Tuscany captivates with its gently rolling hilly landscape, its cypress avenues and pine forests, its magnificent castles, palaces, and country villas amidst of blooming vineyards and olive groves. Cities like Pisa, Florence, or Siena with outstanding cultural treasures, tiny mountain villages, and last but not least "la dolce vita" makes the region one of the most popular in Italy. The Leaning Tower of Pisa, lush green countryside with poplar trees and grapevines, stunning beaches, the red tiled rooftops in Lucca and the brightly lit riverside and domes of Florence, visitors to Tuscany are as enthusiastic about its unique architecture, art and culture as the overwhelmingly beautiful natural setting. The Tuscan way of life has been around since the Etruscan era and whether in Pisa, or Siena or in tiny villages or the Tuscan islands in the azure blue sea, Tuscany offers the highest quality of life. There are pine forests, magnificent castles, palaces and country villas amidst blooming vineyards and olive groves. Uncork the great Tuscan wines and cuisines served on richly laid tables. In pictures the book celebrates local produce and Italian cuisine and wine, in particular Chianti and the extraordinary San Gimignano and the Elsa Valley, Livorno and Riviera degli Etruschi, plus cult vehicles, beautiful church interiors and all with a lick of good quality gelato! Maps, stunning full page colour photos. Text in six languages. Softback, 17 x 20.8cm, 516pp.

England is surrounded by a fringe of mud and pearls - tidal flats and marshes, holiday parks and petrochemical works, jagged cliffs and silver beaches. It has the isles of Canvey, Sheppey, Foulness, Wight and Dogs. Mersea, Wallasea, Two Tree and Rat. And the wild and rockier places of Lundy, the Scillies, Hilbre, the Farnes. Then there's the deserted wartime forts, oil platforms, lost lands of Doggerland and Lyonesse and off-shore wind turbines. These islands and their inhabitants not only cast varied lights on the mainland, they also possess their own peculiar stories, from the Barbary slavers who once occupied Lundy, to the ex-major who seized a wartime fort in the North Sea and declared himself Prince of Sealand. Ian Crofton embarks on a personal journey to a number of the islands encircling England, exploring some that were once places of refuge or holiness, and others that have become locations for prisons, rubbish dumps and military installations. He shows the ways in which England's islands have been formed and how they are constantly changing and his book is filled with excellent natural description, comic encounters, history and culture and he is the most engaging travelling companion. 286pp, 16 pages of colour photos, maps.

