Non Fiction Authors From England

".. even at the age of eight I had a great love for science, and I knew that I wanted to be a scientist."

"... The Whispers of Rock: Stories from the Earth ... is a love letter written with such passion that you can’t help but be moved. Khatwa has devoted much of her life to spreading the gospel of geology, and here she offers clinical, scientific substance to back up her extraordinary depth of feeling. Throughout the book, she is methodical in her explanations of subjects such as how mountains, s and are formed, while also weaving in fascinating details. We learn that the Taj Mahal in India, an iconic symbol of love, was constructed with ivory-white , the origins of which date back to when several primitive land masses collided nearly 2 billion years ago. A recipe incorporating those , , and led to the rock used in this extraordinary monument, a much more complex process than might be realised at first glance. ... Khatwa’s love of rocks emerged as a child, when she walked over . In her book, she takes us with her around the world and across aeons, all the way to her home of 20 years in , UK, where the and its 185 million years of geological history are her neighbours."

"From my perspective as an and as a presenter on television I would love people to know and understand the amazing story of the s under our feet. The fact that without these rocks, the beds of , , clay or even s we would not have the or that we have today. We wouldn’t have the s, trees and wildlife without these rocks. Everything about the countryside is dependent on the rocks that sit underneath the soil, and I would love for people to know and make the connection that the nature they see all exists because of the rocks beneath. The rocks also have an ancient story of earth hidden within them that require us to use our imagination, we have to go back hundreds of millions of years to work out why they are there and can even tell us about the future of climate change."

"The workings of the mysterious influence of heredity present few greater puzzles than the characters of the English kings. It is indeed strange that Edward I should have been the son of the pious but incapable Henry III and father of the equally incapable Edward II."

"In the first place it must be borne in mind that before the extinction of its independence Wales was a geographical expression rather than a nation."

"The theoretical supremacy of the king in legal matters was so far practical that his prolonged absence, in Gascony, Wales or Scotland, usually coincided with the periods of greatest lawlessness."

"Law, considered historically, may be divided into two branches, Theory or Legislation, and Practice or Administration."

"The renewal and confirmation of their charters granted to many towns under Edward I, as in all other reigns, so far from being a mark of his favor may with equal justice be read as reminders to the citizens that they held their privileges by grace of the crown—a grace for the continuation of which they had to pay."

"While Edward I maintained a becoming magnificence of state he was in his personal tastes simple and averse to display, dressing plainly and rightly relying upon his character and personality rather than upon kingly trappings to uphold his dignity."

"It was from the maladministration, peculation and corruption of the officials, from the Chief Justices of the Bench down to the catchpolls of the manor courts, that the people suffered rather than from the weakness or badness of the laws."

"The most famous and popular of all English saints, St. Thomas of Canterbury, could not be ignored but Edward does not seem to have shown any great affection for him and one cannot help feeling that he was too conscious of the parallel between Becket and his own troublesome archbishops to display any great devotion towards the martyr."

"Remarkable as was the resemblance in some ways between Edward I and his great-grandfather Henry II the difference in their attitude towards religion was as great as the difference in appearance between the tall, dark, wiry Plantagenet and the short, stout, ruddy Angevin. Henry was as nearly an agnostic as even a king dared be in the twelfth century, while Edward was a man of very sincere piety."

"As a warrior his reputation was well established and well deserved, not the least important of his qualifications being that mysterious attribute known as luck, an attribute inspiring alike to the possessor and to those serving under him."

"Had his son and successor resembled him in character and ability a despotic autocracy might have been established which would have altered the whole history of English constitutional history, and it is questionable whether we owe a greater debt to the strength of Edward I, which curbed the baronial oligarchy, or to the weakness of Edward II, which shook the power of the throne and saved England from a despotism."

"Eleanor of Provence was a kindly, narrow and commonplace woman, devout to a degree which to modern ideas would seem bigoted but was admirable in the eyes of her contemporaries, affectionate, and even devoted, to her husband, children and relations."

"Eleanor of Castile is the most attractive personality in the long list of English queens, her only rival being Philippa of Hainault."

"No more was heard of the proposal for this extraordinary extension of popular control, but the attacks on the Treasurer, instigated by Winchelsey, were renewed a year later when Sir John de Lovetot accused him of infringements of most of the Ten Commandments and of a few other offences, such as simony, which had been overlooked by the compilers of the Decalogue. As a result Treasurer was suspended and compelled to pay a visit to the papal court, where, after he had been well fleeced, his innocence was established in June 1303. By way of showing his own zeal for the good governance of the Church the Pope at the same time authorised the slandered Treasurer to bestow benefices upon two of his nephews who had reached the mature ages of ten and twelve years respectively."

"There may have been some connection between his convalescent vow of crusade and the arrest by his orders, in May 1287, of all those enemies of the Christian faith, the Jews, in England. Their subsequent release on payment of a fine of 20,000 marks is evidence that he did not allow religion to interfere with business principles."

