Buzzin’ by Bez

Buzzin’
The Nine Lives of a Happy Monday
By Bez
(With Andrew Perry)
White Rabbit / HB / 3 November 2022 / £20
(also available as ebook and audio book)

At the height of his initial, turn-of-the-1990's infamy as the maraca-wielding dancer with 'Madchester' giants Happy Mondays, Mark Berry - forever known to the world as Bez - was visibly a danger to society. He became the so-called Chemical Generation's bug-eyed pied piper, every weekend leading millions out to oblivion and beyond, as they adopted his E-gobbling party lifestyle.

Neither an accomplished musician nor even a very good dancer, Bez was a prime candidate for fleeting celebrity, soon to sink into 'Where Are They Now?' obscurity. That, however, never happened, nor does it show any sign of happening. Through Black Grape, the second band he co-fronted with the Mondays' Shaun Ryder, and his ever-presence in the mass media, Bez's popularity has grown exponentially, his star rocketing ever upwards.

When he bowled into Celebrity Big Brother in 2005, he ended up winning the series, as viewers came to understand his fundamental decency and sunny outlook. His adult life has been extraordinary: unbelievable scrapes with mortality, periods of financial ruin, mindfuck moments like when David Bowie genuflected before him, and enough narcotic-strewn hi-jinx to fill several more volumes of memoir.

Written with the assistance of estimable rock and roll ghostwriter, Andrew Perry (John Lydon, Tricky), this is the story of a bad lad who has turned his life good, tracing his passage from early-thirty-something casualty to middle-aged politician, eco-warrior and bee-aficionado.

‘There is no one like Bez: you could literally throw him out of a helicopter at 60,000 feet and he would land in somebody’s extra-deep swimming pool, get out they would cook him Sunday dinner – and let him stay the night! Shaun Ryder on Bez

Access All Areas by Barbara Charone

Memoir from the writer and music PR legend Barbara Charone, telling the story of a music-obsessed girl from Chicago who falls in love with British counter-culture, destined to re-shape it for multiple generations

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Access All Areas
A Backstage Pass Through 50 Years of Music and Culture
By Barbara Charone
Foreword by Elvis Costello
White Rabbit / HB / 23 June 2022 / £20

Access All Areas: A Backstage Pass Through 50 Years of Music and Culture tells the story of how a music-loving, budding journalist from a Chicago suburb became the defining music publicist of her generation. With an exclusive foreword from Elvis Costello, Barbara Charone’s debut memoir is a time capsule of the last fifty years, told through the lens of music, from the incredible woman who set the cultural agenda in her work with a myriad of stars including Keith Richards, Foo Fighters, REM, Rod Stewart and Madonna.

First as a journalist and then a publicist at Warner Brothers Records for nearly twenty years, Barbara Charone has experienced, first-hand, the changes in the cultural landscape. Access All Areas is a personal, insightful and humorous memoir packed with stories of being on the cultural frontline, from first writing press releases on a typewriter driven by Tip Ex, then as a press officer for heavy metal bands taking the bus up to Donnington Festival with coffee, croissants and the much more popular sulfate. To taking on Madonna, an unknown girl from Detroit, and telling Smash Hits 'you don't have to run the piece if the single doesn't chart', and becoming a true pioneer in music, Charone continues to work with the biggest names in music, including Depeche Mode, Robert Plant, Foo Fighters and Mark Ronson at her agency MBCPR.

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ABOUT Barbara Charone

Born in Chicago, Barbara Charone moved to London after graduating from Northwestern University. The first half of her career was spent as a music journalist working for NME, Sounds, Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy and Cream before writing the authorised biography Keith Richards: Life As A Rolling Stone in 1979.

In November 2000, after almost 20 years at Warner Brothers, Barbara co-founded leading independent music agency MBCPR with Moira Bellas where she still works now. Within six months it became one of the country’s top music PR firms. The current client roster includes: Madonna, Mark Ronson, Foo Fighters, Elvis Costello, Keith Richards, Rod Stewart, Kasabian, Metallica, Depeche Mode, Texas, Rag’n’Bone Man, St Vincent, Pearl Jam, Olly Murs, Ray Davies  and Rufus Wainwright.

Barbara Charone is one of the most respected women working in the music business. In November 2001, Charone and her business partner, Moira Bellas, were honoured as Women of the Year by Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy and The Brit Trust and in 2006 and 2009 won the coveted Music Week PR Award.

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A Village in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

From the bestselling author of Travellers in the Third Reich comes a stunningly evocative portrait of Hitler’s Germany through the people of a single village.

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A Village in the Third Reich
How Ordinary Lives were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism
Julia Boyd (with Angelika Patel)
Elliott & Thompson / HB / £25 / 5 May 2022

Oberstdorf is a beautiful village high up in the Bavarian Alps, a place where for hundreds of years ordinary people lived simple lives while history was made elsewhere. Yet even here, in the farthest corner of Germany, National Socialism sought to control not only people’s lives but also their minds.

By putting one village under the microscope, this book evocatively portrays the momentous period of Nazism in Germany. Why did Germans respond to Hitler in the manner that they did? How did their attitudes change as the war progressed? And when all hope was gone and their country lay in ruins, how did they pick themselves up and start again?

Drawing on archive material, letters, interviews and memoirs, A Village in the Third Reich is an extraordinarily intimate portrait of Germany under Hitler, of the descent into totalitarianism and of the tragedies that befell all of those touched by Nazism. In its pages we meet the Jews who survived – and those who didn’t; the Nazi mayor who tried to shield those persecuted by the regime; and a blind boy whose life was thought ‘not worth living’.

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About Julie Boyd

Julia Boyd is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Travellers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism through the Eyes of Everyday People. Her previous books include A Dance with the Dragon: The Vanished World of Peking's Foreign Colony, The Excellent Doctor Blackwell: The Life of the First Woman Physician and Hannah Riddell: An Englishwoman in Japan. As the widow of a former diplomat, she lived in Germany from 1977 to 1981. She lives in London.

About Angelika Patel

Angelika Patel was born into an old Oberstdorf family. She studied History and German Literature before taking an MBA at INSEAD at Fontainebleu. She is the author of Ein Dorf im Spiegel seiner Zeit (A Village in the Mirror of its Time): Oberstdorf 1918–1952. She lives in London and Oberstdorf.

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Praise for Sunday Times bestseller Travellers in the Third Reich

‘A compelling historical narrative . . . both flatters and challenges our hindsight. [Boyd] lets her voices, skilfully orchestrated, speak for themselves, which they do with great eloquence.’ – Daily Telegraph

‘Fascinating . . . surreal scenes pepper Boyd’s deep trawl of travellers’ tales from the scores of visitors who were drawn to the ‘new Germany’ in the 1930s.’ – Spectator

‘Contains many amazing anecdotes . . . It warns us that we, with our all-seeing hindsight, might ourselves have been fooled or beguiled or inclined to make excuses, had we been there at the time. I can thoroughly recommend it as a contribution to knowledge and an absorbing and stimulating book in itself.’ – Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday
 

‘Meticulously researched…. thought-provoking reading.’ – Caroline Moorehead, Literary Review

‘A fascinating book.’ – Robert Elms, BBC Radio London

‘To a younger generation it seems incomprehensible that after the tragic Great War people and political leaders allowed themselves to march into the abyss again. Julia Boyd’s book, drawing on wide experience and forensic research, seeks to answer some of these questions.’ – Randolph Churchill

‘With an almost novelistic touch, [Boyd] presents a range of stories of human interest . . . The uncomfortable moral of Travellers in the Third Reich is that people see and hear only what they already want to see and hear.’ – David Pryce-Jones, Standpoint

‘Fascinating . . . This absorbing and beautifully organised book is full of small encounters that jolt the reader into a historical past that seems still very near.’ – Lucy Lethbridge, The Tablet

