William Collins The Black Ridge. Amongst the Cuillin of Skye Ingram Simon

‘For awhile after you quit Keats,’ Fitzgerald once wrote, ‘All other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.’ • John Keats died two hundred years ago, in February 1821. F. Scott Fitzgerald defined a decade that began one hundred years ago, the Jazz Age • In this biography, prizewinning author Jonathan Bate recreates these two shining, tragic lives in parallel. Not only was Fitzgerald profoundly influenced by Keats, titling Tender is the Night and other works from the poet’s lines, but the two lived with echoing fates: both died young, loved to drink, were plagued by tuberculosis, were haunted by their first love, and wrote into a new decade of release, experimentation and decadence • Luminous and vital, this biography goes through the looking glass to meet afresh two of the greatest and best-known Romantic writers in their twinned centuries

A classic of travel writing, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is Eric Newby’s iconic account of his journey through one of the most remote and beautiful wildernesses on earth • It was 1956, and Eric Newby was earning an improbable living in the chaotic family business of London haute couture. Pining for adventure, Newby sent his friend Hugh Carless the now-famous cable – CAN YOU TRAVEL NURISTAN JUNE? – setting in motion a legendary journey from Mayfair to Afghanistan, and the mountains of the Hindu Kush, north-east of Kabul • Inexperienced and ill prepared (their preparations involved nothing more than some tips from a Welsh waitress), the amateurish rogues embark on a month of adventure and hardship in one of the most beautiful wildernesses on earth – a journey that adventurers with more experience and sense may never have undertaken

Bat, Ball and Field is a wonderful foray into the history and culture of cricket • Chronicling the evolution of the sport since its earliest years, highlighting transcendent moments as well as tragedies, Jon Hotten lifts the seemingly impregnable veil from the Laws, batting strokes, types of bowling and the sometimes absurd names given to where fielders stand, allowing anyone a pathway into enjoying the sport, and an introductory immersion into its long history • This book is divided into the three parts that make up the fundamental elements of cricket: bat, ball and field. Their harmony produces cricket’s unique environment; their centuries’ long conflict provides its innovation, adaptability and vast psychological hinterland. These sections unite to map out in a completely original way the story of the sport that began as a country pursuit and is now followed by billions across the world

The latest adventure from bestselling author Ben Fogle explores what we can learn from nature about living well and living wild • What can rowing across the Atlantic teach us about boredom and about patience? • Can coming down from Everest take more resilience than climbing up in the first place? • How can the isolation of the South Pole highlight what’s most important? And how can we tap into the same reflective state in our daily lives? • Writing during the unprecedented period of the coronavirus pandemic and drawing on a wealth of personal stories, Ben reflects on the significance of nature to all our lives and shows us how we can benefit from living a little more wild • Drawing on his greatest adventures, he shares what his time spent in the wilderness has taught him about life

An unprecedented history of the personality test conceived a century ago by a mother and her daughter - fiction writers with no formal training in psychology - and how it insinuated itself into our boardrooms, classrooms, and beyond • The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is the most popular personality test in the world. It has been harnessed by Fortune 100 companies, universities, hospitals, churches, and the military. Its language - of extraversion vs. introversion, thinking vs. feeling - has inspired online dating platforms and Buzzfeed quizzes alike. And yet despite the test's widespread adoption, experts in the field of psychometric testing, a $500 million industry, struggle to account for its success - no less validate its results. How did the Myers-Briggs insinuate itself into our jobs, our relationships, our internet, our lives? • First conceived in the 1920s by the mother-daughter team of Katherine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, a pair of aspiring novelists and devoted homemakers, the Myers-Briggs was designed to bring the gospel of Carl Jung to the masses

What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter? • In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself - a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared • Tracking the mind's fitful development from unruly clumps of seaborne cells to the first evolved nervous systems in ancient relatives of jellyfish, he explores the incredible evolutionary journey of the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous molluscs who would later abandon their shells to rise above the ocean floor, searching for prey and acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so - a journey completely independent from the route that mammals and birds would later take

