Professor Stefan Buczacki is one of the world's most renowned botanists having written around 60 books including several standard works of reference. He spent 12 unbroken years as panellist and chairman on BBC Radio Four's Gardener?s Question Time. Join him as he uncovers the wild animals and plants that thrive among the headstones from the graveyard beetle to the mighty yew as he reveals the natural secrets to be found in God's Acre. From the earliest Pagan sites to modern urban cemeteries, burial grounds have always enjoyed a sacred, protected status in the history of society. Consequently, they have become tranquil oases in which wildlife can flourish - a microcosm of the natural habitat long since disappeared from the surrounding area. Buczacki explores the history of churchyards and the landscape as well as what can be done to conserve them for future generations. He looks at plants and fungi, lichens, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, birds and small creatures and shows how deeply churchyards are rooted in British history and literature. We can all look with fresh eyes and be better informed whether or not you are spiritually and religiously motivated. Chapter one opens aptly with Thomas Gray's 1751 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Includes beautiful coloured line art of creatures like frogs, bats, moles, crows and badgers to contemporary photographs, full page colour. 2018 first edition, satin pagemarker.

A Thames & Hudson first edition with 46 illustrations, 14 in colour, chronicling one of the most spectacular art appropriation campaigns in history. Napoleon Bonaparte brought the Bayeux Tapestry to the Louvre Museum in France to whip up further for the proposed invasion of England. In 1796, four years after the founding of the First French Republic and only two days after his marriage to Josephine de Beauharnais, Bonaparte left Paris to take command of his first campaign in Italy, aged only 26. One year later his army was in Venice, and his commissioners were determining which great Renaissance artworks to bring back to France. Among the paintings the French chose was 'The Wedding Feast at Cana' by Paolo Veronese, a vast masterpiece that had hung in the refectory of San Giorgio Maggiore since it was painted in 1563. Once pulled down from the wall, the Venetian canvas crossed the Mediterranean packed among paintings commandeered from Venice, and made its way by river and canal to Paris where Napoleon gathered his spoils of war - treasures from the cities of Rome, Milan and later Berlin and Vienna. In 1801, the Veronese was placed on triumphant display in what was once called the Musée Napoleon, now known as the Louvre, the former palace of the French kings which had been transformed into a public museum that ostensibly belonged to the French people, but which also functioned as a monument to Napoleon's power. Cynthia Saltzman interweaves the stories of Napoleon's military campaigns, uncovering the treatise through which he obtained his loot, with the histories of the plundered artworks themselves. 300pp, colour.

A landmark publication for photography, well written and nicely designed with concise entries on photographers, genres and processes, one that will be enjoyed for many years to come. A truly heavyweight tome in a modern elegant design, the first image is by Richard Avedon, Dovima with Elephants, a beautiful woman in a long black dress with white sash holding the trunks of two elephants, sadly chained, in an arresting black and white image. Other such images to contemplate and recall are Raising the Flag on the Reichstag, 1945 by a photojournalist for the TASS press agency in Moscow documenting the advance of the Red Army during the capture of Berlin, symbolising the fall of the Nazi regime. There are boys playing marbles in front of a mosque in Istanbul 1968, subway passengers New York City 1938, Paris in 1932 on a rainy day outside a train station by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Lewis Caroll's Alice Liddell as The Beggar Maid 1858, plus photo montages and reportage right through to digital photographs and image software such as Photoshop, this is documentary photography at its very best. It is a reference to more than 180 years of history in one authoritative volume, more than 1,200 concise and fully cross-referenced entries on the art, history, science, masters and proponents of photography from Abbas to Zoom lens. Illustrated with over 300 photographs in colour and black and white, diagrams and built upon fresh scholarship by an international team of 79 researchers. Truly epic. 438pp, 19.6 x 30.2cm, amazing softback Thames & Hudson first edition.
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A Times History Book of the Year 2022, we have the first edition described by the Sunday Times as 'Exhilarating and whip-smart' and by the award-winning historian. It is a thrilling true historical detective story set in 16th century Portugal. The book follows the interconnected lives of two men across the Renaissance globe; one an aficionado of mermen and Ethiopian culture, an art collector, historian and expert on water music, returns home from witnessing the birth of the modern age to die in a mysterious incident, apparently the victim of a grisly and curious murder. The other, a ruffian, vagabond and braggart, chased across the globe from Mozambique to Japan, ends up as the national poet of Portugal. The stories of Damiao de Gois and Luis de Camoes capture the extraordinary wonders that awaited Europeans on their arrival in India and China, the challenges these marvels presented to longstanding beliefs, and the vast conspiracy to silence the questions these posed about the nature of history and of human life. It is 30th January 1574, and the King's archivist lies dead - burned or strangled or drowned. The paper found in his hand could be from any corner of the Portuguese empire. But whatever it contains is probably a lie... Like all good mysteries, everyone has their own version of events. Beautifully written and utterly mesmerising with vivid characterisation of people and places, not least those of Lisbon life high and low. 344pp, woodcut illustrations and colour plates and maps and a note on quotations and Portuguese pronunciation.

