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If you've ever been in a Wetherspoon's (and who hasn't), you've probably looked down and noticed the brilliantly-hued carpet beneath your feet. But that carpet isn't just for disguising spilt drinks...Each Wetherspoon has a carpet that is unique and bespoke, with a design inspired by the history of the building, its locale or the name of the pub. Thanks to the hit blog 'Wetherspoon's Carpets' - which posed the important question 'are any two Wetherspoon carpets the same?' - these tapestried hymns to British boozers have become a cultural sensation. Now, Kit Caless has travelled the length and breadth of the UK, from Berkshire to Renfrewshire, Bradford to Bridgend, to photograph over 70 splendid carpets from Wetherspoons and meet some of the pubs' regulars. Each entry appears in all its glorious colour, along with Caless' witty and informative text on the inspiration for each carpet's design, the history of the pub and key facts about the branch and its regulars.
An Unreliable Guide to London brings together 23 stories about the lesser known parts of a world renowned city. Stories that stretch the reader's definition of the truth and question reality. Stories of wind nymphs in South Clapham tube station, the horse sized swan at Brentford Ait, sleeping clinics in N1 and celebrations for St Margaret's Day of the Dead. Taking its cue from travel guides, London histories and books like Tired of London, Tired of Life, An Unreliable Guide to London shakes up the canon of London writing with a tongue firmly rooted in its cheek. An Unreliable Guide to London is the perfect summer read for city dwellers up and down the country. With a list of contributors reflecting the multilayered, complex social structures of the city, it is the guide to London, showing you everything that you never knew existed.
How The Light Gets In is the first collection from award winning short story writer and novelist, Clare Fisher. A book of very short stories that explores the spaces between light and dark and how we find our way from one to the other. From buffering Skype chats and the truth about beards, to fried chicken shops and the things smartphones make you less likely to do when alone in a public place, Fisher paints a complex, funny and moving portrait of contemporary British life.
'One of the most interesting and original young British writers about landscape, culture and people that I know; consistently adventurous in his explorations of place as a novelist, essayist, critic and film-makers.' – Robert Macfarlane 'Adam Scovell is an archaeologist of the imagination, forever unearthing stories like treasure from the soil, raising ghosts, finding links and shining a flickering light into England's hidden corners.' – Benjamin Myers It is the first day of term at a secondary school on Merseyside, 2001. The Towers are soon to fall. A boy cowers in an alleyway, surrounded by a group clad in black. They whip his bare legs with nettles. This is only the start. As term unf...
'CENSUS is a vital testament to selfless love; a psalm to commonplace miracles; and a mysterious evolving metaphor. So kind, it aches.' David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas A father and son who are census takers journey across a nameless country from the town of A to the town of Z in the wake of the father's fatal diagnosis. Knowing that his time is menacingly short, the father takes his son, who requires close and constant adult guidance, on this trip of indefinite length. Their feelings for each other are challenged and bolstered as they move in and out of a variety of homes, meeting a variety of different people. Census is about the ways in which people react to the son's condition, to the son as a person in the world. It is about discrimination and acceptance, kindness and art, education and love. It is a profoundly moving novel, glowing with wisdom and grace, roaring with a desire to change the world.
Acquired for Development By is an anthology of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by 25 writers with 25 different perspectives on a rapidly changing area of London. From gentification to supermarket sandwiches, Turkish Alevism to inner city river living, middle-class civil war to pylon romance, this collection captures an alternative, insightful and sometimes bizarre take on modern London life. Featuring work by Lee Rourke, Molly Naylor, Siddartha Bose, Gavin James Bower, Laura Oldfield Ford, Nell Frizzell, Tim Burrows and many more.
A GRANTA BEST YOUNG BRITISH NOVELIST 2023 WINNER OF THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE 2018 ‘The real inexplicable gorgeous brilliant thing’ MAX PORTER 'She has arrived in a class of her own' SARAH PERRY 'Funny, playful and utterly bravura' MELISSA HARRISON
'There's a trick to time. You can make it expand or you can make it contract. Make it shorter or make it longer . . .' Some moments you want to last forever. Some moments shape a life. For Mona, it's the joy of playing on a Wexford beach as a young girl, next to her family's cottage overlooking the Irish sea. The thrill of moving to Birmingham with a new job and a room of her own in a busy boarding-house. Meeting the love of her life; a whirlwind marriage; a sudden, tragic loss. But now, decades later, Mona is determined to find happiness before it's too late. She knows that every moment is precious. But can we ever let go of the past that shaped us? 'Devastatingly emotional. De Waal's storytelling gives us the poetry and sorrow of life itself' Financial Times 'Weaving tragedy and joy, big themes and the minutiae of life, this is a love story to take on the classics' Emerald Street 'An emotionally sure-handed novel exploring harrowing terrain with deft sensitivity' Sunday Times
“Crime fiction with a difference. . . . A novel full of layers and depth, focusing on class and corruption in India with compassion and complexity.” —Sanjida Kay, author of My Mother’s Secret The acclaimed author of the Blue Mumbai Thrillers, including The Blue Bar and The Blue Monsoon, burst onto the crime fiction scene with this debut novel, which has been optioned by Endemol Shine India for a multi-part drama series. You Beneath Your Skin captures New Delhi in all its cosmopolitan complexity—from its streets to its mansions, its petty thieves to its high-ranking officials—as a serial killer stalks its most vulnerable women. Anjali Morgan is the mother of an autistic teenage so...
A novel set in the 60's by a writer who lived through them.