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The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain
In this selection from over twenty years of reporting and writing, Ian Jack sets out to deal with contemporary Britain - from national disasters to football matches to obesity - but is always drawn back in time, vexed by the question of what came first. In 'Women and Children First', watching the film Titanic leads into an investigation into the legend of Wallace Henry Hartley, the famous band leader of the doomed liner, while 'The 12.10 to Leeds', a magnificent report on the Hatfield rail crash, begins its hunt for clues in the eighteenth century in the search for those responsible. Further afield, he finds vestiges of a vanished Britain in the Indian subcontinent, meeting characters like maverick English missionary and linguist William Carey, credited with importing India's first steam engine. Full of the style, knowledge and intimacy that makes his work so special, this collection is the perfect introduction to the work of one of the country's finest writers.
Dancing in the Streets
The classic Glasgow Memoir with a new introduction by Tom Morton This is Clifford Hanley's vibrant, unsentimental and hilarious account of growing up in the 1920s and '30s, and his later working life as a radio broadcaster and journalist. His razor-sharp observations and anecdotes cover many topics, from family life, art and showbiz to politics, sex, TB and what it was like to be a conscientious objector during the Second World War. But even the most bittersweet stories are leavened with humour, and the irrepressible Glasgow spirit always shines through. 'Hanley writes with consistent relish for his native city . . . captures Glasgow and its people nonchalantly and unfussily' – Ian Jack, The Guardian 'Like a portal into a vanished Glasgow, but one where the city, its people – their foibles, hopes, humour and warmth – are instantly familiar' – Norry Wilson, Lost Glasgow
Figments of Reality
Popular science tour de force from bestselling authors, on evolution of intelligence, culture and mind.
The New Enclosure
How public land has been stolen from us. Much has been written about Britain's trailblazing post-1970s privatization program, but the biggest privatization of them all has until now escaped scrutiny: the privatization of land. Since Margaret Thatcher took power in 1979, and hidden from the public eye, about 10 per cent of the entire British land mass, including some of its most valuable real estate, has passed from public to private hands. Forest land, defence land, health service land and above all else local authority land- for farming and school sports, for recreation and housing - has been sold off en masse. Why? How? And with what social, economic and political consequences? The New Enclosure provides the first ever study of this profoundly significant phenomenon, situating it as a centrepiece of neoliberalism in Britain and as a successor programme to the original eighteenth-century enclosures. With more public land still slated for disposal, the book identifies the stakes and asks what, if anything, can and should be done.
Wheelers
In the year 2270, with travel to the nearby planets well established, a bizarre discovery is made on Callisto, the eighth moon of Jupiter. Dozens upon dozens of strange wheeled artifacts-wheelers-are found buried beneath the icy surface. No one knows what they were used for and who left them in our solar system. At the same time, it is discovered that the moons of Jupiter have moved from their age-old positions. A quickly formed expedition finds that Jupiter is inhabited by a race of balloon-like aliens, who defend their world against comet strikes by moving their moons using gravitational technology. This time, though, their redirection is aiming an incoming comet directly at Earth! Communication at first proves impossible, but an Earth child who has an intuitive understanding of animal behavior becomes the key to contacting them-and joining forces with them to save the world.
Bonnie Jack
From the acclaimed author of the internationally bestselling Ava Lee novels, a bold and captivating new novel about a search for lost family and the cost of keeping secrets. As a boy, Jack Anderson was abandoned by his mother in a Glasgow movie theatre. Now living in the United States and facing his impending retirement, Jack and his wife Anne travel to Scotland to track down his long-lost sister. Their journey takes them from their home in a quiet Boston suburb to the impoverished mill towns of Ayrshire, the gray cobbled streets of Glasgow, and the majestic Scottish Highlands. Along the way, Jack gets entangled in local affairs and must confront uncomfortable truths about family, legacy, and the wife he thought he knew. Bonnie Jack, the first stand-alone novel by acclaimed author Ian Hamilton, is a compelling story about the importance of family, self-discovery, and the lengths we go to protect the ones we love.
Damn You England
Well-known playwright and acerbic wit, John Osborne was a man of trenchant opinions which he was unafraid to express. Ranging from his infamous 1961 letter to Tribune which provides the book with its title to columns written in the last decade of his life, the prose on offer here bear witness to the rage, fury - and great tenderness - that inspired so much of his work.
The Granta Book of India
The Granta Book of India brings together, for the first time, evocative, personal and informative pieces from previous editions of Granta magazine on the experiences of Indian life, culture and politics, including extracts from the highly successful Granta 57: India! The Golden Jubilee. Included are: Suketu Mehta on Mumbai; Chitra Banerji's 'What Bengali Widows Cannot Eat'; Mark Tully on his childhood in Calcutta; Ian Jack's 'Unsteady People' - on unexpected parallels between Bihar and Britain; Urvashi Butalia on tracing her long-lost uncle; a poem by Salman Rushdie about the fatwa; Ramachandra Guha's 'What We Think of America'; Nirad Chaudhuri writing on his 100th birthday; Rory Stewart among the dervishes of Pakistan; Pankaj Mishra on the making of jihadis in Pakistan; as well as fiction by R. K. Narayan, Amit Chaudhuri and Nell Freudenberger.
The Granta Book of Reportage
Since its relaunch in 1979, Granta magazine has championed the art and craft of reportage - journalism marked by vivid description, a novelist's eye to form and eyewitness reporting that reveals hidden truths about people and events that have shaped the world we know. This new edition of The Granta Book of Reportage collects a dozen of the finest and most lasting pieces Granta has published. Featuring distinguished writers and reporters - John Simpson, James Fenton, Martha Gellhorn, Germaine Greer, Ryszard Kapuscinski, John le Carre, as well as new talents Elana Lappin, Suketu Mehta and Wendell Steavenson - the book covers some of the signal events of our time: the fall of Saigon, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the massacre in Tiananmen Square and the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq.
The Jack Harvey Novels
WITCH HUNT, BLEEDING HEARTS, BLOOD HUNT: Three thrillers by mega-seller Ian Rankin, writing as Jack Harvey ¿Rankin¿s ability to create a credible character, delivering convincing dialogue to complement sinister and hard-hitting plots against vividly detailed atmosphere, is simply awesome¿ Time Out ¿His fiction buzzes with energy ¿ Essentially he is a romantic storyteller in the tradition of Robert Louis Stevenson ¿ His prose is as vivid and terse as the next man¿s yet its flexibility and rhythm give it a potential for lyrical expression which is distinctively Rankin¿s own ¿ Rankin controls the material with extraordinary authority and even delicacy ¿ Rankin ranks alongside P.D. James and Michael Dibdin as Britain¿s finest detective novelist¿ Scotland on Sunday ¿Rankin¿s prose is understated, yet his canvas of Scotland¿s criminal underclass has a panoramic breadth. His ear for dialogue is as sharp as a switchblade. This is, quite simply, crime writing of the highest order¿ Daily Express
