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A Country Road, A Tree
by Jo BakerBY THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF LONGBOURNSHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION 2017SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE 2017 'Skilful . . . daring . . . extraordinary' The Guardian'A fascinating fictional account of Samuel Beckett's wartime years' IAN RANKIN'Beautifully written, empathetic and unflinching, it is very, very good' Daily Mail'Marvellous, spare, moving' FRANCIS SPUFFORD'Insightful . . . beautifully paced . . . authentic’ The Irish TimesParis, 1939: The pavement rumbles with the footfall of Nazi soldiers marching along the Champs Elysees. A young writer, recently arrived from Ireland to make his mark, smokes one last cigarette with his lover before the city they know is torn apart. Soon, he will put is own life and those of his loved ones in mortal danger by joining the Resistance...Spies, artists, deprivation, danger and passion: this is a story of life at the edges of human experience, and of how one man came to translate it all into art.Sunday Express Book of the MonthPraise for Jo Baker's LONGBOURN:'Intoxicating' Guardian'Engrossing' Sunday Times'Audacious' New York Times
A Year on Our Farm: How the Countryside Made Me
by Matt BakerEscape into nature with Matt Baker in his first ever book - a diary of the natural year and a glimpse into family life on the farmPeppered with his hand drawn sketches and moments from his TV career throughout, this is a heartfelt and fascinating insight into Matt's life outside of our TV screens_______Matt Baker is at his happiest on the farm.Away from the bright lights of hosting our favourite television programmes, Countryfile, The One Show, Blue Peter and many more, he is often in the company of his family, dogs, array of sheep, Mediterranean miniature donkeys and a whole host of wildlife in the farm's ancient woodland.Now, following the ever-changing seasons, Matt takes us on a journey with his family on the farm.We see woodland animals emerge after a long winter of hibernation, hear the dawn chorus in the height of summer and see the preparations unfold for the harsh and wild winter months.Peppered with hand drawn sketches, unforgettable moments from his TV career and stories of a landscape you'll fall in love with, Matt offers readers a touching insight into life on the farm, and how the power and beauty of the countryside can be an inspiration and source of joy for all of us.A celebration of the natural year, Matt Baker takes us on a journey through the seasons, his life on the farm and how the power and beauty of the countryside has made him who he is.
Camping on the Wye
by Mr S. K. Baker Mr Michael GoffeDuring their university holidays in the late 1880s, S.K. Baker and three of his University College friends clad in stripy blazers and boaters spent time sailing and camping on the River Wye. Baker, a keen artist and diarist, recorded their travels in watercolour in two small leather bound books.The result is an entirely charming, funny account along the lines of the legendary Three Men in a Boat with which the notebooks are entirely contemporaneous although the protagonists are younger and possibly naughtier. Baker records their evenings in the pub, their encounters with girls, (both ashore and afloat), nude swimming and culinary disasters, while recording lovingly the landscape and the boats on which they sailed.The notebook is published as a facsimile with an introduction by Michael Goffe, the son of one of Baker's fellow students (GG in the text), to whom it was gifted.
A Week on the Broads: Four Victorian gents at sail on a Norfolk gaffer in 1889
by Mr S. K. Baker Mr Michael GoffeDuring their university holidays in the late 1880s, S.K. Baker and three of his University College friends clad in stripy blazers and boaters spent time sailing and camping on the Norfolk Broads. Baker, a keen artist and diarist, recorded their travels in watercolour in two small leather bound books.The result is an entirely charming, funny account along the lines of the legendary Three Men in a Boat with which the notebooks are entirely contemporaneous although the protagonists are younger and possibly naughtier. Baker records their evenings in the pub, their encounters with girls, (both ashore and afloat), nude swimming and culinary disasters, while recording lovingly the landscape and the boats on which they sailed.The notebook is published as a facsimile with an introduction by Michael Goffe, the son of one of Baker's fellow students, to whom it was gifted.This is suggested as two separate books although they could be bound up together with a combination title.
Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years
by Russ Baker"Shocking in its disclosures, elegantly crafted, and faultlessly measured in its judgments."-Roger Morris, author of Richard Milhous Nixon and Partners in PowerHow did the deeply flawed George W. Bush ascend to the highest office in the nation, what forces abetted his rise, and-perhaps most important-were those forces really vanquished by Obama's election? Award-winning investigative journalist Russ Baker gives us the answers in Family of Secrets, a compelling and startling new take on the Bush dynasty and the shadowy elite that has quietly steered the American republic for the past half century and more. Baker shows how this network of figures in intelligence, the military, oil, and finance enabled-and in turn benefited handsomely from-the Bushes' perch at the highest levels of government. As Baker reveals, this deeply entrenched elite remains in power regardless of who sits in the Oval Office. Family of Secrets offers countless disclosures that challenge the conventional accounts of such central events as the JFK assassination and Watergate. It includes an inside account of George W.'s cynical religious conversion and the untold real background to the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina. Baker's narrative is gripping, sobering, and deeply sourced. It will change the way we understand not just the Bush years, but a half century of postwar history-and the present.
Camping on the Wye
by S. K. Baker Michael GoffeDuring their university holidays in the late 1880s, S.K. Baker and three of his University College friends clad in stripy blazers and boaters spent time sailing and camping on the River Wye. Baker, a keen artist and diarist, recorded their travels in watercolour in two small leather bound books.The result is an entirely charming, funny account along the lines of the legendary Three Men in a Boat with which the notebooks are entirely contemporaneous although the protagonists are younger and possibly naughtier. Baker records their evenings in the pub, their encounters with girls, (both ashore and afloat), nude swimming and culinary disasters, while recording lovingly the landscape and the boats on which they sailed.The notebook is published as a facsimile with an introduction by Michael Goffe, the son of one of Baker's fellow students (GG in the text), to whom it was gifted.
A Week on the Broads: Four Victorian gents at sail on a Norfolk gaffer in 1889
by S. K. Baker Michael GoffeDuring their university holidays in the late 1880s, S.K. Baker and three of his University College friends clad in stripy blazers and boaters spent time sailing and camping on the Norfolk Broads. Baker, a keen artist and diarist, recorded their travels in watercolour in two small leather bound books.The result is an entirely charming, funny account along the lines of the legendary Three Men in a Boat with which the notebooks are entirely contemporaneous although the protagonists are younger and possibly naughtier. Baker records their evenings in the pub, their encounters with girls, (both ashore and afloat), nude swimming and culinary disasters, while recording lovingly the landscape and the boats on which they sailed.The notebook is published as a facsimile with an introduction by Michael Goffe, the son of one of Baker's fellow students, to whom it was gifted.This is suggested as two separate books although they could be bound up together with a combination title.
Cyprus, as I Saw It in 1879
by Sir Samuel White BakerCyprus was placed under British control in 1878 as a result of the Cyprus Convention, which granted control of the island to Britain in return for British support of the Ottoman Empire in the Russian-Turkish War. Little was known about the country at the time and this work is the result of a visit by Baker, an English explorer and author, in 1879.
William Shakespeare (Writers Lives)
by William BakerThis volume in the Writers Lives series offers a reassessment of Shakespeare and his creative output from his earliest work through his 'mature' drama and the late plays, taking into account our current knowledge of Shakespeare's biography and consensus on key textual, critical and theatrical issues. William Baker offers a comprehensive but accessible introduction to Shakespeare's work and places it in the contexts of what is known of his life and activities. Avoiding speculation of a biographical, critical or textual nature, he focuses instead on an account of what is known of Shakespeare and his achievement at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century.
The Centre of the Bed: An Autobiography
by Joan Bakewell'Honest and intriguing ... beautifully written.' The ObserverJoan Bakewell's life and times spans the Blitz in Manchester, Cambridge during the glittering era of Michael Frayn, Peter Hall, Jonathan Miller et al, London at its most exciting in the swinging sixties and the world of the media and the arts from the 60s to the present. As she reflects on the choices she has made and the influences that shaped her, she confronts painful childhood memories of her mother's behaviour and describes both her affair with Harold Pinter and her two marriages with remarkable honesty. Throughout she uses her own experience to explore the extraordinary change in women's roles during her lifetime. This is no ordinary celebrity autobiography but a memoir that is beautifully written, frank and absorbing, which draws a thought-provoking portrait of Britain in the last 70 years.Dame Joan Bakewell was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship in 2019.
