James Canton teaches the Wild Writing MA course at the University of Essex, exploring the fascinating ties between literature and the landscape of East Anglia. He has run workshops to encourage writing on nature and landscape and is the author of Out of Essex: Re-Imagining a Literary Landscape (2013), which was inspired by rural wanderings in the county.

Rachel Allen was brought up in Dublin and at the age of eighteen left to study at the prestigious Ballymaloe Cookery School. Today, she not only teaches at the school, she also writes regular features for national publications, presents highly acclaimed television programmes which have been broadcast internationally. She is the winner of the 2012 Irish Book Award for Best Non-Fiction for Easy Meals.

She is the founding owner of the Pear Café in Bristol, a must-visit destination for fresh, delicious, handmade soups, frittatas, and sandwiches (including the hugely popular Ham, Emmenthal and Chicken Crackling Sandwich, named one of Buzzfeed’s “17 Sandwiches You Must Eat Before You Die”).

Florence Besson has been a journalist for Elle magazine for fifteen years, covering a wide variety of social issues, many related to romantic relationships. It seemed only right to celebrate the Parisian ways of love. Claire Steinlen is a journalist at Clés magazine and the author of a book on marriage, 10 Bonnes (ou mauvaises) raisons de se marier. She combines her life as a woman, wife and mother of four with humour, curiosity, eroticism and love, of course. Eva Amor is a lawyer, but she spends most of her time giving relationship advice to her single and married friends…and is always ready for a laugh.

Martha Collison is the youngest ever baker on The Great British Bake Off – she made it all the way to the quarter finals whilst studying for her AS Levels! Martha is a self-taught baker who started cooking at the age of eight – the result of her brave parents letting her loose in the kitchen and enjoying the (sometimes mixed) results. Since then her baking repertoire has grown no end, and she now balances studying part-time for her A Levels with writing and testing recipes for various purposes, including a monthly column in Waitrose Weekend as well as her own blog. She loves spending time with her family, and is passionate about helping with charitable campaigns including #NoChildTaken with Tearfund.

Rose Prince is a freelance food journalist and writer, whose work appears regularly in the Telegraph Magazine, the Independent on Sunday and the Spectator. She is the author of the highly acclaimed The New English Kitchen and writes a hugely popular column in the Daily Telegraph. She has contributed to the Food Programme, Woman's Hour, and You & Yours on BBC Radio 4. In 1999 she co-produced In the Footsteps of Elizabeth David a two-hour film for Channel 4 presented by Chris Patten. She lives in London with her husband, the journalist Dominic Prince, and their two children.

Lopè Ariyo recently graduated from Loughborough University, where she read Mathematics. In her spare time, she wrote and filmed recipes for her food blog, focusing primarily on contemporary African food. This lead her to enter, and win, the HarperCollins and Red Magazine African cookery competition. Lopè currently lives in Croydon, south London, and divides her time between consulting for African food brands and writing content for her blog, www.lopeariyo.com.

Nicholas Timmins has been Public Policy Editor of the Financial Times since 1996. Before that he was with the Independent for a decade from its foundation., working variously as its health and social services correspondent , politcal correspondent and its public policy editor. He previously held similar posts at The Times. He has also worked for the Press Association and Nature. He has therefore been reporting on the events covered in this, his first book, for twenty years.

MARCUS WAREING is one of the most respected and acclaimed chefs and restaurateurs in Britain today. Originally from Southport, Merseyside, Marcus began his career at the age of 16. An incredible talent, he started acquiring Michelin stars aged just 26 – one of only a handful of chefs to be recognised at such a young age. Over the last 30 years Marcus has been involved in the creation of many of London’s most iconic and celebrated restaurants, including his own restaurant group, Marcus Wareing Restaurants, which he founded in 2008. With two Michelin stars at his flagship restaurant, Marcus, in the Berkeley Hotel, he also owns and operates two other London restaurants, The Gilbert Scott and Tredwell’s. Alongside his Michelin stars, Marcus has also won numerous coveted awards. These include the Acorn Award, Chef of the Year with Caterer and Hotelkeeper, Tatler Restaurateur of the Year and GQ Chef of the Year. A familiar face on our TV screens, Marcus took on the new role as judge on MasterChef:The Professionals in 2014. Marcus lives in London with his wife and three children.

The Grand Tour stars Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May as three middle aged men who should know better. The trio previously worked on an obscure BBC car show before hitting the big time with The Grand Tour which is an epic show about adventure, excitement and friendship. As long as you accept that the people you call friends are also the ones you find most annoying.

Anna Jones is a cook, food writer and stylist. One grey, late-for-the-office day, she decided to quit her day job after reading an article about following your passion. Within weeks, she was signed up on Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen apprentice programme. She went on to be part of Jamie’s food team – styling, writing and working behind the scenes on books, TV shows and food campaigns. She has also worked with other well-known chefs, such as Henry and Tom Herbert (The Fabulous Baker Brothers), Stevie Parle and Antonio Carluccio, and cooked for royalty, politicians and LA school children alike. She lives, writes and cooks in Hackney, East London.

