The suffragists of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) - as distinct from the suffragettes - did not disband in 1917 when the vote was given to some women. Although franchise had been their primary goal, they had other aims for women. This book looks at the lives of eight suffragists and how they continued the struggle for equality in various fields, among them Eleanor Lodge in higher education, Ellen Wilkinson in Socialist politics and Dr Isabel Emslie Hutton in medicine.

'When Edward Bear said that he would like an exciting name all to himself, Christopher Robin said at once, without stopping to think, that he was Winnie-the-Pooh. And he was.' This slipcased set contains the four children's classics by AA Milne, all with their original line drawings by EH Shepard: Winnie-the-Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six.

Handsome, spirited and erudite, Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011)was a war hero and one of the greatest travel writers of his generation. He was also a spectacularly entertaining letter writer. This judiciously edited selection of his correspondence spans almost 70 years, and includes letters to Nancy Mitford, Diana Cooper, Lawrence Durrell and his lifelong companion Joan Rayner. They sparkle with his humour, zest for life, unending curiosity, lyrical descriptive powers – and his tendency to get into scrapes.

Originally published in 1933, this little book of witty epigrams and epitaphs by the English writer and poet Martin Armstrong (1882–1974) is illustrated with wood-engravings by Eric Ravilious (1903–1942). The subjects of the verses are 54 professionals or types, ranging from a judge to a snuff-taker and a ‘boarding-house lift man’; and each one is accompanied by its own woodcut.

A Welsh nobleman, Owen Tudor married Catherine de Valois, Henry V’s widow, but in secret – it was prohibited for the widowed queen to remarry – and their sons were born in secrecy. Edmund, the elder of two, died fighting Yorkists in Carmarthen in 1456 and three months later, his young wife gave birth to a son, Henry Tudor, the future king. This study covers Owen’s extraordinary life and legacy, from his ancestry to his execution after the battle of Mortimer’s Cross in 1461.

Born in 1917, Dame Vera Lynn was 92 when she realized that her great age gave a better perspective (she wrote her first autobiography in her fifties) and she had to 'get everything down on paper in a final account'. Here then is the life of 'an ordinary girl from an ordinary family with a voice that you could recognize' – but also an embodiment of British spirit during the Second World War.

Since antiquity, rivers have given poets a rich source of metaphor and meaning, yet never before have they been under such environmental pressure. This anthology brings together more than 180 verses, from classics by Clare, Wordsworth and Tennyson to works by modern poets such as Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney and Carol Ann Duffy, celebrating the importance of rivers in our lives and imaginations.

Railway closures were underway in Scotland from the 1930s as remote lines built in the 19th century proved uneconomical. The 1963 Beeching Report recommended further cuts, and by the end of the 1960s large parts of the country were without a service. This exploration of forgotten railways, first published in 2009, traces twelve routes, mixing archive images of the lines in operation with contemporary photographs of what remains of the stations, bridges, signalling and other lineside equipment.

From where I sit writing Postscript entries, I look out on an old Devon hedgerow and an ancient stone wall; John Wright's Natural History has rendered them both very much more interesting. The book covers the origins and history of such boundaries; the present condition of hedgerows and the need to preserve them; the amazing array of fauna and flora they support; and other ways of making boundaries, from movable hazel hurdles to dry stone walls (mine, I've learned, is the 'random rubble' type).

‘Frank Sinatra was like a flawed diamond’, writes Taraborrelli, ‘brilliant on the surface, imperfect beneath’. In a biography based on years of research and hundreds of interviews, he explores the singer’s torrid relationships, his Mafia connections and his friendship with the Kennedys, revealing a complex personality: a generous and loyal friend, but also a volatile, womanizing tough guy.

This book sheds fresh light on the wives of Henry VIII by exploring the manors, castles and palaces where their lives – and deaths – were played out. Lavishly illustrated with maps, plans and 36 pages of colour plates, it takes the reader from the Alhambra in Spain, childhood home of Katherine of Aragon, to Acton Court, where Henry dined with Anne Boleyn; from Düsseldorf, birthplace of Anne of Cleves, to Hampton Court, scene of Jane Seymour’s triumph and tragedy.

Moving Stretch® is a form of resistance stretching that can relieve pain and help anyone, from athlete to office worker, feel relaxed, stronger and more flexible. It works by reshaping the ‘fascia’ – a network of connective tissue that holds our bodies together. Including background information and a questionnaire, this comprehensive guide gives clear descriptions of over 100 stretches with multiple photographs and tips for getting each exercise just right.

