Vintage books The Long Weekend. Life in the English Country House Between the Wars Tinniswood Adrian

A delightful journey through time and through the streets of one of the greatest cultural capitals in Europe • A magnet for trade and travellers from all over the world, stylish, cosmopolitan Amsterdam is a city of dreams and nightmares, of grand civic architecture and legendary beauty, but also of civil wars, bloody religious purges, and the tragedy of Anne Frank • In this fascinating examination of the city's soul, part history, part travel guide, Geert Mak imaginatively recreates the lives of the early Amsterdammers, and traces Amsterdam's progress from waterlogged settlement to a major financial centre and thriving modern metropolis

In An Appetite for Wonder Richard Dawkins brought us his engaging memoir of the first 35 years of his life from early childhood in Africa to publication of The Selfish Gene in 1976, when he shot to fame as one of the most exciting new scientists of his generation. In Brief Candle in the Dark he continues his autobiography, following the threads that have run through the second half of his life so far and homing in on the key individuals, institutions and ideas that inspired and motivated him. He paints a vivid picture, coloured with wit, anecdote and digression, of the twenty-five postgraduate years he spent teaching at Oxford. He pays affectionate tribute to past colleagues and students, recalling the idiosyncrasies of an establishment steeped in ancient tradition and arcane ritual while also recording his respect for the profound commitment to learning and discovery that lies at its core

Swifts live almost entirely in the air. They eat, drink, sleep, mate and gather their nesting materials on the wing, fly thousands of miles across the world, navigating their way around storms, never lighting on tree, cliff or ground, until they return home with the summer • Sarah Gibson has written a fascinating story of discovery, exploring what is known about these mysterious birds, their ancient ancestry and how they have been regarded through history. But the swifts are in real danger: often unintentionally, we are sealing our homes against wildlife of any kind. Cracks, gaps and crevices which for thousands of years have offered nesting space in buildings, are being closed off, while new housing rarely offers entry holes for nesting birds

Perfect for fans of This Is Going to Hurt • Grief. Anger. Joy. Fear. Distraction. Disgust. Hope • All emotions we expect to encounter over our lifetime. But what if this was every day? And what if your ability to manage them was the difference between life and death? • For Aoife Abbey, a doctor in intensive care, these experiences are part of the job - from grief when you make a potentially fatal mistake to joy when the ward unexpectedly breaks into song. Seven Signs of Life is Abbey's extraordinary account of what it means to be alive and how it feels to care for a living • An insightful, tender and inspiring memoir that explores the reality of life on the NHS front line. 'Brilliant, compelling... A hugely life-affirming book' Mail on Sunday

Lady Hale is an inspirational figure admired for her historic achievements and for the causes she has championed. Spider Woman is her story • As 'a little girl from a little school in a little village in North Yorkshire', she only went into the law because her headteacher told her she wasn't clever enough to study history. She became the most senior judge in the country but it was an unconventional path to the top • How does a self-professed 'girly swot' get ahead in a profession dominated by men? Was it a surprise that the perspectives of women and other disadvantaged groups had been overlooked, or that children's interests were marginalised? A lifelong smasher of glass-ceilings, who took as her motto 'women are equal to everything', her landmark rulings in areas including domestic violence, divorce, mental health and equality were her attempt to correct that

The definitive, chilling account of Britain’s involvement in Afghanistan and the first book to document the entire conflict, from the leading academic expert on the subject • Afghanistan was an unwinnable war. As British and American troops withdraw, discover this definitive account that explains why • It could have been a very different story. British forces could have successfully withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2002, having done the job they set out to do: to defeat al-Qaeda. Instead, in the years that followed, Britain paid a devastating price for their presence in Helmand province • So why did Britain enter, and remain, in an ill-fated war? Why did it fail so dramatically, and was this expedition doomed from the beginning? Drawing on unprecedented access to military reports, government documents and senior individuals, Professor Theo Farrell provides an extraordinary work of scholarship

