October 2010 A Field Guide to Demons, Vampires, Fallen Angels: and Other Subversive Spirits Carol Mack and Dinah Mack If you met a werewolf in a forest at night, would you be able to tell what he really was? Could you resist the dark charms of a vampire or the lure of a fallen angel? Seductive, thrilling and often highly dangerous, you may recognise these inhuman beings in books and movies – but if you came across one in real life, would you know how to escape their clutches? MORE
October 2010 Why Can’t Elephants Jump?: And 101 other questions New Scientist Well, why not? Is it because elephants are too large or heavy (after all, they say hippos and rhinos can play hopscotch)? Or is it because their knees face the wrong way? Or do they just wait until no one’s looking? Read this brilliant new compilation to find out. MORE
October 2010 Nella Last in the 1950s: Further diaries of Housewife, 49 Robert Malcolmson and Patricia Malcolmson ‘I can never understand how the scribbles of such an ordinary person ... can possibly have value.’ So wrote Nella Last in her diary on 2 September 1949. Sixty years on, tens of thousands of people have read and enjoyed the first two volumes of her uniquely detailed and moving diaries, written during World War II and its aftermath as part of the Mass Observation project, and the basis for BAFTA-winning drama Housewife 49 starring Victoria Wood (with a follow-up under discussion). MORE
October 2010 Weeds: How vagabond plants gatecrashed civilisation and changed the way we think about nature Richard Mabey Weeds survive, entombed in the soil, for centuries. They are as persistent and pervasive as myths. They ride out ice ages, agricultural revolutions, global wars. They mark the tracks of human movements across continents as indelibly as languages. Yet to humans they are the scourge of our gardens, saboteurs of our best-laid plans. They rob crops of nourishment, ruin the exquisite visions of garden designers, and make unpleasant and impenetrable hiding places for urban ne’er-do-wells. MORE