 
‘In the 1930s the most cultured and technologically advanced country in Europe tumbled into the abyss. In this deeply researched book Julia Boyd lets us view Germany's astonishing fall through foreign eyes. Her vivid tapestry of human stories is a delightful, often moving read. It also offers sobering lessons for our own day when strong leaders are again all the rage.’ – Professor David Reynolds, author of The Long Shadow: The Great War and the 20th Century

‘Drawing on the unpublished experiences of outsiders inside the Third Reich, Julia Boyd provides dazzling new perspectives on the Germany that Hitler built. Her book is a tour de force of historical research.’ – Dr Piers Brendon, author of The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s

‘A truly fascinating read.’ – Keith Lowe, author of Savage Continent 

‘A revealing and original account’ – Sir John Tusa
 

‘A glorious read for anyone with an interest in the history of the twentieth century.’ – Sir Christopher Mallaby, former ambassador to Germany and France

‘Unique, original and engagingly written.’ – Dr Zare Steiner, author of The Lights that Failed: European International History 1919–1933

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My Rock ’n’ Roll Friend by Tracey Thorn

An exploration of female friendship and women in music, from the iconic singer-songwriter and bestselling author of Another Planet and Bedsit Disco Queen

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'Entertaining, affectionate and righteous' Guardian

'Says so much about being a woman' Cosey Fanni Tutti 

‘A gorgeous, vivid account of female friendship, what it is to be a woman in a band, activism, art, motherhood, love and having men take credit for your work’ Sinéad Gleeson 

‘It's such a radical act – as well as a loving one – for a woman to tell the story of her friend like this, and to free her (and all of us, it feels!) from the distorting prism of the male gaze. I honestly wanted to stand up and cheer!’ Melissa Harrison 

‘My Rock ’n’ Roll Friend is a book to treasure, brimming with empathy and good jokes.’ Andrew O’Hagan

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My Rock ’n’ Roll Friend
By Tracey Thorn
Paperback / 5 May 2022 / £9.99

In 1983, backstage at the Lyceum in London, Tracey Thorn and Lindy Morrison first met. Tracey’s music career was just beginning, while Lindy, drummer for The Go-Betweens, was ten years her senior. They became confidantes, comrades and best friends, a relationship cemented by gossip and feminism, books and gigs and rock ’n’ roll love affairs.

Morrison – a headstrong heroine blazing her way through a male-dominated industry – came to be a kind of mentor to Thorn. They shared the joy and the struggle of being women in a band, trying to outwit and face down a chauvinist music media.

In My Rock 'n' Roll Friend Thorn takes stock of thirty-seven years of friendship, teasing out the details of connection and affection between two women who seem to be either complete opposites or mirror images of each other. This important book asks what people see, who does the looking, and ultimately who writes women out of – and back into – history.

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ABOUT Tracey Thorn

Tracey Thorn is a singer-songwriter and writer, best known for her 17 years in bestselling duo Everything But The Girl. She has released four solo albums, one movie soundtrack, a large handful of singles, and three books, including the Sunday Times bestsellers Another Planet and Bedsit Disco Queen. She has been a judge of the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Goldsmiths Prize and writes regularly for the New Statesman. She lives in London, with her husband Ben Watt and their three children.

@tracey_thorn | traceythorn.com

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Earthed by Rebecca Schiller

‘Wow! A beautiful memoir of one small plot of land and one complex human mind; a story of our interconnection and an ambitious search for the truth.’ - Amy Liptrot

‘A powerfully confessional memoir that excavates important truths about our lives, our selves and our dreams - and what happens when we have to let go.’ – Clover Stroud

‘The 'how I moved to a field and had a breakdown book' that desperately needed to be written. Incredibly bold, brave, poetic and absolutely beautiful: a fascinating insight into the mind.’ – Sophie Heawood

‘Earthed is Rebecca Schiller’s powerful, poetic meditation on the process of falling apart, and her love letter to the land that rooted and rebuilt her. A deeply affecting read.’ - Leah Hazard 

‘A moving, intriguing and beautifully conceived exploration of place, person and planet through time, Earthed speaks to the struggles of holding on during dark days and the power of hope in hard times.’ - Rob Cowen 

‘This is a hard and beautiful read. The tough truth about the simple life.’ – Eva Wiseman

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Earthed
by Rebecca Schiller
Elliott & Thompson / 10 March 2022 / paperback / memoir / £9.99

Can the good life ever be the simple life?

 After moving to a countryside smallholding, Rebecca Schiller finds that her family's new life – despite its beautiful surroundings – is far from simple. Overwhelmed by what she has taken on and reeling from the turmoil in the wider world, she turns to her land, searching for answers and hope.

Here, she begins to uncover the hidden layers of her plot's history – and of herself. As the seasons shift, the ground under Rebecca's boots offers hard lessons, revealing brutal truths about the past, our planet and the seeds she holds in her hands.

Yet as a New Year arrives, offering a life-changing diagnosis and a global emergency, Rebecca begins to move forwards with understanding: the smallholding has become her anchor and her family's shelter; an ancient oak tree her compass and guide. Because when we find ourselves lost, we all need something to hold on to – a way to keep ourselves earthed.

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About Rebecca Schiller

Rebecca Schiller is an author and journalist. She is co-founder and trustee of the human rights charity Birthrights and a regular contributor to the Guardian. Rebecca and her family raise a motley crew of goats, geese, ducks and chickens and work their Kent smallholding to grow vegetables, fruit and flowers and restore wildlife to the land.

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Talking Points

Mental health and the cost of hidden neurodiversity:

• in a time of pandemic as well as personal, political and environmental crisis

• exposing the destructive burden of undiagnosed ADHD

• the feminist issues raised by widespread underdiagnosis in women and girls and the extraordinary pressures of lockdown motherhood

• the highs and lows of smallholding as therapy: working the land, tending livestock and growing food to rebuild after breakdown and overwhelm  

The real story of the not-so-simple life:

• exploring our impulse to go back to nature, self-sufficiency, sowing and growing in uncertain times

• the practical lessons and joys of smallholding life: from breeding goats and 'counting chickens', to growing food as a family

• an unflinching look at the back-breaking, marriage-straining reality of following our post-pandemic escape-to-the-countryside dreams

Uncovering our land's hidden histories and politics:

• stories of the neglected women of our land's past and how their voices can help us today

• tracing an English country garden back to our brutal, colonial roots

• looking towards an uncertain future where climate change, political division, race inequality and pandemics collide

• asking how to live, love and thrive in complicated times of hope, fear and change

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The linocut on the jacket of Earthed was designed and painted by Anne Fewster using natural inks and pigments made from the author's smallholding, land and garden.

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Happy Mind, Happy Life by Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Happy Mind, Happy Life
10 Simple Ways to Feel Great Every Day
By Dr Rangan Chatterjee
31 March 2022 | Trade Paperback | Penguin Life | £16.99

‘Simple, genius and reassuring.ʼ Chris Evans

‘No matter how happy you feel, this book will lift you up and make you stronger.' Fearne Cotton

‘A well-researched, personal and entirely user friendly guide for anyone who worries they may have their priorities wrong and who sees a more contented life.ʼ Matt Haig

‘This book will change your life for the better.ʼ The Happy Pear

‘Ranganʼs latest book gets to the crux of what truly matters. Contentment, peace and happiness. This is a joy to read and a simple framework that you can put into practice immediately.ʼ Dr Rupy Aujla

Happiness is good for your health. Learn how to nurture yours.

During his 20 years as a GP, Dr Rangan Chatterjee has seen first-hand how motivation isn't always enough for us to maintain a healthy lifestyle. It's only when we learn how to support our own mental wellbeing and cultivate core happiness that these choices become easy.

In his latest book, Dr Chatterjee shares cutting-edge insights into the science of happiness and reveals 10 simple ways to put you back in control of your health. It features real-life case studies and over 20 practical exercises, including lessons on how to:

1. Define what success means to you.
2. Treat yourself with compassion.
3. Have more genuine, ‘masklessʼ conversations.
4. Deal with criticism

Whether you are at a crisis point or simply want to experience more joy, this book will help you feel calmer, more confident, and able to live your life to the full.

