Diamond Street is Rachel Lichtenstein's fascinating account of London's Hatton Garden. Enter Hatton Garden, one of London's most mysterious streets. Home to ancient burial sites, diamond workshops, underground vaults, monastic dynasties, subterranean rivers and forgotten palaces. Here you'll meet sewer flushers, artists, goldsmiths, geologists and visionaries as Rachel Lichtenstein uncovers the history, secrets and stories that bring this vibrant Clerkenwell street and its environs to life. Praise for Diamond Street: 'Diamond Street is a brilliant and moving book, intricate in its form and fabulous in its curiosity. It is poised somewhere between deep history, archaeological dig, archive-quest and contemporary documentary, and it is suffused throughout with Rachel Lichtenstein's fascination with people and place -- a fascination which approaches a moral quality, really, in its tenderness, diligence and cultural openness' Robert Macfarlane, author of The Old Ways 'Fascinating. The great joy of Lichtenstein's books is that she encourages us to look again at the places we take for granted' Daily Telegraph 'Vivid and amusing, containing so many sparkling things, elegantly organized. Lichtenstein consulted a whole gang of glorious characters, collecting tales, history and lore on her way. An overwhelming trove of stories with a multiplicity of facets to intrigue' Observer 'Engrossing, a superb oral historian. Lichtenstein proves to be an indefatigable explorer' Sunday Times 'Lichtenstein is an artist, writer, local historian and archivist and her multi-faceted approach makes fascinating reading. She make[s] us look with a fresh eye at familiar urban spaces' Independent on Sunday 'Lichtenstein has brought alive something of London . . . how one street can be a kind of Tardis, a portal to another world of parallel commerce, codes, rituals, history. A heartfelt book full of curiosity and love' The Times 'A lively and rewarding addition to the capital's rich history' Independent Rachel Lichtenstein is an artist and writer. She is the co-author, with Iain Sinclair, of Rodinsky's Room and the author, most recently, of On Brick Lane.

Diamond Street

History

Lichtenstein, Rachel

Europe

Hamish Hamilton UK

There but for the is the sparkling satirical novel by bestselling Ali Smith 'There once was a man who, one night between the main course and the sweet at a dinner party, went upstairs and locked himself in one of the bedrooms of the house of the people who were giving the dinner party . . .' As time passes by and the consequences of this stranger's actions ripple outwards, touching the owners, the guests, the neighbours and the whole country, so Ali Smith draws us into a beautiful, strange place where everyone is so much more than they at first appear. There but for the was hailed as one of the best books of 2011 by Jeanette Winterson, A.S. Byatt, Patrick Ness, Sebastian Barry, Boyd Tonkin, Erica Wagner and Nick Barley. 'Dazzlingly inventive' A.S. Byatt 'Whimsically devastating. Playful, humorous, serious, profoundly clever and profoundly affecting' Guardian 'A real gem' Erica Wagner, The Times 'Eccentric, adventurous, intoxicating, dazzling. This is a novel with serious ambitions that remains huge fun to read' Literary Review 'If you liked Smith's earlier fiction, you will know that she enjoys setting up a situation before chucking in a literary Molotov cocktail then describing what happens' Sunday Express 'Wonderful, word-playful, compelling' Jeanette Winterson 'Smith can make anything happen, which is why she is one of our most exciting writers today' Daily Telegraph 'I take my hat off to Ali Smith. Her writing lifts the soul' Evening Standard

There But for The

Literature & Fiction

Smith, Ali

Humor & Satire

The Idle Parent is Tom Hodgkinson's radical parenting remedy against stifled, mollycoddled children. Modern life is wrecking childhood. Why can't we just leave our kids alone? If you've ever wondered why so many of today's children are unhappy, spoilt, stressed and selfish, then the answers and the remedy are to be found in The Idle Parent. Tom Hodgkinson wants us to leave our kids be, to give them the space and time to grow into self-reliant, confident, inquisitive, happy and free people. Full of practical tips of what to do and (more importantly) what not to do, Tom will not only help your kids be happier, but also help you, their parents, live happier and more fulfilled lives. 'Wise, practical, funny, personal, it will make you a much better parent' Oliver James 'An inspiring book, genuinely subversive. Time to put away "silly adult things" and embrace childhood in all its messy glory' London Lite 'A recipe for bright, happy people with need of neither television nor shrink. Who could ask for more?' Evening Standard 'An original, thought-provoking book' Toby Young, Mail on Sunday Tom Hodgkinson is the founder and editor of The Idler and the author of How to be Idle, How to be Free, The Idle Parent and Brave Old World. In spring 2011 he founded The Idler Academy in London, a bookshop, coffeehouse and cultural centre which hosts literary events and offers courses in academic and practical subjects - from Latin to embroidery. Its motto is 'Liberty through Education'. Find out more at www.idler.co.uk.

