Arguably Conor Cruise O'Brien's most influential and admired book was this brilliant collection of essays - on history, literature and public affairs - first published in 1965. 'I can still remember the excitement with which I discovered a copy of Writers and Politics, in a provincial library in Devonshire thirty years ago. Nobody who tries to write about either of those subjects, or about "the bloody crossroads" where they have so often met, can disown a debt to the Cruiser.' Christopher Hitchens, London Review of Books 'When a liberal can write such pieces as "Mercy and Mercenaries", "Journal de Combat", "Varieties of Anti-Communism", "A New Yorker Critic", and "Generation of Saints", an important voice has returned to our culture.' Raymond Williams, Guardian
The contents focus directly on the dynamics of political argument in order to reveal how rival politicians and political scientists practice their persuasive art. Each contributor explores a disputed viewpoint, showing how differences of attitude and ideology structure the contemporary debate. Students should learn how an argument is constructed and develop the skills necessary for separating rhetoric from political reality. Further guidance is provided by summary boxes and suggested additional reading.
Pamela Gillilan was born in London in 1918, married in 1948 and moved to Cornwall in 1951. When she sat down to write her poem Come Away after the death of her husband David, she had written no poems for a quarter of a century. Then came a sequence of incredibly moving elegies. Other poems followed, and two years after starting to write again, she won the Cheltenham Festival poetry competition. Her first collection That Winter (Bloodaxe, 1986) was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Poetry Prize.
In Home Is Where the Wind Blows, Sir Fred Hoyle, one of this century's most eminent scientists and author of dozens of successful books, both fiction and nonfiction, offers a revealing and charming account of his life and work. Mathematician, physicist, astronomer, cosmologist - Sir Fred is perhaps best known, in scientific circles, for his brilliant explanation of the origin of the elements from hydrogen nuclei in stars (a process known as nucleosynthesis) and for developing (with Sir Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold) the elegant but controversial steady-state theory of the Universe (which assumes the continuous creation of matter). In 1950, in the last of a series of radio lectures on astronomy that he delivered on the air for the BBC, Sir Fred coined the term "Big Bang" to characterize the competing expanding-Universe theory, which has since become the dominant paradigm. Ironically, the term has become a permanent addition to the language of cosmology. Sir Fred's name has become well known to the general public because of his unusual ability to describe the ideas of science in a simple and accessible way. In addition to his scientific work, he has written more than a dozen works of popular science (many of them widely translated) and more than a dozen works of science fiction (most of them in collaboration with his son, Geoffrey). In all his work, Sir Fred has shown himself to be ready and able to challenge established thinking. In the author's amusing and memorable account of his childhood in Home Is Where the Wind Blows, the reader will see how this came to be true. Possessed since infancy with a strong streak of independence, he was encouraged by his parents, throughout his schoolyears, to trust his own judgment and to think for himself.
