On August 16th, 2016 Santiago Lange amazed the sporting world when he and his teammate Cecilia Carranza won the gold medal in sailing at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. At that time he was 54 years old, it was his sixth Olympic participation and he fought against unbelievable obstacles. His victory was an incomparable demonstration of his will to fight - not even one year after he had to undergo surgery because of lung cancer. Santiago Lange gave the world of sailing an unforgettable moment of glory. But how did he manage to get back on his feet in such a short time, to train without rest and to take part at the Olympic Games again? And why did he fight when his body, friends and family thought it was time to stop? "Nothing gives me more joy of life and adrenaline than the challenge of sport. When I'm on the water, my thoughts rest. Time stands still. I feel the wave, I feel the wind turning. The tension of the boat tells me that I have to change course or trim. I react, the boat gets faster and everything else doesn't exist anymore. It's always been like that." Santiago Lange

Bind: hardback

Pages: 240

Dimensions: 145 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 22-04-2021

Harold William ‘Bill’ Tilman (1898-1977) was among the greatest adventurers of his time, a pioneering mountaineer and navigator who held exploration above all else. The son of a Liverpool sugar importer, Tilman joined the army at seventeen and was twice awarded the Military Cross for bravery during WWI. After the war Tilman left for Africa, establishing himself as a coffee grower. He met Eric Shipton and they began their famed mountaineering partnership, traversing Mount Kenya and climbing Kilimanjaro. Turning to the Himalaya, Tilman went on two Mount Everest expeditions, reaching 27,000 feet without oxygen in 1938. In 1936 he made the first ascent of Nanda Devi, the highest mountain climbed until 1950. He was the first European to climb in the remote Assam Himalaya, delved into Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor and explored extensively in Nepal, all the while developing a mountaineering style characterised by its simplicity and emphasis on exploration. It was perhaps logical that Tilman would eventually buy the pilot cutter Mischief, not with the intention of retiring from travelling, but to access remote mountains. For twenty-two years he sailed Mischief and her successors in search of them—to Patagonia, where he made the first easterly crossing of the ice cap, to Baffin Island to make the first ascent of Mount Raleigh, to Greenland, Spitzbergen, and islands in the far Southern Ocean, before disappearing in the South Atlantic in 1977. J.R.L. Anderson’s biography draws on a wealth of personal correspondence between Tilman, a compulsive letter writer, and his immediate family and close friends, crafting the first detailed account of the extraordinary life of this remarkable, but very private individual.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 416

Dimensions: 156 x 216 mm

Publication Date: 28-09-2017

No ship should be without Tabasco sauce. Experience is said to be the name men give to their mistakes and of the experience I gained in Spitzbergen that may well be true. The circumnavigation of Spitzbergen is the first of three voyages described in HW ‘Bill’ Tilman’s fifteenth and final book, a remarkable example of his ability to triumph when supported by a crew game for all challenges. The 1974 voyage of the pilot cutter Baroque takes Tilman to his furthest north; the highest latitude of any of his travels in the northern or southern hemisphere. The account of this achievement makes compelling reading, the crew pulling together to avert potential disaster from a navigational misjudgement. A younger, less experienced crew join Tilman in 1975, this time heading north along Greenland’s west coast until a break in the boom necessitates the abandonment of the objective and an early return. “That one can never be quite confident of reaching any of the places I aim at may be part of their charm, and failure is at least an excuse for making another voyage.” The following year proves to be Tilman’s last voyage in his own boat, his account beginning with a dry nod to his artillery background: “As I begin to describe this voyage, the discrepancy between the target and the fall of shot provokes a wry smile.” Tilman never expected crews to pay, covering all the costs of his voyages personally. He therefore held the quite reasonable view that his crew would pull their weight, show loyalty to the ship and take the rough with the smooth. Sadly, the crew in 1976 fell far short of that expectation, forcing several changes of plan and eventually obliging Tilman to leave Baroque in Iceland. Not for the first time in Tilman’s remarkable 140,000 miles of voyaging is he moved to quote Conrad: “Ships are all right, it’s the men in them.” Tilman set a high standard and led by example; where his companions rose to the challenge, as they did in the majority of his expeditions, the results were often remarkable. Triumph and Tribulation closes this newly extended edition of his literary legacy; a fine testament to a remarkable life.

