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Love Poems Carole Ann Duffy £8.99 Whether writing of longing or adultery, seduction or simple homely acts of love, Carol Ann Duffy makes each poem sing with honesty and conviction. Her poetry speaks of tangled, heated passion; of erotic love; fierce and hungry love; unrequited love; and of the end of love. It recognizes too, the way that love can make the everyday sacred. As with all her writing, these poems are alive to the sounds of modern life, but also attuned to - and rich with - the traditions of love poetry. This volume contains some of Duffy's most popular poems. Always imaginative, heartfelt and direct, Duffy finds words for our experiences in love and out of love, and displays all the eloquence and skill that have made her one of the foremost poets of her time. |
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Fires of Faith Eamon Duffy £12.99 The reign of Mary Tudor has been remembered as an era of sterile repression, when a reactionary monarch launched a doomed attempt to reimpose Catholicism on an unwilling nation. Above all, the burning alive of more than 280 men and women for their religious beliefs seared the rule of 'Bloody Mary' into the protestant imagination, as an alien aberration in the onward and upward march of the English-speaking peoples. In this controversial reassessment, a leading reformation historian argues that Mary's regime was neither inept nor backward-looking. Led by the Queen's cousin, Cardinal Reginald Pole, Mary's church dramatically reversed the religious revolution imposed under the child king Edward VI. Inspired by the values of the European Counter-Reformation, the cardinal and the queen reinstated the papacy and launched an effective propaganda campaign through pulpit and press. Even the most notorious aspect of the regime, the burnings, proved devastatingly effective. Only the death of the childless queen and her cardinal on the same day in November 1558 brought the protestant Elizabeth to the throne, and thereby changed the course of English history
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I Drink Therefore I Am Roger Scruton £11.99 The ancients had a solution to the alcohol problem, which was to wrap the drink in religious rituals, to treat it as the incarnation of a god, and to marginalize disruptive behaviour as the god's doing, not the worshipper's. Gradually, under the discipline of ritual, prayer and theology, wine was tamed from its orgiastic origins to become a solemn libation to the Olympians and then the Christian Eucharist - that brief encounter with salvation which has reconciliation as its goal. We are familiar with the medical opinion that a daily glass of wine is good for the health and also the rival opinion that any more than a glass or two will set us on the road to ruin. Whether or not good for the body, Scrtuton argues, wine, drunk in the right frame of mind, is definitely good for the soul. And there is no better accompaniment to wine than philosophy. By thinking with wine, you can learn not only to drink in thoughts but to think in draughts. This good-humoured book offers an antidote to the pretentious clap-trap that is written about wine today and a profound apology for the drink on which civilisation has been founded. In vino veritas!
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Vintage Fashion Emma Baxter-Wright £16.99 A visual journey through the decades, this beautiful book is ideal for those interested in collecting and acquiring vintage but it also caters for the woman who is looking at past influences for inspiration when developing her individual look. Featuring the work of 80 years of couture designers, it is of interest to fashion students, designers and any fashionistas. The book provides an awareness of the fashion skills and techniques of the past, as well as pointers on what to look for when sourcing original vintage pieces, allowing the reader to understand and develop their own intrinsic tastes and fashion sensibilities. Gorgeous! |
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Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone Eduardo Galeano £9.99 An exhilarating single-volume history of the whole world, from the Iron Age to the Information Age, by one of Latin America's greatest living writers. This highly entertaining book consists of 600 vignettes, each devoted to a single subject. A great book to dip into and learn a bite sized piece of history. I think you will find that it’s impossible to taste just one and before you know it time has flown by….
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