364 Products

This post-war recipe book shows how housewives cooked up feasts on meagre rations. From basics such as Boiled Rice or Marrow Soup to Lobster au Gratin, Cold Oxtail Jelly and Figues Flambées, the recipes are presented without introduction, but with useful tips and black-line prints from Edward Bawden.

This book explores the lives and achievements of three unconventional, creative women, and the sacrifices they made for the egotistical artists they loved. Fernande Olivier (1881–1966) was Picasso’s first love and muse; Sophie Brzeska (1873–1925) lived with the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, 19 years her junior, until he was killed in the First World War; and Ida Nettleship (1877–1907) bore five children to Augustus John while living in a ménage à trois with him and his mistress.

‘Tokyo, westernized but insistently Japanese’, writes Stephen Mansfield, ‘provides the setting for a culture that is simultaneously ancient and brand new’.

Martin Garrett traces Oxford’s history from Anglo-Saxon ‘oxen-ford’ to the present, with chapters on its architecture, ‘town and gown’, and writers and religion; and goes beyond the city to surrounding places of interest including Blenheim Palace and White Horse Hill.

From the Danube riverside to the humble birthplace of the poet Attila József, Dent’s book is mainly focused on locations within Budapest and the stories they tell.

Wendy Mewes delves into the history and Celtic legacy of Brittany, then looks in turn at life and culture in its varied habitats and landscapes: the sea and coast, towns, moor and forests, rivers and islands.

Jason Wilson describes the history and spectacular landscapes of the Andes, journeying through Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Venezuela, where the Andes meet the Caribbean.

In the 1960s, over a million women worked in shops, nearly a fifth of the female workforce. The number had grown steadily from the early 19th century as industrialization had drawn people to the cities and created a demand for, and supply of, consumer goods. Originally published to accompany the BBC TV series, this book explores the life of the shopgirl from the strict propriety of Victorian department stores to the boutiques of the 1960s.

Through the story of an elegant art deco villa, the Château de l’Horizon, its owners and guests, Lovell evokes the glamorous lifestyle of the rich and famous on the French Riviera between the 1920s and 1960. Starting with the American actress and society hostess Maxine Elliott, who had the architect Barry Dierks build the house in 1932, the book describes a who’s who of high society, up to the death of Prince Aly Khan, the villa’s owner from 1947 to 1960.

How did the women of Paris survive the grim years of German occupation – and how, in the aftermath of liberation, did they come to terms with their actions? This first in-depth account of the lives of ordinary women in the occupied city charts the experiences of collaborators and resisters, actresses and prostitutes, teachers and writers, Nazis and Jews, in an atmosphere where sex became currency and life-or-death decisions were faced every day.

During the 17th century unprecedented numbers of people left England. They were on their way to new lives in the Caribbean and the North American colonies – but what were their motivations for undertaking such a perilous transatlantic voyage? Using contemporary letters, diaries and court records, Evans tells the personal stories of men and women who left their homeland in search of a fortune, for political and religious reasons or because their desperate poverty meant they had little to lose.

Nothing reveals as much about a society as its bad behaviour, and if Shakespeare’s England is remembered for courtly ceremony, it was also an age of brawling, boozing and badmouthing. Drawing on contemporary behaviour manuals, court cases and sermons, Ruth Goodman, the presenter of Victorian Farm, reveals what most upset and infuriated our forebears. Her entertaining survey dishes the dirt on ninny-hammers, wittols, stinkards and draggletails, and offers practical advice on how to handle yourself in a fight. Off-mint.

Slightly off-mint.

Many books about Venice focus on its glorious past, as if nothing had happened since the fall of the Republic in 1797. By concentrating on the century and half since its incorporation into Italy, this revealing history shows the city in a fresh light. Elegant, subtle and captivating, the book explores the splendour and squalor of the belle époque, two world wars, the dark shadow of fascism, the industrial suburbs, and the threats posed by mass tourism and global warming.

Divorced wife, scandalous mistress, prisoner during the French Revolution and reputed mother of the Prince of Wales’s child, Grace Dalrymple Elliott had little choice but to live off her wits and her beauty. This biography not only charts her adventures in London and Paris, buts sets her swashbuckling life against the social history of the Georgian era, and explores her far-flung family connections that extended to France, America, India and Africa.

The intricate artwork and vibrant mythology of the Celts make their culture a source of particular fascination, which continues to be fuelled by new archaeological discoveries. This overview of ancient Europe discusses the Celts' mysterious origins, their complex society and their vigorous survival even after conquest by the Romans. Previously published as The Ancient World of the Celts (1998).

