Literature

At the height of the Gold Rush in the mid-1800s, more than 300,000 prospectors flocked to California to seek their fortune. The overwhelming majority returned home broken and penniless. The innovative few, on the other hand, lined their pockets and became some of the wealthiest people on the planet. They recognised consumer needs and set out to meet that demand. Samuel Brannan was one such individual. Instead of seeking gold himself, he opened a string of stores and filled them...

The spectacular neoclassical gardens at Stourhead in Wiltshire attract more than 400,000 visitors per year. Its 18th-Century Great Lake, in particular, is one of the most photographed, romantic spots in Britain. The gardens were created by one of the richest men in England at the time, Henry Hoare II, a banker with the money to indulge a passion for grand landscaping and classical architecture. But Hoare, known as Henry the Magnificent, was anything but the happy, successful man he portrayed...

This witty, engaging and heartfelt new memoir by Peter Meyer is a tour de force of wanderlust. It tells the inspirational true story of growing up ‘wild’ in wildest South Africa, and how our childhoods can and do shape our adult lives. The Boy from the Wild recounts Meyer’s “charmed” life growing up on the Karkloof Valley Nature Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The 1,000-hectare reserve was the brainchild of his late father, James, who set about transforming the site...

Well as far as years go this was certainly one of them. I recall remarking somewhere around the end of 2016, the year when All the Celebrities Died, that we would some day look back at that year as the Good Old Days. Who knew that would almost be immediate? But you know, it wasn’t all bad, just a sweeping majority bad; the same kind of sweeping majority that Theresa May thought was hers to be had until she discovered...

Dr Rajan Sankaran heads the International Academy of Advanced Homeopathy in Mumbai, and is the international bestselling author of more than 20 books. His first non-homeopathy book, ‘Dog, Yogi, Banyan Tree', is now out on Amazon UK. Here, Dr Sankaran tells the London Economic why mindfulness has become so important in today’s frantic, technology-driven society. In your books, you describe the practice of ‘silent witnessing’ to find peace of mind. What is that? Most people from all walks of life,...

By Garry Curtis, author of Incoming! Garry Curtis is a former Royal Marine Commando and one of the UK’s most respected hostile environment consultants whose clients include the BBC war correspondent, John Simpson.  Here Curtis, 49, lifts the lid on one of the most dangerous jobs in the world and how he overcame PTSD. His biography, Incoming! hits the UK shelves this week, and is available to buy on Amazon UK. It looks exciting on the TV, glamorous even. Journalists,...

You might think you are making your own choices in life, but you’re not. You are, in fact, a robot, merely doing the bidding of the genetic ‘instructions’ hardwired into your brain. So says author and free will expert Paul Kwatz in this thought-provoking piece of popular science, which presents fascinating philosophical arguments in a concise, clearly-worded and engaging fashion. With a background in medicine, Kwatz writes under a pen name, and presents his readers with some hard-to-swallow facts about...

As I am a kale eating, energy conserving, Trump loathing, Corbyn loving, Lily Allen listening, hug a tree, kiss a bee, spray paint on a bedsheet and wave it at the march activist - no animals harmed in the making of products and does no one think of the children? - of course I read the Guardian. It’s sort of the daily Bible for people who are dubious about actual Bibles.  But here’s a nasty little secret that would bring...

A new book has been released that claims to prep Generation Y on how to thrive in a world screwed up by Baby Boomers. Lucy’s Cohen’s ‘The Millennial Renaissance lays out an actionable, profitable plan for surviving the tough world Millennials have inherited from their parents. With the housing market increasingly inaccessible, retirement seeming like a distant dream and university debt racking up business entrepreneur Cohen offers millennials an alternative to the path taken by the boomers—an innovative and attainable approach to both...