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A regular on Radio 4’s The Food Programme, Tim Hayward examines 70 kitchen items and what they say about the social status and culture of their owners. From wooden spoons and vegetable peelers to specialized electrical appliances such as the sandwich toaster and coffee machine, each object offers a snapshot of modern life and a commentary on our health and values.

As fashion director at Vogue, Tonne Goodman shaped how women dress and strengthened the link between style and celebrity. In this largely photographic volume she recalls working with some of the world’s most renowned photographers, models, celebrities and designers, and offers an insight into her personal life. Examples of her reportage, editorial and advertising work are included, with reproductions of the magazine covers she helped create for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue.

Popular blogger and professional chef Anthony Warner is angry about the increasing prevalence of unscientific food and health experts making bogus claims about superfoods and miracle health regimes. Investigating these claims with academic rigour as well as humour, this well-reviewed book is an exposé of the pseudoscience of food bloggers, self-styled nutritionalists and diet gurus.

Slightly off-mint

Illustrating the range of current archaeological approaches to dress, and taking ‘dress’ to mean all forms of body ornamentation, this collection of seven essays discusses British Middle Bronze Age ornament hoards, Iron Age brooches, the Roman military belt as status symbol and object of fashion, Anglo-Saxon dress accessories, and gifts of apparel in north-east England during the 16th century.

Slightly off-mint

Slightly off-mint

In the 1790s Britain experienced what Edmund Burke called ‘a revolution in sentiments’: Hewitt shows how the French Revolution inspired British radicals to incorporate raw emotion into reformist ideals concerning sex, education, commerce and medicine. However, while this had enduring political effects, the aspirations of Enlightenment figures including Samuel Coleridge, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Wedgwood went unfulfilled as the ensuing Terror led to political crackdowns in Britain.

From ancient Greeks to Donald Trump, people have argued about what democracy means. This concise history surveys its many incarnations, as expressed in the French and American revolutions and 19th-century radicalism, and assesses the challenges it faces today.

The status bag existed long before Louis Vuitton put his initials on his Speedy 25. This illustrated history starts with medieval pouches embellished with gold and silver thread and semi-precious stones, and traces changing fashions up to the modern celebrity bag, with chapters on luggage, evening bags, jewel-encrusted and art bags, and current trends re-inventing handbags as ‘private objects of desire, their secret charms known only to those who carry them close’.

Dispelling the notion that dandyism can be defined as an extravagance of dress, and seeing it more as an art form, this social history explores its relationship to modernity and issues of identity. Through profiles of six 20th-century dandies, including the Duke of Windsor, Quentin Crisp and the film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Phillip Mann shows how their dedication to style is linked intrinsically to their aesthetic values and attitudes.

Between 1998 and 2018, Melvyn Bragg and his co-presenters hosted 815 editions of In Our Time, BBC Radio 4's Thursday morning live discussion, with academics talking on topics in history, science, philosophy, culture and religion. Chosen from the accumulated riches of 20 years, this is an illustrated selection of 50 of the most interesting conversations about subjects as diverse as the 18th-century gin craze, photosynthesis, Confucius, Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire, and the story of Tristan and Iseult.

In this illustrated collection of biographies, the fashion historian and BBC television presenter Amber Butchart investigates the lives and sartorial style of 100 figures across five thousand years of history, from Otzi the Iceman who lived c.3500–3100 BCE to the Vogue model Halima Aden, who was born in 1997. She explores how, across cultures and throughout time, people have used clothing to signify power and status, to adorn and beautify, even to prop up or dismantle regimes.

Following a letter in The Times in 1937 about the difficulty of sourcing Stilton, Sir John Squire asked ten writers to raise awareness of local cheeses by recording the provenance and mythology relating to their favourite. Their entertaining and often humorous anecdotes, reprinted here with illustrations by EH Shepard, reveal an artisanal world as much under threat from mass production then as it is today.

Examples of automata copying human actions date back to the ancient world and the idea of artificial or mechanical humans has had a particularly notable influence on art and the popular imagination since the early 20th century. This celebration of robots in visual culture explores their use in film, music, art, fashion and commerce, from the paintings of Fernand Léger and movies such as The Forbidden Planet to Kraftwerk and Transformers toys.

