Unbound Catalogue Spring 2021 by Unbound

Spring 2021

I Am Not a Wolf / Dan Sheehan, illustrated by Sage Coffey 978-1-78352-933-9 / £10.99

Longhand / Andy Hamilton 978-1-78352-941-4 / £16.99

Reasons My Cat Is Mad / Heloísa Nora 978-1-80018-004-8 / £9.99

The Philosopher Queens / Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting (eds.) 978-1-78352-801-1 / £12.99

The Unwinding / Jackie Morris 978-1-78352-935-3/ £14.99

Stick a Flag in It / Arran Lomas 978-1-78352-914-8 / £18.99

Vic Reeves Art Book / Jim Moir 978-1-80018-002-4 / £25.00

AUTUMN 2020 HIGHLIGHTS

Unbound Unit 18 Waterside 44â&#x20AC;&#x201C;48 Wharf Road London N1 7UX Tel. 020 3997 6790 For more information visit www.unbound.com Head of Sales Julian Mash julian@unbound.com Head of Rights Ilona Chavasse ilona@unbound.com Head of Publicity Amy Winchester amy@unbound.com To order any of the books in this catalogue please contact your PGUK rep. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re unsure who that is, contact Julian Mash at julian@unbound.com

Dear Reader, Welcome to our latest catalogue featuring titles published between January and June 2021. We have a wealth of books to explore, and with the outside world looking far from settled, what better time to curl up in your favourite armchair with a good book. As usual, the front part of this catalogue is devoted to interviews and features around the books in question, with the second half providing a full, chronological list including ISBNs, prices and trade ordering information. January sees the publication of Crow Court by Andy Charman, one of the most perfectly formed debut novels we have encountered – we can’t wait to share it with you. It conjures a kaleidoscope of individual lives that all touch a central mystery: the suicide of a choirboy in rural Victorian Dorset. Award-winning author Ben Myers is an early admirer, describing it as: ‘As gripping as Hilary Mantel and as convincing as Sarah Perry … debut novels shouldn’t be this perfectly formed.’ We couldn’t agree more. Unbound co-founder John Mitchinson discusses the writing and ideas that went into the book with Andy on pages 22–25. What if we responded to death… by throwing a party? Journalist Erica Buist travelled to seven death festivals around the world (Mexico, Nepal, Sicily, Thailand, Madagascar, Japan, Indonesia) in search of better attitudes towards mortality. The resulting book – This Party’s Dead (February) – is the account of her journey to understand how other cultures deal with mortal terror, how they move past the knowledge that they’re going to die in order to live happily day-to-day, how they celebrate rather than shy away from the topic of death – and how when this openness and acceptance are passed down through the generations, death suddenly doesn’t seem so scary after all. In March we are delighted to be publishing Jonathan Meades’s Pedro and Ricky Come Again. This landmark publication collects three decades of writing from one of the most original, provocative and consistently entertaining voices of our time. Anyone who cares about language and culture should have this book in their life and on their shelf. In addition, we have beautiful new paperback editions of his backlist available (Museum Without Walls, Pompey and The Plagiarist in the Kitchen), so why not get fully immersed in Meades this spring?

Also in March we publish Grand Dishes, a collection of time-perfected recipes inspired by the authors’ own grandmothers: Iska’s is German and Anastasia’s is Greek. Both are equally strong and stoic, and their love is shared through the food they serve. This book is rich with wisdom, elegant portraits and diverse recipes from over forty of these inspiring women: it is a selection of stories and techniques that are completely unique to a region, a grandmother and her family. Featured alongside are contributions from celebrated chefs and food writers including Anna Jones, Olia Hercules, Rachel Khoo, Meera Sodha, Enrique Olvera, Darina Allen and Francis Mallmann, who have each chosen one of their own grandmothers’ recipes. In April we publish One of Them, Musa Okwonga’s memoirs of his time at Eton in the 1990s. As a young Black man who grew up in a predominantly working-class town, Musa was not your typical Eton College student. Woven throughout this deeply personal and unflinching memoir is a present-day narrative which engages with much wider questions about pressing social and political issues: privilege, the distribution of wealth, the rise of the far-right in the UK, systemic racism, the ‘boys’ club’ of government and the power of the few to control the fate of the many. One of Them is both an intimate account and a timely exploration of race and class in modern Britain. May sees the publication of Women on Nature, a wide-ranging anthology of women’s writing about the natural world and our place within it. Edited by Katharine Norbury, author of the acclaimed memoir The Fish Ladder, she has gathered a rich array of writing that spans seven centuries, from Emily Brontë and Virginia Woolf to contemporary voices like Helen Macdonald and Amy Liptrot. Other highlights of the season include Financial Feminism by Jessica Robinson – a practical, jargon-busting, step-by-step guide to sustainable investing for women, out in February; Sew on the Go, an inspiring road trip and a practical guide to crafting wherever you find yourself from Mary Jane Baxter, in May; and Think Like a Vegan, a thought-provoking collection of essays and exercises to show how vegan ethics can improve the lives of everyone, also out in May. These are just some of the highlights from our spring list. If you are interested in hosting events (both real and virtual) or learning more about any of these books, do drop us a line – we love to hear from you. Until next time, happy reading. Julian Mash, Head of Sales

CONTENTS Pedro and Ricky Come Again

Three decades of writing from the unparalleled Jonathan Meades

A tour of the world’s death festivals

Author Michael Smith on the significance of this lesser-known tale

How – and why – women should pursue financial feminism

David Mitchell’s foreword to this charming short-story collection

This Party’s Dead

A Different Kind of King Arthur Story Investing to Build a Better World In Other Words Crow Court

Unbound co-founder John Mitchinson interviews debut author Andy Charman

Time-perfected recipes and stories from grandmothers of the world

Bestselling author Tom Cox turns his attention to fashion

How to make your own spring flower hairpins

Katharine Norbury on the origins of this much-anticipated collection

A cheeky sneak peek…

Vicky Unwin on uncovering her father’s secret past

On what it truly means to glitter a turd

Introducing Buddhist monks to the joys of the English seaside

Musa Okwonga reflects on his time at Eton College

Writers in recovery: an extract

On speciesism and challenging our daily ethical decisions

January to June 2021

103

Grand Dishes Fashion Blog

Sew on the Go

Women on Nature

Things I Learned from Mario’s Butt The Boy from Boskovice

An Interview with Coppafeel! Founder Kris Hallenga A Hare-Marked Moon One of Them

A Wild and Precious Life Think Like a Vegan New Titles: Spring New Titles: Digital

PEDRO AND RICKY COME AGAIN Jonathan Meades is a writer, journalist, essayist and film-maker. His latest book, Pedro and Ricky Come Again, collects thirty years of his very best work, demonstrating his unparalleled style, range and erudition with pieces on cities, artists, sex, England, concrete, politics and much, much more. In this extract, he discusses the ubiquitous abuse of the word ‘iconic’. Implicit in the modern use of ‘iconic’ is the perhaps deliberate, perhaps insouciant, aspiration to invest things and people with properties which render them miraculous and superhuman, magical and godlike. It’s today’s expression of humankind’s perennial bent towards aggrandisement and worship of other humans, of human inventions, of things: rocks, clouds, forests, tides, charms, relics. And if those, why not E-types, Zippos? Why not rock stars (whose debauches are puny beside those of Greek or Hindu gods)? But no matter how puny, how could the insipid, anodyne, desperately reasonable, ever so nice, milk-and-one-sugar-please god of the Anglicans – a figment of that thoroughly atypical period when Britons were restrained, reserved and stoical – have possibly competed with such antic Pans as Jagger, such Dionysiac groins as Plant’s: Farrokh Bulsara’s renaming himself Freddie Mercury was prescient; he became a mythic prophecy he had to fulfil. If churches can’t provide appropriate gods, we must make our own. Or allow ourselves to be seduced into worship of self-appointed gods and antinomian furies. One of the dafter ideas propagated by the credulous is that the immane tyrannies of the twentieth century owe their enormities to their atheism. This is wrongheaded. The Third Reich, Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China were theocracies whose dependence on the iconic was as great as their dependence on terror, on neighbours grassing each other up, on lies as gross as those of any established faith. Dictators routinely attempt to kill god so that they may usurp him then act like malevolent forces of nature, wreak divine vengeance, massacre innocents. They sack churches, raze temples, burn texts. The next steps on the road to genocide are all art direction and liturgical choreography. Until his triumph in the Great Patriotic War, after which he was depicted as a genial orphaned absolutist, Stalin would often be shown in paintings as a peripherally positioned member of a group of equals or as Lenin’s acolyte – as though Lenin was the father in heaven and he the mere son doing his father’s will on Soviet earth. The implication 6

was exculpatory, the living son’s errors might actually be the dead father’s. The largely illiterate population of his empire knew Stalin only pictorially, through ‘accessible’ icons. The iconic figure and the man were indivisible. Hitler was more audacious. His appearance was as measured as his rehearsed ranting. He reduced himself to a few pictorial marks and gestures – the salute, the moustache, the bang of hair. So no matter how protean he might be, no matter whether he was represented as a Teutonic knight, a little guy fighting for his people’s entitlement, a reliable provincial station master, a mountain visionary or a revolutionary vanguard, he was instantly recognisable. The modern world’s Apollyon turned himself into something literally picturesque, something iconic. The swastika was a logo. But it was neither an abstraction nor a theft from Jainism. It was a calculatedly didactic icon, pregnant with meaning. In German it is the Hakenkreuz, the hooked cross. It was, then, a graphic twisting of Christianity’s paramount symbol. The Nuremberg rallies were rites that underlined the link between the martial and the sacred. They were as terrifying as an Aztec ceremony, as hokey as amateur operetta. But they remain indelibly fixed on the retina that witnesses them. Their décor lives on in the stadium-rock stage sets designed for the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd et al. by Mark Fisher, who is among Albert Speer’s understandably few apostles. These shows are unintentionally mock-heroic while aspiring to be heroic tout court. And they’re otiose, they’re pompous – altars for flashy pasteboard messiahs. Yet the tawdry grandeur is potent, just as cheap music is meant to be, and the spectacle can stir us, rouse us, despite ourselves. Despite ourselves... here is the very quality that is: Condition A of the truly iconic. It affects us whether we like it or not. We should apply the Victor Hugo Test. When André Gide was asked who the greatest French writer was, he replied: ‘Victor Hugo. Alas.’ Condition B is that the image transcends its subject. Condition C is that that the subject should be legible in a sort of visual shorthand. Jesus’s faces may be those of painters’ catamites but the crown of thorns and outstretched arms are unmistakable. A severed head in a charger stands for his cousin John the Baptist. Napoleon is a silhouette and hand tucked in his greatcoat. Churchill is a V-sign. Chaplin is a walk, a bowler, a moustache. Tommy Cooper a fez. Jagger is lips bloated as Dalí’s Mae West sofa. Dalí is another moustache. Mae West is an inflatable. Condition D is immediacy of recognition. This demands immutability, a quality more readily achieved in objects than humans unless they are 7

dead – Che Guevara, Jimi Hendrix or James Dean, a film star whose invariable role was himself. An actor who is a chameleon (Sellers, Guinness, Olivier, de Niro) could never become an icon. The icon has to be the visual equivalent of an unmistakable catchphrase, such as Lord Owen’s ‘When I was foreign secretary’ or Andie MacDowell’s ‘Because I’m worth it’. And if a catchphrase is a repetitive soundbite then the icon is a strenuously rehearsed sightbite. The people and things that observe these conditions are few, infinitely fewer than the prevalence of the debased word iconic would have us believe. And they are becoming fewer. The half-century of television’s predominance has occasioned the gradual decline of oratorical expansiveness, of theatricality, and has prompted naturalistic discourse. Further, the multiplication of means of representation and the ease of images’ dissemination provide ever more potential low-key idols. The hegemony of the big beasts is already dissipating save in isolated nations like North Korea and Turkmenistan, whose Stalinist statuary seems laughably out of date. More typically, virtual villages will increasingly make icons of figures that are peculiar to them, just as real villages did in the distant past when the people in the next valley paid obeisance to an alien gamut of gods and incomprehensible totems. The more the media grow, the less appropriate the prefix mass. The globalisation of localism and, beyond that, of atomisation will very likely mean that such niche characterisations as ‘a living legend among the vertical matrixing community’, ‘a myth in the Sutured Albino thread’, ‘an iconic figure in Gremlin Pastures’ can be made without leaden irony. (Now, ironic – when did that word come to mean coincidentally?) Equally, the trade in wilfully gesticulatory buildings, aka lighthouse or landmark buildings, will stutter to a halt. The beneficiaries of the urban regeneration projects ‘driven’ by such buildings have been the construction industry, the time-serving operatives of regional development agencies and, of course, countless infrastructure consultants. In times of plenty, money was spent with prodigal abandon on what were nothing but vanity projects, vacuous lumps of architectural bling whose only purposes were to be noticed and photographed. Now that the money has run out, we can only rue the day that a town hall dullard on the make thought that Anyborough would be improved by synthetic modern ‘luxury’ apartments and consequent class clearances, vibrant dockside chain restaurants, pointless pedestrian bridges, loud public sculptures and structures so bereft of right angles that they must be iconic. 8

Find Pedro and Ricky Come Again on page 81

THE MEADES COLLECTION To celebrate the landmark publication of Pedro and Ricky Come Again: Selected Writing 1988–2020, Unbound is reissuing three classic Jonathan Meades titles on 18 March: his scabrous 1993 masterpiece Pompey, his widely acclaimed collection of topographical writings Museum Without Walls, and his polemical anti-cookbook The Plagiarist in the Kitchen.

Pompey: 978-1-78352-854-7 / £10.99 Museum Without Walls: 978-1-78352-853-0 / £12.99 The Plagiarist in the Kitchen: 978-1-78352-852-3 / £9.99

THIS PARTY’S DEAD There are many ways to deal with the knowledge that death is, one way or another, coming for us all. The most common way is to ignore it – that was Erica Buist’s tactic, until the day she found her father-in-law, who had been dead for a week. After a period of refusing to go outside and digitally stalking everyone she knew to check they also hadn’t dropped dead without warning, she decided to face death head-on: she would travel to seven festivals for the dead, one for every day her beloved father-in-law lay undiscovered. She would see for herself how other people deal with mortal terror. This Party’s Dead is the poignant, hilarious and fascinating account of her journey to discover the many ways people deal with life’s only certainty. Read on for a snapshot of each of the death festivals… Day of the Dead, Mexico, 1–2 November The festival for the dead that most people have heard of is Día de Muertos. That and my two years living in Mexico made Day of the

Dead the obvious first stop on my journey. Families build altars for the visiting dead – with food and tequila since the spirits will be arriving hungry and thirsty – and picnic all night in cemeteries, which are stunningly decorated for the occasion, lit up with candles and blanketed with marigolds. I was reintroduced to the traditions via a cemetery tour, a brief boat crash and an emotional rendezvous with the dead. Gai Jatra, Nepal, August My next stop on the death festival trail was Kathmandu, where they celebrate the dead with a cow festival. A decorated cow leads a procession of people who have lost someone that year, to send the message that they are not alone in their grief (though if a cow is unavailable, ‘a boy dressed as a cow will do’). The festival is joyful and funny, infused with comedy performances, a constant flow of music, and chanting and dancing in the streets.

Festa dei Morti, Sicily, 2 November A death festival that’s fighting not to be overshadowed by Halloween, the Festa dei Morti is a festival for death that emphasises love rather than fear. On All Saints’ Day, or Ognissanti, Sicilian children wake up to a treasure hunt, the gifts supposedly hidden by the ghosts of family members. Up until a few decades ago, it was the only day of the year that children would receive presents of any kind. Between grinning corpses in the catacombs and a disastrous attempt at making traditional ‘bones of the dead’ biscotti, I found out what it’s like to grow up associating death with gifts and treasure hunts rather than awkward silences.

