Böcker av Monica Kendall

In July 1798, a Cambridge student set out on a botanical tour and wrote the first guidebook to North Wales. Wearing spectacles and carrying a rucksack, Yorkshire-born William Bingley made notes, sketched and looked for rare plants. He befriended a Welshman with whom he made the first recorded rock climb in Britain on the north flank of Snowdon. Three years later they climbed the iconic mountain Tryfan. Bingley also helped establish the legend of the faithful hound Gelert.In retracing Bingley's steps through the historic counties of Flint, Denbigh, Caernarvon, Anglesey, Merioneth and Montgomery (as well as the town of Oswestry), the reader will discover a landscape and people of over two hundred years ago. They will clamber with Bingley up waterfalls, ride in a waggon into a candle-lit copper mine, sail on a cutter to Ynys Enlli, suffer the fleas at an inn in Beddgelert, ponder the necessity of taking a pint of rum up Snowdon, or blissfully rest in the shade of Montgomery Castle during harvest. Perhaps also, like Bingley, they will be fired by the Last Bard's curse on Edward I, while gazing across the water at sunset towards the isle of the Druids.This first edition since 1839 includes a newly researched biography, and background on the Picturesque, the Sublime, slate quarries and pickled puffins.

Radical insights into Charlotte Bronte's vital two years in Brussels (1842-3).

In August 1914, thirteen-year-old Amy was trapped on the Belgian seacoast as war was declared with Germany, alone with her younger brothers. British, resilient and feisty, she got back to occupied Brussels and began her war diaries.Amy knew Nurse Cavell and Ada Bodart, members of the secret network to get Allied soldiers across the frontier. She writes of zeppelins, food shortages, constant gunfire and spies. She confronts a 'sneering' German who demands to know where her brother is: 'I could have shot him,' she comments. Then it all changes: in 1917 her mother attacks her and Amy is moved to a Catholic boarding school nearby.Constantly in trouble for being disruptive, answering back, whistling, laughing in church and climbing onto roofs 'for fun', she longs for the love and approval of her teacher - and her estranged mother.