How would you reduce crime through architecture? Why is there salt in the sea? Is feminism dead? Probably the stuff of nightmare if you are an Oxbridge candidate, but compulsive reading when your career doesn't depend on coming up with an answer, these are the questions asked at interviews for Oxford and Cambridge colleges. Ranging across disciplines from literature to physics, Farndon discusses 60 conundrums designed to separate the merely bright from the truly clever.

In this extraordinary vision of the feline world we encounter a 'circus cat secretly rehearsing Hamlet', an 'unusually repulsive cat startled by a gesture of affection' and 'the exhausted Persian cat contemplating the advantages of monogamy'... three of the weird and wonderful creatures captured by Searle's inimitable illustrative style and vivid imagination.

Phyll Macdonald-Ross was a trainee nurse at Hackney Hospital in London’s East End when war was declared in September 1939. Her memoir recalls the rigid discipline and hard work of nursing, and the harrowing experience of tending the injured and dying during the Blitz in London, but also friendship and mischief, and the beginning of a lifelong love affair. The story was presented in 2015, Phyll’s 95th year, by her grandson ID Roberts.

United and divided by a river, London is one of the few world cities to find its essence in two profoundly contrasting yet nearly touching urban environments. The Italian artist Matteo Pericoli travelled the 20-mile stretch of the Thames from Hammersmith Bridge to the Millennium Dome to draw both banks of the river. His 25-foot-long folding panorama is accompanied by essays by two of the city's foremost contemporary chroniclers, North Londoner Iain Sinclair and southside resident Will Self.

The charismatic leaders Boudicca, Caratacus, William Wallace, Owain Glyndwr and the legendary King Arthur all epitomize the resistance of British Celts to the fearsome military powers at whose hands they suffered oppression and injustice. This survey of British history focuses on the key moments when the Celts' determination to survive came to the fore, from the Roman invasion to the Act of Union passed by the Tudors, and considers the mythology and psychology that drove them.

William Rosen, author of the acclaimed Justinian’s Flea, examines one of medieval Europe’s most astonishing catastrophes, when exceptional summer rains, freezing winters, animal epidemics and the destruction of farmland through warfare reduced Europe’s total population by one eighth. He combines insights from modern economics and climate science to analyse the complex and interrelated forces that led to the Great Famine, tracing their centuries-long gestation and assessing their implications in the context of today’s changing climate.

In 1898, W Reginald Bray (1879–1939) purchased a copy of the Post Office Guide and began to study the regulations. Thereafter he started to experiment by sending strange objects through the post. He posted items including a turnip, seaweed and his Irish terrier, he posted himself more than once and he sent thousands of strange postcards and autograph requests. Illustrated with many of Bray's postal curios, this book explores the intriguing hobby of a rather eccentric Englishman.

Sir Arthur Harris (1892–1984) remains one of the most controversial figures of the Second World War. As Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command from 1942 to 1945 he made a significant contribution to the Allies’ ultimate success, but his reputation has been tarnished by the fierce controversy over the ‘area bombing’ of German cities. Henry Probert’s critical but sympathetic biography is the first to give a properly balanced account of a remarkably able and dedicated man.

'It was just a gorgeous place to be and there seemed to be laughter coming from everywhere!' From the 1930s until the growth of cheap air travel in the 1970s, Butlin's offered the British holidaymaker a rare taste of escape, magic and fun. Drawing on interviews with Redcoats, waitresses, chalet maids and other staff, this book tells the stories of seven girls who worked at Butlin's, vividly evoking the highs, lows, secrets and scandals of life in the world-famous holiday camps.

Produced for a major exhibition at Tate Britain, this stimulating book examines Picasso's connections with Britain and charts his impact on British artists including Moore, Bacon and Hockney. With 135 colour plates.

Jochen Peiper was adjutant to Heinrich Himmler in the early part of the Second World War, accompanying him to key meetings with the Nazi leadership. He later commanded a Panzer division on the Eastern Front and at the Battle of the Bulge, earning a fearsome reputation and later charges of war crimes. This biography of Peiper assesses his personality and military achievements and the controversies that saw him tried in 1946 and eventually murdered in 1976.

Marie Chilver, codenamed 'Agent Fifi', was used by the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War to test trainee agents' resolve: she befriended them in hotel bars to see if they would reveal their true identities. Compiled from information declassified in 2014, this book tells the story of the London-born Latvian seductress and of other women agents used as honeytraps, decoys, infiltrators and double agents by British spymasters Maxwell Knight and John Masterman.

