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CD and DVD Packaging

Print + Production Finishes for CD + DVD Packaging

£6.50

Print and Production Finishes for CD and DVD Packaging delves into the physical packaging for CDs and DVDs, exploring formats, bindings, casings, materials, textures and finishes. From movie to music packaging, the book explores the creative inspiration behind the package, including artwork, typography, materials, printing techniques and formats. It also goes into detail about practical considerations and restrictions, such as record company stipulations and the inclusion of essential materials and budgets.

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Print and Production Finishes for Packaging

Print and Production Finishes for Packaging

£9.50

ByEdward Denison

With informative text and specially commissioned full-colour photos, Print and Production Finishes for Packaging shows, at a glance, the different effects that can be created, and the key print and production techniques used to achieve them. Work across all budgets and production/print runs is featured, revealing the skills and techniques that grab the target audience’s attention and sell. For print and production finishing ideas on everything from boxes, cartons, bottles, tubes, cans, packs, tubs, jars, multi-packs, clamshells, blister packs, CDs or DVDs, gift packs, and a variety of other more unusual or innovative formats, Print and Production Finishes for Packaging is an indispensable ideas sourcebook and practical guide to finishes, surface graphics, detailing, and materials that help make packaging stand out from the crowd including foil blocking, pigment blocking, thermography, varnishing, laminating, embossing, debossing, die-cutting and laser-cutting; specialist inks, including metallics and fluorescents; different papers stocks and other materials; lenticular printing, and so on. By analysing the best in the business, this book gives readers a thorough understanding of materials, and of the print and production finishes that can be applied to any job.

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Ravilious & co

Ravilious & Co: The Pattern of Friendship

£20.00

The acclaimed biography detailing the lives of the British inter-war artists and designers centred on Ravilious – an enthralling narrative of creative achievement, joy and tragedy.

In recent years Eric Ravilious has become recognized as one of the most important British artists of the 20th century, whose watercolours and wood engravings capture an essential sense of place and the spirit of mid-century England. What is less appreciated is that he did not work in isolation, but within a much wider network of artists, friends and lovers influenced by Paul Nash’s teaching at the Royal College of Art – Edward Bawden, Barnett Freedman, Enid Marx, Tirzah Garwood, Percy Horton, Peggy Angus and Helen Binyon among them. The Ravilious group bridged the gap between fine art and design, and the gentle, locally rooted but spritely character of their work came to be seen as the epitome of contemporary British values.

Eighty years after Ravilious’s untimely death, Andy Friend tells the story of this group of artists from their student days through to the Second World War. Ravilious & Co. explores how they influenced each other and how a shared experience animated their work, revealing the significance in this pattern of friendship of women artists, whose place within the history of British art has often been neglected. Generously illustrated and drawing on extensive research, and a wealth of newly discovered material, Ravilious & Co. is an enthralling narrative of creative achievement, joy and tragedy.

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Richard Smith

Richard Smith: Artworks 1956-2016

£60.00

ByMartin Harrison

The first monograph on Richard Smith, a key figure in the development of British art.Richard Smith (1931-2016) was one of the most original painters of his generation, and one of the most underrated. As Barbara Rose said of Smith’s major Tate Gallery retrospective in 1975, he was ‘at once in and out of touch with the currents of the mainstream … au courant and aloof at the same time.’ That he latterly slipped under the radar to some extent is partly explained by his detachment from the mainstream as well as by his frequent switching of studios between England and the USA, although this helped charge his creative batteries. He is the only artist of his stature who has not been represented by a monograph, which the dazzling presentation of images in Richard Smith: Artworks now fulfils. It has been produced with the generous collaboration of the Richard Smith Foundation. Richard Smith: Artworks traces Smith’s entire career, from the breakthrough lyrical abstraction of the early Pop-inflected paintings, through the radical shaped canvases and three-dimensional works that he produced in the 1960s, to the ‘Kite’ works beginning in 1972 and, eventually, his return to the flat canvas. As a Senior Curator at Tate, Dr Chris Stephens knew Smith well, and he contributes a wide-ranging introduction to Smith’s art and life. Prof David Alan Mellor investigates and explains the Anglo-American cultural contexts that drove Smith’s art, while Alex Massouras’s two themed essays, ‘Young and British’ and ‘From Motion Pictures to Flight’, explore Smith’s originality from fresh perspectives. The book is completed with an Afterword by its editor, Martin Harrison.

