Helen Gordon

A Journey Through Our Past and Future Worlds

Notes from Deep Time

Travis Elborough

The joys and challenges of being a writer are explored in this inspiring assemblage of wit, wisdom and hard-won practical advice from some of the world’s greatest authors musing on the art of writing and how they came to define themselves as writers. From Samuel Johnson in eighteenth-century London to Lorrie Moore in twenty-first-century Wisconsin, the contributors range from the canon to contemporary, covering more than 250 years, and come from all over the world. Beautifully illustrated throughout, this stunning anthology explores and illuminates the pleasures and pitfalls of the compulsion to write, with advice about the whole messy business of writing literature and what it takes to be a writer. The perfect gift for aspiring writers, curious readers, and anyone interested in what the world's greatest authors have to say about the art of writing.

Advice, Musings, Essays and Experiences From the World's Greatest Authors

Being a Writer

Alice Robinson is having doubts about her job on a fashionable London art magazine, and her current way of life. Agreeing to house sit for her parents, she moves back to the suburban streets of her childhood, a world of Girl Guides, Tudorbethan houses and blossom trees. She reasesses her priorities and wonders how do we connect? And what are the maps and manuals that show us how to live today?

Landfall

Beauty. How do we achieve it? Who gets to define it? How do you live a beautiful life? Beauty standards of today are exacting, ever-evolving and often overwhelming. Being Beautiful is your timely, illustrated guide and companion to navigating the relentless pursuit of beauty, both inside and out. A captivating collection of writings, quotes, poems and musings from some of the world's greatest thinkers – philosophers, celebrities, writers, cultural commentators and more – on what it means to be beautiful, it is an inspiring anthology for anyone interested in the concept of personal beauty, from the clothes we wear and the make-up we use, to the lives we lead and the relationships we nurture. Through contemplative, humorous, uplifting and humbling passages interspersed with specially commissioned illustrations, the book attempts to explore and illuminate what beauty means to us in the twenty-first century. And most of all, to inspire, provoke and delight. Broken down into five chapters – Defining Beauty, Finding Beauty, Living Beautifully, Inner Beauty and Outer Beauty – discussions range from how we might define a beautiful face (Edmund Burke), how one can live a 'beautiful' life (Buddha), and the beauty that can be found in ageing (Naomi Wolf). Contributors include such varied voices as Sali Hughes, Emily Dickinson, John Cage, Francis Bacon, Charlotte Brontë, Immanuel Kant, Joan Collins and Kate Moss.

An inspiring anthology of wit and wisdom on what it means to be beautiful

Being Beautiful

'Astounding ... To call this a "history" does not do justice to Helen Gordon's ambition' Simon Ings, Daily Telegraph 'Awe-inspiring ... She has imbued geological tales with a beauty and humanity' Shaoni Bhattacharya-Woodward, Mail on Sunday The story of the Earth is written into our landscape: it's there in the curves of hills, the colours of stone, surprising eruptions of vegetation. Wanting a fresh perspective on her own life, the writer Helen Gordon set out to read that epic narrative. Her odyssey takes her from the secret fossils of London to the 3-billion-year-old rocks of the Scottish Highlands, and from a state-of-the-art earthquake monitoring system in California to one of the world's most dangerous volcanic complexes, hidden beneath the green hills of Naples. At every step, she finds that the apparently solid ground beneath our feet isn't quite as it seems. Join her to meet the unusual characters who are piecing this vast story together. Grapple with the theory that explains how it all works - plate tectonics, a break - through as significant as evolution or quantum physics but much younger than either, with many secrets still to reveal. And look ahead to the worlds to come, when only our traces will remain, enigmas for those who follow us. 'In deep time,' Gordon finds, 'everything is provisional. Bones become rock. Sands become mountains. Oceans become cities.' And life goes on.

Helen Gordon

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