Walking and writing have always gone together. Think of the poets who walk out a rhythm for their lines and the novelists who put their characters on a path. But the best insights, the deepest and most joyous examinations of this simple activity are to be found in non-fiction – in essays, travelogues and memoir.
Winner of the 2021 Rubery Book Award. BBC music broadcaster Stephen Johnson (who has Bipolar Disorder himself) explores the power of Shostakovich’s music during Stalin’s reign of terror, and writes of the extraordinary healing effect of music on the mind for sufferers of mental illness.
A seasonal anthology of Christmas-themed writings to savour during the highs and lows of Christmas Day, introduced by Gyles Brandreth. This delightful book offers a diverse array of classic and contemporary writers who have expressed their thoughts about Christmas over the centuries – with joy, nostalgia, grumpiness, and dazzling wit.
Starting with supervision of her primary school’s ‘Lost and Found’ depot, Gold charts her need to save objects, stories, and people – including herself – that she sensed to be on a road to perdition. In this compelling memoir, Gold relates her descent into addiction, and the fateful meeting that ultimately led to her salvation.
Cyclogeography is an essay about the bicycle in the cultural imagination and a portrait of London seen from the saddle. The bicycle enables us to feel a landscape, rather than just see it, and in the great tradition of the psychogeographers, Day attempts to depart from the map and reclaim the streets of the city.
Things I Don’t Want to Know is a unique response to George Orwell from one of our most vital contemporary writers. Taking Orwell’s famous list of motives for writing as the jumping-off point for a sequence of thrilling reflections on the writing life, this is a perfect companion not just to Orwell’s essay, but also to Levy’s own, essential oeuvre.
In this revealing ‘psycho-geography’, Dennis Marks makes a journey through the eastern borderlands of Europe to uncover the truth about Roth’s lost world. The result is a riveting and involving documentary that reunites Roth with his creative and spiritual landscape.
