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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John Murray Journeys

Travel the World with John Murray Journeys
8 July 2021 / £12.99
(B-format paperbacks with flaps)
Series Editor Nick Hunt

John Murray Journeys is a new list of travel writing comprising classic and rediscovered adventures, all with new introductions from some of today’s most exciting writers. The first five titles are published on 8 July, with more to follow in 2022.

John Murray Journeys celebrate the imprint’s history of publishing exceptional travel writing and will help readers to rediscover classic, timeless and forgotten journeys from the past at a time when so many of us long to travel.   The titles will be a combination of books that have already played a key part in John Murray’s history and books that are new to the imprint, all with new introductions from some of today’s most exciting writers. 

Two of the first five books in the series were originally published by John Murray:

The Valleys of the Assassins by Freya Stark was first published in 1934 and chronicles the author’s travels through Iran in the 1930s. It is introduced by award-winning author Monisha Rajesh.

A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor is the beloved first book of Fermor’s epic trilogy recounting his ‘great trudge’ from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul that began in 1933 when he was eighteen. This edition includes the late-Jan Morris’s 2005 introduction.

The other three books on the 2021 list will be published under the John Murray imprint for the first time:

A Vagabond for Beauty is a collection of letters and diary excerpts by the young artist Everett Ruess, who disappeared aged twenty in the canyonlands of Utah – the mystery of his disappearance remains unsolved to this day. Everett’s writing, which is compiled by the late-W L Rusho, is published for the first time in the UK, and introduced by Booker-shortlisted author Paul Kingsnorth.

The Cruel Way recounts the journey that Ella K Maillart took in a Ford motorcar from Switzerland to Afghanistan in 1939 with Annemarie Schwarzenbach – the two women travelling partly to escape war in Europe and partly in an attempt to break Schwarzenbach’s addiction to morphine. The Cruel Way is introduced by Booker-shortlisted author Fiona Mozley and also includes excerpts from All The Roads Are Open by Annemarie Schwarzenbach, recently reissued by Seagull Books. 

Mississippi Solo is the youngest book in the series and explores Eddy L Harris’s 1988 canoe journey on the Mississippi River, from its source in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, in which the author battled against the power of the mighty river and confronted modern racism and the legacy of slavery. The book is being published for the first time in the UK and will feature an introduction by Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Adam Weymouth.

‘When I asked for suggestions for overlooked travel classics to bring back into print, the response from travel writers, nature writers and readers was overwhelming. Some books required tracking down on the dusty shelves of obscure archives, while others came to find me – one of those we’re republishing simply appeared on my doorstep one day, thanks to a passing neighbour. From over a hundred recommendations this wonderful handful of books has emerged, representing a diversity of background, experience and style, different forms of transport (including car, camel and canoe) and far-flung places and times, from Afghanistan in the 1930s to America in the 1980s. From intricate literary prose to diary entries scribbled in a Utah canyon, all of these books are invitations to illuminating, often surprising journeys and remind us that the world is a wide and extraordinary place.’ Series editor, Nick Hunt

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NOTES TO EDITORS:

Freya Stark was an Anglo-Italian explored and travel writer. She wrote more than two dozen books on her travels in the Middle East and Afghanistan, as well as several autobiographical works and essays. During World War II she worked for the British Ministry of Information in Aden, Baghdad and Cairo, where she funded the anti-Nazi Brotherhood of Freedom.

Everett Ruess was a young artist and wanderer who disappeared in the canyonlands of Utah at the age of only twenty, leaving behind extensive letters, diary excerpts and artworks that tell the story of his travels in the wilderness. His fate remains unknown.

Patrick Leigh Fermor was an author, scholar and soldier. Aged only eighteen in 1933 when he set out to walk across Europe, reaching Constantinople in 1935. He travelled on to Greece and lived mainly in Romania until the outbreak of war. Serving in occupied Crete, he led a successful operation to kidnap a German general, for which he won the DSO.

