Julian Barnes
The Lemon Table

The characters in Julian Barnes' new collection of stories are growing old and facing the end of their lives - some with bitter regret, some with resignation and others with raging defiance. Stories included are: A Short History of Hairdressing, The Story of Mats Israelson, The Things You Know, Hygiene, The Revival, Vigilance, Bark, Knowing French, Appetite, The Fruit Cage and The Silence.

Melvyn Bragg
The Adventure Of English

An expansion of the ideas contained in the acclaimed ITV series, The Adventure of English 500AD to 2000. This is the remarkable story of the English language; from its beginnings as a minor guttural Germanic dialect to its position today as a truly established global language. Understood by around two thousand million people across the world, English seems set to go on. Yet it was very nearly wiped out. The Adventure of English is not only an enthralling story of power, religion and trade, but also the story of people, and how their day-to-day lives continue to change the extraordinary language that is English.

Sarah Challis
On Dancing Hill

Kate and Josh Hutchins have been married for thirty years. For all that time they have lived on Dancing Hill Farm in Dorset. Here they brought up three children, expected to grow old, and imagined they would pass the farm on to one of the boys, like generations of family before them. But things have not gone to plan; Dancing Hill itself is no longer the profitable place that it once was. When her children give her a week's painting holiday in Provence the restless Kate seizes it, not realising that by the time she comes back, everything will have changed.