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Robin Darwin

Robin Darwin: Visionary Educator and Painter

£30.00

ByHenrietta Goodden

Sir Robert Vere (‘Robin’) Darwin, great-grandson of Charles Darwin, was a British artist of note and the highly influential Rector of the Royal College of Art from 1948 until 1971. His story, beginning in 1910, takes in life as an art student and then a teacher, his wartime involvement in camouflage, British postwar reconstruction and the Festival of Britain 1951. His influence in shaping British arts education for the future is uncontested (the list of RCA graduates from 1950-1980 is particularly impressive, including not only fine artists (David Hockney, Peter Blake) but also leaders in industrial design such as James Dyson.

The current status of the Royal College of Art is largely the result of one man, a formidable force with the drive, vision and ability to inspire huge loyalty and first-class creative thinking in others. The list of RCA professors, tutors and visiting lecturers recruited by Darwin reads like a rollcall of the best in post-war British design and art, and their influence continues to inspire students to this day.

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Rock On

Rock On

£5.90

How would you like a six-figure marketing job at the hallowed record label that signed everyone who counts in the last fifty years of pop music? Before you answer, we’ll throw in a plush office, a hip assistant and a bottomless expense account.

When Dan Kennedy is hired by a major label he thinks he has been handed a pass to the secret kingdom of rock and roll. In reality, he has walked into an episode of The Office. Whether directing a gangsta rapper’s video or battling his better judgement to create a campaign celebrating twenty-five years of Phil Collins’ love songs, he’s in way over his head. And from the looks of those around the boardroom, he’s not alone.

Cameos by aging pop stars, dinosaur music-biz kingpins, hip-hop thugs, Iggy Pop and others make up the cast of this brilliant power ballad to rock and roll, office life and all the wage slaves who’ve done their damndest to hide from Human Resources when the axe falls.

If you have ever bought a record, worked in an office, tried to get into a creative industry or suspected that some things are not all they’re cracked up to be, Rock On will make you laugh more than you thought possible.

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Shout

Shout! The True Story of the Beatles

£6.50

ByPhilip Norman

The first and best Beatles biography, Norman had close working relationships with each of the Fab Four, having interviewed them many times since 1965 and observed first hand the events that led to the split during 1969-70. The resulting book contained unique insights into the rise of the Beatles, their final years, the chaos of Apple and the collapse of hippy idealism.

Now fully updated, and written with all of Norman’s trademark verve and skill, this is an essential book for anyone with an interest in pop music, the Sixties and the pleasures and perils of god-like fame.

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Side by Side

Side by Side

£7.50

ByJan Greenberg, Various

In this innovative book of poetry from the editor of “Heart to Heart”, forty poems from around the world speak about specific works of art. Included on every spread is the poem in its original language, an English translation and the piece of art that the poem is about. Readers will look at art and poetry in a new way in this multi-cultural selection! It includes a biography (brief) of each author, translator and artist.

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Smile Please

Smile Please!

£5.00

ByMadeleine Gentle

This is a fascinating and nostalgic collection of pictures taken by a Brighton seaside photographer from the late 1940s to the present day. They capture the spirit of the daytripper eras of the 1950s and 1960s; show the stars of the stage and screen who appeared at the Palace Pier Theatre, the Hippodrome and the Theatre Royal, as well as musicians, pop stars, tv personalities and politicians. there are photos recalling colourful, annual special events, such as the London to Brighton Veteran Run and others illustrating the changing face of the city.

