birlinn general united kingdom edinburgh (634 results)

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. On the same coast, somewhere, were his other men.What had they found? Where were they? His own party was lodged in the chilled breath of this vast polar wilderness where he wrote: 'The winds have a force so tterrific as to eclipse anything previously known in the world. We have found the kingdom of blizzards. We have come to an accursed land.' Sir Douglas Mawson's epic and tragic journey across 600 miles of unknown Antarctic wasteland has been described by Sir Edmund Hillary as 'the greatest story of lone survival in Antarctic exploration'. This Accursed Land tells the story of how Mawson declined to join Scott's ill-fated British expedition in order to lead the Australasian party and his three man team which set out to explore the far eastern coastline of the Antarctic continent. The loss of one of his men and most of his supplies turned a hazardous trek into a nightmare. Mawson and his colleague, Mertz, were trapped 320 miles from base with only nine days' food and nothing for the dogs. They lived on the journey back by slaughtering their starving animals and eating what is now known to have been poisoned meat. Mawson's ultimate and lone struggle for survival after Mertz's descent into madness - starving, poisoned, exhausted, and indescribably cold - is one of the most extraordinary stories in the history of exploration. When he arrived back his weight had reduced from fifteen stone to eight stone. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. In a follow-up to the successful Talking Balls that appeared in Ewen and Roughy's Real Football Quiz Book, Birlinn and Real Radio present Talking Balls 2, a new CD containing a full 70 minutes of the funniest moments from the Sony Award nominated Real Football Phone-in. All these clips happened live on air. And for an extra time slice of action, Ewen and Roughy provide brand new and hilarious commentary linking the calls. Scottish football is the national game and the national passion: there's no end to the amount of fierce debate, trainspotter trivia and amusing banter that it provokes in homes, work places and pubs across the country.An unhealthy proportion of it seems to end up on Scotland's top commercial radio station, Real Radio, on Ewen and Roughy's Football Phone-in. Broadcasting for two hours each day from Monday to Friday, Ewen and Roughy have become the premier presenters in the football phone-in league, provoking debate and laughter across huge swathes of the country. The success of the show has been extraordinary. When last season wound down, Ewen and Roughy's football quiz helped to fill all those barren hours when there was no football to talk about, and proved enormously popular. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. The Scots have always had a reputation for clarity of thought and also for the vigour with which it is put into words. This new edition of David Ross's acclaimed collection spans the entire gamut of a nation's recorded thought and experience from Calgacus in AD 84 to Annabel Goldie in 2011. It covers a vast range of subject matter and demonstrates a remarkable variety of moods and tones, from the literary to the colloquial and bawdy. Packed with sharp observation and humour, it sounds other notes too. Meditative, triumphant, tragic, accusing, tender - and often hilarious - it reveals the spirit of Scotland in a truly unique way. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. This is the story of Scotland's very fine people. From about 8000BC to 4000BC migrant hunter gatherers were slowly moving north as the great ice sheets of the last Ice Age gradually melted. This represents the longest single period in Scotland's past. These peoples did not use metals, farm, or build great monuments, but their success in harvesting the resources available to them allowed them to flourish for thousand of years. The land they lived in was far different from the Scotland of today, great swathes of coastline were under water and much that is now sea was the land. Bill Finlayson weaves a story of the ways of life and beliefs of these people often unfairly caricatured as "squat, grunting savages". They have left but few traces on the landscape - the great shell mounds of Oronsay, cave shelters, scattered stone tools and hearths - but these few traces represent the first sign the first sign of man in Scotland. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Give me three years and well be millionaires, Nick challenged his long-suffering family in 1980, when cash was king. Ive got an idea thats going to take us to the top. Tinkering with alchemy in an old stable he shared with a Shire horse, Nick discovered how to create the most convincing antique replicas ever made. He started by selling a few of his netsukes on a market stall at the Birmingham Rag Market and met extraordinary and eccentric people, the risk-taking gamblers with fast tongues. Each had their own money-spinning ideas; you name it, he replicated it for the wheeler-dealers chasing the dream. When Nick and his crew reached the rarefied circles of the London art world he realised he could be dangerously out of his depth. This is the unlikely and often hilarious story of where nothing but enthusiasm and self-belief can take you. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Springs, John (illustrator). In Highland households, the Seanachie, or bard in the retinue of every chief, told tales that were passed on from one generation to the next. This is a selection of tales from Deirdre of the Sorrows showing the influence of Irish tradition, to ghost stories, love stories and tales of warriors. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Following on from "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency", this novel takes us further into the life of the sassy Precious Ramotswe, the owner of Botswana's only detective agency. Among her cases are wayward wives, unscrupulous maids, and a mother grieving for her son lost on the plains. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. A cross between Kate Brannigan and Miss Marple, Precious Remotswe embarks from her breezeblock office in Botswana on this humourous story of missing husbands, impostor relatives, wayward daughters and abduction. Not all her cases are successful. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Busy and deeply absorbed in all the complexity of life, Ruth Scotts packed diary suddenly had to be cleared when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. She said, Discovering that life might be shorter than expected or hoped for concentrates the mind wonderfully. Whatever life is left to me, I do not want to waste it. In the final months of her life, in the shadows between living and dying, she learned to live with the extremes of treatments that were as aggressive as the disease - and with daily ups and downs that created constant uncertainty. Throughout it all, Ruth creatively explored - through insight, literature, poetry and song - what life is about and how it should be lived. This book is the result. Here, she cuts through all the things in life that we waste our energies on. She explores the depth of life in ways that allow for doubt, absence and uncertainty while also making room for mystery and understanding beyond rational limitations. As she reflects on how we relate (or not) to each other, to the environment and to the more-than-me-ness of life, she offers real inspiration for us all. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency introduced the engaging and sassy owner of Botswana's only detective agency, Precious Ramotswe. This latest novel finds her expanding her business to take in the world of car repair and a beauty pageant. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. What happens when you fall in love with the wrong person? The consequences threaten to be far-reaching and potentially deadly. Bone Deep is a contemporary novel of sibling rivalry, love, betrayal and murder. This is the story of two women: Mac, who is bent on keeping the secrets of the past from her only son, and the enigmatic Lucie, whose past is something of a closed book. Their story is underpinned by the creaking presence of an abandoned water mill, and haunted by the local legend of two long-dead sisters, themselves rivals in love, and ready to point an accusing finger from the pages of history. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Rising from an inner city background, abandoned by his pro cyclist father as a toddler, Bradley Wiggins became a prodigious talent. World Junior Champion, World Champion and Olympic Champion were all titles that came his way at a startlingly young age, but what he really wanted was success on the road. 'Wiggo's' reinvention on the path to becoming Britain's first Tour de France winner in over a hundred years of racing is one of sport's most uplifting and inspiring stories. In this captivating and insightful narrative, Wiggins' old friend and colleague John Deering sets this remarkable story against the backdrop of Wiggins' crushing Tour victory, his races along the thousands of kilometres of French tarmac, telling the tale of his brutal procession from Liege to Paris in counterpoint to his fascinating life. From a Kilburn council estate to the Champs Elysees via the Olympics, Paul Weller and the world's most glorious sideburns, the legend of Bradley Wiggins is unravelled like never before. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Claire Macdonald is one of the best known figures in the culinary world today. A hugely successful and critically acclaimed cookery writer for over thirty years, she has garnered numerous awards and has appeared regularly on TV and at cookery demonstrations and courses all over the globe. In addition to all this, for forty years she ran the award-winning and internationally renowned Kinloch House Lodge on Skye. Cited as one of the world's top 25 small hotels in Conde Nast Traveller magazine, Kinloch's restaurant is one of only 16 restaurants in Scotland to have been awarded a coveted Michelin star in 2011. In this book Claire looks back over four eventful decades to tell the story of how she, her husband, clan chief Godfrey Macdonald of Macdonald, and their family built up Kinloch from insignificant beginnings in a remote but spectacularly beautiful corner of Skye to the great culinary institution it is today. Full of anecdote and humour, it also reveals how hard it was to achieve their dream. An intermittent water supply, shortage of telephones, a lack of fresh vegetables and problems with fire regulations were just some of the problems they had to face, not to mention the staff member who preferred mingling with the diners to helping in the kitchen, the guest who disappeared and the gardener with very un-green fingers. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, Frankenstein, introduced readers around the world to the concept of raising the dead through scientific procedures. Those who read the book were thrilled by this incredible Gothic adventure. Few, however, realised that Shelley's story had a basis in fact. What she imagined as her modern Prometheus was a serious pursuit for some of the greatest minds of the early 19th century. It was a time when scientists genuinely believed, as Frankenstein did, that they could know what it feels like to be God. Raising the Dead is the story of the science of galvanism - named after the Italian scientist Luigi Galvini who had conducted the original experiments - a movement that investigated the theory of 'animal electricity', a unifying vital spirit that animates us all, its leaders believing that they stood on the brink of immortality. While they ultimately failed in this challenge, their studies mapped out the nervous system and made valuable and enduring contributions to modern-day medical knowledge and understanding - from theorising the concept of the modern-day defibrillator, and 'deep brain stimulus' which is used to treat personality disorders, to experimental procedures involving the use of microchip-controlled devices to bridge damaged spinal nerves. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. These books are not simply pictures of what we can see from our car window, nor simply misty landscapes but photography which gets to the heart of both the landscape and its human component. While covering all the main attractions in an area the photographers have sought out the quirky, the curious and the unknown to give a new dimension to a land we all thought we knew. Argyll - the enduring heartland - with a coastline longer than that of France is one of the most beautiful counties in Scotland and also one of the most varied. From holiday towns on the Clyde to the stark grandeur of Ardnamurchan, from the great inland sea of Loch Awe to the flat plain of the Add - the Great Moss, its range of scenery is astonishing. The seat of the reputed Dark Age capital of the Kingdom of Scots, of romantic castles such as Stalker and Kilchurn, of great houses such as Inveraray, it is a landscape moulded by man from earliest times. This is the first photographic study to concentrate on a county which in many ways remains still a kingdom apart. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. 1951. Brighton. With the war over and the Nazis brought to justice at Nuremberg, Mirabelle Bevan (Secret Service, retired) thinks her skills are no longer required. After her lover's death she retires to the seaside to put the past behind her and takes a job at a debt collection agency run by the charismatic Big Ben McGuigan. But when the case of Romana Laszlo - a pregnant Hungarian refugee - comes in, Mirabelle soon discovers that her specialist knowledge is vital. With enthusiastic assistance from insurance clerk Vesta Churchill, they follow a mysterious trail of gold sovereigns and corpses that only they can unravel. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Para Handy has been sailing his way into the affections of generations of Scots since he first weighed anchor in the pages of the Glasgow Evening News nearly a hundred years ago. The Master Mariner and his crew - Dougie the Mate, Macphail the Engineer, Sunny Jim and The Tar - all play their part in evoking the irresistible atmosphere of a bygone age when puffers sailed between West Highland ports and the great city of Glasgow. This definitive edition contains all three collections published in the author's lifetime, as well as a new story never previously published. Extensive notes accompany each story, providing fascinating insights into colloquialisms, place-names and historical events. This volume also includes a wealth of contemporary photographs, depicting the harbours, steamers and puffers from the age of the Vital Spark. This edition includes one further story, which was discovered in 2001. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. This novel tells the story of an incomer married into a close-knit fishing community in northern Scotland. Struggling to cope with poverty, Cis also has to cope with her complex relationship with Marjie, her bright and sensitive daughter. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Precious Ramotswe is on holiday, staying with her Aunty Bee at safari camp deep in the Botswana countryside, and is excited when a new lion arrives. Not just any lion but an actor-lion called Teddy with his own film crew! But when the four-legged movie star goes missing the camp is thrown into confusion. Can the young detective and her resourceful new friend Khumo solve the mystery and find out where Teddy has gone? The search plunges the two young sleuths deep into the jungle. As they dodge the hippos and crocs they will need all their bravery and cleverness to catch their prize. Find out if they succeed as Alexander McCall Smith tells us the story of Precious and the Mystery of the Missing Lion. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. 1587. After three long years, exiled from home and family, and drawn into the depths of the London underworld under the tutelage of Elizabeth I's spymaster Francis Walsingham, Hew returns to Scotland with his new English wife, Frances. The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots has unleashed a torrent of anti-English sentiment in the Scottish people and fear in King James VI, jeopardising Hew's now unlawful marriage. However, the king invites Hew to investigate the perplexing meaning of a death's head painting that has come into his possession. What does it symbolise, and is it a message from his dead mother? Are the local painters all that they appear? If Hew solves the mystery, his marriage to Frances will be blessed. The stakes have never been higher as he embarks on a quest for love and life. Queen & Countryis the fifth Hew Cullan Mystery by Shirley McKay. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. These poems are often poems of love or death and iconic figures, Jungian archetypes, animus figures with strong outlines, harsh comfort and, often, voices of their own dominate the first, the 'title' section of the book. Here you can find poems autobiographical and entirely fictional set in her native rural/industrial Lanarkshire. Poems dedicated to other poets. There is a section of the rude and the rhyming, the out-loud. Now she's in her middle years she's decided to own up to this stuff properly, her interest in 'unrespectable' poetry, in black prison 'toasts', in recitations, folk-poems and music hall monologues. The colour of both the black and the white. The collaboration with the printmaker Willie Rodger was also an essential part of the making of this book. Lochhead, long an admirer of Rodger's work, felt strongly that he was a kindred spirit and his poetically pared down and essential lino cuts accentuate the positive and the negative, the black and the white. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Beginning at Drumnafunner Farm, where the Donald family lived and where the poet Charles Murray - 'Hamewith' - walked over the moors to school, the road winds its way through all sorts of intriguing places, uncovering the stories and characters associated with them. Discover the Witch's Cairn on Reekie Brae and meet Dame Ogilvy, a Doric poet who tells the story of Willie Wabster, chased through the hills by a lustful witch. Wander the glens and the old brown hills, including the North-east's favourite hill - learn about its curious name and why you should take mittens to climb it. Encounter strange characters such as the Wild Warlock, the bold, bad Baron of Gartly and the Penniless Pilgrim, who sailed to Scotland in a paper boat and won the hearts of the Scots lairds. These are just some of the delights on the road to Drumnafunner; many more await those who follow Robert Smith along the length of its path. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Bronny, a young Australian, finds herself down and out in London. She's a sweet girl who has spent her teenage years in a fearful, cautious bubble. She's never taken drugs, had sex or killed anyone. Within six weeks she's done all three. A group of backpackers break into an abandoned London townhouse seeking a rent-free life of debauchery. They don't realise someone's already there: a terrified woman bound and gagged in the basement. "The Devil's Staircase" combines a chick-lit voice and a dark crime noir environment. Not for the faint-hearted, "The Devil's Staircase" is funny, sexy and disturbing - it will keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. There are small paraffin-oil-lamp towns in many parts of the country for which Mr Swan is Fairy Godmother, perpetual Grand Plenipotentiary, and Deputy Providence. Half of his time in Glasgow is taken up with the execution of countless petty commissions for his rural customers and their friends, the selection and purchase of goods quite out of his drapery line. Jimmy Swan, the enigmatic commercial traveller, is another classic comic character from the pen of Neil Munro, the master Scottish humorist. The result of Swan's experiences is a wonderfully entertaining collection, allowing the reader a marvellous insight into daily life in the West of Scotland at the turn of the century. Each story is brimful of local and period detail and the editors have provided a full set of notes explaining those historical, cultural, biographical, linguistic and geographical references which may not be obvious to the twenty-first century reader - but which would have been very familiar from the news pages of their daily papers to the early twentieth-century reader. In addition a full introduction is given, setting these Glasgow tales in their context and providing information about their author, Neil Munro. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Steve has had enough - enough of cyber-bullies, enough of adults messing up the world. Sharp-witted Fran and her brother worry-wart Dan feel exactly the same. And so, along with his dog Nessie, Steve and the FranDan twins leave town in the dead of night to start on the biggest adventure of their lives .But if things were bad before, they soon get worse. Much, much worse. Some seriously bad men show up. Why have Steve and Dan been overpowered and led away as prisoners? Why are they kept tied up in the barn of a disused farm?Having managed to escape, and with no way to call for help, Fran knows it's up to her to mount a one-woman rescue. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. In this beguiling book, Alexander McCall Smith casts his eye over five chanced-upon photographs from the era of black-and-white photography and imagines the stories behind them. Who were those people, what were their stories, why are they smiling, what made them sad? What emerges are surprising and poignant tales of love and friendship in a variety of settings - an estate in the Highlands of Scotland, a travelling circus in Canada, an Australian gold-mining town, a village in Ireland, and the Scottish capital, Edinburgh. Some will find joy and fulfilment - others would prefer happier endings.Each of them, though, will find love, and that is ultimately what matters. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. In Tea at Miss Cranston's Anna Blair recreates a bygone era through the recollections of countless Glaswegians who shared their memories with her during extensive interviews. Nostalgic, yet never rose-tinted or bitter, they offer a candid picture of the joys and hardships - as well as of the mundane and everyday occurrences - of past times. This omnibus edition of her much acclaimed books is a feast of history and together provide a fascinating glimpse into the vibrant and intimate insides of a great city in years gone by. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. 'If it was me, if I was the murderer, Alice thought, where I go? What would I do? The job he had set himself was unfinished, he must be aware that his luck could not go on forever. It was a sumple calculation; at best a lifetime in prison, at worst he'd be killed by the police whilst attempting to complete his self-appointed task.' Introducing Alice Rice, Edinburgh detective. Smart and capable, but battling disillusionment and loneliness, she races against time and an implacable killer to solve a series of grisly murders among Edinburgh's professional elite in the well-to-do New Town. 'There is not a dull page from start to finish' Alexander McCall Smith 'this is a really accomplished debut: atmospheric, detailed, and hitting every requirement for a satisfying crime novel' Waterstones 'The New Rebus' Sunday Express. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. When the body of a retired sheriff is discovered in his grand house in the New Town of Edinburgh, Detective Sergeant Alice Rice finds herself hunting his killer. The search leads her to an unfamiliar world where wind-farm developers with millions of pounds at stake and protesters face each other with daggers drawn. Just as Alice thinks an answer is beginning to emerge, the sheriffs lover is killed in an apparent hit-and-run accident. An unlikely coincidence or, as the search widens, is Alice now investigating a double murder? The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. All proceeds from the book will go to the One City charity, which fights social exclusion in the city. Edinburgh's Lord Provost Lesley Hinds said: 'This book project is exactly what One City is all about. The idea of three successful Edinburgh authors, with very different perspectives, getting together to raise awareness and money by using their talent and creativity, is really exciting.'. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.