From Aristotle to Ada Lovelace: a brief history of the mathematical ideas that have forever changed the world and the everyday people and pioneers behind them. The story of our best invention yet • From our ability to calculate the passing of time to the algorithms that control computers and much else in our lives, numbers are everywhere. They are so indispensable that we forget how fundamental they are to our way of life • In this international bestseller, Mickael Launay mixes history and anecdotes from around the world to reveal how mathematics became pivotal to the story of humankind. It is a journey into numbers with Launay as a guide. In museums, monuments or train stations, he uses the objects around us to explain what art can reveal about geometry, how Babylonian scholars developed one of the first complex written languages, and how ‘Arabic’ numbers were adopted from India

From the foremost historian of 20th century Spain, A People Betrayed is the story of the devastating betrayal of Spain by its political class, its military and its Church • This comprehensive history of modern Spain chronicles the fomenting of violent social division throughout the country by institutionalised corruption and startling political incompetence. Most spectacularly during the Primo de Rivera and Franco dictatorships, grotesque and shameless corruption went hand-in-hand with inept policies that prolonged Spain's economic backwardness well into the 1950s • A People Betrayed looks back to the years prior to 1923 when electoral corruption excluded the masses from organized politics and gave them a choice between apathetic acceptance and violent revolution

From the bestselling author of With the End in Mind, this is a book about the conversations that matter and how to have them better – more honestly, more confidently and without regret • A child coming out to their parent. A family losing someone to terminal illness. A friend noticing the first signs of someone’s dementia. A careers advisor and a teenager with radically different perspectives • There are moments when we must talk, listen and be there for one another. Why do we so often come away from those times feeling like we could have done more, or should have been braver in the face of discomfort? Why do we skirt the conversations that might matter most? • By bringing together stories with a lifetime’s experience working in medicine and the newest psychology, Mannix offers lessons for how we can better speak our mind and help when others need to

A luminous journey through a thousand years of folklore and English history • Once upon a time in a Hertfordshire field, an ancient yew tree hid a dragon hunted by a giant named Piers Shonks. Today, the dragon and its slayer are the survivors of an 800-year battle between rural legend and national record, storytellers and sceptics • In this brilliant and lyrical history, Christopher Hadley journeys from churches to tombs to manuscript margins, to explore history, memory and legend, and the magical spaces where all three meet

Философ, занимающийся подводным плаванием, исследует истоки сознания животных • Погрузитесь под поверхность океана, и вскоре вы столкнетесь с формами жизни, которые не могут показаться более чуждыми нашей собственной: морскими губками, мягкими кораллами и похожими на цветы червями, чьи укоренившиеся тела и сложная геометрия больше напоминают растительную жизнь, чем что-либо узнаваемо животное. И все же эти существа - наши двоюродные братья. Как другие представители животного царства - метазоа - они могут рассказать нам об эволюционном происхождении не только наших тел, но и нашего разума • В своей нашумевшей книге "Другие умы" Питер Годфри-Смит исследовал разум осьминога - самого близкого существа к разумному инопланетянину на Земле. В "Metazoa" он расширяет свои исследования на животных в целом, исследуя эволюцию опыта с помощью широко распространенных видов

Driving is the most dangerous thing each of us does on a daily basis - and yet the average learner receives just eighteen hours' training - less than a Starbucks barista • In this inspirational, fully illustrated, highly entertaining book, former Top Gear star Ben Collins uses his super-charged experience of racing, stunt-work and cutting-edge scientific knowledge to tell you all of the things you didn't learn on your test - and in the process will make your driving safer, more economical and a lot more enjoyable • The skills described in How to Drive, from skid control to gear changes that are as smooth as a cashmere codpiece, have been honed on racing tracks by the greatest drivers in the world. This is the stuff your instructor missed, your dad forgot and your mates pretend to know