Ella K Maillart was a Swiss writer, adventurer and sportswoman who travelled extensively throughout Asia including a 3,500-mile journey from Peking to Srinagar with Peter Fleming. Her travels and journalism covered the USSR, Central Asia, China and the Near East. She was also an Olympic sailor, champion hockey player and international skier. For the first time The Cruel Way includes excerpts from All The Roads Are Open by Annemarie Schwarzenbach, recently reissued by Seagull Books.

Eddy L Harris is a writer and filmmaker from Missouri. He is the author of six books including Native Stranger, which was selected as a ‘Notable Book’ by the New York Times in 1992. In 2017 he released River to the Heart, a documentary film about his Mississippi journey. He lives in France.

The series editor Nick Hunt is the author of Walking the Woods and the Water – which was a finalist for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year 2014 – and Outlandish: Walking Europe’s Unlikely Landscapes. Nick has walked and written across much of Europe and he has written for the Economist, the Guardian and other publications, and he also works as a storyteller and co-editor for the Dark Mountain Project. Asking for suggestion for overlooked travel classics to bring back into print, the response was overwhelming, and the books for the 2021 list were drawn from over a hundred books.

The series has been beautifully and distinctively designed by Istanbul-based designer Laris Alara Kilimci at LAR Studios.

JM travel history

John Murray has a rich and star-studded heritage in travel writing, beginning in 1836 the innovative Murrays Handbooks for Travellers. After his own experience of travelling on the continent, and at a time when domestic and foreign travel was opening up, Murray’s guides covered tourist destinations in Europe and parts of Asia and northern Africa.

Over the next two centuries JM has published some of the most important travel books from captivating tales of intrepid explorers who journeyed through exotic and distant lands – among them explorer Dr Livingstone, mountaineer Edward Whymper and Isabella Bird (the first woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society) – to twentieth-century writers whose writing captured the rapidly changing world around them, including Freya Stark, Dervla Murphy and Patrick Leigh Fermor. 

John Murray is an imprint of John Murray Press, whose parent company is Hachette UK.

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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Feel Great, Lose Weight by Dr Rangan Chatterjee

'One of the most influential doctors in the country' – Chris Evans

'This is not a diet book. This is a whole new way of looking at what, why and how we eat and helps you design your own plan to build a better, healthier relationship with food' – Fearne Cotton

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Feel Great, Lose Weight
Long term simple habits for lasting and sustainable weight loss
By Dr Rangan Chatterjee
31 December 2020 / Trade Paperback / Penguin Life / £16.99

It's more important than ever before that we get in shape, stay healthy and live well - Dr Chatterjee is back to show you how.

Weight loss isn't a race. It isn't one size fits all. Drawing on twenty years of experience as a GP, Dr Rangan Chatterjee has created a conscious, long-lasting approach to weight loss that goes far beyond fad diets and intense workouts and helps to find the best solutions that work for you. Packed with quick and easy interventions this book will help you:

• Understand the effects of what, why, when, where and how we eat

• Discover the root cause of your weight gain

• Nourish your body without any crash diets or gruelling workouts

• Build a toolbox of techniques to help you lose weight, for good. Tips include why eating most of your calories in the morning helps weight loss

With Feel Great, Lose Weight you can make sustainable, medically-approved lifestyle changes and become a more energised, confident and healthy you.

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Talking Points & Feature Ideas

• How to change your relationship with your food and your body forever

• Why fat shaming will never result in lasting weight loss

• Why the government have got the obesity strategy all wrong

• The importance of managing your stress levels – 45% people eat more in response to stress. You don’t need a diet book, you need to reduce your stress

• The importance of good sleep – if you don’t sleep well, you typically eat 22% more food per day

• Ways to set your home environment up for success

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About Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is regarded as one of the most influential medical doctors in the UK and he hosts the most listened to health podcast in the UK and Europe, ‘Feel Better, Live More’. 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.

His first 3 books have all been Number 1 Sunday Times Bestsellers and his latest, Feel Better in 5, shows people how to transform their health in just 5 minutes. Professor BJ Fogg, the world’s leading expert in human behaviour, calls this book - ‘one of the best habit change programs he has seen - deceptively simple but remarkably effective.

