"I'm a writer and poet and a long-term sufferer of depressive illness. I try to keep smiling but sometimes I fail. I love the natural world, and am a great fan of the vagaries of the English weather." These words were the first attempts to define what my blog was about when I began it in February 2009. From these first tentative steps into blogging, Zen and the Art of Tightrope Walking has expanded into a wide-ranging and eclectic exploratory journey into what it means to live with depression. There are many posts on the subject now, and I decided to collect together the ones I felt were...

Ruth Kaufmann follows the life of her father Bertl Kaufmann, a survivor of the persecution, expulsion and extermination which Jews were subjected to during the Nazi rule. Her father never kept a physical diary, but Ruth had many discussions with him about his experiences during which the events he described came so vividly to life that to present them as contemporaneous diary entries seemed to do his memories the greatest justice. This book is an homage to a child survivor of the holocaust and is his experience in the words of the author. It is a link to those times and a witness to the...

Reveals the colourful world of medicine at this time and offers a picture the daily life of an apothecary from the making of pills and the mixing of potions to tooth drawing and blood-letting.

The first full-length study of Elgar's interaction with landscape, both in England and in his extensive travels abroad.