In this chunky volume Darwin's biographer has collected hundreds of quotations from the writings of the great evolutionary scientist, illuminating both his public and private life. The first section deals with his early education and the voyage of the Beagle where he collected the specimens that would underlie his research. Of his schooldays he says disparagingly "The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank". But then "delight is a weak term to describe the feelings of a naturalist who, for the first time, has been wandering by himself in a Brazilian forest"; "with my pistols in my belt and a geological hammer in my hand, shall I not look like a grand barbarian?". After an earthquake in Chile, "solid buttresses 6-10 feet thick are broken into fragments like so much biscuit". Famously, "four natives of Terra del Fuego were carried to England" where "they were taught the simpler religious truths and duties". While writing On The Origin of Species Darwin observes to geologist Charles Lyell that "I believe only one or a few of each large genus ultimately becomes victorious and leaves modified descendants". Darwin's religious faith collapsed: "We can no more argue that the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being" and "I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity, but I was very unwilling to give up my belief". Above all, Darwin was adventurous: "I am like a gambler, and love a wild experiment." 348pp, black and white photos, chronology.

The award-winning US novelist follows Casey in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with her trademark humour, heart and intelligence, the novel explores the artistic passion, ambition and the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another. Blindsided by her mother's sudden death and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, mouldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she has been writing for six years. At the age of 31, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of - the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Her fight to fulfil her ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink. It is a moving story of grief and recovery, funny and immensely clever, emotionally rare and strong. 324pp.

The spectacular life of spectacles is the topic of the esoteric, informative and revelatory book. Alluring details describe how the humble pair of glasses might just be one of humanity's greatest inventions, allowing millions to see a world that would otherwise appear a blur. Yet how much do any of us really know about these things perched on the end of our noses? Travis Elborough traces the story of spectacles from their inception as primitive visual aids for monkish scribes right through to today's designer eyewear. We learn how glasses were the making of rock 'n' roller Buddy Holly, helped liberate an exasperated John Lennon from Beatlemania and added to Michael Caine's sexual allure. We see women in glasses through the lenses of crime fiction by Dorothy L. Sayers and Raymond Chandler, and the full-screen figure of Marilyn Monroe. There are encounters with ingenious medieval Italian glassmakers, myopic Renaissance rulers, and spectacle-makers and opticians - brilliant, mad, bad and dangerous - in the Londons of Samuel Pepys, Dr Johnson and Sherlock Holmes. Peering into early theories about how the eye worked, Elborough considers the theological and philosophical arguments about the limits of perception by Greek thinkers, Roman statesmen and Arab scholars. Chapters include Steam-Powered Vision and Working Glass Heroes. The book opens with a Welby Fine Frames Limited trade advert of 1970 with glamorous blondes in heavy rimmed and horn rimmed and bejewelled frames and a Michael Caine lookalike fella in the centre. 341pp, illus.

'Despite the unpromising financial situation, after twenty-odd years trying to make a living on and around Grub Street - several novels published to grudgingly respectful reviews and negligible sales - I feel that this might just be the year in which something happens. Then again it might not. But hope drives all writers on.' '6th April 2007. Writing income for the year so far: -£300.' This is Chris Paling's diary of trying to make a living as a writer through the typical career trajectory of what is deemed a 'mid-list' novelist. In renumeration terms, writing is a career that often ends in disappointment and despair, and occasionally disgrace. Paling artfully explores what compels him and so many others to write - the battling joys and agonies of when that compulsion beds itself in one's psyche, and a day without writing is a day wasted. His is a fascinating insight into the writing process as he tracks the need to write something new or something old in a new way, something relevant, something that needs to be written when very little actually does, in search of that ever-elusive goal of being 'in print'. By turns moving, wry and brutally honest, the book unveils the rewarding yet soul-baring life of a novelist. At its heart it is a love letter to the art of writing and also a profound reflection on the forces that drive us all. 228pp.