’Dr. Chatterjee regularly appears on BBC News and Television and has been featured in numerous international publications including The New York Times , Forbes, The Guardian and Vogue, and his TED talk, How To Make Disease Disappear, has been viewed almost 3 million times.

He lives in Wilmslow with his wife and their two children

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EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT

LOSE WEIGHT THE RIGHT WAY FOR YOU

Oh Happy Day by Carmen Callil

A story of England and Britain, of Empire, migration; of poverty and rebellion in nineteenth-century England, in ‘Oh Happy Day’ Carmen Callil explores her roots and reclaims her ancestors from obscurity. Drawing telling parallels with our own times, Callil argues that social injustice in Britain today is a product of considerable misunderstanding of its history.

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Oh Happy Day
Those Times and These Times
By Carmen Callil
Jonathan Cape / November 2020 / hardback / £18.99

In this remarkable book, writer and founder of Virago Press Carmen Callil unearths the story of her British ancestors, beginning with her great-great-grandmother Sary Lacey. Born illegitimate in 1808, Sary was an impoverished stocking frame worker in Leicestershire. Through detailed research, we follow Sary from slum to tenement and from pregnancy to pregnancy. We also meet George Conquest, a canal worker, sentenced to seven years transportation to Australia for stealing a piece of hemp - and then faced with the extraordinary brutality of convict life. In Lincolnshire we meet Mary Ann and John Brooks, skivvies and silversmiths. Their lives traverse workhouses, gaols, pregnancies and villainies – and escape across the seas.

But for George, as for so many destitute and disenfranchised British people like him, Australia turns out to be his Happy Day. He survives, prospers and eventually returns to England, where he meets Sary again, after nearly thirty years. He brings her out to Australia, and they are never parted again.

Carmen Callil not only reclaims her ancestors from obscurity but draws telling parallels for our own times in this moving story of poverty, entitlement, injustice, empire and migration.

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TALKING POINTS    

• Has anything changed, fundamentally, in British society since the 19th century?

• Austerity and Brexit are echoed in the battles the English fought amongst themselves over a hundred years ago.

• How much do the British really know about the British Empire?

• Has Britain been corroded by its Empire – how damaging is it to a society to misunderstand its own history?

• An important account of English and British social and political history.

• Illuminates the story of refugees and asylum seekers - migration then and migration now.  

  ‘An absorbing account of empire, migration, the poverty of injustice and enduring love…The book bristles with Callil’s righteous anger at the injustices meted out to her forbears, and at the parallels for our own times.’ Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller (Editor’s Choice)

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ABOUT CARMEN CALLIL

Carmen Callil was born in Australia but has spent most of her career in the United Kingdom. She founded Virago Press in 1973 and in 1982 became managing director of Chatto & Windus. Her first book, Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family and Fatherland, was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Award.

Carmen is available for interviews, features and events.

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Selected praise for Bad Faith

‘A superb exploration of the fractured mind of French anti-Semitism’ - Simon Heffer, Literary Review

‘The story she has uncovered is so strange and powerful that it would be an unusual reader who was not profoundly moved’ - Kathryn Hughes, Mail on Sunday

‘A work of phenomenally thorough, generous and humane scholarship....Callil understands anguish, and lays bare its causes with clarity and precision. Bad Faith exemplifies what Primo Levi called the 'continuous intellectual and moral effort' that is the only adequate response to the events described here’
- Hilary Spurling, Daily Telegraph 

‘Bad Faith is a book of passion and anger which, nonetheless, manages to keep its head as a significant work of history’ - Mark Bostridge, Independent on Sunday

‘We cannot know what Anne Darquier would have thought of Callil's book, but my guess is that she would have been as moved, astonished and impressed as any other reader’
- Ruth Scurr, The Times

‘Extraordinary...touching... a masterpiece of lacerating satire’
- Peter Conrad, Observer

‘Bad Faith represents eight years of astonishing research...a remarkable book’
- Antony Beevor, Sunday Telegraph

‘A meticulous work of scholarship... [an] astonishing biography’
- Adam Thorpe, Guardian

‘Impeccably researched, Bad Faith is a work of great power and originality; Callil is to be congratulated on her achievement’ - Sunday Times

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.

