Arts, Architecture & Design Books

'Buy my Dish of great Eeles, Any Old Iron take money for, Twelve Pence a Peck Oysters, Buy my fat Chickens, Fair Lemons & Oranges'Marcellus Laroon's The Cryes of the City of London drawne after the Life presents, in...

The Merton library is rightly known for its antiquity, its beautiful medieval and early modern architecture and fittings and for its remarkable and important collection of manuscripts and rare books, yet a nineteenth-century plan to tear the medieval...

Beachcombing, overturning a boulder, or simply parting the strands of seaweed in a rock pool can offer a glimpse into a thriving underwater world of astonishing creatures. Starfish which, upon losing an arm, can grow a new one; ethereal moon jellyfish...

During the Renaissance, artists and illustrators developed the representation of truthful three-dimensional forms into a highly skilled art. As reliable illustrations of three-dimensional subjects became more prevalent, they also influenced the way in...

Every map tells a story. Some provide a narrative for travellers, explorers and surveyors or offer a visual account of changes to people's lives, places and spaces, while others tell imaginary tales, transporting us to fictional worlds created by writers...

Homecoming, haunting, nostalgia, desire: these are some of the themes evoked by the beguiling motif of the lighted window in literature and art. In this innovative combination of place-writing, memoir and cultural study, Peter Davidson takes us on...

Representing four centuries of collecting and a thousand years of Jewish history, this book brings together Hebrew manuscripts and rare books from the Bodleian Library and Oxford colleges. Highlights of the extraordinary collections include a fragment of...

About a millennium ago, in Cairo, someone completed a large and richly illustrated book. In the course of thirty-five chapters, our unknown author guided the reader on a journey from the outermost cosmos and planets to Earth and its lands, islands,...

Martin Lister, royal physician and fellow of the Royal Society, was an extraordinarily prolific natural historian with an expertise in shells and molluscs.Disappointed with the work of established artists, Lister decided to teach his daughters, Susanna...

The range of J. R. R. Tolkien's talents is remarkable. Not only was he an accomplished linguist and philologist, as well as a scholar of Anglo-Saxon and medieval literature and Norse folklore, but also a skillful illustrator and storyteller. Drawing on...

Early manuscripts in the English language include religious works, plays, romances, poetry and songs, as well as charms, notebooks, science and medieval medicine. How did scribes choose to arrange the words and images on the page in each manuscript? How...

How were the first fonts made? Who invented italics? When did we work out how to print in colour?Many of the standard features of printed books were designed by pioneering typographers and printers in the latter half of the fifteenth century. Although...

Throughout the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, historical events were tremendously popular as adaptations for the stage. From the Revolutionary War to the French Revolution, stage dramas brought history vividly to life through powerful...

When Falstaff calls upon the sky to rain potatoes in The Merry Wives of Windsor, he is highlighting the late sixteenth-century belief that the exotic vegetable, recently introduced to England from the Americas, was an aphrodisiac. In Romeo and Juliet,...

Behind every typeface is a story - who designed it, and why? What are its distinctive characteristics, and what cultural baggage does it carry?This book explores fifty of the most remarkable typefaces, dating from the birth of European printing in the...

As the devastation of German-occupied Belgium awakened Britain to the horrors of the Great War, a group of English cartoonists responded to these events with characteristic black humor. Among the most inventive responses was advertising artist John...

The Bodleian Library is home to treasures from every corner of the globe that mark major milestones in cultural history. This book contains twenty-six pull-out postcards-one for each letter of the alphabet-each featuring a rare or beautiful manuscript...

In 1934 Sir Giles Gilbert Scott began work on designs for a substantial new library building opposite the Old Bodleian Library site in Broad Street, Oxford in order to provide much-needed space for the growing numbers of books housed in the library and...

Janet Stone's photograph albums feature informal portraits from the mid-twentieth century of many of the leading cultural figures and personalities of the day. The wife of the distinguished engraver Reynolds Stone established a kind of literary salon in...

LONDON, 1942.A killer going by the name of 'Crimson Jack' is stalking the wartime streets of London, murdering women on the exact dates of the infamous Jack the Ripper killings of 1888. Has the Ripper somehow returned from the grave? Is...

This is the untold story of black music its triumph over racism, segregation, undercapitalised record labels, media discrimination and political anxiety told through the perspective of the most powerful office in the world: from Louis...

Detroit 67 is the story of Motor City in the year that changed everything. Twelve chapters take you on a turbulent year-long journey through the drama and chaos that ripped through the city in 1967 and tore it apart in personal, political and interracial...

From the unbridled sensuality of silent Italian films, to the neorealist classic Bitter Rice, to the astonishing imagination of Fellini and the more cerebral and fascinating movies of Antonioni, Italy has a filmic legacy unlike that of any other...

Emerging filmmakers need to know the basics of their art form: the language of the camera, and lenses, the different crew roles, the formats, the aspect ratios. They also need to know some bare-bones theory: what an auteur is, what montage is, what...

