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Among the highlights of the 1950s: Audrey Hepburn, dressed as a tulip, dances in Sauce Piquant, 500 Morris Minors on London dockside awaiting shipment to Canada, Queen Elizabeth II is crowned, CND protestors march to Aldermaston and Ernest Marples opens the M1.

The years between 1 January 1940 and 31 December 1949 saw the country on the brink of disaster, then celebrating victory in the Second World War and beginning years of austerity – but with welcome diversions: a royal wedding, the 1948 Olympics at Wembley and television.

This anthology presents a highly readable selection of extracts from a wide range of female sources, usefully grouped by theme. Topics naturally include motherhood, marriage and domestic life, but here is also commentary on religion, politics, work and education by contributors from all walks of life. These are the authentic voices of British women's experience (and the occasional man's), from the close of the 18th century to the outbreak of the First World War. No jacket.

Jim Endersby explores ‘the curious and unexpected variety of significances that people have ascribed to orchids’ in western cultures, from Theophrastus’ herbals in ancient Greece to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, deadly science-fiction species and ongoing research into Spider Orchids on the South Downs. The book looks at our relationship with orchids in terms of science, sex and death, and examines the theme of empire, describing how European imperial expansion and wealth stimulated the search for ever rarer orchids.

Drawn from the Press Association’s archives, the photographs in this collection start with a penny-farthing race in 1932 and end with a jitterbug competition in 1939 – but in between are years of mass unemployment, fascists in London, the abdication crisis and the declaration of war.

For Bath, 1909 became a truly memorable year when a great pageant with a cast of thousands was held to attract tourists to the city. Generously illustrated with old photographs, this book describes Bath’s ‘pageantitis’ and other aspects of life in the city in 1909.

How did a commodity that was once the prized monopoly of kings become an essential ingredient of everyday life and then the cause of a global health epidemic? James Walvin traces the history of how the demand for sweetness has been met, from early Mediterranean sugar plantations, to the immense human and environmental cost of the Caribbean plantations and the slave system, the industries that followed, and the dawning awareness of the obesity problem.

Battling unscrupulous dealers, blockades and sinking ships, Minister for Food Lord Woolton was tasked with feeding the nation during the Second World War. Despite Churchill’s misgivings, Woolton – a working-class boy turned business tycoon – rose to the challenge, making a huge contribution to the war effort and improving the health of the nation to boot. Award-winning food writer William Sitwell draws on personal letters and diaries to reveal this previously untold story.

This collection of traditional recipes from the Costa d’Argento of southern Tuscany includes the author's favourite, Acquacotta – a soup made from leftover food. Her photographs accompany instructions for preparing a range of simple, comforting peasant dishes, with notes on the history and customs of the region. Slightly off-mint.

This lavishly illustrated book charts the history of fashion and the social calendar in Britain from the late 18th century to the outbreak of the Second World War, when intricately drawn fashion plates were gradually abandoned in favour of photography. Material is taken from the pages of fashion magazines, showing readers how to dress appropriately and stylishly at any time of year and for any occasion, ranging from weddings and funerals to sporting activities and the making of morning calls.

Censorship targets speech and writing deemed to attack the state, corrupt morals or question religion. But whose morals, and which religion? Each chapter in this book examines the case of a work – many now considered masterpieces – that fell foul of the censors of the day, including Lady Chatterley's Lover , Ulysses, The Well of Loneliness, Lolita and The Satanic Verses. It is a history of texts and of those who would suppress them.

‘My great-grandmother was the mistress of your great-great-grandfather,’ Camilla Parker-Bowles once told Prince Charles. ‘So how about it?’ Camilla’s great-grandmother was Alice Keppel, and Edward VII was by no means the first rich, influential man she courted in her pursuit of wealth, power and status. In charting the irresistible rise of Mrs Keppel, this frank biography lifts the lid on a hidden world of scandal, decadence and debauchery beneath the respectable surface of the English aristocracy.

An outline of the major events of 1926–1930 – the return to the Gold Standard and the General Strike – introduces profiles of seven notable figures: Virginia Woolf, Radclyffe Hall, John Logie Baird, the car manufacturer William Morris, Ramsay MacDonald, Noël Coward and W Somerset Maugham.

Along with a sketch of the social and economic background and a timeline of events, this volume profiles the lives and achievements of Robert Baden-Powell, the fraudster Horatio Bottomley, Marie Stopes, David Lloyd George, Lord Reith and Bertrand Russell.