Quiet, dutiful and shy, Princess Mary born at Sandringham on 25th April 1897, and would grow to become one of the most respected senior members of the royal family. Anyone with an interest in the Great War will surely have heard of her, and of the brass box that carries her image and her Christmas Gift Fund of 1914. Aged just 17, Mary was engaged with the London Needlework Guild, a focus of activity with her mother. A combination of her interest and empathy undoubtedly led her to desire to develop her own gift for the Sailors and Soldiers of the Empire. The book is the remarkable story of the Princess's Christmas Gift, a simple appeal to the nation which began on 16th October 1914 in the Daily Mirror the Press Notice Announcement. The appeal was designed to provide a mark of recognition of the sacrifices being made by the armed forces and some way of providing comfort to them under challenging circumstances in that first Christmas in the First World War. The contents of the gifts varied depending on the town or village who had gathered sufficient funds for the 5,481 parcels that were sent out in time for Christmas Day. Subscribers rich and poor made their donations. For example the generous parcels from the people of Nottingham contained much of value to the average man on active service. They included the inevitable Christmas plum pudding, chocolate, woollen mittens, cigarettes, booklets of greetings, plain postcards, pencils, tins of Meloids, tins of peppermints, tablets of soap, caramels, tins of boric ointment, laces, tins of dubbin, tins of Vaseline and all together no fewer than 130,844 articles were packed and despatched 'as a token of appreciation of the services of those undertaking the hardships and risking the dangers of the great conflict.' Each gift was provided with a specially produced Christmas booklet that carried the message 'With most cordial Christmas Greetings from the people of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire' together with portraits of the King and Queen, the Prince of Wales, and Princess Mary. Set against the backdrop of the Christmas Truce of 1914, the book is the first time the full story of the Princess's gift has been told. It is lavishly illustrated with surviving artefacts, archive records, letters and newspaper reports and the full contents of the gift and its many variants, the design and manufacturer of the gift box, as well as the meaning of the gift to many of its recipients. It also covers gifts for the Indian Army, nurses and non-smokers and a look at those in the Colonies and also casualties of 1914. Glamorous first edition, 320 glossy pages packed with colour and archive images.

Now rare 2014 first edition, a 96 glossy paged colour tribute to artist Tessa Newcomb. The book explores her enchantment with Paris in words and paint portraying the city's flâneurs, chic ladies walking their no less elegantly coiffured dogs, expectant lovers, children playing on carousels in the Tuileries, dainty eaters of patisseries, stall holders selling mushrooms, haute cuisine of delicious artistry and simple little restaurants with Lapin à La Cocotte on the menu, mobile phone users outside cafés, butchers cleaning up and chess players sequestered under trees in the Luxembourg Gardens. These vignettes are layered with the flavour of Tessa's own eclectic reading of writers inspired by Paris including Verlaine, Colette, Jean Rhys and François Sagan. Approximately 100 oils and watercolour drawings are reproduced in this wonderfully intimate visual record of her wanderings in both historic and hidden parts of Paris. Colour.

In this wide-ranging and sometimes controversial study, one of our pre-eminent political historians dispels the popular myths that have grown up about this critical period in Britain's story, and argues that it set the scene for much that is laudable about our nation today. He looks at how Britain has been governed, the franchise and electoral system, the House of Lords and the House of Commons, the monarchy, the Cabinet, local government, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, the Empire. He looks at the politics of unionism and the 1895 General Election, at Lord Salisbury's foreign policy and challenges from America, the Middle and Far East. He looks at the war in South Africa and the challenge from the Boers, confident unionism, the Labour Party representing the working class and the trade unions. He does not shy away from the concentration camps in South Africa, Lord Rosebery's return. There was the problem the end of the Victorian Age of reforming education leading into new alignments and the alliance with Japan, the Irish Land Act and devolution, the Corn Duty and its repeal, Home Rule, the 1906 General Election, school meals and medical inspection, old age pensions, the reform of taxation, Churchill and social reform, the constitutional crisis and the end of Balfour's leadership, land reform, female suffrage, and from the entente with France and two world wars. The turbulent years of 1895 to 1914 changed Britain's political landscape for ever. They saw a transition from aristocratic rule to mass politics and heralded a new agenda which still dominates today. Economic modernisation, social welfare and equality, secondary and technical education, a new role for Britain in the world were all complex and difficult issues of the period which proved so thorny that despite the efforts of the Edwardians, they remain among the most pressing problems facing us in the 21st century. Vernon Bogdanor believes that the robustness of Britain's parliamentary and political institutions and her liberal political culture, with the commitment to rational debate and argument, were powerful enough to carry her through one of the most trying periods of her history, and so make possible the remarkable survival of liberal Britain. A thumping 3" thick tome of 880 pages with superb timeline of main events and seven maps in 2022 first edition.