Illustrated with vintage advertisements and photographs, this examination of olfactory trends from the 1920s to the 1980s considers the key historical events and iconic female figures of each decade in turn and goes on to analyse in detail the scents most associated with it, such as Joy in the 1930s and Opium in the 1970s.

Although women started to enter employment en masse in the early 20th century, it was not until the 1970s that they began to exercise a modicum of autonomy over what they wore at work. Accompanied by introductory essays by fashion journalist Vanessa Friedman and New York Times. bestselling author Roxane Gay, the 240 photographs in this volume depict the changes in women’s clothing in the workplace over the last hundred years.

A quarter of a century after the end of apartheid, Christopher Hope embarks on a road trip through his homeland from Cape Town to the Zimbabwean border, meeting exploited black miners and embittered white nationalists. In the face of persisting economic inequality and interracial bitterness, he concludes that Nelson Mandela’s dream of a ‘rainbow nation’ is fading, and it might be the turn of the whites to hear what anti-apartheid politician Oliver Tambo called ‘the Move-on Blues’.

This illustrated guide to Spanish fans offers a comprehensive overview of their origin, development and use, from the gem-encrusted status symbols of the wealthy to the mass-produced, disposable paper trifles used to advertise goods and services. The various religious and cultural influences that inspired their design are considered, along with the range of materials used to construct them and the artists who decorated them.

Based on the historian Peter Kimpton’s collection of fashion postcards from Edwardian times, this well-illustrated guide documents the hat (and hatpin) fashions that defined that era and the designers – including Coco Chanel – who created them. The author also explores the darker side of the millinery industry, from the wholesale slaughter of exotic birds for their ornate feathers to the appalling conditions in the hat-making sweatshops of New York.

First published in 1920, this manual reveals a golden age of elegant dining. Advice on table settings and decorations, etiquette, food and wine is complemented by menus for breakfasts, al-fresco luncheons, wedding receptions and garden parties. A chapter on ‘freak dinners given by wealthy people’ offers a glimpse into the decadent world of the Jazz Era.

Part memoir, part social commentary, part elegy, this biography traces the life of Violet Thompson, the first woman to be given a publican’s licence in her own name.

Due to the expensive materials and craftsmanship required, shoes have often been regarded as status symbols; the desire of owners to display their wealth resulting in extreme designs such as the absurdly elongated toes of 14th-century 'poulaines'. This well-illustrated history of shoe design analyses the many fads of the 20th century and the latest models of contemporary designers as well as investigating footwear styles dating back as far as 3500 BCE – the oldest shoe ever found.

Dress in the Middle Ages was an identifier of status, wealth, occupation, gender and ethnicity, and fashions in dress caused controversy and complaint: ‘Do not fashion your clothing in a new-fangled way’, wrote Robert Brunne in Handlyng Synne (1303). This volume of manuscript sources, transcribed and translated from Old and Middle English, Latin and Anglo-Norman French, illuminates these subjects through readings from wills, accounts, inventories, moral and satirical works, sumptuary regulations and epics and romances.

After petroleum, coffee is the most traded commodity in the world, with over 7 million tonnes produced annually. By 2015, when this book was written, Britain had more than 20,000 coffee shops, and the sector was still growing. This book records the history of what a pope called ‘the Devil’s drink’, the rise of the coffee house in 18th-century Europe and the global industry today.

Born in the Welsh valleys, Joan Ruddock went on to lead the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament before becoming an MP and the first Minister for Women in the Blair government. In this memoir, she recalls the hard lives of her parents, which fuelled her passion for social justice, her career as campaigner and politician, the euphoria she felt after the 1997 election, and the frustration and disillusionment that followed.

This well-illustrated book follows 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 the making of morning calls and sporting activities.