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Somebody

£10.00

ByStefan Kanfer

Marlon Brando will never cease to fascinate us: for his triumphs as an actor (On the Waterfront, The Godfather, Last Tango in Paris), as well as his disasters; for the power of the screen portrayals he gave, and for his turbulent, tumultuous personal life.

Seamlessly intertwining the man and the work, Kanfer takes us through Brando’s troubled childhood, to his arrival in New York in the 1940s, where he studied with the legendary Stella Adler, and at the age of twenty-three became the toast of Broadway in A Streetcar Named Desire. Kanfer expertly examines each of Brando’s films – from The Men in 1950 to The Score in 2001 – making clear the evolution of Brando’s singular genius, while also shedding light on the cultural evolution of Hollywood itself. And he brings into focus Brando’s self-destructiveness, his lifelong dissembling, his deeply ambivalent feelings towards his chosen vocation, and the tragedies that shadowed his final years. This is a never-before-seen portrait of one of the most extraordinary talents of the twentieth century.

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Something of His Art

Something of His Art

£10.00

ByHoratio Clare

In the depths of winter in 1705 the young Johann Sebastian Bach, then unknown as a composer and earning a modest living as a teacher and organist, set off on a long journey by foot to Lübeck to visit the composer Dieterich Buxterhude, a distance of more than 250 miles. This journey and its destination were a pivotal point in the life of arguably the greatest composer the world has yet seen. Lübeck was Bach’s moment, when a young teacher with a reputation for intolerance of his pupils’ failings began his journey to become the master of the Baroque.

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Spirit of Place

Spirit of Place

£12.99

When we look at the landscape, what do we see? Do we experience the view over a valley or dappled sunlight on a path in the same way as those who were there before us? We have altered the countryside in innumerable ways over the last thousand years, and never more so than in the last hundred. How are these changes reflected in – and affected by – art and literature?

Spirit of Place offers a panoramic view of the British landscape as seen through the eyes of writers and artists from Bede and the Gawain-poet to Gainsborough, Austen, W. G. Sebald and Barbara Hepworth. Shaped by these distinctive voices and evocative imagery, Susan Owens describes how the British landscape has been framed, reimagined and reshaped by each generation. Each account or work of art, whether illuminated in a manuscript, jotted down in a journal or constructed from sticks and stones, holds up a mirror to its maker and their world.

With 80 illustrations

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Street Art

£7.99

From Banksy to Blek le Rat, JR to Futura, the street art phenomenon is sweeping the globe. With people turning up in their thousands to view the first street art exhibition at the Tate Modern in 2008, and with celebrity endorsements from the likes of Brad Pitt to Damon Albarn, street art has captured the imaginations of art-lovers everywhere. In this exciting and fresh follow-up to the highly successful Graffiti Planet and Graffiti Planet 2, expert KET brings together another 100 awe-inspiring and extraordinary examples of urban art from around the world. Street Art is a great introduction and the perfect companion for anyone excited by this imaginative and highly prevalent art form.

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Ta-ra-ra

Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay

£7.50

BySimon Napier-Bell

Let legendary rock manager Simon Napier-Bell take you inside the (dodgy) world of popular music – not just a creative industry, but a business that has made people rich beyond their wildest dreams.

He balances seductive anecdotes – pulling back the curtain on the gritty and absurd side of the industry – with an insightful exploration of the relationship between creativity and money.

This book describes the evolution of the industry from 1713 – the year parliament granted writers ownership over what they wrote – to today, when a global, 100 billion pound industry is controlled by just three major players: Sony, Universal and Warner. Inside you will uncover some little-known facts about the industry.