Cheng Meng, Thailand, April While researching the Chinese Pure Bright Festival, or Qing Ming, I realised it was the same festival my father and Thai–Chinese stepmother celebrate every year where they live in north-east Thailand. So naturally I took a family road trip across the country with my father, who told childhood stories of dodging violent death in a Japanese prisoner-ofwar camp. The festival is a lavish picnic in the graveyard at the foot of a loved one’s tomb. They light joss sticks, offer prayers for their ancestors’ protection and burn paper representations of money as a way of sending it to the dead. With my extended Thai family, we also burned a paper iPhone for my step-grandfather, whose wife then wondered why he never calls her from Heaven (‘Oh no! It must be because we forgot to burn him a charger!’). Famadihana, Madagascar, June to September Google Famadihana or the Turning of the Bones and you’ll likely see pictures of a corpse wrapped in a shroud, held aloft by grinning young men, shafts of sunlight cutting across their faces. The tradition in the Highlands of Madagascar is to dig up the dead every five to seven years for a party. They wrap the corpse in fresh sheets, get drunk and dance around with the body to the joyful trumpets of a brass band. After asking around for an invite a year in advance, I found myself standing on a tomb watching bodies emerge from a hole in the ground, then lending my pen to surrounding families so they could write the deceased’s name on their new shroud, to be able to recognise them the next time they come out for a visit. © Erica Buist

Obon, Japan, August In Kyoto, the dead are invited to visit with a dance, and the invitation is good for a week. After coming back for refreshments and an update on what they’ve missed, the dead get a beautiful send-off from the city. Huge bonfires in the shape of Chinese characters are set on the 12

surrounding mountains. I was guided by locals to coax my father-inlaw’s spirit from the underworld and send him off in an emotional scene, hitching a ride to the skies on bonfire smoke. Ma’nene, Tana Toraja in Indonesia, August Ma’nene, which roughly translates to ‘hanging out with grandma’, is a festival in which the exhumed corpses of loved ones are the guests of honour. Unlike in the West, where death means a loss of all your power, in Tana Toraja the dead are demi-gods. Tana Toraja’s economy runs largely on death. When someone dies, they are regarded as ‘ill’ and brought meals until the family has saved enough money for a funeral – which, given that Tana Toraja’s funerals are extravagant, days-long affairs, can take months or years. During the annual festival of Ma’nene, people retrieve their relatives from burial caves and dress them in smart new clothes. They then ‘walk’ them around, take pictures with them, even FaceTime loved ones who can’t make it. I met an abundance of corpses and reflected on how quickly it becomes ordinary, how visible the love is in these rituals, and the stark ways we’re getting death wrong in the West.

Find This Party’s Dead on page 75

A DIFFERENT KIND OF KING ARTHUR STORY

Writer, printmaker and historian Michael Smith has returned to Unbound to publish his new translation of the classic Middle English alliterative poem, King Arthur’s Death, illustrated with his striking prints. Here he explains how the poem differs from the more common legend of King Arthur, and why it is so significant today.

As a historian and translator, I have a particular interest in the fourteenth century. During this period the English tradition of alliterative poetry underwent a renaissance, and in the library of Lincoln Cathedral rests one of the jewels of this revival: the Alliterative Morte Arthure, or King Arthur’s Death. The stories of King Arthur, of course, are the stuff of legend. Mention the name and we immediately conjure up stories of the Round Table, courtly love, jousting and chivalry. Arthur is also seen as the mythical embodiment of a dormant Britain, ready to rise again. But this is only one side of the Arthur story... King Arthur’s Death tells a different Arthur tale: a story of the fall of kings driven by the folly of pride. This is an account rich in contemporary detail, highlighting the horrors of war, the foolishness of ambition and the perils that await those who chase selfish dreams. Yes, King Arthur is at its centre but he is held up as an example, both of how best and how The Romans for dread hurled themselves to the earth For fear of his face, just as if they were dead not to rule. 14

ÂŠ Michael Smith

With fleet flying arrows, Those feather-fletched shafts

they shot fresh at those fellows; pierced through the fine mail

Behind its sweeping narrative, as Arthur wages war across Europe in defence of his realm, we begin to see that this poem was written on two levels: a chivalric epic yet also a dark commentary. Penned at a time of deep national uncertainty, when Richard II was either toppling or had fallen, King Arthurâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Death holds up a mirror to kingship and to political intrigue. It warns kings who choose to venture abroad to be mindful of the safety of the country they left behind. At the same time, it warns those who might rise up to seize the kingdom that to do so without justice and law is a recipe for disaster. While the setting may be the Middle Ages, its message is hugely relevant now; with nationalist and populist politics once more on the rise in Britain and elsewhere, it highlights many unforeseen consequences 15

of the politics of shadow-chasing. Good government is essential to legitimate power, not spin and puff. The appeal for me in translating this fabulous Middle English poem is precisely because it reveals the flipside of the conventional medieval romance – and because its message transcends the centuries. This is a powerful, epic work but also one which, behind the action, asks its audience to consider the legitimacy of war and the folly of vanity. The poem also enabled me to explore a different side to my printmaking: a darker side where the age of chivalry is stripped bare on the bloodied battlefields of Europe. These prints, influenced by the German printmaker Käthe Kollwitz, show war for what it really is: a stain upon the human race. Some people have said that the title gives the game away – Arthur dies at the end. I’ll let you into a secret: it’s how he ends up there that matters. Written anonymously some six centuries ago at a time of national crisis, King Arthur’s Death still speaks to us today.

Find King Arthur’s Death on page 74

INVESTING TO BUILD A BETTER WORLD Sustainable investing expert Jessica Robinson, founder of Moxie Future, believes we – and women in particular – can use our financial investments to build the kind of world we want to live in. Financial Feminism: A Woman’s Guide to Investing for a Sustainable Future is her practical and accessible guide to doing just that. Through jargon-free explanations and real-world examples, she demystifies the financial services industry and breaks down just what sustainable investing is, explaining the societal and environmental impact of the investment decisions we make. Do you ever wake up with an overwhelming feeling that you are not doing enough? Do you ever fear that you are part of the actual problem? You are not alone. We are watching the Amazon rainforest burn, millions of people struggle to survive because they are living in absolute poverty, children are unable to get basic healthcare or go to school. Yet here I find myself, living a life of privilege, consuming what I want, taking more than I give. It’s not sitting comfortably, not comfortably at all. Yes, I have made some changes. As a consumer, I do my best to buy local and I’m about 80 per cent vegan. My household is as plastic-free as possible, and by paying for recycling services I alleviate some of my daily guilt over the amount of trash we generate. As a mother, I preach the values of sustainability, of mindful consumption, of the importance of human rights for all people. My children could probably recite the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (please don’t let me down, kids!). I work as a strategic advisor to governments, think-tanks, institutional investors and companies, on all matters relating to sustainable finance and responsible investing. And I have done for many years. Yet, despite dedicating my career to this cause, I still feel that I’m falling miserably short. I’m sure there is a lot more that I can do. I know 17

that I am not the only person, and certainly not the only woman, who feels this way. I genuinely believe that sustainable investing presents an opportunity for women like you and me to start influencing other aspects of our collective lives. We don’t have to be pawns in the financial world, where someone else makes decisions on our behalf. We can educate and empower ourselves to demand better from the financial industry. The problem is there’s not a lot of guidance out there for people who just want to get started on their sustainable investing journey. The financial industry doesn’t pay a great deal of attention to anyone who doesn’t have big bucks to invest. And that’s just plain wrong. The industry also does a fantastic job of putting people off, through ridiculous jargon and nonsensical terminology. This sits at the heart of why I am focusing on women. Of course, sustainable investing is not solely for women. Absolutely not. This has to be a collective effort and I genuinely hope that many men pick up this book too. But we do know that women feel excluded from the financial industry, whether that is because of confidence, overuse of jargon that puts us off or simply the way the industry interacts with female clients. The feminist voice in me is shouting out that this has to change as well. Money is a tricky topic, and for many women it’s almost taboo. Why is this? Why does it throw up so many different emotions, many of which are negative? I want to explore women’s unique relationship with money – and the different drivers that sit behind this. Fortunately, there is increasing data on how women feel about and act on money, as well as their somewhat peculiar relationship with the financial industry. This is useful stuff because it can help us to figure out what we need to do better for women and their wealth. I am pitching this book at women, but at the same time, I do not want us to be fixated on a comparative discussion about women versus men. Sure, some comparison is interesting and, at times, illuminating. However, the intention behind focusing on women is not to engage in a tit-for-tat argument over what women do better or worse than men. Rather, it is to recognise the unique position of many women today when it comes to the thorny issue of wealth. It is to recognise that many women need solutions tailored towards their specific needs and ambitions that, to date, haven’t been fully addressed by the financial industry. It’s fair to say that women all over the world face a lot of challenges because they are, well, women. And this is never truer than when it 18

comes to money and wealth. While somewhat of a generalisation, when you compare the financial positions of men against women you cannot help but be confounded by the extent to which women are not receiving their fair share on the money front. So, what’s up? Over recent years, there has been a huge amount of attention given to the gender pay gap – basically, the average difference in remuneration between men and women who are working. And rightly so. It’s a critical and underpinning issue. There’s another important trend in there too – we have a pile of data telling us that many women are impassioned and inspired by issues of sustainability and that this extends to their financial decisions. Again, this isn’t to the exclusion of men, but we need to bring it into focus. It’s time we pulled this all together so that we have something that speaks directly to women, in a field that is overly dominated by testosterone. The financial industry has done an excellent job of excluding many women and it’s time we democratised it. So, I guess that’s what this book is. An ardent, urgent attempt to do more, to encourage us all to think about things differently, in an aspect of our lives that we – especially women – so easily overlook: MONEY. I’m taking what I know about professionally and sharing what I’m learning about personally, in the hope that it provides you with some guidance or support in your own journey. Come with me.

Find Financial Feminism on page 70

IN OTHER WORDS There are so many myths surrounding autism and autistic people that have persisted for generations. Despite autism being prevalent – one in a hundred people are diagnosed as autistic – society is still fraught with misconceptions and misunderstandings about it. In Other Words, an anthology of short fiction from eight autistic contributors – their themes as diverse as the writers themselves – aims to change that. Some cover trauma, societal issues and stigma. Some reach back in time, while others are set in another dimension altogether. There is heartbreak, wit, humour, poignancy and above all fantastic writing. Below is a sneak peek at the book’s foreword by David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks and Utopia Avenue. I’m honoured to have been asked to write this foreword for In Other Words, a collection of eight stories by eight authors, curated by Mainspring Arts. The narratives are as varied in subject and style as the stories are lively and imaginative. ‘A Conversation of Sparrows’ by Jon Adams begins the anthology with an intriguing mystery set in a recent garden and a wartime past, and shadowed by psychiatric damage. Clues to what is going on are revealed with a mature, unhurried pace, and the story rewards a second reading. There is also more to the world of Damian Sawyer’s ‘Standard Candles’ than meets the eye, where a single mother is helped at the darkest point of her young life by an angelic figure. Hope is shown to be as indestructible and ever-present in dark places as stars. Stars also feature in Joshua Wiskey’s ‘Light Revolution’, a quirky, pun-loving science-fiction-slash-comedy-of-academic-manners-slash-Utopian vision of the future, following a shift in the nature of light and the appearance of an eighth colour in the visible spectrum. It’s tempting to see a metaphor for neuro-atypicality in this eighth colour. Next is ‘The Crows’ by Kate Roy, an occult fantasy in the tradition of H. P. Lovecraft, whose protagonist finds himself alone and trapped in a Cambridge college. Laws of physics have been bent out of shape, and the use of imagery is especially memorable. ‘The Last Tree’ by Sarah Davis is narrated by the last tree in the world. I admired how this ecological fable about humanity’s mistreatment of the natural world mirrors – and is mirrored in – the story of a boy who befriends the sentient tree, their relationship striking a strong emotional chord. Esther Lowery’s 20

compelling story ‘The Clockmaker’ takes the reader back in time to Victorian London, where a likeable, poor young woman struggles to survive in a hostile world and builds a temporary bridge across the social divide. In Other Words ends on a light-hearted note with Richard Baskett’s ‘Winona the Angelic Wizard’, a magic caper especially rich in talking animals. Writing, finishing, editing and polishing a story is no mean feat, and congratulations are due to all the authors in this volume. As someone with a personal interest in autism, I began the collection with my antennae alert for signs of the authors’ first-hand knowledge of autism. The use of split-screen narratives or the non-mainstream viewpoints in the stories could be attributed to neuro-atypicality, but these could be traced just as plausibly to fertile imaginations and an authorial judgement that this structure or that point of view is the best method to tell the story. Perhaps this blurry border between the imagination, creative writing and autism is the point of the collection. The imagination is not a neurotypical place, whether its host-brain is neurotypical or not. We all have stories to tell, whether we are neurotypical or not. We all share a human urge to tell stories, neurotypical or not. We all share an appetite to read and hear stories, neurotypical or not. The authors, the editors and I hope the reader will find much to enjoy in these stories. Neurotypical or not. David Mitchell, 2020

Find In Other Words on page 100

CROW COURT An interview by John Mitchinson, co-founder of Unbound, with Andy Charman on his debut novel. Crow Court opens in the Dorset town of Wimborne in 1840 and takes the form of fourteen connected episodes spread across three decades. The landscape and language of rural Dorset connects them, flowing through the individual stories like the meanderings of a chalk stream. There’s the death of a child at the story’s heart and a mystery to be solved, but it is the assurance with which Andy Charman recreates the inner world of the characters – as though each of their episodes are written in a different tonal key – that really sets the book apart. As fellow novelist Ben Myers has written: ‘Debut novels shouldn’t be this perfectly formed... Crow Court already looks, feels and smells like a classic.’

John Mitchinson: Andy, can you give us a sense of where the book began? Andy Charman: It started as a short story. I wanted to explore what it must have been like living in a small market town – such as Wimborne Minster – before railways; or as the railways arrived. There’s a pub just outside Wimborne called The World’s End and I’ve no idea where that name comes from, but I imagined that that was the end of the known world as far as Wimborne residents were concerned at the time. And then of course railways arrived and wrecked all that. And having written that one story, I became fascinated by the changes ushered in by the Industrial Revolution, particularly in rural areas, and its impact on the lives of different people. Each story would introduce some new element that I would then want to follow up. It wasn’t until I had about six stories that I realised there was an overarching tale to be told and then started to fill in the gaps. JM: Why that period, in particular? AC: It’s almost the creation of the world as we know it now. I became really interested in how ideology worked in that process. The whole notion of the development of the middle class, the disappearance of an agricultural working class and the ways in which even well-meaning middle-class folk could see it happening and not be able to do anything about it. They were in the grip of forces beyond anybody’s control: the arrival of Darwin and scientific methodologies, the end of old religious truths. And the change was not just in the way that people lived, but in how they thought, even how they spoke. JM: Can you give us a flavour of the story, avoiding spoilers! AC: Alas, you can’t do it entirely without spoilers because even to set it up you have to spoil the opening tale. But without giving too much away, there is a malevolent choirmaster in the minster who is abusing the boys in the choir, one of whom apparently drowns himself in the river. When a group of four local men turn up to confront the choirmaster, he’s already dead, with a dagger in his back, and they panic. The rest of the story is really about their reaction to that event, their ambiguous feelings of guilt and their continued reactions to the choirmaster’s influence on the town. But it takes the whole book to solve the mystery. And I liked playing with how far away from that central story I could get: the classic image of the ripples on the pond. 23

JM: The wonderful texture and detail of the book suggest it required a great deal of research. Is authenticity important to you? AC: Yes, the details were really important to me, the language was really important to me. The sailing story [‘The Voice O’ Strangers’] was the product of reading at least ten books, many of them first-hand accounts of retired sea captains from the age of sail. The final story was five thousand words but the research behind it took six months at least. Accuracy is only part of what I’m trying to achieve. There are two useful metaphors to describe my way of working. The first is house restoration. I’ve got this wonderful Victorian house and I want to redecorate it. I can’t use actual Victorian materials but I’m using the closest I can possibly get to that: authentic paint and original wallpaper patterns. I’m trying to reimagine what Victorian life was like while using modern sensibilities and modern language. The other metaphor I liked is the idea of pointillism rather than brush strokes: that our lives are composed of these little focuses, these hot-spots that punctuate the ordinary flow of time where we go to the supermarket or take our children to school. That gave me the idea of having lots of ‘windows’ and angles on the same story rather than a single consistent narrative. JM: Do you know the area in which the book is set well? AC: Yes, I’m from the area. My grandparents lived in Wimborne, my parents grew up and met living in Wimborne, and we lived just outside the town for most of my childhood. It is a very Victorian town, although much older, and lots of the events in Crow Court happen in places that are very familiar to me. Both of my grandparents’ houses feature, as well as the rivers we played in as children and the minster of course, which is at the centre of it. JM: Can you describe the crow court of the title? AC: Crows are very smart animals. And the ‘crow court’ is an ancient idea. I’ve read supposed eyewitness accounts of crows gathering to form a perfect circle with one victim in the middle. They stand around cawing, as if discussing the matter, and then the crow in the middle is pecked to death. It’s a haunting image and one that casts a long shadow over the book.

Find Crow Court on page 65

GRAND DISHES Anastasia Miari and Iska Lupton travelled far and wide to collect stories and time-perfected recipes from grandmothers around the world. The result is Grand Dishes, a book rich in timeless wisdom, elegant portraits, mouth-watering food shots and recipes as diverse as the grannies themselves.

