Travelling the circumference of the truly gigantic Pacific, Simon Winchester tells the story of the world's largest body of water, and - in matters economic, political and military - the ocean of the future. The Pacific is a world of tsunamis and Magellan, of the Bounty mutiny and the Boeing Company. It is the stuff of the towering Captain Cook and his wide-ranging network of exploring voyages, Robert Louis Stevenson and Admiral Halsey. It is the place of Paul Gauguin and the explosion of the largest-ever American atomic bomb, on Bikini atoll, in 1951. It has an astonishing recent past, an...

Martin Parr, one of Britain's best-known contemporary photographers, and President of Magnum, the world-famous photographic agency has undertaken a photo-documentary book project. Oxford is a collection of around 100 photographs documenting an academic year in the life of the university. They captures the day-to-day life of the colleges and University at work and play, and the colourful and arcane rituals that make it so distinctive.

His photographs are accompanied by an extended essay that draws on, and enriches, the photographic material and penned by Simon Winchester, OBE, the...