Popular Errors Explained
by Stewart McCartney

In 1841 John Timbs wrote a book called Popular Errors Explained. It went on – with Timbs' other great series 'Curiosities of …’ – to become one of the great popular books of the 19th century, running into many editions and selling hundreds of thousands of copies. Some say the popularity of his one hundred and fifty volumes led him to outsell a certain Mr Dickens.

Stewart McCartney, under the Timb's title of Popular Errors Explained has created a new book, capturing the zeal and enthusiasm of the original, to be 'agreeable, by way of abstract and anecdote so as to become an advantageous and amusing guest at any intellectual fireside.'

The book has completely new material - around 200 or so 'popular errors' from science and literature, history, sport, popular culture and so on. Each entry will have that eyebrow raising 'I didn't know that!' or 'Surely that cannot be true!' feel. Every one will explode a commonly held misbelief.

The Royal Navy Way of Leadership
by Andrew St George

In business, as in life, the skills required for good leadership are at least misunderstood and at most confused. Those who are expected to lead tend to manage and those who manage tend not to know when to lead. Andrew St George one of the UK's top leadership consultants puts it like this: Managing is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right thing.

Four years ago the charismatic Commander in Chief of the Royal Navy Admiral Sir James Burnet-Nugent asked Andrew to spend time with every level of the Navy staff, from Able Seamen in the engine room of an Aircraft Carrier to commanders of nuclear submarines and from young lieutenants right up to senior leaders at cabinet level, with the aim of creating a book which distils the leadership culture of one of the most highly respected and efficient organisations in the world. As Admiral Lord Nelson, the greatest British naval leader and probably the finest naval strategist and commander of all time, wrote: to succeed we must have: clarity of intent; a strategy; resources; a contingency plan; an emotional investment.

These tenets still stand today in all walks of business and personal life.

'Admiral Burnet-Nugent carries two things with him at all times. Not a phone nor a blackberry nor a computer. He carries his hat, 'so that when I walk into a room everyone knows who I am, which saves a great deal of time', and a small card with Nelson's lines on it 'so that when I walk in a room I know what I'm there for.'

Monte Cassino: Ten Armies in Hell
by Peter Caddick-Adams

The five-month Monte Cassino campaign in central Italy is one of the best-known European land battles of World War Two, alongside D-Day and Stalingrad. It has a particular resonance now, because Cassino, with its multitude of participating armies - most notably the American 5th Army under the controversial General Mark Clark - was perhaps the campaign of the Second World War that most closely anticipates the coalition operations of today, with its ever-shifting cast of players stuck in inhospitable, mountainous terrain, pursuing an objective set by unknowing politicians in distant capitals, where victory is difficult to define.

Monte Cassino was characterised by the destruction of its world famous Abbey: in retrospect, considered an unjustifiable act of cultural vandalism by the allies.The audit trail of decision-making to destroy an icon as well known then as the Eiffel Tower or Lincoln Memorial, is a chilling reminder that similar decisions are still being made in Iraq and Afghanistan and indeed Libya. To this day, reversing normal prejudice, German troops are welcome in the abbey, having rescued its treasures from allied destruction in February 1944.

Cassino was an unusual campaign for World War II in that its outcome was not reliant on sweeping movements or the use of tanks or aircraft - but by old-fashioned boots in the mud, whether capturing the town of Cassino after months of grinding urban warfare (a Stalingrad in miniature) or scrambling up the steep mountain to seize the heights and the religious complex on top of Monte Cassino.

Monte Cassino Abbey was painstakingly rebuilt after the war (its baroque chapel remains incomplete) and is now a World Heritage site. An hour south of Rome, it is visited each year by up to one million tourists and pilgrims from around the world.

Home to Roost: Putting Down Roots in Cornwall
by Tessa Hainsworth

Seagulls in the Attic left Tessa thrilled as Annie, her best friend from London, fell in love and married a local Cornishman. Alas the newlyweds decide to settle out of the county but Tessa and her husband are delighted when a new young couple arrive in the village fresh from the city. However what looks such a promising new friendship turns to a nightmare as these are people who think money can buy them acceptance - and the village is soon in quiet revolt. Tessa finds herself in the thick of it - and realises that she has grown very strong roots in the community in the two years she has been in Cornwall.

Like so many in the country, she has to think about turning her house into a source of income in the summer months. Having finally got the place up to scratch, she and her family are wondering whether to camp for a couple of months when they are asked to take over a B&B owned by friends of friends. Tessa is bubbly, outgoing - but quite inexperienced at being a landlady. She muddles through only with the generous help of the 'customers' on her postal round.

Written with her usual warmth and good humour, Tessa Hainsworth enchants us again with her stories of life as a newcomer to 'deep' Cornwall and makes us dwell on the true value and meaning of 'home'.

Fairytale Food: Enchanting recipes to bring a little magic to your cooking
by Lucie Cash

If you fancy tucking into a steaming hot bowl of Princess & the Pea Soup, curling up by the fire with a cup of tea and a slab of Hansel & Gretel's House Gingerbread or tickling your taste-buds with a dollop of Tinkerbell's Trifle, then Fairytale Food is for you ...

... Once upon a time, a young(-ish) maiden decided she was fed up with cooking the same old beans on toast and pasta bakes every night; she longed for some magic in her cooking. So she left her cosy cottage (flat in West London), pen and paper in hand and set off to find inspiration in the land of fairytales. For months and months she toiled visiting our best-loved characters; some were wonderfully sweet and generous, others were a bit grumpy and a little scary, but they all gave her ideas, tips and the confidence to create her very own delicious recipes.

Put a bit of magic into your cooking with these recipes inspired by some of our most-loved fairytales.