"Knowing the old, you well understand the new." This motto is inscribed on a bust of the 18th century antiquarian Charles Townley, for whom the house at 14 Queen Anne's Gate, formerly 7 Park Street, was built to display his collection of antiquities. In this impressive house of classical design, described by a contemporary German newspaper as the most magnificent private museum in the whole of Europe, visitors would find a collection of Roman sculpture unrivalled outside Italy, as well as non-western art, a library and a collection devoted to understanding the "universal generative spirit" worshipped by early civilisations. Townley was keenly interested in the esoteric and the occult. This book follows No 14 from its conception, construction and alterations through to our own time. St James's Park, now at the heart of the British establishment, was originally Henry VIII's deer park and later became the home of eccentrics and radicals. Charles Townley was a marginal character, Catholic and bisexual, educated at Douai, who preferred to converse in Italian or French and lived a libertine and rakish life. Catholics were prohibited from holding public office, and the author associates Townley's love of Bacchic mystery cults with the fact that like Catholicism they operated outside mainstream religion. As a veteran of the Grand Tour, Townley had bought a Piranesi engraving from Piranesi himself, and true to tradition he shipped back home large crates of marbles. The paintings he acquired included "A Group of Connoisseurs" by Richard Conway, depicting himself and his friends admiring the Townley Venus. Townley was predominantly gay at a time when it could be a capital offence, though he may also have had an illegitimate child, but his expertise gave him entrée to the highest circles. By the late 1780s he was the most trusted authority on classical antiquity in Britain, advising the future George IV on the decoration of Carlton House. Other works of art included the Townley Discobolus, a bust of Agrippina, later designated Isis, priapic works acquired from Cardinal Albani, and Poussin's "Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem". 128pp, colour reproductions.
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Some collections are put together over a lifetime, while others last a single afternoon. You might be a sucrologist, collecting packets of sugar, or perhaps you would rather collect stamps, matchboxes, special tickets, shells, badges, mugs or shoes? Designed for ages six and up with big bold colourful illustrations we are invited to explore different kinds of collections in a book which you can personalise with beautiful stickers, spaces to write or draw and even a special envelope to start your collection of your very own. Includes dedication page 'This collector's edition BELONGS TO...' The perforated stickers cover everything from toys and leaves and sweets and flowers and beetles to medals and coins and safety pins. Some collections are about secrets, they could be edible, about memories or have a common colour such as lots of blue objects. Falerists collect medals of all kinds and Phillumenists collect matchboxes, matchbooks and labels. Truly an inspirational glamorous big picture book to complete and personalise. Ages 6-11, 26 x 30.5cm, colour illus.

The archaeologist author together with Christiane Eluère takes us back beyond the borders of history. Achilles, Odysseus and other heroes of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey fought with shields and swords of bronze. What was the world like in those mythic days when the rival Greek cities of Troy and Mycenae battled for supremacy, and far to the West unknown engineers raised the megaliths of Stonehenge? We read about Achilles, armed for battle raging at the Trojans. 'First he placed along his legs the fair greaves linked with silver fastenings to hold the greaves at the ankles. Afterward he girt about his chest the corselet, and across his shoulders slung the sword with the nails of silver, a bronze sword, and caught up in the great shield, huge and heavy nets, and from it the light glimmered far, as far from the Moon... Next he pulled out from its standing place the spear of his father...' But what do we know of even earlier times when the settled peoples of Europe first replaced their crude stone tools with those made of refined metal, and crafted ornaments of beaten copper and gold? Chapters cover The Metallurgical Centres like the Gold of Varna in Bulgaria with 2,200 ornaments dating from as early as the 5th millennium, The Chalcolithic Period in the Iberian Peninsula which was the result of Eastern influences. Bronze (an alloy of copper and tin) appeared between 3000 and 1500BC in the Eastern Mediterranean and in Northern Europe. Pictured are remains and art in Crete, vessels, arms and armour, cultural centres, mother goddesses and horned figures, chariots, wheels and birds depicted in small Sardinian bronzes; the Mycenaean religion, funeral rites and an appendix on documents, with illustrations including the remarkable remains of Otzi, the ancient man, as preserved today. 160pp, paperback packed with colour illus. and glossy pages in this Thames & Hudson publication.

A maiden voyage medal and brochure from the SS Imperator, a brass bell from RMS Aquitania, commemorative plaque, propellors, cards posted from sea, pen and ink drawings, a saloon chair, a cutaway rendering, souvenir cigar box, launch menu, Lalique water goblet, cigarette case, salvaged name plate, maritime replicas model, a telephone, a dry martini cocktail from the RMS Queen Mary, a gala dinner menu and the Hales Trophy blue ribboned card both from the SS Normandie and a Cunard magazine are among the 50 items representing technology, supreme luxury and fine cuisine. Ocean liners represented the ambitions of their nations in peace and war. Their design, interiors and fittings incorporated the finest contemporary technology and artistic features. In peace time they carried celebrities, holidaymakers, and emigrants, while in war they carried thousands of troops and then war brides seeking new lives. This is a story of peril, disaster and death, international pride and competition, glory and war, told through 50 objects each telling a fascinating story and showing how the functional sea voyage has evolved from the late 19th century to the huge cruise ship industry we have today. Glossy heavyweight bright white paper, 240pp in softback, approximately 100 colour images, many full page including a superb cutaway extract of the RMS Caronia on page 172.