The Russian emigre artist Romain de Tirtoff is best known by the phonetic French rendering of his initials: Erté – and for many, Erté is Art Deco. In the course of his long life he was key to the development of the style in the 1920s, and lived to see its revival in the 1970s. This elegant, sumptuously illustrated volume surveys his life and work, including his jewellery, furnishings, magazine covers for Harper's and his seminal sets for the Ziegfeld Follies.

In his first, much-acclaimed book, Missing Links: The Hunt for Earliest Man (1981), John Reader gave a definitive account of palaeoanthropology, its breakthrough finds, frauds and controversial theories and the central role of fossils in the search for 'missing links' between humans and ape-like ancestors. This expanded and updated edition, reflects the exciting and significant advances of the last 30 years, including genetic discoveries and the identification of several new species of extinct hominid.

From the 1830s onwards, a succession of British aristocrats headed for the American West, taking with them their valets, their dogs – and their prejudices. This sparkling account describes the newcomers' experiences as they crossed the country to meet Native Americans, hunt buffalo and build cattle empires. Packed with lively incident and colourful personalities, it also charts their reception by Americans often less than pleased at the return of their former colonial overlords.

Renaissance travellers would arrive in Venice weary and sore from a long carriage ride over bumpy roads to find themselves transported with silken smoothness by gondola to an ethereal island metropolis. Illustrated with almost 200 colour photographs, engravings, maps, and paintings by artists from Carpaccio to Monet, this elegant volume explores the city's unique relationship with its lagoon, its use of water as architectural space reflecting the facades of its grand buildings, and its carefully nurtured mystique.

Philip Shenon's book pieces together the compelling story of the most important, and most misunderstood, homicide investigation in 20th-century America: the Warren Commission inquiry and its conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone to assassinate the President. Drawing on unprecedented access to surviving Commission staff and other key witnesses, Shenon reveals how much of the truth about the Kennedy assassination has not been told and how much evidence was 'shredded, incinerated or erased' before it reached the Commission.

The distinctive ceramics produced by Clarice Cliff (1899–1972) at the Wilkinson and Newport potteries remain among the most popular collectables of the 20th century. This guide and reference for the enthusiast provides a useful introduction to the much-loved designer's world and key information on identifying her work. Over 500 pieces are illustrated and identified, and there is also practical advice on sourcing, storage, display and restoration.

Lavishly illustrated with around 170 reproductions, this celebration of Art Nouveau is in three parts, looking first at the movement as a whole – a design ethos that swept across Europe and America between the late 19th century and the First World War. Part two deals with the graphic arts, including the posters of Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha, while the final section explores the impact of Art Nouveau in the fine arts, discussing artists from Paul Gauguin to Gustav Klimt.

How have gay men and women lived, loved, and coped with prejudice through the ages? This chronological survey ranges from two men of ancient Egypt to the Cuban writer and dissident Reinaldo Arenas (1943–1990), taking in such celebrated figures as Sappho, Michelangelo and Oscar Wilde. With 128 illustrations, 56 in colour, it presents a rich tapestry of gay life from the unknowable relationships of the distant past to the frankest affirmations of modern sexuality. Slightly off-mint.

From the Big Bang to the end of our world billions of years later, one of Stephen Hawking's former graduate students takes the reader on a journey through the cosmos as it is currently understood by scientists. With humour and imaginative storytelling he brings to life the beauty of the universe and explains such mysteries as quantum mechanics and black holes without equations or graphs, in the belief that 'we can all understand this stuff'.

Aethelflaed, the eldest daughter of Alfred the Great, is an enigmatic and almost legendary figure, a renowned warrior queen who fought the Danes and who struggled to be accepted as a female ruler of the Saxon Kingdom of Mercia. This study goes back to contemporary sources to explore the ‘Lady of the Mercians’ and reveals a skilled diplomat, and a shrewd, even ruthless leader, but also a patron of learning who used the poetic tradition to fashion her own reputation.

This unusual and beautiful guide to anatomy is almost a work of art. Intricate, hand-drawn, cutaway illustrations take the reader inside the male body layer by layer, through the digestive, circulatory and nervous systems. Then a series of detailed drawings focus on key organs, bones and joints, while a doctor explains their function in clear and concise text. The whole volume is attractively presented with heavy stock, marbled endpapers, a fabric spine and covers of thick card. Age 7+

The former Northern Editor of the Guardian, Martin Wainwright has collected, 'like a magpie', facts about place names, festivals, ancient customs and recent history to offer a succinct but richly informative survey of the English village in its many aspects. In chapters on themes including the 'Big House', the church and the pub, village 'frolics', farming and dwellings, Wainwright reflects on the character of villages past and present and ends by looking to the future challenges and comforts of village life.

