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From the hopeful beginnings of Britains entry into the European project to the bitterness of Brexit, Continental Drift is a vivid, personal account of a political life spent at the heart of the European Parliament.As Europes longest-serving MEP, Bill Newton-Dunn offers a front-row view of the shifting tides in Britains often uneasy relationship with its continental neighbours. Spanning the four decades from 1979 to 2020, this lively memoir chronicles the currents of Euroscepticism, internal wranglings of UK delegations and the complex dance between Westminster and Brussels.But Continental Drift is more than political history: it is also rich with behind-the-scenes stories, sharp observations and colourful pen portraits of the characters who shaped Europe, from British premiers and fiery backbenchers to European visionaries and bureaucratic bruisers, not to mention impassioned Communists and rumoured Mafiosi. With dry wit and unsparing honesty, Newton-Dunn brings to life the dramas, debates and diplomatic showdowns that marked a turbulent era.Candid, compelling and frequently funny, Continental Drift is a timely reflection on Britains place in Europe and what was lost when the flag came down.

A story of faith, fanaticism, and the uncanny power of the imagination.The dawn of the Victorian era: the world is changing rapidly. Poverty and the workhouse cast long shadows across rural England, and a traditional way of life is coming to an end.In the villages and fields of Kent, the discontented find an unlikely champion in John Nicholls Tom. Calling himself Sir William Courtenay, he appears to the local magistrates and gentry as a madman, a charlatan, or a dangerous radical. But for the labouring people he is the New Messiah, come to lead them in a revolt against the forces of oppression, and to herald the end of the world.But equality and wealth redistribution are dangerous ideas, and in May 1838 Toms crusade ignites into bloody violence. The confrontation that follows will shock the country, and become known as the last battle ever fought on English soil.Mad Toms Rising presents an alternative vision of early Victorian England, as a place of mystical religious faith, riot and disturbance, surveillance and insecurity, arson and uproar. Drawing on original sources, it reconstructs the strange and astonishing events of that time, and the lives and experiences of those forever marked by them.

Henrietta Moraes first discovered Soho when she was eighteen or so she tells us. Her favourite sport was social climbing (heaven knows she enjoyed the exercise) and she was good at it, going to all the right parties and simply gate-crashing others. From the summit of the 1950s bohemian scene she surveyed the life and times of those who broke all the rules, such as the artists Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon (for whom she became a muse). But thats not all she did as a key counter-culture figure in the 1960s Chelsea Set, no other woman was more indefatigable in becoming a bohemian legend.Through Hen, youll learn how to steal your best friends boyfriend; enchant and ensnare a husband; blossom into a magnificent muse; dress like a comic book superhero; become a connoisseur of every illicit drug known to medical science and dose a Rolling Stones concert with them; join the caravan set and head along the gypsy trail in search of the Holy Grail, before rematerialising as the minder for a mind-blowing pop iconAlong the way youll indulge in the gentle art of cadging drinks; the feline felony of cat burglary; the canny craft of charity shop shoplifting and the haphazardness of steamy sex in second-hand bookshops.Hen, Mistress of Mayhem takes you to the epicentre of Sohos Golden Age; stage by stage it forms a complete guide to a hell-raising companion.

This is a book about maps and map-making, about power and class, and about war, seamanship and navigation. It is a study of wealth, patronage and money, in an England riven by religious disorder and toxic politics.Greenvile Collins (164394) was a naval warrant officer who caught the attention of a King. His seagoing career took him from Patagonia to the Arctic, into battles against Dutch men of war and Barbary corsairs, and to the slave markets and Silk Road ports of the Mediterranean. A scientific navigator, his professional drive drew him to Shetland, the Scilly Isles and all points in between, as he undertook the most ambitious hydrographic survey of the British coastline yet attempted.Then, even as he laboured to complete his monumental sea atlas, he was summoned yet again to the service of the Crown. The Glorious Revolution was a campaign of crisis for a deeply conflicted Royal Navy, and a crucial test of loyalty for Greenvile Collins and his fellow officers.

A revealing and controversial exposé of international white-collar crime.Alexander Lebedev continues his investigation of banksters (gangster-bankers) scams which he started in his autobiographical book, Hunt the Banker. Each chapter examines a different sophisticated fraudulent scheme whereby stolen billions are laundered in offshore tax havens and deposited in secret accounts with the major UK and US banks, invested in shares of blue-chip companies, and converted into mansions, yachts, private jets, works of art and luxury goods.The topics covered include the cheating of their customers by supposedly respectable financial institutions in Europe and America, their complicity in laundering illegal proceeds of corrupt officials from all over the world, the financial pyramid schemes of Bernie Madoff and other mega-fraudsters, and black holes in the charity universe.Lebedev investigates the phenomenon of the symbiosis of dirty money and the latest information technologies of the blockchain, which threatens the global financial system with a cryptocurrency apocalypse, and he describes the degradation of political elites inebriated by biased mainstream media and fake news stories.

