28 DAN MARTIN By Dan Martin RRP: £20 Format: Hardback ISBN: 9781529427585 Known, thanks to his racing style and attitude, for being one of road cycling’s last romantics, Dan has always shied away from revealing too much about himself and his story. Now, having retired at the end of the 2021 season aged 35 and no longer bound by the constraints of the racing circuit, Dan feels the time is right to tell his story in the same forthright and honest manner that he rode his bike. This book reflects Dan’s generous and outspoken spirit, his resilience to pain, crashes, bad luck and, finally, his acceptance of destiny. Each chapter’s title has a sub-title based on a typical cyclist’s fear: the fear of losing a race, the fear of retiring from the sport, the fear of mountains or downhills, the fear of doping and, ultimately, the fear of death. Dan also discusses every aspect of the professional cyclist’s life - food, discipline, money, dreams, friendship and betrayal. Dan is unashamed when it comes to exposing these dark feelings, his weaknesses and how he tried to deal with them, his attitude exemplifying Mark Twain’s quote: “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear”. Written with his long-time friend and best-selling author Pierre Carrey, this is the story of a rider who never sought to conform to modern cycling’s norms and someone who, in many ways, embodies an age in cycling which has long since disappeared. This is the celebration of a true cyclist’s career, which will appeal to anyone who’s embraced the weekend ride whilst dreaming of the mountains. www.quercusbooks.co.uk I’LL TRY ANYTHING ONCE By Prue Leith RRP: £9.99 Format: Paperback ISBN: 9781529426083 Prue Leith describes herself as greedy in all senses of the word. Cook, caterer, restaurateur, food writer, journalist, novelist, businesswoman, teacher, television presenter, charity worker, lover, wife and mother, she has certainly lived life to the full. Prue came to London in the early 1960s and, not long afterwards, opened Leith’s Restaurant. By the mid-seventies she was a food columnist on the Daily Mail, had published several cookbooks and opened Leith’s School of Food and Wine. But it wasn’t all work. Prue writes with honesty of her love life, her longing for children, the birth of her son, the adoption of her daughter and much else besides. In this fully revised and updated edition she tells of how she met, fell in love with and married John Playfair as well as her exciting role as a judge on Great British Bake Off, now a hit show in the United States as well as the UK. Prue’s down-to-earth attitude to life and her remarkable energy are an inspiration to women readers everywhere. www.quercusbooks.co.uk WINTER SWIMMING By Susanna Søberg RRP: £22 Format: Hardback A beautifully illustrated exploration of cold-water traditions in Scandinavia and around the world, and a thorough account of why it provides such a boost to body and soul. Whether in lake, lido, river or sea, we know the benefits of swimming outdoors and in nature – environmentally friendly and accessible, it can influence our happiness, our energy and our inner tranquility, and give us that winter glow. Danish scientist Dr Susanna Søberg leads us step by step into the icy water and explains the “cold-shock response”, the massive endorphin rush as our body reacts and adapts to very cold temperatures through the winter season. Not only do our circulation, heart, lungs and skin respond positively, but our immune system, metabolism and mental health too. In particular, she explains how our “brown fat” is activated to benefit multiple health conditions. Winter swimming is fast becoming one of our most popular pastimes. This beautifully illustrated exploration of cold-water traditions in Scandinavia and around the world shows how it can have a significant positive impact on our physical and mental health, confidence and well-being, providing such a boost to body and soul. www.quercusbooks.co.uk WILD By Amy Jeffs RRP: £20 Format: Hardback In this beautiful book, the Sunday Times bestselling author of Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain takes the reader back into the medieval mind, exploring ancient myths and poems rooted deep in the British landscape Sheer cliffs, salt spray, explosive sea spume, thunderous clouds, icy waves, whales with mountains on their backs, sleet, bitter winds, bleak, impenetrable marshes, howling wolves, forests, the unceasing cries of birds and the death grip of subterranean vaults that have never seen the sun: these are wild landscapes of a world almost familiar... In Wild, Dr Amy Jeffs journeys both on foot and through medieval texts, offering the reader an insight into a world at once distant and profoundly close to home. The seven chapters, entitled Earth, Ocean, Forest, Beast, Fen, Catastrophe and Paradise include Amy’s haunting retellings of venerable tales and the places where she finds them reflected in Britain today, from the bat-haunted darkness of ancient barrows to the cacophony of a pub wassail. Amy’s sources include Old English elegies, The Exeter Book, the Welsh Englynion and the Irish immrama, and many of these stories focus on figures whose voices often go unheard in the corpus of medieval literature: women, outcasts, animals. Illustrated with Amy’s original wood engravings, evoking an atmospheric world of whales, wolves, caves, cuckoos and reeds, Wild lets us look through the eyes of those who walked these ways before us, and will leave readers feeling ‘westendream’: delight in the wilderness. www.quercusbooks.co.uk
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTA0NTE=