Never Mind the Quantocks

Never Mind the Quantocks PDF Author: Stuart Maconie
Publisher: David and Charles
ISBN: 144635573X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
In this hilarious and heart-warming collection of essays, the bestselling author reflects on a life spent exploring the British countryside on foot. From the splendor of the Pennines and the Lake District to the drama of the Dorset coast; from the canals of the Midlands to wildest Scotland, this book is an attempt to explain a passion for walking and the delights it can bring. Culled from Stuart Maconie’s monthly column in Country Walking, it’s full of the beautiful places, magical moments and wonderful characters he has encountered on his travels. It discusses such intrepid adventures as taking on the famous “Wainwright” fells of the Lake District, walking Hadrian’s Wall with colleague Mark Radcliffe, and why the most important things to carry in a rucksack are a transistor radio and a small bottle of red wine. Praise for Stuart Maconie “Maconie makes a jovial, self-deprecating narrator. Sharp and funny.” —The Guardian “He is as funny as Bryson and as wise as Orwell.” —The Observer “Stuart Maconie is the best thing to come out of Wigan since the A58 to Bolton.” —Peter Kay “An heir to Alan Bennett . . . stirring and rather wonderful.” —The Sunday Times

Never Mind the Quantocks

Never Mind the Quantocks PDF Author: Stuart Maconie
Publisher: David and Charles
ISBN: 144635573X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this hilarious and heart-warming collection of essays, the bestselling author reflects on a life spent exploring the British countryside on foot. From the splendor of the Pennines and the Lake District to the drama of the Dorset coast; from the canals of the Midlands to wildest Scotland, this book is an attempt to explain a passion for walking and the delights it can bring. Culled from Stuart Maconie’s monthly column in Country Walking, it’s full of the beautiful places, magical moments and wonderful characters he has encountered on his travels. It discusses such intrepid adventures as taking on the famous “Wainwright” fells of the Lake District, walking Hadrian’s Wall with colleague Mark Radcliffe, and why the most important things to carry in a rucksack are a transistor radio and a small bottle of red wine. Praise for Stuart Maconie “Maconie makes a jovial, self-deprecating narrator. Sharp and funny.” —The Guardian “He is as funny as Bryson and as wise as Orwell.” —The Observer “Stuart Maconie is the best thing to come out of Wigan since the A58 to Bolton.” —Peter Kay “An heir to Alan Bennett . . . stirring and rather wonderful.” —The Sunday Times

Pies and Prejudice

Pies and Prejudice PDF Author: Stuart Maconie
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0091930308
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
A Northerner in exile, Stuart Maconie goes on a journey in search of the North, attempting to discover where the clichés end and the truth begins. He travels from Wigan Pier to Blackpool Tower and Newcastle's Bigg Market to the Lake District to find his own Northern Soul, encountering along the way an exotic cast of chippy Scousers, pie-eating woollybacks, topless Geordies, mad-for-it Mancs, Yorkshire nationalists and brothers in southern exile. The bestselling Pies and Prejudice is a hugely enjoyable journey around the north of England.

The Routledge International Handbook of Walking

The Routledge International Handbook of Walking PDF Author: C. Michael Hall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317271106
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 568

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Book Description
Walking is an essentially human activity. From a basic means of transport and opportunity for leisure through to being a religious act, walking has served as a significant philosophical, literary and historical subject. Thoreau’s 1851 lecture on Walking or the Romantic walks of the Wordsworths at Grasmere in the early 19th Century, for example, helped create a philosophical foundation for the importance of the act of walking as an act of engagement with nature. Similarly, and sometimes inseparable from secular appreciation, pilgrimage trails provide opportunities for finding self and others in the travails of the walk. More recently, walking has been embraced as a means of encouraging greater health and well-being, community improvement and more sustainable means of travel. Yet despite the significance of the subject of walking there is as yet no integrated treatment of the subject in the social science literature. This handbook therefore brings together a number of the main themes on the study of walking from different disciplines and literatures into a single volume that can be accessed from across the social sciences. It is divided into five main sections: culture, society and historical context; social practices, perceptions and behaviours; hiking trails and pilgrimage routes; health, well-being and psychology; and method, planning and design. Each of these highlights current approaches and major themes in research on walking in a range of different environments. This handbook carves out a unique niche in the study of walking. The international and cross-disciplinary nature of the contributions of the book are expected to be of interest to numerous academic fields in the social and health sciences, as well as to urban and regional planners and those in charge of the management of outdoor recreation and tourism globally.

The Nanny State Made Me

The Nanny State Made Me PDF Author: Stuart Maconie
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473562104
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
'He is as funny as Bryson and as wise as Orwell' Observer It was the spirit of our finest hour, the backbone of our post-war greatness, and it promoted some of the boldest and most brilliant schemes this isle has ever produced: it was the Welfare State, and it made you and I. But now it's under threat, and we need to save it. In this timely and provocative book, Stuart Maconie tells Britain’s Welfare State story through his own history of growing up as a northern working class boy. What was so bad about properly funded hospitals, decent working conditions and affordable houses? And what was so wrong about student grants, free eye tests and council houses? And where did it all go so wrong? Stuart looks toward Britain’s future, making an emotional case for believing in more than profit and loss; and championing a just, fairer society.

