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'Extraordinary' ANNE APPLEBAUM
'Thrilling . . . a record of an infatuation' TELEGRAPH
'The book of a lifetime' ELIF SHAFAK
'The North Pole proves to be the perfect subject for him' MICHAEL PALIN
'Heart-catching . . . fabulous' OBSERVER
'A beautiful book' ALAIN DE BOTTON

The epic adventure story of the North Pole - its transcendent beauty and dangerous appeal - from Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge who travelled there in 1990

Foot-stepping alongside Erling Kagge, we hear the story of the North Pole as never told before. From Herodotus, who first wondered what the northernmost point of our planet might be like, to the intrepid early cartographers who mapped our world, and the legendary expeditions led by Fridtjof Nansen and Robert Peary - the first polar explorer global celebrities - who were in the grip of a dangerous obsession to get to the North Pole first.

What emerges is a new history of the world, spanning thousands of years, as seen from the 'silver-shining vacantness' of the North Pole. Blending memories from Kagge's own 1990 trip with this gripping history, The North Pole is an adventure story, a book about difficult fathers and difficult sons, and an inspiring record of what it means to keep putting one foot in front of the other in the face of adversity.

'As an explorer Erling Kagge is world class; as a writer he is equally gifted' RANULPH FIENNES

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\"Easy-going, discursive and digressive, even those to whom trains are a closed timetable will find this a charming travelogue.\" - Stuart Maconie

Join travel writer and self-confessed \"train nut\" Tom Chesshyre as he celebrates 200 years of passenger railways on a zigzagging tour around the UK - where trains (proudly) began

In a small market town in the northeast of England in 1825, something momentous happened: ticket-bearing human beings started moving along wrought-iron tracks on a contraption with engine-powered wheels. The contraption was called a \"train\". What happened in Darlington, along a 26-mile line to Stockton, would kickstart the worldwide railway revolution. Today, 1.3 million miles of tracks crisscross the planet.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of this groundbreaking event, Tom Chesshyre embarks on a journey around the country that invented trains, taking in many heritage lines maintained by armies of enthusiasts. On a long, circular series of rides beginning and ending in Darlington, Chesshyre enjoys the scenery, seeks out the history, dodges delays (best he can), reports on the current (often shambolic) state of British railways, and lets the rhythm of the clattering tracks reveal what it is about trains - especially wonderful old trains - that we love so much.

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From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the twentieth century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, and greeted with critical acclaim as \"the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date\" (The Boston Globe), Kaplan's prescient, enthralling, and often chilling political travelogue is already a modern classic.

This new edition of the Balkan Ghosts includes six opinion pieces written by Robert Kaplan about the Balkans between 1996 and 2000 beginning just after the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords and ending after the conclusion of the Kosovo war, with the removal of Slobodan Milosevic from power.

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The Wild Places

by Robert Macfarlane