Product Description: Now in paperback, the intimate and highly original interpretation of the life and work of Charles Darwin, by acclaimed poet and Darwin's direct descendant Ruth Padel.Padel is the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin, and in this collection of exceedingly readable, vivid verse, she brings us his life, not only following the great drama of his discovery of evolution, but also imagining the fluctuating emotions of the solitary child, the private man, and the tender father...read more

Uses sixty poems by some of our finest poets to look at the idea of the journey, through literature and through life. The author highlights the ways in which the best poets find a balance between rhymed formal verse and modernism's freer styles, using a traditional, formal craft to convey genuinely felt, up-to-the-minute experience.

A noted poet and descendant of Charles Darwin describes her journey to a tropical jungle and wildlife sanctuary in India, a visit that inspired a two-year odyssey through eleven countries in search of the elusive tiger, a highly endangered animal whose mystical qualities have left them at the mercy of humankind.

* A brilliant and beautiful travel book about love, escape, and that most mesmerising of animals: the tiger. *'Lyrical and deeply impressive ... a gripping and informative book' GUARDIAN

Hallucinatory and lyrical, Ruth Padel's poetry starts from the streets of London, reaching out to the Amazon, Siberia, Mexico and even ancient Athenian politics. Full of wildlife and colour, she makes wild connections over space and time, even linking mythology with zoological science.

Product Description: Madness is central to Western tragedy in all epochs, but we find the origins of this centrality in early Greece: in Homeric insight into the "damage a damaged mind can do." Greece, and especially tragedy, gave the West its permanent perception of madness as violent and damaging...read more