Why is it so impossible to get a relationship to work between two mature single people, driven by enormous longing and loudly ticking biological clocks? In alternate chapters, Benny and "Shrimp" tell
The son of migrant corn-pickers, Willie Gary is one of America's most successful lawyers. This is his most most notorious case, a contract dispute between rival funeral parlours, which he turns into a
Nurse Wolf is Manhattan's Queen of Pain - she gives pleasure by inflicting it. Neurologist Dr Oliver Sacks is her opposite, a defuser of pain. Yet the dominatrix and the doctor operate in similar terr
Carrie Kipling was one of the most loathed women of her generation...Henry James called her 'this hard, capable little person'. Rudyard Kipling's parents saw her as not more than an American on the ma
In 1949, at the beginning of the Cold War, Lieutenant-Commander John Kerans, stuck in a desk job in Nanking, was suddenly called upon by the Admiralty to go to the rescue of a naval frigate, the HMS A
Arthur Hugh Clough is the great undiscovered genius of Victorian literature. The golden hope of his generation at Rugby and Oxford, he battled against the orthodoxies of his time to produce some of th
In 1819 the Hungarian linguist Alexander Csoma de Koros set off for Turkestan, in search of the origins of the Magyar people. He was continuously thwarted in his quest - a misunderstood innocent who b
Paris, by custom and design, is a pedestrian's city - each block a revelation, every neighbourhood a new feast for the senses, a place rich with history and romance at every turn. The Most Beautiful W
No-one suspected a thing when a new figure appeared on the London academic scene. Charlotte Bach was a former lecturer at the University of Budapest, and had a new theory of sex and evolution which wa
This game-changing book originated in an article, written by two of Britain''s greatest journalists, that became a viral sensation within hours of publication.
Beautiful, charismatic, and talented, in 1966 Syd Barrett invented the British Psychedelic scene—founding Pink Floyd—before collapsing into madness two years later. This book traces the hi
How many snowflakes are needed to make a snowman? Where is the snowiest place on Earth? When will the last snowflake fall? Snow has a lot in common with religion. It comes from heaven. It changes ever
In an age where more British people believe in aliens than trust our politicians, Dorothy Byrne asks the question: what went wrong and how can our trust in democracy and public life be regained?In thi
Political upheaval, nuclear weapons, Trump, bankers'' bonuses, climate change, sugar, Trump... Let''s face it; we could all do with a break from worrying about what''s going on out there. This book
Daughter of the famous romantic poet Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace was a child prodigy. Brilliant at maths, she read numbers like most people read words. A hundred years before the dawn of digital technolo
