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Roy Fisher is known internationally for his witty, anarchic poetry which plays the language, pleasures the imagination and teases the senses. But he is at heart an English Midlander. In Standard Midland, he confronts and worries at nuances of perception and the politics of understanding. Many of the poems are concerned with landscapes, experienced, imagined or painted, particularly the scarred and beautiful North Midlands landscape in which he has lived for nearly thirty years. Shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award in 2010, "Standard Midland" contains work mostly written since his Bloodaxe retrospective "The Long and the Short of It: Poems 1955-2005" and his texts for the artist's book "Tabernacle", his recent collaboration with Ronald King. Publication coincided with his 80th birthday. Critic Peter Robinson is publishing an 80th birthday festschrift with contributions by Fisher's many admirers at the same time. "Standard Midland" is the first Bloodaxe title to be issued in e-book format as well as in paperback.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Assembly Lines asks what it means to be here and now, in post-industrial towns and cities of the heartlands that are forever on the periphery. From schools and workplaces and lives lived in 'a different town, just like this', these poems take a historical perspective on the present day from the ground upwards - whether the geological strata that underpins a 'dithering island' or the ever-moving turf under a racehorses' hooves. This is a new Midlands realism, precision-engineered, which seeks wonderment in unlikely places. By turns both fierce and tender, the poems in Jane Commane's first book-length collection re-assemble the landscape, offer up an alternative national curriculum and find ghosts and strange magic in the machinery of the everyday. Between disappearances and reformations, the natural and the man-made, the lines are drawn; you might try to leave your hometown, but it will never leave you.
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'THE BOOK EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT' THE TIMES 'It was tempting to think, at times like this, that some bizarre hysteria had gripped the British people' Beginning eight years ago on the outskirts of Birmingham, where car factories have been replaced by Poundland, and London, where frenzied riots give way to Olympic fever, Middle England follows a brilliantly vivid cast of characters through a time of immense change. There are newlyweds Ian and Sophie, who disagree about the future of the country and, possibly, the future of their relationship; Doug, the political commentator who writes impassioned columns about austerity from his Chelsea townhouse, and his radical teenage daughter who will stop at nothing in her quest for social justice; Benjamin Trotter, who embarks on an apparently doomed new career in middle age, and his father Colin, whose last wish is to vote in the European referendum. And within all these lives is the story of modern England: a story of nostalgia and delusion; of bewilderment and barely-suppressed rage. Following in the footsteps of The Rotters' Club and The Closed Circle, Jonathan Coe's new novel is the novel for our strange new times. 'From post-industrial Birmingham to the London riots and the current political gridlock, [Middle England] takes in family, literature and love in a comedy for our times' Guardian 'Coe shows an understanding of this country that goes beyond what most cabinet ministers can muster . . . his light, funny writing makes you feel better' Evening Standard 'Middle England is a full-blooded state of the nation novel, and it brings us bang up-to-date' Sunday Times Coe is an extraordinarily deft plotter...the book zips along...he tackles big ambitious themes, in this case the effect of politics on people's lives, and political opinions on personal relations' Mail on Sunday 'What is striking about Coe is not so much his flight from Enghlishness as his ambivalent embrace of it ' Financial Times 'Slick . . . stylishly engineered . . . you'll marvel at the extraordinary attention to detail' Spectator 'Coe's comic critique of a divided country dazzles . . . Properly laugh-out-loud funny . . . it is also incisive and brilliant about our divided country and the deep chasms revealed by the vote to leave. Do not miss' The Bookseller.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
'THE BOOK EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT' THE TIMES _________________ 'It was tempting to think, at times like this, that some bizarre hysteria had gripped the British people' Beginning eight years ago on the outskirts of Birmingham, where car factories have been replaced by Poundland, and London, where frenzied riots give way to Olympic fever, Middle England follows a brilliantly vivid cast of characters through a time of immense change. There are newlyweds Ian and Sophie, who disagree about the future of the country and, possibly, the future of their relationship; Doug, the political commentator who writes impassioned columns about austerity from his Chelsea townhouse, and his radical teenage daughter who will stop at nothing in her quest for social justice; Benjamin Trotter, who embarks on an apparently doomed new career in middle age, and his father Colin, whose last wish is to vote in the European referendum. And within all these lives is the story of modern England: a story of nostalgia and delusion; of bewilderment and barely-suppressed rage. Following in the footsteps of The Rotters' Club and The Closed Circle, Jonathan Coe's new novel is the novel for our strange new times. _________________ 'Brilliantly funny' Economist 'A writer of uncommon decency' Observer 'A pertinent, entertaining study of a nation in crisis' Financial Times, Books of the Year 'Superb' The Times '[Coe's] light, funny writing makes you feel better' Evening Standard 'Very, very funny' Stylist 'Coe is as funny and tender as ever' Grazia 'Exceptionally good' BBC Radio 4, Saturday Review 'The great chronicler of Englishness' Independent.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

A football reporter is sent to a Midlands city on a routine assignment. On arrival, he is forced to admit to himself something he has been previously shutting out of his mind, that his dead friend and his wife had lived there.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Part of the "Everyman" series which has been re-set with wide margins for notes and easy-to-read type. Each title includes a themed introduction by leading authorities on the subject, life-and-times chronology of the author, text summaries, annotated reading lists and selected criticism and notes.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Heritage Unlocked is a new English Heritage series that aims to encourage visitors to explore some of our lesser-known sites. Each book covers one region of England, and will include features on the region's history, culture and character, as well as a concise but informative entry on each site, all fully illustrated in colour. OS maps, lists of useful websites and further reading, brief histories of each county, visitor directions to each site and information on joining English Heritage are also included. In a specially designed format - small square paperbacks with flaps - these new guides will appeal to general readers, new visitors and heritage enthusiasts alike. This book describes the essential features of English Heritage free sites in the Midlands region, covering territory from the Welsh borders to the North Sea coast. This part of England contains an extraordinary range of monuments, dating from the Neolithic period to the Industrial Revolution. They include enigmatic prehistoric stone circles and burial chambers in Derbyshire, Herefordshire and Shropshire; a length of Roman wall in Leicester; an impressive Iron Age hill fort; a thirteenth-century castle that was the birthplace of Henry IV; evocative remains of abbeys, monasteries and country houses; and Iron Bridge in Shropshire, Britain's best-known industrial monument.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)