MERCEDES 26SOU PS & SI DES

An unassuming lift in a 1970s apartment block opened on to a kaleidoscopic pattern-on-pattern-on-pattern apartment, where a petite woman of great character was poised to make ajo blanco soup with us. White garlic, white bread and white almonds against a house of red, pink, green and purple. A dainty, creamy, chilled soup produced by a grandmother who danced about her kitchen with extreme agility, spilling things and laughing endlessly. It was a splendid sensory onslaught from the moment we arrived. At one point we asked what the tray on the wall was used for. It had a plate, cutlery and cups painted into its surface in childlike strokes. ‘Breakfast in bed – every day!’ she told us. When we asked what that involved, she decided she’d perform it for us. Within 10 minutes she was sitting up under the covers in her pink-and-white nightie, spooning homemade marmalade onto toast. We ate the soup from a giant porcelain soup tureen with a carnation strapped to the handle. This soup can be eaten immediately, but is better chilled for a couple of hours for the flavours to fuse. We took the time to fuse too, with a glass of red and a sliver of prosciutto. Then all eight women gathered around her Vogue Living-worthy dining table to dine on ajo blanco and pimientos del pico rellenos de bacalao (red peppers stuffed with cod), a dish from her childhood in northern Spain.

Born: San Sebastin, Spain, 1931 Mother tongue: Spanish Grandchildren: Coro, Carla, Mariana, Mariano, Enrique, Pedro, Juan, Jonás, Tomas, Mercedes, Ana, Isabela, Paloma They call her: Abuela

My family comes from the north of Spain, which is where this recipe comes from. In my home town of San Sebastián, the ladies of the house were supposed to cook very well, otherwise they were completely disgraced. If you didn’t know how to cook very well, you were a pariah, so I had to learn not just to cook, but to do it well. In my grandmother’s house, which was really a temple of culinary knowledge, I learned absolutely everything I know now about cooking. We did everything at home, including slaughtering the animals we would eat. I remember watching bloody massacres of a chicken being placed between the cook’s legs before being decapitated. Then it would run around the kitchen headless. I would then have to suffer seeing the entrails of the chicken being pulled out.

I thought it was the cabinet of horrors in my grandmother’s kitchen. They’d put live lobsters on to boil and I would feel so awful about it, watching their claws being axed off. It was like torture. I hated it. I much preferred when I began to learn to cook in France during my summers in the Basque country. It was less traumatic. When we would cook meat and fish there, it was already dead. I actually had such a wonderful time in France when I was younger. Not just because the food was better, but because we were able to read books that were banned in Spain during Franco’s rule. I’d spend hours consumed by Federico García Lorca. In fact, all the frivolous things we wanted, like fashion, were so much better in France than what we had access to here in Spain. 19

Franco found us a miserable nation after the war. There was nothing to eat and we had no clothes or shoes to wear, just hand-me-downs passed on from sister to sister. We’d buy meat on the black market from men who would carry around suspicious suitcases. They’d open them up and the suitcases would be packed full of all kinds of meat inside. No one farmed for the entire war period. There was no agriculture because everyone was out killing each other. My grandmother however, had a lovely garden. When the war came, my mother, who was very practical, took away all her beautiful roses and flowers, and instead planted tomatoes, green beans, cabbages, carrots. I was inspired by this garden to begin using vegetables for centrepieces in my career as florist to the Spanish royals. Young married girls who want to have a

SOU PS & SI DES

lovely table can, for instance, use a wine-coloured centrepiece with red grapes, aubergines and mauve cabbage. Combined with different pinks, it looks lovely. Then the day after your party, you can eat all the vegetables. I think giving birth is for cows, not for ladies. So when I was having my first boy I expressed the need for time to myself in the morning. My husband, who was really an angel, told me not to worry and that I could take my breakfast in bed. Ever since then, I have eaten my breakfast every morning in bed. — Abuela Mercedes

ABUELA MERCEDES’S SPANISH CHILLED ALMOND SOUP INGR EDIENTS (Feeds 4)

METHOD 1. Rip the bread into pieces and soak in water for 10 minutes.

— 125g white bread, crusts removed (it’s good to use up stale bread) — 75g blanched almonds

2. Squeeze out the bread a little and add to a blender with the almonds, garlic, melon, vinegar, oil, egg, salt and water.

— 1 large garlic clove, finely chopped — 100g melon, cubed (galia or honeydew work well)

3. Blend for 4 minutes, until smooth and the consistency of single cream. Add more water, if needed.

— 1 tbsp red wine vinegar — 100ml olive oil — 1 egg — 1 tsp salt

4. Transfer into a bowl and put it into the fridge for at least 2 hours before serving into bowls with an extra drizzle of olive oil on top and a sprinkle of fresh parsley.

— 1 tbsp water — handful fresh parsley,

Tip: To get your soup colder quicker, a trick is to use iced water to blend.

finely chopped

ABUELA MERCEDES’S SPANISH ROASTED RED PEPPERS STUFFED WITH SALT COD

INGR EDIENTS (Feeds 4) — 300g salt cod, flaked by hand into small pieces

METHOD 1. To prepare for this dish you need to desalt the cod 24 hours in advance. Do this by soaking the flaked salt cod in a large bowl of cold water, changing the water every 6 hours if possible.

— 3 tbsp olive oil — 3 onions, finely diced — 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped — 1 tbsp flour, plus extra for dusting

2. Heat 2 tbsp of the olive oil in a sauté pan and cook the onion for 5 minutes, then add the garlic and cook until everything is transparent, not golden – about 5 minutes more.

— 150ml milk — 14 roasted red peppers from a jar (2 for the sauce) — light olive oil for frying

3. While the onions cook, drain the desalted cod (saving the water) and lay out on a clean tea towel to soak up any extra moisture. It’s important that it’s totally dry.

— 1 egg, beaten — 1 red pepper, finely chopped — juice from the jar of peppers — 50ml cream — 350ml fish stock — handful fresh parsley, finely chopped

4. Set half the cooked onions and garlic aside in a bowl for the sauce. Spoon the cod into the onions, adding the remaining olive oil. Stir in ½ tbsp flour and a generous glug of the milk. Cook for 5 minutes as it thickens, then add the other ½ tbsp of flour and the rest of the milk. Cook for a further 5 minutes until the taste of flour has gone completely and it’s a loose, slightly sticky béchamel consistency. Add a touch more milk if you think it’s getting too thick. 5. Lay 12 of the peppers out on a tray or platter ready to stuff. Spoon about 1 tbsp of the cod mixture into each pepper and secure the top by threading a toothpick through. 6. Heat a deep frying pan with light olive oil about 2cm high and prepare two wide bowls, one with flour in and one with beaten egg. Light olive oil is better, as extra virgin will smoke quicker due to its low burning point. 7. When the oil is frying hot (bubbles gather quickly round your wooden spoon when you dip the end in), begin to dip and coat each pepper first in flour and then in egg and drop into the hot oil. 8. Fry on each side until golden and remove with a slotted spoon onto a kitchen towel to remove excess oil. Keep warm while you make the sauce. 9. Put the saved bowl of cooked onion and garlic into a large saucepan on a medium heat, Add the 2 jarred peppers you saved, the chopped red pepper and a little juice from the pepper jar. Cook for 10 minutes until the peppers are soft and the mixture smells sweet.

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10. Turn off the heat and use a hand blender to whizz the sauce together with the cream and fish stock. 11. Add the stuffed peppers to a pan with the sauce and cook on a low heat for 30 minutes before sprinkling with a handful of parsley and serving simply with a green side salad. 23

Find Grand Dishes on page 77

FASHION BLOG The Sunday Times bestselling author Tom Cox shares some ruminations on fashion: the good, the bad and the hairstyles.

Directly prior to death, I am certain, there is an anteroom where you are reunited with all the socks you once knew. My sock drawer is like a diverse but unsuccessful sock dating site: socks of every shape and colour, each of them alone, failing to find love. It never occurred to me until recently that it was OK to wear odd socks, that nobody would report me to a governing body for it. This is no doubt in part influenced by a couple of ex-partners: one, in particular, who admitted that seeing the wearing of odd socks sent her tumbling into a minor state of rage. Although I didn’t share it, this irrational dislike was one of those small flaws – such as her equally strong distaste for the wearing of watches – that made me love her a little bit more. In the summer of 2013, when we were out for lunch with my American friends Albert and Lara and their children Matthew and Nathaniel, who were seven and nine at the time, we all talked about her dislike of odd socks. Seeing the four of them is always something that lifts my mood, not least because listening to Matthew and Nathaniel talk has, right from when they were very small, been more entertaining than listening to most expensively priced comedy gigs by adults. But we didn’t catch up with them for about five months after that. When they arrived at my house the next time we saw

them, the first thing Matthew and Nathaniel did was lift up their trouser legs to show my girlfriend the odd socks they were both wearing. I’ve got some shirts I was so, so excited about when I bought them. Sometimes, when I’m wondering what to wear, I put one of them on, then go, ‘Neh.’ That’s been happening for a whole decade with a couple of them, and I really need to let them go. There’s nothing wrong with the shirts. It’s not like the shirts dislike me, or I dislike them. The shirts and I are just different people with different opinions. In the nineties, to get to the good second-hand clothes shop you went down an alley, then up a narrow staircase almost completely wallpapered with gig flyers. There were two rooms at the top: the cheap room, and the almost-as-cheap room. There were always hundreds of badges on the counter, where a friendly bloke whose voice was Nottingham in all the best ways took your money. The almost-as-cheap room was where I got my flares – new flares, but made to original early 1970s patterns, in many different styles – because in my head 1996 wasn’t 1996, it was 1972, just as in my head 2010 wasn’t 2010, it was 1970, and in my head 2019 isn’t 2019, it’s 1968. In 1970, or 2010 as some people insisted on calling it, I went back to the shop after a gap of many years, but dismayingly it was full of skinny jeans. I then remembered one other shop that used to stock the flares, which was a long way away, up a big hill, right on the edge of the city. It was a stiflingly hot day but something deep inside of me that likes trousers was very determined and I walked up the hill to the other shop, and discovered it was still there, but it wasn’t really a second-hand clothes shop anymore, more of a fancy dress hire shop, full of cheap eighties crap and comedy wigs. Even so, I went in and something made me lift up some long coats on a rack in the back room, and what I discovered underneath them was ten pairs of the flares; possibly the last ten in existence, each priced at £10. I bought them all, even the ones that weren’t in my size, and the shop knocked another £15 off. Over the next few months, I distributed the ones that didn’t fit amongst appropriately sized seventies-clothes-loving friends, like some bellbottom fairy. The only ones in my size I didn’t keep were a bright orange pair: a choice I now have some misgivings about. Never take advice from your mum on hair. Mums are mostly brilliant but when it comes to hair their sole mission is to sabotage your wellbeing. This is a hard lesson that you have to relearn several times, especially 33

when, like me, you have a particularly great mum. My mum has cut my hair many times in the past, but if my mum had cut my hair the way she wanted to, my hair would have been very different. At my school in Nottinghamshire, almost all the boys got their hair cut by a man in town they called ‘Mad George’, for fifty pence. Having my hair cut by my mum, and not by Mad George, was one of the things that prompted some people at my school to call me ‘posh’, along with the fact that I had brown bread in my packed lunch, and wore imitation Doc Marten boots and dark socks instead of tasselled slip-ons with white socks. Since then, I have had my hair cut by proper barbers and hairdressers, sometimes for over £10, but I remain of the opinion that anything that happens to male hair that costs over £10 is entirely fictional. I went for a haircut at a new place. After my haircut, the hairdresser fetched my duffle coat from the peg in the corner of the room. I’d been thinking about letting the duffle coat go for a couple of years, but hadn’t quite been able to bring myself to do it. It was very old, and unusually heavy, and I saw the hairdresser’s knees buckle an inch or two under its weight. ‘Here is your carpet, sir!’ he said, handing it to me. I don’t think anybody should be nasty about somebody’s appearance, ever. I’m against it, one hundred per cent. Yet at the same time, thinking back to a couple of periods of my life, I can’t help sometimes wondering, ‘Could somebody not have taken me to one side and had a quiet word with me about how shit I was looking?’ Everyone likes to believe every change in their hair and outfit is a step forward, yet sometimes seventeen years of apparent stylistic steps forward, with no financial restrictions, can somehow lead you to a backcombed ex-rocker mullet and a light grey suit that looks like it came from the sale rack in Littlewoods. What’s bewildering about the mid to late eighties is not the way people who looked brilliant and made mind-blowing music in the sixties and seventies started dressing and overproducing their music, it’s the fact that they clearly viewed it all as progress. Even George Harrison, a pop star more impervious to fads than most, wasn’t impervious to this. It felt like irons were poised to be a much more important aspect of life, when I was growing up. Same with shoe polish. I’ve got an iron, but I haven’t used it for ages, and I haven’t applied any shoe polish to a shoe for even longer. Life has gone on, and nothing too horrific has happened 34

as a direct result of my neglect. If you’re diligent about ironing, you might spend, say, thirteen hours of the next year ironing. You’ll have neat clothes but remember the cost: that’s thirteen hours you’ve lost that you could have used walking through haunted forests, visiting esoteric museums or befriending strange dogs. ‘He’s got curtains,’ my Nottingham friend Karina Dakin used to say, when talking about a boy she liked. After a while she didn’t even need to say it; she’d just do a slicing motion with her hands below both ears. I always knew instantly what she meant. 1992 was sliding into 1993 and everyone wanted curtains. I couldn’t have curtains because my hair was too thick and curly. I resented my curly hair and the way it seemed to resemble a vast straw mushroom every time I grew it. Curls are like large breasts in probably one way only: they’re brilliant and a lot of people want them but frequently not the people who actually own them. These days, I am happy to be curly, wouldn’t want it any other way, and admire the way many young folk embrace their curls and let them fly, but the 1990s were not a good time to be young with thick curly hair. One time, my pal Robin and I got chased across an industrial estate near Long Eaton by a couple of thugs in the dead of night. When they caught up with us, I asked them what their problem was. ‘He wants to beat t’shit out o’ you ’cause you got bushy hair,’ said one of the thugs, pointing to his accomplice. This did not surprise me as much as you might imagine. It was that kind of place, and that kind of time.

Find Notebook on page 80

SEW ON THE GO You know the score. You’re at your desk, idly scrolling through picture-perfect posts from total strangers, thinking for the millionth time about leaving the rat race behind. It’s just you, your backpack and a rough plan on a piece of paper. There are no e-mails, no deadlines, no daily commute, no people vying for your attention. There’s just the freedom of the open road…

Around this time my Godfather died and unexpectedly left me a little bit of money. I immediately decided to spend part of this inheritance on a small campervan. I’d always dreamed of having a Mobile Makery – a stylish studio on wheels packed with everything I needed to make beautiful things. It wasn’t quite love at first sight, but I plumped for my own Bambi after only one date having seen her advertised online by a garage in Southampton. I nipped down on the train to take a closer look and found a muchneglected van needing lots of TLC. How could I not pick her up, dust her down and give her a new lease of life? I (perhaps rather naively) bought her on the spot and proudly drove her back to south-east London, where I parked her on the street in front of my flat. It didn’t matter to me that Bambi’s top speed was 60, that the interior electrics and fridge were broken or that I’d have to use a potty on board. Bambi would be my bolthole, my crafty retreat from the world. Travelling encourages creativity. You might see a familiar object in a different setting and find yourself thinking of fresh ways in which to use it. You might meet someone who shares their love of a local craft with you and decide to try it for yourself. Or you might come across a treasure that’s way beyond your budget but could be reproduced to some extent at home. I hope this book will encourage you to think differently about what can be achieved.

