I've long had a love of poetry and never the ability to create any of my own. My friends and family have this gift yet have never pushed to have any of their work published so I took it upon myself to correct this. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.
There's no end to the audacity of Northland sculptor Chris Booth, man who thinks not just big but huge. His latest stone wall at the Hamilton Botanical gardens is absolutely stunning and now he has embarked on a giant sculpture for Kerikeri. His last hardback for Godwit is now out of print and this all-new book brings together the remarkable pieces he has installed both in New Zealand and overseas, in both public and private collections, and traces his remarkable artistic and spiritual journey. His latest commission is for a gigantic work in a chalk pit at The Eden Project in the UK, a work that will cement him firmly on the international stage.
He is the David Attenborough of mountaineering . . . Bonington's most personal memoir yet' The Times 'This is a compelling tale of fortitude and endurance' The Sunday Times Chris Bonington is Britain’s best-known climber, having spent a lifetime among the world’s highest and wildest mountains. In the 1960s, he made the first British ascent of the north face of the Eiger. In the 1970s, he led some of the most important first ascents ever achieved in the Himalaya, including the south face of Annapurna and the south-west face of Everest – the hard way. Along with successes came the agony of friends losing their lives on the mountain, gambling with the highest stakes of all. In the 1980s, he reached the summit of Everest, aged fifty-one, a moment of fulfilment that only renewed his passion for adventure. In the years since, he has led countless expeditions to remote peaks with small teams all over the world, his enthusiasm for remote and little-known places still burning as he enters his ninth decade. He now looks back on his extraordinary life, recounting his family’s adventurous roots, his mother’s struggle to bring him up through the Blitz on her own, his discovery of the mountains, his fierce ambition and the long marriage that gave a sensitive boy the security to find his place in the world. Honours and fame follow the decades of risk and adventure, but nothing could protect him from the devastating fatal illness of his wife Wendy. Open, honest and full of hardwon wisdom, Ascent is the epic saga of an unrepeatable life on the edge.
For Chris Bonington and Charles Clarke, long-time friends and expedition partners, few mountains were more alluring than Sepu Kangri. Known locally as 'the Great White Snow God', Tibet's nearly 7,000-metre mountain had never before been visited by Westerners. Armed only with a tourist map for reference, the two set off for this elusive peak in 1996. In the reconnaissance and two expeditions that followed, neither of them were expecting to be profoundly impacted by their experiences. However, they not only met their match in Sepu Kangri, but both found their expertise pushed to the limit. While Clarke acted as a travelling doctor, treating myriad ailments encountered along the way, including a life-saving diagnosis of an ectopic pregnancy, Bonington's love of technology saw him testing out cutting-edge satellite phones and computers, allowing them to communicate with the outside world for the first time on an expedition. Tibet's Secret Mountain is a story of discovery as much as it is an account of the expeditions, and it is this that sets it apart from other mountaineering memoirs. The focus not only on the climbing itself, but the experiences, people and tensions that accompany it, offers a poignancy that anyone with a love of adventure will identify with. Beautifully written and full of unfailing cheer, Tibet's Secret Mountain is Bonington and Clarke's love letter to mountaineering.
What connects the Murder of Maria Marten, the Luddites, Baring's Bank, the Castlemaine Gold Rush, the Marquiss of Normandy, Knutsford Prison, the Archibishop of York Wentworth Woodhouse, the Earl of Mulgrave, W B Yeats and a Ghost of Denby Dale? They all feature in this fourth addition to the influentialand highly successful series Denby & District. Amongst a wealthof absorbing new research this book features the Green family, corn millers of Denby Dale; Elijah Hinchcliffe, a convicted felon from Cumberworth who was transported to Tasmania for his crimeand the Kelso family of Denby Dale, comedians and travelling music hall artistes. The book also includes a fascinating, in depth analysis of the lives, careers and families of the curates of Upper Denby church, from 1627, which has thrown up a wealth of previously unknown information, made available here for the first time. Illustrated with numerous family trees and well over a hundred never before published photographs, the book is a must for anyone with an interest in the area and continues the high standards and traditions set by previous volumes in the series.
THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER 'Chris Broad explores Japan in all its quirky glory..Endlessly fascinating!' Will Ferguson, author of Hokkaido Highway Blues 'Carves a unique path across Japan bringing him into contact with far too many cats, heartening renewal in Tohoku, and even pizza with Ken Watanabe.' Iain Maloney, author of The Only Gaijin in the Village 'Fascinating, fact-packed and very funny..An excellent and enjoyable read for the Japan-curious. I loved it and learned a lot.' Sam Baldwin, author of For Fukui's Sake: Two years in rural Japan When Englishman Chris Broad landed in a rural village in northern Japan he wondered if he'd made a huge mistake. With no knowledge of the language and zero teaching experience, was he about to be the most quickly fired English teacher in Japan's history? Abroad in Japan charts a decade of living in a foreign land and the chaos and culture clash that came with it. Packed with hilarious and fascinating stories, this book seeks out to unravel one the world's most complex cultures. Spanning ten years and all forty-seven prefectures, Chris takes us from the lush rice fields of the countryside to the frenetic neon-lit streets of Tokyo. With blockbuster moments such as a terrifying North Korean missile incident, a mortifying experience at a love hotel and a week spent with Japan's biggest movie star, Abroad in Japan is an extraordinary and informative journey through the Land of the Rising Sun. Number one Sunday Times bestseller, August 2023
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