Böcker av Peter Kerr

"This award-winning book, first published in 2000, launched the best-selling series of five books charting the Kerr family's often-hilarious adventures after leaving Scotland in the 1980s to grow oranges for a living on the Spanish island of Mallorca."It's the stuff of dreams, but when they turn out to be not quite as intended, laughter is the best medicine."Look! The weather has come from Scotland to welcome you to Mallorca,"beamed Senor Ferrer. To our new neighbour's delight and my dismay, a cold mantle of white was rapidly transforming our newly acquired paradise in the sun into a bizarre winterscape of citrus Christmas trees, cotton wool palms and Snowball Oranges.Full of life and colour, joyful and revealing, and set against a backdrop of the breathtaking beauty of Mallorca.(The subsequent titles in this series are 'One Mallorcan Summer [previously published as Mañana, Mañana'], 'Viva Mallorca!', 'A Basketful of Snowflakes' and 'From Paella to Porridge'. 'Thistle Soup' is a set-in-Scotland prequel to the series).

Previously published as Mañana Mañana, this is the second book in the award-winning pentad of fun-filled Mallorcan travelogues which also includes 'Snowball Oranges', 'Viva Mallorca!', 'A Basketful of Snowflakes' and 'From Paella to Porridge'. Having battled and succumbed to the tranquilo pace of rural Mallorca, where you seldom do today what can be more judiciously put off till mañana, Peter Kerr and family are now relaxing into a supposedly simpler way of life, growing oranges on their little valley farm, Ca's Mayoral. However, even after the trials, tribulations and triumphs of their initiation, Spain has not yet finished with them. Embarrassing subtleties of the language, brushes with the local police, the unfortunate outcome of a drinking session ... there are surprises aplenty to test the resolve, stamina and, perhaps more importantly, the sense of humour of this venturesome émigré family.

From the author of the bestselling Snowball Oranges series of Mallorcan travel books comes a substantial and compelling novel inspired by one of the most momentous and lastingly-celebrated events in the history of this enchanting Spanish island.It's 1229, the year of the Christian 'Reconquest' of Mallorca from the Moors, a Muslim people of Afro-Arabic origin who have ruled Spain in cultural splendour for five hundred years. Heading the Christian invasion is King Jaume I, the dashing 21-year-old ruler of the northern Spanish kingdom of Aragon, who sets out for Mallorca with a mighty armada of one hundred and fifty ships carrying some fifteen thousand foot soldiers and fifteen hundred cavalry.The helmsman of the royal galley is Pedrito Blànes, a strapping Mallorcan peasant of the same age as King Jaume. This is his story...Set against a backdrop of breathtaking Mediterranean scenery, described in the author's hallmark style which transports readers right into the heart of the action, an enthralling saga dictated by the vagaries of fate unfolds. The horror and brutality of battle is countered by the tenderness shown to Christian Pedrito in an unexpected encounter with two Muslim women - one older than him, the other younger - which reveals heart-rending aspects of his past and sows the seeds of a forbidden romantic relationship punishable by death.Yet there are threads of humour woven discreetly into this intense, action-packed yarn - a rare quality that puts Song of the Eight Winds in a niche unique within the genre of historical fiction.Here, then, is a book that will appeal equally to devotees of Mallorca, who will be fascinated by depictions of familiar locations as they existed in a bygone age, and to those who simply love to read a good story, entertainingly-told.

This book offers a fresh view of postwar British politics, very much at odds to the dominant view in contemporary scholarship. The author argues that postwar British politics, up to and including the Blair Government, can be largely characterised in terms of continuity and a gradual evolution from a period of conflict over the primary aims of government strategy to one of recent relative consensus. This book provides a provocative and challenging account of the historical background to the election of the Blair Government and will be of interest to a wide audience.