Sub-titled 'Everything You Need to Know About 139 Languages That Don't Really Exist'. Now with artificial intelligence and artificial languages, we look throughout history starting with the Greeks to Grammelot with present and future dialects, languages with their roots on Earth, languages that are a little more out of this world, dystopian languages and full scale literary experiments, how TV sparks language development, Tolkien's secret vice, Klingon and fan fiction. The Voynich manuscript of the 15th century was discovered by a bookseller in 1912 and was written in an unknown language with an unknown script by an unknown author. It depicted unidentified constellations, mysterious plants, bathing women, astrological tables and long pieces of beautiful but incomprehensible text. Linguists and codebreakers have been trying in vain to solve that mystery for over century and since then linguists, cryptologists, occultists and various wannabe geniuses have also tried. If you think about it, all languages are made up - some are just more open about it than others. Here Yens Wahlgren heads up an expedition through time, space and multiple universes to explore the words that have built worlds. From the classic constructed languages of Star Trek and Tolkien to (literally) Orwellian Newspeak and pop-culture sensations such as Game of Thrones, The Witcher and The Mandalorian, this is your portal to over a hundred realms and lexicons - and perhaps the starting point to creating your own. 288 pages.

Recording dizzying changes in culture and politics, these elegant essays range in subject from the photographer Lee Miller to the Archbishop of Canterbury, from the actress Sarah Bernhardt to the rapist Jimmy Savile, from a celebration of Mad Men to a diagnosis of the incoherence of Conservatism in the new century, the painter Patrick Caulfield or the young Chekhov. The poems, in contrast, are private: tender meditations, filled with love, memory, vulnerability and the melancholy of ageing. Titles include a weekend in St Petersburg, Imperfect Villanelle, Thomas Gainsborough, Shakespearean Weather, and Kay Kendall Plays the Trumpet Underground. This is a powerful compilation of prose and poetry by one of the distinctive thinkers of our time. 'David Hare's great quality has always been his refusal to accept the division between fact and imagination... Whether he is writing about Tony Blair or Joan Didion, whether he is writing out of love or rage, evoking the intimate moments of his own life or the great moral questions of our times, he brings his subjects to life with an irresistible immediacy. All the wit, combativeness, energy and edge he has brought to the stage are present here on the page.' - Fintan O'Toole. 304 pages.

A classic collection of the New Yorker's most urgent and groundbreaking reporting from the frontlines of the climate emergency and global warming over the last three decades. The writing includes Bill McKibben's seminal essay 'The End of Nature', the first piece to popularise both the science and politics of climate change for a general audience. Also the Pulitzer prize-winning work of Elizabeth Kolbert, Kathryn Schulz, Jonathan Franzen, Eric Klinenberg and others. The essays take a glacier in India, Inuits in Alaska, solar-power users in Tanzania, fire managers in California, from Greenland to the Great Plains, and into both laboratories and rainforests. 541pp, paperback.

'A startlingly original journey into the soul of Shakespeare by one of his greatest living interpreters.' - Sir Antony Seldon. Whether audience, actor or scholar, Bate represents his own personal 'madness' and the importance of reading and talking about reading with people, young and old. Bate has devoted his professional life to reading, teaching and writing about literature, and in his brave and candid memoir takes us on a sad, uplifting and inspiring journey into the classroom to witness great Shakespearian actors in the theatre. His examples include an array of writers including Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Edward Thomas and Dr Johnson himself, who even as they struggled with mental illness took inspiration from the greatest of all writers - William Shakespeare. Shakespeare's world is permeated with the same existential questions and domestic worries as ours today and Bate investigates 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 of crisis. Along the way we also meet actors such as Judi Dench and Simon Callow and writers Keats, Austen and the Brontes and Ben Jonson. 303pp with fairly large print, illus.