• How to re-define what success means to you – Ranganʼs upbringing prized ‘successʼ and ‘achievementʼ over happiness and he says, ‘the single biggest problem people have in their search for happiness is them confusing it with success.ʼ

• How to eliminate too much choice in your life, and why all this choice can be a hidden stressor.

• Why it is so important to treat yourself with respect – and the link between self-compassion and physical health

• How and why to treasure your time

• How to deal with criticism

• How to talk to strangers – and the importance of micro-connections

• How to create distance from your phone, and why this will improve your relationships.

• How to have Maskless Conversations, and make time for interactions where you can truly be yourself

• How to take your daily holiday – the importance of doing something that brings you into the present moment and helps you to find a time of stillness

• How to practice gratitude, and the health benefits of prioritising the happiness of others.

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ABOUT Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is regarded as one of the most influential medical doctors in the UK. A practising GP for the last two decades, Dr Chatterjee wants to inspire people to transform their health and happiness through making small sustainable changes to their lifestyles. Leading the charge on how healthcare and medicine is understood in the UK, Dr Chatterjee has co-created and teaches the widely acclaimed 'Prescribing Lifestyle Medicine' course with the Royal College of GPs, that has now been delivered to thousands of doctors and healthcare professionals. Dr. Chatterjee hosts the most listened to health podcast in the UK and Europe, ‘Feel Better, Live Moreʼ which is one of Apple's most downloaded podcasts. His mission is to empower 100 million people to become the architect of their own health and to help them feel fantastic with simple, practical and digestible information. He is the author of four bestselling books and regularly appears on BBC television, national radio and has been featured in numerous international publications including The New York Times, Forbes, The Guardian, The Times, Grazia, Vogue, The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Mail and his TED talk, How To Make Disease Disappear, has been viewed almost 4.4 million times. He lives in Wilmslow with his wife and their two children.

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Are you ready to get good at happy?

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How We Met by Huma Qureshi

‘A tale of patience, tenderness and love that’ll add sunshine to your year.’
-Stylist (best non-fiction, 2021) 

‘A beautiful, refreshing and honest memoir about family, love, inheritance and loss that is warm and authentic’ - Nikesh Shukla

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How We Met
A Memoir of Love and Other Misadventures
By Huma Qureshi
Paperback / non-fiction / Elliott & Thompson / 3 February 2022 / £9.99

You can’t choose who you fall in love with, they say.

If only it were that simple.

Growing up in Walsall in the 1990s, Huma straddles two worlds – school and teenage crushes in one; the expectations and unwritten rules of her family’s south Asian social circle in the other. Reconciling the two is sometimes a tightrope act, but she manages it. Until it comes to marriage.

Caught between familial duty and her own appetite for adventure, Huma seeks refuge in Paris and imagines a future full of possibility. And then her father has a stroke and everything changes.  

As she learns to focus on herself she realises that searching for a suitor has been masking everything that was wrong in her life. Marriage – arranged or otherwise – can’t be the all-consuming purpose of her life. And then she meets someone. Neither Pakistani nor Muslim nor brown, and therefore technically not suitable at all. When your worlds collide, how do you measure one love against another?

As much as it is about love, How We Met is also about how we fall out with and misunderstand each other, and how sometimes even our closest relationships can feel so far away. Warm, wise, tender and hopeful, this is a coming-of-age story about what it really means to find 'happy ever after'.

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ABOUT Huma Qureshi

Huma Qureshi is an award-winning writer and journalist, and contributor to The Best Most Awful Job: Twenty Writers Talk Honestly About Motherhood (2020). Her collection of stories, Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love (Sceptre, Nov ’21), has been described as ‘deft, satisfying and poignant’ (Pandora Sykes).

A former Guardian reporter, she has also written for The Times, Independent, Observer, Grazia, Red, Harpers, New Statesman and The Huffington Post. She is a regular contributor to BBC2’s Pause for Thought and has appeared as a contributor on BBC Woman’s Hour, BBC London, BBC Breakfast and the BBC Asian Network. She is the winner of the 2020 Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize.

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Selected Praise for How We Met

‘A sweet, touching memoir about family, faith and love. There's a purity and simplicity to Huma's writing, as she attempts to reconcile the sprawling weight of expectation with her own desire for a contained but free life. But what does a life on her own terms look like? What even are her own terms?  A consolation to others who have trod this very path, enlightening for those of us who haven't, you'll be rooting for not just Huma, but for everyone she loves too.’ Pandora Sykes

‘I just loved loved loved loved How We Met. A love story about panic, faith, family, duty, living on your own, work, grief and trust. It delves into love and politics in the British South Asian community and left me beaming.’ Nell Frizzell, author of The Panic Years

‘This beautiful, romantic memoir grabs you from the first page and won’t let you go. Told with heart, wit and quiet restraint, How We Met is the story of how we can transcend the expectations of others and arrange our own happiness in life and in love.’ Viv Groskop

‘A wonderful read - a memoir of grief, becoming and true love. Huma Qureshi is a writer with a sharp eye and a romantic heart.’ Katherine May, author of Wintering

'I devoured this brilliant memoir! Huma's voice is effortless, beautiful, incredibly refreshing and so relatable. I highly recommend it' Haleh Agar, author of Out of Touch

‘There are the books that touch you. Then there are the books that open out their arms and straight out hug you - How We Met is this second kind of book. Honest, joyful, at times heart-breaking, at times laugh out loud funny, but always generous in its telling... this is Huma Qureshi, heart and soul.’ Ami Rao, author of David and Ameena

‘A fearlessly honest memoir of courage, love and loss, and trying to find your place in the world. Quietly heart-breaking but life-affirming too.’ Kia Abdullah, author of Take It Back

‘Every page radiates Huma’s love for her family, for her emerging self, and for the possibilities of a life more fully lived’ Leah Hazard, author of Hard Pushed: A Midwife’s Story

‘Huma Qureshi tells the story of her great loves with generosity and tenderness that will grab readers by the heart.'  Jean Hannah Edelstein, author of This Really Isn't About You

'How We Met is the book I, and countless women of similar heritage, have been waiting our whole lives for. I cried and laughed out loud as I recognised myself in so much of Huma Qureshi's story.’ Saima Mir, author of The Khan

‘I loved every minute.’ Laura Pearson

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Write It All Down by Cathy Rentzenbrink

Write It All Down
How to Put Your Life on the Page
By Cathy Rentzenbrink
6th January 2022 / hardback / £14.99

'Astonishingly good, not just on how to write about your life, but why to as well.’
Steve Biddulph, bestselling author of 'Raising Boys'

Why do we want to write and what stops us?

How does the urge to express ourselves fight with the worry that no-one will care or that we will get in trouble?

How do we identify and overcome everything that gets in our way so we can start making work? 

Sunday Times bestselling author Cathy Rentzenbrink shows you how to tackle all this and more in Write It All Down, a guide to putting your life on the page. This is a kind, encouraging and stimulating book that explores the nature of memoir writing and offers helpful guidance on how to write your life on paper. Rentzenbrink will help you to discover the pleasure and solace to be found in writing; the profound satisfaction of wrestling a story onto a page and seeing the events of your life transformed through the experience of writing the self. 

Perfect for both seasoned writers as well as writing amateurs and everyone in between, this helpful handbook will steer you through the philosophical and practical challenges of writing the self. Intertwined with reflections, anecdotes and exercises from successful writers such as Dolly Alderton, Matt Haig, Kit de Waal, Sathnam Sanghera and Maggie O’Farrell, Write It All Down is at once an intimate and enjoyable narrative and an invitation to share your story.

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TALKING POINTS

• ‘How writing changed my life’ - Cathy’s personal story

• Top 5 tips on how to write your own story 

• How to use this book for your own wellbeing

• Writing in a digital world: the importance of storytelling

• New Year’s Resolutions – why you shouldn’t diet, but learn something new instead

• Therapy – both Cathy’s personal experiences, and how to use writing as therapy.

