Vintage books Ground Work. Writings on People and Places Dee Tim

These interlocking essays uncover art as an active force in the world - neither elitist or remote, present to those who want it, affecting even those who don't. Winterson's own passionate vision of art is presented here, provocatively and personally, in pieces on Modernism, autobiography, style, painting, the future of fiction, in two essays on Virginia Woolf, and more intimately in pieces where she describes her relationship to her work and the books that she loves

On 11 March 2011, a massive earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of north-east Japan. It was Japan’s greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki • Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, lived through the earthquake in Tokyo, and spent six years reporting from the epicentre. Learning about the lives of those affected through their own personal accounts, he paints a rich picture of the impact the tsunami had on day to day Japanese life • Heart-breaking and hopeful, this intimate account of a tragedy unveils the unique nuances of Japanese culture, the tsunami’s impact on Japan’s stunning and majestic landscape and the psychology of its people • Ghosts of the Tsunami is an award-winning classic of literary non-fiction

'Elegant and enjoyable...a thoughtful exploration of the twin delights of the piano and the Parisian life' Express on Sunday • T. E. Carhart, an American living in Paris, is intrigued by a piano repair shop hidden down a street near his apartment. When he finally gains admittance to the secretive world of the atelier, he finds himself in an enormous glass-roofed workshop filled with dozens of pianos. His love affair with this most magical of instruments and its music is reawakened • Packed with delicate cameos of Parisians and reflections on how pianos work and their glorious history, The Piano Shop on the Left Bank is an atmospheric and absorbing journey to an older way of life

In August 1914 the two greatest navies in the world confronted each other across the North Sea. At first there were skirmishes, then battles off the coasts of England and Germany and in the far corners of the world, including the Falklands. The British attempted to force the Dardanelles with battleships - which led to the Gallipoli catastrophe. As the stalemate on the ground on the Western Front continued, the German Navy released a last strike against the British 'ring of steel'. The result was Jutland, a titanic and brutal battle between dreadnoughts. The knowledge, understanding and literary power Robert K. Massie brings to this story is unparalleled. There will never again be a war like this in which seagoing monsters hurl shells at each other until one side is destroyed

A ground-breaking and beautifully written investigation into the Arctic Treeline with an urgent environmental message • The Arctic treeline is the frontline of climate change, where the trees have been creeping towards the pole for fifty years already • Scientists are only just beginning to understand the astonishing significance of these northern forests for all life on Earth. At the treeline, Rawlence witnesses the accelerating impact of climate change and the devastating legacies of colonialism and capitalism. But he also finds reasons for hope. Humans are creatures of the forest; we have always evolved with trees and The Treeline asks us where our co-evolution might take us next

Why We Drive is a rebellious and daring celebration of the human spirit and the competence of ordinary people by the bestselling author of The Case for Working with Your Hands • Once we were drivers on the open road • Today we are more often in the back seat of an Uber • As we hurtle toward a 'self-driving' future, are we destined to become passengers in our own lives too? • In Why We Drive, the philosopher and mechanic Matthew Crawford celebrates the risk, skill and freedom of driving. He reveals what we are losing to technology and government control in the modern world, and speaks up for play, dissent and occasionally being scared witless

A lieutenant writes of digging through bodies that have the consistency of Camembert cheese; a mother sends flower seeds to her son at the Front, hoping that one day someone may see them grow; a nurse tends a man back to health knowing he will be court-martialled and shot as soon as he is fit. Edited by the bestselling author of Birdsong and Dr Hope Wolf, this is an original and illuminating non-fiction anthology of writing on the First World War • Diaries, letters and memories, testaments from ordinary people whose lives were transformed, are set alongside extracts from names that have become synonymous with the war, such as Siegfried Sassoon and T.E. Lawrence. A Broken World is an original collection of personal and defining moments that offer an unprecedented insight into the Great War as it was experienced and as it was remembered

A satirical and daring collection of short stories exploring black life from one of America's rising stars • 'Makes you shake your head in delight... Her stories feel simultaneously like the poke of a stick and a comforting balm; a smack followed by a kiss. I’m so into it' Bim Adewunmi, Guardian • Heads of the Colored People interrogates our supposedly post-racial era to wicked and devastating effect, exposing the violence that threatens black Americans, no matter their apparent success • A teenager is insidiously bullied as her YouTube following soars; an assistant professor finds himself losing a subtle war against his office mate; a nurse is worn down by the demand for her skills as a funeral singer. And across a series of stories, a young woman grows up, negotiating and renegotiating her identity

A spellbinding travel book, exploring the psychology of walking, pilgrimage, solitude and escape • 'An extraordinary, dreamlike journey through West Africa' Adharanand Finn • At the age of twenty-seven and afraid of falling into a life he doesn't want, Robert Martineau quits his office job, buys a flight to Accra and begins to walk. He walks 1,000 miles through Ghana, Togo and Benin, to Ouidah, an ancient spiritual centre on the West African coast • As he travels alone across rainforest, savannah and mountains, Martineau meets shamans, priests, historians, archaeologists and kings. Through the process of walking each day, and the lessons of those he encounters, Martineau starts to build connections with the natural world and the past - and, at last, to find the meaning he craves

A powerful, personal agenda-changing exploration of poverty in today's Britain • 'When every day of your life you have been told you have nothing of value to offer, that you are worth nothing to society, can you ever escape that sense of being 'lowborn' no matter how far you've come?' • Kerry Hudson is proudly working class but she was never proudly poor. The poverty she grew up in was all-encompassing, grinding and often dehumanising. Always on the move with her single mother, Kerry attended nine primary schools and five secondaries, living in B&Bs and council flats. She scores eight out of ten on the Adverse Childhood Experiences measure of childhood trauma • Twenty years later, Kerry's life is unrecognisable. She's a prizewinning novelist who has travelled the world

Agatha Christie called her ‘a shining light’. Have you discovered Margery Allingham, the 'true queen' of the classic murder mystery? • In a masterpiece of storytelling, Margery Allingham sends her elegant and engaging detective Albert Campion into the eccentric Palinode household, where there have been two suspicious deaths. And if poisoning were not enough, there are also anonymous letters, sudden violence and a vanishing coffin. Meanwhile the Palinodes go about their nocturnal business and Campion dices with danger in his efforts to find the truth • As urbane as Lord Wimsey…as ingenious as Poirot… Meet one of crime fiction’s Great Detectives, Mr Albert Campion

Майкл Бут жил среди скандинавов более десяти лет, и был озадачен многими странными парадоксами и чертами характера, и в равной степени ошеломлен безоговорочным энтузиазмом ко всему скандинавскому • Он покидает свой дом в Дании и отправляется в путешествие по всем пяти северным странам, чтобы узнать, кто такие эти любопытные племена, секреты их успеха и, что самое интригующее, что они думают друг о друге. Результатом этого путешествия стала книга "Почти идеальные люди. Миф о скандинавской утопии" • Книга на английском языке • The Danes are the happiest people in the world, and pay the highest taxes • 'Neutral' Sweden is one of the biggest arms manufacturers in the world • Finns have the largest per capita gun ownership after the US and Yemen • 54 per cent of Icelanders believe in elves