and... and... and...

From the acclaimed and bestselling biographer Jonathan Bate, a luminous new exploration of Shakespeare and how his themes can untangle comedy and tragedy, learning and loving in our modern lives.'The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.'How does one survive the death of a loved one, the mess of war, the experience of being schooled, of falling in love, of growing old, of losing your mind?Shakespeare's world is never too far different from our own 'permeated with the same tragedies, the same existential questions and domestic worries. In this extraordinary book, Jonathan Bate brings then and now together. He investigates moments of his own life - losses and challenges - and asks whether, if you persevere with Shakespeare, he can offer a word of wisdom or a human insight for any time or any crisis. Along the way we meet actors such as Judi Dench and Simon Callow, and writers such as Dr Johnson, John Keats, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, who turned to Shakespeare

'A seven-year old girl on a seventy-foot yacht, for ten years, over fifty thousand miles of sailing . . . a fantastic story of a truly Odyssean journey across all the world's great oceans - but is also the inspiring story of the developing of a restless and inquiring mind' Simon Winchester 'A classic memoir of childhood. This is a book that every parent should read to consider the consequences of their midlife crises, and every child should read to learn how to deal with impossible mums and dads, as well as boils and barnacles' Mail on Sunday 5* 'This is a story of an epic childhood journey, so exciting and so shocking it is hard to know whether you're reading about a dream or a nightmare... Wavewalker is thrilling, horrifying, beautifully written - I couldn't put it down' ED BALLS Aged just seven, Suzanne Heywood set sail with her parents and brother on a three-year voyage around the world. What followed turned instead into a decade-long way of life, through storms, shipwrecks, reef