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ABOUT Cathy Rentzenbrink

Cathy Rentzenbrink is the author of the Sunday Times best-seller The Last Act of Love and of A Manual for Heartache, Dear Reader: The Comfort and Joy of Books and Everyone is Still Alive. It took her twenty years to wrestle her own life story on the page and she loves to use what she has learnt about the profound nature of writing the self in the service of others.

Cathy has taught for Arvon, Curtis Brown Creative, at Falmouth University and at festivals and in prisons, and welcomes anyone, no matter what their experience, education, background or story. She believes that everyone’s life would be improved by picking up a pen and is at her happiest when encouraging her students to have the courage to delve into themselves and see the magic that will start to happen on the page. 

Website - https://cathyreadsbooks.com/
Instagram – @writeitalldown_
Twitter - @catrentzenbrink

The Power of Geography By Tim Marshall

The Sunday Times bestseller and much-anticipated sequel to the million-copy selling Prisoners of Geography is out now in paperback

‘I can’t imagine reading a better book this year.’ Mirror

'Another outstanding guide to the modern world. Tim Marshall is a master at explaining what you need to know and why.'

- Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads

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The Power of Geography
Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World
By Tim Marshall
7 October 2021 / Paperback / £9.99. Also available in ebook and audio

If you want to understand what’s happening in the world, look at a map.

Tim Marshall’s global bestseller Prisoners of Geography showed how every nation’s choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas and concrete. Since then, the geography hasn’t changed, but the world has.

In this revelatory new book, Marshall explores ten regions that are set to shape global politics in a new age of great-power rivalry. Find out why Europe’s next refugee crisis is closer than it thinks as trouble brews in the Sahel; why the Middle East must look beyond oil and sand to secure its future; why the eastern Mediterranean is one of the most volatile flashpoints of the twenty-first century; and why the Earth’s atmosphere is set to become the world’s next battleground.

 In ten chapters covering Australia, The Sahel, Greece, Turkey, the UK, Iran,  Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Space, delivered with Marshall’s trademark wit and insight, this is a lucid and gripping exploration of the power of geography to shape humanity’s past, present – and future.

‘This valuable book is an urgent and accessible study of the facts and forces that will shape our future on earth and beyond.’ - Ed Husain, author of The House of Islam

'A skilful navigation of the regions that could define geopolitics for future generations. One to read to stay ahead of the game.' - Dharshini David, author of The Almighty Dollar

‘A compelling account of the return of geopolitics by the master of maps.’ - Professor Brendan Simms, author of Britain's Europe: A Thousand Years of Conflict and Cooperation

‘Marshall’s books are excellent for anyone who takes satisfaction in understanding the world and who harbours a fascination for the shifting alliances…. Each segment of The Power of Geography is accessible, although by no means simple. Marshall covers much ground, moving smoothly through each nation’s background, current struggles and options for the future….A sharp and concise evaluations of today’s geopolitics.’ Geographical

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ABOUT Tim Marshall

Tim Marshall is a leading authority on foreign affairs with more than 30 years of reporting experience. He was diplomatic editor at Sky News, and before that was working for the BBC and LBC/IRN radio. He has reported from 40 countries and covered conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Libya. He is the author of the Sunday Times bestsellers Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics and Divided: Why We’re Living in an Age of Walls as well as Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags; and Shadowplay: Behind the Lines and Under Fire.
 
#powerofgeography

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Hey Hi Hello by Annie Nightingale

‘[Annie Nightingale] is completely inspirational . . . The book is a riveting read’ DJ Magazine

‘Absolutely terrific’ David Quantick

‘A marvellous memoir’ Louder Than War

 ‘A joy to read’ Guardian

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Hey Hi Hello
Five Decades of Pop Culture from Britain's broadcasting DJ pioneer
By Annie Nightingale
White Rabbit/ 2nd September 2021/ Paperback/ £9.99

Featuring never exclusive interviews with The Beatles, Bob Marley, David Bowie, Billie Eilish and Primal Scream among others. 

Hey Hi Hello is a greeting we have all become familiar with, as Annie Nightingale cues up another show on BBC Radio 1. Always in tune with the nation's taste, yet effortlessly one step ahead for more than five decades, in this book Annie digs deep into her crate of memories, experiences and encounters to deliver an account of a life lived on the frontiers of pop cultural innovation.

Annie Nightingale was the first female DJ on the BBC and has the longest running radio show on BBC Radio 1, celebrating her 50 years in broadcasting in 2020. As a writer, DJ and broadcaster on radio, tv and the live music scene, Annie has been an invigorating and necessarily disruptive force, working within the establishment but never playing by the rules. She walked in the door at Radio 1 as a rebel, its first female broadcaster, in 1970. Fifty years later she became the station's first CBE in the New Year's Honours List; still a vital force in British music, a DJ and tastemaker who commands the respect of artists, listeners and peers across the world.

Hey Hi Hello tells the story of those early, intimidating days at Radio 1, the Ground Zero moment of punk and the epiphanies that arrived in the late 80s with the arrival of acid house and the Second Summer of Love. It includes faithfully reproduced and never before seen encounters with Bob Marley, Marc Bolan, The Beatles and bang-up-to-date interviews with Little Simz and Billie Eilish. 

Funny, warm and candid to a fault, Annie Nightingale's memoir is driven by the righteous energy of discovery and passion for music. It is a portrait of an artist without whom the past fifty years of British culture would have looked very different indeed.

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ABOUT ANNIE NIGHTINGALE

Annie Nightingale CBE began her career as a journalist, columnist and fashion boutique owner. She was the first female DJ on BBC Radio 1 and is now the stations longest serving broadcaster, celebrating 50 years at the BBC last year.

Annie was the first female DJ from Radio 1 to be inducted into the Radio Academy Hall of Fame, and she received a special Gold Award at the Sony Radio Academy Awards. She won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Audio Production Awards in 2020 and was awarded MBE by The Queen in 2000. She is an ambassador of The Princes’ Trust and patron of Sound Women, an organisation to promote women in broadcasting.

As well as touring the world as a live DJ, she has also released music compilation collections, including Annie On One (Heavenly) and Masterpiece (Ministry of Sound), and two volumes of autobiography, Chase the Fade and Wicked Speed.

In 2020 BBC Four devoted a night's TV to Annie, including two new documentaries about punk and post punk music. This reflected Annie's tenure as the only ever female anchor of the legendary BBC TV music series, The Old Grey Whistle Test. Annie was interviewed on Desert Island Discs in 2020.

Note:
The photography section includes photographs from Annie's personal collection. Featuring Mick Jagger, Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys, Little Simz, Billie Eilish, and a series of recently discovered backstage pictures from the height of Beatlemania with The Fab Four.  

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‘Annie was important to me back when I was a teenager, when not only was she one of the few people playing records I liked, she was a WOMAN doing it, which was inspirational to me. I wrote about her in my book Another Planet, where I quote a diary entry from 1978 which listed things I was loving in between watching Bowie on tv and taping a Bruce Springsteen album, the entry simply says, ‘Listened to Annie Nightingale’.’  - Tracey Thorn
 

‘I can’t imagine what growing up without Annie Nightingale would have been like. I don’t want to contemplate the limitations that would have been imposed on my cultural life and my own ambitions in that sphere without her presence. Thank god I don’t have to and she was there every step of the way from a voice on the radio to an enthusiastic comrade in the chill out zone and post-rave party.’ - Irvine Welsh

‘It wasn’t until I heard Annie Nightingale on Sunday evenings after the chart rundown that I understood what music radio could be. Nightingale had a broader music taste than, say, John Peel, but was alternative enough to introduce me to songs I never would otherwise have heard. She’s still on Radio 1 now, at the very Nightingale time of 1am. She still plays tracks I hate, tracks I love. She’s still the best.’
Miranda Sawyer - ‘Top 50 inspiring cultural icons’, Observer

‘Full of brilliant anecdotes, this autobiography offers a rare insight into a woman who has lived at the forefront of pop culture’ - The Sun 

‘Jam-packed with stories and events that span decades of music and culture, from the Beatles via Marc Bolan to Primal Scream and Little Simz . . . very hard to put down’ - Buzz Magazine

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The Best, Most Awful Job

“Poignant, funny, sensitive, but most importantly, heart-stoppingly true. This is an outstanding collection of stories, from some of the finest writers, which gets right to the dark heart of what it really means to be a mother. I loved it.” - Clover Stroud

‘An outstanding collection of essays from some of the finest writers’ - Grazia

‘Moving and vital, this is the kind of book that could well make a difference to someone’s life . . .every mother should read it.’ - Laura Pearson, author of I Wanted You to Know

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The Best, Most Awful Job
Twenty Writers Talk Honestly About Motherhood
Edited by Katherine May
Elliott & Thompson / 5 August 2021 / £9.99 / PB

What does it mean to be a mother?