With over 60 stunning plates of original art, this is a bold and glorious rendering of the life of the Buddha by author Ranchor Prime who brings to life the inspired work of award-winning artist B. G. Sharma with a sensitive, immensely readable and rarely seen biography of the Buddha. From his birth as a prince to his final lesson in achieving nirvana, Sharma captures it all. Ornamented throughout are quotes from A Dhammapada for Contemplation by Ajahn Munindo. "An exquisite rendering of the Buddhist story. As if the beauty of the Blessed One could step out of modern India's best paintings into your hands." - Jack Kornfield. What do we really know about the life of Siddhartha, who later became known as the Buddha? What challenges did he encounter along his path to the Bodhi Tree? He lived in northern India in the 5th century BC as a Hindu prince who fled a life of luxury to live an ascetic life as a wandering monk. During his lifetime he established a substantial following and was known for performing miracles and traditionally his teachings have emphasised compassion and forbearance, summarised in his sermons and in the Dhammapada. His life is reflected within these ornately illustrated pages. 30.48cm squared, first edition, 208pp. Modern Moghul-inspired exquisitely colourful illustrations throughout this glamorous publication.
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Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-79) was one of the most important and innovative photographers, criticised in her lifetime for her unconventional techniques. Right now a new exhibition with a modern photography is being staged at the National Portrait Gallery. She is now celebrated as a pioneering portraitist and to mark the bicentenary of her birth and the 150th anniversary of her first museum exhibition, the only one in her lifetime, held at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1865, Bibliophile has got hold of this rare 2015 exhibition catalogue. Drawing on the V&A's significant collection of photographs acquired directly from Cameron and letters she wrote to the museum's founding director, Curator Marta Weiss tells the story of Cameron's artistic development and presents for the first time a group of photographs recently revealed to have belonged to her friend and mentor the artist G. F. Watts which shed light on previously unacknowledged aspects of Cameron's experimental approach. There is a modernity and contemporary spirit to her visual language and themes at a time when photography was still in its infancy. Her delicacy of touch is shown in her portraits of naked children, beautiful women with long flowing hair decorated with flowers and women portrayed not only as seductresses and paramours but as caring mothers and grandmothers with children and grandchildren, affection, caressing and kissing, and in home theatricals with mythological, biblical and allegorical scenes. She attached heavy swans' wings to children's shoulders and created great beauty in such tableau as King Ahasuerus and Queen Esther in Apocrypha, the bearded old man, the beauty resting on the shoulders of another woman captured so artistically. Simple and beautiful is the first example entitled Annie, 1864, a little girl of around seven years with unbrushed hair gazing wistfully as are many of these subjects. Page after page of sepia and black and white beautifully reproduced full page photographs. 224pp, marbled endpapers, cloth binding and silver tooling for the title, 26 x 22cm. The paperback sells at £30 and we have the glamorous hardback first edition with English intro and further text in German and French .

Vincent Van Gogh was a revolutionary artist who changed the nature of draughtsmanship so thoroughly, brightened the palette for serious painting and infused his art with so much personal character, it was hard for his contemporaries to see the merits of his work. When he died at the age of 37 in 1890 he was not completely unrecognised, but it wasn't until the end of 1888 when his younger brother Theo entered three of his paintings in an Avant-Garde exhibition that a few major artists and writers began to give Van Gogh's work a serious look. In all the major cities he lived - The Hague, Amsterdam, Brussels, Antwerp, London and Paris - Van Gogh applied his keen eye and devilish intellect to all the art he could find. He frequented museums and declared 'It is good to love as much as one can' as he embraced life, especially art and literature, with passion. He studied Gustave Doré's work intensely, and tenderly called Millet 'Father Millet', and was devoted to the Old Masters and their influence on his work would always be profound. The works selected for this magnificent volume provide an opportunity to see the artists who were the predominant painters of the era, some famous some still not, and why they gave the world Van Gogh inhabited so much pleasure. There are several works by Jean-Francois Raffaëlli who shared Van Gogh's sensibility for the subject of the downtrodden and influenced for example Van Gogh's portrait 'Woman Rocking a Cradle', an image so important to him that he made five versions of it, focussing our attention on the working-class woman's rough hands just as Raffaëlli did. A painting by Jozef Israëls of a peasant family at a dinner table inspired Van Gogh's most famous early work 'The Potato Eaters'. Just as Rembrandt painted himself almost a hundred times, Van Gogh made more than 30 self portraits over a much shorter span of time. We watch Van Gogh experimenting with loose brushwork and bright colours as used by Manet, studying the pointillist dots used by Seurat and appreciating the work of Monet, Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec, all positioned here side by side with images and for detailed comparison in the text by this bestselling author. With chapters arranged from Religion, Romanticism, The Barbizon School, English Art and The Graphic, Japanese Prints, The Female Sitter, Still Life, Impressionism, The Sea and more. An afterword on his legacy by Ann Dumas. Glossy white pages, hundreds of full page colour images. Tiny remainder mark. A magnificent tome of 409pp, 22.33 x 26cm.
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