MAKE SPRING FLOWER HAIRPINS I first saw a version of these blossom-like flowers on a silky vintage nightdress case that I bought at a French flea market. I unpicked them stitch by stitch to see how they were made. This is my own interpretation using cotton organdie – a crisp fabric that’s easy to dye and manipulate. Go on, give these a whirl. They’re not difficult. This is couture craft for a fraction of the price. Not quite what you’ll find in Legeron, the French flower-making atelier, but still très belle! You’ll need: Cotton organdie fabric in cream or white Scissors A fine needle and thread Small paint brush and some water Felt-tip pens Scrap of felt Glue gun Large old-fashioned hair pins 1. Cut the cotton organdie into strips 40 cm long and 5 cm wide. Fold in half lengthways then add some colour on one side with the felt-tip pens. Blend and bleed the colours together with the paint brush and a little water. 2. Once the fabric is dry, take a double thread and put a knot at the end. Work a small running stitch along the raw edge of the folded strip for 5–6 cm, then make a large stitch up to the top and down again to form a V. 3. Now gather up your stitching. As you pull the stitches together you’ll see that they pull the fabric into a petal shape. Repeat the previous step to create another petal and so on until the end of the strip. 4. Once you get to the end, you should have seven to eight petals in total. 5. Arrange the petals in a circle and stitch through the middle to form a flower shape. 6. To make stamens, form a loop by wrapping thread round your first two fingers a few times. Take off and tie in the middle. 7. Sew the thread to the centre of the flower and when secure cut the loops of the thread. 8. Use the glue gun to stick the flower to a hairpin. Cover the join on the back with a small circle cut from felt and scrunch the flower a little so it’s not too perfect. You’re done! Find Sew on the Go on page 93

WOMEN ON NATURE Women on Nature is a scintillating vision of the natural world, bringing to the foreground the writing of women on place, landscape and nature, over the centuries and up to the present day. Read on for a glimpse of the introduction by Katharine Norbury, editor of the collection and author of the critically acclaimed The Fish Ladder. When Unbound first asked me to curate this anthology I was hesitant. The words ‘women’ and ‘nature’ have both, in different ways, shifted their meaning in this first quarter of the twenty-first century. The simple dictionary definitions no longer seem to cover it. ‘Women’, in English, is the plural form of ‘woman’, a Middle English term that grew from the Old English ‘wiman’, or ‘wifmann’, and is given in most dictionaries to mean an adult female human. But it’s hard to ignore the implication of an adjunct, or ‘spare rib’, in those three letters: ‘wif’. My wonderfully relaxed and supportive parents didn’t really impart to me an awareness of being a ‘female human’. Perhaps because Mum was, in her own words, a tomboy, and though there were dresses for Sunday best, hand-tailored by older female relatives, I was usually to be found in slacks, often climbing the pear tree in our garden or hiding in the shrub-house I had constructed with my friends in a massive rhododendron bush. While my brother and I had different interests – he played golf, I played the flute in a youth orchestra – neither of these pastimes was particularly associated with either maleness or femaleness, as a result of which I grew up without any particular awareness of having a gender. With hindsight, I have come to regard the laissez-faire attitude of my parents in relation to who or what I perceived myself to be as having been a great luxury. ‘Nature’ was an equally slippery notion for me to grasp. The online dictionary defines it as ‘the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations’. This idea of the Other was something that I struggled with. Many of you will be too young to remember the ‘I Spy’ books: I Spy In the Country, I Spy Birds, with their alluring tick-boxes for stag beetles and hayricks, chiffchaffs and mallards. Of different kinds of gate openings. The ‘I Spy’ books were perfect for negotiating and giving form to the endless summer holidays, both as a solitary child and as one accompanied by friends. There was a reassuring, football-card nerdyness in ticking off the species of moths or natural features and comparing them with your 38

friends’ or cousins’ achievements. During term time, our formidable deputy head, Mrs Ames, ran the Young Ornithologists’ Club, then the junior branch of the RSPB. Seventeen species of garden bird appeared regularly at the enormous bird table Dad had made for our garden. I had once hand-reared a baby thrush after some boys plucked the nest from the hedgerow. These things were the stuff of everyday life, growing up as I did at the edge of a green belt, and I certainly didn’t think of them as ‘other’, or see ‘nature’ as something separate from or different to myself. And looking at that dictionary definition – what does it actually mean? Does ‘nature’ only include things that have evolved naturally, without our intervention? So, not including domestic animals, cats and dogs, cows and sheep? And what about the things that are wild? Where does my hand-reared thrush, Jimmy, fit in? Was he still wild? What does ‘wild’ mean? Also, as anyone who has spent any time outdoors will have learned, humans and ‘other than human critters’, to borrow Donna Haraway’s term, have a tendency to domesticate one another, if left in too close proximity for any length of time.

MY REAL ISSUE WITH THE WORD ‘NATURE’ IS THAT IT IS IMPLICITLY ANTHROPOCENTRIC. IT IS, BY DEFINITION, ‘THEM’ AND ‘US’. When I returned this evening and put the light on in my study here at RSPB Haweswater, there was a quick ‘Chagh!’ and a metallic tap at the window. A greater spotted woodpecker – something of a martinet – had observed my return to the house, and specifically to the room where a plastic bird feeder was attached by suction discs to the window. ‘Chagh!’ meant, ‘Go and get those sunflower hearts you know that I love’, or at the very least: ‘Where are they?’ This bird will enter the room if I leave the window open. I haven’t tamed it. It has simply come to associate me with 1) no danger to itself and 2) a thus-far endless supply of sunflower hearts. It hasn’t come into the room to be my friend, but to try to find the stash (they’re in a filing cabinet, in a sack, labelled: RSPB Sunflower Hearts). Carl Safina in his groundbreaking study of animal behavior, Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace, seeks to open our eyes to the largely unacknowledged cultural common ground shared by whales, scarlet macaws, chimpanzees and humans, among others, and the extent to which we all learn, are taught, to ‘become’. Shared cultural attributes such as the desire to nurture one’s family, in the case of whales, or to 39

live in peace with one’s neighbours (despite a natural proclivity towards war) in the case of chimpanzees. My real issue with the word ‘nature’ is that it is implicitly anthropocentric. It is, by definition, ‘them’ and ‘us’. The philosopher Timothy Morton prefers not to use the word, preferring ‘ecology’ instead. Ecology, and here’s another dictionary definition, is ‘the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings’; in other words, in this version of the world, we too are part of the whole. And yet even the term ‘ecology’ takes no cognisance of a spiritual or other-than-physical aspect to the world we are seeking to describe. That which is unseen, and unquantifiable, and sublime slips through the net. How many of us respond to something elusive, something mysterious about the natural world, in some unquantifiable way?

WE ARE STUMBLING INTO A TRAP, THEREFORE, IF WE ASSUME THAT WOMEN HAVE TRADITIONALLY NOT WRITTEN ABOUT THE NATURAL WORLD BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOT BEEN WRITING THESE KINDS OF BOOKS. So, given my own discomfort with the concepts of both gender and nature it may seem an odd decision for me to have called this collection Women on Nature, even perhaps something of a retrograde step. But, the thing is, you know what I mean! In reality I chose the title, Women on Nature, as a playful acknowledgement of Susan Griffin’s controversial 1978 feminist polemic Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, in which Griffin disputed the patriarchal and somewhat patronising position that ‘women’ are ‘intuitive’, ‘closer to nature’ (Mother Nature, Father God) and therefore inherently ‘wild’ / ‘volatile’ and in need of ‘taming’ / ‘civilising’. And until really very recently, in our east Atlantic archipelago at any rate, it is true that nature writing has been associated almost exclusively with men. As a fledgling writer, I was very much influenced by the work of Bruce Chatwin, Robert Macfarlane and Peter Matthiessen. At a certain level these writers may be thought of as travel writers, and nature writing, as we often think of it, bears a familial relationship to travel writing. A writer goes out into a landscape and records what they see. Yet this kind of writing, writing that is born out of a journey, has often been undertaken, and for sound cultural and economic reasons, by men who for one reason or another have had 40

both the time and the resources to do both the travelling and the writing. And we are stumbling into a trap, therefore, if we assume that women have traditionally not written about the natural world because they have not been writing these kinds of books. What would happen, I wondered, if I simply missed out the 50 per cent of the population whose voices have been credited with shaping this particular ‘cultural norm’. If I coppiced the woodland, so to speak, and allowed the light to shine down to the forest floor and illuminate countless saplings now that a gap has opened in the canopy. But it isn’t only male voices that are hushed in this volume. I have also focused exclusively on writing in English about the eastern islands of the Atlantic ocean. This is because if you ask someone to name well-known nature writers who are women, the names Annie Dillard, Rebecca Solnit and Terry Tempest Williams are likely to be among the first to come up, and the American tradition, for want of a better term, and its east Atlantic equivalent, have different formative influences, and have emerged in different ways. So having cut away half the population and much of the English-speaking world, this volume focuses on what is left. In searching for contributions to this anthology I have been interested by how many times the words wall, garden, tree have appeared. Domestic animals appear as regularly as their wild counterparts, and all in all there is an emphasis on – rather than the elusive term: ‘nature’ – simply the experience of ‘being outside’. Perhaps, in the end, that is what this collection is: a collection of writing by women about the experience of being under the permissive sky rather than beneath a manmade, and it usually was made by a man or men, ceiling. Whether or not by reading these women’s voices in proximity to one another we change our thoughts about what constitutes ‘nature writing’, and whether ‘nature’ is something separate from ourselves, or whether we are all part of a unified whole, I leave to you to decide. Katharine Norbury, Naddle Farm, Haweswater, August 2020

Find Women on Nature on page 94

THINGS I LEARNED FROM MARIO’S BUTT When it comes to video game character designs, one of the most commonly overlooked aspects is the buttocks. Sure, we might see tweets when a game launches about how nice a female character’s big arse is, or we might giggle at GIFs of farts from time to time, but how often do we as lovers of interactive media stop to really think about the meaning of the butt? In Things I Learned from Mario’s Butt, Laura Kate Dale sets out to change that, alongside original artwork from Zack Flavin.

MARI KING

Rabbid P

Rabbid Peach, one o of a fusion device le for this turn-based Peach is full to burs We know from i middle of being sw to her buttocks. When we look a head-to-toe outfits Rabbid Luigi’s shirt The only charac dress, but Rabbid P puffy royal dresses wanting to sneak it letting your fluffy bu Even official stat selfies; she really w royalty that she is.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM MARIO’S BUTT

MARIO & RABBIDS: KINGDOM BATTLE Rabbid Peach Rabbid Peach, one of Ubisoft’s Minions-esque Rabbid characters, given a new look and personality as a result of a fusion device let loose on the world, is without a doubt the most memorable of the characters created for this turn-based developer mash-up. From her kiss-my-arse attitude to her perpetual selfie-taking, Rabbid Peach is full to bursting with confidence and charisma. We know from in-game context that Rabbid Peach is body-positive – she’s taking selfies even when in the middle of being swung through the air by a giant, mutant piranha plant – and that body-positivity expends to her buttocks. When we look at every other Rabbid persona based on a Mario character in Kingdom Battle, they wear head-to-toe outfits that match those worn by their real-world counterparts. Rabbid Mario wears overalls, Rabbid Luigi’s shirt covers his legs, and Rabbid Yoshi wears a dinosaur onesie. The only character not to cover their whole body is Rabbid Peach. Princess Peach wears a floor-length dress, but Rabbid Peach only wears a shirt of the same colour and pattern. Why not wear a dress? Because puffy royal dresses hide and disguise buttocks, and if you’re loud and proud about your love for your butt, wanting to sneak it into selfies when you can get the angle right, you’re better off just wearing a shirt and letting your fluffy butt fly free for the world to see. Even official statues of Rabbid Peach show her bent in such a way that her butt can get into her trademark selfies; she really wants the world to see that butt, and why wouldn’t she? It’s a butt fit for the selfie-taking royalty that she is.

MARIO & RABBIDS KINGDOM BATTLE

Wario

Birdo Birdo, first introduced to Western audiences in Super Mario Bros. 2, is a character with infamous origins. Birdo was initially referenced in the game’s manual as being a trans-woman, someone assigned male at birth but living as female, something only ever really explored in a Japan-only game called Captain Rainbow. For those unfamiliar with Captain Rainbow, the game featured a plotline in which Birdo was arrested by the police for using a women’s public bathroom, a clear display of transphobia if ever there’s been one, and the player is tasked with finding evidence of her female status to get her freed. It’s not perfect as trans stories goes, with the evidence being used to free her – owning a personal mock phallus – not really proving anything about her female status, but it does show that the character was always intended to be a trans woman. Some may argue that the fact her

j 16

THINGS I LEARNED FROM MARIO’S BUTT

Wario has a rear end that’s defined primarily by its size and its utility. We’re not just talking about a plump, unrefined butt like Mario’s, but a bottom that’s practically bulging out of its jeans, and frankly you’d be unlikely to find a tailor in all the land who wouldn’t be just a little daunted by the challenge of creating this man’s jeans. Wario’s butt is the antithesis to Mario’s. Where Mario’s butt is an underutilised tool, engaged in thumping but no other actions, Wario makes use of every part and function of his sizeable posterior. In some Super Smash Bros. games he attacks with farts; elsewhere he engages in Luigi-style hip-swing attacks where his rear momentum is the bulk of his attacking power; he jumps to higher platforms via butt propulsion; and he can even use his stored-up gas to create huge powerful mushroom cloud blasts in combat. It’s not a glamorous butt, nor one you’d would want to put your face too close to, but it’s a butt used to its fullest potential, achieving things other butts could only dream of. It’s a butt that’s large not out of complacency, but out of a desire to excel.

trans status hasn’t been mentioned by Nintendo in the West in twenty years, or in Japan in ten, means she’s no longer meant to be a transgender character. Alternatively, you could choose to view this as Nintendo respecting her identity and not bringing up her trans status unnecessarily. Birdo is a woman, and if it’s not important to the plot to highlight that she’s trans, they’ll just address her as a woman. So, why bring up Birdo’s trans status in a book about butts? Well, because oestrogen-based hormone replacement therapy for transgender individuals is known to have a number of effects on the body, one of which is body-fat redistribution. Trans women often find that following hormone replacement therapy they end up with larger, plumper, more rounded and bouncy buttocks as a result of the body relocating its fat. So Birdo’s trans hormones have given her a big ol’ cute bouncy bottom. You can’t argue with science.

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THE MARIO SERIES

Find Things I Learned from Marioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Butt on page 71

THE BOY FROM BOSKOVICE Vicky Unwin had always known her father – an erstwhile intelligence officer and respected United Nations diplomat – was Czech, but it was not until a stranger turned up on her doorstep that she discovered he was also Jewish. So began a quest to discover the truth about his past – one that perhaps would help answer the niggling doubts she had always had about her ‘perfect’ father... By early 2009 my father’s health was declining. In May I went down to Somerset to share my discoveries with him and to persuade him to allow me access to the suitcase and to begin recording his memories. To my surprise, he agreed to start telling his story; perhaps he now felt the need to unburden himself as his life was drawing to a close. He also said I could take the suitcase. It was a battered old thing, kept in a cupboard under the hall stairs, the locks stiff and rusty through lack of use. Inside there were piles of books and papers, all higgledy-piggledy and covered in dust. Slowly, as I rifled through the contents, the suitcase began to reveal its secrets. And what secrets they were. There was an impressive 700-page PhD thesis by a German scholar, Dieter Sudhoff, on Hermann, my father’s father, with over 200 pages of family history. The thesis included excerpts from diaries, notebooks and letters written by Hermann and his close friends and fellow members of his literary circle in Prague and Berlin, including Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht and the best-selling German-Jewish writer Stefan Zweig. Buried in the suitcase I also found first editions of Hermann’s key works, French and Czech translations of his books, original manuscripts of his plays and two volumes of literary criticism. These latter books contained interviews with my father and photographs supplied by him, yet he had never revealed to his family that he had been in communication with the authors for over twenty years. I was furious that Dad had kept this cache from me for so long, but also euphoric at finally being allowed to glimpse this secret world. Here were envelopes and albums of old photographs, some of which I recognised – my father, his brother, my grandmother – but the majority were a mystery. Later I would go through the albums with Dad to identify who was who – from the photos of family holidays by the seaside, sad-looking children and young women, a bewhiskered Kaiser 46

Wilhelm lookalike (my great-grandfather) and plump ladies staring out from under parasols or straight into the camera, to his childhood penfriends from England: true to form, Dad remembered the girls well. It was hard to tell whether he was enjoying this process or simply humouring me, knowing his time was running out. On reflection, I think he found it cathartic to find space in his heart for those he had abandoned when he left for a new life in England. As for me, at last I could go all the way back to the beginning. * By this time it was obvious to me that my father was not the man everyone called â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;good old Tomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, the perfect Englishman, former colonial officer and UN diplomat, with his pipe, monocle and received pronunciation; the handsome charmer and flatterer who was always the centre of attention at any social gathering, bursting with so much self-confidence and bonhomie that he fooled just about everyone. A man who was simultaneously the adoring father of my childhood and a misogynistic bully of a husband, whose temper and dark side alienated him from my mother, me and, later, his grandchildren. A man who was responsible for the biggest betrayal of all â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the betrayal of a child by their father. It was not until I began to delve into his past that the impact of his destructive behaviour and its effect on all of us became clear. For Tom Unwin was also Tomas Ungar, the boy from Boskovice, a small town in Moravia, a teenager who left Czechoslovakia shortly before the Second World War for a new life and a new identity in England. The young man who became Tom Unwin and achieved a very British respectability by denying his roots and abandoning his family until his past caught up with him.