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Pages: 202

Dimensions: 156 x 216 mm

Publication Date: 01-06-2017

In climbing mountains or sailing the seas one often has to settle for less than one hoped. ‘For most men, as Epicurus has remarked, rest is stagnation and activity madness. Mad or not, the activity that I have been pursuing for the last twenty years takes the form of voyages to remote, mountainous regions.’ HW ‘Bill’ Tilman’s fourteenth book describes three more of those voyages, ‘the first comparatively humdrum, the second totally disastrous, and the third exceedingly troublesome’. The first voyage describes Tilman’s 1971 attempt to reach East Greenland’s remote and mountainous Scoresby Sound. The largest fjord system in the world was named after the Whitby whaling captain, William Scoresby, who first charted the coastline in 1822. Scoresby’s two volume Account of the Arctic Regions provided much of the historical inspiration for Tilman’s northern voyages and fuelled his fascination with Scoresby Sound and its unclimbed mountains. His first attempt on Scoresby had already cost him his first boat, Mischief, in 1968. The following year, a ‘polite mutiny’ aboard Sea Breeze had forced him to turn back within sight of the entrance to the Sound. With a good crew aboard in 1971, it was particularly frustrating for Tilman to find the boat blocked once more, this time by impenetrable ice off the entrance to the fjord. He refused to give up; his obsession with Scoresby Sound continued in 1972 and after a series of unfortunate events Sea Breeze ended up between a rock and an ice floe with a failed engine and a disastrous outcome. Safely back home in Wales, the inevitable search for a new boat began. ‘One cannot buy a biggish boat as if buying a piece of soap. The act is almost as irrevocable as marriage and should be given as much thought’. The 1902 Pilot Cutter Baroque, after not inconsiderable expense, proved equal to the challenge after Tilman’s first troublesome voyage in her to West Greenland in 1973.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 160

Dimensions: 156 x 260 mm

Publication Date: 06-04-2017

The most mountainous of a singularly mountainous country. Throughout 1949 and 1950 H.W. ‘Bill’ Tilman mounted pioneering expeditions to Nepal and its Himalayan mountains, taking advantage of some of the first access to the country for Western travellers in the 20th century. Tilman and his party—including a certain Tenzing Norgay—trekked into the Kathmandu Valley and on to the Langtang region, where the highs and lows began. They first explored the Ganesh Himal, before moving on to the Jugal Himal and the following season embarking on an ambitious trip to Annapurna and Everest. Manaslu was their first objective, but left to ‘better men’, and Annapurna IV very nearly climbed instead but for bad weather which dogged the whole expedition. Needless to say, Tilman was leading some very lightweight expeditions into some seriously heavyweight mountains. After the Annapurna adventure Tilman headed to Everest with—among others—Dr Charles Houston. Approaching from the delights of Namche Bazaar, the party made progress up the flanks of Pumori to gaze as best they could into the Western Cwm, and at the South Col and South-East Ridge approach to the summit of Everest. His observations were both optimistic and pessimistic: ‘One cannot write off the south side as impossible until the approach from the head of the West Cwm to this remarkably airy col has been seen.’ But then of the West Cwm: ‘A trench overhung by these two tremendous walls might easily become a grave for any party which pitched its camp there.’ Nepal Himalaya presents Tilman’s favourite sketches, encounters with endless yetis, trouble with the porters, his obsessive relationship with alcohol and issues with the food. And so Tilman departs Nepal for the last time proper with these retiring words: ‘If a man feels he is failing to achieve this stern standard he should perhaps withdraw from a field of such high endeavour as the Himalaya.’

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Pages: 280

Dimensions: 156 x 216 mm

Publication Date: 06-04-2017

I felt like one who had first betrayed and then deserted a stricken friend; a friend with whom for the past fourteen years I had spent more time at sea than on land, and who, when not at sea, had seldom been out of my thoughts. The first of the three voyages described in In Mischief’s Wake gives H.W. ‘Bill’ Tilman’s account of the final voyage and loss of Mischief, the Bristol Channel pilot cutter in which he had sailed over 100,000 miles to high latitudes in both Arctic and Antarctic waters. Back home, refusing to accept defeat and going against the advice of his surveyor, he takes ownership of Sea Breeze, built in 1899; ‘a bit long in the tooth, but no more so, in fact a year less, than her prospective owner’. After extensive remedial work, his first attempt at departure had to be cut short when the crew ‘enjoyed a view of the Isle of Wight between two of the waterline planks’. After yet more expense, Sea Breeze made landfall in Iceland before heading north toward the East Greenland coast in good shape and well stocked with supplies. A mere forty miles from the entrance to Scoresby Sound, Tilman’s long-sought-after objective, ‘a polite mutiny’ forced him to abandon the voyage and head home. The following year, with a crew game for all challenges, a series of adventures on the west coast of Greenland gave Tilman a voyage he considered ‘certainly the happiest’, in a boat which was proving to be a worthy successor to his beloved Mischief.

