Non-Fiction Books

Renowned as the most learned man in eighth-century Europe and the author of the first English history to be written by an Englishman, the Venerable Bede was the personification of the golden age of Anglo-Saxon Northumbria. Here are specially commissioned translations from his Life of Cuthbert, his Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, and his famous Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The large-format book is lavishly illustrated with colour photographs of manuscripts, monuments and landscapes that Bede himself would have recognized, and prefaced with illuminating introductions to the man in his time.

John Marsden is not just one of Australia's most successful writers of all time; he's also one of our best teachers of writing. "Highly recommended" Sun Herald "The most exciting, interesting and useful book on the teaching of writing" Australian English Teacher The ultimate "get off your bum and do it" book, Everything I Know About Writing will motivate anyone to write. It's a lively, funny guide to writing, as readable as a novel, but packed front to back with ideas and insights. This new edition has one other great feature: 600 extraordinary topics, guaranteed to have you or your students writing before you know it. Everything I Know About Writing is the most painless way into writing - ever.

I found Ellie's voice quite unexpectedly, as I drove back from the tip one Saturday afternoon. I was in an old Landrover, just 500 metres from home, and suddenly I could hear Ellie talking... In his fiction John Marsden explores the lives of the guilty, the inarticulate, the crazy, the brave and the resourceful. Read about his ideas and his experiences in "Marsden on Marsden" - a frank, behind-the-scenes look at what John was really thinking about when he wrote books like "Letters from the Inside" and the internationally acclaimed Tomorrow Series.

An examination the life of the mid-12th-century Gaelic-Norse lord and his cultural and historical significance, by the author of Galloglas . Through almost eight hundred years, Somerled of Argyll has been variously denounced as an intractable rebel against his rightful king and esteemed as the honored ancestor of the later medieval Lord of the Isles. But now he can be recognized as a much more complex figure of major prominence in twelfth-century Scotland and of truly landmark significance in the long history of the Gael. In this book, author John Marsden investigates Somerled’s emergence in the forefront of the Gaelic-Norse aristocracy of the western seaboard, his part in Gaeldom’s challenge to the Canmore kings of Scots, his war on the Manx king of the Isles, his importance for the church on Iona, and his extraordinary invasion of the Clyde, which was cut short by his violent death at Renfrew in 1164. Marsden also demonstrates how almost everything that is known of or has been claimed for Somerled reflects the same characteristic fusion of Norse and Celt that binds the cultural roots of Gaeldom. It is this recognition that has led Marsden to propose Somerled’s wider historical importance as the personality who most represents the first fully-fledged emergence of the medieval Celtic-Scandinavian cultural province from which is directly descended the Gaelic Scotland of today.