Christopher Nicholson – författare

‘I asked the sailor what an Elephant looked like; he replied that it was like nothing on earth.’In the middle of the 18th century, a ship docks at Bristol with an extraordinary cargo: two young elephants. Bought by a wealthy landowner, they are taken to his estate in the English countryside. A stable boy, Tom Page, is given the task of caring for them.‘The Elephant Keeper’ is Tom’s account of his life with the elephants. As the years pass, and as they journey across England, his relationship with the female elephant deepens in a startling manner. Along the way they meet incredulity, distrust and tragedy, and it is only their understanding of each other that keeps them together.Christopher Nicholson’s charming and captivating novel explores notions of sexuality and violence, freedom and captivity, and the nature of story-telling – but most of all it is the study of a profound and remarkable love between an elephant and a human being.

From the author of the Costa Best Novel-shortlisted ‘The Elephant Keeper’, a poignant imagining of Thomas Hardy’s relationship with his last muse.In the winter of 1924 the most celebrated English writer of the day, 84-year-old Thomas Hardy, was living at his Dorset home of Max Gate with his second wife, Florence. Aged 45 but in poor health, Florence came to suspect that Hardy was in the grip of a romantic infatuation. The woman in question was a beautiful local actress, 27-year-old Gertrude Bugler, who was playing Tess in the first dramatic adaptation of Hardy’s most famous novel, ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’.Inspired by these events, ‘Winter’ is a brilliantly realised portrait of an old man and his imaginative life; the life that has brought him fame and wealth, but that condemns him to living lives he can’t hope to lead, and reliving those he thought he once led. It is also, though, about the women who now surround him: the middle-aged, childless woman who thought she would find happiness as his handmaiden; and the young actress, with her youthful ambitions and desires, who came between them.

This book provides a complete, easy-to-use handbook for nurses who see patients with heart failure. In recent years heart failure has become a high priority in health care. With more nurses caring for patients with heart failure and making decisions that are often complex, there is a clear need for those nurses to have access to good quality clinical information and guidance. This book is designed to be a practical, ‘one-stop’, handbook for the practitioner, supported by case studies and up-todate references throughout, providing all the topics the Practitioner or student may need in their work with patients with heart failure.

The Peak District has always been a formidable barrier to transport links across it, particularly railways. The first crude horse-drawn tramways fed canals on its eastern and western flanks, but in 1830 – only five years after the Stockton & Darlington Railway opened – a standard gauge line climbed over the top of the Peak District and down the other side on fearsome inclines to connect canals at Cromford and Whaley Bridge.Sheffield and Manchester were connected in 1845 by the first line across the Pennines through the notorious Woodhead Tunnel, followed by a gradual infilling of lines connecting Peak District towns and villages. Some of them became as famous as the Settle–Carlisle route, such were the engineering difficulties of driving a route through the limestone dales. The line between Dore and Chinley was the last main line in England to be driven across the Pennines in two huge tunnels.At its height the Peak District railway system encompassed a narrow gauge light railway for tourists, cable-hauled inclines to export limestone, seven of the UK’s twenty longest railway tunnels, and Britain’s first all-electric main line.The birth of British Railways in 1948 and the subsequent Beeching axe were the death knell for many of these unique railways. Today some of the tracks can still be followed on foot, bicycle or horseback thanks to the Peak District National Park and other leisure organisations. The historic tunnels, viaducts and stations on the most famous routes have been restored and reopened as long-distance footpaths and heritage lines – a renaissance to be enjoyed by today’s tourists.

Rock Lighthouses of Britain & Ireland is a new edition of the classic work on the subject but with some of the most famous Irish rock lighthouses included. The text has been updated to include the modern technology being used by the lighthouse authorities, as well as all the historical advances made over the centuries at British and Irish rock lights. This is complemented by scores of new  and many stunning photographs as well as historic plans and drawings, many of them highly colourful and artistic, as used by the original lighthouse builders. At the end are comprehensive and detailed tables about all the rock lighthouses maintained by the three lighthouse authorities. Building on the acclaim received for the earlier editions, it brings the history of these iconic structures completely up-to-date, from the days before the first granite block was laid, through their construction, automation, the disappearance of the lighthouse keeper, right up to today’s totally automatic operation. These are some of the world’s most famous rock lighthouses, and their stories of men battling against Nature’s most powerful forces to build a structure designed to save lives on a seemingly impossible site. Rock Lighthouses of Britain & Ireland spans the centuries between the world’s first rock lighthouse on the Eddystone reef, to the very last rock lighthouse constructed in the traditional style – on Ireland’s Fastnet Rock – and accordingly it will remain the premier book about rock lighthouses.

'A beautiful book... full of intense light and colour, extraordinary glimpses, moving insights and subtle humour' Richard Kerridge, author of Cold BloodAs the summer draws to a close, a few snow beds - some as big as icebergs - survive in the Scottish Highlands. Christopher Nicholson celebrates these great, icy relics through a personal meditation on their significance. A book full of vivid descriptions and anecdotes, Among the Summer Snow explores the meanings of nature, beauty and mortality in the twenty-first century.'Beautiful writing that transcends form to arrive somewhere improbable and compelling' Paul Evans, Guardian