The Idle Parent: Why Less Means More When Raising Kids

Parenting & Relationships

Hodgkinson, Tom

Parenting

Brave Old World is Tom Hodgkinson's year-round guide to the ancient art of husbandry. In this indispensable addition to his much-loved guides for the free-spirited, Tom Hodgkinson takes us on a modern tour of the ancient arts of everyday living: philosophy, husbandry and merriment. Drawing on the wisdom of an eclectic range of thinkers and writers, and, as ever, on Tom's own honestly recounted and frequently imperfect attempts to travel the road to self-sufficiency, Brave Old World charts the progress of a year in pursuit of the pleasures of the past. From January to December, let Tom be your guide to a better, older way of life. 'A meditation on why life has been a dreadful mistake ever since the Reformation brought us paid jobs and the work ethic. Brave Old World is hugely inspiring even when it is most bonkers' Sarah Bakewell, New Statesman 'A delightful read. Share in the exuberant joys and comic misfortunes of an eccentric who has made up his mind about the existence he wants to lead, and has gone ahead and lived it' James Delingpole, Mail on Sunday Tom Hodgkinson is the founder and editor of The Idler and the author of How to be Idle, How to be Free, The Idle Parent and Brave Old World. In spring 2011 he founded The Idler Academy in London, a bookshop, coffeehouse and cultural centre which hosts literary events and offers courses in academic and practical subjects - from Latin to embroidery. Its motto is 'Liberty through Education'. Find out more at www.idler.co.uk.

Brave Old World

World

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2012 THE SUNDAY TIMES #3 BESTSELLER The genre-defining book by acclaimed nature writer Robert Macfarlane: travel Britain's ancient paths and discover the secrets of this beautiful, underappreciated landscape Following the tracks, holloways, drove-roads and sea paths that form part of a vast ancient network of routes criss-crossing the British Isles and beyond, Robert Macfarlane discovers a lost world - a landscape of the feet and the mind, of pilgrimage and ritual, of stories and ghosts; above all of the places and journeys which inspire and inhabit our imaginations. 'Really do love it. He has a rare physical intelligence and affords total immersion in place, elements and the passage of time: wonderful' Antony Gormley 'A marvellous marriage of scholarship, imagination and evocation of place. I always feel exhilarated after reading Macfarlane' Penelope Lively 'Macfarlane immerses himself in regions we may have thought familiar, resurrecting them newly potent and sometimes beautifully strange. In a moving achievement, he returns our heritage to us' Colin Thubron 'Every Robert MacFarlane book offers beautiful writing, bold journeys . . . With its global reach and mysterious Sebaldian structure, this is MacFarlane's most important book yet' David Rothenberg, author of Survival of the Beautiful and Thousand Mile Song 'Luminous, possessing a seemingly paradoxical combination of the dream-like and the hyper-vigilant, The Old Ways is, as with all of Macfarlane's work, a magnificent read. Each sentence can carry astonishing discovery' Rick Bass, US novelist and nature writer 'The Old Ways confirms Robert Macfarlane's reputation as one of the most eloquent and observant of contemporary writers about nature' Scotland on Sunday 'Sublime writing . . . sets the imagination tingling . . . Macfarlane's way of writing [is] free, exploratory, rambling and haphazard but resourceful, individual, following his own whims, and laying an irresistible trail for readers to follow' Sunday Times 'Macfarlane relishes wild, as well as old, places. He writes about both beautifully . . . I love to read Macfarlane' John Sutherland, Financial Times 'Read this and it will be impossible to take an unremarkable walk again' Metro

The Old Ways

Travel

MacFarlane, Robert

Travel Writing

Melvin Podgorski is young, naïve, American - and a coffee fanatic. His obsession propels him from Chicago to Glasgow as a scout for US coffee franchise Burbacks. Putting behind him a messy divorce, he's here to make something of himself. And make Glasgow fall in love with coffee. But Glasgow has one or two surprises in store for Melvin. Firstly, they don't speak American. Not even English. He's got to get his head around the Scottish patter. Next, there's the radical politics he's sort of - by accident, you understand - become involved in. And lastly, there's Nicole, about to become his new favourite obsession. Is Glasgow ripe for an American invasion? Will the past catch up with the present? Or will Melvin's mania be his making?

