Andrew Martin – författare

THE TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Vividly conjures a lost age' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Hugely entertaining' EVENING STANDARD'A feast of anecdotage' SUNDAY TIMESThroughout the twentieth century, the seaside service posters of Britain's railways promised fresh air and frivolity to millions of urban dwellers with the phrase: 'To the sea by train'. A staple of modern British life, the seaside getaway was intertwined with the train, in whose compartments holidaymakers were shunted from smog-choked cities to sandy coves.With his signature wit and anecdotal style, Andrew Martin captures an era defined by its railways: from the development of Brighton and Scarborough into pleasure resorts, and the introduction of bank holidays and two-day weekends, to the advent of cheap flights and the British coast's subsequent decline. Humorous and evocative, To the Sea by Train takes a charming tour through Britain's most beloved pastime.'A standalone classic' COUNTRY LIFE 'Infectious' SPECTATOR

This book discusses and analyses an important chess variation that is very modern and yet highly under-represented in chess literature.

The incredible story of Gyles Mackrell and his Burmese, elephant-assisted wartime rescue mission.In the summer of 1942, Gyles Mackrell – a decorated First World War pilot and tea plantation overseer, performed a series of heroic rescues in the hellish jungles of Japanese-occupied Burma – with the aid of twenty elephants.At the age of 53, Mackrell went into the `green hell’ of the Chaukan Pass on the border of North Burma and Assam. Here, Mackrell and a team of elephant riders rescued Indian army soldiers, British civilians and their Indian servants, from the pursuing Japanese, directing the elephants through jungle passes and raging rivers, and territory infested with sand flies, mosquitoes and innumerable leeches. Those he saved were all on the point of death from starvation or fever: that summer was spent in a fight against time.Now in Andrew Martin’s hands this never-before-told tale of heroics is given the shape of a suspenseful adventure, a wartime rescue whose facts are the stuff of fiction. `Flight By Elephant’ is a gripping chronicle of war and survival, starring everyone’s favourite animal – the powerful, exotic and hugely loveable elephant.

The incredible story of Gyles Mackrell and his Burmese, elephant-assisted wartime rescue mission.In the summer of 1942, Gyles Mackrell – a decorated First World War pilot and tea plantation overseer, performed a series of heroic rescues in the hellish jungles of Japanese-occupied Burma – with the aid of twenty elephants.At the age of 53, Mackrell went into the ‘green hell’ of the Chaukan Pass on the border of North Burma and Assam. Here, Mackrell and a team of elephant riders rescued Indian army soldiers, British civilians and their Indian servants, from the pursuing Japanese, directing the elephants through raging rivers, and territory infested with sand flies, mosquitoes and innumerable leeches. Those he saved were all on the point of death from starvation or fever: that summer was spent in a fight against time.Now in Andrew Martin’s hands this tale of heroics is given the shape of a suspenseful adventure, a wartime rescue whose facts are the stuff of fiction. ‘Flight By Elephant’ is a gripping chronicle of war and survival, starring everyone’s favourite animal – the powerful, exotic and hugely loveable elephant.

'A fool and his words are soon parted' wrote William Shenstone in 1764; one might add that 'A wit and his words are rarely collected'. Here is the antidote: a dazzling survey of the funniest remarks, quips and observations from Ancient Rome, the Bible and Chaucer right up to The Simpsons and Little Britain. Over 5,000 of the very funniest remarks to have appeared on paper since, well, paper was invented. The quotations are arranged thematically and cover all aspects of life: from the world we inhabit to the things we eat, smoke and drink; from the way we move around to what and how we learn - oh, and the pointlessness of football. There is a short biography of all of the authors in the book, a brief contextual note for each quotation and an index of keywords to help you find you chosen witticism quickly. But do not be over-hasty when you use this book: it is a browser's delight, and should be enjoyed at leisure.

Europeans use ''social models'' to refer to the combination of welfare state, industrial relations, and educational institutions jointly structuring what we can think of as the supply-side of the labor market. The dominant view in controversy over the social models has been that in the name of equity they have impaired the labor market''s efficiency, thereby causing unemployment. But doubt is cast on this supply-side-only diagnosis by powerful macroeconomicdevelopments, from the Europe-wide recession following Germany''s post-unification boom to the deepest economic crisis since the interwar Great Depression, which the Eurozone''s truncated economic governance structure transformed into a sovereign debt crisis, threatening the Euro''s and even EU''s very survival.This book explores the interaction of Europe''s diverse social models with the major developments that shaped their macroeconomic environment over the quarter century since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It concludes that this environment rather than the social models are primarily responsible for the immense social costs of the crisis.

