In the summer of 1863 seven people left London on a train that would take them on a thrilling adventure across the Alps. They were the Junior United Alpine Club and members of Thomas Cook's first Conducted Tour of Switzerland. For them it was an exciting novelty; it turned out to be the birth of mass tourism, and it started with the Swiss.Best-selling author of Swiss Watching Diccon Bewes acquires a copy of Alpine member Jemima Morell's journal and travels from London to Lucerne—and back in time. He brings only the journal and the club's nineteenth-century guidebook to retrace their steps one by one, traveling by train whenever possible. Bewes follows the 1863 expedition, experiencing firsthand through Jemima's journal the original British "holiday" that shaped the future of two disparate nations, one a global monarchy and the other a recovering, struggling republic. Alongside vintage illustrations, Bewes creates a fascinating comparison of how people across the globe explore and vacation today. This is also the story of how a nostalgic tour surprised an expat author, revealing a Switzerland very different from the present—and an unexpected personal connection with the diarist in a startling twist. A perfect read for anyone who seeks an expert blend of context and consequence to their travel writing.Diccon Bewes became a travel writer via the scenic route of bookselling. After ten years at Lonely Planet and Holiday magazine, he decamped to Switzerland, where he has until recently managed the Stauffacher English Bookshop in Bern. Following the success of Swiss Watching, a Financial Times Book of the Year and international bestseller, he is now a full-time writer.

    Yet it is also one of the most puzzling, with an intriguing and sometimes violent history, from the sixth century BCE to the present day. Destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, the ruins of Pompeii offer the best evidence we have of life in the Roman Empire. But the eruptions are only part of the story. In The Fires of Vesuvius, acclaimed historian Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. She explores what kind of town it was--more like Calcutta or the Costa del Sol?--and what it can tell us about ordinary life there. From sex to politics, food to religion, slavery to literacy, Beard offers us the big picture even as she takes us close enough to the past to smell the bad breath and see the intestinal tapeworms of the inhabitants of the lost city. She resurrects the Temple of Isis as a testament to ancient multiculturalism. At the Suburban Baths we go from communal bathing to hygiene to erotica. Recently, Pompeii has been a focus of pleasure and loss: from Pink Floyd's memorable rock concert to Primo Levi's elegy on the victims. But Pompeii still does not give up its secrets quite as easily as it may seem. This book shows us how much more and less there is to Pompeii than a city frozen in time as it went about its business on 24 August 79.

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    Intellectuals, politicians, scientists, and artists?among them Arnold Toynbee, Aldous Huxley, and H. G. Wells?sought a vision for a rapidly changing world. Coloring their innovative ideas and concepts, from eugenics to Freud's unconscious, was a creeping fear that the West was staring down the end of civilization. In their home country of Britain, many of these fears were unfounded. The country had not suffered from economic collapse, occupation, civil war, or any of the ideological conflicts of inter-war Europe. Nevertheless, the modern era's promise of progress was overshadowed by a looming sense of decay and death that would deeply influence creative production and public argument between the wars. In "The Twilight Years," award-winning historian Richard Overy examines the paradox of this period and argues that the coming of World War II was almost welcomed by Britain's leading thinkers, who saw it as an extraordinary test for the survival of civilization? and a way of resolving their contradictory fears and hopes about the future.

    Each chapter takes a type of hill – whether it be knoll, cap, cliff, tor, bump or even mere hillock – as a starting point.These hills can leads to an exploration of an intimate relationship with a beach, a journey into Cox's past or a lesson from an expert in what goes into the mapping of hills themselves. Because a good walk in the hills is never just about the hills; it will take your mind to many other places.

    In the past, it was possible to live with delightful confusion: one could be English, or British, Scottish or Irish and a citizen/subject of the United Kingdom (or Great Britain). For years that state has been what Gavin Esler calls a 'secret federation', but without the explicit federal arrangements that allow Germany or the USA to survive.Now the archaic state, which doesn't have a written constitution, is coming under terrible strain. The English revolt against Europe is also a revolt against the awkward squads of the Scottish and Irish, and most English conservatives would be happy to get rid of Northern Ireland and Scotland as the price of getting Brexit done. If no productive trade deal with the EU can be agreed, the pressures to declare Scottish independence and to push for a border poll that would unite Ireland will be irresistible.Can England and Wales find a way of dealing with the state's new place in the world? What constitutional, federal arrangements might prevent the disintegration of the British state, which has survived in its present form for 400 years?