‘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

‘Reading Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths by Natalie Haynes: 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, on Twitter

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Pandora’s Jar
Women in the Greek Myths
By Natalie Haynes
Picador / hardback / 1st October 2020 / £20

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.

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

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ABOUT NATALIE HAYNES

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. 

@officialnhaynes / https://nataliehaynes.com/ 
https://www.facebook.com/watch/nataliehaynesstandupclassicist/1649832641846815/

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SELECTED PRAISE FOR A Thousand Ships

‘With her trademark passion, wit, and fierce feminism, Natalie Haynes gives much-needed voice to the silenced women of the Trojan War. Her thoughtful portraits will linger with you long after the book is finished’ - Madeline Miller, author of Circe 

'A gripping feminist masterpiece' Deborah Frances-White ‘The forgotten women are vividly brought to life in this moving, intelligent and witty book.’ - Martha Kearney, BBC Radio 4 

‘Here, in this treat of a book, the women take centre stage - and how brilliantly . . . Natalie Haynes brings them to witty, lyrical, scintillating life . . . A book to both savour and devour.’ - Suzannah Lipscomb 

‘Breathtaking . . . Her writing isn’t merely clever, or elegant, or (at times) extremely funny - though it is all of those things. It’s also viscerally vivid.’ - Catherine Nixey 

‘Haynes is master of her trade, crafting perfect sentences and believable characters who speak and think in delicately nuanced language. [She] succeeds in breathing warm life into some of our oldest stories to show how remarkably little basic human relationships and emotions have changed’ - Daily Telegraph  

’Absorbing and fiercely feminist.’ - Guardian

How to Be Hopeful by Bernadette Russell

How do we find hope? And how do we hold onto it?
This kind and compassionate book leads the way.

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How to Be Hopeful
Your Toolkit to Rediscover Hope and Help Create a Kinder World
By Bernadette Russell
Elliott & Thompson / £12.99 / 10 September 2020

How to be Hopeful is a celebration of hope: an essential and courageous thing to envisage, create and connect with in our everyday lives. It shows us the places we can look for hope – in ourselves, nature, art, the kindness of strangers, communities, science, technology, innovation, as well as our individual and collective actions – and ways to keep it alive through all the challenges life throws at us. It invites us to act on our hopes towards positive and real change and includes stories of seemingly impossible odds overcome by individuals and groups of people who dared to do so, and triumphed. Starting with how we find hope in ourselves, this book also offers practical and creative exercises and tips on how we can embrace and develop hope in our communities, the wider world and in our future, as we face the very real and complex challenges of our times.

Exploring scientific, philosophical and spiritual perspectives on hope throughout the centuries and today, How to Be Hopeful is the essential book for our times.

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TALKING POINTS

• Why we should try and find hope and how acting with hope can help us create positive change. How hope is different from wishful thinking or blind optimism, how hope can provide us with the fuel to transform our lives, our communities and the world.

• How hope is connected with compassion - how compassionate practise - to ourselves, each other and to the whole world, can restore hope and increase happiness.

• The ‘positivity bias’ of children - how understanding and being inspired by children and our younger selves can help us find and maintain hope as adults – bringing us joy and giving us courage to try things.

• Why adults are prone to pessimism and how we can counter this? How cynicism and negativity can diminish our lives and how nurturing hope can help us live our lives more fully.

• How hope can help us even when we’re faced with life’s big challenges, such as illness, grief, death and dying.

• How to remain hopeful in the face of huge global problems such as the climate crisis, and how to stay informed yet not drift to despair. How to become an active part of the solution, and how to enjoy yourself whilst doing so! (activism for beginners!)

• The neurological benefits of acts of kindness and self-care, and how they fortify hope - how being kind to yourself and others can and should co-exist and how compassionate practise makes you more resilient, hopeful and more able to recover from setbacks and disappointment.

• How to grow your hope by connecting with your communities and your neighbours, and improve your own life and the area in which you live.

