At Larwood House, a school for witch-orphans, witchcraft is utterly forbidden. So when a note is found declaring that someone in class 2Y is a witch the rumour-mill goes into overdrive. So, when the son of history teacher Mr. Wentworth disappears and a note is found signed by the mysterious Witch of 2Y, the dreaded Inquistors are called to investigate.
The Yorkshire dales have never seemed more beautiful for James - now he has a lovely wife by his side, a partner's plate on the gate and the usual menagerie of farm animals, pets and owners demanding his constant attention and teaching him a few lessons along the way. All of the old Darrowby friends are on top form - Siegfried thrashes round the practice, Tristan occasionally buckles down for finals, and James is signed up for a local cricket team. 'He can tell a good story against himself, and his pleasure in the beauty of the countryside in which he works is infectious',
In life, at least before the espionage charges, it was Mata Hari's body that made her mesmerizing; in this alluring novel, it is her hypnotic voice. As softly poetic as it is insistent, it entices the reader from the first lines to give Mata Hari what she always craved: not the secrets that are the currency of a spy, but the rapt attention that is oxygen to a performer.
In this book, Kate Distin proposes a theory of cultural evolution and shows how it can help us to understand the origin and development of human culture. Distin introduces the concept that humans share information not only in natural languages, which are spoken or signed, but also in artefactual languages like writing and musical notation, which use media that are made by humans.