Find The Boy from Boskovice on page 63

AN INTERVIEW WITH COPPAFEEL! FOUNDER KRIS HALLENGA Kris Hallenga was diagnosed with cancer at twenty-three and went on to found the national charity CoppaFeel!, helping people stand the best possible chance of surviving cancer. Here, she discusses her upcoming memoir How to Glitter a Turd and her best advice for staying positive, with Unbound editor Martha Sprackland. Martha Sprackland: Tell us a little about your forthcoming memoir, How to Glitter a Turd. Kris Hallenga: This book is about how I’ve navigated a life with cancer, aka ‘the turd’, for eleven years, and all the lessons it has taught me about life and living. It’s a bit different to how I first imagined telling my story five years ago. I think I approached it from a place of wanting to help people – much like the reason I set up CoppaFeel! right after I was diagnosed, rather than giving myself a chance to breathe and look after myself. In the same way I think this book has first and foremost helped me reflect on a life well lived in spite of cancer, and if it helps others navigating their own turds, then that will be a massive bonus. MS: CoppaFeel! is the breast cancer awareness charity you built. What do you hope to convey to people about the importance of selfchecking? KH: I wouldn’t be living with cancer now had I known to check my boobs from a young age. I wouldn’t have had to hear that I might be dead within three years had I developed some kind of a relationship with my boobs. My hope since the day I was diagnosed has been for no one else to be told their cancer can’t be cured because it was found too late. Checking your boobs can save your life – it’s as simple as that. Don’t do what I didn’t. MS: What’s your writing process? KH: I am the world’s worst procrastinator, so sitting down to write was a far bigger challenge than finding the words. I wouldn’t really say I have 48

a process as such, I ‘simply’ write. I didn’t find sitting at a desk (my dining table) helpful, and although working from bed is in no way healthy it seemed to be the only place where I could get into the groove. I had wild dreams of escaping to a beachside café or a yurt in Cornwall, until this nuisance of a thing called coronavirus shat all over that. I didn’t share much of my work with anyone until I had good chunks of it done. I always knew that my twin Maren would be the first to read anything – she became my bullshit-o-meter. I definitely think she helped keep my voice authentic. MS: You were exceptionally young when you first fell ill, yet your life is full (and busy as a whirlwind). What are your proudest achievements? KH: There are many moments I look back on and feel all warm and glowy about, far too many to mention. The one I always harp on about is the first time we realised that CoppaFeel! was having REAL impact, and was making people get their own breast cancer symptoms checked out. One day we received an email from a girl called Jenny who’d just been given an early cancer diagnosis at the age of twenty-six. She was so grateful I’d shared my story, and that was the moment all the hard work paid off and my own cancer diagnosis felt as if it made some sense. Jenny has just given birth to her second baby during lockdown! MS: What are some of the books you’ve most enjoyed reading? KH: I’m obsessed with reading about other people’s lives. I can’t seem to get lost in fiction: I’m drawn in by real life, real pain, real survival, real sacrifice and real mushy love. I recently read Candice Brathwaite’s I Am Not Your Baby Mother, which totally blew my mind. I learned so much about everything else white women take for granted when it comes to bringing a child into this world. I don’t have a child, but since my twin had a baby last year I’ve become really interested in childbirth – I was present at hers – and motherhood. I also read Laura Dockrill’s What Have I Done?, about postpartum psychosis, and now have an even greater respect for women and our incredible bodies.

MS: Your book is about, as the title suggests, ‘glittering the turd’ – finding a way to turn the bad into the positive. What are your tips and tricks, hobbies, habits or routines for positivity? KH: I don’t think it can be simplified into tips and tricks. I think positivity needs to be cultivated with the help of the people around you, what you’re surrounded by (nature!) and what you’re doing to bring a bit of joy and goodness into everyday life. It can be as simple as a cup of tea, as silly as dancing around your kitchen, or extravagant as a trip to the Maldives. For me being around people who make me laugh, make me think, and challenge me keeps me buoyant, as well as sea-swimming and a bloody good glass of wine. MS: Finally, if there’s anything you could say to a prospective reader, what would it be? What will they get from your book? KH:

• • • • •

Insight into the life of a thirty-four-year-old living with an illness we all fear Some ideas about shifting perspectives A few choice words about past relationships and how they’ve shaped the woman I am today Life-affirming reflections Ideas about how to glitter one’s own turd – and FYI, it doesn’t have to be cancer-shaped!

How to Glitter a Turd will be published in autumn 2021

A HARE-MARKED MOON In the spring of 2004, David Lascelles invited a group of Buddhist monks from Bhutan to build a stupa in the gardens of Harewood House in Yorkshire, his family’s home. It was a step into the unknown for the Bhutanese. They didn’t speak any English, and had never travelled outside their own culture. This extract from David’s memoir A Hare-Marked Moon tells the story of the time he introduced the monks to the joys of the English seaside. It wasn’t all work for the monks. One thing we were all determined they should do was go to the seaside: a typical English summer holiday outing that would be a novelty for the Bhutanese. Their landlocked country is several hundred miles from the sea and only Kesang, a little more travelled than the rest, had ever seen the ocean. There were heavy showers the morning we had arranged our outing to Whitby and Robin Hood’s Bay on the East Yorkshire coast. We looked at the sky and decided to postpone our departure by a couple of hours to see if it got any better. It didn’t. ‘Let’s go anyway,’ I said. ‘The weather’s often better on the coast.’

We set off. The further east we got the worse the weather became. The road on the other side of York was clogged with traffic and there was flooding near Pickering with a long tailback from the roundabout in the centre of town. Lama Sonam was praying loudly in the back of the car. I didn’t take it personally any more. He did it on every journey, whoever was at the wheel. ‘This next bit of the road is very beautiful,’ I said as we drove slowly up onto the North Yorkshire Moors, stuck in a line of cars behind two caravans. ‘Great views.’ The higher we climbed, the lower the clouds seemed to get. There was the occasional glimpse across the Moors, fresh heather glowing purple in the murk, but none of the magnificent long vistas I’d been describing so enthusiastically. There is a magical moment as you come down from the Moors towards Whitby when you get the first glimpse of the sea, sparkling in the distance beyond the rolling hills. Today there was just a view of a large blue big top dripping forlornly in a muddy field. The circus was coming to town. ‘Do you get typhoons in England?’ asked Kesang, whose only previous experience of the sea was in Hong Kong. Under the circumstances it wasn’t an unreasonable question. We parked in the car park at the top of the hill at Robin Hood’s Bay and huddled under the tailgate as we assembled wet weather gear for the walk down to the seafront. The road down the hill – the only road in town – is steep and winding. Today it felt more like a water chute feature in 52

an amusement park than a thoroughfare for traffic. Families in shorts and plastic ponchos huddled in the doorways of the souvenir shops and watched curiously as our unlikely group hurried by. Fish and chips in a nice café by the sea was the plan. Haddock and chips all round and some crisps to nibble while we were waiting. Lama Sonam fiddled with his crisp packet, unable to get a purchase on the slippery plastic. Suddenly, he pulled a large machete from under his gho and sliced the packet open, knife back under cover quick as a flash and before anybody noticed or tried to have us arrested. We stared out of the window as the rain lashed down on the beach and told tales of sodden childhood summer holidays. We tried to explain that this was, in its way, a very typical English seaside experience.

Find A Hare-Marked Moon on page 92

SPRING 2021 PAPERBACKS I’m Out: How to Make an Exit Robert Wringham 21 January 2021 978-1-78352-959-9 £9.99

A Curious History of Sex Kate Lister 4 February 2021 978-1-78352-971-1 £9.99

Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear?: 200 Birds. 12 Months. 1 Lapsed Birdwatcher. Lev Parikian 18 February 2021 978-1-80018-021-5 £9.99 Eileen: The Making of George Orwell Sylvia Topp 4 March 2021 978-1-80018-026-0 £9.99

Magnificent Women and their Revolutionary Machines Henrietta Heald 4 March 2021 978-1-80018-027-7 £9.99 54

Song Michelle Jana Chan 18 March 2021 978-1-80018-037-6 £9.99

Nerve Endings: Selected Lyrics Kristin Hersh 29 April 2021 978-1-80018-035-2 £9.99

The Lost Diary: A Summer Fishing in Pursuit of Golden Scales Chris Yates 27 May 2021 978-1-78352-960-5 £9.99

Tatterdemalion Sylvia V. Linsteadt and Rima Staines 10 June 2021 978-1-78352-956-8 £12.99

Tales from the Colony Room: Soho’s Lost Bohemia Darren Coffield 24 June 2021 978-1-80018-028-4 £9.99

ONE OF THEM Poet, journalist and writer Musa Okwonga reflects on his five years at Eton College, an experience which challenged him, moulded him and made him wonder why a place that was so good for him also seems to contribute to the harm being done to this country. Examining the connection between one of Britain’s most prestigious institutions and the genesis of Brexit, and between his hometown in the suburbs of Greater London and the rise of the far-right, One of Them is both a personal account and an intimate exploration of race and class in modern Britain. It’s the Accent

Arriving at school at the start of each term will always feel so grand, like stepping into an opera house. No one here ever tells us out loud that we Etonians are natural leaders: that is what the architecture is for. In one of the rooms, where students gather now and then, I find the mounted bust of every boy who has gone on to become the leader of the country. My boarding houses look like government buildings. My school has its own vocabulary, with grand names for seemingly every task and landmark. There are special terms for playing fields and academic performances and acts of disobedience. If you submit work of exceptional merit, then it is Sent Up for Good, a copy of it stored in the vaults of the school library for ever. If you submit work that is utterly substandard, then you are given a Rip, with the top corner of your offending paper receiving a small tear. If you arrive notably late for class then you must get up early and walk to a school office where you must sign the Tardy Book as punishment; if you get into more significant trouble, then while you await your sentence your name is entered on a register forebodingly named The Bill. At Eton, even your mistakes are epic, and the effect of this is to give the sense that every single thing you do truly matters. As a student here, it is therefore easy for you to conclude from your surroundings that one day you will be important too. 56

The greatest proof of my status is my uniform. Every single day I go to class in clothing that many men wear only once in their lives, if at all; a morning suit, identical to the clothing of a bridegroom. It consists of a black tailcoat, a black waistcoat, under which I wear a white shirt with a starched collar and thin white cotton tie, a pair of black pinstriped trousers, and black shoes. By the time my teens are over, I will have worn one of the smartest outfits in anyone’s wardrobe hundreds of times. The effect of this is that, when I put on a business suit for work or any formal occasion, I look as relaxed as if I am wearing a pair of pyjamas. By now my accent has changed too. The adaptation has been gradual and unforced; one day I suddenly notice that I no longer pronounce milk as melk. Years later I will talk to a friend of mine, a black woman who also attended private school, and who is now working in a hostile corporate environment. Despite her excellence at her job, she is in no doubt as to which asset serves and protects her the most. It’s the accent, she tells me, almost despairingly. It’s the accent.

Find One of Them on page 88

A WILD AND PRECIOUS LIFE A Wild and Precious Life, edited by novelists Lily Dunn and Zoe Gilbert, is an anthology of fiction, memoir and poetry by writers in recovery, whether from addiction, physical illness, mental health issues or loss. Theirs are stories from the deep crevices of the mind, from the ecstatic heights of life; a vitality that is reflected in the following extract from Astra Bloom’s ‘Telling Blue’. ‘When you are mine I will call you Blue.’ I tell him that from the start. Baby boy is in the air. His colour is blue. I’m not allowed near. ‘Shoo. Go on, shoo!’ We, the pack, are scared away. She thinks us feral. But it’s two o’clock and she hasn’t fed us, and it’s her that’s showing her teeth. This start of a boy comes from our mother, that’s what they say; but less you think a bird comes from a tree, or first light comes from a window – you know that’s a lie. I’ve known his coming. And though they say newborns see-think upside-down, and are dumb, I don’t believe it. I think there are things this baby’s tiny ears could catch and start drinking; I think of buttercups open to summer rain, light as lacy curtains, balls of yellow water-light wobbling, balancing. I see a big sister’s words should be like raindrops; I realise I must start watering this wee thing. ‘Now, Blue,’ I tell him, ‘there’s a block of brown flats at the bend of our road by the pub, Sprout, you come from taller than that. There’s this huge sky – always morphing – white as an albino rabbit, flowerblue, school-blue, bruise-grey, witch-black – and in it you get these miracle things called stars (which you’ll sing about, yep, Blue, you will, you must). And there’s this moon like a big lick of cream – so bright… And above all of that – now, you won’t remember your height – but you, baby – before here – you were Aloft. Beyond. Highest of all. And very mighty happy in this place called The Sure Place, or The Palace of Friends. We’ll go back there one day. Even God and his angels can only visit Sundays. No one’s ever alone there; it’s filled with beauties: people and children in pink and blue and green. They never stop kissing and laughing and singing. Very. Very high, like birds…’ Other times, it’s important I give my baby brother the skinny. And I can see he brightly likes me being honest. I tell Blue about when he was birthed: ‘Now, let me see… Yep. I was on my back beneath the bay window in my bedroom. I’d pulled my socks off, put my eyes out to rest on 58

the blue spring sky; I was flexing my bare toes, though it was cold. The bay’s a cold cave, it’s true, I used to go there to catch my death some days… But on this day I was following the long white scar line from an aeroplane (it was pointing me so high) when I rolled onto a pinched-from-school drawing pin. It was that exact same second, little boy, that you came in. I was pierced in my climbing-spine between my wing bones; right where the cap on my flying heart goes, when you were born, Blue. I heard you, a screaming fat fish swimming up thighs, bashing into air. And I’ve never got that pricking out. Sharp and rust are in me. If you lick me, I taste of clockwork. Blue likes this; his mouth turns to a wiggly pink rain-worm. Course, I don’t, I can’t say: ‘Well, you’ve come to our land now, littlemite-thing. In the street, to people, you are a big, “Ooh, number six!” But, Blue, really, What will we do? You are not cress in the cupboard. You need much more than my school seeds in their Stork marg tub. Blue, how’re you gonna survive in this family’s dark little club?’

Find A Wild and Precious Life on page 89

THINK LIKE A VEGAN Authors Emilia Leese and Eva Charalambides are among a growing number of people who have adopted the ideals and practice of veganism. In Think Like a Vegan, they invite us all to set aside our preconceived notions and join the thoughtprovoking conversation about our daily ethical decisions. We often hear shouts of victory! and progress! whenever there is a news article about decreased meat consumption, an increase in non-dairy milk or other vegan products for sale, more vegan options at restaurants, an improvement in welfare standards for farmed animals or promises not to use this or that animal for our entertainment. We are told meat-reduction campaigns are successful and beneficial. We Speciesism is the notion that humans are superior are never exactly sure how the to animals. This notion is the current norm success of such campaigns is accepted by the overwhelming majority of people. objectively measured, and we Speciesism manifests itself in our viewing animals are generally sceptical. But we as objects and using them in a variety of ways, use two standard questions primarily for food. to evaluate these claims. One is body count and the other is Our use of animals for food and clothing is follow the money. the most evident manifestation of speciesism. In law school during the Therefore, to the extent possible and practicable, mid-nineties, our criminal-law vegans avoid using animals for food, clothing, professor taught us body count. entertainment or any other purpose. This means He would invent a fictionalised vegans do not consume animal flesh, fish, insects, crime scene in which we would molluscs, eggs, dairy, cheese and honey; do not count the bodies, whether ride horses, visit zoos or aquariums; and do not dead, injured or affected by wear leather, fur, wool or silk. the criminal actions. This way we could identify the number Vegans reject speciesism and accept animals into of possible crimes committed. the same moral sphere as humans with respect to (Also, the term is a reference fundamental rights, such as the right to live and to the heavy-metal band the right to be free from ownership as anotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s from Los Angeles of whose property. The basis for this is a basic rule: accord frontman, Ice-T, we are fansâ&#x20AC;Ś) the same moral treatment to everyone, unless It should be obvious why body there is a morally relevant reason to justify treating count is helpful here. If the someone differently. prevailing advocacy approaches 60

were successful, we should see fewer animal bodies. A decrease in the supply of animal-based foods would be the logical outcome of decreased consumer demand for those products. Follow the money is a phrase coined in the film All the President’s Men. The application here is simple. Where and how are people, companies and governments spending money? What does that show us, in this case, with respect to animals? Unfortunately for animals and us, we are far from reducing either demand for animal foods or the supply of animal bodies. Although there have been some shifts, the current wisdom in animal advocacy promotes reducing consumption instead of simply advocating for veganism. The standard arguments seem to be focused on how we treat animals, their welfare, and humane animal use, with little to no simultaneous challenge to fundamental speciesist and unjust notions regarding the use of animals. Focusing on treatment is insufficient to significantly shift the overwhelming global majority view that it is okay for humans to use animals. Some people blame capitalism for the massive consumption of animal products and there is, of course, truth to that. However, humans have been farming animals for at least 10,000 years, through a variety of economic systems. Capitalism is only a magnifier for our wellestablished behaviours and proclivities. It is our demand for animal products that is driving the business, capitalist Research published in 2017 shows the or otherwise, of using and killing number of land animals slaughtered for animals. Discussions about whether to meat in 2014 was: dismantle capitalism are important, no doubt, but we can’t have any economic • 62.01 billion chickens or political discussion without also • 1.47 billion pigs addressing our demand for animal • 648.74 million turkeys products. • 545.08 million sheep We are all sentient and we owe animals the same moral treatment, unless there is a morally relevant reason to justify treating animals differently.

Find Think Like a Vegan on page 95

• •

444.17 million goats 300.07 million cattle

These numbers exclude dairy cows and egg-laying chickens.