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Pages: 172

Dimensions: 156 x 216 mm

Publication Date: 26-01-2017

Upon this trackless waste of snow, cut by a shrewd wind, they sat down and wept. In China to Chitral H.W. ‘Bill’ Tilman completes one of his great post-war journeys. He travels from Central China, crossing Sinkiang, the Gobi and Takla Makan deserts, before escaping to a crumbling British Empire with a crossing of the Karakoram to the new nation of Pakistan. In 1951 there still persisted a legend that a vast mountain, higher than Everest, was to be found in the region, a good enough reason it seems for Tilman to traverse the land, ‘a land shut in on three sides by vast snow ranges whose glacial streams nourish the oases and upon whose slopes the yaks and camels graze side by side; where in their felt yurts the Kirghiz and Kazak live much as they did in the days of Genghis Khan, except now they no longer take a hand in the devastation of Europe’. Widely regarded as some of Tilman’s finest travel writing, China to Chitral is full of understatement and laconic humour, with descriptions of disastrous attempts on unclimbed mountains with Shipton, including Bogdo Ola—an extension of the mighty Tien Shan mountains—and the Chakar Aghil group near Kashgar on the old silk road. His command of the Chinese language—five words, all referring to food—proves less than helpful in his quest to find a decent meal: ‘fortunately, in China there are no ridiculous hygienic regulations on the sale of food’. Tilman also has several unnerving encounters with less-than-friendly tribesmen. Tilman starts proper in Lanchow where he describes with some regret that he is less a traveller and more a passenger on this great traverse of the central basin and rim of mountain ranges at Asia’s heart. But Tilman is one of our greatest ever travel writers, and we become a passenger to his adventurers.

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Pages: 184

Dimensions: 156 x 216 mm

Publication Date: 26-01-2017

No sea voyage can be dull for a man who has an eye for the ever-changing sea and sky, the waves, the wind and the way of a ship upon the water. So observes H.W. ‘Bill’ Tilman in this account of two lengthy voyages in which dull intervals were few and far between. In 1966, after a succession of eventful and successful voyages in the high latitudes of the Arctic, Tilman and his pilot cutter Mischief head south again, this time with the Antarctic Peninsula, Smith Island and the unclimbed Mount Foster in their sights. Mischief goes South is an account of a voyage marred by tragedy and dogged by crew trouble from the start. Tilman gives ample insight into the difficulties associated with his selection of shipmates and his supervision of a crew, as he wryly notes, ‘to have four misfits in a crew of five is too many’. The second part of this volume contains the author’s account of a gruelling voyage south, an account left unwritten for ten years for lack of time and energy. Originally intended as an expedition to the remote Crozet Islands in the southern Indian Ocean, this 1957 voyage evolved into a circumnavigation of Africa, the unplanned consequence of a momentary lapse in attention by an inexperienced helmsman. The two voyages described in Mischief goes South covered 43,000 miles over twenty-five months spent at sea and, while neither was deemed successful, published together they give a fine insight into Tilman’s character.

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Pages: 196

Dimensions: 156 x 216 mm

Publication Date: 01-09-2016

A lot of international games have been played by New Zealand men’s and women’s national teams since the first New Zealand Tournament Team was selected in 1947, but all are covered in this official History of New Zealand Basketball. Also recorded are New Zealand junior selections, national representative results, and the New Zealand leagues from when they emerged. So is the involvement of American, Australian and European players and coaches New Zealand brought in both to widen the league player bases, and to assist broadening the international expertise of locals to ensure the Tall Blacks and Tall Ferns could compete well in World Championship and Olympic events. The book also identifies many New Zealanders who have played some of their basketball in national leagues of other countries. And it traces the basketball politics across the years. Game detail is here—’stats’, as this material is now called. But the real story is about New Zealand basketball people—players, coaches, and administrators. And the very wide selection of photographs reminds the basketball world how many local identities looked in their prime. Twelve of the key ones grace the cover—who can you identify? But there are hundreds more, as the History of New Zealand Basketball covers 75 years.

Pages: 568

Dimensions: 205 x 275 mm

Publication Date: 31-05-2022

DISCOVER NEW ADVENTURES IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS, FEATURING RECIPES, ACTIVITIES, TRAVEL INSPIRATION, TENT HACKS, BUSHCRAFT BASICS, FORAGING TIPS AND MORE! Say yes to new adventures! This beautiful book is brimming with tips, recipes, activities and more to help you plan your perfect trip and discover the joys of camping in the great outdoors. Camping is one of life's purest pleasures. It's a way to escape the frantic pace of the everyday, to get back to nature and to discover new experiences - and nothing comes close to the joy of sleeping under the stars. Packed with ideas for first-time campers and seasoned experts alike, this book is sure to inspire your next trip and help you create memories to last a lifetime. Within these pages you will find: Handy camping hacks Delicious recipes Foraging tips Bushcraft basics Wild camping advice Inspiration for your travel bucket-list ... And much more! Whether you're seeking a relaxing natural getaway or an intrepid wilderness adventure, the great outdoors is waiting for you. So, pack your bag, pick up your tent and go camping!

Bind: hardback

Pages: 160

Dimensions: 176 x 196 mm

Publication Date: 14-04-2022