, Bop and the Bumbles, Tomorrow Never Comes, The Night Knight, Snoot's Birthday Surprise, Sometimes Mum is Silly and The Festival of Colours.

Leo the mouse isn't like the other knights. While they like fighting, he'd rather read a book. Leo's parents are keen to turn him into a proper knight, so they pack him off on a mission to tame a dragon. But Leo knows that books are mightier than swords, and he tames not just the dragon, but a troll and a griffin, too - by reading them stories. With its witty rhyming text and glorious, detailed illustrations, THE KNIGHT WHO WOULDN'T FIGHT is a joyful, magical picture book about the power of stories.

What is the value of literature? In this important new work, Thomas Docherty charts a new economic history of literary culture and its institutions in the modern age. From the literary patronage of the early modern period, through the colonial exploitation of the 18th and 19th centuries to the institutionalisation of "literature" in the neoliberal university of the 21st century, Literature and Capital explores the changing ways in which literary culture has both resisted and become complicit with exploitative economic notions of value. Drawing on the work of economic and political thinkers such as Thomas Piketty, Naomi Klein, Edward Said and Raymond Williams, the book includes readings of work by a wide range of canonical authors from Shakespeare, Donne and Swift to Tolstoy, Woolf and Ishiguro.

"Docherty is not only is a brilliant critic of those forces that would like to transform higher education into an extension of the market-place... he is also a man of great moral and civic courage, who under intense pressure from the punishing neoliberal state has risked a great deal to remind us that higher education is a civic institution crucial to creating the formative cultures necessary for a democracy to survive, if not flourish." - Henry Giroux, McMasters University "Docherty engages with the secular university in its present crisis, reflecting on its origins and on its role in the future of democracy. He tackles the urgent issue of inequality with a compelling denunciation of the ways of entrenched privilege; he offers a view of governance and representation from the perspective of those who are silenced; and exposes the fundamental damage done to thought by management-speak. Docherty is moral, passionate and committed and this is a fierce and important book." - Mary Margaret McCabe, King's College London There is a war on for the future of the university worldwide. The stakes are high, and they reach deep into our social condition. On one side are self-proclaimed modernisers who view the institution as vital to national economic success. Here the university is a servant of the national economy in the context of globalization, its driving principles of private and personal enrichment necessary conditions of 'progress' and modernity. Others see this as a radical impoverishment of the university's capacities to extend human possibilities and freedoms, to seek earnestly for social justice, and to participate in the endless need for the extension of democracy. This book analyses the former position, and argues for the necessity of taking sides with the latter. It does so with a sense of urgency, because the market fundamentalists are on the march. The fundamental war that is being fought is not just for scholars, but for a better - more democratic, more just, more emancipatory - form of life. Choose sides.