Spring Titles

January to June 2021

January

THE BOY FROM BOSKOVICE A Father’s Secret Life VICKY UNWIN

The extraordinary story of a Holocaust survivor who left a trail of pain and secrets in his wake Vicky Unwin had always known her father – an erstwhile intelligence officer and UN diplomat – was Czech, but it was not until a stranger turned up on her doorstep that she discovered he was Jewish. So began a quest to discover the truth about his past. First, Vicky discovered the identity of her grandfather: the tormented author and diplomat Hermann Ungar, a protégé and possible lover of Thomas Mann. As she unpicked the lingering power of ‘survivors’ guilt’ on the generations that followed the Holocaust, she also learned of the existence of a previously unknown sister. Together, they attempted to come to terms with what had made their father into the deeply flawed yet charismatic man he became.

Title: The Boy from Boskovice Pub date: 21/01/2021 Format: Hardback Price £25.00 ISBN: 978-1-78352-906-3 Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION Vicky Unwin’s first book Love and War in the WRNS, a collection of her mother’s letters home during the Second World War, was published in June 2015. Following her father’s death she returned to the family secrets. This book tells that story. @vickyunwin

January

BOY SOLDIER

A Memoir of Innocence Lost and Humanity Regained in Northern Uganda NORMAN OKELLO and THEO HOLLANDER

Former child soldier Norman Okello describes a journey into inhumanity and back to forgiveness and love Uganda’s civil war with Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army has raged since the 1980s, claiming over 100,000 lives. Kony’s rebel force have abducted tens of thousands of children: their child soldiers. Norman Okello was only twelve when he was abducted by the LRA and subjected to a ruthless training regime aimed at turning him into a killer without conscience. When he finally escaped their clutches, he faced his next ordeal: trying to reintegrate into a society that feared and despised him. Harrowing, heart-rending and enlightening, Boy Soldier is a story of survival and redemption against unbelievable odds.

Title: Pub date: Format: Price: ISBN: Rights:

Boy Soldier 21/01/2021 Hardback £25.00 978-1-78352-811-0 World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION Norman Okello is a former child soldier from northern Uganda. Dr Theo Hollander is a peacebuilding professional with over ten years of experience working with child soldiers. From 2011 to 2014, he coordinated a war documentation center based in northern Uganda. 64

January

CROW COURT ANDY CHARMAN

This searingly inventive novel conjures a kaleidoscope of individual lives that all touch a central mystery: the suicide of a choirboy in rural Victorian Dorset Spring, 1840. In the market town of Wimborne Minster, a young choirboy drowns himself. Soon after, the choirmaster – a belligerent man with a vicious reputation – is found murdered. The gaze of the magistrates falls on four local men, whose decisions will reverberate through the community for years to come. So begins the chronicle of Crow Court, unravelling over fourteen episodes, the town of Wimborne their backdrop: a young gentleman and his groom run off to join the army; a sleepwalking cordwainer wakes on his wife’s grave; desperate farmhands emigrate. We meet the composer with writer’s block; the smuggler; a troupe of actors down from London; and old Art Pugh, whose impoverished life has made him hard to amuse. Meanwhile, justice waits…

Title: Pub date: Format: Price: ISBN: Rights:

Crow Court 21/01/2021 Hardback £16.99 978-1-78352-910-0 World/Audio/TV & Film

‘Debut novels shouldn’t be this perfectly formed’ Ben Myers

FICTION Andy Charman was born in Dorset and grew up near Wimborne Minster, where Crow Court is set. He has had short stories published in anthologies and journals. He now lives in Surrey. He writes in the corners and the edges of the day, in evenings and mornings, and while commuting by train. 65

January

DATA: A GUIDE TO HUMANS

PHIL HARVEY AND NOELIA JIMÉNEZ MARTÍNEZ How using data with empathy could transform our lives for the better Data is humanity’s most important new resource. It has the capacity to provide insight into every aspect of our lives, and to improve our existence as much as previous technological revolutions. Yet there is a tendency in data science to forget about the human needs and feelings of the people who make up the data. Without empathy, this precious resource is at best underused, at worst misused. Data: A Guide to Humans will help you understand how companies and governments are currently using data, and why empathy is needed to elevate data into something that will make a lasting and essential contribution to your business, your life and maybe even the world.

Title: Pub date: Format: Price: ISBN: Rights:

Data: A Guide to Humans 21/01/2021 Hardback £14.99 978-1-78352-864-6 World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION Phil Harvey worked as a programmer for fifteen years. He is the named inventor on a patent and now works at Microsoft as a cloud solutions architect for data and AI. @CodeBeard Dr Noelia Jiménez Martínez has worked as a data science consultant in London, and as an astrophysics researcher at several universities. 66

January

I’M OUT

How to Make an Exit ROBERT WRINGHAM

How to escape the traps of modern existence and say goodbye to a lifetime of meaningless work We will each spend an average of 87,000 hours at work before we die. We will spend another 5,000 getting to and from work. And we will spend countless more preparing for, worrying about and recovering after work. Most of us hate our jobs, so why do we insist on grinding away only to be rewarded with stress, debt, isolation and general unhappiness? In I’m Out: How to Make an Exit, Robert Wringham shows us how we can take control of our fate and say goodbye to a lifetime of meaningless drudgery. What if the door is open and we can leave any time we like?

Title: Pub date: Format: Price: ISBN: Rights:

I’m Out 21/01/2021 Paperback £9.99 978-1-78352-959-9 World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION Robert Wringham is a writer and performer. He is the founder of New Escapologist, a small-press magazine and website about work and the good life. His second book, A Loose Egg, was shortlisted for the Leacock Medal for Humour. His third was first published as Escape Everything! in 2016. It was a surprise hit in translation, which led to The Good Life for Wage Slaves in 2020. @rubberwringham / www.wringham.co.uk 67

January

TAMING GAMING

Guide Your Child to Healthy Video Game Habits ANDY ROBERTSON

An informative guide for parents about how to get the best out of screen-time, gaming and gadgets for their children Worrying about video game screen-time, violence, THE WORLD OF VIDEO GAMES CAN BE OVERWHELMING TO NAVIGATE – BUT ITaddiction DOESN’T HAVE TO BE. is an expense and INSIDE IS ALL THE ADVICE YOU NEED TO GUIDE YOUR CHILD TO HEALTHY VIDEO GAME HABITS, UNDERSTAND to scary understandable response THE PITFALLS AND BENEFITS OF GAMING, AND MAYBE EVEN HAVE SOME FUN ALONG THE WAY. newspaper headlines. But with this first-hand understanding of the video games your children love to play, you can anchor gaming as a healthy part of family life.

299

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AN DY ROBERTSON

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In this guide, Andy Robertson offers parents and carers practical advice and insights – combining his own experiences with the latest research and guidance from psychologists, industry experts, schools and children’s charities – alongside a treasure trove of ‘gaming recipes’ to test out in your family.

TAMING GAMING Guide your child to healthy video game habits

Andy Robertson has d of the above, not just o covering this topic for radio and television bu of three. In this guide, parents and carers pra and insights – combini experiences with the la and guidance from psy industry experts, schoo charities – alongside a of ‘gaming recipes’ to your family.

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Taming Gaming leads doing this so that video stop being a point of a and stress and start pr connecting and ambiti together as a family.

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AN DY ROBERTSON Title: Pub date: Format: Price: ISBN: Rights:

Taming Gaming 21/01/2021 Hardback £18.99 978-1-78352-892-9 World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION Andy Robertson has been helping families get more from video games for fifteen years. He has written for the Guardian and Forbes, been a broadcaster for the BBC, and now runs the YouTube channel FamilyGamerTV, which boasts 540k subscribers. @GeekGamerDad / youtube.com/familygamertv 68

Video games can inst qualities in our childre resilience, patience an solving to name a few World Health Organi gaming disorder as a diagnosable condition carers can worry abo games are doing to th

February

BUILD YOUR SALES TRIBE

Successful Selling in the Information Age STEVE SCHRIER

A Thinkers50 title: a fresh, practical guide to building an effective sales team in the information age The world of sales is undergoing a massive change: the world is getting smaller, data is getting bigger, communication is becoming easier, and buyers are empowered like never before. Build Your Sales Tribe is a manual for navigating this change and bringing your business into the future. It guides the reader through functions and foundations that will allow them to build a successful approach to sales and find the right salespeople for the job. The book delivers advice and offers a series of practical projects on a wide range of topics from targeting customers to pricing models, diversity and inclusion, negotiation techniques and much, much more.

Title: Pub date: Format: Price: ISBN: Rights:

Build Your Sales Tribe 04/02/2021 Paperback ÂŁ14.99 978-1-78352-878-3 World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION Steve Schrier has held multinational commercial roles for over twentyfive years. His journey has taken him from start-up to exit several times focusing on high growth through proven commercial engagement techniques. He believes that, as the information age accelerates, many B2B companies will continue to face serious challenges in forming and running a successful commercial approach. www.salestribe.co.uk 69

February

FINANCIAL FEMINISM

A Woman’s Guide to Investing for a Sustainable Future JESSICA ROBINSON

A practical, jargon-busting, step-by-step guide to sustainable investing for women As we face global challenges like climate change and inequality, what if women could use their investments to build a cleaner, fairer and more sustainable world? In this practical and accessible guide, sustainable investing expert Jessica Robinson shows how women can use their financial power to bring about the kind of world they want to live in. With jargon-free explanations and realworld examples, she demystifies the financial services industry and demonstrates the societal and environmental impact of the investment decisions we make. Financial Feminism arms women with the information they need to grow their own wealth and, in doing so, use their financial decisions to demand a better world.

Title: Financial Feminism Pub date: 04/02/2021 Format: Paperback Price: £10.99 ISBN: 978-1-78352-952-0 Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION Jessica Robinson has spent most of her career in the financial services industry, and now advises governments, institutional investors, think tanks and companies on green finance and sustainable investing. She is the founder of Moxie Future – an education, content and community platform for women who want to learn more about responsible and sustainable investing. @Jess_Robinson1 70

February

THINGS I LEARNED FROM MARIO’S BUTT A Series of Gaming Butt Critiques LAURA KATE DALE

An illustrated compendium and critique of the most beautiful, bulbous and downright dangerous video game butts Have you ever wondered why some video game characters wear trousers and others don’t? Or pondered the connection between a character’s toned, muscular derrière and their level of dexterity? In Things I Learned from Mario’s Butt, video game critic Laura Kate Dale brings backsides to the foreground, analysing dozens of posteriors and asking the important questions: Has Mario let himself go? Do Link’s small buttocks hold him back? When he dies, is Pac-Man eaten by his own caboose? Wedged full of original artwork by Zack Flavin, the book also features guest butt reviews from gaming favourites such as Jim Sterling, Ashens and Brentalfloss.

Title: Things I Learned from Mario’s Butt Pub date: 04/02/2021 Format: Hardback Price: £25.00 ISBN: 978-1-78352-890-5 Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION Laura Kate Dale is a video game critic who has worked as News Editor for Kotaku UK and UK Editor for Destructoid, started the website Let’s Play Video Games, and written for IGN, Polygon, Vice, the Guardian and Rock Paper Shotgun. Laura’s first book was Uncomfortable Labels, a memoir about growing up at the intersection of being LGBT and living with autism. @LaurakBuzz 71

February

QUIET PINE TREES T. R. DARLING

Jet fuel for your imagination: a collection of 500 time-travelling, mindbending microfictions from the creator of @QuietPineTrees Quiet Pine Trees is a wrecking ball against writer’s block. This collection features more than 500 compelling miniature stories that turn the humble microfiction into a self-contained work of literary art. Within the limits of the form, each story combines powerful imagery with haunting themes using just a few words, making snapshots of bigger, stranger worlds to inspire the creativity of the reader. The multitude of stories in this volume span genres and galaxies alike: from science fiction about advanced time travel techniques, to otherworldly fantasy about desperate trees and artillery pianos, to eerie horror about dolls’ eyes and what awaits humanity between the stars.

Title: Quiet Pine Trees Pub date: 04/02/2021 Format: Hardback Price: £12.99 ISBN: 978-1-80018-007-9 Rights: World ex. US & Can/Audio/TV & Film

FICTION T. R. Darling is a broadcast journalist living in Michigan. After earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he spent several years as a reporter and news anchor at a radio station before becoming a television news producer. @QuietPineTrees

February

A CURIOUS HISTORY OF SEX KATE LISTER

The Sunday Times bestselling exploration of the weird and wonderful things human beings have done in pursuit (and denial) of the mighty orgasm Based on the popular research project Whores of Yore, and written with her distinctive humour and wit, A Curious History of Sex draws upon Dr Kate Lister’s extensive knowledge of sex history. From medieval impotence tests to twentieth-century testicle thefts, Kate unashamedly roots around in the pants of history, debunking myths, challenging stereotypes and generally getting her hands dirty. This fascinating book is peppered with surprising and informative historical slang, and illustrated with eye-opening, toe-curling and meticulously sourced images from the past. You will laugh, you will wince and you will wonder just how much has actually changed. ‘I’ve never had so much fun learning stuff’ The Times

Title: Pub date: Format: Price: ISBN: Rights:

A Curious History of Sex 04/02/2021 Paperback £12.99 978-1-78352-971-1 World/Audio/TV & Film

‘An anecdote-rich chronicle’ Guardian

NON-FICTION Dr Kate Lister is a university lecturer. She researches the history of sexuality and curates the online research project Whores of Yore. She is also a columnist for iNews and the Wellcome Trust where she writes about the history of sex. Kate won the Sexual Freedom Award for Publicist of the Year in 2017. @WhoresofYore / thewhoresofyore.com 73

February

KING ARTHUR’S DEATH The Alliterative Morte Arthure MICHAEL SMITH

A new translation of the classic English poem that inspired Malory, stunningly illustrated with linocuts by the author King Arthur’s Death is a Middle English poem written at the end of the fourteenth century. A source work for Malory’s later Morte d’Arthur, it is an epic tale which documents the horrors of war, the loneliness of kingship and the terrible price paid for arrogance. Michael Smith’s new version includes a comprehensive introduction explaining the poem, and the book is beautifully illustrated throughout with detailed recreations of the illuminated lettering in the original manuscript, and the author’s own linocut prints. Combining heroic action, probing insight into human frailty and a great attention to contemporary detail, King Arthur’s Death is an astonishing mirror on our own times.

Title: Pub date: Format: Price: ISBN: Rights:

King Arthur’s Death 18/02/2021 Hardback £18.99 978-1-78352-908-7 World/Audio/TV & Film

FICTION Michael Smith is from Cheshire. He studied history at the University of York and printmaking at the Curwen Print Study Centre near Cambridge. His first book, a translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, was published by Unbound in 2018. @mythicalbritain / www.mythicalbritain.co.uk

February

THIS PARTY’S DEAD

Grief, Joy and Spilled Rum at the World’s Death Festivals ERICA BUIST

Journalist Erica Buist travels to seven death festivals around the world in search of better attitudes towards mortality Following the unexpected death of her father-in-law, Erica Buist decided to confront death head-on by visiting seven death festivals around the world. From Mexico to Nepal, Sicily, Thailand, Madagascar, Japan and finally Indonesia – with a stopover in New Orleans – Erica searched for the answers to both fundamental and unexpected questions around death anxiety. This Party’s Dead is her account of this journey to understand how other cultures deal with mortal terror, how they move past the knowledge that they’re going to die in order to live happily day-to-day – and how when this acceptance is passed down through the generations, death suddenly doesn’t seem so scary after all.

Title: Pub date: Format: Price: ISBN: Rights:

This Party’s Dead 18/02/2021 Hardback £16.99 978-1-78352-954-4 World English

NON-FICTION Erica Buist is a journalist and author living in London. She writes mostly for the Guardian but her words can also be found on the BBC and Medium, as well as in Newsweek and various literary magazines and anthologies. Erica is currently working on a collection of short stories based in London. @ericabuist 75

February

WHY DO BIRDS SUDDENLY DISAPPEAR? 200 Birds. 12 Months. 1 Lapsed Birdwatcher. LEV PARIKIAN

A ‘gentle and enormously enjoyable’ (Metro) memoir detailing conductor Lev Parikian’s attempt to spot 200 birds in a year At twelve years old, Lev Parikian was an avid birdwatcher. He was also a fraud, a liar and a cheat. Those lists of birds seen and ticked off? Lies. One hundred and thirty species? More like sixty. Then, when he turned fifty, he decided to right his childhood wrongs. He would go birdwatching again, and would aim to see two hundred species of British bird in a year. Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? is the story of that year, a story about birds, family, music, nostalgia, the nature of obsession and obsession with nature; about finding adventure in life when you twig it’s shorter than you thought. ‘Funny and clever... even a little bit gripping’ TLS

Title: Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? Pub date: 18/02/2021 Format: Paperback Price: £9.99 ISBN: 978-1-80018-021-5 Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

‘Parikian has a musician’s ear for birdsong’ Samuel West

NON-FICTION Lev Parikian is a writer, conductor and hopeless birdwatcher. His first book, Waving, Not Drowning, was published in 2013; Music to Eat Cake By and Into the Tangled Bank will both follow in 2020. @LevParikian

March

GRAND DISHES

Time-Perfected Recipes and Stories from Grandmothers of the World ISKA LUPTON AND ANASTASIA MIARI

A cookbook featuring recipes, stories and photographs of wise and witty grandmothers across the globe There is no food quite like a grandmother’s time-perfected dish. Grand Dishes is inspired by the authors’ own grandmothers: both are equally strong and stoic, and their love is shared through the food they serve. This book is rich with wisdom, elegant portraits and diverse recipes from over forty of these inspiring women: it is a selection of stories and techniques that are completely unique to a region, a grandmother and her family. Featured alongside are contributions from celebrated chefs and food writers including Anna Jones, Olia Hercules, Rachel Khoo, Meera Sodha, Enrique Olvera, Darina Allen and Francis Mallmann, who have each chosen one of their own grandmothers’ recipes.