Sub-titled 'An Intimate Collection of Behind-The-Scenes Photos Featuring the Legendary Art Collector', the renowned photographer took these images between 1967 and 1974, and many have never been seen before. Born into a wealthy New York family in 1928, Marguerite 'Peggy' Guggenheim was one of the greatest art collectors of the 20th century. Using her inheritance to open her first art gallery, her love of art led her to eventually settling in Venice where she relaunched her life after becoming the star of the 1948 Venice Art Biennale. Striking, enigmatic and dramatic, Moses photographed Peggy in her favourite places around Venice, as well as in her private palazzo at Canal Grande. She glides on her gondola with her Lhasa apso dogs, and wears her iconic butterfly glasses, a fur-trimmed coat and bright red stockings. She had been photographed by Man Ray in 1924, wearing flapper eveningwear, by Gisèle Freund in 1939 with Herbert Read, and by Berenice Abbott in 1926, a dog in her arms, and of course by Moses who shows her from provocative poise to complete relaxation in this collection. She is pictured surrounded by pigeons on St Mark's Square and around the first buildings of the Renaissance, surrounded by artworks in her own home, being shown paintings as she reclines on a sofa, reading a book in front of a bottle of Gordon's Dry Gin, enjoying the company of visitors approving of the paintings by Magritte and Max Ernst to be seen on the walls of her barchessa. There are blue glass Venetian figures, sculptures, she is pictured with paintings by Miró, Chagall, or sitting on her Byzantine style throne looking at a photo album in the grounds of her home. Inside her turquoise bedroom the 'headboard' is by Alexander Calder and the lamps were made by Carlos Scarpa for Venini. In her salon there is a huge painting by Grace Hartigan (Ireland, 1958) and she is pictured with her grandson and his wife in front of a Giacometti sculpture (Walking Woman, 1936). There is also a wonderful series of black and white images and family snapshots and portraits and pet dogs from the archive included on black pages in one special section. 144 exceptional pages, 23 x 29.5cm, colour.

Edward R. Murrow, America's most prominent journalist, in March 1961 ended a quarter century career with the Columbia Broadcasting System to join the administration of John F, Kennedy as Director of the United States Information Agency (USIA). Charged with promoting a positive image abroad, the agency sponsored overseas research programmes, produced documentaries, and operated the Voice of America to spread the country's influence throughout the world. As Director, Murrow hired African Americans for top spots in the agency, and leveraged his celebrity status at home to challenge all Americans to correct the scourge of domestic racism that discouraged developing countries, viewed as strategic assets, from aligning with the West. Using both overt and covert propaganda programmes, he forged a positive public image for Kennedy's administration policies in an unsettled era that included the rise of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and support for Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem. This magnificent historical work tackles an understudied portion of Murrow's life and exposes the importance of public diplomacy in the advancement of US foreign policy. It is an invaluable look back on the virtues and a few vices of the approach taken 50 years ago by the legendary broadcast journalist in the service of a remarkable administration. The book is both fun and informative, 353pp, 12 illus, chapters include 1776 Pennsylvania Avenue, From Fiasco to Progress in Latin America and Birmingham, The Story Heard Round the World.

'Was it the bourbon or the dye fumes that made the pink walls quiver like vaginal lips?' Greeted as shocking, daring and scandalous on publication in 1922, the swirl of bourbon, dyed blonde hair and vaginal lips is audacious, but also feminist camp, and writing which moved with invention and forcefulness into a new field like other outlaw writers Jean Genet and William S. Burroughs. Turning wine vomit into glittering burgundy ribbon, as in 'Pig's head dropped lower. She gagged and a long line of glittering burgundy ribboned down the stairwell.' Set in the San Francisco of the early 90s, of the Lusty Lady, like all of Steinke's novels, this has been lauded for its 'gorgeous prose'. Jesse is a 29 year old adrift in San Francisco's demi-monde of sexually ambitious, drug-taking outsiders, desperately trying to sustain a connection with her bisexual boyfriend. She becomes caretaker and confidante to Madame Pig, a grotesque, besotted recluse. Jesse also meets Madison, Pig's daughter or lover or both, who uses others' desires for her own purposes, and who leads Jesse into a world beyond all boundaries. An intensely erotic story of one woman's sexual and psychological odyssey, and a modern cult classic. The New York Times said, 'Hallucinatory, dystopian... A disturbing, poisonous fable.' 180pp, paperback.