Stop the Clocks: Thoughts on What I Leave Behind
by Joan BakewellJoan Bakewell has led a varied, sometimes breathless life: she has been a teacher, copywriter, studio manager, broadcaster, journalist, the government's Voice of Older People and chair of the theatre company Shared Experience. She has written four radio plays, two novels and an autobiography - The Centre of The Bed. Now in her 80s, she is still broadcasting. Though it may look as though she is now part of the establishment - a Dame, President of Birkbeck College, a Member of the House of Lords as Baroness Bakewell of Stockport - she's anything but and remains outspoken and courageous. In Stop the Clocks, she muses on all she has lived through, how the world has changed and considers the things and values she will be leaving behind.Stop the Clocks is a book of musings, a look back at what she was given by her family, at the times in which she grew up - ranging from the minutiae of life such as the knowledge of how to darn and how to make a bed properly with hospital corners, to the bigger lessons of politics, of lovers, of betrayal. She talks of the present, of her family, of friends and literature - and talks too of what she will leave behind. This is a thoughtful, moving and spirited book as only could be expected from this extraordinary woman.
The Tick of Two Clocks: A Tale of Moving On
by Joan BakewellOld age is no longer a blip in the calendar, just a few declining years before the end. Old age is now a major and important part of life: It should command as much thought - even anxiety - as teenagers give to exam results and young marrieds how many children to have . . . I am in my 80s and moving towards the end of my life. But in a more actual sense, I have moved from my dear home of 50 odd years into another . . . the home where I will be until the end. Writing here of how it has happened is in a sense a reconciliation with what cannot be avoided, but which can be confrontedWhen Joan Bakewell, Labour Peer, author and famous champion of the older people's right to a good and fruitful life, decided that she could no longer remain in her old home, she had to confront what she calls 'the next segment of life.' Disposing of things accumulated during a long life, saying goodbye to her home and the memories of more than fifty years, thinking about what is needed for downsizing - all suddenly became urgent and emotional tasks. And then there was managing family expectations. Some new projects such as planning the colours and layout of a new, smaller flat, were exciting and some things - the ridding herself of books, paintings, memento - took courage. So much of the world is on the move- voluntarily or not - and so many people are living to a great old age. In using the tale of her own life , Joan Bakewell tells us a story of our times and how she is learning to live to the sound and tune of The Tick of Two Clocks: the old and the new.
The View from Here
by Joan BakewellBuilt loosely on her much-loved Guardian column - Just 70The View from Here is Bakewell's discerning and heartwarming account of life at 70 and beyond. A household name and a popular radio and TV broadcaster, Bakewell is the ideal ambassador for challenging what being 70 can mean for women today. All of life, including the taboos of old age, are here - work, family, love, sex, body and death - written about with humour, warmth, and Bakewell's characteristic verve and intelligence.
At The Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
by Sarah BakewellShortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman PrizeParis, near the turn of 1932-3. Three young friends meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and their friend Raymond Aron, who opens their eyes to a radical new way of thinking…‘It’s not often that you miss your bus stop because you’re so engrossed in reading a book about existentialism, but I did exactly that... The story of Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, Heidegger et al is strange, fun and compelling reading. If it doesn’t win awards, I will eat my copy’ Independent on Sunday‘Bakewell shows how fascinating were some of the existentialists’ ideas and how fascinating, often frightful, were their lives. Vivid, humorous anecdotes are interwoven with a lucid and unpatronising exposition of their complex philosophy… Tender, incisive and fair’ Daily Telegraph‘Quirky, funny, clear and passionate… Few writers are as good as Bakewell at explaining complicated ideas in a way that makes them easy to understand’ Mail on Sunday
The English Dane: From King of Iceland to Tasmanian Convict
by Sarah BakewellThis gripping nineteenth-century adventure stars Jorgen Jorgenson, who ran away to sea at fourteen and began a brilliant career by sailing to establish the first colony in Tasmania. Twists of fortune then found him captaining a warship for Napoleon before joining a British trading voyage to Iceland, where he staged an outrageous coup and ruled the country for two months.Much lay ahead, from imprisonment in the hulks to patronage by Joseph Banks and travels in Europe as a British spy. But Jorgenson was dogged by his own excesses, and ended up transported as a convict to the very colony he helped to found. Here he reinvented himself again as an explorer, and, despite his sympathy for the people, was caught up in the terrible Aboriginal clearances. Using unpublished sources and letters, Sarah Bakewell tells his astonishing tale with dazzling verve.
How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer (Playaway Adult Nonfiction Ser.)
by Sarah BakewellHow to get on well with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love? How to live? This question obsessed Renaissance nobleman Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-92), who wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. Into these essays he put whatever was in his head: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog's ears twitched when it was dreaming, events in the appalling civil wars raging around him. The Essays was an instant bestseller, and over four hundred years later, readers still come to him in search of companionship, wisdom and entertainment - and in search of themselves. This first full biography of Montaigne in English for nearly fifty years relates the story of his life by way of the questions he posed and the answers he explored.
Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Enquiry and Hope
by Sarah Bakewell***AS READ ON RADIO 4***The bestselling, prizewinning author of How to Live and At the Existentialist Café explores 700 years of writers, thinkers, scientists and artists, all trying to understand what it means to be truly human.'I can't imagine a better history' PHILIP PULLMAN * 'Fascinating, moving, funny' OLIVER BURKEMANIf you are reading this, it's likely you already have some affinity with humanism, even if you don't think of yourself in those terms. You may be drawn to literature and the humanities. You may prefer to base your moral choices on fellow-feeling and responsibility to others rather than on religious commandments. Or you may simply believe that individual lives are more important than grand political visions or dogmas.If any of these apply, you are part of a long tradition of humanist thought, and you share that tradition with many extraordinary individuals through history who have put rational enquiry, cultural richness, freedom of thought and a sense of hope at the heart of their lives.Humanly Possible introduces us to some of these people, as it asks what humanism is and why it has flourished for so long, despite opposition from fanatics, mystics and tyrants. It is a book brimming with ideas, personalities and experiments in living - from Erasmus to Esperanto, from anatomists to agnostics, from Christine de Pizan to Bertrand Russell to Zora Neale Hurston. It joyfully celebrates open-mindedness, optimism, freedom and the power of the here and now - humanist values which have helped steer us through dark times in the past, and which are just as urgently needed in our world today.PRAISE FOR SARAH BAKEWELL'S BOOKS'Quirky, funny, clear and passionate . . . Few writers are as good as Bakewell at explaining complicated ideas' Mail on Sunday'A wonderfully readable combination of biography, philosophy, history, cultural analysis and personal reflection' Independent'Splendidly conceived and exquisitely written' Sunday Times'A rare achievement' Evening Standard
The Smart: The True Story Of Margaret Caroline Rudd And The Unfortunate Perreau Brothers
by Sarah BakewellThe Smart is a true drama of eighteenth-century life with a mercurial, mysterious heroine. Caroline is a young Irishwoman who runs off to marry a soldier, comes to London and slides into a glamorous life as a high-class prostitute, a great risk-taker, possessing a mesmerising appeal. In the early 1770s, she becomes involved with the intriguing Perreau twins, identical in looks but opposite in character, one a sober merchant, the other a raffish gambler. They begin forging bonds, living in increasing luxury until everything collapses like a house of cards - and forgery is a capital offence. A brilliantly researched and marvellously evocative history, The Smart is full of the life of London streets and shots through with enduring themes - sex, money, death and fame. It bridges the gap between aristocracy and underworld as eighteenth-century society is drawn into the most scandalous financial sting of the age.
The Fall of Reza Shah: The Abdication, Exile, and Death of Modern Iran’s Founder
by Shaul BakhashReza Shah's authoritarian and modernising reign transformed Iran, but his rule and Iran's independence ended in ignominy in 1941. In this book, Shaul Bakhash tells the full story of the Anglo-Soviet invasion which led to his forced abdication, drawing upon previously unused sources to reveal for the first time that the British briefly, but seriously, toyed with the idea of doing away altogether with the ruling Pahlavis and considered reinstalling on the throne a little-regretted previous dynasty. Bakhash charts Reza Shah's final journey through Iran and into his unhappy exile; his life in exile, his reminiscences; his testy relationship with the British in Mauritius and Johannesburg; and the circumstances of his death. Additionally, it reveals the immense fortune Reza Shah amassed during his years in power, his finances in exile, and the drawn-out dispute over the settlement of his estate after his death. A significant contribution to the literature on Reza Shah and British imperialism as it played out in the case of one critical country during World War II, the book reveals the fraught relationship between a once powerful ruler in his final days and the British government at a critical moment in recent history.
The Fall of Reza Shah: The Abdication, Exile, and Death of Modern Iran’s Founder
by Shaul BakhashReza Shah's authoritarian and modernising reign transformed Iran, but his rule and Iran's independence ended in ignominy in 1941. In this book, Shaul Bakhash tells the full story of the Anglo-Soviet invasion which led to his forced abdication, drawing upon previously unused sources to reveal for the first time that the British briefly, but seriously, toyed with the idea of doing away altogether with the ruling Pahlavis and considered reinstalling on the throne a little-regretted previous dynasty. Bakhash charts Reza Shah's final journey through Iran and into his unhappy exile; his life in exile, his reminiscences; his testy relationship with the British in Mauritius and Johannesburg; and the circumstances of his death. Additionally, it reveals the immense fortune Reza Shah amassed during his years in power, his finances in exile, and the drawn-out dispute over the settlement of his estate after his death. A significant contribution to the literature on Reza Shah and British imperialism as it played out in the case of one critical country during World War II, the book reveals the fraught relationship between a once powerful ruler in his final days and the British government at a critical moment in recent history.
Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva
by Janaki BakhleA monumental intellectual history of the pivotal figure of Hindu nationalismVinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) was an intellectual, ideologue, and anticolonial nationalist leader in India&’s struggle for independence from British colonial rule, one whose anti-Muslim writings exploited India&’s tensions in pursuit of Hindu majority rule. Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva is the first comprehensive intellectual history of one of the most contentious political thinkers of the twentieth century.Janaki Bakhle examines the full range of Savarkar&’s voluminous writings in his native language of Marathi, from political and historical works to poetry, essays, and speeches. She reveals the complexities in the various positions he took as a champion of the beleaguered Hindu community, an anticaste progressive, an erudite if polemical historian, a pioneering advocate for women&’s dignity, and a patriotic poet. This critical examination of Savarkar&’s thought shows that Hindutva is as much about the aesthetic experiences that have been attached to the idea of India itself as it is a militant political program that has targeted the Muslim community in pursuit of power in postcolonial India.By bringing to light the many legends surrounding Savarkar, Bakhle shows how this figure from a provincial locality in colonial India rose to world-historical importance. Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva also uncovers the vast hagiographic literature that has kept alive the myth of Savarkar as a uniquely brave, brilliant, and learned revolutionary leader of the Hindu nation.
Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva
by Janaki BakhleA monumental intellectual history of the pivotal figure of Hindu nationalismVinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) was an intellectual, ideologue, and anticolonial nationalist leader in India&’s struggle for independence from British colonial rule, one whose anti-Muslim writings exploited India&’s tensions in pursuit of Hindu majority rule. Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva is the first comprehensive intellectual history of one of the most contentious political thinkers of the twentieth century.Janaki Bakhle examines the full range of Savarkar&’s voluminous writings in his native language of Marathi, from political and historical works to poetry, essays, and speeches. She reveals the complexities in the various positions he took as a champion of the beleaguered Hindu community, an anticaste progressive, an erudite if polemical historian, a pioneering advocate for women&’s dignity, and a patriotic poet. This critical examination of Savarkar&’s thought shows that Hindutva is as much about the aesthetic experiences that have been attached to the idea of India itself as it is a militant political program that has targeted the Muslim community in pursuit of power in postcolonial India.By bringing to light the many legends surrounding Savarkar, Bakhle shows how this figure from a provincial locality in colonial India rose to world-historical importance. Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva also uncovers the vast hagiographic literature that has kept alive the myth of Savarkar as a uniquely brave, brilliant, and learned revolutionary leader of the Hindu nation.
Mother of the Church: Sofia Svechina, the Salon, and the Politics of Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Russia and France (NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies)
by Tatyana BakhmetyevaSofia Petrovna Svechina (1782–1857), better known as Madame Sophie Swetchine, was the hostess of a famous nineteenth-century Parisian salon. A Russian émigré, Svechina moved to France with her husband in 1816. She had recently converted to Roman Catholicism, and the salon she opened acquired a distinctly religious character. It quickly became one of the most popular salons in Paris and was a meeting place for the French intellectual Catholic elite and members of the Liberal Catholic movement. As a salonniére, Svechina developed close friendships with some of the most noted public figures in the Liberal Catholic movement. Her involvement with her guests went deeper than the typical salonniére's. She was a mentor, spiritual counselor, and intellectual advisor to many distinguished Parisian men and women, and her influence extended beyond the walls of her salon into the public world of politics and ideas. In this fascinating biography, Tatyana Bakhmetyeva seeks to understand the creative process that informed Svechina's life and examines her subject in the context of nineteenth-century thought and letters. It will appeal to educated readers interested in European and Russian history, the history of Catholicism, and women's history.
The Family Of Abraham: Jewish, Christian, And Muslim Interpretations
by Carol Bakhos"Abrahamic religions" has gained currency in scholarly and ecumenical circles as a way to refer to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Carol Bakhos steps back from the convention to ask: What is Abrahamic about these three faiths? She challenges references to Judaism and Islam as sibling religions and warns against uncritical adoption of the term.