Originally warriors mounted on horseback, knights became associated with the concept of chivalry as it was popularised in medieval European literature. They were expected to fight bravely and honourably and be loyal to their lord until death if necessary. Later, chivalry came to encompass activities such as tournaments and hunting, and virtues including justice, charity and faith. The Crusades were instrumental in the development of the code of chivalry, and some crusading orders of knighthoods such as the Knights Templar have become legend. By the 15th century, advances in warfare had rendered knights obsolete, but the 'knight' had survived as an honorary title granted for services to a monarch or country, and remains an icon of popular culture. Chapter headings include 1066 and All That, Kingdom of Heaven, Longshanks, Braveheart, St Crispin's Day, Game of Thrones and Ivanhoe. The historical roots of chivalry lie in a mist-shrouded Teutonic past, sanctioned and effectively annexed by the church. The knighthood provided a core philosophy and set values that, while no means always adhered to, furnished the mystique. This ideology, combined with long years of training and expensive equipment, permitted the mounted knight to maintain his elite and largely unchallenged status as arbiter on the battlefield. Military service was bound into the mesh of feudalism. An intriguing Casemate Short History, 160pp illustrated paperback.

A new examination of Leonardo da Vinci's (1452-1519) ground-breaking anatomical drawings presented by two brothers, one a painter and the other a doctor. They discuss the artistic and scientific significance of these most beautiful and important drawings in the history of Western art. They are chiefly concerned with the skeletal, cardiovascular, muscular and nervous systems and the brothers discuss the impact they had both on art and medical understanding. Stephen looks at them from the artist's point of view, redrawing the occasional detail in the light of contemporary scientific knowledge. Michael provides a physician?s perspective. They find that for Leonardo, drawing constituted a way of thinking that was as fundamental as language, enabling him not only to refine his understanding, but to make imaginative leaps that were frequently but not always correct. These leaps were nothing short of revolutionary. We appreciate the proportions of the leg and foot, the foetus in the womb, the reproductive and abdominal organs, the vertebral column, the cranial nerve, the skull, muscles, bones and joints, the gastrointestinal tract and the bladder and the heart and cardiopulmonary circulation. Superbly reproduced in close up detail in 96 large pages, sepia colour. A Royal Academy of Arts publication, 17 x 23.4cm.

Billed as a 'modern classic of LGBT writing'. Born in 1930, Lillian Faderman is the only child of an uneducated and unmarried Jewish woman who left Latvia to seek a better life in America. Lillian grew up in poverty but fantasised about becoming an actress. When her dreams led to the dangerous, seductive world of the sex trade and sham-marriages in Hollywood of the 50s, she realised she was attracted to women, and that showbiz is as cruel as they say. Desperately seeking to make her life meaningful, she studied at Berkeley, paying her way by working as a pin-up model and burlesque dancer, hiding her lesbian affairs from the outside world. At last she became a brilliant student and a loving partner, a devoted mother, an acclaimed writer and ground-breaking pioneer of gay and lesbian scholarship. She became a very powerful woman in the Californian university system during the 1970s and hers is an amazing story of survival and success. Very graphic in the lesbian experience in parts, this is certainly a woman determined to overcome life's obstacles. 465pp, eight pages of photos including a very curvaceous Lil as Mink Frost in her days as a stripper. Paperback.

A hilarious and true account of one man's struggle with the monthly tide of the books he has bought and the books he has been meaning to read, here is another collection of 14 months? of Nick Hornby essays from the Believer magazine to collect in this series we have acquired. 'Books are, let's face it, better than everything else. If we play cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go 15 rounds in the ring against the best that any other artform had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time. Go on, try it. The Magic Flute v. Middlemarch? Middlemarch in six. The Last Supper v. Crime and Punishment? Fyodor on points. See? I mean, I don't know how scientific this is, but it feels like the novels are walking it. You might get the occasional exception - Blonde on Blonde might mash up 'The Old Curiosity Shop', and every now and then you can get a shock, because that happens in sport, so Back to the Future 3 might land a lucky punch on Rabbit Run - but I'm still backing literature 29 times out of 30.' Discussed in the book is Dickens's retort to minimalism, edible poems, the pros and cons of Salinger, the Dewey Decimal v. Trivial Pursuit system of organising a library, Britons in Los Angeles (indoor and wrapped in cold flannel), Mick Jagger's projected envy of Jonathan Lethem, the phenomenon of forgetting every book you've ever read, the effectiveness of blurbs, the shoddy memories of reappearing heroes, the death of pub culture, and the exact point at which innovations stop looking like mistakes are all included. With excerpts from the works by Chekhov, Tony Hoagland, Dickens, Patrick Hamilton and Charlotte Moore. 144pp, paperback to dip into and collect with the others in the series.

