The letter is a powerfully evocative form that has gained in resonance as the habits of personal letter writing have declined in the digital age, faith in the letter as evidence of the intimate thoughts of individuals underplays the sophisticated ways letters functioned in the past. In our book leading scholars approach the letter from a variety of disciplines to uncover the habits, forms and secrets of letter writing. The look at such elements as handwriting, seals, ink, and the arrangement of words on the manuscript page which were significant carriers of meaning alongside epistolary rhetorics. Chapters explore the travels of the letter uncovering the many means through which correspondence reached a reader by messenger and horse and carriage, and the ways in which the delivery of letters preoccupied contemporaries. They reveal how other practices such as the use of cipher and the designs of forgery threatened to subvert the surveillance and reading of letters. Individual chapters study the language of letter writers and their thoughts and discover deliberate, skilful exercises in managing the conventions and expectations of the form. Letters enjoyed textual and archival afterlives whose stories are rarely told except those which have been celebrated for their historical or literary significance. From Palatino to Cresci, carriers and posts, enigmatic culture of cryptology, the culture of copying and counterfeit correspondence, allegory in Sidney and Spenser, Cicero, the effects in the Herrick family letters of the 16th century, John Stubbs's left-handed letters, and preservation and early archive are among the artful qualities of letters and the cultures of collaboration and re-writing that produced them in this magnificent study. 322pp, illus.

Architect Josef Hoffmann and designer and painter Koloman Moser founded the Vienna Workshop or Wiener Werkstätte after parting ways with the Vienna Secession. From 1903-32 the cooperative of artists created highly decorative everyday objects driven by quality of design and bolstered by the support of Vienna's elite. The group produced furniture, textiles, postcards, ceramics, jewellery and more and 30 artworks are included in this book of postcards, repeating patterns in bold colours, floral designs in teal, peach and orange such as Florentina by Mathilde Flögl (1893-1950) or Valentine Kovacic's Harlem in blue with green and sage, shown in detail, a thistle type floral design. Glossy white detachable postcards in softback, all in glorious colour and many a detail central to the white bordered postcard.

Our dear late friend ex-Python Terry Jones in his foreword says 'Did they imagine, as they took their poses, that their friends and families would think they had really flown in an aeroplane or a balloon or that they had actually owned an automobile?' Passengers on photographs travelling First Class, driving smart motorcars and motorcycles, with a backdrop of a deck of a ship, one of which looks suspiciously like the Titanic (plate 197), a couple photographed in the dashing speedboat on page 7, a jolly house party deciding to improvise a charabanc from dustbin lids and bits of wood! And he continues 'Why on earth did people have their photographs taken on the beach sitting astride a cut-out donkey?' (plate 58). In papier-mâché planes they brave the clouds or row through a painted sea in half a boat - the revelries of travel in the early years of the 20th century could briefly be realised in the dream factory of the photographer's studio and permanently recorded in the form of a photo postcard. Stern looking couples in the basket of a balloon in a studio in Blackpool, and aboard flying machines in Weston-Super-Mare and Southend, the sometimes huge caricature faces show the joie de vivre and sense of fun with captions like First Stop Berlin. 204 sepia postcards reproduced to the best possible quality, a truly nostalgic step back in time from this Oxford University Bodleian Library publication.

Sub-titled 'The Interaction of Technology and Play' here is a romp through the changing landscape of 19th and 20th century American toys, games, hobbies and amusements and the ways in which technology affects play, and play shapes people. Inventors have used new materials and technologies to reshape sports and games, crafting new and extreme forms of recreation, always responding to popular demand. From LEGO, skateboards to beading kits and video games, the text is basically a social history. Some particular technologies for example the bicycle fit into more than one chapter as a toy, a hobby, a sport. There is a chapter on the American Playground Reform Movement and how they were engineered to provide wholesome and efficient activities to children of working class families. A third chapter covers commercial pleasure parks from Coney Island to Disneyland, sites where great collections and machines often imitate the technology of transportation and production through rides, shows and fanciful environments. Crafts seem to prescribe gender rules with heavy tools such as saws and hammers being reserved for men and lighter tools like sewing or knitting needles and paintbrushes reserved for women. In the 20th century new technologies presented new hobbies - operating ham radios, building model aeroplanes, assembling HiFi equipment, modifying cars, and by the end of the century cooking gourmet meals using a wide range of expensive kitchen utensils. The book looks at baseball and basketball, golf and tennis alongside the USA's elaborate road rail work, the rise of mass circulation newspapers and magazines which made national sports possible, pioneer sporting goods manufacturers, the standardisation of playing fields and equipment and through technology, high performance swimsuits and 'anchored' putters challenging the concept of the level playing field. Electronic games it seems have reproduced many of the joys and the alarm of the older toys and is discussed right from the first chapter. 200 page paperback, photos.