A wonderfully original book about contemporary Russia as seen on journeys in search of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Lermontov, Chekhov, Gogol and Turgenev • Shortlisted For The Edward Standford Travel Writing Award 2020 • With the writers of the Golden Age as her guides - Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol and Turgenev, among others - Wheeler travels the length and breadth of Russia to make connections between then and now. On the Trans-Siberian railway, at sail on the Black Sea, or while watching television with her hosts in Soviet apartment blocks, Wheeler searches for a Russia not in the news - a Russia of humanity and daily struggles • At a time of deteriorating relations between Russia and the West, Wheeler gives a voice to the 'ordinary' people of Russia and discovers how the writers of the past continue to represent their country today

Scenes from Provincial Life brings together, in one volume, J.M. Coetzee’s majestic trilogy of fictionalised memoir, Boyhood, Youth and Summertime • It opens in a small town in the South Africa of the 1940s. We meet a young boy who, at home, is ill at ease with his father and stifled by his mother’s unconditional love. At school he passes every test that is set for him, but he remains wary of his fellow pupils. Later, as a student of mathematics in Cape Town he prepares to escape to Europe and turn himself into an artist. Once in London, however, the reality is dispiriting. Decades on, an English biographer researches a book about the late writer, John Coetzee. As he interviews important figures in Coetzee’s life, a portrait emerges of an awkward outsider who – even after death – remains dogged by rumours

Acclaimed National Book Award-winning author George Packer diagnoses America's descent into a failed state, and envisions a path toward overcoming injustices, paralyses, and divides • How, in a few decades, did the United States transform from a broadly prosperous middle-class country, with relatively healthy institutions and competent leaders, to a nation defined by discredited elites, hollowed-out institutions, and blatant inequalities-feared and pitied by our friends, mocked and sabotaged by our adversaries, first in the world in Covid cases and deaths, and led in recent years by an incompetent authoritarian bigot? Last Best Hope is a bracing account of our current crisis and of how a new era of civic revitalization may bring it to an end • Combining reportage with historical narrative, autobiography, and political analysis, Packer depicts and assesses the four inadequate narratives that dominate American public life: Libertarian America, which imagines a nation of individuals responsible for their own fate, and serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy; Cosmopolitan America, the ideology of Silicon Valley and the professional elite,which celebrates globalization and leaves many American communities behind; Diverse America, which defines citizens as members of large identity groups that have inflicted or suffered oppression; and White America, a shallow nationalism that fears the contamination of non-whites and treachery of coastal elites, and poses the greatest threat to democracy in our lifetime

A thrilling new history of the disastrous years of indecision, failed diplomacy and parliamentary infighting that enabled Hitler and the Nazis to dominate Europe • On a wet afternoon in September 1938, Neville Chamberlain stepped off an aeroplane and announced that his visit to Hitler had averted the greatest crisis in recent memory. It was, he later assured the crowd in Downing Street, 'peace for our time'. Less than a year later, Germany invaded Poland and the Second World War began • Drawing on previously unseen sources, Appeasing Hitler sweeps from the advent of Hitler in 1933 to the beaches of Dunkirk, and presents an unforgettable portrait of the ministers, aristocrats and amateur diplomats whose actions and inaction had devastating consequences

In 1981 Tim Parks moved from England to Italy and spent the next thirty years alongside hundreds of thousands of Italians on his adopted country’s vast, various and ever-changing networks of trains • Through memorable encounters with ordinary Italians – conductors and ticket collectors, priests and prostitutes, scholars and lovers, gypsies and immigrants – Tim Parks captures what makes Italian life distinctive. He explores how trains helped build Italy and how the railways reflect Italians’ sense of themselves from Garibaldi to Mussolini to Berlusconi and beyond

A teenage son shoots himself under his parents' bed. They sleep that night unaware he is lying dead beneath them • A stranger turns up at a man's door to persude him that they must get rid of his ageing mother in order to sell the house • An old man grumbles to his daughter about the unexplained digging and banging he hears under the house at night • As each story unfolds, Amos Oz, builds a portrait of a village in Israel. It is a surreal and unsettling place. Each villager is searching for something, and behind each episode is another, hidden story. In this powerful, hynotic work Amos Oz peers into the darkness of our lives and gives us a glimpse of what goes on beneath the surface of everyday existence • By the winner of the 2013 Franz Kafka Prize, previous winners of which include Philip Roth, Ivan Klima, Elfriede Jelinek, Harold Pinter and John Banville