From the Historic England popular series by the historian who has researched incredible photographic archives and who here selects 1,200 of the best images depicting the yards and alleys of Georgian and Victorian London and Britain, the maze of medieval streets, transformation of shopping areas and lost buildings. Once sleepy villages and market towns during this period were engulfed by a tide of development - Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Leeds exploded across the face of England and railways wrought massive changes as their iron tentacles spread across the landscape. By 1900 nearly 80% of England's population lived in urban areas, compared with just one third 100 years earlier. Ranging from 1870, the midpoint of Queen Victoria's reign, England was entering the Great Depression. Education became a statutory right, putting children at school desks rather than setting them to work. Women were being given control of any wages they earned and they began their long fight for equality. European rivalry accelerated and Britain's industrial and commercial pre-eminence was challenged by foreign competition. It was the age of the internal combustion engine, the telephone, radio, and aviation lay just around the corner and photographs were now able to record the moment. Most were taken to provide a permanent record of areas which were vanishing, and the quality of the images are of the highest quality of the time showing early railways, coaching inns, horse-drawn travel, the offices of the White Star Line Liverpool 1898, mock Tudor homes in Port Sunlight model village, Knebworth, fishermen's towns like Newlyn Cornwall 1907 with women and children and a man at work, New Street Station, grand civic buildings and town halls, Fry's chocolate in glamorous shop windows, tea rooms and formal gardens, back-to-backs, puppet shows and village life, markets and railway workers, Windsor Castle and Stonehenge with silk top-hatted gentlemen visiting, a windmill being demolished, watermen selling water with a bonneted child alongside her parents and his cart. The images are grouped by Northwest, Northeast, East Midlands, West Midlands, East England, South and Southeast, London, South and Southwest. A spectacular heavyweight large volume 10" x 11¾", 560 glossy pages.
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It was from the 1740s onward that cartographers, poets and artists had begun to give outsiders some idea of what the Lakeland landscape of mountains and valleys, lakes, rivers and waterfalls actually looked like. The Romantic movement with its cult of the 'sublime' and of the 'picturesque' made the mountainous regions of Wales, the Lake District and even Scotland more fashionable for visitors to admire for their 'beauty, horror and immensity'. But these tourists never left the well-beaten and recommended path nor ventured into the hills for themselves. Only miners and quarrymen or shepherds with sheep to find or pack-horse drivers did that, and when the first eccentric visitors asked to be guided to the summits, the locals were amazed and bemused. When Samuel Taylor Coleridge, wild, unconventional and physically fearless, arrived to join the Wordsworths in the Lakes in 1799, he immediately set out fell walking on his own. His records of these explorations in his notebooks and letters, particularly to his beloved but unattainable Sara Hutchinson, provided totally new and modern appreciation and understanding of the mountain landscape. Helvellyn, Skiddaw, Scafell and most of the now popular summits were visited by him alone, without maps or any equipment beyond his notebook in which he scribbled his impressions and his reactions. 'O Joy for me!' he jotted on first seeing Ullswater from the top of the Great Dodd. The book explores and explains the experiences of a true pioneer and captures the remarkable creative spirit of this great Briton. Chapters also cover his walks around Nether Stowey, Somerset between June 1797 to July 1798, his tour of the Harz mountains Germany, May 1799, at home at Greta Hall, Keswick 1800, Saddleback, Dungeon Ghyll Force, Coledale Fells, Walla Crag, Nab Scar and a nine day walk to the coast and back in August 1802 among them. Plus final walks with Sothey and Hazlitt through Borrowdale and the Fell wanderer Alfred Wainwright. Beautifully produced 194 pages with many modern colour photographs, line art and coloured maps.

A beautiful collection in which 20 outstanding writers set out with old memories to find new adventures. Ingrid Persaud and Agnès Poirier consider the rituals of pilgrimage and protest marches. Kamila Shamsie writes of Karachi. On the shores of Foulness Island, Will Self hopes to avoid landmines. In a forest north of Berlin Jessica Jay Lee gets soaked then lost, and pacing around Delhi, Keshava Guha is interrupted by a husky dog. 'During the pandemic of 2020' he writes, looking back, 'he was the only thing I hugged.' Stories to dip into from all walks of life, together they capture the magic and opportunity that walking had to connect us with our surroundings and free us from our worries, raise our heartrate and relax our mind. This collection will lead us across historic ground and inspire new thinking and other writers include Tim Parks, Nicholas Shakespeare, Richard Ford and Patrick Gale. A William Collins publication, 230 pages, illus.

The longest street name in Britain is Bolderwood Arboretum Ornamental Drive in the New Forest. The shortest is Rye in Puriton in Somerset. There are some 800,000 streets in England, Scotland and Wales that have a name, along with several thousand more in Northern Ireland ranging from Aachen Way in Halifax to Zurich Gardens in Bramhall in Stockport. There are more than 5,400 High Streets, but there is only one Christmas Pie Avenue. There are thousands of Roads, and Closes, but very few Vennels and Boulevards. Some state the obvious - Station Approach or River View and some are more obscure like Gillygate or Titty Ho. There are important Roman roads like Ermine Street from London to York, Watling Street from Dover to Chester, Stane Street from London to Chichester, and Dere Street from London to Cirencester. With a history from Saxon times onwards, the Circus in Bath to Piccadilly Circus, crescents and squares, quays and mews, Holborn Viaduct, here are the Latin derivations, the steps and the follies, twittens and drangways, gates and hills - natural features, trades and traders, battles, war heroes and political figures, royal connections, noble land owning families, builders and developers, local worthies, artists and entertainers, writers and sportsmen and the unique, unusual and unfortunate names like Ugly Lane, Upper Butts or Uranus Road. Eminently browseworthy, with gazetteer, 225pp.

