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Marr has a gift of presenting complex issues with clarity; here he uses a diverse cast to show where we are and how we got here.
Elizabethans: How Modern Britain Was Forged
Hardback £20.00 -
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.
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Fur: A Sensitive History
Hardback £40.00 -
The author lived alongside Elizabeth and Margaret at Windsor during the war, between the ages of 16 and 22, the span of these diaries. She remained a confidante until her death in 2001.
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A zesty account of archaeological wizardry, from Champollion's decipherment of hieroglyphics in 1822 to the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon.
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Being, at Sandoe's, afficionados of the stale squashed fly, 'indulgence' is not the word that comes to mind. Niche culinary and social history.
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This epic tale of the Sassoons and the Kadoories in 1930s Shanghai is like 'Dynasty' transferred from Texas to the global stage of China-Baghdad-London in the 1930s. NB Publ... read more
Kings of Shanghai
Hardback £20.00 -
A curator of fashion at the V&A for most of her working life, CW uses her experience and sensitivity to clothes to explore how, in her own family's life, the secrets of clothes measure out t... read more
Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes
Hardback £16.99 -
A fine, close study of a city continuously inhabited for five thousand years, by an expert academic.
Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece
Hardback £25.00 -
In the early 20th century an easily overlooked square in Bloomsbury was the home, at one time or another, of the modernist poet H.D., Dorothy L Sayers, the classicist Jane Harrison, the hist... read more
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From the C7th to the present day... It transported Vikings to the Caspian and was crucial in the Battle of Stalingrad... a remarkable account of diversity and strategic significance.
The Volga: A History
Hardback £25.00 -
A panoramic account by the distinguished Harvard historian of five generations of a French provincial family originally from Angouleme, crammed with stories and archival research. ER has a d... read more
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KnD was born in Derry, on the border between the Five Counties and Eire; one parent was Catholic, the other Protestant. This is a remarkable debut that combines memoir, nature writing and th... read more
Thin Places
Hardback £14.99 -
A vibrant blend of social history and memoir: argues that this three-month period of nation-wide, wintry shutdown gave rise to unprecedented cultural renewal. Fingers crossed for 2021 and 2... read more
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The veteran commentator considers the 1960 coup that deposed Menderes, and traces the parallels that divide Erdogan's Turkey.
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Joan Leigh Fermor's biographer turns to Eddy Sackville-West, Desmon Shawe-Taylor and Eardley Knollys and the unusual salon they created at Long Crichel in Dorset, where Nancy Mitford, Benjam... read more
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The Camondos, Rothschilds, Ephrussis and others amassed superb collections which in many cases they left to the state that betrayed them.
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First vol of the unexpurgated diaries, with the second due in the autumn. (A selection was published in 1967 but there was a 60-year embargo on the full text.)
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The story of the son of a Parsi-convert vicar near Birmingham who, convicted for mutilating horses and writing threatening letters to the vicar, contacted Conan Doyle to unravel the mystery ... read more
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The story of the magazine that began in a someone's spare room 125 years ago. What - and who - made it so successful?
Glossy: The inside story of Vogue
Hardback £20.00 -
The rich and varied life of the woman who introduced smallpox vaccination into the British Isles, a friend of Swift and Pope, and who is famous for her letters, especially those sent from Tu... read more
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This magnificent book - which takes its title from a remark of the singer Josephine Baker - gives us the cultural landscape of black genius from the mid C20th to the present. We are in extr... read more
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The marvellous Attlee takes us on the journey, through space and time, of one violin, whose voice "was powerful enough to unbuckle joints". Cremona, Russia, Venice, Alpine forests... (Her la... read more
Lev’s Violin: An Italian Adventure
Hardback £20.00 -
A riveting portrait of the man who sold many of the books that drove the Renaissance, who knew where manuscripts were, arranged for copies to be made and trod carefully among rival ruling fa... read more
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The story of diplomats like Jan Zwartendijk, the Dutch consul in Lithuania, who enabled thousands of Jews to escape the Holocaust.
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An account of farming in Britain today - from sheep farming to polytunnels. Bella Bathurst's previous subjects have included the Lighthouse Stevensons, so she gets our vote.
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Alex Renton is a journalist and writer: he uncovers his own family's slave-owning past and uses this as a means of approaching the growing debate about such legacies and contemporary consequ... read more
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The follow-up to Ruth Scurr's dazzling, inspired book about John Aubrey is a glorious portrait of Napoleon through his love of nature and gardens.
Napoleon: A Life in Gardens and Shadows
Hardback £30.00 -
In praise of curiosity: the author's investigations began when she found herself living next door to its two-acre remnant. Part biography, part memoir, part history of science, this is as in... read more
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Looks at the history of meritocracy, and at its recent corruption. Rather than abandon it, he argues in favour of a renewed social mobility.
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C20th experimental and idealistic collectives, including Santiniketan in Delhi, England's Dartington, Germany's Bruderhof. Their leaders were charismatics too - Tagore, Gurdjieff, et al - ... read more
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A welcome reissue of this 1948 classic in the gorgeous Little Toller Nature Classics series. A careful survey of buildings associated with traditional farms, it is also fascinating social hi... read more
An English Farmhouse
Paperback £15.00 -
A biography of the man so vividly presented in Robert Edric's 2008 novel 'In Zodiac Light': the poet and composer who, following his experiences as a soldier in WW1, was confined to an asylu... read more
Dweller in Shadows: A Life of Ivor Gurney
Hardback £30.00 -
How the rise of antiquarian interests between the Fall of the Bastille and the Great Exhibition promoted the rediscovery of national history in Britain, France and Germany. From the author o... read more
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Re-issue of her classic 1976 memoir. Arriving in Britain in 1952 to study child development at the University of London, Gilroy was at first denied teaching positions but eventually became t... read more