Women have played a crucial role in the history of Scotland, yet their contribution has often been overlooked. This study reveals the harsh realities of life for witches, prostitutes, factory hands and bodysnatchers in a misogynist Presbyterian society where women had no personal possessions, no vote and few career options. The final section of the book charts the struggle for women’s rights in the 20th century, and celebrates its heroines.

Throughout the burgeoning cities of Victorian Britain, lodging houses provided shelter to those who flocked from the countryside in search of work. Crowded, insanitary and often disreputable, they aroused the horror of respectable society, and were viewed as hotbeds of crime and disease. Drawing on contemporary accounts, newspaper reports and court cases, this fascinating social history shines a light into the shadowy world of itinerant labourers, criminals, street entertainers, peddlers, prostitutes, abandoned children, and families fallen on hard times.

Life in a 19th-century kitchen could be tough and exacting, and staff below stairs needed a broader range of skills than ever before, as new and exotic ingredients were arriving from around the Empire. Using case studies and detailed research, Karen Foy examines Victorian cuisine through the seasons (with some recipes), and discusses useful tools and the sourcing of ingredients as well as introducing early cookery writers, including Catherine Dickens.

Gill Rossini traces the social history of adoption from the ‘fallen woman’ and makeshift arrangements for unwanted children and orphans of the 19th century, through the 1926 Adoption of Children Act to the shift in attitudes that followed the NHS release of the contraceptive pill in 1961. Rossini’s study uses real stories; deals with topics such as charitable institutions, baby farming, the First World War, and the 1945 illegitimate baby boom; and ends with a guide to resources for researching an adoption.

Annotated woodcuts of historical duels and methodical swordplay illustrate this classic guide to resolving a gentlemen’s disagreement in Elizabethan England. Honour, pride and shame were at the heart of most duels, and Italian fencing master Vincentio Saviolo’s prose, which has been subtly updated for the modern reader, suggests ways for both challenger and defender to navigate the labyrinth of etiquette without resort to the rapier, his favoured weapon of combat.

With tales both tragic (the 2,500 deaths from crinoline fires in 1864) and amusing (the horse that ate the stuffing from a race-goer’s bustle), Bowman takes readers on a lively journey from Roman times through to 1940s Britain, examining some of the more unusual trends that have been deemed fashionable at one time or another. From the style that was invented to mask disease, to a 1920s hairdo that ended relationships, there’s more to fashion that first meets the eye.

Founded in 1892, the Norland Institute trained educated working- and middle-class young women to be nannies, and quickly won the patronage of British and European royalty. Drawing on Norland archives and the nannies’ own accounts, this book tells their story of caring for children on the home front, behind enemy lines, and in distant parts of the British Empire, or volunteering as nurses during the First World War.

Hiding from daylight in her mouldering wedding dress, Dickens’s Miss Havisham is the classic literary image of the jilted bride. But thanks to the 18th-century law of breach of promise, many women had more attractive options. This entertaining social history uncovers more than a thousand cases in which wronged fiancées employed no-win-no-fee lawyers to gain substantial financial redress for their disappointment – and adventuresses extracted money from men ‘they cannot possibly want as husbands’.

In her prologue to this much-acclaimed study, Dressler writes of Eigg, ‘From the fierce struggles in clan times to the bleak period of famine and emigration, through to the modern-day fight to maintain a viable crofting community, the island has always been a microcosm of Highland history’. Drawing on oral history, legend and song, and written sources, Dressler’s book covers the story of the island from the coming of the Celts to life on Eigg since the 1997 community buy-out.

Milestones in aviation have always provided a good story and a good photograph, from the daredevil pioneers of powered flight and airship disasters of the early 20th century to the first flight of Concorde in 1969 and Richard Branson's contemporary space plane programme. This selection of 300 images from the Press Association archive mixes war aces, record-breakers and flying firsts to tell the story of aviation.

Murderers brought to justice, jewel thieves with a pigeon accomplice, strange wagers (seemingly a Welsh speciality) and mistranslated bilingual signs: Foster’s entertaining miscellany delves into the quirkier side of Wales and the Welsh.

Happily married, but insolvent, Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau (1785–1871) and his wife Lucie devised a plan to save their beloved estate: they would divorce and Pückler would go to England to marry an heiress. Based on the prince’s letters reporting his progress to Lucie, this book is a blow-by-blow account of Pückler’s courtships, but also a portrait of Regency England through the eyes of an intelligent, observant and, at one point, lovesick fortune hunter.