Explore Essays and memoir
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Co-operation for the Birds
Lewis Thomas
‘Somehow, despite the internal squabbles and constant competitions, the tree swallow societies manage to get by and survive, year after year.’
Cold Storage
Oliver Sacks
‘Uncle Toby was alive, but suspended, apparently, in some strange icy stupor.’
Colin Thubron | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Colin Thubron
‘The death of travel – and of the travel book – has been predicted for almost a century.’
Coming Home to the Counter-Revolution
Jack Shenker
‘My Cairo is an inverted city, one that wears its innards above the skin.’
Constitutional
Helen Simpson
‘The thing about a circular walk is that you end up where you started.’
Cyclone
Jonathan Raban
‘It began as a vacuum in the atmosphere, far out over the Atlantic. Trying to fill itself, it set up a spinning mass of air, like a plughole sucking water from a bath; but the faster the winds blew, the more the vacuum deepened.’
David Searcy | First Sentence
David Searcy
‘When I was a kid, my family doctor, right through high school, was this wonderful, funny guy with a little Boston Blackie moustache who looked a lot like Burgess Meredith.’
David Sylvester | A London View
David Sylvester
‘When you turn your back on the view, you're face to face with the Western Pumping Station across the street and its campanile-like tower.’