Heroic though of lowly status, Gladiators fought vicious duals in large arenas filled with baying crowds and were the celebrities of their day. The survivor could either be executed (the famous 'thumbs down' signal) or spared at the whim of the crowd or the Emperor. Few lasted more than a dozen fights, yet they were a valuable asset to their owners. But how did they fight, how did their weapons and techniques develop, and who were they? This superb Casemate Short History introductory series provides an entertaining overview of the history of the Gladiator, debunking some myths along the way. We learn about the different forms of combat, and the pairings which were designed to carefully balance the strengths and weaknesses of one against the other. The retiarii (with nets) were lightly armed but mobile, the secutores and murmillones protected but were weighted down by their armour. Gladiators also participated in simulated naval battles on large artificial lakes or even sets inside the arena of the Colosseum. Although their lives were brutal and short, Gladiators were often admired for their bravery, endurance and willingness to die. Men who fought each other were not the only type of Gladiator. Being torn apart by wild animals was yet another form of entertainment provided for the crowd. Those who fought wild animals (bestiarii) or participated in hunts in the arena (venatores) are recorded in sculpted reliefs, equipped as Gladiators and locked in combat with big cats. Those who fought each other were usually condemned criminals or prisoners of war, expected to fight enthusiastically, usually in recreations of great battles from the past complete with scenery. Other gory scenes of death included the paegnarii who fought each other with sticks, or the andabatae who duelled or attempted to do so in helmets with no eye holes! With useful timeline, illus. plus line art and evidence from contemporary literature, ancient remains, graffiti and the multiple skeletons which tell their story. 160 page illustrated paperback.

12 Medieval French plays rendered into modern English by the translator of 'The Farce of the Fart', scurrilous, sexy, stupid, satirical, scatological, side splitting.' Enders is unafraid to reference modern comedy in her translations as she assesses these comedies from half a millennium ago. Did you hear about the newlywed who rushes off for legal advice before the honeymoon is over? Or the husbands who arrange for an enormous tub in which to cure their sugary wives with a pinch of salt? How about a participatory processional toward marriage so sacrilegious that it puts Chaucer's pilgrimage to shame? And who could have imagined a medieval series of plays devoted to spouse-swapping? Jody Enders has heard and seen all this and more and shares it in her volume of performance-friendly translations of Medieval French farces. Carefully culled from more than 200 extant plays and crafted with a wit and contemporary sensibility to make them playable today, these dozen bawdy plays take on the hilariously depressing and depressingly hilarious state of holy wedlock. In 15th and 16th century comedy, love and marriage had everything to do with arranged marriages of child brides to doddering old men, frustration, fear, anxiety, jealousy, disappointment and despair matched only by the eagerness with which everybody sings, dances and cavorts in pursuit of deception, trickery and adultery. Easily recognisable stock characters come vividly to life, struggling to negotiate the limits of power, class and gender, each embodying the distinctive blend of wit, social critique and breathless boisterousness that is farce. There are notes on stage directions, grammar and style, music and choreography and brief plot summaries and the 12 plays include The Newlywed Game, The Shithouse, Holy Deadlock, Bitches and Pussycats, Wife Swap and Extreme Husband Makeover among them. There are four to six actors in The Shithouse - Wily Willy, the valet who manages to make out like a bandit assisting in the assignation between his mistress Kitty and her Lover, the dandyish Sir Allcock. Allcock arrives with a picnic but when the Husband arrives home at an inopportune moment, the poor Lover has nowhere to hide but the Latrine. He is forced to shove his head and more into the privy hole, literally shitfaced after an interrupted feast. 536pp.