Title: Grand Dishes Pub date: 04/03/2021 Format: Hardback Price: £25.00 ISBN: 978-1-80018-000-0 Rights: World/Audio

NON-FICTION Anastasia Miari is a freelance writer whose work ranges from fashion magazine editorials to travel features for the Telegraph and easyJet Traveller magazine. @Anastasia_Miari Iska Lupton works as a creative producer, styling food for various brands and publications. @IskaLupton / @GrandDishes 77

March

EILEEN

The Making of George Orwell SYLVIA TOPP

The never-before-told story of George Orwell’s first wife, a woman who shaped the life of one of twentieth century’s greatest writers From the time they spent in a tiny village tending goats and chickens, through the Spanish Civil War, to the couple’s narrow escape from the destruction of their London flat during a German air raid, Eileen is the first account of the Orwells’ nineyear marriage. It is also a vivid picture of bohemianism, political engagement and sexual freedom in the 1930s and 40s. The year before George met her, Eileen had published a futuristic poem called ‘End of the Century, 1984’, and he would go on to name his greatest work in homage to her memory. This touching story of an unjustly overlooked woman offers a completely new perspective on Orwell himself. ‘A revelation... Outstanding’ The Times

Title: Eileen Pub date: 04/03/2021 Format: Paperback Price: £9.99 ISBN: 978-1-80018-026-0 Rights: World English

‘Moving and important’ New Statesman

NON-FICTION Sylvia Topp is the author of numerous essays, including ‘Hidden Husbands’ and ‘You Can’t Get to Barnhill from Here’. She was married to Tuli Kupferberg, a Beat poet who later co-founded the legendary rock and roll band the Fugs. Together Sylvia and Tuli wrote and designed over thirty books and magazines. 78

March

MAGNIFICENT WOMEN AND THEIR REVOLUTIONARY MACHINES HENRIETTA HEALD

The lost stories of Britain’s trailblazing, boundary-breaking women engineers ‘Women have won their political independence. Now is the time for them to achieve their economic freedom too.’ This was the great rallying cry of the pioneers who, in 1919, created the Women’s Engineering Society. Spearheaded by Katharine and Rachel Parsons, a powerful mother and daughter duo, and Caroline Haslett, whose mission was to liberate women from domestic drudgery, it was the world’s first professional organisation dedicated to the campaign for women’s rights. Acclaimed biographer Henrietta Heald tells the stories of the women at the heart of this group, from their success in fanning the flames of a social revolution to their significant achievements in engineering and technology.

Title: Magnificent Women and their Revolutionary Machines Pub date: 04/03/2021 Format: Paperback Price: £9.99 ISBN: 978-1-80018-027-7 Rights: World/Audio

‘A fascinating social history’ TLS

NON-FICTION Henrietta Heald is the author of William Armstrong, Magician of the North which was shortlisted for the H. W. Fisher Best First Biography Prize and the Portico Prize for non-fiction. Her other books include Coastal Living, La Vie est Belle and a National Trust guide to Cragside, Northumberland. 79

March

NOTEBOOK TOM COX

Bestselling author Tom Cox’s latest book celebrates an often overlooked literary medium – the humble notebook When a rucksack containing Tom Cox’s notebook was stolen at a Bristol pub in 2018, the author realised just how much notebookkeeping means to him: the act of putting pen to paper has always led him to write with an unvarnished, spur-of-the-moment honesty that he wouldn’t achieve on-screen. Here, Tom has assembled his favourite stories, fragments, moments and ideas from those notebooks, ranging from memories of his childhood to the revelation that ‘There are two types of people in the world. People who fucking love maps, and people who don’t.’ The result is a book redolent of the real stuff of life, shot through with Cox’s trademark warmth and wit. ‘One of the most reliably readable and enchanting writers around’ Stephen Fry

Title: Pub date: Format: Price: ISBN: Rights:

Notebook 18/03/2021 Hardback £14.99 978-1-78352-972-8 UK & Comm. ex. Can

‘Brings magic to the most mundane of subjects’ Marian Keyes

NON-FICTION Tom Cox lives in Norfolk. He is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling The Good, The Bad and The Furry and the William Hill Sports Book longlisted Bring Me the Head of Sergio Garcia. 21st-Century Yokel was longlisted for the 2018 Wainwright Prize, and the titular story of Help the Witch won a Shirley Jackson Award in 2019. @cox_tom 80

March

PEDRO AND RICKY COME AGAIN Selected Writing 1988–2020 JONATHAN MEADES

A landmark book of the best of three decades of Jonathan Meades Thirty years ago Jonathan Meades published a hefty collection of reportorial journalism, essays, criticism, squibs and fictions called Peter Knows What Dick Likes. It quickly acquired cult status. The critic James Wood was moved to write: ‘When journalism is like this, journalism and literature become one.’ This new collection is every bit as rich and every bit as catholic. Hence its title: Pedro and Ricky Come Again. Thirty years older, so no longer boys, but no wiser, and still impervious to good taste and good manners. The work assembled here demonstrates Meades’s unparalleled range and erudition, with pieces on cities, artists, sex, England, concrete, politics and much, much more. ‘Meades is a very great prose stylist, with a dandy’s delight in the sound and feel

Title: Pedro and Ricky Come Again Pub date: 18/03/2021 Format: Hardback Price: £30.00 ISBN: 978-1-78352-950-6 Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

of words, and we are lucky to have him’ The Spectator

NON-FICTION Jonathan Meades is a writer, journalist, essayist and film-maker. He is the author of Filthy English, Peter Knows What Dick Likes, The Fowler Family Business, Museum Without Walls and Pompey. In 2014, he published the first volume of his autobiography, An Encyclopaedia of Myself. His many films for the BBC include Abroad in Britain, The Joy of Essex and, most recently, Franco Building. 81

March

MUSEUM WITHOUT WALLS JONATHAN MEADES

In this widely acclaimed collection, Jonathan Meades proves there is no such thing as a boring place Jonathan Meades has an obsessive preoccupation with places. He has spent thirty years exploring an extraordinary range of them, from natural landscapes to man-made buildings and ‘the gaps between them’, drawing attention to what he calls ‘the rich oddness of what we take for granted’. This book collects fifty-four pieces and six film scripts that dissolve the barriers between high and low culture, good and bad taste, deep seriousness and black comedy. To read Meades on places, buildings, politics or cultural history is an exhilarating workout for the mind. He leaves you better informed, more alert, less gullible. ‘Britain’s most consistently surprising and informative writer on the built environment’ Owen Hatherley, London Review of Books

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Museum Without Walls 18/03/2021 Paperback £12.99 978-1-78352-853-0 World/Audio/TV & Film

March

THE PLAGIARIST IN THE KITCHEN A Lifetime’s Culinary Thefts JONATHAN MEADES

This ‘anti-cookbook’ collects of 125 of Meades’s favourite recipes, combining polemic with indispensable culinary advice Best known as a provocative novelist, journalist and film-maker, Jonathan Meades has also been called ‘the best amateur chef in the world’ by Marco Pierre White. His contention here is that anyone who claims to have invented a dish is delusional, dishonestly contributing to the myth of culinary originality. The Plagiarist in the Kitchen is an anti-cookbook, delivering a polemical but highly usable collection of 125 of the author’s favourite recipes, each one an example of the fine art of culinary plagiarism. Accompanied by excellent practical advice, these are dishes and methods he has hijacked, adapted, improved upon and made his own. ‘I adore Meades’s book... I want more of his rulebreaking irreverence in my kitchen’ New York Times

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The Plagiarist in the Kitchen 18/03/2021 Paperback £9.99 978-1-78352-852-3 World/Audio/TV & Film

March

POMPEY

JONATHAN MEADES ‘One of the very best and most absurdly underrated novels of the nineties’ (Stephen Fry) – a reissue of Jonathan Meades’s savage masterpiece At first glance, Jonathan Meades’s Pompey is a post-war family saga set in and around the city of Portsmouth. This doesn’t come close to communicating the scabrous magnificence of Meades’s creation, an obscene, suppurating vision of an England in terminal decline. There is no richer stew of perversity, voyeurism, corruption, religious extremism and curdled celebrity in all of English literature, but there is also an underlying compassion and a jet-black humour which make Pompey an important and strangely satisfying work of art. Prepare to enter the English novel’s darkest ride… ‘Disgusting and brilliant – should earn Meades justifiable comparison to Joyce, Celine, Pynchon’ Vogue

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Pompey 18/03/2021 Paperback £10.99 978-1-78352-854-7 World/Audio/TV & Film

FICTION Jonathan Meades is a writer, journalist, essayist and film-maker. He is the author of Filthy English, Peter Knows What Dick Likes, The Fowler Family Business, Museum Without Walls and Pompey. In 2014, he published the first volume of his autobiography, An Encyclopaedia of Myself. His many films for the BBC include Abroad in Britain, The Joy of Essex and, most recently, Franco Building. 84

March

SONG

MICHELLE JANA CHAN A sweeping historical epic following one boy’s long journey from rags to riches, by award-winning Vanity Fair journalist Michelle Jana Chan Song is just a boy when he sets out from Lishui village in China. Brimming with courage and ambition, he leaves behind his impoverished, broken family, hoping he’ll make his fortune and return home. Chasing tales of sugarcane, rubber and gold, Song embarks upon a perilous voyage across the oceans to the British colony of Guiana, but once there he discovers riches are not so easy to come by… This beautifully written and evocative novel spans nearly half a century and half the globe, and though it is set in another century, Song’s story of emigration and the quest for an opportunity to improve his life is timeless. ‘A wonderfully lush and atmospheric odyssey of survival against all odds’ Bernardine Evaristo

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Song 18/03/2021 Paperback £9.99 978-1-80018-037-6 World/Audio/TV & Film

‘Brings a world of equal peril and possibility to life with rich, radiant prose’ Tatler

FICTION Michelle Jana Chan is an award-winning journalist and travel editor of Vanity Fair. She was formerly a BBC TV presenter, a news producer at CNN International and a reporter at Newsweek. Michelle was named the Travel Media Awards’ Travel Writer of the Year in 2016. @michellejchan 85

April

THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION JOURNAL THE WOMEN’S PRIZE (ED.)

An illustrated journal celebrating twenty-five years of brilliant fiction by women Part journal, part keepsake commemorating twenty-five years of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, this beautiful book is intended to inspire you to pick up your pen. It’s also a compendium of the history of the Prize, spotlighting each of the phenomenal winners from the past quarter of a century, and featuring bespoke illustrations as well as an appendix listing all the brilliant women who’ve judged the Prize and the books they shortlisted throughout the years. Alongside an introduction by Founder-Director Kate Mosse, there are plenty of inspirational quotes and exclusive writing tips, and space for notes to help you find your own voice.

Title: The Women’s Prize for Fiction Journal Pub date: 01/04/2021 Format: Hardback Price: £14.99 ISBN: 978-1-80018-055-0 Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION The Women’s Prize for Fiction is the UK’s most prestigious annual book award honouring fiction written by women. Founded in 1996, the Prize was set up to celebrate originality, accessibility and excellence in writing by women. @WomensPrize / www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk

April

ITCHY, TASTY

An Unofficial History of Resident Evil ALEX ANIEL

The definitive history of the development of Capcom’s groundbreaking Resident Evil video game series This book is the behind-thescenes story of Capcom’s survival horror video game series – one of the most popular, innovative and widely influential franchises of all time. Alex Aniel spent two years interviewing key members of Capcom staff, and here he narrates the development of each Resident Evil game released between 1996 and 2006, interspersed with commentary from the creators themselves. This commentary offers fans new information about what inspired the games, the technical and artistic innovations they involved, and the fascinating dynamics of the industry that produced them.

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Itchy, Tasty 15/04/2021 Hardback £18.99 978-1-78352-948-3 World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION Alex Aniel has over a decade of experience in the video game industry, and currently works for video game music label Brave Wave Productions and physical game publisher Limited Run Games, specialising in the production of game soundtrack albums and business development for both companies. @cvxfreak 87

April

ONE OF THEM

An Eton College Memoir MUSA OKWONGA

An intimate and timely exploration of race and class in modern Britain Musa Okwonga – a young Black man who grew up in a predominantly working-class town – was not your typical Eton College student. The experience moulded him, challenged him… and made him wonder why a place that was so good for him also seems to contribute to the harm being done to the UK. Woven throughout this deeply personal and unflinching memoir is a present-day narrative which explores the long-term impact of Okwonga’s Eton experience on his life, and which also engages with much wider questions about pressing social and political issues: privilege, class, the distribution of wealth, the rise of the far-right in the UK, systemic racism, the ‘boys’ club’ of government and the power of the few to control the fate of the many.

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One of Them 15/04/2021 Paperback £8.99 978-1-78352-967-4 World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION Musa Okwonga is a poet, journalist, broadcaster, musician, social commentator, football writer and consultant in the fields of creativity and communications. He has written on identity, sport, culture and society for a range of publications including Africa Is a Country, The Economist, ESPN, Foreign Policy, the Guardian and the New York Times. @Okwonga 88

April

A WILD AND PRECIOUS LIFE A Recovery Anthology

LILY DUNN AND ZOE GILBERT (EDS.) A vital anthology of stories, poetry and memoir from writers in recovery Featuring a foreword by Will Self We’ll all experience recovery at some point in our lives, whether from addiction, physical illness, mental health issues or loss. Many of us heal, and we may discover ways to live with our changed selves, to reclaim a life. We may find a new voice, or unearth a voice that has been submerged. Vitally, recovery can mean community. This anthology represents a community of writers – new voices alongside emerging and established authors. Their stories come from the dark back alleys, the deep crevices of the mind, and from the wild, ecstatic heights of life before, during and after recovery. These are voices that urgently need to be heard, in all their variety.

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A Wild and Precious Life 15/04/2021 Paperback £9.99 978-1-78352-964-3 World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION Lily Dunn’s first novel, Shadowing the Sun, was published by Portobello Books and her creative non-fiction has been published by Granta, Aeon and Litro. @Lilydunnwriter Zoe Gilbert is the author of Folk (2018) and Mischief Acts (2021). Her short stories have won prizes including the Costa Short Story Award. @mindandlanguage 89

April

NERVE ENDINGS Selected Lyrics

KRISTIN HERSH A collection of lyrics by celebrated Throwing Muses songwriter Kristin Hersh, author of the widely acclaimed memoir Paradoxical Undressing Since forming the seminal art rock band Throwing Muses while still in her teens, Kristin Hersh has been at the forefront of alternative music, acclaimed for her raw, visceral and poetic songwriting. Here, collected for the first time, are the lyrics to one hundred songs, curated by the woman who wrote them. From Throwing Muses classics like ‘Bright Yellow Gun’ to solo material such as ‘Your Ghost’ and her songs with 50 Foot Wave, Nerve Endings encapsulates one of the most fascinating and honest careers in modern rock music. Title: Pub date: Format: Price: ISBN: Rights:

Nerve Endings 29/04/2021 Paperback £9.99 978-1-80018-035-2 World & Audio ex. TV & Film

NON-FICTION Kristin Hersh is a musician, author, mother of four and founder of the seminal art rock band Throwing Muses. Over three decades she has also performed as a solo artist and leader of 50 Foot Wave, released dozens of critically acclaimed albums, and written her memoirs, Paradoxical Undressing and Don’t Suck, Don’t Die. Kristin currently lives in California. @kristinhersh 90

May

CUT FROM THE SAME CLOTH?

The Lived Experience of British Hijabis in Their Own Words SABEENA AKHTAR (ED.)

A groundbreaking collection of essays written by British hijabis Perceived as the visual representation of Islam, hijabwearing Muslim women are often harangued at work, at home and in public life, yet they are rarely afforded a platform of their own. Cut from the Same Cloth? seeks to change this. The collection features essays by eighteen women from diverse backgrounds who look beyond the tired tropes perpetuated by the media and offer honest insight into the issues that really affect their lives, from pop culture and anti-blackness to working life and women’s rights. It’s time we, as a society, stopped the hijab-splaining and listened to the people who know.