Arabic erotic literature has a long and rich history, which goes back as far as the ninth century. Far from being the pursuit of prurient pornographers, eroticism and sexuality received considerable attention from scholars.Written by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201 - 1274), one of the leading scientists of the age, The Sultans Sex Potions is part of a relatively small group of works devoted to aphrodisiacs, as well as sexual stimulants, sexual practices and positions. Sober and measured in tone, the work was intended to be a manual, which would allow the patient to dispense with the services of a physician. Written at the request of the ruler, its potions, electuaries, syrups and enemas enjoyed a royal warrant of appointment to arouse the lust for coitus and enhance sexual potency.This bilingual volume includes a critical edition of three manuscripts (Berlin, Cairo and Glasgow) and is accompanied by a translation, as well as an introduction to Arabic erotic literature, a biography of the author and extensive indexes.

A fresh look at Labours greatest ever Prime Minister

Mary Boleyn has long been dismissed as the great and infamous whore - her story overshadowed by scandal and myth. But what if everything we thought we knew about her was wrong?Drawing on newly re-translated original sources and rare archival material, this ground-breaking book peels away centuries of rumour to reveal the true Mary Boleyn. Far from the reckless wanton of legend, she emerges as a woman of ambition, resilience, and intelligence. Through meticulous research and fresh analysis, this book challenges out-dated narratives, uncovering the real extent of Marys relationships with Henry VIII and Francis I, her role in the rise and fall of her younger sister Anne, and her life beyond the royal spotlight.This revelatory biography rewrites Mary Boleyns story - a must-read for Tudor history enthusiasts.

On 13 March 1996 Thomas Hamilton walked into the gym hall of a primary school in Dunblane armed with four legally owned handguns and in less than four minutes fired 105 bullets, killing 16 young children, their teacher and injuring many more. It was a crime that first shocked the world then changed the nation.Based on original archival research and exclusive interviews with parents, politicians and police, One Morning in March tells for the first time the incredible and powerful true story of how, in their darkest hour, a band of parents used their grief as fuel in a fight to forever ban handguns in Britain, and create the tightest gun laws in the world.

During the golden age of science, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, there was a dedicated drive to accurately categorise nature and explain the natural world. Many enthusiastic naturalists, amateur and professional, set off to collect and classify plants and animals across the New World, and many of these finds still bear the names of those who discovered them today.The Noble Quest, previously Sightseers & Scholars: Scientific Travellers in the Golden Age of Discovery, features a new introduction that considers the growing catastrophic trend in species extinction today. The nine important individuals featured in the book encompass early naturalists William Bartram and Alexander von Humboldt; inquisitive aristocrats Charles Waterton and Prince Maximilian of Wied; professional collectors David Douglas, John Kirk Townsend and John Richardson; and the last of the field naturalists Henry Walter Bates and John Wesley Powell. All faced great adventures and hardship as they undertook their groundbreaking work, which makes for great armchair travel today.

Como é possível que um aspirante a guitarrista sem dois dedos tenha inventado um gênero musical baseado justamente em riffs de guitarra? Em resumo, essa é a história de Tony Iommi, o pai fundador do

Una obra imprescindible para entender cómo la guerra ha conformado el mundo en que vivimos.La guerra ha desempeñado un papel trascendental en la historia, por lo que resulta difícil identificar algún campo de la actividad humana en el que no haya dejado su impronta de forma mas o menos acusada. Una historia habitualmente marcada por las ansias de poder y de riqueza y por la incapacidad de los gobiernos para resolver las crisis mediante la negociacion, pues, como insinuo Clausewitz hace dos siglos, la guerra es la mas patente manifestacion del fracaso de la politica.En este libro, Fernando Puellde la Villa un reconocido especialista en el ambito militar ofrece un analisis riguroso y accesible que recorre los principales hitos belicos de los ultimos seis siglos: desde las innovaciones tacticas que transformaron los imperios hasta las batallas que dejaron una profunda huella en generaciones enteras. Y se centra, en particular, en el papel clave que ha desempeñado España en muchos de esos avances militares, habitualmente ignorados.