Such novels as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in Eighty Days have made Jules Verne the most widely translated of all French authors. But he has typically been categorized as the father of science fiction or a writer of harmless fantasies for children. Now, in this brilliantly original new book, Andrew Martin relocates Verne squarely at the centre of the literary map.Dr Martin shows that a recurrent narrative (exemplified in short stories by Napoleon Bonaparte and Jorge Luis Borges), relating the strange destiny of a masked prophet who revolts against an empire, runs through Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires. This approach illuminates the paradoxical coalition in Verne of realism and invention, repression and transgression, imperialism and anarchy.In this book Verne emerges not just as a key to the political and literary imagination of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but as a model for reading fiction in general.

This book analyzes the interaction of European social models - the institutions structuring labor markets' supply side - and their turbulent macroeconomic environment from the deep Europe-wide recession, ending Germany's post-unification boom, through monetary union's establishment, to the Great Recession following the recent financial crisis. The analysis reaches two conclusions challenging the dominant view that the social models caused unemployment by impairing labor markets' efficiency in the name of equity. First, the social models' employment and distributive effects are far outweighed by their macroeconomic environment, especially in the Eurozone, where its truncated structure of economic governance transformed the Great Recession into a sovereign debt crisis. Second, instead of a trade-off between efficiency and equity, the employment effects of counteracting markets' tendency to generate inequality depends on the macroeconomic conditions under which it occurs and how it is done.

Europeans use 'social models' to refer to the combination of welfare state, industrial relations, and educational institutions jointly structuring what we can think of as the supply-side of the labor market. The dominant view in controversy over the social models has been that in the name of equity they have impaired the labor market's efficiency, thereby causing unemployment. But doubt is cast on this supply-side-only diagnosis by powerful macroeconomic developments, from the Europe-wide recession following Germany's post-unification boom to the deepest economic crisis since the interwar Great Depression, which the Eurozone's truncated economic governance structure transformed into a sovereign debt crisis, threatening the Euro's and even EU's very survival. This book explores the interaction of Europe's diverse social models with the major developments that shaped their macroeconomic environment over the quarter century since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It concludes that this environment rather than the social models are primarily responsible for the immense social costs of the crisis.

Cyber space is easily the most complex thing humans have ever created. With billions of people and devices all connected together, vulnerability and compromise are inevitable. The complexity continues to grow, and with it comes the emergent insecurity brought by an ever-developing frontier where digital devices and connected people meet. Security challenges present themselves increasingly often and with ever-greater impacts. This is not going to change anytime soon.Although the internet has transformed communication, business, and social life for the better, the construct of 'cyber space' is incredibly fragile and presents endless risk. Connecting every corner of our lives to those of billions across the world, the frontier is slender between the good and the bad, benefit and catastrophe, real and fake, security and insecurity. Cyber security advice can be confusing, contradictory, and sometimes utterly detached from reality. Too easily, people feel guilty for not knowing what to do, or failing to live up to expectations. People, particularly business leaders and policy makers, must daily make security-sensitive decisions, sometimes unknowingly, without being security experts.Securing the Digital Frontier doesn't offer easy answers, but instead explains sixteen dimensions of this dynamic problem and its current partial solutions. The strong technology of encryption has become commonplace, and is a huge benefit if deployed well: but how can you tell? Programming errors give rise to security problems, but why can we not eliminate them? Privacy is tied up with security, but can the two work against each other? Cyber space is international: how can domestic laws protect us? And what happens when those laws come into conflict with technologies like encryption? Why do you need a punctuation symbol and a capital letter in your password, anyway? Through a grasp of the big picture, through technical and human perspectives, we can begin to explore ways to unwind some of the complexity and find ways to contain the risk.

Cyber space is easily the most complex thing humans have ever created. With billions of people and devices all connected together, vulnerability and compromise are inevitable. The complexity continues to grow, and with it comes the emergent insecurity brought by an ever-developing frontier where digital devices and connected people meet. Security challenges present themselves increasingly often and with ever-greater impacts. This is not going to change anytime soon.Although the internet has transformed communication, business, and social life for the better, the construct of 'cyber space' is incredibly fragile and presents endless risk. Connecting every corner of our lives to those of billions across the world, the frontier is slender between the good and the bad, benefit and catastrophe, real and fake, security and insecurity. Cyber security advice can be confusing, contradictory, and sometimes utterly detached from reality. Too easily, people feel guilty for not knowing what to do, or failing to live up to expectations. People, particularly business leaders and policy makers, must daily make security-sensitive decisions, sometimes unknowingly, without being security experts.Securing the Digital Frontier doesn't offer easy answers, but instead explains sixteen dimensions of this dynamic problem and its current partial solutions. The strong technology of encryption has become commonplace, and is a huge benefit if deployed well: but how can you tell? Programming errors give rise to security problems, but why can we not eliminate them? Privacy is tied up with security, but can the two work against each other? Cyber space is international: how can domestic laws protect us? And what happens when those laws come into conflict with technologies like encryption? Why do you need a punctuation symbol and a capital letter in your password, anyway? Through a grasp of the big picture, through technical and human perspectives, we can begin to explore ways to unwind some of the complexity and find ways to contain the risk.