Twenty writers speak out in this searingly honest, diverse and powerful collection.

 Motherhood is life-changing. Disorientating, overwhelming, intense on every level, it can leave you questioning everything you thought you knew about yourself. Yet despite more women speaking out in recent years about the reality of their experiences – good, bad and in between – all too often it’s the same stories getting told, while key parts of the maternal experience still remain unspeakable and unseen. There are a million different ways to be a mother, yet the vision we see in books, on screen and online overwhelmingly fails to represent this commonplace yet extraordinary experience for most of us. It’s time to broaden the conversation.

The Best, Most Awful Job is a deeply personal collection about motherhood in all its raw, heart-wrenching, gloriously impossible forms. Overturning assumptions, breaking down myths and shattering stereotypes, it challenges perceptions of what it means to be a mother, bringing together a diverse range of bold and brilliant writers and asking you to listen.

Some highlights include:

• Hollie McNish on her trademark outspoken and sane form

• Josie George writing beautifully and carefully about mothering yourself and your child when your body won’t play ball

• Michelle Adams on meeting your adoptive child and learning to be a mother

• Peggy Riley on the lost heartbeat of a deeply yearned-for child

• MiMi Aye on the pain of her children being seen as ‘other’ in their own country

• Leah Hazard - practising midwife and author of Hard Pushed - on the scars our bodies hold as mothers...

• Saima Mir on the taboo that is maternal rage

• Stories also cover: being unable to conceive, step-parenting, losing a child, single parenthood, being an autistic mother, being a reluctant home-schooler and the many ways in which race, class, disability, religion and sexuality affect motherhood.

‘A wonderful anthology. I enjoyed it so much – the honesty, intelligence, fury and tenderness of the essays; and, importantly and refreshingly, the range of voices and stories it contains. I only wished each essay were longer so that I might spend more time with each of these writers and their worlds.’
Liz Berry, author of The Republic of Motherhood and winner of the Forward Prize

‘If I had added a Post-it Note to every sentence in this book that made me laugh, wince in recognition, or faintly well up, I would have turned it into a paper porcupine.’
Ceri Radford, Independent
 

‘Absorbing stories from different women… Multiracial and non-binary perspectives are among the welcomingly diverse inclusions here.’
Jude Rogers, New Statesman
 

‘In this poignant, vital collection of essays, twenty writers meditate on what it means to be a mother… a real treat’
Elizabeth Morris, Crib Notes

‘These essays, diverse in the experiences of their authors but all hitting upon a near-universal truth, tackle beautifully [the challenge of] trying to balance creativity with childcare’
Sarah Langford, author of In Your Defence

‘I’ve been really missing the company of other mothers so this was a very good read… this book covers so much. The essay that really blew me away was Peggy Riley on not becoming a mother.’
Samantha Ellis, author of How To Be A Heroine

“Searingly honest, diverse and powerful collection about motherhood in all its raw, heart-wrenching, gloriously impossible forms”
Irish Examiner

‘All the pain, power and privilege of being a mother is here in these tales of step-parenting; being unable to conceive; having six children; single parenthood; and of how race, class, disability, religion and sexuality affect our perceptions of motherhood’
Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller Editor’s Choice

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ABOUT Katherine May

Edited and curated by Katherine May, an author of fiction and memoir whose most recent works have shown a willingness to deal frankly with the more ambiguous aspects of parenting. In The Electricity of Every Living Thing she explored the challenges – and joys – of being an autistic mother, and sparked a debate about the right of mothers to ask for solitude. In her New York Times bestseller, Wintering, she looked at the ways in which parenting can lead to periods of isolation and stress. She lives with her husband and son in Whitstable, Kent.

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Lobby Life by Carole Walker

A no-holds-barred insight into the corridors of Westminster and personal stories of life in the Lobby from a journalist who was at the heart of the political establishment for two decades.

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Lobby Life
Inside Westminster’s Secret Society
By Carole Walker
Elliott & Thompson / Hardback non-fiction / £16.99 / 24 June 2021

Drawing on personal experience and interviews with former colleagues, politicians, spin doctors and critics of the system, Lobby Life tells the intriguing story of the once highly secretive institution known as the Lobby – the club at the heart of Westminster which has been the focal point of battles between government and the media for more than 140 years. From the Lobby's conception to the present day, Carole Walker exposes the battles between its political reporters and Downing Street to control the news agenda, including during some of most momentous stories in recent history. Through the rise and fall of successive governments – via war, industrial strife and scandal, the financial crash, Brexit and a global pandemic – we witness the rows and resignations, the drama and debate.

In this no-holds-barred account of what really happens behind the closed doors of Westminster, Walker asks urgent questions about the role of the media today, when politicians can engage directly with voters online, bypassing journalists – and accountability.

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TALKING POINTS

• Lifting the lid on the mysterious world of the parliamentary Lobby – once so secretive that the late Chris Moncrieff, legendary former political editor of the Press Association, said it was like working for MI5.  When he joined in the 1970s he was warned he must never mention that he attended regular briefings from the Prime Minister’s press secretary to anyone – even his wife.

• What it’s like being a Lobby journalist at Westminster: how you gather your stories; how you find your sources; how government and MPs seek to shape the stories we are told. The words uttered at Lobby briefings can make headlines around the world, signal the end of a ministerial career or indicate far-reaching policy changes. 

• How the women of the Lobby have confronted outdated attitudes and established their rightful place, holding MPs and ministers to account and explaining the decisions that shape our daily lives. 

• How female Lobby journalists helped to expose unacceptable behaviour by some of our most senior politicians when the #MeToo movement swept through Westminster in 2017. From the infamous ‘lunge after lunch’, which brought down a Cabinet minister, to casual comments and ‘wandering’ hands, women in the Lobby have dealt with it all.

• The fun and frustration being a Lobby journalist ‘on tour’ with a Prime Minister: champagne on a flight with Margaret Thatcher; breaking news on-board Tony Blair’s plane; battles to meet deadlines in a desert sandstorm with David Cameron. On these tightly controlled package tours, the destination is far less important than your fellow-travellers. 

• The power of key insiders at Westminster, such as Sir Bernard Ingham (Thatcher), Alastair Campbell (Blair) and Dominic Cummings (Johnson), on government – and how they use the Lobby to try to shape the agenda.

• The role of Lobby journalists today when politicians can engage directly with voters via social media.

• Behind-the-scenes at Westminster during some of the most pivotal moments in our recent history: Churchill’s war government, the Suez Crisis; mining strikes; the Falklands conflict and two Gulf wars; the ‘dodgy-dossier’ on WMD; the death of Dr David Kelly; the phone-hacking and expenses scandals; the financial crisis of 2008; Brexit and a global pandemic.

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ABOUT Carole Walker

Carole Walker is a high-profile journalist and political commentator with more than twenty years’ experience as a BBC Political Correspondent. As a Lobby journalist, she covered some of the biggest political stories in recent history including six general elections, the EU referendum, the rise and fall of successive governments, resignations, rows and parliamentary debates. She has travelled to Iraq and Afghanistan with Prime Ministers and reported on international summits, the first Gulf War, revolution in Moscow, the break-up of the Soviet Union and civil war in the Balkans and Somalia. She is now a flag-ship presenter on Times Radio, shining a light on the political events of the day.