The Office for National Statistics Census 2021 is the basis of this official story in numbers. In 1841 there were 734 female midwives working in Britain, along with nine artificial eye makers, 20 peg makers, six stamp makers and one bee dealer. Fast forward nearly two centuries and there are 51,000 midwives working in the UK and not an eye maker in sight. For the past 200 years, through the Census and national surveys, the Office for National Statistics and its predecessors have charted the lives of the British - our jobs, home lives and strange cultural habits, with questions on occupation, housing, religion, travel and the family. The Census findings have informed the economy, politics and every other national matter, and its collected data forms the single most valuable ongoing historical resource of modern times. Delving deep into statistics and including the latest findings on the Covid-19 pandemic, where to give one example the ONS with its partners set up the Virus Infection Survey to gauge the prevalence in the community, going from its announcement to first publication of results in barely three weeks, it taught us the value of timely, accurate, trustworthy, comprehensive information. The book marks the 25th anniversary of the ONS creation now that it is being brought together with the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys. Among the questions that have stumped the normally indefatigable ONS Press Office down the years were: 'What percentage of the UK are aristocrats?' and 'How many rats and squirrels are there in the UK?' 298pp, charts, diagrams.

One of the finest Hispanists in the country, Sir Paul Preston CBE has written extensively about Spain and in particular the Spanish Civil War, Franco and Spain from dictatorship to democracy. Here he turns his attention to how, from 1874 to the present day, the Spanish people were devastatingly betrayed by their political class, military and church. The sub-title of this monumental history is 'A History of Corruption, Political Incompetence and Social Division in Modern Spain 1874 to 2018'. He chronicles how violent social division throughout the country has been cultivated by institutionalised corruption and startling political incompetence, most spectacularly during the Primo de Rivera and Franco dictatorships when grotesque and shameless corruption went hand-in-hand with inept policies that prolonged Spain's economic stagnation well into the 1950s. Preston looks back to the years prior to 1923 when electoral corruption excluded the masses from organised politics, giving them a choice between apathetic acceptance and violent revolution. Bitter social divisions, economic tensions and conflict between centralist nationalism and regional independence movements then exploded into the Civil War of 1936-39. The horrors of that war and the dictatorship that followed broke the pattern. The moderation shared by the progressive right and a chastened left underlay a bloodless transition to democracy after 1975 yet as before, corruption and political incompetence continued to have a corrosive effect, and still does to this day. The history sparkles with vivid portraits of politicians and army officers, some corrupt and others clean, and the triumphs and disasters of kings Alfonso XIII and Juan Carlos. A work of deep historical scholarship superbly written by an outstanding historian. 750pp, illus.

Told backwards - Stuart's idea - the novel starts with a deeply troubled 32 year old stepping out in front of the 11.15 train from London to King's Lynn, and ends up with a 'happy-go-lucky' little boy of 12. Compelling, humane and funny, it is as extraordinary and unexpected as the life it describes. Stuart: A Life Backwards expanded the possibilities of what a biography could be - the stories it could tell, and how it could tell them. It is about a remarkable friendship between a reclusive writer ('a middle-class scum ponce, if you want to be honest about it, Alexander'), and Stuart Shorter, a thief, hostage-taker, psycho and street raconteur. An unforgettably moving prize winning novel, 294pp, illus. and in the collectable 4th Estate Matchbook Classics wraparound paperback edition.