An intimate of the 1960s fashion scene and Fleet Street, Felicity Green never knew who she might be interviewing next - politicians, film stars, the latest pop stars, fashion designers. She was thrilled to be working for the Daily Mirror and she brought a new and original voice and look to the fashion pages of the newspaper. For the first time in newspaper history, she created fashion pages to appeal to both sexes, and the circulation soared to more than five million copies a day. And with all those magical names, which journalist could fail to shine? There was the inimitable Mary Quant, the sheer style genius of Barbara Hulanicki of BIBA fame, the irresistible Twiggy, Kiki Byrne, Foale and Tuffin, Jean Muir, John Bates and Ossie Clark. Felicity sailed happily through all the excitement and her role expanded. Long before her famous Dear Marje column was born, Marje Proops, columnist and agony aunt, had been beloved of the multimillion readers for six years before Felicity came on board as associate editor. Two powerful women, and together they represented the voice of women for The Mirror and got on famously, enjoying being women in a man's newspaper world under the guidance of the brilliant Editorial Director Hugh Cudlipp. There are fantastic cartoons of Felicity by cartoonist Moira Hodell picturing her from the back, and page after page of newsprint features reproduced in facsimile to take us right back to the 60s. Pictured are Her Majesty the Queen, Jackie Kennedy and Liz Taylor all wearing real leopard skin, full length coats, the rarest and best skins of which was the Somali leopard which could cost up to £3,000. 'Cheaper ones cost much less - a few hundred pounds - but who wants a CHEAP status symbol?' And then there are the most famous photographers of the time and their remarkable, classy pictures - David Bailey, Terry Donovan, John Cowan, Brian Duffy, Lewis Morley, John Adriaan and of course Terry O'Neill creating striking, saucy and stylish images bringing visual excitement to The Mirror pages. Here is all the glamour and style capturing the stellar time when London fashion conquered the world, with discussion on bikinis that let the sun shine through, tights to wear with miniskirts, new shapes in bras, the Paris catwalk fashions, a comparison of corset adverts, trouser suits and some crazy fashion statements. It is all fun, entertaining and informative in a big glamorous glossy 192 page history of beauty and fashion. 24.6 x 30.8cm published by the Antique Collectors Club.
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Sub-titled 'Two Years of Reading Begat More Reading', presented in easily digestible, hysterical monthly instalments. This is the final collection of Hornby's monthly column for The Believer magazine about the books he has bought and the books he has read. It begins in August 2006 and the challenges of reading during a World Cup month, knowing too much about the author whose work you are reading, taking seriously bad books, literature's obstruction by sex, his musical preferences, recommendations from Stephen Frears, Orwell on Dickens, good wine and Sartre, the third greatest children's book of the last 70 years, and blank-verse werewolf novels. A companion to Housekeeping vs. The Dirt, 131pp, paperback.

As a founding member of the influential English rock bands Soft Machine and Matching Mole and with a solo career which has lasted for over 40 years, Robert Wyatt has collaborated with artists including Bjork, Brian Eno, Carla Bley, Paul Weller and David Gilmour. His own music remains unclassifiably personal. Alfie Benge is a visual artist, songwriter and pioneering music manager, who has managed Robert's career for over 50 years and is also married to him. Since 1982 they have collaborated on many of Robert's most well-known songs. This unique Faber volume celebrates one of the most enduring creative partnerships of the last half century. Their work is unusual, perceptive, playful, songs that touch your mind and your heart, selected and arranged by the authors themselves and featuring an introduction by Jarvis Cocker. A full presentation of the lyrics, poems, writings and drawings, some of the titles include Dada Was Here, Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road, Pigs, and Vandalusia. The purity and fragility of Robert's singing can lead to the lyrics being overshadowed and finally this is readdressed. Some are fantastically funny like 'Winter of our discotheque' and 'Words take the place of meaning' and some are disturbingly prescient as in Born Again Cretin and NIO (New Information Order). Despite being rendered virtually immobile following his accident, Robert flies in his book so be prepared for lift off. 192pp, illus.