Carole is available for interviews, features and events.

Life on a Knife’s Edge by Dr Rahul Jandial

“A beautifully written and fearless depiction of both brain surgery and the mind of a surgeon. Riveting”

— Jim Down, author of Life Support

“Is this a memoir or a science book? An exposé of the shortcoming of our healthcare system or a paean to the wonders of modern medicine? The answer is YES, to all those things and more. Jandial takes us deep into the day-to-day life of his profession as a brain surgeon while simultaneously taking us even deeper into the inner-workings of our own biology. It’s an unconventional approach, and a bit disarming at first blush, but pays off in spades. I loved this book.”

— James Nestor, New York Times bestselling author of Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

“A reminder that what makes us stellar physicians and surgeons are not our skills with our hands and/our knowledge but rather our empathy and ability to connect with our patients”

— Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa

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Life on a Knife’s Edge
A Brain Surgeon’s Reflections on Life, Lose and Survival
Dr Rahul Jandial
Penguin Life / HB non-fiction / 3rd June 2021 / £16.99

A raw and unflinching account from leading neuroscientist and neurosurgeon of the valuable lessons we can learn from patients confronted with their own mortality.

 As one of the world's leading brain surgeons, Dr Jandial is the last hope for many patients who have extreme forms of cancer - patients who can't be saved but deserve more time.

Life on a Knife's Edge is his account of the resilience, courage and belief he has witnessed in his patients, and the lessons he has learned from them. Both an unflinching account of extreme surgeries and a profound, moving and introspective memoir, this book reveals the depths of a surgeon's psyche who is pushed to his limits, day in, day out.

From keeping a gun victim's heart pumping with his own hand, to saving a woman from paralysis and performing brain surgery while time is running out on a haemorrhaging patient, we see how making life and death decisions and facing unimaginable pressure has shaped one man's life. Now, he shares the many truths about human nature that he has learned along the way: from how we deal with trauma, loss, addiction, failure and threat to our innate belief and sense of self. 

From a life spent balancing the line between life and death, Rahul reveals what it means to survive life's challenges.

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FEATURE IDEAS / TALKING POINTS

• Lessons of hope and survival learnt from cancer patients

• Lessons on coping with trauma from a frontline worker

• Reverse PTSD and resilience– how to mentally survive, heal and thrive after trauma

• Healthy ways to deal with tremendous uncertainty

• How to enhance your performance – from neural efficiency to simulated crisis management and breathing techniques

• From University dropout to world-class surgeon – Dr Jandial’s personal journey

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ABOUT Dr Rahul Jandial

Dr Rahul Jandial, MD, PhD is an American dual-trained neurosurgeon and scientist at City of Hope, a research centre, hospital and postgraduate training faculty in Los Angeles. When he isn't performing surgery, he is leading a team of scientists in Jandial Laboratory, named after him and known for its cutting-edge approach to brain surgery and neuroscience. In addition to being a world-class surgeon and scientist, Dr Jandial is the author of ten academic books and over 100 papers. Sunday Times bestseller Life Lessons from a Brain Surgeon (2019) was his first book for a general audience.

Repotting Your Life by Frances Edmonds

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“The ultimate handbook for anyone wanting to be challenged, fulfilled and stay young in mind and body.”

— Angela Rippon

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Repotting Your Life: Reframe Your Thinking. Reset Your Purpose. Rejuvenate Yourself Time and Again

By Frances Edmonds
Elliott & Thompson / hardback / non-fiction / 13 May / £14.99 

Do you feel stuck or stifled, but struggle to know what to do next? It’s time to ‘repot’ your life.

“What I learnt along my journey of repotting – a journey that would take me to a whole new country and an undertaking full of possibility and growth – offers, I hope, a useful new model for navigating the increasing number of transitions that we are all called upon to make throughout life in the modern world. And so my gift to anyone embarking on a new stage in life would be an understanding of how best to master the challenging and often daunting process of moving on and branching out. My gift would be proficiency in the art of repotting.”

— Frances Edmonds

In a world in which we’re living longer, and change is a necessary yet often uncomfortable process, Repotting Your Life offers a toolkit to revitalize your relationships, your passions or your career, whatever your age. It is for anyone who feels stuck or stifled, and is struggling to know what to do next.

There are four simple steps in the process of repotting:

Step 1 – Potbound: Know when you need to make a change.

Step 2 – Pots and Plans: Identify where you want to be. Understand what makes you feel fulfilled and matters most to you. Figure out a plan of action.

Step 3 – Pulling up the Roots: Prepare to end one phase of your life and commit to your repotted future.

Step 4 – Bedding In: Put down new roots and re-energize yourself for your next adventure.

With verve, wit and wisdom, Repotting for Life offers the motivation to set aside what is no longer working and the tools required to design a thriving life full of fresh possibility. 

Frances Edmonds has had an extraordinary professional career full of transitions and transformation, latterly becoming a longevity and well-being fellow at Stanford University’s Distinguished Careers Institute in 2018, where her concept of ‘repotting’ was born. She is an inspirational keynote speaker, a cross-generational mentor and helped create the UK’s most prestigious business development network. Previously an international conference interpreter at the European Union, United Nations and World Economic Summits, she is also a bestselling author and broadcaster

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Feature ideas / talking points

• Intergenerational education, teamwork and cross-mentorship: a new model for the future: Frances took up her research fellowship at the Distinguished Careers Institute at Stanford (the epicentre of California’s Silicon Valley, innovation and high-tech) in her mid-60s at the same time as her 30-year old daughter who’d left a lucrative career in investment banking and was studying at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
  
  Independently, they navigated the challenges of their own new beginnings. Together they helped forge a powerful inter-generational community that combined the energy of thrusting young students with the wisdom of experienced elders - a model for tomorrow’s innovative, flexible and highly effective blended teams.

• Ageism: We often talk about diversity and inclusivity – but these concepts rarely extend to “older” people who have enormous amounts of accumulated wisdom to share and are too often denied the appropriate opportunities. Reseach has demonstrated that in business a blended team of mixed ages achieves the best results.

• Post Pandemic Priorities: The new work/life integration model: At a time of global change, more people than ever are being obliged to reassess their priorities. Even before the COVID pandemic, the classic 3-chapter model of Learn, Earn and Retire at 65 had become unrealistic for the vast majority of people. In a world of extended life expectancy, a new model of work/life integration is required that will involve constant oscillation in and out of work and in and out of continuous personal and professional development throughout a far longer life span.

• The huge challenge is that society does not yet have the culture or the institutions to deal with the “30 extra gifted years” of life expectancy that a baby born today will have as compared to a baby born in 1900. What Mindset, Toolset and Skillset will be necessary to successfully navigate the expected “100 year life”?

• How Frances conceived of the idea of ‘repotting’ whilst at Stanford: The plaque at the entrance to Stanford’s world famous Graduate School of Business: “Repotting - that’s how you get new bloom -  you should have a plan of accomplishment and when that is achieved, you should be willing to start off again.” (Ernest Arbuckle – former Dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business.)

• Reframe Your Thinking: Techniques for dialing down the emotion, taking the heat out of negative thought patterns, and “turning the debacle into an earner.”

• Reset Your Purpose:  What happens when you lose your sense of purpose?  The end of a relationship, an empty nest, a situation that’s no longer working… there are endless catalysts that precipitate loss of purpose. How do you identify and move on to the next organising principle in your life?

• Rejuvenate Yourself Time and Again: “Repotting” is a process – and you are never, ever finished. It’s a journey, not a destination. It’s a system, not a goal. The better you understand the system, the more effectively you’ll be able to negotiate today’s increasingly frequent and radical changes.

• Importance of wellness, purpose and community: The key pillars of a meaningful life well-lived.

For more information, please contact Emma Finnigan PR.

Pandora's Jar by Natalie Haynes

In traditional retellings of the Greek myths, the focus is invariably on gods and men, but in Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths, Natalie Haynes refocuses our gaze on the remarkable women at the centre of these ancient stories.