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Talking to Women

Talking To Women

£10.99

In 1964, Nell Dunn spoke to nine of her friends over a bottle of wine about sex, work, money, babies, freedom and love. The novelist Ann Quin says she appears to be a ‘singular girl, singular and single’ but questions the use she makes of her freedom. The Pop artist Pauline Boty reveals she married ‘the first man I could talk very freely to’ ten days after meeting him. Kathy Collier, who worked with Dunn in a Battersea sweet factory, talks about what it takes to ‘get out’ of a life that isn’t fulfilling. Edna O’Brien tells us about the time she inadvertently stole a brown georgette scarf and the lesson she took from it: ‘Morality is not the same thing as abstinence.’ After more than fifty years out of print, Talking to Women is still as sparkling, honest, profound, funny and wise as when it was first published.

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Taste

Taste: The No.1 Sunday Times Bestseller

£9.99

ByStanley Tucci

THE NO.1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

A Guardian book of the year
A Times book of the year
A Daily Mail book of the year

From award-winning actor and food obsessive Stanley Tucci comes an intimate and charming memoir of life in and out of the kitchen. For Stanley and foodie fans, this is the perfect, irresistible gift.

‘It’s impossible to read this without becoming ravenous!’ — Nigella Lawson

‘It is as infectious as it is delicious, as funny as it is insightful. The only reason to put this book down, is to go cook and eat from it’ — Heston Blumenthal

From award-winning actor and food obsessive Stanley Tucci comes an intimate and charming memoir of life in and out of the kitchen.

Before Stanley Tucci became a household name with The Devil Wears Prada , The Hunger Games , and the perfect Negroni, he grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night around the table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbookand The Tucci Table , and now he takes us beyond the recipes and into the stories behind them.

Taste is a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with anecdotes about growing up in Westchester, New York, preparing for and filming the foodie films Big Nightand Julie & Julia , falling in love over dinner, and teaming up with his wife to create conversation-starting meals for their children. Each morsel of this gastronomic journey through good times and bad, five-star meals and burnt dishes, is as heartfelt and delicious as the last.

Written with Stanley’s signature wry humour and nostalgia, Taste is a heartwarming read that will be irresistible for anyone who knows the power of a home-cooked meal.

‘ The man, the myth, The Devil Wears Prada legend Stanley Tucci has blessed our hungry souls with a food memoir [… in which] he divulges some of his most treasured memories and stories behind favourite recipes – prepare to feel bereaved when it’s over’ – – Evening Standard

‘ Superb … Taste enriches the reader and establishes Tucci as one of the wisest and most generous personalities of our time’ – – Daily Mail

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Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life

£30.00

ByJonathan Bate

“Gripping and at times ineffably sad, this book would be poetic even without the poetry. It will be the standard biography of Hughes for a long time to come” -Sunday Times

“Captures the great poet in all his wild complexity. Powerful and clarifying, richly layered and compelling” -Melvyn Bragg, Observer

Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. He is one of Britain s most important poets, a poet of claws and cages: Jaguar, Hawk and Crow. Event and animal are turned to myth in his work. Yet he is also a poet of deep tenderness, of restorative memory steeped in the English literary tradition. A poet of motion and force, of rivers, light and redemption, of beasts in brooding landscapes.

Ted Hughes left behind him a more complete archive of notes and journals than any other major poet, including thousands of pages of drafts, unpublished poems and memorandum books that make up an almost complete record of Hughes s inner life, preserved by him for posterity.

Renowned scholar Sir Jonathan Bate has spent five years in his archives, unearthing a wealth of new material. Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, his book offers for the first time the full story of Ted Hughes’s life as it was lived, remembered and reshaped in his art. It is a book that honours, though not uncritically, Ted Hughes s poetry and the art of life-writing, approached by his biographer with an honesty answerable to Hughes s own.

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art of the illustrated book

The Art of the Illustrated Book (Victoria and Albert Museum)

£45.00

ByJulius Bryant

The story of the illustrated book from the earliest printed books to the present day, told through the collections of the V&A’s National Art Library.

Throughout history, images have been used to reflect the meaning of words and to enhance our understanding of texts. With the invention of mechanized printing in Germany in the 15th century, illustrated books were no longer the preserve of the elite and became a source of knowledge, instruction and pleasure for a wider audience.

