Written in the wake of the Paris attacks on November 13, 2015, Gila Lustiger examines the deep-rooted motives behind the attacks, the rise of antisemitism in the banlieues, and the profound flaws at the heart of the French governing system. She argues that the question of how to deal with terrorism has become a question for the whole of civil society.
The Paradoxal Compass is both historical narrative and environmental manifesto. Morpurgo compares our own tipping point with the ‘great unsettling’ faced by the Elizabethans more than four centuries ago. As the modern world continues to plunder the ‘infinite store’ of the earth’s riches, Morpurgo explores how our abusive relationship with the natural world began. He asks what the Age of Discovery might have to teach us in the current environmental crisis, as we too reappraise our place in the world.
Out of print since 1968, this is a unique guidebook from the late, great architectural writer, Ian Nairn. Illustrated with the author’s black and white snaps of the city, Nairn gives his readers an idiosyncratic and unpretentious portrait of the ‘collective masterpiece’ that is Paris.
John Berger, art critic, novelist and long-time smoker, joins forces again with Turkish writer and illustrator Selçuk Demirel. This charming pictorial essay reflects on the cultural implications of smoking, and suggests, through a series of brilliantly inventive illustrations, that society’s attitude to smoke is both paradoxical and intolerant.
The essays of Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, the 16th-century French philosopher, are an obvious addition to the Notting Hill Editions ‘Classic Collection’ due to the masterful balance of intellectual knowledge and personal story-telling conveyed in his writing. He popularised the genre of the essay form, coining the term from the French verb ‘essayer’, translated literally as attempts or trials. This selection is introduced by Tim Parks and is from the M A Creech translation.
We live in a world of docu-drama, in which the ‘real life’ story is held in higher regard than fiction. Where does that leave the imagination? Five writers grapple with reality and fiction, and the alchemical process of turning life into art.
A delightful selection of Priestley’s essays, drawing on five decades of his writing. Priestley defined the essay as a ‘prose masterpiece in miniature’ and understood that to perfect the form, the essayist had to stand ‘naked and shivering’ in the very first sentence.
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.
