Remember that bit of scrub ground between your front door and the road, adorned only by an empty chip bag and a can of cola? Well, it's time to feel guilty again as the Beeb bring us the wonderful Christine Walkden. Now the down-to-earth Lancastrian has been given her own show to pass on her down-to-earth advice...It almost makes you want to get out into the freezing cold and start weeding. Almost.

Hilarious, heartwarming and movingly honest. This is a book about self-exile and creation that only a poet could write

I loved the comments about English gardening as preposterous, and her ability to conjure so much out of so little without ever leaving her garden... Truly wonderful

Lyrical and pithy, full of wry humour, yet weightier than most fat tomes, The Price of Water in Finistère is a book about the past and the state of the world we have created... I adored it

I finished this book torn between wild feelings of omnipotence and a nagging sense of guilt for poisoning the mice in my garden shed...he guides us around the millions of varieties of insects that most of us either ignore or abhor...even slugs, the gardener's most persistent foe, are given respect.

Top Title: Hints and tips from a plant ecologist who maintains that encouraging wildlife in your garden and promoting biodiversity is cheap and compatible with ordinary gardening. Delightfully readable, and attractively packaged, too

The author...[demystifies] and [simplifies] wildlife gardening in a friendly and accessible way. A must for anyone interested in this subject.

A fresh look at wildlife gardening which punctures myths and gives sold, science-based advice. Hoorah!. The book many of us have been waiting for: wildlife gardening backed up by science....Essential reading for anyone with a garden - even a tiny one

Written in an easy, popular style, No Nettles Required analyses the hard scientific data behind biodiversity in gardens, whilst gently poking fun at well-worn principles promoted in a plethora of 'wildlife gardening' books...My own advice...is never to manicure the lawn...But don't listen to me - read No Nettles Required.

Discover how you can enjoy the pleasures of a wildlife garden, and how a whole host of wildlife can enjoy your garden, too!

Packed with tips and sensible, easy-to-follow advice, this is a timely and welcome book to add to any gardening collection.

It's full of tips on how to fill our gardens with everything from foxes and frogs to butterflies and ladybirds...He also makes us more aware of the struggles for life that go on among the inhabitants of our garden every day, but that we rarely take time to notice.

Full of helpful hints and tips, this book reveals how easy it can be to fill our gardens with everything from foxes, frogs and mice to butterflies, ladybirds - and thousands of creepy-crawlies

Fascinating reading. It dispels myths and offers science-based advice.

This little book is a thoroughly readable, amusing, fact based, accessible account of a research project that will be relevant to anyone with a garden or outdoor space. The advice is unfailingly practical and the received wisdom questioned. The book does not simply regurgatate the same old advice about wildlife gardening, but offers in many cases a new approach, based on the empirical evidence of the research. The author is clearly aware that wildlife gardening is viewed by many gardeners as expensive and/or unattractive, and he offers lots of sensible suggestions for things that cost next to nothing, perfectly in keeping with the most traditional garden and are proven to be effective. He stresses that anyone, no matter what size garden, can garden with wildlife in mind with very little effort.

A fascinating read

An atomic Dad's Army, McDowall's history of the UK's nuclear civil defence is full of hilarious gems

McDowall's book has the tone of a podcast [...] She leads her audience round bunkers, propaganda films and government records, pointing out the horrifying, the unexpected and the absurd

Most interesting

An unsettling festive read

A superb achievement ... a lucid, totally compulsive read from beginning to end, chilling as well as profoundly empathetic in tone

Utterly brilliant. This gripping account of East Germany sheds new light on what for many of us remains an opaque chapter of history. Authoritative, lively and profoundly human, it is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand post-WW2 Europe

A gripping and nuanced history of the GDR from its beginnings as a separate German socialist state against the wishes of Stalin to its final rapprochement with its Western other against those of Gorbachev. Beyond the Wall is a unique fresco of everyday reality in East Germany. Elegantly moving between diplomatic history, political economy and cultural analysis, this is an essential read to understand not only the life and death of the GDR but also the parts of it that still survive in the emotions of its former citizens.

Superb, totally fascinating and compelling, Katja Hoyer's first full history of East Germany's rise and fall is a work of revelatory original research - and a gripping read with a brilliant cast of characters. Essential reading

A beyond-brilliant new picture of the rise and fall of the East German state. Katja Hoyer gives us not only pin-sharp historical analysis, but an up-close and personal view of both key characters and ordinary citizens whose lives charted some of the darkest hours of the Cold War. If you thought you knew the history of East Germany, think again. An utterly riveting read

A fantastic, sparkling book, filled with insights not only about East Germany but about the Cold War, Europe and the forging of the 20th and 21st centuries

The joke has it that the duty of the last East German to escape from the country was to turn off the lights. In Beyond the Wall Katja Hoyer turns the light back on and gives us the best kind of history: frank, vivid, nuanced and filled with interesting people

A refreshing and eye-opening book on a country that is routinely reduced to cartoonish cliché. Beyond the Wall is a tribute to the ordinary East Germans who built themselves a society that - for a time - worked for them, a society carved out of a state founded in the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism

A colourful and often revelatory re-appraisal of one of modern history's most fascinating political curiosities. Katja Hoyer skilfully weaves diverse political and private lives together, from the communist elite to ordinary East Germans

Katja Hoyer is becoming the authoritative voice in the English speaking world for all things German. Thanks to her, German history has the prominence in the Anglosphere it certainly deserves.

Katja Hoyer brilliantly shows that the history of East Germany was a significant chapter of German history, not just a footnote to it or a copy of the Soviet Union. To understand Germany today we have to grapple with the history and legacy of its all but dismissed East

Katja Hoyer's return to discover what happened to her homeland - the old East Germany - is an excellent counterpoint to Stasiland by Anna Funder