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'Hugely enjoyable and witty' - The Guardian

‘Agile, rich, subversive, Pandora's Jar proves that the classics are far from dead, and keep evolving with us.' - Madeleine Feeny, Mail on Sunday

'Haynes is a brilliant classicist as well as a stand-up comedian and with her latest offering, Pandora's Jar, she has effectively written the first textbook codifying this new feminist take on the Greek myths.' - Neil Mackay, Herald

‘Haynes…puts the women of Greek myths on equal footing with the menfolk in an exploration of their stories, motivations and myths. Written in Haynes’ immediately gripping and readable style, we get the stories of Medea – a seriously powerful girl – who ends up betrayed by Jason as well as deep dive into the stories of The Amazons, Penelope and Phaedra to name a few. Both fascinating and incredibly researched if you want to catch up on your Greek myths, this is the place to start.’ - Stylist

‘Beyoncé, Star Trek, Ray Harryhausen ...  the most enjoyable book about Greek myths you will ever read, absolutely brimming with subversive enthusiasm.’ — Mark Haddon

‘Natalie Haynes is beyond brilliant. Pandora’s Jar is a treasure box of classical delights. Never has ancient misogyny been presented with so much wit and style.’ — Amanda Foreman

‘Witty, erudite and subversive, this takes the women of Greek myth—the women who are sidelined, vilified, misunderstood or ignored—and puts them centre stage.’ — Samantha Ellis

‘Funny, sharp explications of what these sometimes not-very-nice women were up to, and how they sometimes made idiots of... but read on!’ — Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale

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Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths by Natalie Haynes

Picador / paperback / 13 May 2021 / £9.99 / non-fiction

Stories of gods and monsters are the mainstay of epic poetry and Greek tragedy, from Homer to Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, from Jason and the Argonauts to the wars of Troy. Today, a wealth of novels, plays and films draw their inspiration from stories first told almost three thousand years ago. But modern tellers of Greek myth have usually been men and have rarely shown interest in telling women’s stories. And when they do, those women are often painted as monstrous, vengeful or just plain evil. But Pandora – the first woman, who according to legend unloosed chaos upon the world – was not a villain to the Greeks, Helen didn’t always start a war, and even Medea and Phaedra have vastly more nuanced stories than generations of retellings might indicate.

Now, in Pandora’s Jar, Natalie Haynes – broadcaster, writer and passionate classicist – redresses this imbalance. Taking Pandora and her jar (the box was a mistranslation by Erasmus) as the starting point, she puts the women of the Greek myths on equal footing with the menfolk. After millennia of stories telling of gods and men, be they Zeus, Odysseus or Oedipus, the voices that sing from these pages are those of Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Eurydice and Penelope.

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About Natalie Haynes

'Natalie Haynes is the nation's great muse' — Adam Rutherford 

Natalie Haynes is the author of five books. A Thousand Ships, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020. Her earlier books include: The Children of Jocasta (2017), The Amber Fury (2014), and The Ancient Guide to Modern Life (2010). She has written and recorded six series of Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics for BBC Radio 4. Natalie has written for The Times, The Independent, The Guardian and The Observer.

Visit Natalie’s Twitter | Facebook | Website 

For more information on this book, please contact Emma Finnigan.

Earthed by Rebecca Schiller

‘A powerfully confessional memoir that excavates important truths about our lives, our selves and our dreams - and what happens when we have to let go.’
– Clover Stroud, author of My Wild and Sleepless Nights

‘The 'how I moved to a field and had a breakdown book' that desperately needed to be written. Incredibly bold, brave, poetic and absolutely beautiful: a fascinating insight into the mind.’
– Sophie Heawood, author of The Hungover Games

‘So honest, so raw and so vulnerable. This much-needed story of resilience integrates history, myth and folklore, drawing on the histories of the people who have gone before and to whom this land once belonged. Such an evocative, sensitive and a refreshing take on nature writing and memoir.’
– Dr Pragya Agarwal, author of Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias

‘A lyrical journey through nature and the human heart.'
– Sarah Langford, author of In Your Defence

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Earthed
By Rebecca Schiller
Elliott & Thompson / 6 May 2021 / Hardback / £14.99

A courageous memoir for our uncertain times: Earthed is a story of the power of place to transform us, of dreams and nightmares on the land and of living in an unfamiliar world and a volatile mind.  

In 2017, Rebecca Schiller turned fantasy to reality and moved her family to a countryside smallholding for a life of sowing and growing. But as the first few years go by, and the ever-expanding list of tasks builds to a cacophony, it becomes clear that this is not going to be simple.

Another January comes in, and with it the threat of a mental health crisis, and so Rebecca turns to the garden where she has made her home, and to the women of this place’s past. Here, she stumbles on a wild space of imaginative leaps, where she begins to uncover the hidden layers of her plot’s history – and of herself.

The ground under Rebecca’s boots offers hard lessons as the seasons shift, delivering unflinching glimpses of damage done to peoples and the planet and regular defeats in her battle with the slugs.

Yet as the New Year returns, carrying a life-changing diagnosis and then a global pandemic, Rebecca begins to move forwards with hope: the smallholding has become her anchor, her teacher and her family’s shelter. Because when we find ourselves in an unknown land, we all need something small to hold on to and a way to keep ourselves earthed.

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TALKING POINTS & FEATURE IDEAS

Mental health and the cost of hidden neurodiversity:

• in a time of pandemic as well as personal, political and environmental crisis

• exposing the destructive burden of undiagnosed ADHD

• the feminist issues raised by widespread underdiagnosis in women and girls and the

• the highs and lows of smallholding as therapy: working the land, tending livestock and growing food to rebuild after breakdown and overwhelm  

The real story of the not-so-simple life:

• exploring our impulse to go back to nature, self-sufficiency, sowing and growing in uncertain times

• the practical lessons and joys of smallholding life: from breeding goats and 'counting chickens', to growing food as a family

• an unflinching look at the back-breaking, marriage-straining reality of following our post-pandemic escape-to-the-countryside dreams

Uncovering our land's hidden histories and politics:

• stories of the neglected women of our land's past and how their voices can help us today

• tracing an English country garden back to our brutal, colonial roots

• looking towards an uncertain future where climate change, political division, race inequality and pandemics collide

• asking how to live, love and thrive in complicated times of hope, fear and change

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ABOUT Rebecca Schiller

Rebecca Schiller is a writer, journalist and the author of Your No Guilt Pregnancy Plan (Penguin Life) and Why Human Rights in Childbirth Matter. She is co-founder and trustee of the human rights charity Birthrights and a regular contributor to the Guardian. Rebecca and her family raise a motley crew of goats, geese, ducks and chickens. They work their small plot to grow vegetables, fruit and flowers and restore wildlife to the land.

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The linocut on the jacket of Earthed was designed and painted by Anne Fewster using natural inks and pigments made from the author's smallholding, land and garden.

The Power of Geography by Tim Marshall

10 maps that reveal the future of our world: the much-anticipated sequel to the million-copy bestseller Prisoners of Geography

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'Another outstanding guide to the modern world. Tim Marshall is a master at explaining what you need to know and why.' - Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads

‘This valuable book is an urgent and accessible study of the facts and forces that will shape our future on earth and beyond.’ - Ed Husain, author of The House of Islam

'A skilful navigation of the regions that could define geopolitics for future generations. One to read to stay ahead of the game.' - Dharshini David, author of The Almighty Dollar

‘A compelling account of the return of geopolitics by the master of maps.’ - Professor Brendan Simms, author of Britain's Europe: A Thousand Years of Conflict and Cooperation  

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The Power of Geography

THE POWER OF GEOGRAPHY: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World

Tim Marshall | ISBN: 978-1-78396-537-3

22 April 2021 / Royal Hardback / 368pp / £16.99
Also available in ebook and audio

If you want to understand what’s happening in the world, look at a map.

Tim Marshall’s global bestseller Prisoners of Geography showed how every nation’s choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas and concrete. Since then, the geography hasn’t changed, but the world has.

