Books
Biography and Autobiography
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An Unlikely Spanish Don: the life and times of Professor John Brande Trend
John Brande Trend, the first Professor of Spanish in Cambridge in 1933, arrived at his Chair by a circuitous route through a variety of disciplines, encountering a host of prominent people in pre-war political, cultural and intellectual life. It was this wider experience that made his teaching so unique and makes his story central to the period through which he lived. Read more...
The Lost Carving: a journey to the heart of making
An inspired reflection on creativity and achievement by one of the world's most renowned artisans. Read more...
The Kombi Trail: Across Three Continents in a VW Van
Cambridge, 1961. A group of students set off on the trip of a lifetime. Against the backdrop of the Cold War they travel through the Soviet Union to the Middle East, South Asia and on to Africa. Their mode of transport? The iconic VW Kombi. This book tells the story of that trip and the many experiences that they encountered along the way. Read more...
Francis Schaeffer (Bitesize Biography)
We may call him a prophet for his prescient analysis of trends in philosophy that explain where we are today; we may call him an apologist; less accurately, though popular articles and publishers’ blurbs delight in it, he may be called a philosopher. Fundamentally though, Francis Schaeffer rejoiced in being a pastor and evangelist. That is how he began, and through many twists and turns, that is what he remained to the end. Read more...
The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes
The results of a five-year project to publish the collected works of pioneering British economist John Maynard Keynes, has recently been unveiled by Cambridge University Press. The Collected Writings is published on behalf of The Royal Economic Society and comprises thirty volumes of all Keynes' published books and articles. Read more...
The Rough Guide to the Dark Side
Why a young reporter quit his job at The New York Times, and got himself mixed up with Balkan gangsters. Read more...
Middle Age: a Natural History
A vet turns forty and discovers sound - and surprising - zoological evidence that he's about to experience the best years of his life. Read more...
The Coder Special Archive
The authors along with 70 plus former 1950s national service Naval conscripts reveal how they learned Russian, spied on the Soviet military and shed light on the East-West conflict. Featuring contributions from alumni including but not limited to: Sir John Drummond (Trinity 1955), Dr James Muckle (Peterhouse 1957) and Mark Frankland (Pembroke 1954) Read more...
Fighting Season: tales of a British officer in Afghanistan
A terrific, gritty and intelligent account of Afghanistan. Read more...
Extramural: Literature and Lifelong Learning
An impassioned and articulate defence of the enduring importance of lifelong learning, and in particular the value of literary education for those seeking to expand their knowledge and horizons in adult life. Read more...
An Ordinary Spectator: 50 Years of Watching Sport
Through its 'Seven Ages of Watching Sport', this book aims to be far more than a simple 'I was there' catalogue of sporting events ... Rather, it offers some perceptive insights into what we derive from sports spectating, why we are continually drawn back to watch time and time again, and – from an individual’s perspective – what watching sport tells us about ourselves. Read more...
Life on the edge: Peter Danckwerts GC, MBE, FRS
Peter Danckwerts was brilliant, witty and wise. A hero of the London Blitz, disarming parachute mines at 23, Danckwerts later turned his sharp intellect to chemical processing. This biography covers his interest in wine, women and song, as well as his wide grasp of things scientific and the great sympathy and generosity he showed to his colleagues and many friends. Read more...
Alan Turing: The Enigma
Alan Turing was the extraordinary Cambridge mathematician who masterminded the cracking of the German Enigma ciphers and transformed the Second World War. This title presents his portrait. Read more...
The Diamond Queen: Elizabeth II and Her People
Andrew Marr's vivid account of the Queen and her reign now available in paperback. Read more...
A Brief Life of the Queen
A short illustrated life of Elizabeth II by her leading biographer for her Diamond Jubilee. Read more...
Todo in Tuscany: the dog at the villa
A heart-warming story of a London couple making a new life in Italy, a lonely dog and a house that's brought back to life. Read more...
Higgy: Matches, Microphones and MS
Alastair Hignell had three highly successful careers in sport: as an England rugby player, a county cricketer and a sports broadcaster. A much-loved figure in the sporting world, he retired after being diagnosed with MS. This book is his warm and inspirational story. Read more...
Bits and Pieces of My Life
Bits and Pieces of My Life is the autobiographical acount of a Cambridge educated Englishman whose captivating life has spanned several continents. Read more...
Alan M. Turing Centenary Edition
'In a short life he accomplished much, and to the roll of great names in the history of his particular studies added his own.' Read more...
Echoes of Ingen Housz
Jan Ingen Housz (1730 –1799) was a remarkable physician and scientist who lived in a circle of very famous names and through tempestuous times. His reputation has slid into obscurity and deserves new prominence, especially his discovery of the primacy of light in photosynthesis. Read more...
The Barbed-Wire University
The conventional picture of life in an Allied POW camp conjures up images of daring escapes (Colditz and The Great Escape) or the terrible brutality of the Far East (Bridge on the River Kwai). Read more...
The Road from Frijoles Canyon
In 1936, eight-year-old William Adams made his first visit to the Southwest and the Puebloan ruins of Frijoles Canyon—better known as Bandelier National Monument. Read more...
Bismarck: A Life
This is the life story of one of the most interesting human beings who ever lived. Read more...
Wild Coast
In this compelling and elegant travel memoir, John Gimlette returns to Guyana, the Wild Coast in South America, to discover his ancestral colonial history – one of brutal, cruel and often uncomfortable truths. Read more...
