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A collection of the best Guardian columns by a much-loved writer spanning 52 years; a touching and wide-ranging chronicle of the life of the Lake District; appeal to both the outdoor and the nostalgia market; published in the same collectable small hardback format as Aurum's highly successful Byron Rogers collections like An Audience with an Elephant; major promotion in the pages of the Guardian; Martin Wainwright keen to promote the book through talks and signings. Second only to Allstair Cooke's Letter from America, Harry Griffin's 'Country Diary' column for the Guardian was the longest-running regular feature in the British media, running uninterrupted for some 52 years until his death in...
This work provides a comprehensive look at the author's years with the Coniston Tigers, one of the first climbing clubs in the Lake District. It talks of his climbing with the great names such as George Basterfield, G.S. Sansom and C.F. Holland, and captures daring exploits of climbing in the 1930s long before modern safeguards.
In a distinguished writing career lasting more than seventy years Harry Griffin reflected on and documented the landscape, history and people of his beloved Lake District. To mark his centenary year in 2011 this is a new selection of his previously uncollected writings on the mountains, on climbing and on the social history of the Lakes. It also includes passages from Music and Mountains, his unfinished and final manuscript which records both his experience as music critic of the Daily Mail in Manchester before and after the war where he met and heard many celebrated musicians and, more personally, recounts the importance of his own daily struggles with performance. It includes notes from his personal diaries of some of his fellwalking routes in Cumbria.
The 32 walks in this book vary considerably in length and effort required. They are all circular and start and finish at a recommended parking area. Interesting features along the route are described.
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The year is 1941, and Michael James is a struggling lawyer in war-torn London. His father, the eminent and highly regarded physician Charles James, is to be the recipient of a knighthood but dies of natural causes before he receives the honour. At the funeral Michael is approached by an old man Jonathon Sandpiper, who claims to have known his father when they were medical students at the London Hospital, Whitechapel, and relates that Michael will soon find out the truth and that he holds what is left of his life in his hands. His search to authenticate the truth unwittingly leads him into the world of corruption, trafficking, prostitution and espionage.
In the darkness before moonrise on the Atlantic Ocean off the African coast on August 21, 1940, the night erupted in a fusillade of bullets and shells. The victim was a stalwart English tramp steamer, Anglo-Saxon, part of the lifeline that was keeping besieged England supplied. The attacker was the Widder, a German surface raider, disguised as a neutral merchant ship. When it was near its prey, the raider unmasked its hidden armament and with overwhelming force destroyed the target ship. Only seven of the forty-one man crew of the Anglo-Saxon managed to get into a small boat and escape the raiders. Seventy days later, two of them, half dead, stumbled ashore in the Bahamas. The account of the...
Throughout its history the Guardian has had unparalleled access to mountaineers and climbers, and its coverage of the sport is second to none. From Edward Whymper's conquest of the Matterhorn in 1865 through to the first ever ascent of Everest in 1953, and on to the extreme climbing (and associated apparatus) that dominates the modern-day incarnation of the sport, the paper has chronicled every development with insight and intelligence. This beguiling collection draws together a selection of Guardian writing that is both informative and celebratory, tracking the sport's history and uncovering how public perception has changed over time. - Postings on how cigarettes 'aided breathing' on some of the earliest Everest expeditions - Victorian advice to 'lady climbers': 'Small rings should be sewn inside the seams of the skirt ... [so] that the whole dress may be drawn up at a moment's notice to the requisite height' - Articles on scrambling, fell-running, rock-climbing and rambling. Whether you're a serious mountaineer or a weekend rambler, On the Roof of the World is packed full of insights and stories that make it the perfect bedside companion.
Phil Tombs's wins almost a quarter of a million pounds. Many try to take for a ride and relieve him of his new found fortune, but Phil is no fool, and he makes an enterprising and amusing hero as he learns the social nuances and the power of money, going from one adventure to another with what has been described as ‘proletarian gusto’.
One of the most turbulent periods in the history of prairie agriculture is chronicled in a new book about the life and times of Alexander "Mac" Runciman, the Saskatchewan farmer who led the United Grain Growers as president from 1961 to 1981. Mac Runciman earned the respect and admiration on both sides of the great agriculture debates of the 1960s and 1970s from individual farmers to Pierre Trudeau, who offered Runciman a cabinet post in 1980 (Mac turned him down). Mac Runciman: A Life in the Grain Trade tells the story of how Runciman rose through the ranks of the UGG to play a central role in the fierce debates over the modernization of grain handling, subsidized freight rates, and the role of The Canadian Wheat Board. Runciman's reminiscences give new insights into the events and personalities of that critical period in Canadian agricultural history, a time in which the rural community began to question highly centralized and regulated marketing and transportation systems. The events and decisions of those years continue to reverberate in today's controversies over grain marketing and grain transportation.