"So far as the popes were concerned it was Edward I’s habitual practice to become enthusiastic over crusading propositions whenever he was in want of money and thereby to obtain grants of clerical subsidies, which he promptly applied to other purposes."

"Although he must have seen that the position was serious it was impossible for him to realise the disastrous effect that the death of the Maid of Norway was to have upon the history of England. The discussion of hypothetical history is not very profitable, but it may be pointed out that if the marriage planned between Maid of Norway and Edward had been consummated the union of England and Scotland might have been anticipated by several centuries, the wearisome and disastrous wars between those two kingdoms would at least have been avoided, and also the Hundred Years’ War with France, arising out of Edward’s actual marriage with Isabel of France. Had Maid of Norway lived Bannockburn, Crécy and Agincourt would never have been fought."

"The Prince, now at the end of his seventeenth year, had been with his father on the last Scottish campaign and had on several occasions acted as his father’s representative but seems already to have been showing signs of the frivolous and unworthy character which distinguished him in later life, and the evidence of these characteristics accumulates rapidly during the next few years even before they are exposed to the fierce light that beats upon a throne."

"That it was the king’s intention to govern the parts of Wales that were now under his control with justice and gain the goodwill of the inhabitants cannot be doubted. There is also reason to believe that he was in some considerable measure successful so far as the common people were concerned, but the chieftains and petty lords were too long accustomed to that form of license which they called liberty to accept the restraints of English law even if administered with strict impartiality, and from what we know of contemporary English officials in their own country we may feel fairly sure that cases of maladministration and oppression were not lacking."

"Faithfulness to those whom he had once admitted into the rather narrow circle of his friendship was, indeed, a mark of his character. Those whom he had once found loyal and capable as ministers, soldiers or diplomats retained, as a rule, his confidence to the end."

"The oldest book dealing with the virtue of herbs is the , circa 900–950. This Leech Book was evidently the manual of a Saxon doctor and it is the oldest existing Leech Book written in the ."

", of the most noted of the day, entered the service of the as an assistant gardener. In 1826 he was made head-gardener. His name at is chiefly associated with the remarkable he designed, which was begun in 1836 and finished in 1840."

"The most attractive time in is in spring when the bank sloping from the terrace is thick with s and ."

"Even in only very wealthy men had separate gardens merely for pleasure, whilst all the small s and s throughout the country still retained the old . For over seven centuries before that time, all the gardens in England were herb gardens, and very beautiful they must have been, for s, , s, , , , , s, , s, and s were all used as herbs."

"For the gardens of the few who can give them warm walls in the most sheltered parts of Great Britain, two scented January-flowering treasures are ' and Freylinia cestroides. With its globe-shaped head of flowers, ranging from deep butter to cream-colour on the same head (the flowers turn cream-colour as they fade), its sweet scent and the length of time it remains in bloom, E. chrysantha is a most attractive plant, and the buff-coloured flowers of fill the air with fragrance in mid-winter."

"Of s we knew nothing till we learnt about them from the s; and they were only introduced into England in . It was about the same time that s were first cultivated in this country, but s were unknown till . The is an indigenous plant in the , but of the we were ignorant till the Flemish immigrants in the early seventeenth century introduced them. To them also we owe our present garden , which has had a long journey to reach us, for it is said to have come from Asia through Spain. The was used by our ancestors from , and one of the Saxon names for March was "sprout-kale month"; but otherwise the whole ' tribe were unknown to us till the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."

"In midwinter, when few fresh herbs except , , , , and are available, dried herbs can be used, also or ..."

"Queen Elizabeth came twice to Oxford: once in 1566 and again in 1592."

"The most famous of Elizabethan gardening authorities was , who came of a well-known family. When he left , Hugh Platt became a member of , and being given a generous allowance by his father he was able to devote many years to literary work. He became keenly interested in and agriculture and was in communication with all the authorities in this country. His own gardens at , , and were famous, and his (reprinted later under the title of The Garden of Eden) is full of information gleaned in all parts of England ..."

"is a passion with people from all walks of life, all races, all ages, and the plots they cultivate range from large country gardens to allotments, to tiny urban patches, to es. For me, it is a very personal passion. In the 1970s my husband and I and our two young children spent a year touring western Europe in a caravan, studying vegetable growing and collecting old varieties. We "rediscovered" forgotten salad plants like and , as well as the then new and green Italian Lollo lettuces. On our return we introduced them to the UK, along with the productive cut-and-come-again technique for growing salad seedlings."

"... of all the Oriental vegetables, the , a group roughly defined as members of the cabbage family, should prove the most rewarding for Westerners to get to know and grow. An amazingly diverse group, it includes the sturdy, bud-like heads of (already well known in the West), the crisp white- and green-stemmed s, and with their delicious flowering shoots, the pretty fern-leaved s and the . Within the mustards there are exceptionally hardy varieties with beautiful purple-hued leaves, compact-headed mustards and forms with weirdly swollen but highly prized stems and roots."