A true story based on a false storyLate one night in February 2018, the award-winning Irish journalist Olaf Tyaransen returned home to find his name trending on Twitter.To his horror, he discovered that Brooke Magnanti - controversial author of the Belle de Jour books - had published an article accusing him of physically and sexually assaulting another woman a few years earlier.Tyaransen had never met Magnanti, and the woman in question had recently died in tragic circumstances. While the allegation was completely untrue, it was already going viral. Hundreds of people were rushing to judgement and sharing Magnantis article.In a painfully honest and compelling memoir, Tyaransen details the emotional, social and professional impact of that false accusation.His lacerating, unflinching account highlights the importance of due process, the mindless cruelty of crowds and the potentially fatal consequences of online vigilantism

The leading authority on our contemporary prime ministers Dominic Grieve, GuardianAfter almost a decade and a half of Tory rule, the 2024 General Election saw the Conservatives suffer their worst-ever defeat: they received 7.14 million fewer votes than in 2019; 23.7 per cent is their lowest ever vote share; and their current 121 MP contingent is their smallest since 1832. Meanwhile, the rise of Reform threatens the partys very existence.How did it all go wrong so quickly, following Boris Johnsons record-setting win in 2019?From taking office amidst the cost of living and energy supply crises and the panic caused by Liz Trusss disastrous mini-budget, through the agenda-dominating Ukraine and Gaza wars and the Rwanda Asylum Plan, to the stunning 2023 local election results, Sunak at 10 is the definitive and jaw-dropping window into Rishi Sunaks premiership.

Hannah Richell was lost in writing her new novel when the outside world finally broke in to tell her that her husband, Matt, had been killed in a surfing accident. This the story of the grief journey she travelled over the first two years of loss, but it is also an account of what happens beyond those early years, when time and distance have offered some perspective and healing.Not just a love letter to her late husband, but a love letter to the country that stole her heart, to motherhood, and to the healing power of creative endeavours. More than anything, its a story of recovery and hope.

Blending biography, memoir and art criticism, Fancy Work: Unpicking Past Lives explores the ever-shifting tensions between family, labour and gender through the history of embroidery, or fancy work. At the heart of the book is Alice Hattricks encounter with the embroidery designer May Morris and her circle: from her father William Morris to her mother Jane, an artists model and embroiderer herself, and M.F., Mays gender non-conforming partner for twenty years. Searching for guidance, Hattrick looks to Mays life alongside others who have found, in textiles, a means of resistance to understand better their own queer identity, family ties and fractious working conditions in an ableist society. In the ephemeral nature of textiles, Hattrick finds a mirror to archival research. How can the past help us to imagine alternative domestic circumstances and create unconstrained lives of our own, especially when not all traces remain? Expansive in thought, form and time, Fancy Work is a radical and thrilling work that reminds us that we can think differently, inviting us to place the needle in our own hands and stitch ourselves a loop in the chain.

In this vivid blend of memoir, nature writing and ecological thinking, Rebecca Tamás seeks new answers in old folk ways. Suffering from burn-out and grief both environmental and personal, Tamás sets out on a journey across the UK guided by the Pagan wheel of the year, marking each solstice, equinox and the midpoints between them with a ritual drawn from ancient traditions. From a confrontation with the sharp pains of winter at Samhain in Edinburgh to a giddy experience of collective joy at Padstows May Day, she finds in these traditional practices electric potential for transforming our relationship to the natural world and the flow of time. Intellectually penetrating and richly lyrical, The Book of Mysteries follows the drumbeat of seasonal ritual towards an immersion in the wild time of the earth. Ecstatic, radical and irreverent, this book is a rallying cry to wrest time away from the structures of work and capital, so as to encounter the life-giving mystery of the natural world.

Thanks to a thrown beer bottle and a fan letter to a P.O. box, Melissa Auf der Maurs first band scored an opening slot for the Smashing Pumpkins in her bohemian home town, Montreal. Sensing Melissas talent, Billy Corgan recommended her to Courtney Love. Whisked from her local scene, Melissa joined Hole just after the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Holes prior bassist, Kristen Pfaff, with the just-widowed Courtney Love at the centre of it all.That was only the beginning of Melissas journey through alternative rock, a trip she undertook alongside 90s luminaries including Rufus Wainwright, Michael Stipe and her former boyfriend, Dave Grohl. Even the Good Girls Will Cry is a vivid dispatch from the last analogue decade, capturing that bygone era in all its messy, angsty glory.

A line of pain runs through generations of families until one generation stops to question the ancestral forces behind the door. In Life & Fable Guislaine Vincent explores archetypal patterns in the ancestral background of her familys storytelling, peeling away the layers to discover a self in myth and fable. As the narrative unfolds, its the implacable presence of childhood that recurs, not only in events, but in how events reveal the self. Mektoub, my father would say: it is written. From a great grandfather found in the deserts of Syria and named after the monastery that takes him in to the pain of losing a child; from a childhood of 14 schools across multiple countries to training as a Jungian Psychoanalyst, this is a life story that asks deep questions about who we are and how we peel back reality to find the truth in fables. A story of resilience and the epiphany of how powerful it is to have a name.