Paddington, the intrepid bear from Darkest Peru, has a knack for «smelling out things». His sharp nose, supported by marmalade sandwiches, leads him into many adventures. This title is for children from the age of six. Читать дальше…

The irresistible paddington bear, who was found on paddington station, returns in this reissued novel, with a brand new cover design. Up until now, paddington has managed to avoid school. But the inspector himself catches up with him and packs him off. After one day, even the teacher wonders whether there is anything he can teach a certain bear from darkest peru. And when it comes to dancing the rumba as always, paddington takes the cake!stories of paddington bear have delighted children all over the world for more than fifty years.

A funny picture book about Paddington, the beloved, classic bear from darkest Peru — soon to be a major movie star! Paddington has never been to a carnival before, so Mr Gruber takes him down to the canal to join in the fun. Hoping to win a boat ride for two, the friends enter the Busy Bee Adventure Trail. Paddington soon discovers that he’s very good at spotting things beginning with the letter B, but it seems that he’s not the only one with his eye on the prize…

The irresistible Paddington Bear, who was found on Paddington station, returns in this reissued novel, with a brand new cover design. «Oh dear!» said Paddington, «I’m in trouble again.» Somehow trouble always comes naturally to Paddington. What other bear could catch a fish in his hat, or cause havoc in the Browns’ kitchen just trying to be helpful?

The translation of Beowulf by J.R.R. Tolkien was an early work, very distinctive in its mode, completed in 1926: he returned to it later to make hasty corrections, but seems never to have considered its publication. This edition is twofold, for there exists an illuminating commentary on the text of the poem by the translator himself, in the written form of a series of lectures given at Oxford in the 1930s; and from these lectures a substantial selection has been made, to form also a commentary on the translation in this book. From his creative attention to detail in these lectures there arises a sense of the immediacy and clarity of his vision. It is as if he entered into the imagined past: standing beside Beowulf and his men shaking out their mail-shirts as they beached their ship on the coast of Denmark, listening to the rising anger of Beowulf at the taunting of Unferth, or looking up in amazement at Grendel’s terrible hand set under the roof of Heorot. But the commentary in this book includes also much from those lectures in which, while always anchored in the text, he expressed his wider perceptions. He looks closely at the dragon that would slay Beowulf ‘snuffling in baffled rage and injured greed when he discovers the theft of the cup’ but he rebuts the notion that this is ‘a mere treasure story’, ‘another dragon tale’. He turns to the lines that tell of the burying of the golden things long ago, and observes that it is ‘the feeling for the treasure itself, this sad history’ that raises it to another level. ‘The whole thing is sombre, tragic, sinister, curiously real. The «treasure» is not just some lucky wealth that will enable the finder to have a good time, or marry the princess. It is laden with history, leading back into the dark heathen ages beyond the memory of song, but not beyond the reach of imagination.’ Sellic Spell, a ‘marvellous tale’, is a story written by Tolkien suggesting what might have been the form and style of an Old English folk-tale of Beowulf, in which there was no association with the ‘historical legends’ of the Northern kingdoms. Читать дальше…