• How science, tech and art can all provide us with hope for the future - and how we can support and join in with those who are working towards a brighter tomorrow.

• How to find hope in the midst of a barrage of online negativity and relentless bad news - how to stay informed and engaged with the world whilst increasing your happiness and hope.

• How sharing stories can help us regain hope when it is lost, those of triumph over adversity, succeeding despite the odds, and happy endings. Understanding the way we tell our own stories can affect how our hope and our happiness, and how to take charge of our own stories and our lives, to help us realise our dreams.

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‘This book is an invitation to start your own journey towards hope. I believe that active hope increases the chances that our future can be better and our present lives happier.’

Bernadette Russell

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ABOUT Bernadette Russell

Bernadette Russell is an expert on hope and kindness, as well as a writer, performer and activist who plants a lot of trees – and helps others do the same. She is author of The Little Book of Kindness and The Little Book of Wonder, both published by Orion and in multiple foreign editions around the world. Since 2012, she has toured the US and UK speaking about the importance and life-changing experience of practicing kindness, including for BBC Radio 4 Saturday Live, Action for Happiness, Birmingham School of Philosophy, People United’s Kindness Symposium, The Roundhouse, Tate Britain, Turner Contemporary, Sunday Assembly and the Southbank Centre, where she was nominated as one of sixty-seven change makers for her project 366 Days of Kindness. Since 2018 she has worked with the Royal Albert Hall, producing performances with kindness and creativity at their heart. 

Bernadette presents the ‘How to be Hopeful’ podcast.

More information at: https://www.bernadetterussell.com/ Instagram: @bernadetterussell / Twitter: @betterussell / Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bernadetterussellwrites /

Bernadette is available for interviews, features and events.

Hey Hi Hello by Annie Nightingale

Hey Hi Hello
Five Decades of Pop Culture from Britain's First Female DJ
By Annie Nightingale
White Rabibit / 3 September 2020 / hardback, e-book and audio / £18.99

50 stories and encounters in the inimitable voice of Annie Nightingale, celebrating 50 years of broadcasting and presenting at the BBC.

Featuring never before seen exclusive interview with The Beatles, Billie Eilish, Bob Marley 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 the Guinness World Record holder for the longest running radio show on BBC Radio 1. As a 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 the author

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 this 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 was awarded MBE by The Queen in 2000, was made an honorary Doctor of Letters at the University of Westminster in December 2012. 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.

Annie’s 50th anniversary at Radio 1 in 2020 will be marked by two documentaries on BBC TV, a series of events on Radio 1.

Annie lives in West London.

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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

The Power of Us By David Price

The Power of Us: How we connect, act and innovate together
By David Price
Thread, Bookouture / 28th August 2020 / ebook, paperback, audio

We are witnessing the emergence of ordinary people working together to solve big problems in all aspects of our society, rooted in a communal desire to make the world a better place in which to live:

• The outdoor clothing company that sees record sales after telling its customers not to buy their clothes.

• The 17-yr old high school dropout who created the world's most used Covid tracking app.

• A school achieving great academic outcomes because of its commitment to diversity.

• The successful brewery giving customers the opportunity to become co-producers.

• A co-operative empowering communities to generate renewable energy.

David Price takes us behind the scenes of some of the world’s most innovative organisations harnessing the power of collaboration and diverse thinking to effect real change – and demonstrates what we can learn from them.

Thought-provoking and incisive, The Power of Us is an urgent call for leaders, teams and individuals to challenge the status quo. The response to Covid-19 has shone a light on how people-powered innovation is reshaping our world.  We’re seeing a global wave of self-determined and self-organised activism. The Power of Us offers a practical toolkit of ideas to show us how we can foster our own cultures of co-creators to transform our lives and rebuild a better world for the future.