Two screenwriters once walked into a Hollywood producer's office and said three words: Jaws in space. Those three words won them the contract for the blockbuster movie Alien. The ability to pitch well is essential for all writers, directors and producers...

Barry Forshaw is acknowledged as a leading expert on European crime fiction, but his principal area of expertise is in the crime arena of the British Isles. Continuing the earlier success of the series with Nordic Noir and Euro Noir, he has now delivered...

Writing and Selling Romantic Comedy Screenplays offers a fresh approach to creating narratives for this ever-changing genre. Moving away from rigid and limited definitions that have evolved out of mainstream genre films, the book embraces a...

This stunning series of pocketbooks from Kew offers a snapshot into the diverse and beautiful world of plants and fungi. Each book lavishly showcases choice examples from different groups or collections.Hot, spicy, aromatic, zingy, oral, earthy and...

This stunning series of pocketbooks from Kew offers a snapshot into the diverse and beautiful world of plants and fungi. Each book lavishly showcases choice examples from different groups or collections.Part of our everyday lives, full of flavour and...

This stunning series of pocketbooks from Kew offers a snapshot into the diverse and beautiful world of plants. Kew Pocketbooks: Wildflowers lavishly showcases a meadow's worth of familiar plants in 40 botanical paintings. Kew Pocketbooks: Wildflowers is...

This is the first book to reveal artworks made using the world's brightest colour Pure Structural Colour, recently derived from the metallic-like colours of Pollia berries, hummingbirds and butterflies.Pure Structural Colour is a mimic of the type of...

Plants are an integral part of festivities around the world, used in religious, cultural and national celebrations. This Kew Pocketbook is packed full of 40 of these festive plants, from winter favourites such as holly, pines and mistletoe, to colourful...

This stunning series of pocketbooks from Kew offers a snapshot into the diverse and beautiful world of plants. Each book lavishly showcases choice examples from individual plant groups or collections, and in this pocketbook a selection of plants are...

This stunning series of pocketbooks from Kew offers a snapshot into the diverse and beautiful world of plants. Each book lavishly showcases choice examples from individual plant groups or collections, and this new title showcases Japanese plants, from...

Jan Hendrix is a Dutch-born, Mexico-based contemporary artist. His work is all about observation and analysis; nature and its diff erent ways of representing and telling extended stories, often in a non- linear narrative. Based on an exhibition...

The Library, Art and Archives at Kew is one of the most extensive botanical libraries in the world, with the oldest item dating back to the 1370s. In this new pocketbook series from Kew, each book presents 40 botanical paintings from the collection,...

The Library, Art and Archives at Kew is one of the most extensive botanical libraries in the world, with the oldest item dating back to the 1370s. In this new pocketbook series from Kew, each book presents 40 botanical paintings from the collection,...

An intrepid Victorian traveler and prolific painter, Marianne North produced more than eight-hundred paintings over her lifetime. She eschewed the soft pastels of typical botanical artists and instead painted entire landscapes using bold, hearty oil...

Beautiful celebration of the Hive at Kew Fascinating story of the origins of the gold winning centrepiece at the UK Pavilion, 2015 Milan Expo Behind the scenes insight into the arrival if the Hive at Kew Highlights the importance of bees as pollinators...

Pollination Power is a visually spectacular insight into the hidden secrets of plant pollination, unravelling the deceit, tricks and rewards that plant bestow upon their pollinators. Throughout the book, full page colour photographs are accompanied with...

Artists' Kew reveals Kew in all its charming detail as well as in its full natural beauty by the Thames. The book contains 120 paintings, by 50 artists. The contemporary art shown in this book builds upon Kew's eclectic tradition: to inspire, to excite,...

Journeys to school are an important time and space of transition between homes and schools for children around the world.This book comprises various chapters providing insights on children's experiences of this essential part of their lives and schooling...

Create 40 delicious dishes from your favourite Studio Ghibli films!40 recipes inspired by the masterpieces of Studio Ghibli: My Neighbour Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, The Moving Castle...Dive into the dreamlike worlds of these animated films...

Explore the beginning of Steven Spielberg's remarkable career with this definitive retrospective that covers Duel, The Sugarland Express, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1941, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.In...

Shudder's Creepshow: From Script to Scream, produced by AMC Networks Publishing and Creepshow showrunner and executive producer Greg Nicotero (The Walking Dead), is a coffee-table book which brings fans behind-the-scenes of the acclaimed Creepshow series...

When the visual artist H.R. Giger, best known for his biomechanical creature and set design for seminal 1979 sci-fi-horror film Alien, encountered Debbie Harry, the punk icon and lead singer of globally successful New Wave band Blondie, the results were...

The definitive, in-depth exploration of the creation and legacy of the classic 1987 Withnail & I, featuring interviews, essays, and fascinating never-before-seen archive material. Authorized by author and director Bruce Robinson, Withnail & Us:...

Gotham Knights: Official Collector's Edition gives you exclusive behind-the-scenes content and the expert strategy you need to immerse yourself in the world of Gotham Knights.Gotham Knights is the eagerly anticipated action role playing game set in a...