VS. Pritchett, master of the short story, is also the most evocative of travel writers. First published in 1967, his portrait of Dublin - its past, politics and people, its grand mansions and curious corners - is as beguiling and eloquent as the city itself, as he writes of the Dublin he knew in the 1920s, of visits to Sean O'Casey and Yeats (brandishing a teapot in his rage at Shaw) and of the changing city forty years later, facing the future but still as eccentric and engaging as ever.

Dublin: A Portrait

Travel

PRITCHETT, V.S.

Europe

Bodley Head

There are a thousand stories in the land of Narnia, and the first is about to be told in an extraordinary motion picture, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, from Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media.

In the never-ending war between good and evil, The Chronicles of Narnia set the stage for battles of epic proportions. Some take place in vast fields, where the forces of light and darkness clash. But other battles occur within the small chambers of the heart and are equally decisive.

Journeys to the ends of the world, fantastic creatures, betrayals, heroic deeds and friendships won and lost -- all come together in an unforgettable world of magic. So let the adventures begin.

The first volume in
The Chronicles of Narnia®
The Magician's Nephew

Narnia ... where Talking Beasts walk ... where a witch awaits ... where a new world is about to be born.

On a daring quest to save a beloved life, two friends are hurled into another world, where an evil sorceress seeks to enslave them. But then the Great Lion Aslan's song weaves itself into the fabric of a new land, a land that will become known as Narnia. And in Narnia, all things are possible ...

The Magician's Nephew

Literature & Fiction

C.S.LEWIS

Classics

A single-volume edition of four picture books featuring Harvey Mouse, Willie the Hedgehog, Rue Rabbit and their friends: "The Foxwood Regatta", "The Foxwood Kidnap", "The Foxwood Smugglers" and "The Foxwood Surprise".

The Foxwood Treasury

Cynthia Paterson

Children's Books

Nelson: we think that we are familiar with the man behind the name. But, in this second volume of his authoritative biography, John Sugden delves behind the myths, strips back the apocrypha, and reveals a figure both intimately familiar and greatly estranged.Sugden interweaves graphic accounts of the well-known battles of the Nile, Copenhagen and Trafalgar with Nelson's lesser-known but equally gripping campaigns to liberate the Italian states from French domination, his role in the blockade of Malta and his turbulent relations with the volatile Barbary powers, often snatching remarkable triumphs from crippling reverses. But behind his military prowess was a man riven with paradoxes and schisms at the very heart of his personal life. Sugden paints a vivid composition of Nelson as glory-hunter and national hero, humanitarian and hardened military leader, family man and adulterer.Sugden opens up to us a man who was ever thwarted in his quest for happiness and pers

Nelson: The Sword of Albion by Sugden, John (2012) Hardcover

Sugden, John.

Biographies & Memoirs

Surprisingly early in the Second World War - long before an Allied victory was assured - people began to plan for its aftermath. They were haunted by memories of what happened a generation before - when the millions of soldiers killed on the battlefields of the Great War had been eclipsed by the millions more civilians carried off by disease and starvation when the conflict was over. They were determined that this time around the ceasefire would not be followed by a civilian disaster. Confronted by an entire continent starving and uprooted, and with the help of a new UN body to aid the populations of Europe and Asia, Allied planners did not single out victims of the Nazi death camps for particular attention, but devised strategies to help all 'displaced persons' - as they had become known by 1943. Most of the fifteen million foreign labourers in Germany were speedily repatriated. But a million-and-a-half people - Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians and Yugoslavs - refused to go home. It took the Allies seven years to resolve this problem. They had to create the state of Israel, alter the whole basis of their immigration policy and let thousands of war criminals go free. This book offers a radical reassessment of the aftermath of World War II. Unlike most recent writing about the 1940s, it assesses the events and personalities of that decade in terms of contemporary standards and values. In particular, it shows that the tragic consequences of war were understood not in terms of genocide, but of displacement - of millions of people deprived of their homes and often forced to work for the Germans.

