Esme,
a very young motherless child, spends her days collecting scraps of paper under
the table where her father’s team is compiling entries for the first Oxford
English Dictionary. In my mind’s eye, she is each of my
two wonderful daughters at that age.
Esme matures through the tragedy of
wartime and the fight for women’s suffrage, emerging as a remarkably successful woman, again like my daughters, now in their middle years. It is a book of
great poignancy.
'An enchanting story about love, loss and the power of language' Elizabeth Macneal, author of The Doll Factory
Sometimes you have to start with what's lost to truly find yourself...
Motherless and irrepressibly curious, Esme spends her childhood at her father's feet as he and his team gather words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary.
One day, she sees a slip of paper containing a forgotten word flutter to the floor unclaimed.
And so Esme begins to collect words for another dictionary in secret: The Dictionary of Lost Words. But to do so she must journey into a world…
Lexington was an extraordinary horse in
his own time and remains so today amidst all the living equine competition.
The story of the former slave that raised, rode, and rescued him, the powerful
men who bought, sold, and nearly stole him, the artist who painted him, and the
modern people who ensured his place in history all make their way through this
skein of marvelously reconstructed history.
I spent much of my teenage years on
the back of a quarter horse, and as I read this wonderful book, I could still
feel her changing her gaits.
"Brooks' chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps are thrilling." -The New York Times Book Review
"Horse isn't just an animal story-it's a moving narrative about race and art." -TIME
A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history
Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an…
Only an archaeologist can love this
book like I do, but that is much of what I am.
I’ve travelled to Scotland twice
in the last fifty years, and the ancient Pictish symbol stones there have
fascinated me. What were they for? Marriage contracts? Family seats? Political alliances? Heraldry?
Iain Fraser’s exhaustive
compendium made it possible for me to test these and more propositions and to
come to a few conclusions. Other readers might find their own reasons to enjoy
this beautiful work on a unique prehistoric art form.
This is a revised and expanded version of the RCAHMS publication originally entitled Pictish Symbol Stones: A Handlist. It publishes the complete known corpus of Pictish symbol stones, including descriptions, photos and professional archaeological drawings of each. An introduction gives an overview of work on the stones, and analyses the latest thinking as to their function and meaning.
In 1568, an English slaving voyage to the Caribbean ended badly in the
aftermath of a hurricane, and a hundred mariners were marooned on the Mexican
Gulf Coast.
Eleven months and 3600 miles later, three of them were rescued by a
French ship on the Bay of Fundy. One of them, David Ingram, later told his
story as completely as he could, starting in Africa. A misrepresentation of
Ingram’s story was published seven years later by Richard Hakluyt.
For four centuries, historians have condemned Ingram as a liar. However,
for all of that time, they have depended upon Hakluyt’s muddled version. Now, Ingram’s storyline has been restored to its original narrative form, and we have new insights into the world of the 16th century.