    Landmarks is about the power of language to shape our sense of place. It is a field guide to the literature of nature, and a glossary containing thousands of remarkable words used in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales to describe land, nature and weather. Travelling from Cumbria to the Cairngorms, and exploring the landscapes of Roger Deakin, J. A. Baker, Nan Shepherd and others, Robert Macfarlane shows that language, well used, is a keen way of knowing landscape, and a vital means of coming to love it.

    He was a handsome baronet with a promising career in government. The marriage of Lady Seymour Dorothy Fleming and Sir Richard Worsley had the makings of a fairy tale—but ended as one of the most scandalous and highly publicized divorces in history.In February 1782, England opened its newspapers to read the details of a criminal conversation trial in which the handsome baronet Sir Richard Worsley attempted to sue his wife’s lover for an astronomical sum in damages. In the course of the proceedings, the Worsleys’ scandalous sexual arrangements, voyeuristic tendencies, and bed-hopping antics were laid bare. The trial and its verdict stunned society, but not as much as the unrepentant behavior of Lady Worsley.Sir Joshua Reynolds captured the brazen character of his subject when he created his celebrated portrait of Lady Worsley in a fashionable red riding habit, but it was her shocking affairs that made her divorce so infamous that even George Washington followed it in the press. Impeccably researched and written with great flair, this lively and moving true history presents a rarely seen picture of aristocratic life in the Georgian era.

    From Scottish culture to the ancient history of the country to modern pastimes, this book has all that and more. Learn why the thistle is the floral emblem of Scotland, how Scotch whisky is made, why the Scots celebrate Hogmanay, how to play the bagpipes, and much more. This delightful book is the perfect gift for anyone planning a visit to Scotland, with an interest in Scottish history, or a drop of Scottish blood.

    Mingle with the most extravagant handlebar moustaches in Britain, pay your respects at the dog cemetery in Hyde Park, visit a Masonic temple, take trapeze lessons in a former power station, pray in a floating church, sail on a disused reservoir, discover the stone from which Arthur drew Excalibur, admire the sacred penis of a pharaoh, take aim on the City’s last bowling green, go stargazing at Greenwich Observatory, examine a rare cucumber straightener, a stuffed mermaid or a cow’s heart... Far from the crowds and the usual clichés, London still holds hidden treasures for those who know how to wander off the beaten track. An indispensable guide for those who thought they knew London well, or who would like to discover the hidden face of the city.

    What makes the Back Sea cultures distinctive, Ascherson agrues, is the way their comonent parts came together over the millennia to shape unique communities, languages, religions, and trade. As he shows with skill and persuasiveness, Black Sea patterns in the Caucasus, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Turkey, and Greece have linked the peoples of Europe and Asia together for centuries.

    'Death and the Virgin' is the story of a remarkable and frenetic period in Elizabeth's life: a tale of love, death and tragedy, exploring the dramatic early life of England's Virgin Queen.

    They range from the intensely physical, like the Icelandic Phallological Museum, which collects the penises of every mammal known to exist in Iceland, to the vaporously metaphysical, like the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, which poses a particularly Icelandic problem: How to display what can't be seen?In The Museum of Whales You Will Never See, A. Kendra Greene is our wise and whimsical guide through this cabinet of curiosities, showing us, in dreamlike anecdotes and more than thirty charming illustrations, how a seemingly random assortment of objects--a stuffed whooper swan, a rubber boot, a shard of obsidian, a chastity belt for rams--can map a people's past and future, their fears and obsessions. The world is chockablock with untold wonders, she writes, there for the taking, ready to be uncovered at any moment, if only we keep our eyes open.

    Agreement that they were far and away the best pop group ever is all but universal. And nowhere is the spirit of the Sixties - both in its soaring optimism and its drug-spirited introspection - more perfectly expressed than in the Beatles' music. Taking all the elements which combined to create each song as it was captured on vinyl - the songwriting process, the stimuli of contemporary pop hits and events, the evolving input from each of the Four, the brilliant innovations pulled off in the studio and, ultimately, the twisting grip of psychedelic drugs - the Beatles are pinpointed, record by record, in precise and fascinating detail against the backdrop of that vibrant era.

    Savage brings to life the sensational story of the meteoric rise and rapid implosion of the Pistols through layers of rich detail, exclusive interviews, and rare photographs. This fully revised and updated edition of the book covers the legacy of punk twenty-five years later and provides an account of the Pistols' 1996 reunion as well as a freshly updated discography and a completely new introduction.