The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War

BEN SHEPHARD

The Dying Empire: Europe's Cataclysm

History

WHEATCROFT, Andrew

A magnificent new biography of the greatest conqueror the world has ever known, based on newly translated sources and the latest scholarship. Genghis Khan was by far the greatest conqueror the world has ever known. At the time of his death in 1227, his empire encompassed more than half the globe. At its peak, it stretched from the Pacific Ocean to central Europe, including all of China, the Middle East and Russia. So how did an illiterate nomad from the steppes of Central Asia rise to such colossal power, eclipsing the military achievements of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Napoleon? Credited by some with paving the way for the Renaissance and even democracy itself, condemned by others for being the most heinous murderer in history, who was Genghis Khan? His actual name was Temujin, and the story of his success is the story of the Mongol people: a loose collection of fractious tribes who tended livestock, ate a diet of meat and fermented yak’s milk, considered bathing strictly taboo and possessed an unparalleled genius for horseback warfare. United under Genghis, they were exceptionally meritocratic, religiously tolerant, disciplined and pragmatic, and developed the means to communicate rapidly over vast distances. Genghis himself was a tactician of astonishing cunning and versatility, who realised that the Mongols’ nomadic culture and military prowess equipped them to dominate any sedentary society they chose. In this magnificent new biography, Frank McLynn brings vividly to life the strange and distant world of the Mongols, describes Temujin’s rise from boyhood outcast to become Genghis Khan, and tells the greatest story of military conquest in human history. Combining fast-paced accounts of battles with rich cultural background, he draws on the latest scholarship to provide the most balanced and comprehensive account yet of one of the most extraordinary men ever to have lived.

Genghis Khan: The Man Who Conquered the World

MCLYNN, Frank

A vivid, brutal and enthralling account of the Burma Campaign -- one of the most punishing and hard-fought military adventures of World War Two. Often described as "the forgotten war", the Burma Campaign was one of the most punishing and protracted military adventures of World War Two. It has become notorious for the ingenious tactics used by Britain, America and their allies on the one hand and the Japanese and their allies on the other, as well as for the atrocious conditions that had to be endured by both sides. Seasonal monsoon rains -- which allowed effective campaigning for little more than half the year -- as well as famine, disease, snakes and crocodiles all bore heavily on the troops. Impenetrable jungle, poor transport infrastructure and the Allied preoccupation with the war in Europe made this the longest single campaign fought by the British in the Second World War. It is against this epic backdrop that Frank McLynn constructs the dramatic story of the four larger-than-life commanders directing the Allied effort: Louis Mountbatten, Orde Wingate, Joseph Stilwell and William Slim. Strikingly original in its approach, the book explores the Campaign through the prism of these four men and their often stormy relationship. From 1942 and the greatest defeat for British arms in the history of the Empire, through the crucial simultaneous battles of Imphal and Kohima -- 'the Stalingrad of the East' -- and on to ultimate victory in 1945, this is a vivid, brutal and enthralling account. By telling it through the interactions and antagonisms of its principal players, we see how the plans, designs and strategies of generals and politicians were translated into a hideous reality for the men on the ground. From the Trade Paperback edition.

The Burma Campaign

Asia

The vivid, magisterial and long-awaited biography of Marcus Aurelius — the last of the “five good emperors” of the Roman Empire.Emperor Marcus Aurelius — the embodiment of the philosopher’s king — is the one figure of antiquity who still speaks vividly to us today, over 2000 years after his death. We may thrill to the exploits of Alexander the Great, Hannibal or Caesar, and historical novelists may beguile us with their imaginative reconstructions of this life or that, but the only voice from the Greco-Roman world that still seems to have contemporary relevance is that of the man who ruled the Roman Empire from 161 to 180 A.D. His book of reflections, Meditations, continues to sell in large numbers in numerous editions. Though a persecutor of Christians, Marcus holds out the prospect of spirituality for atheists, happiness without God, joy without heaven and morality without religion. He truly was a man for all seasons, and those seasons include the twenty-first century.His reign foreshadowed the eventual decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and his life itself represents the fulfillment of Plato’s famous dictum that mankind will prosper only when philosophers are rulers and rulers philosophers. Marcus Aurelius by acclaimed historian Frank McLynn, promises to be the definitive biography of this monumental historical figure — now known very widely through the Oscar-winning film Gladiator.

Marcus Aurelius

Ancient Civilizations

Britain has not been successfully invaded since 1066; nor, in nearly 1,000 years, has it known a true revolution -- one that brings radical, systemic and enduring change. The contrast with her European neighbours -- with France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece and Russia -- is dramatic. All have been convulsed by external warfare, revolution and civil war -- all have experienced fundamental change to their ruling elites or their social and economic structures. In The Road Not Taken Frank McLynn investigates the seven occasions when England came closest to revolution: the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, the Jack Cade rising of 1450, the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, the English Civil War of the 1640s, the Jacobite Rising of 1745-6, the Chartist Movement of 1838-50 and the General Strike of 1926. Mixing narrative and analysis, he vividly recreates each episode and provides compelling explanations of why social turbulence stopped short of revolution. McLynn takes issue with those who argue that great events do not have great causes -- that they happen not because of some titanic clash of systems -- the bourgeoisie versus the landed aristocracy or the oligarchy versus the gentry -- but because of accident -- the blunders and miscalculations of individual human beings. As well as suggesting causes for these seismic events and reasons for their ultimate collapse, he examines the underlying currents which have allowed England (and, since 1707, Scotland) to enjoy a continuity and stability unknown in almost every other country.

The Road Not Taken: Revolutionary Moments in British History

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