Richard Jones is a nationally acclaimed entomologist, a fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, fellow of the Linnean Society, and past president of the British Entomological and Natural History Society. He has been fascinated by wildlife since a childhood exploring the South Downs and Sussex Weald after plants and insects – especially beetles. He now writes about insects, nature and the environment for BBC Wildlife, Gardener’s World, Countryfile, the Guardian and Sunday Times and has regular media appearances on programmes such as Springwatch Unsprung, Natural Histories and Open Country. He is the author of several books on science and wildlife.

Neil Somerville is the author of the international bestseller Your Chinese Horoscope for Each and Every Year. He is a great advocate of positive thinking and he has a strong interest in Eastern beliefs and traditions. He lives in Berkshire with his wife, children and adopted cat, Lily.

Mary Colwell makes programmes for the BBC and the independent sector, mainly on nature and the environment. She recently featured in BBC Wildlife’s UK 50 Top Conservation Heroes awards.

Janneke Vreugdenhil is one of the Netherlands’ best-loved culinary journalists. Her columns and articles in the quality Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad are hugely popular, due in no small measure to her infectious enthusiasm. She has been a food writer and critic for many years, and as a result is very well connected. Mark Bittman and Claudia Roden are close friends of hers.

J.A. Baker (1926-1987) is now widely acknowledged as one of the most important British writers on nature in the twentieth century. When his first book, The Peregrine, appeared in 1967 with all the unexpected power and vertiginous daring of its eponymous bird, it was instantly recognised as a masterpiece. Today it is viewed by many as the gold standard for all nature writing and, in many ways, it transcends even this species of praise. A case could easily be made for its greatness by the standards of any literary genre.

An English language and literature specialist with many years’ experience of teaching English and Italian, Lisa Samson is a Senior Lecturer in Writing at Leeds Beckett University. Lisa's first novel, Talk To Me, came second in the Virginia Prize for Fiction 2011. She has been published in short form both in print and online.

Rhodri Marsden is a writer and musician based in London. A columnist for The Independent for more than a decade, he writes features, books and opinion pieces about subjects as varied as bad dates, rude place names, USB cables, crumpets, perfume and anxiety. He plays in hardy perennial post-punk band Scritti Politti and Britain’s best-loved TV theme covers band Dream Themes, and he won the under-10 piano category at the 1980 Watford Music Festival with a scintillating performance of a piece called "Silver Trumpets".

In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream. It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem. * * * "Now we have an American masterpiece in its final form: the original crystal has shaped itself into the true diamond. This is the novel as Fitzgerald wished it to be, and so it is what we have dreamed of, sleeping and waking." -- James Dickey * * * The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published on April 10, 1925, it is set on Long Island's North Shore and in New York City during the summer of 1922. The novel takes place following the First World War. American society enjoyed prosperity during the "roaring" 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol as mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers. After its republishing in 1945 and 1953, it quickly found a wide readership and is today widely regarded as a paragon of the Great American Novel, and a literary classic. The Great Gatsby has become a standard text in high school and university courses on American literature in countries around the world, and is ranked second in the Modern Library's lists of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century. --Wikipedia

School Jokes One hundred of hilarious and funny jokes !Have fun and laugh!

Crawford Hunt ??i vrea fiica ?napoi. Dup? moartea so?iei sale ?n urm? cu patru ani, rangerul texan a alunecat pe o pant? a nes?buin?elor care a f?cut s? fie consemnat la munca de birou ?i a dus la pierderea custodiei fiicei sale. Acum ?ns? Crawford ?i-a reg?sit calea cea dreapt?, a?a c? ?nainteaz? o cerere de redob?ndire a custodiei. Cazul i este atribuit judec?toarei Holly Spencer, o femeie la fel de atr?g?toare pe c?t este de ambi?ioas?. C?nd un mascat ?narmat ?ntrerupe audierile pentru custodie ?i ?ndreapt? arma c?tre judec?toare, rangerul reac?ioneaz? instinctiv ?i se n?puste?te asupra lui. Dar autorit??ile prind pe altcineva, iar adev?ratul atacator r?m?ne necunoscut, ?n libertate, un pericol. Prinderea adev?ratului f?pta? devine pentru Crawford o misiune personal?. Oare omul legii, obi?nuit s? ia atitudine, ??i va risca ?ansele de a ob?ine custodia copilului ?i va porni pe urmele unui presupus asasin? ?i oare va reu?it aceast? pereche mai pu?in obi?nuit? s? ignore atrac?ia interzis? ce pare s? fie din ce ?n ce mai puternic??