'This uprising of action in response to COVID-19 demonstrates the ingenuity and talent that flourishes at the grassroots…It also fills a powerful desire for people to get involved and bring whatever expertise they have to bear—technical, medical, social, political, legal. This movement inspires hope for the future. Leveraging open, collaborative innovation by grassroots makers at international and local levels can help solve not just for the coronavirus but teach us new ways to work together to solve other challenges too.’ David Price

‘People are starting to find their voice, to understand that they can actually have an impact […] Doing our best is no longer good enough. We must now do the seemingly impossible. And that is up to you and me. Because no one else will do it for us.’ Greta Thunberg

Case studies in the book include:
Brewdog; Act-Up; Riders for Health; sparks & honey;
Liger Leadership Academy; Patagonia; WD40; New Roads School

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TALKING POINTS

• The New Activism - don’t just protest, provide solutions! (eg #MeToo, Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter)

• We are witnessing new, and more effective, social movements redefining social, environmental and cultural norms, deploying the tools and techniques of mass ingenuity.

• During the coronavirus pandemic grassroots actions often outperformed governmental responses that were slow and unwieldy.

• Social movements, citizen scientists, and peer producers are now better connected and have learned from previous attempts to leverage social reform. They are willing to lead communities in a post-Covid world. Given the scale of the anticipated economic depression, we may have no option but to work closely with them.

Tips for successful businesses:

• Focus on the mindset – ingenious innovators will shape a problem to fit the skillset.

• Know your limitations – surround yourself with people who have the skills you lack.

• Make your actions practical, enterprising and collaborative.

• Social enterprise demands unreasonable attitudes – the world won’t change by itself.

• Be excited, not intimidated, by the scale of the challenge.

• 8 Key TEAM Ingredients:

o   Trust & Transparency


o   Engagement & Equity


o   Autonomy & Agency


o   Mastery & Meaning


 Medicine:

• Research suggests that up to 8% of patients with rare diseases have developed innovations that were unknown to the medical science community (eg Tim Omer who worked with the NightScout group to develop an artificial pancreas).

• The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly recalibrated development and safety timescales.

• The pandemic has also brought together user-innovators, lead patients, and producers in a powerful, effective alliance.

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About David Price

David Price is an expert in organisational learning for a complex future. He is co-founder of We Do Things Differently, a UK culture consultancy. In 2009 he was awarded an OBE for services to education.

He writes, talks, trains and advises, around the world, on some of the biggest challenges facing business, education and society: solving the problems of employee, student and civic disengagement; maximising our potential to be creative, innovative and fulfilled citizens, and understanding the global shift towards open organisations, and systems of learning. David is the author of Open: How We'll Work, Live and Learn In The Future. He lives in North Yorkshire.

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Watermarks by Lenka Janiurek

Lenka Janiurek has written the remarkable story of her life - an unflinching account of loss, success, love, despair, and the solace of the natural world.

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Watermarks
Life, Death and Swimming
By Lenka Janiurek
Allison & Busby / HB / 21 May 2020 / £14.99

Lenka Janiurek’s story really begins with the death of her mother when she was nine. She is the daughter of a Polish immigrant father, and one of eight children. Across the years she is plagued by the rage, addiction and despair of the controlling men she is closest to. This memoir grapples with identity, of trying to find a place in a world and within a family, that don’t feel like your own.

This remarkable story from the 1960s to the present day, describes the loss of her mother to her relationships with 2 stepmothers, early success as a playwright, extensive travel, and encounters with both extreme wealth and poverty. Throughout Lenka explores and celebrates the beauty and tragedy of living life to the full.

Watermarks is a stunning evocation of alienation, searching, and the restorative power of nature.  

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Talking points

• Wild swimming – Water has been central to Lenka’s life, at the moment she swims in the sea every day. 

• Green housing – Lenka is passionate about housing solutions, she helped build a straw bale house in Pembrokeshire. It was Grand Designs Eco home award winner in 2008.

• Living with chronic illness – both Lenka and her younger daughter have had ME, severely limiting their lives.

• Living off grid for a year up a mountain in West Wales 20 years ago.

• Extensive travel in remote areas of India with 2 children.

• Inherited trauma – trying to understand and process the legacies of war, secrets, grief, addiction, violence, and the loss of country and identity.