Cyber space is easily the most complex thing humans have ever created. With billions of people and devices all connected together, vulnerability and compromise are inevitable. The complexity continues to grow, and with it comes the emergent insecurity brought by an ever-developing frontier where digital devices and connected people meet. Security challenges present themselves increasingly often and with ever-greater impacts. This is not going to change anytime soon.Although the internet has transformed communication, business, and social life for the better, the construct of 'cyber space' is incredibly fragile and presents endless risk. Connecting every corner of our lives to those of billions across the world, the frontier is slender between the good and the bad, benefit and catastrophe, real and fake, security and insecurity. Cyber security advice can be confusing, contradictory, and sometimes utterly detached from reality. Too easily, people feel guilty for not knowing what to do, or failing to live up to expectations. People, particularly business leaders and policy makers, must daily make security-sensitive decisions, sometimes unknowingly, without being security experts.Securing the Digital Frontier doesn't offer easy answers, but instead explains sixteen dimensions of this dynamic problem and its current partial solutions. The strong technology of encryption has become commonplace, and is a huge benefit if deployed well: but how can you tell? Programming errors give rise to security problems, but why can we not eliminate them? Privacy is tied up with security, but can the two work against each other? Cyber space is international: how can domestic laws protect us? And what happens when those laws come into conflict with technologies like encryption? Why do you need a punctuation symbol and a capital letter in your password, anyway? Through a grasp of the big picture, through technical and human perspectives, we can begin to explore ways to unwind some of the complexity and find ways to contain the risk.

A terribly funny and lovably louche novel about five friends growing older, if not always up, from Andrew Martin, author of Early Work and Cool for America.Without Cassandra, Aaron would probably be dead. Fortunately, she won't leave him-despite the drinking, flirting, solipsism, armchair socialism, overspending, infidelity, catastrophic depression, and disparate but increasingly frequent spells of drug- and booze-addled debauchery. Unfortunately, she might be reaching the end of her rope.Cass and Aaron, like the other neurotic, ambivalent intellectuals in their orbit, are getting older. There's Malcolm, with his own alcoholism and marginally more successful writing career; his partner, Violet, a doctor with little patience for either; Antonia, a teaching fellow whose book about ecocide may get her tenure at a prestigious university near Harvard Square-yes, that one. When Sam, a charming trust-fund punk at the center of this loose network, dies suddenly and a global pandemic takes hold, all five must contend with the lives they've made: their desires and disappointments, habits and hang-ups, pathologies and addictions, and the possibilities of making art and being good as the earth whirls to its end.Down Time marks the delightful return of Andrew Martin, the author of the pitch-perfect slacker classics Early Work and Cool for America. Compulsively readable and contagiously intelligent, this is a wryly comic novel of settling down, selling out, growing up, and getting out that turns a terrifically funny and hyperliterate eye on our most desperately guarded ambitions: to love and be loved, to know and be known, to stay sane, if only just.

This highly original study is concerned with the theory of knowledge. It approaches the subject in a new way by exploring the recurrent paradox which equates pure ignorance with perfect knowledge, twin ideals free from the impurities and imperfections of discourse. The author combines the techniques of literary criticism and intellectual history in order to examine the literary, philosophical, theological, and political ramifications of this anxiety about, and ambition to transcend, the limits of the text. Dr Martin begins by tracing a network of interlocking motifs and images - beginning and end, nescience and omniscience, genesis and renascence, savagery and civilization - across a broad spectrum of texts from the Book of Genesis through the Renaissance (in particular the works of Nicholas of Cusa and Erasmus) to Rousseau. The central section of the book translates these temporal oppositions into the spatial antithesis of East and West in the Orientalism of Hugo, Napoleon and Chateaubriand. A final chapter draws together these apparently disparate themes in a consideration of the dichotomy of science and literature in Jules Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires.

Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is one of the most important developments in modern European politics. Building on two decades of monetary integration it transfers monetary policy, a core function of the modern state, to an independent European Central Bank (ECB) and limits member states' fiscal policy discretion. The ECB insists that growth and employment depend on 'flexibilizing' Europe's labor markets through deep reforms of the social policies and employment relations which comprise the 'European social model'. Member states retain authority over these areas at the heart of national politics, but how will EMU affect the domestic politics of institutional change? Will EMU reinforce de-regulation and retrenchment or will it facilitate reforms that maintain the protections against economic insecurity, inequality, and unilateral employer power the European model has provided? To address these questions, a transatlantic team of leading experts analyzes the evolving tensions between monetary integration and national social policies.

