Following the death of his sister, middle-aged Dr Graesler leaves his winter home in Lanzarote for a health resort in Germany, where he practised medicine for many years. There he…
‘Assuming that I was sane and awake, my experience on that night was such as has befallen no man before’ After five years of 'strange amnesia', Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee remains…
The stories of two veterans - one traumatised, one blind - who rediscover themselves with the help of a friend in the course of two epic ocean adventures, kayaking around the…
A revelatory account of the past, present, and future of economic growth - and how we should rethink itOver the past two centuries, economic growth has freed billions from poverty…
‘I had rather die in the adventure of noble achievements, than live in obscure and sluggish security’In 1666, Margaret Cavendish had a vision: there was a crack in reality at the…
“All Frenchmen know you have to become civilised between eighteen and twenty-three and that civilisation comes upon you by contact with an older woman, by revolution, by army…
All over the world there are fantastic ruins and objects that cannot be explained by conventional history, archaeology or religion. In the ground-breaking Chariots of the Gods,…
I am a ridiculous man. They call me mad now. That would be a promotion in rankA delusional man whose strange dream changes his life; a self-justifying husband who causes his…
‘Waking, I cry “Oh, is this your – buried treasure? The light in the heart.”’In these exquisite stories from the genius of English modernism, everyday objects acquire profound…
It is 1837 and a brilliant German artist sets out to cross the mountains between Chile and Argentina. Perhaps nobody before him has been able to paint the sights that unfold: vast…
Now you slip away in sleep.Your boat is sea-mist, dreaming, by the shore. Spain’s most beloved poet, Federico García Lorca brilliantly captures the beauty and brutality of the…
A writer engulfed by a new obsession, an occasional sex-worker, a runaway, a teenager entering the workplace: these four tales of desire and dislocation explore the rough edges of…
Lay down all hope, you that go in by me . . .Through the gates of Hell, past whirling hurricanes, leering devils and rivers of blood, lies the ultimate evil: Satan himself.…
It’s terribly important that I get in touch with a gentleman who may have stopped in here to buy flowers this morning. Terribly important. Sometimes, the person you think you love…
‘Under bare Ben Bulben’s headIn Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.An ancestor was rector thereLong years ago, a church stands near,By the road an ancient cross.No marble, no…