Traditional accounts of the illustrated book survey its history in terms of technological advances, from illumination to hand-drawn illustrations and photography. This study offers a new approach, grouping books by subject – from natural history and travel to art, architecture and fashion. Gathered here are some of the most influential and compelling examples of the illustrated book, all chosen from the collections of the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Each chapter starts with a general introduction to the subject, followed by key examples accompanied by narrative captions. The commentaries range beyond the illustrations to consider the whole book, the design, typeface, binding, inks and papers. Many of the books are not on display to the public and have been specially photographed for this volume. Most examples have been chosen for their significance, being innovative and beautiful. But humble books, often overlooked in histories, have also been selected, when particularly effective in their field, or simply memorable.

From beautiful printed Psalters and Books of Hours, to striking natural history books such as Audubon’s Birds of America , La Fontaine’s Fables illustrated by Marc Chagall, Serlio’s treatise on architecture and Owen Jones’s Grammar of Ornament , this book gives a fascinating overview of some of the finest illustrated books ever created. In the face of recent pronouncements about the death of the printed book, this volume demonstrates the enduring appeal of the illustrated book.

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The Artist’s Studio: A Cultural History

£30.00

An exciting narrative and visual history of the artist’s studio, examining the myth and reality of the creative space from early times to today.

The artist’s workplace has always been an imaginary as well as an actual location, an idealized utopia as well as the domain of dirty, back-breaking work. Written descriptions, paintings, prints and even photographs of the artist’s atelier distort as much as they document. This pioneering cultural history charts the myth and reality of the creative space from Ancient Greece to the present day.

Tracing a history that extends far beyond the bohemian, romantic and renaissance cults of the artist, each chapter focuses on key developments of the studio space as seen in a variety of familiar and unfamiliar images. Mythical and divine makers, and some amateurs, are included, and so too are craftspeople – workers in metal and wood, potters, illuminators, weavers, embroiderers and architects to name a few. Each carefully chosen example is placed within a cultural and political context, with the aim of correcting the historical imbalance that has long overlooked the many artisans who collaborated with artists. Leading authority James Hall also extends the discussion to the artist’s museum and the artist’s house, as well plein air painting and the development of portable studios.

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Beed Club

The Beef Club

£11.50

Bring the steakhouse to your very own kitchen with Beef Club. This is the book for those who love hearty meals full of flavour. Impress your guests with classic meatballs served with aubergine and tomato sauce; take your burgers to the next level with homemade relishes and delicious topping suggestions; and master the art of the perfect steak. Alongside traditional meat favourites are inspired seafood recipes and vegetable and side dishes such as pumpkin and mozzarella salad and steamed garlic spinach. The Brunch chapter will make sure your Saturday morning starts the right way. Indulge in honey and butter pancakes, pork sandwiches or Eggs Benedict. Not forgetting your sweet tooth, Beef Club offers delectable desserts such as profiteroles and strawberry tarts, and cocktails to die for. This is a cutting-edge compendium of recipes for those who love good food.

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The Camping Cookbook

The Camping Cookbook

£8.00

ByAndrea Lo Vetere, Sara Mutande

No matter how far off the beaten track your wanderlust takes you, these foolproof, field-tested recipes will set you on your way, keep you on your feet, and reward all your efforts when you get back to camp.

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The Comfort Book

The Comfort Book

£16.99

Reflections on hope, survival and the messy miracle of being alive

It is a strange paradox, that many of the clearest, most comforting life lessons are learned while we are at our lowest. But then we never think about food more than when we are hungry and we never think about life rafts more than when we are thrown overboard.

The Comfort Book is a collection of consolations learned in hard times and suggestions for making the bad days better. Drawing on maxims, memoir and the inspirational lives of others, these meditations celebrate the ever-changing wonder of living. This is for when we need the wisdom of a friend or a reminder we can always nurture inner strength and hope, even in our busy world.