In this revelatory new book, Marshall explores ten regions that are set to shape global politics in a new age of great-power rivalry. Find out why Europe’s next refugee crisis is closer than it thinks as trouble brews in the Sahel; why the Middle East must look beyond oil and sand to secure its future; why the eastern Mediterranean is one of the most volatile flashpoints of the twenty-first century; and why the Earth’s atmosphere is set to become the world’s next battleground.

In ten chapters covering Australia, The Sahel, Greece, Turkey, the UK, Iran,  Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Space, delivered with Marshall’s trademark wit and insight, this is a lucid and gripping exploration of the power of geography to shape humanity’s past, present – and future.

Tim Marshall

Tim Marshall is a leading authority on foreign affairs with more than 30 years of reporting experience. He was diplomatic editor at Sky News, and before that was working for the BBC and LBC/IRN radio. He has reported from 40 countries and covered conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Libya. He is the author of the Sunday Times bestsellers Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics and Divided: Why We’re Living in an Age of Walls as well as Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags; and Shadowplay: Behind the Lines and Under Fire.  #powerofgeography 

Tim is available for interviews, features and events. For further information please contact Emma Finnigan.

Everything I’ve Learned About Motherhood by Zeena Moolla

Everything I’ve Learned About Motherhood
From My Single-Parent Dad
By Zeena Moolla
24th February 2021

Motherhood is amazing and the devotion you encounter is staggeringly strong. But when you’re in the eye of the shitstorm, veering between love and lunacy, wondering how this tiny, adorable human can wreak so much bedlam in your life, I believe you need a robust sense of humour to help save your sanity.

For Zeena Moolla, the early days of being a new mum were a heady cocktail of sleepless nights, acid reflux and aching boobs. But finding the funny in the chaos buffered so much of the stress. And she has her dad to thank…

Being brought up solely by a single dad, one of a foreign, Muslim background, exemplified beautifully that parenting and families come in all different shapes and sizes. His massive-hearted parenting shaped the kind of mother Zeena is, and as the funniest person she knows, he can also turn any situation around with warmth, wit and a cheese sandwich. If that’s not a vital skill in parenting, then what is?

With top tips for surviving sleep-deprivation (spoiler alert: embrace a cantankerous mood and don’t buy crap coffee) to dealing with judgy idiots, getting to grips with shitty mum-guilt and returning to work, Zeena will show you that motherhood won’t just get better, it’ll be incredible.  

Laugh-out-loud funny, honest, tender and packed with real life advice – this is essential reading for every new mother not cherishing every moment, feeling like a misfit or simply finding this parenting lark all too much.

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ABOUT Zeena Moolla

Zeena Moolla is a journalist, editor, and blogger. As a journalist, Zeena has written for many publications including Marie Claire, The Telegraph, The Mirror, Good Housekeeping and OK! magazine.

Her blog wordtothemothers.com was also turned into a TV series for Made Television, in which Zeena hosted a parent-specific chat show. 

Zeena is also mum to Zain, eight and Yasmin, six. Her parenting style has very little in common with Gwyneth Paltrow’s and she’s alright with that. Her lovely husband Pete and very happy kids seem to be too. 

Instagram: word_to_the_mothers
Twitter: @bristolgirl1973

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How We Met by Huma Qureshi

How We Met
A Memoir of Love and Other Misadventures
By Huma Qureshi
Hardback / non-fiction / Elliott & Thompson / 28 January 2021 / £14.99

You can’t choose who you fall in love with, they say.
If only it were that simple.

Growing up in Walsall in the 1990s, Huma straddles two worlds – school and teenage crushes in one; the expectations and unwritten rules of her family’s south Asian social circle in the other. Reconciling the two is sometimes a tightrope act, but she manages it. Until it came to marriage.

Caught between familial duty and her own appetite for adventure, Huma seeks refuge in Paris and imagines a future full of possibility. And then her father has a stroke and everything changes.

As she learns to focus on herself she realises that searching for a suitor has been masking everything that was wrong in her life. Marriage – arranged or otherwise – can’t be the all-consuming purpose of her life. And then she meets someone. Neither Pakistani nor Muslim nor brown, and therefore technically not suitable at all. When your worlds collide, how do you measure one love against another?

As much as it is about love, How We Met is also about how we fall out with and misunderstand each other, and how sometimes even our closest relationships can feel so far away. Warm, wise, tender and hopeful, this is a coming-of-age story about what it really means to find 'happy ever after'.

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Talking Points

• Defying your parents’ expectation of marriage

• Bringing your children up with multiple identities

• Raising three boys

• Grieving a parent (Huma's father died when she was in her early 20s, profoundly shaping her experience of early adulthood)

• The relationship between mother and daughter, and how we come to better understand our parents with age

• Learning to be happy and fulfilled in your own company

• Being a mother and a writer and carving out time to work

• Marriage ten years on, and how it evolves and changes after having children

• Huma's own love story – meeting her husband, who converted to Islam soon after

• Home – where it is and how that changes. As Huma’s mother is selling the family home, she is in the process of buying her ‘forever’ family home

• Growing up with love stories – how growing up reading Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer shaped Huma’s romantic ideals, and how nineteenths century social etiquette and the matchmaking mothers seemed so reminiscent of the circles in which she grew up

• Navigating others’ perceptions as a person of colour in the media.

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About Huma Qureshi

Huma Qureshi is an award-winning writer and journalist, and contributor to The Best Most Awful Job: Twenty Writers Talk Honestly About Motherhood (2020). A former Guardian reporter, she has also written for The Times,  Independent, Observer, Grazia, New Statesman and The Huffington Post. She is a regular contributor to BBC2’s Pause for Thought and has appeared as a contributor on BBC Woman’s Hour, BBC London, BBC Breakfast and the BBC Asian Network. She is the winner of the 2020 Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize.

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Why the F*ck Can’t I Change? by Gabija Toleikyte

Why the F*ck Can’t I Change?
Insights from a neuroscientist to show that you can
By Gabija Toleikyte
21st January 2021

Most of us want to change something about ourselves. It might be our response to stress, our weight, patterns in our relationships or our performance at work. Change is hard, it’s emotional, but it’s not as impossible as you think…

In this ground-breaking book, neuroscientist and behavioural coach Dr. Gabija Toleikyte gets straight to the root cause of why we form certain habits and behaviours and shows how we can realistically stop ourselves repeating the same mistakes.

 Expertly researched, Gabija takes us on an eye-opening journey through the extraordinary human brain, exploring how it deals with the everyday changes that face us all. With relatable case studies and practical strategies and tools, Gabija demonstrates how you can rethink change.

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TALKING POINTS

• Why you shouldn’t suddenly stop bad habits.

• How you can take control of your emotions.

• The simple ways to improve your motivation and productivity at work.

• How you can become a better communicator, decision-maker and leader.

• The secret to strengthening your relationships, and the impact relationships have on our brains.

• How to look after your brain health and why it’s so important.

• Why ‘positive thinking’ can be a bad thing.

• Why it’s physically impossible for us to truly multitask.

• The science behind our gut instinct

• The science behind bias.
  

This transformative, inspiring and empowering book will help you get unstuck and guide you through every step to achieving meaningful, lasting change in every aspect of your life.

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ABOUT Gabija ToleikyteI

Dr. Gabija Toleikyte is a neuroscientist, lecturer, and performance and wellbeing coach. She is currently a lecturer in psychology at Sheffield Hallam University. Gabija completed her PhD at University College London on the neuronal basis of memory and navigation and her PhD findings were published in one of the highest impact research journals – Nature Neuroscience – in 2017. Prior to that, she undertook award-winning academic research on Parkinson’s disease at the University of Helsinki. 

During her PhD Gabija has also qualified as a business coach and coached UCL academics and administrative staff. Combing her neuroscience background with coaching experience Gabija has started her own consulting company, providing coaching and seminars for organizations and the general public on the subjects including changing habits, productivity, leadership, and decision-making.

Gabija is also a TEDx speaker and her work has been featured in the Guardian.

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