Javascotia

Obler, Ben

Contemporary

In Ghost Milk Iain Sinclair exposes the dark underbelly of the Olympics 2012 Burrowing under the perimeter fence of the grandest of Grand Projects - the giant myth that is 2012's London Olympics - Ghost Milk explores a landscape under sentence of death and soon to be scorched by riots. This is a road map to a possible future as well as Iain Sinclair's most powerful statement yet on the throwaway impermanence of the present. 'Wonderful, sharp, amusing, grippingly atmospheric. One of our most dazzling prose stylists' Daily Telegraph 'A scorching diatribe' Independent 'Sinclair views London through a distortingly surreal lens; a striking visual poetry and tart black comedy are extracted from even the most hopeless of London locations. For those unfamiliar with Sinclair's work, Ghost Milk is a good place to start' Spectator 'Inventive, dazzling, arresting. Sinclair lays bare the human consequences and mourns the disruption of communities, the erasure of history and of a sense of place and continuity. This is Sinclair at his best. He is the archetypal whistleblower, a pricker of vainglorious and self-promoting hyperbole. A superb chronicle of an improbable dream that has descended to a nightmare. It is essential reading for all Londoners curious about their city' Dan Cruickshank, New Statesman 'Be warned: Ghost Milk reads like some whimsical meld of the poet Allen Ginsberg, comic books writer Alan Moore and an anarchists' message board. Highly alienating' Evening Standard 'A wounding assault' DJ Taylor, Independent on Sunday 'Sinclair's literary excavations of London's memory go deeper than anyone's' Time Out 'Brilliant' Robert Macfarlane, Guardian Iain Sinclair is the author of Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Award); Landor's Tower; White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings; Lights Out for the Territory; Lud Heat; Rodinsky's Room (with Rachel Lichtenstein); Radon Daughters; London Orbital, Dining on Stones, Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire and Ghost Milk. He is also the editor of London: City of Disappearances.

Ghost Milk

SINCLAIR, Iain

I'm the King of the Castle is Susan Hill's spellbinding novel of childhood cruelty. With an introduction by Esther Freud. Susan Hill's I'm King of the Castle was first published in 1970. Telling the story of two boys forced to live together by their widowed parents, it is a chilling portrayal of childhood cruelty and persecution, of parental blindness and of our own ambivalence to what are supposed to be the happiest days of our lives. 'Hill's exploration of a juvenile ghoul and his natural prey is a brilliant tour de force'Guardian 'Equalled for poignancy and horror only in Lord of the Flies'Sunday Telegraph

I'm the King of the Castle (Penguin Decades)

HILL, Susan

Genre Fiction

'There is no Light without Darknesse and no Substance without Shaddowe' So proclaims Nicholas Dyer, assistant to Sir Christopher Wren and the man with a commission to build seven London churches to stand as beacons of the enlightenment. But Dyer plans to conceal a dark secret at the heart of each church - to create a forbidding architecture that will survive for eternity. Two hundred and fifty years later, London detective Nicholas Hawksmoor is investigating a series of gruesome murders on the sites of certain eighteenth-century churches - crimes that make no sense to the modern mind . . . 'Chillingly brilliant . . . sinister and stunningly well executed' Independent on Sunday Peter Ackroyd was born in London in 1949. A novelist, biographer and historian, he has been the literary editor of The Spectator and chief book reviewer for the The Times, as well as writing several highly acclaimed books including a biography of Dickens and London: The Biography. He lives in London.

Hawksmoor

ACKROYD, Peter

Toby's Room

Toby's Room is the second novel in Pat Barker's Life Class Trilogy, returning to the First World War in a dark, compelling examination of human desire, wartime horror and the power of friendship When Toby is reported 'Missing, Believed Killed', another secret casts a lengthening shadow over Elinor's world: how exactly did Toby die - and why? Elinor determines to uncover the truth. Only then can she finally close the door to Toby's room. Moving from the Slade School of Art to Queen Mary's Hospital, where surgery and art intersect in the rebuilding of the shattered faces of the wounded, Toby's Room is a riveting drama of identity, damage, intimacy and loss - this is Pat Barker's most powerful novel yet. 'Heart-rendering return to the Great War . . . On every level, Toby's Room anatomises a world where extreme emotion shatters the boundaries of identity, behaviour, gender. Through the mask of Apollo bursts an omnipresent Dionysus' Independent 'Once again Barker skilfully moves between past and present, seamlessly weaving fact and fiction into a gripping narrative' Sunday Telegraph 'A gripping and moving exploration of the lasting effects of war' Woman &amp; Home 'A natural storyteller . . . the reader [will be] torn between wanting to linger over the sheer pleasure of the writing and the desire to rush towards the end to discover how it all pans out' Daily Mail Other titles in the trilogy: Life Class Noonday

BARKER, PAT

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Books by Hamish Hamilton UK