This comprehensive and detailed sourcebook comprises over 2,000 specially commissioned illustrations, many in colour, charting the history of the shoe from the Egyptian sandals of 2500 BCE to the baseball boots of the 21st century. Each example is carefully described, including details of materials, decorations and fastenings. The reference section provides short biographies of leading designers and companies, and a visual timeline shows the development of footwear through the centuries.

First published in 1983, this landmark history shed new light on the struggle for social justice and drew attention to the achievements of many forgotten women activists. Reissued with a new introduction, it remains as relevant as ever today.

Doris Kloster, the photographer and editorial director of FAD magazine, presents an album of 160 photographs celebrating the world of night people, drag goddesses, dominatrixes and divas that inhabited New York’s club scene in the 1980s and 1990s. Sexually explicit.

Launched in 1978, weekly teenage magazine My Guy was packed with celebrity news, fashion tips, advice and photo stories. Here are some of the earliest stories, many featuring future stars such as Tracy Ullman, Hugh Grant and George Michael.

From the cavernous kitchens of medieval manors to the relatively sophisticated technology of Victorian houses, this volume draws on the records of National Trust properties to show how cooking and dining habits evolved through the centuries. The book is illustrated with reproductions of paintings from each period and photographs of surviving kitchens, and each chapter includes practical modern adaptations of historical recipes.

With examples from 45 films across seven genres, including crime, musicals, horror and fantasy, this illustrated volume explores Hollywood’s influence on fashion. Demonstrating how costumes can prompt designers’ creativity decades after appearing on screen, it includes looks that have become mainstream – Marlene Dietrich’s androgynous appearance in Morocco in 1930 has been mimicked repeatedly – and those that remain outlandish, such as the robotic bodysuits in Thierry Mugler’s 1995–96 collection, inspired by the 1927 classic Metropolis.

DA Hamer’s study in the history of Victorian reform agitations looks at extra-parliamentary reform and particularly the deployment of mobilized ‘persuasion’ directed at candidates and political parties.

Marijuana was part of the scene for the early jazzmen of New Orleans, and the arrival of heroin in Harlem in the 1940s hooked the bebop players and helped create the culture that influenced writers such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. This social history examines the connection between drug use and the evolution of jazz music and discusses its influence in shaping American culture in the 20th century. Slightly off-mint with a felt-tip mark on upper trimmed edge.

In her foreword, Harper’s editor-in-chief, Glenda Bailey, writes, ‘You can become a good model with a perfect body, but to become a great model you need a unique face’. With over 200 photographs by some of the greatest fashion photographers, this volume presents the stories of 28 women whose faces, poise and ability to switch personas made them the most sought-after models of the last 60 years, from Dovima and Suzy Parker in the 1950s to Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss in the 2010s.

Fashion changed slowly in the centuries before the modern era and resulted in some odd and impractical styles, such as the long, pointed men’s shoes of the 15th century or the 19th century’s bustles and crinolines. This children’s history of costume tells the story of fashion from the ancient Egyptians and Greeks to the modern era through a series of 325 colour illustrations. Age 8+

In short essays, each of these volumes focuses on the 50 essential writers, movements, works or themes in disciplines ranging from ancient history to modern media studies.

Written by noted experts, these lucid, alphabetically organized handbooks define and discuss the central concepts, thinkers and debates in a broad range of academic disciplines.

Among the royals of Europe there have always been fashionistas: long before Christian Louboutin, Louis XIV created a trend with red-soled shoes, Queen Victoria started the fashion for white wedding dresses, and the elegant style of Grace Kelly has been copied the world over. With over 200 photographs of aristocratic fashion leaders, Royal Style celebrates regal fashion, from the Middle Ages to the newest icons such as the couture-loving Kate Middleton and Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece.

This volume brings together Beales's essays, articles and lectures on 18th century Europe and, in particular, his research on Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor 1765-1790 and ruler of the Austrian Monarchy 1780-1790, and his 'revolution from above'. The book covers an area as wide as Joseph's rule and reforming influence, from the Austrian Netherlands in the West to Galicia and Transylvania in the East, and explores his ideas, aims and achievements through topics ranging from enlightened despotism to Mozart, and from the suppression of the Jesuits to Maria Theresa.