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'My first English lesson was grammar with the terrifying Mrs Petrie. She spent the entire time marching up and down the classroom, thwacking various items of school furniture with a ruler while she banged on about the ING part of the verb. I sat there, vibrating with fear, desperately trying to figure out what on earth she could mean. Irregular Negative Gerund? Intransitive Nominative Genitive? It was only years later, when I was teaching English to foreign students, that I realised that English grammar wasn't obscure and wilfully difficult but a fascinating subject which I was already brilliant at - and this book will prove that you are too.' Forget the little you think you know about Engli...
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Nearly two decades after a crowd of schoolfriends in Scotland disbanded their regular Friday Night Club, it has reconvened - in London this time. At the centre, again, is Rob - now a man of means, a man about town, and a man of mystery. The story is told by the other members of the revived Friday Night Club, three men who spin round in Rob's orbit. There's Ian, a hippy hedonist who has returned to Britain after wandering around Europe, teaching English and seducing women. There's Graham, freelance illustrator and aspiring artist, struggling to cope with the ghost of an ex, a flagging career and the lure of strong drink. And there's Alastair, whose shyness accounts for his nervous cough and his ability to attract nicknames, but only partly explains why he hasn't had sex since the Eighties.
Nearly two decades after a crowd of schoolfriends in Scotland disbanded their regular Friday Night Club, it has reconvened - in London this time. At the centre, again, is Rob - now a man of means, a man about town, and a man of mystery. The story is told by the other members of the revived Friday Night Club, three men who spin round in Rob's orbit. There's Ian, a hippy hedonist who has returned to Britain after wandering around Europe, teaching English and seducing women. There's Graham, freelance illustrator and aspiring artist, struggling to cope with the ghost of an ex, a flagging career and the lure of strong drink. And there's Alastair, whose shyness accounts for his nervous cough and his ability to attract nicknames, but only partly explains why he hasn't had sex since the Eighties.
An outstanding collection of football writing - edited by Nick Hornby, author of the bestselling Fever Pitch Roddy Doyle's account of the Republic of Ireland's triumphant journey through Italia '90 is just one of the many first-class pieces in this anthology of original football writing. Contributors include: Roddy Doyle, Harry Pearson, Harry Ritchie, Ed Horton, Olly Wicken, D.J. Taylor, Huw Richards, Nick Hornby, Chris Pierson, Matt Nation, Graham Brack, Don Watson and Giles Smith.
When redundancy comes for Ewan it's not too bad. It's the company he built up himself that he's leaving, and, having left his wife at almost the same time, he finds himself with a lot of money and a lot of time. He buys a flat in Dalston and settles down to watch a lot of television. His next door neighbour helps him to smoke a lot of dope, and his best friend Russell helps him to meet a lot of women. For Richard redundancy is a different story, and something that he can’t see coming as he trundles into work each day at his dreary construction-business trade magazine. He dotes on his baby son and his (sometimes less than adoring) wife. What can link these two strangely compulsive – and compelling – characters as they take their individual journeys through modern manhood – and modern London? THE THIRD PARTY is both wonderfully funny and deeply moving, a brilliantly observed comedy of manners for our times.
Why are we all so hostile? So quick to take offence? Truly we are living in the age of outrage. A series of apparently random murders draws amiable, old-school Detective Mick Matlock into a world of sex, politics, reality TV and a bewildering kaleidoscope of opposing identity groups. Lost in a blizzard of hashtags, his already complex investigation is further impeded by the fact that he simply doesn’t ‘get’ a single thing about anything anymore. Meanwhile, each day another public figure confesses to having ‘misspoken’ and prostrates themselves before the judgement of Twitter. Begging for forgiveness, assuring the public “that is not who I am”. But if nobody is who they are anymore - then who the f##k are we? Ben Elton returns with a blistering satire of the world as it fractures around us. Get ready for a roller-coaster thriller, where nothing - and no one - is off limits.
Harry Ritchie takes a trip around the vestiges of the British Empire—the last pink bits on the world map—belatedly attempting to answer the question asked by George V—How is the Empire?
Audere, agere, auferre. To dare, to strive, to conquer. For generations, privileged young men have attended St. Oswald's Grammar School for Boys, groomed for success by the likes of Roy Straitley, the eccentric Classics teacher who has been a fixture there for more than thirty years. But this year the wind of unwelcome change is blowing. Suits, paperwork, and information technology are beginning to overshadow St. Oswald's tradition, and Straitley is finally, and reluctantly, contemplating retirement. He is joined this term by five new faculty members, including one who -- unbeknownst to Straitley and everyone else -- holds intimate and dangerous knowledge of St. Oswald's ways and secrets. Ha...
A guide to wild flower propagation and cultivation based on ten years of pioneering research at the North Carolina Botanical Garden.