Illustrated by Robert Ingpen the well-renowned artist and author in the most glorious full page colour artworks showing historical details like the quayside, hauling a sailor back on board (his trousers dropping!), playing and fighting and lost at sea, capturing all the mystery of the sea chest and a secret pirate treasure map. When an old ship's captain arrives at the sleepy Admiral Benbow Inn, young Jim Hawkins soon finds himself in the middle of one of the greatest adventure stories of all time. A ship named the Hispaniola is fitted out for the voyage, and a crew is engaged to find the treasure and bring it home, but some of the crew have other intentions for the treasure and their loyalties lie not with the honest Captain Smollett, but with the fearsome cook, a one-legged pirate called Long John Silver. Jim soon finds himself in a race to find the treasure, save the lives of his friends, wrest control of the ship from the hands of the pirates, and apprehend the villains. But when he is gravely injured, it is Long John Silver who's the only man who stands between Jim and certain death. Can the bonds of friendship, so convincingly betrayed, still be strong enough to pierce the black heart of so ruthless a man? The book still excites and enthrals readers of all ages as it has done for the last 150 years with all its adaptations on stage and film. Gloriously illustrated complete and unabridged edition bringing these characters to life as never before. 192pp, 19.7 x 23.5cm, perfect for all swashbuckling pirates young and old. Complete with satin bookmark, a glorious gift edition.

Aesop's celebrated collection of fables has always been popular with both adults and children. These simple tales embody truths so powerful, the titles of the individual fables - the fox and the grapes, the dog in the manger, the wolf in sheep's clothing and many others - have entered the languages and idioms of most European tongues. Fables include The Fox and the Grapes, The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs, The Fox and the Stork, The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, The Shepherd's Boy and the Wolf, The Hare and the Tortoise, The Lion and the Ass, The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, The Ass and His Masters, Prometheus and the Making of Man and many more. This edition is beautifully illustrated in black and white by the great Arthur Rackham. 199pp in paperback.

Ebenezer Scrooge is a miserly old skinflint. He hates everyone, especially children. But at Christmas three ghosts come to visit him, scare him into mending his ways, and he finds, as he celebrates with Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim and their family, that geniality brings its own reward. This finest of all Christmas stories is beautifully illustrated with Arthur Rackham's superb line drawings. 160pp. Paperback.

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) is perhaps the foremost economic thinker of the 20th century. On economic theory, he ranks with Adam Smith and Karl Marx; and his impact on how economics was practiced, from the Great Depression to the 1970s, was unmatched. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was first published in 1936. But its ideas had been forming for decades ? as a student at Cambridge, Keynes had written to a friend of his love for 'Free Trade and free thought'. Keynes's limpid style, concise prose, and vivid descriptions have helped to keep his ideas alive - as have the novelty and clarity, at times even the ambiguity, of his macroeconomic vision. He was troubled, above all, by high unemployment rates and large disparities in wealth and income. Only by curbing both, he thought, could individualism, ?the most powerful instrument to better the future', be safeguarded. The 21st century may yet prove him right. In The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), Keynes elegantly and acutely exposes the folly of imposing austerity on a defeated and struggling nation. 538 page paperback.

Orphan Ellinor Arden is called from her secluded Paris home to London for the hearing of a will. To her surprise she is named as the inheritor of her estranged uncle's fortune, on condition that she marry his adopted son. Encouraged by her lawyer and guardian, the dashing Horace Margrave, Ellinor enters into wedded life with this perfect stranger, but it soon becomes clear that her trust in a dead man's wishes has been misplaced. Suspense-ridden sensational Victorian literature presented with the counterpart piece 'The Mystery at Fernwood'. The author Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1837-1915) counted W. M. Thackeray and Henry James among her admirers and wrote more than 70 books. 118pp, paperback.

Set in the shabby world of England's theatricals, populated by hack writers, drunken actors, pushy stage mothers and unscrupulous directors, is a drama of greed, ambition and love. Christopher Tatham is trying to 'make it' in acting, surviving on third-rate bit parts and the charity of his uncle and continues to hope for the elusive leading-man role. A chance encounter with the enchanting Peggy Harper seems to herald a change of fortune, but Tatham is soon forced to give up his flagging career for a dispiriting position as a clerk in the City as he wanders nostalgically through the West End. In a London daubed with greasepaint and filled with hungry actors, will Peggy and Tatham manage to carve out a life for themselves and attain the success and stability they crave? An Edwardian classic thankfully reprinted, this is a surprisingly modern dilemma for the young couple. George Orwell writes in his foreword of 'trudging up and down the Strand on worn-out boot soles, the agents' offices where women in dyed frocks sit waiting their turn, the forlorn collection of press cuttings, the manager who bolts in the middle of the tour with all the takings.' 164pp, paperback.