Title: Cut from the Same Cloth? Pub date: 13/05/2021 Format: Paperback Price: £9.99 ISBN: 978-1-78352-944-5 Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION Sabeena Akhtar is a writer and editor, and Festival Coordinator of Bare Lit, the UK’s principal festival celebrating remarkable writers in the diaspora. She is also co-founder of the Primadonna Festival, which spotlights the work of women writers, and Bare Lit Kids, the UK’s first children’s festival showcasing the work of writers of colour. Sabeena lives in London. @pocobookreader 91

May

A HARE-MARKED MOON

From Bhutan to Yorkshire: The Story of the Harewood Stupa DAVID LASCELLES

This memoir details the building of a Buddhist stupa in the grounds of an English country house, and the Himalayan travels that inspired it In the spring of 2004, David Lascelles invited a group of monks from Bhutan to build a stupa in the gardens of Harewood House in Yorkshire. It was a step into the unknown for the Bhutanese. They didn’t speak any English, had never travelled outside their own culture, had never flown in an airplane or seen the ocean. Theirs was one kind of journey. But the project was also another kind of voyage for David: an attempt to reconcile a deep interest in Buddhism with the 250 years that his family has lived at Harewood, the country house and estate that he has loved, rejected, tried to make sense of and been haunted by all his life.

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A Hare-Marked Moon 13/05/2021 Hardback £16.99 978-1-78352-930-8 World ex. TV & Film

NON-FICTION David Lascelles is a film producer whose credits include Inspector Morse and Moll Flanders for television, and The Wedding Gift, The Wisdom of Crocodiles and Ian McKellen’s Richard III for the cinema. He now lives at Harewood and runs Harewood House Trust, the educational charitable trust that looks after the estate for the public benefit. 92

May

SEW ON THE GO A Maker’s Journey

MARY JANE BAXTER An inspiring road trip and a practical guide to crafting wherever you find yourself

Sew on the Go is Mary’s guide to carving out more creative space in your life. From decorating your own budget-conscious bolthole to achievable projects including clothes and beautiful gift ideas, this is the ideal companion for those who dream of devoting more time to their craft.

In 2016, Mary Jane Baxter did what many people dream of: she quit her job, rented out her flat and headed for the hills. Her home for the next few months was an upcycled 1986 Bedford Bambi campervan with a top speed of 60 mph. With this as her travelling craft studio, she set off around Europe searching for inspiration.

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Sew on the Go 13/05/2021 Hardback £16.99 978-1-78352-916-2 World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION Mary Jane Baxter is the author of two books, Chic on a Shoestring and The Modern Girl’s Guide to Hatmaking, and has presented on fashion and craft for the BBC, most notably bartering her sewing skills for board and lodging in a series of films for Newsnight. She lives in London. @maryjanemakes 93

May

WOMEN ON NATURE KATHERINE NORBURY (ED.)

This scintillating anthology provides a timely and polemical new perspective on women’s writing about the natural world There has, in recent years, been an explosion of writing about place, landscape and the natural world. But within this blossoming of interest, women’s voices have remained very much in the minority. In Women on Nature, Katherine Norbury has sifted through the pages of women’s fiction, poetry, household planners, gardening diaries and recipe books to show the multitude of ways in which they have observed and recorded the natural world about them, from the fourteenthcentury writing of the anchorite nun Julian of Norwich to the seventeenth-century travel journal of Celia Fiennes; from the keen observations of Emily Brontë to the brilliant new voices throughout our archipelago writing today.

Title: Women on Nature Pub date: 13/05/2021 Format: Hardback Price: £20.00 ISBN: 978-1-80018-041-3 Rights: World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION Katharine Norbury is the author of The Fish Ladder, which was shortlisted for the 2016 Wainwright Prize, longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and was a Book of the Year in the Guardian, Telegraph and Observer newspapers. She is a literary critic for the Observer and has contributed travel pieces to the Guardian and Lonely Planet magazine. @kjnorbury 94

May

THINK LIKE A VEGAN

What Everyone Can Learn from Vegan Ethics EMILIA A. LEESE AND EVA J. CHARALAMBIDES

Thought-provoking essays and exercises to show how vegan ethics can improve the lives of everyone

This is not just a book for vegans. It’s for anyone interested in veganism, its ideals and what even non-vegans can learn from its practice.

From the basics of vegan logic to politics, economics, love and other aspects of being human, every chapter draws you into a thoughtprovoking conversation about your daily ethical decisions.

Think Like a Vegan invites the reader to set aside their preconceived notions about veganism, exploring through a personal and often irreverent lens a variety of contemporary topics related to animal use in all areas of everyday life.

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Think Like a Vegan 27/05/2021 Hardback £14.99 978-1-80018-018-5 World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION Emilia A. Leese writes essays on life, travel and veganism for online publications, including her blog Emi’s Good Eating. She speaks about veganism at events and festivals, and lives in London. www.emisgoodeating.com Eva J. Charalambides is a photographer and vegan advocate. She lives in Toronto. 95

May

THE LOST DIARY

A Summer Fishing in Pursuit of Golden Scales CHRIS YATES

The rediscovered diary of the legendary angler’s 1981 summer spent trying to catch a mythical fish In June 1980, when he was thirtytwo and had just caught what was then the largest British carp, Chris Yates wondered if his obsession had been cured. Having landed a fifty-pounder, could he now dream of capturing Redmire’s real monster, the King? Far from the monster itself, it was the idea of such a leviathan that hooked Chris Yates in the summer of 1981, playing him along the banks for one final season before releasing him back out into the world. Rediscovered after being lost for more than two decades, this diary – complete with original illustrations – recounts the final reckoning of an angler’s long relationship with a beloved and mysterious pool. ‘A piscatorial Proust’ Observer

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The Lost Diary 27/05/2021 Paperback £9.99 978-1-78352-960-5 World/Audio/TV & Film

‘A slim volume of much power as if imbued with magic’ Caught by the River

NON-FICTION Chris Yates is an author and photographer but most famously a fisherman. In 1980 he caught what was then the biggest fish ever caught in England – a fifty-one and a half-pound carp – using a split cane rod at Redmire. He went on to record his experiences in books, in his own magazine, in radio programmes and in the BBC2 series A Passion for Angling. He lives in south Wiltshire. 96

June

BORDER CROSSINGS

My Journey as a Western Muslim

MOHAMMAD TUFAEL CHOWDHURY The story of a British-born Bangladeshi man as he travels the world experiencing first-hand the changing ways that different societies treat Muslim people Whether negotiating the mindgames of the Israeli intelligence services or performing ablutions in a London bathroom, Mohammad Chowdhury’s life as a British Muslim brings daily challenges. Border Crossings is the story of Chowdhury’s journey, gripping in some parts and shame-inducing in others, as he describes a lifelong struggle to reconcile the British, Asian and Muslim sides of his identity, constantly dealing with the mistrust of Westerners alongside the hypocrisies of his own community and their misunderstanding of Islam.

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Border Crossings 10/06/2021 Hardback £18.99 978-1-78352-969-8 World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION Mohammad Tufael Chowdhury was one of the first British-born Bangladeshis to study at Oxford, following which he completed his master’s at Cambridge and executive training at Harvard Business School. Chowdhury is a senior partner at a global consulting firm and is recognised as a leading emerging markets technology expert by the BBC, Financial Times, Forbes and CNN. @mtchowdhury 97

June

GENDER EUPHORIA

Stories of Joy from Trans, Non-Binary and Intersex Writers LAURA KATE DALE (ED.)

Essays by non-cisgender writers celebrating experiences of joy, pride, confidence and freedom For many non-cisgender people, it’s not gender dysphoria that pushes forward transition, but gender euphoria: a powerful feeling of happiness experienced as a result of moving away from their birth-assigned gender. It’s that joy you feel the first time a parent calls you by your new chosen name, or the first time you have the confidence to cut your hair short like you’ve always wanted. Featuring essays from sixteen trans, non-binary, agender, gender-fluid and intersex authors, Gender Euphoria seeks to show the world the sheer variety of ways being non-cisgender can be a beautiful, joyful experience.

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Gender Euphoria 10/06/2021 Paperback £9.99 978-1-80018-056-7 World/Audio/TV & Film

NON-FICTION Laura Kate Dale works primarily as a video game critic, and she has also written about LGBT representation and disability accessibility for the BBC, the Guardian and Huffington Post. Her memoir, Uncomfortable Labels: My Life as a Gay Autistic Trans Woman, was published in 2019. @LauraKBuzz 98

June

TATTERDEMALION

SYLVIA V. LINSTEADT AND RIMA STAINES A beautifully illustrated novel rooted in fantasy and folklore, set in a post-apocalyptic California Poppy, who speaks the languages of wild things, travels east to the mountains with the wheeled and elephantine beast Lyoobov. Poppy’s seeking answers to the mysteries of his birth, and the origins of the fallen world in which he lives. Up in the glacial peaks, among a strange, mountainous people, a Juniper Tree takes Poppy deep into her roots and shows him the true stories of the people who made his world, people he thought were only myths. Tatterdemalion is a stunning collaboration between writer Sylvia V. Linsteadt and artist Rima Staines, featuring the fourteen original paintings that inspired the narrative.

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Tatterdemalion 10/06/2021 Paperback £12.99 978-1-78352-956-8 World English

‘Exquisite... Angela Carter goes feral with Ursula K. Le Guin’ Jay Griffiths

FICTION Sylvia V. Linsteadt is a writer and artist. Her collection of stories, The Gray Fox Epistles, won the James D. Phelan Literary Award from the San Francisco Foundation in 2014. Her other books include The Wild Folk, The Wild Folk Rising and Our Lady of the Dark Country. @WildTalewort Rima Staines is an artist living in South Devon. @tilsamka 99

June

IN OTHER WORDS MAINSPRING ARTS (ED.)

A remarkable anthology of short stories by eight autistic writers, with forewords by David Mitchell and Joanne Limburg Despite the prevalence of autism – one in a hundred people is diagnosed as autistic – society is still fraught with misconceptions and misunderstandings about it. This isn’t helped by the fact that autistic people are so rarely being afforded their own voices in arts and literature. We need far more, and far more varied, depictions of autism. In Other Words collects eight short stories that grew out of a writing workshop held specifically for autistic writers. What all the participants had in common was a passion for writing and the freedom it brings – the limitless possibility that enabled them to find their voices in a way the neurotypical world often didn’t allow.

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In Other Words 24/06/2021 Paperback £9.99 978-1-80018-033-8 World/Audio/TV & Film

FICTION Mainspring Arts was founded in 2015 by Katya Balen and Miranda Prag, who were frustrated by the lack of diversity in the arts, where neurotypical and non-disabled actors or writers frequently assume the roles and voices of neurodivergent people, or those with disabilities. Katya and Miranda believe those people should be able to tell their own stories, and Mainspring Arts exists to help them do it. @mainspring_arts 100

June

WORK IN PROGRESS

DAN BROTZEL, MARTIN JENKINS AND ALEX WOOLF A farcical novel-in-emails about an eccentric writers group. They’ve all got a book in them, unfortunately Julia Greengage, aspiring writer and devoted housewife, puts up a poster in her local library with an idea to start a writers’ group. Seven people answer... It’s not long before the group’s idiosyncrasies and insecurities start to appear. Expect feuds, rivalries and romance; sex, scandal and humiliation – not to mention an exploding sheep’s head, a cosplay stalker and an alien mothership invasion. They’re on a journey, and god help the rest of us. A novel-in-emails about seven eccentric writers, written by three quite odd ones, Work in Progress is a very British farce about loneliness, the ache of literary obscurity, and the perils of Twiglet sex.

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Work in Progress 24/06/2021 Paperback £9.99 978-1-78352-962-9 World/Audio/TV & Film

FICTION Dan Brotzel’s first collection of short stories, Hotel du Jack, was published in 2020. @danbrotzel Martin Jenkins’s publications include the experimental novel A New Science of Navigation. Alex Woolf has written over 100 books for children and adults, published by the likes of OUP, Ladybird, Heinemann and Watts. 101

June

TALES FROM THE COLONY ROOM Soho’s Lost Bohemia DARREN COFFIELD

The definitive oral history of London’s most notorious drinking club, with a foreword by Barry Humphries To commemorate the tenth anniversary of the closure of London’s most infamous arts establishment, the Colony Room Club in Soho, former member Darren Coffield has written the authorised history of this notorious drinking den. It’s a hair-raising romp through the underbelly of the post-war scene: during its sixtyyear history, more romances, more deaths, more horrors and more sex scandals took place in the Colony than anywhere else. Tales from the Colony Room is an oral biography, consisting of previously unpublished and longlost interviews with the characters who were central to the scene, giving the reader a flavour of what it was like to frequent the Club. ‘Entertaining, shocking, uproarious, hilarious’ Sunday Times

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Tales from the Colony Room 24/06/2021 Paperback £9.99 978-1-80018-028-4 World/Audio/TV & Film

‘Riveting... An elegy to that vanished world’ Daily Mail

NON-FICTION Darren Coffield has exhibited widely at venues ranging from the Courtauld Institute to the Voloshin Museum, Crimea. In the early nineties he worked with Joshua Compston on the formation of Factual Nonsense, the centre of the emerging Young British Artists scene. In 2011 Coffield published a book about this period, Factual Nonsense: The Art and Death of Joshua Compston. 102

NEW TITLES: DIGITAL The following titles are from our digital-first list, available to order as paperbacks from GBS at orders@gbs.tbs-ltd.co.uk It is July 1944. German generals have tried – and failed – to kill Hitler. One man in London is relieved. Jago Craze, Military Intelligence Officer and failed SOE agent, believes the premature death of Hitler could cause the Allies to lose the war. Jago attempts something he never would have imagined: a secret operation to save Hitler... Title: Author:

Wolf Trap Alan Hescott

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978-1-78965-083-9 £10.99

‘Extremely intriguing with intricate twists and turns’ Frederick Forsyth When maverick police sergeant Jolly Macken is banished to the sleepy 1950s Irish border village of Blackwatertown, he vows to find the killer of his brother – even if the murderer is inside the police. Title: Author:

Blackwatertown Paul Waters

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978-1-78352-925-4 £9.99

Eloise is an erratic, faded fashionista. Bradley is a glum teenager. In need of help to write her racy 1960s memoirs, the former fashion guru tolerates his common ways. But what is he scheming – beyond getting his hands on her bank card? And just what’s hidden in that mysterious locked room? Title: Author:

Note to Boy Sue Clark

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978-1-78965-093-8 £10.99

Leaves of Love is laced with inspiring real-life stories that depict the rich gleanings to be found within ageing and the unexpected opportunities that can reveal themselves when we embrace the reality of our dying. These stories bring with them a tool bag of ideas and practical tips to empower the carer within all of us to value our own unique gifts and love as we have never loved before. Title: Author:

Leaves of Love Lucy Ackroyd

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978-1-78965-087-7 £9.99

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Captain Charles Maddox returns secretly to London from an exile in disgrace only to be arrested, imprisoned and threatened with the death penalty. He is rescued by a shadowy agency called the Map Room who give him a choice: return to prison or become an agent and help them uncover a government conspiracy connected to the Ripper murders. Title: Author:

The Sterling Directive Tim Standish

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978-1-78965-085-3 £10.99

From 1983 until 1991, glam metal was the sound of American culture. Big hair, massive amplifiers, drugs, alcohol, piles of money and life-threatening pyrotechnics. This was the world stalked by Bon Jovi, Kiss, W.A.S.P., Skid Row, Dokken, Motley Crue, Cinderella, Ratt and many more. Armed with hairspray, spandex and strangely shaped guitars, they marked the last great era of supersize bands. Title: Author:

Nothin’ But a Good Time Justin Quirk

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978-1-78965-135-5 £10.99

The growing numbers of twin parents soon realise that the best people to speak to are others who have been there. Be Ready to Parent Twins is a no-holds-barred guide to how to prepare for and survive pregnancy and the first year, sharing the experience and expertise of Dr Ella Rachamim and twin buddy Louise Brown alongside first-hand accounts of many other parents they have surveyed and interviewed. Title: Be Ready to Parent Twins Author: Louise Brown and Ella Rachamim

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978-1-78965-081-5 £10.99

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Featuring: Crow Court A gripping and deeply moving debut novel set in mid-nineteenth-century Dorset Pedro and Ricky Come Again The definitive collection of Jonathan Meades’s journalism, essays, criticism and more, from 1988–2020 This Party’s Dead A journey to death festivals around the world, confronting grief and death anxiety along the way Notebook The latest offering from Tom Cox, on the sheer joy of putting pen to paper Grand Dishes Stories and time-perfected recipes passed down from grandmothers around the world One of Them Musa Okwonga’s unflinching memoir, taking us back to his time as a young Black man at Eton Women on Nature A landmark anthology illuminating the writing of women on place, landscape and the natural world