William Collins Viking London Williams Thomas

Для многих слово "викинг" вызывает ассоциации с насилием. Но грабежи, изнасилования и мародерство - это еще не вся история. В этой новой повествовательной истории Томас Уильямс, куратор выставки Британского музея "Викинги: жизнь и легенда", переосмысливает историю викингов. Сочетая новые научные исследования с изучением физических останков и ландшафтов, которые создавали викинги и по которым они ходили, эта книга предлагает жизненно важное воспоминание о забытом мире, его влиянии на британский язык, литературу, топонимику и фольклор, его отголосках в более поздней истории и его значении для современности • Книга на английском языке • To many, the word 'Viking' invites visions of violence. But plunder, rape and pillage do not tell the full story

When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan, the literary world was up in arms. How could the world's most prestigious book prize be awarded to a famously cantankerous singer-songwriter in his Seventies, who wouldn't even deign to make an acceptance speech? • In Why Dylan Matters, Harvard Professor Richard F. Thomas answers that question with magisterial erudition. A world expert on Classical poetry, Thomas was initially ridiculed by his colleagues for teaching a course on Bob Dylan alongside his traditional seminars on Homer, Virgil and Ovid. Dylan's Nobel prize win brought him vindication. This witty, personal volume is a distillation of Thomas's famous course, and makes a compelling case for moving Dylan out of the rock n' roll Hall of Fame and into the pantheon of Classical poets

«Баламут предлагает тост» – продолжение одной из самых известных книг британского писателя и теолога Клайва Стейплза Льюиса. Оригинальное произведение, «Письма Баламута», было оформлено в виде писем старого беса Баламута, опытного искусителя и верного прислужника «всенизшего». Письма были адресованы его племяннику, юному бесу Гнусику, и попали в руки Льюиса тайным путём, который он отказывался рассекречивать. Несмотря на колебания автора, через несколько лет после публикации «Писем» читатель всё же смог добиться от него продолжения • Теперь, в 75-ю годовщину первой публикации «Писем», издательство William Collins представляет новое издание книги «Баламут предлагает тост», включающее также и другие произведения автора • «Баламут предлагает тост», книга выдающегося британского писателя Клайва Стейплза Льюиса, является знаковым произведением для направления популярной теологии

An essential read for anyone who has encountered a crisis of confidence • Where does self-confidence come from? How does it work? Why are some people more confident than others? On the surface, these seem like simple questions – but answers can feel hard to come by when we need them most • In this bestselling book, Charles Pepin brings to light the strange alchemy that is self-confidence. Pepin examines the role confidence plays in the lives of our most respected public figures including the likes of Madonna, Mozart, Frieda Kahlo, Martin Luther King and Serena Williams, and argues that above all, to live a life of confidence is to live a life of action • Drawing on the collective wisdom of philosophers, psychologists and the lives of people we encounter on a daily basis, Pepin invites us to probe the mystery and mastery of self-confidence

Henry II conquered the largest empire of any English medieval king. Yet it is the people around him we remember: his wife Eleanor, whom he seduced from the French king; his son Richard the Lionheart; Thomas Becket, murdered in his cathedral. Who was this great, yet tragic king? For fans of Dan Jones, George RR Martin and Bernard Cornwell • The only thing that could have stopped Henry was himself • Henry II had all the gifts of the gods. He was charismatic, clever, learned, empathetic, a brilliant tactician, with great physical strength and an astonishing self-belief. Henry was the creator of the Plantagenet dynasty of kings, who ruled through eight generations in command of vast lands in Britain and Europe. Virtually unbeaten in battle, and engaged in a ceaseless round of conquest and diplomacy, Henry forged an empire that matched Charlemagne's

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics • 'We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.' • When his beloved owners are forced to sell him, Black Beauty leaves his life as a young, carefree colt and embarks on a working life of misery, pulling cabs in London. As he passes through the hands of a number of different masters, he faces cruelty and hardship, as well as compassion and kindness, as he struggles to survive • Through her poignant but heart-warming tale, Anna Sewell highlights the plight of the working animal. First published in 1877, this story of a horse whose spirit cannot be broken has become an enduring and popular children's classic

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics • 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…' • Set in Paris and London against the backdrop of the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities tells the story of Lucie Manette and her father Alexandre, held captive in Paris's notorious Bastille prison for eighteen years. When Alexandre is finally released, the Manettes find themselves caught up in the lives of a French aristocrat and an English lawyer who compete for the love of Lucie. The ensuing tale of violence and revenge depicts the plight of the peasantry, the brutality of the early revolutionaries, and the menacing shadow of the guillotine • Serialised in Dickens's own literary periodical in 1859, A Tale of Two Cities is one of the best-known works of literature set during the French Revolution

Inventory of a Life Mislaid follows Marina Warner’s beautiful, penniless young mother Ilia as she leaves southern Italy in 1945 to travel alone to London. Her husband, an English colonel, is still away in the war in the East as she begins to learn how to be Mrs Esmond Warner, an Englishwoman • With diamond rings on her fingers and brogues on her feet, Ilia steps fearlessly into the world of cricket and riding. But, without prospect of work in a bleak, war-ravaged England, Esmond remembers the glorious ease of Cairo during his periods of leave from the desert campaign. There, they start a bookshop, a branch of W. H. Smith’s. But growing resistance to foreign interests, especially British, erupts in the 1952 uprising, and the Cairo Fire burns the city clean

Between 1941 and 1944, sixteen thousand plucky homing pigeons were dropped in an arc from Bordeaux to Copenhagen as part of 'Columba' – a secret British operation to bring back intelligence from those living under Nazi occupation. The messages flooded back written on tiny pieces of rice paper tucked into canisters and tied to the legs of the birds. Authentic voices from rural France, the Netherlands and Belgium – they were sometimes comic, often tragic and occasionally invaluable with details of German troop movements and fortifications, new Nazi weapons, radar system or the deployment of the feared V-1 and V-2 rockets that terrorized London • Who were the people who provided this rich seam of intelligence? Many were not trained agents nor, with a few exceptions, people with any experience of spying

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

From the bestselling author of Who Owns England?, a mesmerising chronicle of our forgotten rainforests – and an inspiring intervention to help restore them to the places they once were • In 2020, writer and campaigner Guy Shrubsole moved from London to Devon. As he explored the wooded valleys, rivers and tors of Dartmoor, Guy discovered a spectacular habitat that he had never encountered before: temperate rainforest. Entranced, he would spend the coming months investigating the history, ecology and distribution of rainforests across England, Wales and Scotland • Britain, Guy discovered, was once a rainforest nation • This is the story of a unique habitat that has been so ravaged, most people today don’t realise it exists. Temperate rainforest may once have covered up to one-fifth of Britain and played host to a dazzling variety of luminous life-forms, inspiring Celtic druids, Welsh wizards, Romantic poets, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s most loved creations

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come • What if intelligent life on earth not only evolved on land, but also in the sea? • Other Minds is 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 over millennia, Other Minds explores the incredible evolutionary journey of the cephalopods. What kind of intelligence do they possess? And how did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? • Heralded as the ‘scuba-diving philosopher’ when Other Minds first published, Peter Godfrey-Smith explores the underwater world and the concept of sentience to trace the question of inner life back to its roots