A book of timeless comfort for modern minds.

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The Dark Side of the Moon

The Dark Side of the Moon

£5.00

The Dark Side of the Moon is one of rock’s most fully realised and elegant concept albums, and a stunning exploration of the madness, anxiety and alienation rooted in the band’s history – and particularly in the tragic tale of their one-time leader Syd Barrett. Drawing on interviews with bass guitarist and chief songwriter Roger Waters, guitarist Dave Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason, and the album’s supporting cast, The Dark Side of the Moon is a must-have for those who want to know more about one of the most compelling, commercially successful and mysterious albums ever made.

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The Dark Stuff

The Dark Stuff

£6.99

A new edition as part of the Faber Greatest Hits – books that have taken writing about music in new and exciting directions for the twenty-first century.

In The Dark Stuff Nick Kent profiles twenty-two of the most gifted and self-destructive talents in rock history. From Brian Wilson to Syd Barrett, the Rolling Stones to Neil Young, Iggy Pop to Lou Reed, he offers intimate portraits that are unimaginable in the world of today’s market driven music business.

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The Deep Purple Family 1

The Deep Purple Family: Vol 1

£14.99

ByMartin Popoff

Renowned rock author Martin Popoff’s exhaustive and detailed timeline of Deep Purple milestones – often to the day – looks at the band’s influences, cultural milieu, tours, recording sessions, charts, singles, certification news, break-ups, personal stuff, trivia, mixed with lots of artist quotes to add to the entries, turning the book into a quasi-oral history but loaded with factual matter.But this book is not just about Deep Purple but the whole family of bands that surrounds it. Weaved in and out of the story are the dastardly diaries of Rainbow, Whitesnake, Ian Gillan Band, Gillan, Paice Ashton Lord, all the solo projects, guest slots, even Captain Beyond, Warhorse, Jerusalem, Jesus Christ Superstar, Bedlam, Elf, Episode Six, The Outlaws, and Trapeze.The book also touches on a whole host of other artists including the likes of Uriah Heep, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Nazareth, Moxy, Silverhead, Hard Stuff, Lord Sutch, Warpig, Vanilla Fudge, Brian Auger, Judas Priest, James Gang, Angel and Legs Diamond – but always with contextual explanation that make this book such a fascinating read and an absolute smorgasbord of facts surrounding one of the greatest rock bands’ of all time.

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The Distance Between Us

The Distance Between Us

£12.99

ByRenato Cisneros

This is a son’s search for his father. A familiar theme, but one that, across the generations, can occasionally unearth something rather powerful. In The Distance Between Us that son is Renato Cisneros, a talented writer and a well-known journalist, and that father is the former Army General Luis Federico ‘El Gaucho’ Cisneros, one of the most important figures in the recent history of Peru.

Renato Cisneros digs into his own family history to understand and demystify the figure of ‘El Gaucho’: the controversial Secretary during the regime of Francisco Morales Bermúdez and, shortly after, the country’s Minister of War. In this book, the intimate perspective and the passage of time reveal the unknown truths about a man, a family and an entire country.

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The Empire Strikes Back

The Empire Strikes Back

£20.00

BySaatchi Gallery

Indian art has gone through a boom period in parallel with the extraordinary economic rise of the subcontinent from an agrarian state to a high tech axis of the new global economy. With new money came a new gallery system. With bigger spaces came bigger art and the sheer scale of ambition led to a break into the international market, which is always keen to find a new spectacular presence in the art world. The new art has also been created against a background of communal tension and violence. The exploration of identity, a common enterprise for artists internationally, is all the more challenging in the context of India under transformation. Above all Indian artists are faced with the legacy of their history and the ghosts of the Raj.

