''Has anybody in here got a degree?' demanded the examiner as he opened his introductory talk on the Knowledge of London at the Old Public Carriage Office in October 2008. One or two of us in the room sheepishly raised our hands 'Well, this is harder,' he boomed in his stern cockney accent.' Welcome to a London quiz book like no other, written by a licensed London taxi driver who spent more than four years of intensive study on top of a full time job and countless hours riding around London on a moped learning 320 set routes around a 9km (six mile) radius of Charing Cross, memorising thousands of points of interest from a nondescript Balham boozer to Buckingham Palace. Five sets of quizzes are based on actual set routes beginning with the first they all learn ? Manor House Station to Gibson Square and ending with the last, Copenhagen Street to Charing Cross Station. The book deliberately captures as many of the big sights as possible and the routes get harder. The eagle-eyed reader might spot one or two which might not have scored full marks for being the most direct routes in an actual Knowledge appearance. Here is all the slang and lingo like ten o'clock known in the trade as 'burst time' because the double doors of theatres and concerts are flung open and every back seat of every black cab is quickly filled. Ian Beetlestone takes us on a guided tour around London's 40,000 plus streets with 500 head scratching questions from easy to mind-bendingly difficult. What is Walthamstow's postcode, and what's it got to do with Christmas 1994? Holland Park is home to annual summer season performances of what? Which club, just east of Putney Bridge Station, was the site of the first match in which sport in 1874? Who, reportedly, had notorious premises at 186 Fleet Street in the 18th century? From the Royal College of Music SW7 to Crouch Hill Station N4, London City Airport to Hornchurch or Consort Road SE15 to the Ministry of Defence SW1, for each there is a full page A-Z style colour map and bullet point details and facts throughout these big colourful pages. 184pp, softback.

12" square strong board box containing five double-sided sturdy playing boards and accessories to play no less than 100 games. The instruction book covers them all from chess, Crokinole with its discs and shooting lines, Ludo, Nine Men's Morris, four in a row, tic-tac-toe, snakes and ladders, checkers, solitaire, barbudi, heaven and nine, yacht, drop dead, pig, poker dice, and a fantastic series of matchstick games including turning the donkey and the wine glasses puzzle. Colourful 'matchsticks', 16 plastic simple figures in four primary colours, 15 white and 15 black playing pieces for chess and draughts, and five rolling dice. Colour boards. One for all the family ages 6+ and one to eight players. Fantastic value for money.

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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Combining high quality production with magnificent fine art, the cover is printed on foil in five pastel green and pink colours, embossed and then foil stamped, and the thick paper stock makes this A4 large blank book perfect for sketching and drawing. The cover illustration features Kay Nielsen's Crinoline & Lace in which the Danish illustrator recreates the fairy tale of Minon-Minette. Prince Souci fell in love with the beautiful and kind-hearted Princess and was desperate to win her love, yet finding himself one day by chance in the Iron King's territory, he was captured and caged. Princess Minon-Minette discovered his fate and, prepared to bring war to the Iron King's gates, rode out into the world to seek her Prince. A Flame Tree gift publication, 144pp, 21.6 x 28cm.

One of the sleek designer range imported from Galison NY, the timeless brand from the couture house Christian Lacroix is known for its unique, exuberant, colourful and baroque style. Created with attention to detail, the Japanese style pink swirling leaf design is printed on a sturdy navy blue folder with a hint of a glint background in this most stylish passport holder. 5? x 6" or 142 x 100mm with Christian Lacroix embossed in small gold text on the back and a handy slot on the inside cover.

12 notecards, three designs, and four of each, the first has a bottle green background and a gold foil tiger laid our flat, his tail curled, eyes towards you. The second image is a silhouette of three stylised faces, two white and one black, in a repeating pattern with the eyes marked out in gold foil. The third image on a red background is a pair of snakes intertwined at the centre in a twisted gold foil. There is a set of 12 matching golden stickers to seal the 12 white quality envelopes with a marbled interior included. The notecards, envelopes, seals and smart box for safekeeping make this a high-quality stationery item for ladies or gents.