Printed monthly in The Believer, Hornby's book reviews are suffused with wit, ire and loving insight and his choices often strike into the deeper and odder reaches of the literary world, big books which are ridiculously unfunny but also books that can bring themselves 'all the way through the long march to your soul.' Sub-titled 'Fourteen Months of Massively Witty Adventures In Reading', by the author of the bestselling novels About A Boy and High Fidelity including excerpts from his favourite new books by Sarah Vowell, Jennie Erdal and others. As rich and varied as the world of literature itself, Hornby is perfectly cast as both tour guide and host, and insatiable bibliophiles will devour his columns with delight. Here is his popular collection of essays as Nick Hornby continues the feverish survey of his swollen bookshelves offering funny, intelligent and unblinkered accounts of the stuff he's been reading, with revelations on the intellectual scene and English football in equal measure. In February 2005 he ponders the mystique of Bob Dylan and makes a point about Philip Roth; by May he ponders bird books and true crime then Capote and Gourevitch. He discovers Adrian Mole and considers why he doesn't understand science fiction, and asks if Martin Amis and Marilynne Robinson are modern classics. He ponders the profound effect of literature on life and interesting philosophical debate about blow jobs in a terrific opening scene from Jess Walter's novel. He reads about American lives, Anthony Burgess about Michael Frayn, the foul-mouthed Philip Larkin and rereads William Cooper. 153pp, paperback.

Sub-titled 'A History of Those Who Rose to the Occasion and Those Who Didn't' written by a former officer in the Irish Guards. The book includes familiar battlefield heroes like Audie Murphy or 'H' Jones together with less well-known characters like Corporal Graham 'the bravest man at Waterloo', and the young Erwin Rommel decades before he became famous as the 'Desert Fox.' Those bucking the odds have to include Douglas Bader, Britain's flamboyant aircraft ace flying with his artificial legs, George Washington daringly crossing the Delaware, and John Paul Jones challenging the might of the Royal Navy. Joan of Arc was certainly one of those who had the courage of their convictions, while Sergeant York had to overcome his pacifist views in World War One France. There have been few better examples of the constant thread of valour than Joshua Chamberlain, the saviour of the Union position at Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg, Michael Wittmann, the ultimate tank ace, or Albert Jacka, the Australian who many feel deserved not just one but three Victoria Crosses. O'Brien also pays homage to the brilliant codebreakers Alan Turing and Captain Reginald Hall RN, photographic experts such as Constance Babington Smith, and medical pioneers like Napoleon's great surgeon Baron Larrey or 'Weary' Dunlop, Australia's hero of the Kwai railway. All had an influence on warfare as great as any warrior. And those who didn't rise to the occasion? Many were too confident by half like Saddam Hussein who was to lead his country to ruin, the corpulent and boastful Hermann Goering, wrecking the plans of others at Dunkirk and Stalingrad, or even the inexperienced Jack Kennedy during the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Other simply display fatal inattention like France's Constable Charles D'Albret at Agincourt, or General Ledlie at the Battle of the Crater. Flaws and obsessions can wreck the reputations of otherwise great men - Douglas MacArthur in Korea, Napoleon in Russia, Montgomery and Patton, due to their jealous feuding, and even Mark Antony who risked everything for such a non-military notion as love. Worst of all in warfare must be treachery and rank disobedience - Mark Clark vaingloriously capturing Rome instead of trapping the Germans, Lord Sackville refusing to charge at Minden, Mountbatten persisting with his disastrous raid at Dieppe, and Benedict Arnold changing sides to try to hand over West Point, becoming America's symbol of the ultimate traitor. And finally a streak of cruelty with unfeeling generals at the Easter Rising, Amritsar and My Lai. The ultimate judgement for those who received lavish praise or quite the opposite must be left to the reader. 288pp, well illustrated.

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.