"I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb - and I'm not blonde either." Singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, actress, author, business... read more
The author of 'On Food and Cooking' has spent a decade thinking about the science behind smells. The result is a work of great scientific and historical scholarship, as well as being essent... read more
Artemisia Gentileschi's father was a friend of Caravaggio, and she his greatest successor. This is the first catalogue dedicated entirely to Gentileschi's astonishing work.
A well-illustrated and erudite monograph on the last of the libertine painters of the ancient regime, who fell off the swing of favour in his own lifetime.
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
In the C13th, the largest library in Europe contained fewer than 2000 books. Baghdad alone contained five libraries with between 200,000 and a million books.
As an account of concepts of freedom, this book might perhaps be placed in a History or Philosophy section. We hope you will take its inclusion under Current Affairs as a gesture of hope!
There have been many books on Plath, but this is in fact the first full biography. Sensitive and perceptive, it navigates both the controversies and poetry with skill.
The 1970s NME critic got bored with pop and discovered that the most radical music of all was classical. This is a personal and entertainingly idiosyncratic history of music.
Well, obviously it helps if you wear an enormous straw hat, a faded apron and just let it into your beautiful home... Thirty gardens from around the world that exemplify the Kinfolk aesthet... read more
Explores the world and campaigns of the late-medieval imperialists, the Christian adventurers whose mind-sets are as remote to us today as were those of the Aztecs and Incas to them.
Greek and Roman patrons, robber-baron philanthropists, welfare socialists, celebrity activists...: motives and results are explored through historical analysis and numerous interviews.
A good new book on the Bloomsbury group and its visual aesthetic - the Omega Workshops and photography as well as their artistic contributions as painters, models, collectors and critics; in... read more
Another wonderful illustrated volume of tangential history from Yale (see the book on guitars, below, in 'Music'). This is an exploration of how the rose has inspired fashion over hundreds o... read more
Published by Yale, this is a fascinating and original exploration of the influence of the newly popular guitar on the Romantics and on culture in the early C19th.
A massive work tracing Wagner's immense influence, not only through his adoption by the Nazis but through a gallery of others, from Baudelaire and Woolf to Philip K Dick and 'Apocalypse Now'... read more
A remarkable odyssey around the edges of that vast country - through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finl... read more
Six centuries of plant classification and description are a unique source of data for us now. By the director of the Steere Herbarium in the New York Botanical Garden - the second largest he... read more
This book was in our summer catalogue but we include it (exceptionally) in the present one too because it is outstanding. As in her 'Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire' (200... read more
This illustrated biography looks at Nash's friendships and relationships, especially with his remarkable wife, Christine Kuhlenthal. A rounded and personal biography that complements Lambirt... read more