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About LENKA JANIUREK

LENKA JANIUREK was born in York. At the age of 17 she won the prestigious Young Writer’s Competition at the Royal Court Theatre and subsequently had three plays on at the Royal Court Theatre, a platform play at the National Theatre, and one at the Other Place with the RSC in Stratford-on-Avon. She has facilitated workshops in writing, drama, art, and well-being, in schools, colleges, at camps, and in a women's prison. And worked as a baker, fundraiser, caretaker, green builder and researcher. She has four children. She lives close to the sea in Wales.

Lenka is available for interviews, features and events.

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Kilo by Toby Muse

In this ground-breaking and utterly compelling book, Toby Muse draws on 15 years of reporting on the drug war in Colombia, giving readers unprecedented access to the entire cocaine supply.

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Kilo
Life and Death Inside the Secret World of the Cocaine Cartels
By Toby Muse
Ebury Press / Hardback / £16.99 / 26 March 2020

Join the deadly journey of cocaine, from farmer to kingpin.

Meet Maria. Maria doesn’t see herself as a criminal. She’s just a farmhand picking the crops that never lose money: coca.

This is Cachote. He prays to the Virgin of the Assassins that his bullets find their target. If he misses, he’ll have to answer to the cartel who pay him to take out their enemies.

Pedro works the coca labs. But this laboratory is hidden deep in the jungle, and he turns coca leaves into coca paste, a step just short of cocaine.

And finally, here is Alex. Alex is a drug-lord and decides where the drug goes next: into Europe or the US. And he wields the power of life and death over everyone around him.

Following one brick of cocaine from Colombia’s jungles to the Pacific Ocean as it races to join global underworld economy, Kilo is an unprecedented journey to the violent heart of the cocaine industry. On the way we will meet drug lords, contract killers, drug mules, cartel witches, as well as the Colombian police and US Coast Guard who are desperately trying to stop the kilo reach the consumers in the world’s richest countries.

Toby Muse has been on the ground in the drug war for over a decade, earning the trust of those involved on all sides. Telling the human stories of how the world’s second most popular drug gets from the Colombian jungle to the London street corner, Kilo is a devastating account of a multi-billion-pound business whose influence reaches across the world.

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Discussion points

• There is more cocaine in the world than ever, a result of a slowly crumbling peace process between the Colombian government and Marxist rebels.

• UK police are seizing record amounts of cocaine. The drug funds gangs in the UK and the rest of the world, fuelling violence.

• This cocaine is destabilizing parts of Latin America and empowering criminal gangs which then fuel emigration towards the US border

• How effective is the war on drugs? (running for five decades without victory in sight).

• The human story of cocaine – the men and women who live and die in cocaine.

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“Kilo is surely the best account of the cocaine trade that will be ever be written, as well as the most incredible work of investigative journalist I’ve read.”

—  Ben Westhoff, author of Fentanyl, Inc

“Toby Muse goes beyond stereotypical crutches and achieves an honest and nuanced portrait of Colombia’s cancerous cocaine industry. Muse gradually reveals not just the stakes and the human toll behind every line of cocaine, but also the reasons why freeing Colombia from this deadly industry has proven so difficult. Kilo will prove enlightening even to those who lived first-hand the horrors of the country’s civil war.”

— Juanita Ceballos, Vice News

“In fifteen years covering Colombia, this is the best book I’ve ever read about the cocaine trade.”

— Matthew Bristow, former Colombia bureau chief, Bloomberg News

“‘Kilo explores the trenches of the drug trade like few other books. With vivid writing and deep access to the underworld borne from his decades in the field, Muse has produced a must-read for those trying to understand why decades of bloodshed and billions of dollars haven’t won the war on drugs.’ ”

— Jim Wyss, Pulitzer Prize winner

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ABOUT TOBY MUSE

Toby Muse is a British-American writer, television reporter, documentary filmmaker and foreign correspondent. He has reported from the front lines of the conflicts in Colombia, Iraq and Syria. He has embedded with soldiers, rebels and drug cartels, producing exclusive reports from cocaine laboratories and guerrilla jungle camps. He lived in Bogota, Colombia for more than fifteen years, reporting across South America and the endless drug war.

Toby is available for interviews, features and events.

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