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An award-winning journalist and native Canarian explores every island in the archipelago to describe their geology, ecology, history, mythology, folklore and cuisine. Earlier writings, and the recollections of older generations remembered from his youth, depict the islands before mass tourism.

In a novel that explores the pernicious influence of money, the son of a rich dust-contractor must accept his father’s choice of bride or forgo his inheritance; but he takes the fateful decision to conceal his identity and meet the woman before agreeing to marry her. Slightly off-mint.

Languishing in Marshalsea debtors’ prison, having fallen foul of the government’s Circumlocution Office, William Dorrit suddenly comes into money. Only his daughter Amy, ‘Little Dorrit’, keeps her head and stands by her beloved Arthur Clennam when he hits hard times. Slightly off-mint.

Off-mint.

Adam Ardrey follows up the detective work in his Finding Merlin with this account of his wider investigations into the legend of King Arthur. He reaches the startling conclusion that the historical Arthur came from Scotland, and also presents evidence to suggest that some of the story’s most familiar features – the Round Table, the Sword in the Stone and the Lady of the Lake – have their origins in the landscapes of the Scottish Highlands.

Slightly off-mint.

The birthplace of three great Abrahamic faiths, the Holy Land occupies a unique status in history. In the 1920s Arie Speelman, a Dutch Christian, commissioned the hand-colouring of 1,200 black-and-white slides of the area. This book explains their background and reproduces a magnificent selection of these images, which were bequeathed to Amsterdam's Jewish Historical Museum. They offer a rare glimpse of towns, villages and landscapes before the onset of modernization, as Jesus might have seen them.

Here are the culinary adventures of an extraordinary menagerie – Hugh the blue emu, Theodor the lemur (who 'Goes door to door/ Selling boar bristle brushes'), Iggy the guinea piggy and the zoo VIP (Very Idle Panda), to name just a fraction – told in rhymes and hilarious pictures. Ronald Searle obviously relished drawing creatures such as William the billy goat cooking 'spaghetti of sweater yarn', but he didn't forget to hide a little mouse for young readers to find in every picture. Age 5+