"AI's running fast, and we need to run as fast with governance mechanisms."

"The benefits of shelter cannot be exaggerated. Research has shown that sheltering s from even light winds can increase their yields by up to 30 per cent — which is equivalent to the increase in returns from optimum irrigation or optimum fertilizer use. The bents of sheltering plants from severe winds are considerably higher. In coastal areas, s also give protection from wind-borne ."

"By the 1980s we had reorganized our kitchen garden and laid it out in parallel narrow beds — a practical, efficient, centuries-old system, enabling the to develop a high state of fertility in the beds. ... Not long afterwards I made my first Little Potager, an area nor more than 6½ by 4½ m/20 by 15 ft. It was later enclosed in an undulating woven willow fence. Then followed a Winter Potage, primarily for edible plants which retain leaf, stem or flower colour in winter; these include s, hardy s, purple-flowering , hardy , , s, , 'Parcel' celery and winter pansies. Partially edged with low, stopover apples, the Winter Potager is surrounded on three sides by a of vines, and . With luck it remains colourful and decorative even in mid-winter. The full story is told in my book Creative Vegetable Gardening, but what is relevant here is the decorative potential of so many salad plants."

"It's going to enable us to feed more people"

"It's really important" that we make sure that we're "not encoding own prejudices and taking them forward with us, because if do that, we will actually stultify the development of the world."

"We don't have the luxury of a long time to actually even out the effects on job loss with this revolution, because it's happening so quickly."

"It's really important that we know that there are all these different tensions, because without addressing them, we are really left with, I suspect, a failing trust in the technology," she said. "What I certainly don't want to see are all the benefits of AI somehow being lost because we haven't put in the ethical underpinnings to help the public know that we're doing something safe"

"The technology promises improvements to everything from industrial processes to agriculture to transportation, Firth-Butterfield said. But it also could lead to a raft of challenges and dangers, including massive job losses in a relatively short period of time, the illegitimate denial of goods or services thanks to flawed or biased algorithms, and citizens' loss of control of what was previously personal data."

"On the other hand, such toys raise a host of issues that policymakers are only starting to get a handle on. The privacy implications alone of potentially having a toy — or a succession of them — collect a child's every utterance from the time they can talk until adulthood are tremendous. That is an issue that we really have to solve."

"... in quiet old-world ... dwelt that master craftsman of s, , whose emblem of minute golden garb or wheatsheaf is searched for amidst the design of any modern church window that we admire. For many years he here applied his craft, leaving as a heritage that well-planned semblance of an Elizabethan house, complete in all its details, comprising a wondrous , a raised Garden Mount, a Wilderness, A Garden House of Entertainment, all those striking features in short which are alluded to in Bacon's Essay "Of Gardens.""

"There are charming avenues of s in the gardens of St. Mary's House ... A bedchamber above is named the " Room," because of its paneled walls constructed from wood taken from these enemy ships. In the centre of each panel is a clever inlaid representation of one of these Spanish warships; picturesque objects, all of them, with their fine sails blown by the wind as they combat the waves."

"Her book Grow your Own Vegetables is a masterpiece of good sense; I have read it more than once. And her Creative Vegetable Gardening is, as books go, my happy place, one I head back to whenever I feel uninspired by my own garden. So imagine how excited I was when I got an invitation to her retirement vegetable garden that sits on a windswept corner of . She and Don, her husband, converted it from a in just under 10 years. As a garden, it is everything I hoped for. Relaxed, a little messy perhaps to some (but not to the wildlife), joyous with colour and filled to the brim with food. I squished many s in return for some lemon verbena tea. If you want to read more about her garden, buy Just Vegetating. It is much more than simply a – it also takes in her travels in the pursuit of the best vegetables from Europe to China."

"… the small village of ... was once the meeting-place of many s, for in the midst of somewhat modern surroundings we see these narrow gipsy-frequented grass-grown lanes at intervals before coming to an especially practical signboard that directs us to Homestall, the late 's old house."

"As I watch the young women gathering apples on this still autumn day, coming up the hill bearing on their arms wooden "trugs," all lined with soft to prevent their load of fruit being bruised, I am more than ever convinced that is most essentially suitable work for them. There is so much connected with it that requires the dainty touch of a woman, much that her inborn gentleness can help. Two long, low dark and cool apple-rooms have been excavated out of the chalk, and here on wooden shelves the apples are carefully laid, forming thus the richest treasure-houses of the garden."

"Like the , we should make a study of thrift, learning to prepare for all emergencies; and thus even the wild fruits of the rows, the , could be turned to useful account. Especially is this the case in a year when apples are so plentiful that there are barely accepted gratefully as a gift and cannot all find room on the shelves in the fruit house. There is nothing more delicious than blackberry-and-apple jam, and the advantage of this mixture is that the blackberries help to keep the jam, as apples if boiled alone and bottled would not last without the berries."

"Personalized education using AI for kids is going to be a huge game changer."