How do we understand the heritage of the Levant? In the last few hundred years, the centre of cultural innovation has moved inexorably westwards, leaving us with too small a grasp of the turmoil out of which our own civilisation grew. In 2003 Rupert de Borchgrave walked out one March morning to begin a journey of ideas that took him to the much-disputed grounds where the ancient world created the possibilities and problems that shape us now.

We tend to view the world beyond these shores on the basis of what the media make of it, whether the media of words or of images, and long-considered or instant. Ian Ross offers a welcome change of perspective. He spent his career as a senior executive in two controversial industrial sectors—tobacco and oil—and necessarily sees the world through the lens of business. The West and the Rest examines what he gained that we can learn from.

Prof. Arthur Lash, born Artur Lasch in pre-war Austria, takes his American wife and their three sons back to Vienna, in 1960, to see how well his father is rebuilding the life that was interrupted by Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria in 1938. For Arthur, the journey helps him re-establish his links with the city he was brought up in; for the rest of his family, other emotions are awoken—all watched over by Mrs. Woodbine, the family nanny.

TV reporter David Tereshchuk has traveled the world questioning perpetrators and victims of war and injustice. Their replies have won him awards; but one question still eludes him—that of his own origins—because his mother, the one person who knew, refused to tell him. She was raped, aged 15, she said; on all else, including who his father (her rapist) was, she was evasive, setting him off on a life of insecurity—and dissipation. And a quest. 

Publisher and editor Ahmad Shawkat was tortured under Saddam Hussein, forced to fight in the Iraqi army against Iran, and banished from his hometown of Mosul for his political writings. When Gulf War Two broke out in 2003, he became guide and translator to NPR-reporter Michael Goldfarb, as well as a respected friend. Then, after the fall of Saddam, Ahmad was murdered for publicly decrying Islamic terror. This is his story. 

Chris Hilton went to Havana to escape the drudgery of life in England and found himself mixed up with a compelling variety of gangland chancers. Compelling too was Jamilia—a refugee from rural poverty, who’d come to the big city as a teenager, and been rescued from the streets by a family of criminals. “A little crazy is good,” Jamilia tells Chris. But how long can craziness last when luck and money run out? 

Princess Raine is a very smart kid—and no one likes smart kids. Even her Dad, the king, finds her a challenge. To make things worse, she has two funny, silly, younger brothers, both as dumb as a bar of soap—whom everyone loves. When the kingdom of Rainland is hit by a weird heatwave, Raine treats it as a natural phenomenon, but everyone else thinks there's a fire-breathing monster. How does Raine survive?  

Flt Lieut Oliver Carmichael and Baron Julius von Stulpnagel had been living together in Berlin, trying to sell forged paintings. So why are they now in rundown Ballingore, in wartime neutral Ireland in 1940, and how will ex-convent-girl Mary Collins and her devoted red- headed sidekick Niamh Slattery play into their hands? A hilarious Irish farce in which K. J. Kelly brilliantly recreates the slapstick flavour of an Ealing Studios comedy. 

In Volume 2 of The Gay Street Chronicles, gay hero Bellerophon (Belle) Nash returns to Regency Bath after a four-year exile in Grenada, and tries to draw Pablo Fanque, the would-be African circus entrepreneur, into a love pact to substitute for the man he left in the Caribbean. A story of whimsical humour but also strong moral purpose in the face of bigotry and racism. 

Twelve everyday stories of survival - on the streets of Lagos, where the poor face corruption and desperation, and up in the north of Nigeria, where the innocent face Boko Haram insurgency. Many of the tales are about dreams of escape. There's humour, too, in the world of the Danfo driver and the magic of the spirit world. 

Can Muslim daughters enjoy the same life chances as boys without offending against Indian family traditions? In Part One of this passionate family saga, first-time author Fatima Kara reveals the tensions when women’s expectations in the Bulawayan branch of the Khumbar caste outpace those of relations in rural Uganda, source of the family’s arranged marriages. . 

A raw, compelling novel about a young black preacher in the 1870-80s, trained by the Anglican Church in England, then sent back to Cape Colony to face unresolved issues with his family and people, the condescension of church leaders towards their own native pastors, and That Woman—seen once in a photograph and never forgotten. 

When a soufflé fails to rise, friends try to find out why and uncover a web of corruption that spreads throughout Bath's legal system. Set in the early 1830s, this comic gay historical novel exposes the bigotry of the times but also introduces a new literary and moral hero—Belle Nash, city councillor and bachelor. About time!

A contemporary account of the battle between advanced tastes and democratic principle during Britain's first dalliance with the Modern Movement. Narrated by England's leading lighting designer, the owner of Best & Lloyd, once the world's largest light manufacturing company. Introduction by Pevsner biographer Stephen Games. 

Brian Verity married the nurse who had cared for him after his breakdown following the break-up of his previous marriage. It was a loving relationship. Then he started to notice that his wife's physical and mental abilities were deteriorating, just as those of her mother and siblings had. In growing panic, he decided they needed a plan. 

During WW2, Romania gave Hitler massive military aid and George Tomaziu wasn't surprised to be put in prison and abused for spying on German troop movements for the UK. But when Romania went Socialist after the war, he thought he'd be redeemed. He wasn't.​ He was treated worse.
 

After the death of his girlfriend in England, Michael Roberts seeks comfort in memories of his first love back in Northern Ireland, only to find that those memories are elusive and painful and that he must solve the mystery of why he has suppressed so much. Overtones of Sally Rooney. 

A satirical novel in which a schoolteacher in modern China falls into an inebriated dream that takes him back to medieval times and up to the highest ranks of the civil administration, leaving him stranded when conditions change and fortune turns against him. Half Daoist literature, half Lewis Carroll: drollery at its best. 

Short stories set in the 1950s and 60s, narrated by single women, in their middle years, as they travel the world, rekindling old friendships and seeking new ones. They speak of a world now lost, of a European culture—cosmopolitanism, self-confident and well-heeled but displaced and adrift, trying to find its anchor.

No one expected that a generation that had befriended Germany in the 1900s would be eagerly fighting it in the 1910s. In this extraordinary memoir, one of Britain's most important industrial designers tracks his career from the progressive idealism of his school days at Bedales to his passionate enlistment into the Royal Flying Corps.  

The Jarawa people, descended from ancient Africans, want nothing to do with modern civilisation, but modern civilisation doesn't care. Tourists travel each day along the Andaman Trunk Road in the hope of seeing these naked pygmy hunters in what is now India's human safari park. Jonathan Lawley went back to the colony his grandfather ran over a century ago and was shocked by what he found.  

Michael Holman, born in what was then Rhodesia, was put under house arrest as a student activist for threatening the regime of Ian Smith. He went on to become a foreign correspondent, writing on sub-Saharan Africa for the Financial Times and other media, eventually becoming the FT's Africa Editor. Those writings, published here, provide rare insight into the continent's successes and set-backs since 1970s, and should be read by all.