Off-mint

Off-mint.

The 50 maps in this innovative atlas offer a colourful visual representation of our physical, political, economic and cultural world. The first section, Land, Air and Sea, provides information on the physical environment and natural resources; the second focuses on populations, both human and animal; while the third plots global connections, from shipping routes to Twitter links. Lucid texts give background and context, while charts and diagrams supply additional data. Off-mint.

Using letters and diaries, some previously unpublished, this biography uncovers the hidden friendships that sustained four of the world’s greatest women writers: Jane Austen’s bond with the family servant and amateur playwright Anne Sharp; Charlotte Brontë’s admiration for her unconventional schoolfriend Mary Taylor; the transatlantic correspondence between George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin; and the highly charged friendship of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield.

Mixing memoir and practical advice, this book shows how to reconnect with the sights, sounds and smells of the wild. Challenging the idea that this can only happen in the countryside, it argues that nature benefits mental and physical health even in an urban environment.

Not marked on any official map, new islands are emerging from the ocean, villages are disappearing beneath it, sea-forts declare independence and utopian communities are founded. This book explores 39 such extraordinary places. Here are the elusive Minkies in the English Channel, islands created in the South China Sea by a People’s Republic determined to expand its territory and influence, a ‘city without ground’, and the new Arctic being revealed as a result of global warming.

The explosion of independent breweries is the latest twist in the resurgence of the British beer industry. The popular bloggers Jessica Boak and Ray Bailey tell its story, from the reaction against industrialization and standardization in the 1950s and 1960s to modern craft beers. Slightly off-mint.

Bletchley Park may be famous for the exploits of Alan Turing and the team operating his first 'computer', but at the peak of its operations Station X employed as many as 12,000 people, two-thirds of whom were women. From language students to society debutantes and even a former ballerina, this book explores the extraordinary secret life of these women during the Second World War and the significant contribution they made to the Allied victory. Slightly off-mint.

‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends’... The redoubtable readers and letter-writers of the Daily Telegraph confront the era of Trump, Twitter and Brexit in this ninth compilation of wit, opinion and getting the facts right: from Forston in Dorset, a reader asks, ‘How can I distinguish fake reports about fake news from real reports about fake news? Slightly off-mint.

From the case of the killer worms to budgies with itchy beaks, Pete Wedderburn documents some of the most memorable mysteries from his many years in veterinary practice and as vet-in-residence answering readers’ questions at the Telegraph. Among his patients are a ginger cat with a bad cough, a Newfoundland who wouldn’t budge, and a parrot who refused to talk; and after each case of veterinary detection, there are owners’ questions and answers about similar problems.

Having mined the archives of readers’ letters ‘like a chaffinch in search of the juiciest worms’, Iain Hollingshead presents a hugely entertaining selection that illustrates the British love and respect for animals, whether tame or wild, mammal, bird or amphibian, and the occasional stick insect. Violent dislike is reserved for flying insects, and the Scottish midge in particular. Slightly off-mint.

Like his fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle enjoyed applying his mind to unsolved crimes, and the murder in 1860 of wealthy widow Mary Emsley was one such case. This book tackles the problem afresh, picking apart the evidence against the man who was hanged for the crime and, unlike Conan Doyle, reaching a conclusion as to the identity of the real killer. Off-mint<./i>

Organized by seasons, this anthology mines the Telegraph’s archive to present over 100 years of food writing, from ‘Cooks Compared: French v. English’ in 1899 to profiles of today’s famous chefs. There are articles and recipes from cookery writers including Elizabeth David, Clement Freud and Bon Viveur (aka Fanny and Johnnie Cradock), occasional pieces by writers, such as Germaine Greer’s lament on the death of True Parsley, readers’ letters, and even a survey of biscuits for dunking.

At the end of the Second World War, many of the Bletchley Park codebreakers were moved on to the newly formed GCHQ to keep tabs on Britain's new foe, the Soviet Union. This book explores their work in the early period of the Cold War as Western and Eastern blocs were established and cryptanalysts attempted to uncover the secrets behind flashpoints such as the Berlin Blockade, the Cambridge spy ring and the revolution in China.

‘Sir, It has all been a terrible mistake. We thought we were voting to leave Eurovision.’ In a year dominated by the EU Referendum, the Telegraph’s letter-writers were in full spate – and not just on the momentous vote. Here, in sections such a ‘The Use and Abuse of Language’, ‘Box Gogglers’ and ‘Royal Blushes’ are readers’ opinions – frankly stated – on everything from family life to ‘Benito Trump’.

As Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, the Queen is seen by many as a calm, reassuring presence in an era of restless change. But what of the institution she represents? This revelatory book takes a glimpse behind the scenes at the machinery that sustains the monarchy today: its constitutional role, its leadership of the Church of England, its finances. It also takes a clear-eyed view of its future, and the pressures that will face an heir to the throne. Slightly off-mint.

Famous for its record-breaking express service on the LNER in the 1920s and 1930s, then as a globe-trotting preserved locomotive after 1963, the Flying Scotsman is now a national icon. This history of the engine, from Nigel Gresley’s drawing board to the National Railway Museum in 2016, is illustrated with over 130 photographs and reproductions, from a rare shot of the newly constructed locomotive at the Doncaster shed in 1923, to a stunning picture of the train on an evening test run, 2016.

After the 1918 Armistice and until his death in 1928, Douglas Haig was hailed as a British national hero; by the mid 1930s, his reputation lay in ruins, with Lloyd George’s war memoirs in particular portraying him as an incompetent general. In this major biography, based on Haig’s writings, official documents and the writings of contemporaries, Professor Sheffield offers a more rounded portrait, and combines conventional biography with an examination of Haig’s role within the British Army of the First World War.

Modern digital technology has seen gadgets predicted by early science fiction – such as videophones – become reality, and a host of ideas proposed in more recent productions, such as the Star Trek series, offer intriguing possibilities for the future. From the Terminator to the Death Star, this book investigates some of the most celebrated concepts of recent science fiction and explores the potential technology behind them, revealing that some are closer to reality than we might think.