Each chapter describes the castle itself, its history and architectural features, and how those relate to the landscape that surrounds it, followed by an easy-to-navigate description of the walk itself. This absorbing text is accompanied by brilliant photography of the castle and the sights you will see on your walk, and a useful map to guide you on your way.

From the well-known and popular castles such as St Michael’s Mount, Tintagel Castle, Corfe Castle and Edinburgh Castle, to the lesser-known gems like Kidwelly Castle, Castle Stalker and Framlingham Castle, The Walker’s Guide to the Castles of Britain will show you how to better enjoy the castles you already know and love and discover some new ones to add to your favourites list.

‘A proper page-turner …. A fascinating tangle of witches and mermaids, drowned fishers and dead warriors, ghostly planes and spectral horses .’ – Christopher Somerville, author of Ships of Heaven

‘One of the most enjoyable books on the paranormal I’ve read. Neil Oliver creates a bucket list of places to visit, perfect for both paranormal investigators and history buffs alike.’ – Nick Tyler, author of Haunted Yorkshire
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For longer than recorded history there have been tales of spirits and of places where our hackles rise and our skin turns cold.

Bestselling historian Neil Oliver travels the British Isles on a deliciously spine-chilling tour that spans several centuries and explores more than 20 sites – castles, vicarages and towers, lonely shorelines and forgotten battlefields – to unpick their stories..

Oliver invokes his family’s history alongside that of kings and queens past as he probes why our emotions and senses are heightened in certain locations where the separation between dimensions seems gossamer thin. Our landscape is riven with these places, creaking from the weight of the secrets they hold, the echoes of tragedy and dark deeds . From Inverness to Devon, Co Dublin to Norfolk, Hauntings casts an enjoyably eerie glow with stories that, told generation after generation, are inextricable from place – and considers why they matter.
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‘Oliver is an evocative storyteller, vividly bringing his tales to life’ BBC History Magazine

PETER FRANKOPAN

Walking along the crumbling defensive walls of Istanbul and talking to those he passes, Alexander Christie-Miller finds a distillation of the country’s history, a mirror of its present, and a shadow of its future.

Caught between two seas and two continents, Istanbul lies at the centre of the most pressing challenges of our time. With environmental decay, rapacious development and tightening authoritarianism straining its social fabric to breaking point, it represents the precipitous moment civilizations around the world are currently facing.

In and around its crumbling Byzantine-era fortifications, Alexander Christie-Miller meets people who are experiencing the looming crisis and fighting back, sometimes triumphing despite the odds.

To the City seamlessly blends two narratives: the story of Turkey’s tumultuous recent past told through the lives of those who live around the walls, and the story of Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II’s siege and capture of the city in 1453. That event still looms large in Turkey, as Recep Tayyip Erdogan like a latter-day sultan invokes its memory as part of his effort to transform the country in an echo of its imperial past.

This is a meditation on the soul of Istanbul, a paean to its resilience and fortitude. Walk with Christie-Miller and see the danger, beauty and hope.

‘Deftly weaving together Istanbul’s past and present, Christie-Miller’s work is a beautifully written, nuanced examination of a city whose story is so often told in binaries’

Louise Callaghan, Turkey and Middle East correspondent for the Sunday Times and author of Father of Lions Speak

Houses of Power is the result of Simon Thurley’s thirty years of research, picking through architectural digs, and examining financial accounts, original plans and drawings to reconstruct the great Tudor houses and understand how these monarchs shaped their lives.
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What was it like to live as a royal Tudor?
Why were their residences built as they were and what went on inside their walls?
Who slept where and with who?
Who chose the furnishings?
And what were their passions?
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The Tudors ruled through the day, throughout the night, in the bath, in bed and in the saddle. Their palaces were genuine power houses – the nerve-centre of military operations, the boardroom for all executive decisions and the core of international politics.

Far more than simply an architectural history – a study of private life as well as politics, diplomacy and court – it gives an entirely new and remarkable insight into the Tudor world.

The many quirks of the golfing world are covered, such as the 18th green the other side of the River Lea which is serviced by an electric ferry, or the LA golf course that has its own funicular railway, or the floating golf hole in Idaho, where it’s not just the pin position that’s changed every day, it’s the distance from the shore!

Golf courses that feature neolithic standing stones (Scotland), Roman roads (England), and ruined medieval castles (Wales) take their place alongside the old temples of Delhi or a UNESCO World Heritage bridge that is used to link the 9th and 10th at Angkor Wat.

There are the beloved classic courses of St. Andrews, Carnoustie, Royal St. George and Westward Ho!. There are spectacular golf courses hewn out of the Nevada and Arizona desert, green oases in a cactus-strewn, rocky landscape, along with Hawaiian courses fringed by barren black lava flows. But nothing can beat the thrill in Guatemala of lining up your drive on an active volcano at the Fuego Maya course.

In comparison there are the traditional wind-blown Scottish links, such as the Machrie Hotel on the island of Islay which has the most blind greens on any course, or the remote Isle of Barra where greens are only accessible via a kissing gate.

Fancy swapping countries mid-round? You can at the Llanmymynech club in Wales. At the fourth hole golfers tee off in Wales and putt out on the green in England. Remarkable Golf Courses brings together some astonishing stories with some extraordinary photography.

From a tidal strip of sand outside the Ship Inn at Elie, in Fife, to the monumental Melbourne Cricket Ground with its 100,000 capacity, this book features the extraordinary places and venues in which cricket is played.

Many grounds have remarkably beautiful settings. There is the rugged Devonian charm of Lynton and Lynmouth Cricket Club set in the Valley of the Rocks, not far from the North Devon coast. Then there is the vividly-coloured, almost Lego-like structure of Dharamshala pavilion in Northern India where local resident the Dalai Lama has watched a match.

Many of England’s greatest players have come from public schools, and there are some wonderful examples of their cricket grounds such as Sedbergh and Milton Abbey. Country houses such as Audley End and Blenheim Palace form the backdrop to many cricket pitches, or castles, such as Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland, or even Portchester Castle, where there is a cricket ground inside the castle walls.

Sri Lanka’s test ground, Galle, has a fort looming above it, while Newlands Stadium in Cape Town, has the unmistakeable Table Mountain as the backdrop. Some of the stunning imagery has a modern feel. Queenstown cricket ground has international jets taking off just yards from the playing action, while Singapore Cricket Club is an oasis of lush green set against a 21st century array of high-rise towers. Then there are cricket grounds in unusual places; Hawaii, Corfu, Berlin, Slovenia and St Moritz to name but a few.