'Genuinely gripping ... A brilliant evocation of Edwardian working-class life - the sort of thing DH Lawrence might have written had he been less verbose or been blessed with a sense of humour.' Peter Parker, Evening StandardThe second Jim Stringer adventure, The Blackpool Highflyer is a superbly atmospheric thriller of sabotage, suspicion and steam. 'Unique and important ... There is no one else who is writing like Andrew Martin today.' Ian Marchant, Guardian'Evokes Edwardian Yorkshire and Lancashire, their great industrial prosperity and singular ways of living, quite brilliantly in a historical whodunnit which for its fresh and stealthy approach to past times deserves the adjective Bainbridgean.' Ian Jack, Guardian (Books of the Year)'A steamy whodunnit ... This may well be the best fiction about the railways since Dickens.' Michael Williams, Independent on Sunday

York, Winter, 1906 - two brothers have been shot to death. Meanwhile, Jim Stringer meets the Lost Luggage Porter, humblest among the employees of the North Eastern Railway company. He tells Jim a tale which leads him to the roughest part of town, a place where the police constables always walk in twos. Jim is off on the trail of pickpockets, 'station loungers' and other small fry of the York underworld. But then in a tiny, one-room pub with a badly smoking fire he enters the orbit of a dangerous, disturbed villain who is playing for much higher stakes . . .

When railwayman Jim Stringer moves to the garish and tawdry London of 1903, he finds his duties are confined to a mysterious graveyard line. Perplexingly, the men he works alongside have formed an instant loathing for him. And his predecessor has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Can Jim work out what is going on before he too is travelling on a one-way coffin ticket aboard the Necropolis Railway? A gripping detective story, fabulously rich in atmosphere and period detail, The Necropolis Railway steams toward an unexpected conclusion.

It's the sweltering summer of 1911, and one Friday evening a young aristocrat arrives into the custody of detective Jim Stringer, a man recently found guilty of murdering his father in the sleepy village of Adenwold. He warns Jim of another murder likely to happen in the same village - that of his brother, a reclusive intellectual. When Jim and his wife Lydia arrive at Adenwold they encounter a host of likely suspects and the intended victim, and suddenly Jim has one weekend in which to stop a murder and unravel a conspiracy of international dimensions...

One night, in a private boarding house in Scarborough, a railwayman vanishes, leaving his belongings behind...It is the eve of the Great War, and Jim Stringer, railway detective, is uneasy about his next assignment. It's not so much the prospect Scarborough in the gloomy off-season that bothers him, or even the fact that the last railwayman to stay in the house has disappeared without trace. It's more that his governer, Chief Inspector Saul Weatherhill, seems to be deliberately holding back details of the case - and that he's been sent to Scarborough with a trigger-happy assistant. And when Jim encounters the seductive and beautiful Amanda Rickerby a whole new personal danger enters Jim's life...

On the first day of the Somme enlisted railwayman Jim Stringer lies trapped in a shell hole, smoking cigarette after cigarette under the bullets and the blazing sun. He calculates his chances of survival - even before they departed for France, a member of Jim's unit had been found dead. During the stand-off that follows, Jim and his comrades must operate by night the vitally important trains carrying munitions to the Front, through a ghostly landscape of shattered trees where high explosive and shrapnel shells rain down. Close co-operation and trust are vital. Yet proof piles up of an enemy within, and as a ferocious military policeman pursues his investigation into the original killing, the finger of accusation begins to point towards Jim himself . . .

Baghdad 1917. Captain Jim Stringer, invalided from the Western Front, has been dispatched to investigate what looks like a nasty case of treason. He arrives to find a city on the point of insurrection, his cover apparently blown - and his only contact lying dead with flies in his eyes. As Baghdad swelters in a particularly torrid summer, the heat alone threatens the lives of the British soldiers who occupy the city. The recently ejected Turks are still a danger - and many of the local Arabs are none too friendly either.For Jim, who is not particularly good in warm weather, the situation grows pricklier by the day. Aside from his investigation, he is working on the railways around the city. His boss is the charming, enigmatic Lieutenant-Colonel Shepherd, who presides over the gracious dining society called The Baghdad Railway Club - and who may or may not be a Turkish agent. Jim's search for the truth brings him up against murderous violence in a heat-dazed, labyrinthine city where an enemy awaits around every corner.