Granta books

In January 2011, as the crowds gathered to protest Mubarak's three decades of rule in Egypt, Wendell Steavenson went to Cairo to cover the story.

Most humans contain between nine and twelve pints of blood. Here Rose George, who probably contains nine pints, tells nine different stories about the liquid that sustains us, discovering what it reveals about who we are.

In an old wooden sloop, Philip Marsden plots a course north from his home in Cornwall. He is sailing for the Summer Isles, a small archipelago near the top of Scotland that holds for him a deep and personal significance.