The dryly precocious, soon-to-be-fifteen-year-old hero of this engagingly offbeat debut novel, Oliver Tate lives in the seaside town of Swansea, Wales. At once a self-styled social scientist, a spy in the baffling adult world surrounding him, and a budding, hormone-driven emotional explorer, Oliver is stealthily (and perhaps a bit more nervously than he’d ever admit) nosing his...(展开全部)

Awards Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize : Shortlist 2008 Desmond Elliott Prize : Longlist 2008 Synopsis Hello. I'm Oliver Tate, the protagonist. I am likely to use words like protagonist and, moments later, words like twonk. My ambitions are as follows: 1) To find out why my father sometimes stays in bed for days at a time. 2) To find out why my mother's getting surfing lesso...(展开全部)

Meet Oliver Tate, 15. Convinced that his father is depressed ('Depression comes in bouts. Like boxing. Dad is in the blue corner') and his mother is having an affair with her capoeira teacher, 'a hippy-looking twonk', he embarks on a hilariously misguided campaign to bring the family back together. Meanwhile, he is also trying to lose his virginity - before he turns sixteeen - ...(展开全部)

In Battle at Sea , John Keegan applies to maritime warfare the technique that he put to such brilliant effect in his classic of war on land, The Face of Battle . He concentrates on four key conflicts: Trafalgar, Jutland, Midway and the Battle of the Atlantic. He takes us into the very heart of the fighting while providing a remarkable panoramic view of naval warfare through t...(展开全部)

In Battle at Sea , John Keegan applies to maritime warfare the technique that he put to such brilliant effect in his classic of war on land, The Face of Battle . He concentrates on four key conflicts: Trafalgar, Jutland, Midway and the Battle of the Atlantic. He takes us into the very heart of the fighting while providing a remarkable panoramic view of naval warfare through t...(展开全部)