Pussweek is a publication written by cats for cats and now in book form, from scandalous pawparazzi pics to revealing litter quizzes, hairy exposés to tell-tail interviews, and tips and tricks on dealing with your annoying human, you will finally find the full feline empowerment lies within you. The letters pages are simply hilarious like finding a safe place to dump your uncomfortable load with Ollie. The 'Is that what you're wearing?' face tortures Geraldo's human and makes her feel insecure every time she gets dressed. Beatrice sends a picture of her nipple to Ollie! There are cats on toilet bowls, sheeting (peering out from under the bed sheet), climbing into handbags and the Top 20 Most Satisfying Things to Push off the Table, like books, a vase of flowers and cutlery, all pictured and with hilarious captions. Then there is the vacuum cleaner, playtime and biting: 'Out of nowhere he calls me Fatty and then he just started grabbing at my belly...' and what to do if your human is a creeper and has hundreds of photos of you. They tell you all their problems (and expect you to care). Do you have a catnip problem? Get up to scratch with the curtain call and the rights and wrongs of ascending a net curtain, clawing things at home, even getting your nails painted; pretending you eat the medicine popped into your food then spitting it out on their pillow, and hiding under beds and sofas, spotting rolling playfully with the pet dog. Pussweek is printed with the highest quality material so you can chew on it or pee on it if your like! 152pp, colour photos of cats as we have never seen them before. Highly recommended to our cat loving readers with a good sense of humour. Softback.

The world of Dickens was wonderfully strange. Miss Havisham of Great Expectations lives her wedding day, every day, in a state of ghastly corruption; Crook (Bleak House) drinks so much gin he bursts into flames and covers the area with greasy flakes of soot; young Bailey (Martin Chuzzlewit) goes for a shave so he has not a trace of a beard; Good Mrs Brown (Dombey and Son) steals the young heroine's clothes and sends her out in rags; the starving runaway David (David Copperfield) sells his jacket to a man who grabs him by the hair and repays him in instalments of a halfpenny a time, and Jenny Wren (Our Mutual Friend) sits on the roof and says 'Come up and be dead!' Dickens had a furious energy, an eye on his audience, his money and his art, and rarely has any artist been so ready to engage with life as it was lived in his time. The dying children, desperate orphans, 'fallen' women, the pantomime villains, pure heroines and cardboard heroes we meet in his novels were the vital elements that shaped his whole work. This miscellany explores his busy and diverse life, allowing us to get to know the man through his work and its major themes. With carefully choses quotations from the novels, and also from his Sketches and journalism, here is what he had to say on the big issues like crime, family, education and money, moral convictions, passionate indignation and mad humour. 130pp, illus.

'The second day Ian smashed a flowerpot. Bobby is not having anything to do with us.' 'Plenty of hippies on the pier, but they behaved.' 'Can't say we're having a good time.' 'I'm wasting time by writing to you.' 'A crab bit my toe.' - written on the back of a postcard from LONDON! 'If it doesn't stop raining soon I shall have webbed feet.' And a picture of Hotel Paguera in Spain with the handwritten message on the reverse 'If I was here I'd be having a superb time.' On our holidays in the 1960s and 70s we sent stacks of sun-bleached postcards from leaky caravans in Skegness and chintzy guesthouses in Weston-Super-Mare, gossiping about our relatives, spilling the beans on summer romances, and providing a constant stream of weather reports. Tom Jackson has gathered the funniest, weirdest and most moving messages from his vast postcard archive, transforming the throwaway scribblings of a generation into a symphony of voices and tantalising glimpses into the past written from rainy campsites, over grim hotel breakfasts, on sweltering beaches and in windy seaside carparks. A laugh-out-loud tribute to the British character. 167pp, colour postcards on every page, softback.

Among zillions of Dr Who books, this one stands out as being one of the most original, showcasing artwork created by 100 fans illustrating Dr Who stories from the First to the Twelfth Doctor. The Time Lord has been travelling across the galaxies in the Tardis for thousands of years, but we start in 1963 when two teachers follow their mysterious pupil Susan home and instead find themselves inside the Tardis. A superb facial close-up dominates the accompanying illustration by Kevin Parrish, with the Tardis itself and the school in the background. Still in the same series, the Daleks are encountered for the first time on the planet Skaro, living in protective metal survival machines after a nuclear incident, and realised in an impressive design by Wayne Whited. A number of illustrations focus on the war machines, particularly Wotan, the universal problem solver and self aware thinking device masterminded by Professor Brett. There are depictions of the continuing Antarctica Adventure, and a selection of brilliant illustrations of the Thals and Kaleds at war in an irreversible cycle of mutation, closely followed by the terror of the Zygons. With the Fourth Doctor the Skarasen known as the Loch Ness Monster, a huge armoured cyborg, is revealed, and the Fifth Doctor lands the Tardis on earth in the 26th century, only to be pitted against the cybermen, effectively illustrated in their metallic blankness. Later that year the Doctor manages to land the ship in the Dalek territory of London's docklands, and there is an accomplished drawing of the genetically engineered human Stien who accompanies the Doctor into the time corridor. The Sixth Doctor, with Peri, visits Britain's industrial revolution, and the Tenth Doctor accompanied by Rose discovers a parallel version of earth while millions of Daleks are released from the Genesis Ark. Clara and the Twelfth Doctor meet Robin Hood and the story brings us to 2017 with Bill as his new companion. 208pp, full-page illustrations, most in colour, on every double spread, list of contributors.
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