Discoverers of the Universe: William and Caroline Herschel
Discoverers of the Universe tells the gripping story of William Herschel, the brilliant, fiercely ambitious, emotionally complex musician and composer who became court astronomer to Britain's King George III, and of William's sister, Caroline, who assisted him in his observations of the night sky and became an accomplished astronomer in her own right. Read more...
From a Clear Blue Sky
On the August bank holiday Monday in 1979, 14-year-old Timothy Knatchbull went out on a holiday boat trip in Co Sligo. Read more...
A Scientist's Survival Guide
Dr Gerhard Haas’s life in science has spanned six decades--as biochemist, enzymologist and microbiologist, working with some of science's foremost researchers and some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical, brewing and food concerns. Read more...
Coleridge's Play of Mind
Eminent Coleridgean scholar John Beer presents a series of biographical investigations exploring Coleridge's life, stage by stage, and reconsidering the intellectual quality of his thinking and poetry through an emphasis on the notion of 'play'. Read more...
Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan
Great-grandson of a crofter and son-in-law of a Duke, Harold Macmillan (1894-1986) was both complex as a person and influential as a politician. Read more...
Salman Rushdie: Second Edition
This updated and expanded new edition reviews Rushdie's novels in the light of recent critical developments. Read more...
Michael Falcon: Norfolk's Gentleman Cricketer
Six men who began their careers with Norfolk went on to play Test cricket for England - but many who watched or played against Michael Falcon believe he too should have been granted the ultimate honour of representing his country. Read more...
A European Life
Distinguished economist, historian and linguist Michael Tracy publishes his memoirs, revealing a life spent at the forefront of political and economic development in both Western and Eastern Europe. Read more...
My Friend the Mercenary
In a fly-blown bar in West Africa, British war reporter James Brabazon found himself being briefed on covert military plans to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea by one of Africa's most notorious mercenaries - his friend Nick du Toit. Read more...
Off Duty!
An illustrated account by Ex-Wren Anne Lewis-Smith of the fun had whilst 'off-duty' by the Wrens who worked behind the scenes at Bletchley Park during World War II. Read more...
Rise and Shine
When I was thirty-five, my wife and I were both reported dead by the first paramedics to arrive at the scene of a seventy-five-mile-an-hour hit-and-run. Read more...
Young Romantics
In Young Romantics Daisy Hay shatters the myth of the Romantic poet as a solitary, introspective genius, telling the story of the communal existence of an astonishingly youthful circle. Read more...
A Natural Calling
This book provides new factual material on Charles Darwin, following many years of research into Darwin’s relationship to his cousin William Darwin Fox. Read more...
Memories of F.R. Leavis
Mr Matthews’s memories of more than sixty years, going back to the great days of Downing, are a fresh testimony to the greatest English critic of modern times. Read more...
Its A Dons Life
Mary Beard's by now famous blog A Don's Life has been running on the "TLS" website for nearly three years. Read more...
Blood over Water
On a blustery, overcast April day in 2003, David and James Livingston raced against each other in the 149th Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, watched by over seven million people. Read more...
The House on the Sacred Lake
In 1959 Margaret Anstee was working for the UN in Uruguay when she was offered the job of Deputy Resident Representative in Bolivia, then an extremely poor and underdeveloped country. Read more...
Unutterable Love: The Passionate life and preaching of F.W. Robertson
In this book Christina Beardsley uncovers two episodes of Robertson’s life that have been somehow obscured until now: his Victorian crisis of faith and his preoccupation with gender and sexuality. Read more...
The Mayor of Aihara
Aizawa Kikutaro was born into the wealthiest family in Hashimoto, an agricultural village specializing in wheat and silk. Read more...
The Other Elizabeth Taylor
This is the first biography of one of the outstanding English writers of the last century. Read more...
What a Time I am Having – Selected Letters of Max Perutz
Selected by his daughter, Vivien, from Max Perutz’s voluminous correspondence, the letters reproduced here portray their author with a spontaneity and directness no autobiography could have matched. Read more...
The Pattern in the Carpet
This is a beautifully written and deeply personal book on the jigsaw puzzle and the part it plays in the puzzle of its distinguished author's life. Read more...
Under Running Laughter: Burma- The Hidden Heart
Under Running Laughter is a fictionalised biography of Charles Garrad. Read more...
Raymond Williams - A Warriors Tale
Raymond Williams (1921-1988) was the most influential socialist writer and thinker in post-war Britain. Read more...
Beyond the Giant- Personal Insight into the Life of J.R.D. Tata
This penetrating book tells the story of one of India’s most successful businessmen Mr J.R.D Tata. Read more...
The Young Charles Darwin
What sort of person was the young naturalist who developed an evolutionary idea so logical, so dangerous, that it has dominated biological science for a century and a half? Read more...
Two Victorian Ladies on the Continent
This is the journal of Miss W, a lady in her forties, travelling through France and Switzerland to Italy, accompanied by a teenage girl, Minnie, for whom she is acting as guardian and tutor. Read more...
The Pelican in the Wilderness
Ivan Clutterbuck has long been a familiar figure amongst Anglo-Catholics. Read more...
A Dyslexic Doc's Memoirs
Ian Whyte, a Cambridge-graduate family doctor, was born in pre-apartheid South Africa. Read more...
Frances Partridge - A Life
Frances Partridge was the last significant writer of the Bloomsbury Group but far from the least. Read more...
