Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?The theme ...

Modern Politics (1969) is an introductory study of politics, with an emphasis on politics as a study in which the work particularly of sociologists and psychologists is increasingly relevant. It reflects the transfer of political study away from politics as the description and evaluation of ‘legal’ governments and their policies, towards politics as the study of the behaviour of individuals and groups who participate in the making and execution of public policy.

To help a potter find and prepare his own clay and glaze materials.

Discover the Power of Purposeful Connections"The Art of the Connect: Crafting Relationships with Care and Intention" is your guide to mastering human relationships for personal and professional growth. Learn the basics of engagement, from making memorable first impressions to navigating digital connections with grace. Explore different types of connections, deepen existing ones, and overcome challenges with empathy and resilience. With this comprehensive guide, you'll inspire commu...

Willa Sibert Cather was born on 7th December, 1873 on her grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia. After several years and moves the family eventually settled in Red Cloud, Nebraska and for the first time Cather could now attend school.In Red Cloud Cather had her earliest writings published in the local Red Cloud Chief newspaper. Her time in the mid-West created a vivid tranche of experiences for the young woman. It was still, for the most part, the fr...

John Griffith Chaney was born on January 12th, 1876 in San Francisco.His father, William Chaney, was living with Flora Wellman when she became pregnant. Chaney insisted she have an abortion. Flora's response was to turn a gun on herself. Although her wounds were not severe the trauma made her temporarily deranged.In late 1876 his mother married John London and the young child was brought to live with them as they moved around the Bay area, eventually settling in Oakland whe...

Herman Melville was born in New York City on 1st August 1819.At the age of 7 Melville contracted scarlet fever which permanently diminished his eyesight. Add this to a contemporary description of being "very backwards in speech and somewhat slow in comprehension" and his opportunities for success seemed limited.His father died when he was 12 leaving the family in very straitened times. 2 years later Melville took a job in a bank and followed up with a failed stint as a surv...

Stephen Crane was born 1st November, 1871 in Newark, New Jersey and was the eighth surviving child out of fourteen. Incredibly he began writing at the age of four and was published several times by the age of sixteen.Crane only began a full-time education when he was nine but quickly mastered the grades needed to catch up and move forward. Although educated at Lafayette and Syracuse he had little interest in completing university and was keener to move on to a career, declaring col...

Washington Irving was born on 3rd April, 1783, the youngest of 11, in New York.Irving found his real interests away from school in literature and the theatre. An outbreak of yellow fever at 15 moved him away from Manhattan and into the surrounding countryside providing valuable settings for later works such as ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’.By 19 Irving was writing regularly to the New York Morning Chronicle, commenting on the theatrical and social scenes. When his health be...

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on 24th September 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota into an upper-middle class family. Whilst his mother was pregnant with him, his two young sisters tragically died. Fitzgerald once said this was when his destiny as a writer was ordained.His intelligence and talent was recognised from an early age, with his first story, about a detective being published in the school magazine when he was just 13.In 1913 he enrolled at Princeton but his dev...

Stephen Crane was born 1st November, 1871 in Newark, New Jersey and was the eighth surviving child out of fourteen. Incredibly he began writing at the age of four and was published several times by the age of sixteen.Crane only began a full-time education when he was nine but quickly mastered the grades needed to catch up and move forward. Although educated at Lafayette and Syracuse he had little interest in completing university and was keener to move on to a career, declaring col...

Zona Gale was born on 26th August 1874 in Portage, Wisconsin. She was exceptionally close to her parents and later used them as the basis for characters in her works.She wrote and illustrated her first story at the age of 7 and by 16 she was being paid for stories from the Milwaukee Evening Wisconsin.After studies at the University of Wisconsin, where she received a degree and two master's, she moved to New York and a job at the New York World newspaper. She was later hired...