We teamed up once again with Drake & Morgan – this time to celebrate The City of London as part of a great event!
The Book Fairies of London have been celebrating City Giving Day with Drake & Morgan! We have been hiding some RED books to match the theme. Every year City Giving Day celebrates the value of the City to society and shows how businesses can make a difference, as part of their bid to create a fair society.
Here are some of the books that were hidden!
Home Bar by Andy Clarke
In a corner of every home is an area where bottles lurk. For some, it’s a plinth of joy where beautifully polished spirits stand proud. For others, it’s a dark, mysterious nook where bottles are hidden from view under a layer of dust. In Home Bar, drink expert Andy Clarke shows that even the most unloved bottle of booze can be a treasure chest full of liquid promise, waiting to be unlocked.
Andy shares over 60 recipes, from classic cocktails to his own creations, batch ideas for parties, seasonal tipples and even some tasty snacks. He also gives advice on essential bar tools, home-made syrup recipes, and genius suggestions which will allow you to produce next-level drinks, even if you think you don’t have the kit!
Whether it’s a Friday night drink for two, or a weekend party for twenty, this book is guaranteed to transform you into an unstoppable cocktail legend.
Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit
“Outside my work the thing I care most about is gardening”
Roses, pleasure and politics: a fresh take on Orwell as an avid gardener, whose political writing was grounded in his passion for the natural world.
Inspired by her encounter with the surviving roses that Orwell is said to have planted in his cottage in Hertfordshire, Rebecca Solnit explores how his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist, and the intertwined politics of nature and power.
Following his journey from the coal mines of England to taking up arms in the Spanish Civil War; from his prescient critique of Stalin to his analysis of the relationship between lies and authoritarianism, Solnit finds a more hopeful Orwell, whose love of nature pulses through his work and actions. And in her dialogue with the author, she makes fascinating forays into colonial legacies in the flower garden, discovers photographer Tina Modotti’s roses, reveals Stalin’s obsession with growing lemons in impossibly cold conditions, and exposes the brutal rose industry in Colombia.
A fresh reading of a towering figure of the 20th century which finds solace and solutions for the political and environmental challenges we face today, Orwell’s Roses is a remarkable reflection on pleasure, beauty, and joy as acts of resistance.
Devils by Fyodor Dostoevsky
“He who teaches that all are good, will end the world.”
In 1869 a young Russian was strangled, shot through the head and thrown into a pond. His crime? A wish to leave small group of violent revolutionaries, from which he had become alienated. Dostoevsky takes this real-life catastrophe as the subject and culmination of Devils, a title that refers the young radicals themselves and also to the materialistic ideas that possessed the minds of many thinking people Russian society at the time.
The satirical portraits of the revolutionaries, with their naivety, ludicrous single-mindedness and
readiness for murder and destruction, might seem exaggerated – until we consider their all-too-recognisable descendants in the real world ever since. The key figure in the novel, however, is beyond politics. Nikolay Stavrogin, another product of rationalism run wild, exercises his charisma with ruthless authority and total amorality. His unhappiness is accounted for when he confesses to a ghastly sexual crime – in a chapter long suppressed by the censor. This prophetic account of modern morals and politics, with its fifty-odd characters, amazing events and challenging ideas, is seen by some critics as Dostoevsky’s masterpiece.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
“There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger.”
In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a huge cyclone transports the orphan Dorothy and her little dog Toto from Kansas to the Land of Oz, and she fears that she will never see Aunt Em and Uncle Henry ever again. But she meets the Munchkins, and they tell her to follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City where the Wonderful Wizard of Oz will grant any wish. On the way, she meets the brainless Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion. The four friends set off to seek their heart’s desires, and in a series of action packed adventures they encounter a deadly poppy field, fierce animals, flying monkeys, a wicked witch, a good witch, and the Mighty Oz himself.
This edition also includes Glinda of Oz, the last of the original ‘Oz’ books, Dorothy and Princess Ozma seek the help of Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, when they find themselves in peril on the Magic Isle of the Skeezers.
About Drake & Morgan restaurants and bars
A whopping THIRTEEN restaurants and bars in the Drake & Morgan restaurant family are in the City of London. Find your local one here!
Would you like to be a book fairy?
You are MORE than welcome to join us! If you have a pile of books you’d like to hide, just grab some official book fairy stickers and start hiding books in your local neighbourhood or on your travels…