INTRODUCTION BY ZEHRA JUMABHOY

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The Hardest Climb

The Hardest Climb

£16.00

ByAlistair Sutcliffe

After becoming the first man to conquer the highest peak on each of the seven continents at the first attempt, Alistair’s hardest climb was surviving a brain haemorrhage. Foreword by Sir Chris Bonington. The book is fascinating and inspiring, and contains some stunning photographs from Dr. Sutcliffe’s climbing expeditions. His wife Clare also makes personal contributions at the end of each chapter.

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hidden language of symols

The Hidden Language of Symbols

£30.00

ByMatthew Wilson

A stimulating narrative and reference resource that guides the reader through the most significant symbols from worldwide art history.

Why do we reach for the red rose on Valentine’s day? Where did the owl gain its reputation for wisdom? Why should you never trust a fox? In this visual tour through art history, Matthew Wilson pieces together a global visual language enshrined in art: the language of symbols.

Symbols exert a strong hold in the image-saturated 21st century, and have done so for thousands of years. From national emblems to corporate logos and emojis, our day-to-day lives abound with icons with roots in the distant past. Expert art historian Matthew Wilson traces the often surprising trajectories that symbols have taken through history, from their original purposes to their modern meanings, identifying the common themes and ideas that link seemingly disparate cultures. Thus we meet the falcon as a symbol of authority from the ancient Egyptian pharaohs to the medieval aristocracy; the dog as stalwart companion from the classical era to the Renaissance; and the mythical phoenix as a symbol of female power connecting a queen in England with a goddess in China. We also see moments of radical reinterpretation and change: the transformation of the swastika from an auspicious symbol of hope to one of hate.

From Palaeolithic cave paintings to contemporary installations, Wilson deftly guides us through this world of symbols, showcasing their enduring ability to express power, hope, fear and faith, and to create and communicate identities, uniting – or dividing – the people that made them.

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western art

The History of Western Art

£10.99

ByJanetta Rebold Benton

A concise, reader-friendly illustrated survey of Western art and architecture from prehistory to the present day.

Acknowledging how architecture, painting, sculpture and the decorative arts reflect the culture and society of their time, this latest addition to the Art Essentials series invites the reader to experience and appreciate the entirety of Western art from prehistory to today.

Focusing on the ‘history’ in art history, each of the twelve chapters opens with a question to ponder, followed by a summary of the major historical developments of the period, touching on social structure, political organization, migration, race, religious beliefs, scientific advances and customs. An exploration of these themes in the visual arts reveals how architecture, sculpture and painting simultaneously shape, reflect, and document the culture of the time and place they were created. A secondary focus explores the constantly evolving aesthetic preferences that swing between naturalism and abstraction, with each era and style either rebelling against the previous or seeking to improve it. Antecedents and outside influences are also discussed.

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The House of Dudley

The House of Dudley

£25.00

Marriage, murder, deadly rumour, riot and rebellion – here, for the first time, is the story of England’s Borgias, a noble house competing for proximity to the throne through cunning, adultery and sheer audacity. In a narrative as rigorous and thought-provoking as it is page-turning, Joanne Paul traces the history of an utterly compelling family – the drama and tragedy of the House of Dudley.

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The Importance of Being Interested

The Importance of Being Interested

£17.99

SIGNED COPIES AVAILABLE

A delightful and scintillating hymn to science.’ Carlo Rovelli

Comedian Robin Ince quickly abandoned science at school, bored by a fog of dull lessons and intimidated by the barrage of equations. But, twenty years later, he fell in love and he now presents one of the world’s most popular science podcasts. Every year he meets hundreds of the world’s greatest thinkers.

In this erudite and witty book, Robin reveals why scientific wonder isn’t just for the professionals. Filled with interviews featuring astronauts, comedians, teachers, quantum physicists, neuroscientists and more – as well as charting Robin’s own journey with science – The Importance of Being Interested explores why many wrongly think of the discipline as distant and difficult. From the glorious appeal of the stars above to why scientific curiosity can encourage much needed intellectual humility, this optimistic and profound book will leave you filled with a thirst for intellectual adventure.

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