‘I lived alone in this cottage for five years, summer and winter, with no transport, no phone. This is the story of those five years, where I lived and how I lived. It is the story of what it means to live in a place so remote that you may not see another soul for weeks on end.

And it is the story of the hidden places that I came to call my own, and the wild creatures that became my society’. “Touching. Through Ansell’s charming and thoroughly detailed stories of run-ins with red kites, curlews, sparrowhawks, jays and ravens, we see him lose himself …in the rhythms and rituals of life in the British wilderness”.

A Review By Keith

In the year 1570, at the age of thirty-seven, Michel de Montaigne gave up his job as a magistrate and retired to his chateau to brood on his own private grief – the deaths of his best friends, his father, his brother and, most recently, his first-born child. But finding his mind agitated rather than settled by this idleness, Montaigne began to write, giving birth to the Essays – short prose explorations of an amazing variety of topics. And gradually, over the course of his writing Montaigne began to turn his back upon his stoical pessimism, and engage in a new philosophy of life, in which living is to be embraced in all its sensory, exuberant vitality – the smell of his doublet, the pleasures of friendship, the intelligence of his cat and the flavour of his wine.

Quite frankly I was surprised by this book. I knew nothing of Montaigne to speak of, and could easily have mixed him up with Montesque. Now I have discovered what I have been missing. Montaigne was not only a great thinker and writer and philosopher, but he was also some one who was very human and whom we get to know in intimate detail..whether it was the agonising problems he had with kidney stones, the circular stone library he loved to inhabit, his love life, his problems with his vineyard, his close involvement with the horrific Wars of Religion then raging in France, or his attitiude to the foreigners he meets on his travels, it all adds up to making him a man we can almost regard as a friend…such is the acuity and cleverness with which Saul Frampton paints his picture.

Indeed Saul Frampton offers a celebration of perhaps the most joyful and yet profound of all Renaissance writers, whose work went on to have a huge impact on Shakespeare (very interesting this….Shakespeare virtually copies and pastes huge chunks of Monataigne into his plays) , and whose writings offer a user’s guide to existence even to the present day. I shall certainly now be reading some of the Essays as a result of this marvellous introduction which made a thoroughly enjoyable read.

A Review By Keith Smith

A story, rather remarkable really, of someone who decided to live in a run-down, isolated, virtually derelict cottage in mid-Wales where he saw no-one for weeks on end. So this is a lovingly-written account of his communion with nature and all the multifarious creatues that surrounded him. Lyrical and magical are two words that would best describe it.

Because he had little to do, other than survive, he came to know every inch of ground around the cottage and he knew the animals and birds almost by name, certainly as individuals. Such a privilege is rarely given to anyone. Indeed very few would put themselves in his position to find out.  We learn about bats and goshawks, otters and ravens, sparrowhawks and starlings….and we feel we get to know them as intimately as he did. A wonderful book. So much missing in our lives!

Collector’s item, landmark in the history of the tour guide, snapshot of Britain in the 1860s – Bradshaw’s Handbook deserves a place on the bookshelf of any traveller, railway enthusiast, historian or anglophile. Produced as the British railway network was reaching its zenith, and as tourism by rail became a serious pastime for the better off, it was the first national tourist guide specifically organised around railway journeys, and to this day offers a glimpse through the carriage window at a Britain long past. This is a facsimile of the actual book – often referred to as ‘Bradshaw s Guide’ – that inspired the ‘Great British Railway Journeys’ television series, possibly the only surviving example of the 1863 edition. Bradshaw’s Handbook was regularly updated, with the journeys featured, and the remarks made, differing between editions. This is the only available version of the 1863 edition.

Who can say what the night might bring? Mummy tucking you up with Teddy and a cup of Ovaltine? Fireworks and frivolity? A party? Music? Dancing? Or you could be reading in bed, between clean linen sheets before falling into deep and restful sleep and sweet dreams. And who knows; the night might bring romance, or love, or sex, if you play your cards right. Or you might be working; millions of people work at night.

If nobody worked at night, Britain would cease to function. Or the night might be cold, haunted, inhuman and wild. When you look up into the night sky, you see that you are nothing.

An insignificant mote of dust. Or the night could be all too human. Hen parties in skimpy dresses and fairy wings being slammed into the back of a police van; girls working on street corners in the part of town where the lights don’t come on; businessmen going to lap-dancing clubs to forget what waits at home.

Or you could die. Most people do die at night. Or you could just lie awake and wait for the dawn.

Set over the course of an intoxicated night in a house up a mountain in West Cork, Ian Marchant offers a darkly funny account of what people get up to at night, explores his own experience of a life of night times, and shows us how we all have something of the night about us.