Derek J. Taylor embarks on a mission to uncover the 'golden thread of truth' travelling to palaces and villages of medieval England, through the castles and towns of France and the Middle East, to the United States of the 21st century. We go to the Fens, Clarendon Palace in Wiltshire, Lionheart's legacy, Chateau Gaillard in Normandy, Temple Ewell in Kent, Bouvines in Northern France, and of course Runnymede in Surrey plus the British Library, the Wash, Worcester Cathedral and the Palace of Westminster, Jamestown Virginia and Washington DC and back to Runnymede. In some senses, Magna Carta itself back in 1215 was a business deal. When hostilities had broken out between King John and the rebel barons earlier that year, the City of London, already a thriving trade centre, saw a commercial opportunity and pitched their support behind the barons. It was a game-changer, which tipped the balance away from John and a neat little clause was inserted into Magna Carta saying that the City of London should 'enjoy all its ancient liberties and free customs, both by land and by water'. For 800 years, Magna Carta has inspired those prepared to face torture and even death in the fight against tyranny. But the belief that the Great Charter gave us such freedoms as democracy, trial by jury and equality beneath the law has its roots in myth. When King John was forced to issue it, Magna Carta was regarded as little more than a stalling tactic in the bloody conflict between monarch and barons. With maps and illus., and eight pages of colour photos. 403pp, paperback.

Apart from Phoenician traders, Egyptian pharaohs and Roman emperors, Mark Antony gave the island to Cleopatra, St Paul preached there, and Richard the Lionheart sold it to the Templars in 1192. Cyprus stands at a unique geographical relationship to Europe, the Middle East and the Mediterranean and, since 1869, to the Suez short route to the East. It was its strategic importance to a post Second World War Britain engaged in the painful process of essential global military readjustments that precipitated one of the fiercest and most painful of colonial freedom struggles in the mid and late 1950s. Disraeli had acquired the island for Britain in 1878 as a potentially invaluable military and naval base and although still a valuable strategic site, Cyprus is an increasingly desirable and popular holiday destination whether to the north or more commonly to the south. There are wonderful Roman mosaics at Paphos and the fine Byzantine interior of Asinou Church. Includes historical gazetteer, chronology of major events, historical and contemporary maps and covers prehistory through the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Frankish, Venetian, Ottoman and British periods. 231pp, pen and ink drawings. Paperback.

A combination of easy reference and good writing makes this book ideal for any tourist or student of Greek culture. It covers many facets of Greek history including the conflicts with Persia, conquests by the Romans, the Byzantine age and occupation by the Turks and later the struggle for independence, the turbulent 20th century, up to the recent troubled economic waters of the 21st. It covers the Persian Wars, Athenian Empire, Peloponnesian War, Alexander the Great, the Hellenistic world, Roman Greece and Byzantian and maps cover Alexander's route and the expansion of Greece since 1832 among them. The book questions how it is possible to reconcile the Greek genius for trading with the vigorous Communist and Socialist stance of so many citizens of Greece. With chronology of major events, heads of state since independence and historical gazetteer, pen and ink illustrations and maps. 338pp, paperback.

Prehistoric Anatolia, the Hittite Age 2000-1250BC, the Dark Ages to the Persian Conquest 1250-494BC, the Persian Empire at war with the Greeks 494-334BC, Alexander the Great and his legacy 334-133BC, the impact of Rome 193BC to AD330, the Byzantine Empire from the foundation of Constantinople to the Battle of Manzikert 330-1071, the Byzantine Empire and the Turks 1071-1461, the Ottoman Empires, the Ataturk Years 1909-1938 and Modern Turkey 1939-present, the book offers a full history. At least seven ancient civilisations have made their homes in Turkey and all have left their mark on the landscape, architecture and art in the place where East meets West. Stoneman's readable account covers the legendary Flood of Noah, the early civilisation of Catal Huyuk 7000 years before Christ, the treasure of Troy, the Seljuks, and the Golden Age of the Sultans to the upheaval and changes wrought by Kemal Atatürk culminating in the strong position Turkey now occupies on the world stage. Includes maps, chronology of events, major battles and lists of native rulers. Pen and ink artworks, 247pp, paperback.