'I love Jon Day's writing' OLIVIA LAINGWhat happened in that house?Growing up, Jon Day heard the same stories as everyone else. There was the grand canal house in Amsterdam where, during the Second World War, the exiled German writer Wolfgang Frommel had hidden young Jewish men from the Nazis. It was a place, his family said, of literature and poetry, courage and sacrifice, home to an extraordinary circle of artists and intellectuals known ...

The campaign that led to the first Battle of Newbury in 1643 represents a vital phase in the English Civil War, yet rarely has it received the attention it deserves. In this compelling and meticulously researched new study, Jon Day shows how the campaign was critical to the outcome of the war and the defeat of Charles I. The late summer 1643 was the military high tide for the king and his armies, yet within two months the opportunity had been squandered. The Royalists failed first to take ...

Cyclogeography is an essay about the bicycle in the cultural imagination and a portrait of London written from the saddle. Informed by his years spent as a bicycle courier, Day reflects on the way bicycles connect people with places. Parasitic on the city, couriers have an intimate knowledge of London, and for those who survive the grinding toughness of the job the bicycle can become the only thing holding them together.

A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR Longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year**'Rich and joyous ...The book's quiet optimism about our ability to change, and to learn to love small things passionately, will stay with me for a long time' Helen Macdonald 'Big-hearted and quietly gripping' Guardian 'I love Jon Day's writing and ...

'I love Jon Day's writing' OLIVIA LAINGWhat happened in that house?Growing up, Jon Day heard the same stories as everyone else. There was the grand canal house in Amsterdam where, during the Second World War, the exiled German writer Wolfgang Frommel had hidden young Jewish men from the Nazis. It was a place, his family said, of literature and poetry, courage and sacrifice, home to an extraordinary circle of artists and intellectuals known ...

'[Day has] succeeded in making that most familiar of birds seem mysterious, almost magical, and illuminated, brilliantly, the urge towards home' Malachy TallackA feral history of home, and our relationship with that most unloved bird.As a boy, Jon Day was fascinated by pigeons, which he used to rescue from the streets of London. Twenty years later he moved away from the city centre to the suburbs to start a family. But in ...

A loving and hilarious—if occasionally spiky—valentine to Bill Bryson’s adopted country, Great Britain. Prepare for total joy and multiple episodes of unseemly laughter.Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to discover and celebrate that green and pleasant land. The result was Notes from a Small Island, a true classic and one of the bestselling travel books ever written. Now he has traveled about Britain again, by bus and train and re...

Why is the Victoria Line so hot? What is an Electrical Multiple Unit? Is it really possible to ride from Kings Cross to Kings Cross on the Circle line? The London Underground is the oldest, most sprawling and illogical metropolitan transport system in the world, the result of a series of botch-jobs and improvisations.Yet it transports over one billion passengers every year - and this figure is rising. It is iconic, recognised the world over, and loved and despised by Londoners in equal mea...

What is visible to the naked eye has been exhaustively raked over; in UNDERGROUND LONDON, acclaimed travel writer Stephen Smith provides an alternative guide and history of the capital. It's a journey through the passages and tunnels of the city, the bunkers and tunnels, crypts and shadows. As well as being a contemporary tour of underground London, it's also an exploration through time: Queen Boudicca lies beneath Platform 10 at King's Cross (legend has it); Dick Turpin fled the Bow Stree...

'My name is Mike and I am a map addict. There, it's said…'Mike Parker, presenter of Radio 4’s On the Map, celebrates the richness of all things maps in this fantastic, critically-acclaimed read, completely updated in 2023.On an average day, we will consult some form of map approximately a dozen times, often without even noticing: they are a cipher for every area of human existence. At a stroke, they convey precise information about topography, layout, histo...

We were aware of a dreamlike quality to our trip. There was something far-fetched about it, something out of this world.Austerity might be getting everyone else down, but Steve is waving his worries goodbye on another of his light-hearted trips around the picturesque English waterways.This time it’s a bit different, though. This time he’s not just cruising with his cat, Kit, but with his long-suffering wife, Em, who’s given up work and wants her share of easy living too. The...

London's Overthrow is a potent polemic describing the capital in a time of austerity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Award-winning author and essayist China Miéville cuts through the hyperbole of our politicians to present a view from ordinary London - of the inequality, oppression and indignity and the hidden, subversive sentiment pervading throughout our streets. 'China Miéville does more than reveal the skull beneath the London's scabby, piebald skin; he offers effervescen...