Literary companions, book reviews & guides

'Bird-watchers are tense, competitive, selfish, shifty, dishonest, distrusting, boorish, pedantic, unsentimental, arrogant and – above all – envious'. So says Bill Oddie, and he should know!

What were the achievements of the ’angry’ writers who emerged in the fifties?

Historically, they gave birth to the satire movement of the 1960s-Beyond the

Fringe, That Was the Week that Was and Private Eye. Their satire and

irreverence aroused enthusiasm in man, and a new ‘anti-Establishment’ mood

Exploring the brilliant web of verbal hocus-pocus that J.R.R. Tolkien delightedly spun in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, master hobbit investigator David Day reveals the myriad crafty puns and riddles, hidden meanings, and mythical associations beneath the saga's thrilling surface.

Exploring the brilliant web of verbal hocus-pocus that J.R.R. Tolkien delightedly spun in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, master hobbit investigator David Day reveals the myriad crafty puns and riddles, hidden meanings, and mythical associations beneath the saga's thrilling surface.

A delightful, wide-ranging anthology about England and the English over the centuries – songs, poems, hymns, letters and prose – this compendium is entertaining, witty, lyrical and heart-warming.

'Secrets' is a collection of sexually provocative stories. Intelligent, sexually frank and stimulatingly revealing, the stories cover the secret affairs, thoughts and fantasies which turn women on. Each carefully commissioned story is written by strong new talent. They are chosen for their literary merit as much as their erotic content.

In Tolkien's Ring, David Day shows how the Lord of the Rings is the result of an ancient story-telling tradition; and how, by drawing upon the world's primary myths and legends, J.R.R Tolkien created his own mythology for the twentieth century.

Within these pages are hundreds of facts, figures, stories and trivia about reading and writing, from the earliest printed books to today's best sellers.