The Making of Poetry

The Making of Poetry PDF Author: Adam Nicolson
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374721270
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
Brimming with poetry, art, and nature writing—Wordsworth and Coleridge as you've never seen them before June 1797 to September 1798 is the most famous year in English poetry. Out of it came Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and “Kubla Khan,” as well as his unmatched hymns to friendship and fatherhood, and William Wordsworth’s revolutionary songs in Lyrical Ballads along with “Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth's paean to the unity of soul and cosmos, love and understanding. In The Making of Poetry, Adam Nicolson embeds himself in the reality of this unique moment, exploring the idea that these poems came from this particular place and time, and that only by experiencing the physical circumstances of the year, in all weathers and all seasons, at night and at dawn, in sunlit reverie and moonlit walks, can the genesis of the poetry start to be understood. The poetry Wordsworth and Coleridge made was not from settled conclusions but from the adventure on which they embarked, thinking of poetry as a challenge to all received ideas, stripping away the dead matter, looking to shed consciousness and so change the world. What emerges is a portrait of these great figures seen not as literary monuments but as young men, troubled, ambitious, dreaming of a vision of wholeness, knowing they had greatness in them but still in urgent search of the paths toward it. The artist Tom Hammick accompanied Nicolson for much of the year, making woodcuts from the fallen timber in the park at Alfoxden where the Wordsworths lived. Interspersed throughout the book, his images bridge the centuries, depicting lives at the source of our modern sensibility: a psychic landscape of doubt and possibility, full of beauty and thick with desire for a kind of connectedness that seems permanently at hand and yet always out of reach.

Country Topics; Some Essays

Country Topics; Some Essays PDF Author: Auberon Waugh
Publisher: Michael Joseph
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Leadership strategies grounded in reality and focused on results. Recent polls show that 71% of workers think about quitting their jobs every day. That number would be shocking-if people actually were quitting. Worse, they go to work, punching time clocks and collecting pay checks, while completely checked out emotionally. In Reality-Based Leadership, expert Fast Company blogger Cy Wakeman reveals how to be the kind of leader who changes the way people think about and perceive their circumstances-one who deals with the facts, clarifies roles, gives clear and direct feedback, and insists that everyone do the same-without drama or defensiveness. Filled with dynamic examples, innovative tools, and diagnostic tests, this book shows you how to become a Reality-Based Leader, revealing how to: *Uncover destructive thought patterns with yourself and others *Diffuse drama and lead the person in front of you *Stop managing and start leading, empowering others to focus on facts and think for themselves *Equipped with a facts-based, confident approach, you will free yourself from the frustrations you face at work and transform yourself into a Reality-Based Leader, with the ability to liberate and inspire others.

The Quantocks and Their Associations

The Quantocks and Their Associations PDF Author: William Luke Nichols
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Quantock Hills
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description


In Pursuit of Spring

In Pursuit of Spring PDF Author: Edward Thomas
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1291417885
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Spring was late in 1913 and Edward Thomas decided to go and search for winter's grave and the tell-tale signs of season's turn - he set out to cycle westwards from London to the Quantocks. Edward Thomas 1878-1917 turned from writing prose to poetry in 1914. His work as a poet has been widely celebrated and admired - Ted Hughes described Thomas as "the father of us all". The Pursuit of Spring, originally published in 1914, bridges the divide between Thomas the journalist/critic and Thomas the highly regarded poet.

The Gardener's Guide to Growing Dahlias

The Gardener's Guide to Growing Dahlias PDF Author: Gareth Rowlands
Publisher: Timber Press (OR)
ISBN:
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Our popular ongoing Gardener's Guide series offers first-rate authors, an approach that is neither superficial nor overly technical, and excellent photographs.

Double Blind

Double Blind PDF Author: Edward St. Aubyn
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374717478
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Double Blind follows three close friends and their circle through a year of extraordinary transformation. Set inLondon, Cap d'Antibes, Big Sur, and a rewilded corner of Sussex, this thrilling, ambitious novel is about the headlong pursuit of knowledge—for the purposes of pleasure, revelation, money, sanity, or survival—and the consequences of fleeing from what we know about others and ourselves. When Olivia meets a new lover just as she is welcoming her best friend, Lucy, back from New York, her dedicated academic life expands precipitously. Her connection to Francis, a committed naturalist living off the grid, is immediate and startling. Eager to involve Lucy in her joy, Olivia introduces the two—but Lucy has received shocking news of her own that binds the trio unusually close. Over the months that follow, Lucy’s boss, Hunter, Olivia’s psychoanalyst parents, and a young man named Sebastian are pulled into the friends’ orbit, and not one of them will emerge unchanged. Expansive, playful, and compassionate, Edward St. Aubyn's Double Blind investigates themes of inheritance, determinism, freedom, consciousness, and the stories we tell about ourselves. It is as compelling about ecology, psychoanalysis, genetics, and neuroscience as it is about love, fear, and courage. Most of all, it is a perfect expression of the interconnections it sets out to examine, and a moving evocation of an imagined world that is deeply intelligent, often tender, curious, and very much alive.