Ebury Press British Woodland. How to explore the secret world of our forests Mears Ray

What happens on the pitch is only half the story • Being a footballer is not just kicking a ball about with twenty-one other people on a big grass rectangle. Sometimes being a footballer is about accidentally becoming best mates with Mickey Rourke, or understanding why spitting is considered football’s most heinous crime • In How to be a Footballer, Peter Crouch took us into a world of bad tattoos and even worse haircuts, a world where you’re on the pitch one minute, spending too much money on a personalised number plate the next. In I, Robot, he lifts the lid even further on the beautiful game. We will learn about Gareth Bale’s magic beans, the Golden Rhombus of Saturday night entertainment, and why Crouchy’s dad walks his dog wearing an England tracksuit from 2005

Resident: I feel I want to keep talking • Me: Of course! What do you want to talk about? • Resident: My heart • Me: What about your heart? • Resident: I feel I want to touch it • Me: Your heart? You want to touch your heart? • Resident: Yes, but I'm too frightened • Me: What are you frightened about? • Resident: Everything. People. Things • Me: What's frightening you at this very moment? • Resident: (Closes eyes). That I'll never be touched again. That I won't be able to get to my heart • Me: Metaphorically? • Resident: More carrots please • Whether he's initiating a coup d'etat against new regulations with the residents, or forging a bond with the 98-year old who once called him a fat slut, Pope Lonergan's work is infinitely varied. This no-holds-barred account shows what life inside a care home is really like, for both residents and carers

There may be no insect with a worse reputation than the wasp, and none guarding so many undiscovered wonders • Where bees and ants have long been the darlings of the insect world, wasps are much older, cleverer and more diverse. They are the bee’s evolutionary ancestors – flying 100 million years earlier – and today they are just as essential for the survival of our environment. A bee, ecologist Professor Seirian Sumner argues, is just a wasp that has forgotten how to hunt • For readers of Entangled Life, Other Minds and The Gospel of Eels, this is a book to upturn your expectations about one overlooked animal and the wider architecture of our natural world • With endless surprises, this book might teach you about the wasps that spend their entire lives sealed inside a fig, about stinging wasps, about parasitic wasps, about wasps that turn cockroaches into living zombies, about how wasps taught us to make paper

Did you know that pigs frequently throw tantrums? • That chickens are capable of complex communication? • That sheep know their own names? • That cows grieve when their calves are taken away from them? • Jeffrey Masson delves deep into the mysterious world of farm animals and reveals just how sophisticated these creatures truly are - capable of joy, sadness, love and friendship - just like us

The story of a visionary British surgeon whose quest to unite science and medicine delivered us into the modern world - the safest time to be alive in human history • In The Butchering Art, historian Lindsey Fitzharris recreates a critical turning point in the history of medicine, when Joseph Lister transformed surgery from a brutal, harrowing practice to the safe, vaunted profession we know today • Victorian operating theatres were known as 'gateways of death', Fitzharris reminds us, since half of those who underwent surgery didn't survive the experience. This was an era when a broken leg could lead to amputation, when surgeons often lacked university degrees, and were still known to ransack cemeteries to find cadavers. While the discovery of anaesthesia somewhat lessened the misery for patients, ironically it led to more deaths, as surgeons took greater risks

For those fascinated by neurology and for fans of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat comes a powerful exploration of the mind during night time. Here are the mysteries of sleep, explained – from known conditions to the extreme • World-renowned neurologist and sleep expert, Doctor Guy Leschziner, takes you through various sleep conditions and how they arise and affect people. Insomnia, narcolepsy, night terrors and apnoea are just some of the conditions afflicting those struggling with sleep • Then there are the extreme cases • The people frighten into paralysis by hallucinations. The woman in a state of deep sleep who gets dressed and goes for a drive. The teenager with ‘Sleeping Beauty Syndrome’, stuck in a cycle of excessive unconsciousness

"Тайный мир растений. Рассказы о более чем 100 замечательных цветах, деревьях и семенах" - это вечная сокровищница из более чем 100 историй из невероятного царства растений, рассказанных автором и экспертом по природе Беном Хором • Растения встречаются почти повсюду на Земле, но для многих людей их жизнь остается загадкой. Узнайте, как цветет морская трава под водой, как венерина мухоловка рассчитывает, чтобы наверняка поймать свою добычу, и почему некоторые тюльпаны раньше стоили дороже дома! Эта увлекательная книга для детей исследует обширное царство растений и объясняет, как устроены растения, а также странные и чудесные отношения, которые они связывают с животными • Книга на английском языке • A timeless treasury of more than 100 stories from the incredible kingdom of plants, told by author and nature expert Ben Hoare

The hilarious tale of one podgy boy's dreams on the outside edge of a cricketing life from 'one of Britain's funniest writers' (Daily Mail) • A fat boy with a passion for sweets and a loathing for games, the young Michael Simkins finds in cricket a sport where size doesn't necessarily matter and a full-blown obsession is born. Now in middle-age, he still harbours the somewhat deluded belief that the England middle-order might usefully benefit from his hard-earned skills. From impromptu Test series played with his dad in the family sweetshop through to his years running a team of dysfunctional inadequates, Fatty Batter is the bestselling and hilarious story of one man's life lived through cricket

Longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award • Simon Timson and Chelsea Warr were the Performance Directors of UK Sport, tasked with the outrageous objective of delivering even greater success to Team GB and ParalympicsGB at Rio than in 2012. Something no other host nation had ever achieved in the next Games • In The Talent Lab, Owen Slot brings unique access to Team GB’s intelligence, sharing for the first time the incredible breakthroughs and insights they discovered that often extend way beyond sport. Using lessons from organisations as far afield as the Yehudi Menuhin School of Music, the NFL Draft, the Royal College of Surgeons and the SAS, it shows how talent can be discovered, created, shaped and sustained • Charting the success of the likes of Chris Hoy, Max Whitlock, Adam Peaty, Ed Clancy, Lizzy Yarnold, Dave Henson, Tom Daley, Jessica Ennis-Hill, Katherine Grainger, the Brownlee Brothers, Helen Glover, Anthony Joshua and the women’s hockey team, The Talent Lab tells just how it was done and how any team, business or individual might learn from it

Demystify the world of whisky • Whisky experts Nick Morgan and The Whisky Exchange open the lid on the whisky industry, revealing what makes one of the world's simplest spirits just so popular. Everything You Need to Know About Whisky will answer all of your burning questions; from what makes the perfect scotch and how to drink it like a pro to an exploration of distilleries around the world and their fascinating (often scandalous) histories • This indispensable guide is filled with insider tips on finding your new favourite bottle and brewing up the very best whisky based cocktails - essential reading for all whisky fans, novices and experts alike

"It's ok to be scared, to feel lonely... we'll get through it, because we have to." • For more than 40 years Linda and Anne have performed side by side as members of iconic Irish girl group The Nolans. But in 2020 the sisters sat next to each other for a very different experience. Soon after returning home from filming their hit TV series The Nolans Go Cruising, with their sisters Coleen and Maureen, Linda and Anne received devastating cancer diagnoses within days of each other and soon began gruelling rounds of chemotherapy together. It was a stark reminder of how cruel life can be and, of course, of their beloved sister Bernie, who also faced and lost the same battle • Stronger Together is Linda and Anne's story. A reflection on their close-knit relationship, in the limelight and behind the scenes, and of how family helped them hold it all together when things got tough