One of the most celebrated travel writers of the 20th century, Patrick Leigh Fermor maintained a lifelong silence about his most famous exploit. In 1944, he and his fellow SOE officer Billy Moss, aided by local partisans, kidnapped the German commander of Crete, General Heinrich Kreipe, and spirited him away to captivity in Egypt. This gripping first-hand account, published after his death, includes Fermor's own intelligence reports, sent from caves deep within the island.

Agincourt is one of the most celebrated battles in English history, a victory that made Henry V a national hero and still resonates six centuries later. This title peels away the layers of myth to tell the human story through the eyes of key participants, from the king himself to a Somerset squire and an archer from Dorset. Drawing on historic accounts, it assesses the casualties and discusses the massacre of French prisoners that shocked contemporaries.

Strong-minded yet vulnerable, ambitious yet insecure, Britain's greatest naval hero was a man in need of constant reassurance. Wellington thought him 'so vain and silly as to surprise and almost disgust me'. This second volume of Sugden's authoritative biography charts Nelson's life from 1797 to his death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Drawing on letters and diaries, it interweaves his victories at the Nile and Copenhagen with his stormy relations with colleagues and his scandalous private life.

We have a great deal of information on Geoffrey Chaucer's busy and eventful life – from the important offices he held while doing the king's business to his capture in battle and indictment for rape. In the first volume in his Brief Lives series, Peter Ackroyd shows that the real-life figure is often at odds with Chaucer's persona, presented in his literary works as a bookish and self-deprecating poet.

The change from sail to steam in the Royal Navy was underway by 1850 and in the following decades the work and life of ordinary seamen changed radically as new jobs, servicing the engines and operating the sophisticated gunnery and communications systems, replaced the traditional lot of the sailor. This well-researched history chronicles the increasing professionalization and specialization of the lower deck as the Navy rapidly evolved and introduced many of the roles and practices which are familiar today.

From catering for Victorian mourners with 50 shades of black fabric in its first shop in Oxford Street in the 1860s, to 12 million YouTube viewings of its Christmas ad for 2013, this is a 150-year retailing success story. Jonathan Glancy looks back over John Lewis's history, describing its roots in drapery and fabrics, the radical partnership structure set up in 1929, its architecturally distinguished flagship stores, the success of the online store and its future plans – more shops.

Eddie Chapman, the double agent known as Agent Zigzag, has been celebrated in print, film and television documentaries, but the life of his wife Betty was also far from conventional. Mrs Zigzag tells of her rise from humble origins to become the owner of a pioneering health farm, the guest of Middle Eastern royalty and the confidante of film stars and an African president – as well as the wife of a remarkably brave and loving, but often difficult man.

The 'Warburg Wire Job' was an audacious escape plan by 40 British, Australian, New Zealand and South African POWs from Oflag VI-B in Warburg, Germany. With the camp lights fused, the prisoners laid scaling ladders constructed from bed boards over the high perimeter fence and 28 made it across. Mark Felton's history tells the story of the planning and execution of the breakout and the stories of the escapees' attempts to evade recapture and return home.

In August 1939 a Surrey housewife began a war journal in which she recorded daily life on the home front. She tells of bombers overhead day and night, ration queues and the influx of evacuees. In 1947, she sent the diary to the Imperial War Museum with a letter describing herself as a housewife and a professional journalist; she was a naturally gifted writer whose diary gives a compelling account of wartime Britain.

In 1880 a young medical student named Arthur Conan Doyle embarked on his first adventure as ship's surgeon aboard the Arctic whaler the Hope. The illustrated diary in which he recorded the action-packed voyage is published here for the first time in a beautiful facsimile edition. The volume also contains an annotated transcript, photographs of the ship and the young Conan Doyle on deck with its officers, two non-fiction pieces about his experiences, and two tales inspired by them.

The hero of El Alamein and Normandy, Bernard Law Montgomery is remembered as one of Britain's greatest military leaders, but he also earned a reputation, among those who encountered him, for arrogance, tactlessness and egotism. This assessment of his achievements, written by his younger brother and first published in the 1970s, delves into Monty's distinguished ancestry, as well as his upbringing, to discover the factors that formed his singular character and equipped him for greatness.

Kate Summerscale re-opens the case of the gruesome Road Hill murder of 1860, but models her meticulously researched account on the country-house murder mystery – the genre inspired by the real murder and its investigation by Jonathan Whicher, one of Scotland Yard's very first detectives. 'The best whodunnit of the year – and it's all true' (Tatler). Slightly off-mint.