Had Mrs Gaskell lived in Japan and a century later, she might have written this intimate portrait of four sisters of good family living in Osaka in somewhat straitened circumstances. Their e... read more
Dedicated to her friend Tirzah Garwood, this is a deliciously charming and funny mix of commonplace book and diary from the 1950s, illustrated with woodcuts not by Tirzah as intended (she ha... read more
A cultural history of ice and icy places, written between Northern Greenland and the Bodleian Library, in the Alps and at the Kinross Curling Club. NC, a poet, deftly blends memoir, literary... read more
A memoir by the artist who had a decade-long relationship with Lucian Freud; full of insights, sometimes discomfortingly so. CP has a fine, clear voice - Freud's gestures and movements as ... read more
So the shortest day came, and the year died: a poem about how humans have responded to midwinter - the fading of the light and its mighty return - for millennia, by a well known children's a... read more
Boelsums is an extraordinary visual artist and this is one of the most remarkable photographic books to have come our way. Tramping through any amount of Dutch rain, wind and weather - arduo... read more
Simms and Medd were part of the mass-release of Allied prisoners when Italy surrendered in 1943. Their escape story - and the bravery and kindness of the Italians who helped them on their ... read more
Beautifully published in India, this shows the development of Olivia's work from watercolours of contemporary life in India to the exquisite geometric works of recent years: focussed, ordere... read more
Translated from the German, this is a substantial book on the man who led Europe out of the Napoleonic chaos; the father of realpolitik, according to Kissinger.
Refracts an abusive relationship through a range of genre and fairytale tropes. A haunting work that is part-memoir and part-literary theory.
There is also a paperback edition of this boo... read more
In this magnificently madcap adventure, SR pursues rumours of old pianos into all corners of Siberia: Arctic, Altai, Kamchatka, Princess Volkonsky in Irkutsk... She writes well, has a lovely... read more
DON'T PANIC! And console yourself that as gloomy as things seem, at least the Earth hasn't been demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. Self-isolation doesn't mean you can't trav... read more
An incisive post-mortem on the state of the Victorian union, told (with a gossipy thrill) through the lives of five couples - Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh, John Ruskin and Effie Gray, Charl... read more
A history and call-to-action by a dynamic new thinker and campaigner, re-centring the importance of grassroots, structural change. Vital reading for the present (and any) cultural moment.
Despite its title, this is not a self-help book but rather a beautiful exploration of a condition that is at the heart of human life - solitude. The book is a memoir of time spent in social ... read more
A memoir from the former Editor of British Vogue, her trademark white stilettos at the ready. Shulman has been the most significant mind in British fashion for a generation.
The author is a medical doctor and a poet: this book is both a meditation on art and life and a collection of snippets about the history of medicine. Written over twenty years, it moves effo... read more
Susanna, a stylish self-made woman and arch-observer of her Viennese neighbours, has secrets of her own to hide in the years before WWI. A more grown-up and melancholic novel than Ibbotson's... read more
Twisting, sensuous lines, strong forms, rich deep colours, delicate drawing - all on a large scale: Graham's work is distinctive and beautiful, infused with influences from Central Asia and ... read more
By extraordinary chance, the author discovered an address book in the inner pocket of a vintage diary dating back to 1951. It disclosed an amazing list of luminaries from the European avant-... read more
A slim, irresistible coming-of-age story in the tradition of Bonjour Tristesse and Call Me By Your Name, in which the arrival of two American brothers wreaks havoc on an English family over ... read more
One in a second trio of reprints of the adored Eva Ibbotson. A young dancer escapes a stifling existance in Cambridge to join a corps de ballet en route to the Manaus Opera House, on the ba... read more
One in a second trio of reprints of the adored Eva Ibbotson. A struggling opera company is hired for a single performance at an Austrian castle, but their under wardrobe mistress has somethi... read more
Rutter - a literature graduate who notes the etymological link between 'text' and 'textile' - travelled the British Isles researching the social history of wool and knitting. This charming a... read more