Samer Nashef is a cardiac surgeon at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge and a world leading expert on risk and quality in surgical care. He tells heart-stopping stories of transplants, coronary artery bypasses, aorta repair and cardiac arrest and also delivers humane advice about medical realities rarely observed - the futility of obsessing over diet, the necessity of calculating risks, the role of decision making, and the resilience of doctor and patient alike. He takes a scalpel to the medical profession and asks if patients get the standard of care they have a right to expect from their surgeons. Nashef is co-creator of the Euroscore System, a safety and monitoring tool that predicts the outcomes of heart surgery and he has saved thousands of lives too. In his spare time he compiles cryptic crosswords for the Guardian and the Financial Times under the pseudonym The Naked Surgeon. His Monologues speed from the transporting of a donor's heart at the motorway hard shoulder to cautionary stories of excessive intervention gone awry in US hospitals, to a traumatic trip to bring advanced cardiac surgery to the Palestinian West Bank. Magnificently warm, Nashef has the best imaginable bedside manner. 276pp, paperback.

Sub-titled 'Laying Bare and Learning to Repair Our Love Lives', here is a book to achieve better sex in ten steps by a renowned sex therapist. Think about the last time you had sex. Who initiated it? When and where did it happen? What was off-limits and why? Did you lose yourself in pleasure and connection, or did you come away feeling disappointed or even ashamed? Ian Kerner shows you how to create a sex life that works for you and helps you figure out what's working and what's not, where you might be missing some elements. He also discusses many common sexual problems such as low desire, issues with climaxing, and erectile unpredictability - and how to resolve them. He begins with desire and the call to sexual action, touch, psychological stimulation side by side and face to face, exploring erotic themes, expressing your inner kinks, deep arousal for male and female, that orgasm is a journey not a destination, entering a state of revery and getting your glow on. Create sex scripts that confirm meaning or might delay ejaculation, and he touches on porn, trauma and pain and gender dysphoria. For adults of all sexual persuasions, this is a very popular psychologist, and the sensitivity with which he writes about such personal and potentially embarrassing situations is extraordinary. For example Ella, who still had a penis and as a trans woman was taking medication which made her need to pee a lot and how her newish girlfriend Gemma suggested she wears an adult diaper, and how eventually Gemma was able to give Ella pleasure and move in a more sexual direction below the waist. There are fantastic sentences such as 'Think of G-spot stimulation as adding some serious bass to the treble of clitoral stimulation.' And 'Speaking of vibrators, we're living in a Golden Age of sex toys' (now better designed and produced). 354pp, large softback.

Finely drawn sketches, portraits and fantasies by one of the major theatre and opera, stage and costume designers of the 20th century, many of Lila De Nobili's colour artworks have never been previously published before this publication. Parisian cats have been celebrated by painters, writers and chansonniers since the 19th century when Steinlein created the poster for the cabaret Le Chat Noir. An important place among these artists is occupied by Lila De Nobili who moved to the French capital in 1945 and never left the 7th Arrondissement, its quintessential neighbourhood. She painted and designed stage sets for the Scala in Milan, the Opéra in Paris, Covent Garden in London and was sought by the most famous directors. She designed costumes for Maria Callas, Edith Piaf, Audrey Hepburn and Ingrid Bergman. Just after the events of May 1968, she devoted herself exclusively to painting and adopted her first cat Ulysse and the feline family soon grew. She never tired of sketching and drawing them, and painting them in watercolour and most of these intimate works full of insight and subtlety were gifted to a friend, herself a cat lover and thanks to this collection, now published in book form. Also included are fantasies and stories including Dominique, affectionate cards featuring her cats Mitzi and Rouki, a tabby and a pale ginger. Some of the cats are dressed as can-can dancers or Siamese cats as Pierrot, costume sketches for Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty at Covent Garden, but best of all are the beautifully observed small cats looking curiously or snuggled under the covers inside a cardboard box and kittens looking for a home. Exquisitely coloured renderings, 144 landscape pages measuring 21.6 x 16.5cm.
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