Inserted into tissue paper pockets throughout this large spiral bound, magnetic fastening folder are facsimile ephemera such as the front page of The Daily Mirror 1924 with the headline 'The King As Driver of the Windsor Castle', a promotional picture of the Flying Scotsman and other famous steam trains, and dozens of postcards as we climb aboard this treasury. It covers the Early Pioneers, Steam Goes Public, Rain Hill Trials, Robert Stephenson and Co., Steam Abroad, Competition in the South, Railway Rivalry, Standardisation and Imported Technology, Grouping, World War Two, Nationalisation and BR Standard Locomotives, Steam In Decline, Famous Men In Steam, and Brunel The Heroic Engineer among the chapters. Lovely colour artworks, archive and colour photographs and clear text, but best of all is the fantastic poster and other iconic ephemera. Very collectable and an incredible price.

Here are the court battles over ownership of pieces, new building materials and the key institutions include the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, British Museum, Tate Modern, the Hermitage, Guggenheim, Smithsonian Institute and Acropolis Museum, the Prado and the Uffizi and galleries in Berlin, Sao Paolo, Manhattan's Whitney Museum designed by Renzo Piano opened in 2014 and hundreds more across the globe together with a selection of artifacts and highlights. A truly glamorous heavyweight Frances Lincoln publication, this spectacular book marries together aspects of architecture, history, photography, art, politics and social interaction at the many hundreds of museums around the world and how they have changed across the years. We take museums for granted. Even if they aren't all free to get into, we assume they will always be there as a bedrock for understanding civilisation. As repositories of human endeavour, knowledge and creativity, the institution of the museum is most like the library, but whereas books are generally read by one person at a time, museums offer a wider possibility of experiencing an object together with friends, family and more broadly as a society. Today museums have fully assimilated media such as photography, film and increasingly digital media and objects yet its status as a 'timeless treasury' as described by Rauschenberg remains as strong as ever. Filled with stunning imagery highlighting the beauty of these venerated buildings, the origins of all the key institutions are revealed as are the motivations of the architects, curators and patrons. The cast of names includes King George II, Napoleon, Henry Clay Frick, Peggy Guggenheim, Andrew Carnegie, Alfred Barr, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Frank Gehry, Richard Rogers, Nicholas Serota and Zaha Hadid. A truly magnificent tome, 320pp, 26 x 31.2cm.
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'A Visual History of the World's Greatest 250 Rock Acts' with striking, colour-coded infographics, the book provides an overview of every aspect of each band's story. See at a glance which musicians featured when, what instruments they played, which label the act was with and when, the album release dates and who played on which album. Photographs of key members past and present supplement the engaging text, and founder and current members are highlighted for immediate recognition in this masterful book which is arranged alphabetically. For more than 50 of the biggest acts there is a stunning display of iconic photographs charting their dramatic changes in appearance, and relating each iconic look to albums of the same period. The Animals 1962-1969, Anthrax 1981-present, Arcade Fire 2001-present, Arctic Monkeys 2002-present, the Bee Gees 1960-2011, Buffalo Springfield 1966-2011, Bob Dylan 1959, Emmerson Lake & Palmer 1970-2010, Jefferson Airplane/Starship 1965-present, The Triffids 1978-1989, U2 1978-present to ZZ Top 1969-present etc etc. With label abbreviations, websites, Grammy Award winners, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees and performer directory, this is the ultimate peerless rock encyclopaedia, era by glorious era. Super weighty softback, packed with colour photos, 24.6 x 17.6 x 4.3cm.
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Jewels of the Nile celebrates the very first time that the Worcester Art Museum's internationally important collection of Egyptian jewellery - which has undergone conservation and cleaning - has been shown together. This strikingly illustrated book introduces the reader to the collection of an early 20th century Boston couple with a passion for ancient Egypt. The collectors, Laura and Kingsmill Marrs, were guided in their acquisitions by Howard Carter, the archaeologist who would later achieve world-wide recognition for his discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun (1922). Under his guidance, the Marrs's purchased an outstanding selection of scarabs, amulets, jewellery and cosmetic-related articles, including rare, blue-toned stone vessels. They also acquired a group of Carter's watercolour renditions of important Egyptian sites and royal figures. These artifacts, as well as objects from Worcester's stellar collection of Egyptian antiquities, are included in the publication. Colour illus. 24.13 x 2.54 x 29.21cm. 216 pages.
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Exquisitely curated and designed with hundreds of colour and other illustrations and artworks, we are invited to see Dr Sloane's curiosities and the beginnings of the British Museum, described by Virginia Woolf as 'One solid immense mound, very pale, very sleek in the rain', once a jumbled store in large damp chambers from which knowledge was organised to create an understanding of the world and of humanity's place within it. On 15th January 1759, following the passing of an Act of Parliament six years previously, a new museum opened its doors in a house in Bloomsbury. It held and displayed the collections of three men and their families - the physician and entrepreneur Sir Hans Sloane, who donated 71,000 books, dried plants, minerals and antiquities to the nation; the manuscript collection of the antiquarian Sir Robert Cotton, including the Lindisfarne Gospels and two copies of Magna Carta; and the 8,000 volume library of the politician and bibliophile Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford. James Hamilton recounts the remarkable 250 year history of the British Museum, a world renowned public institution whose collections of more than eight million objects and artifacts are explored in the cultural context in which the Museum came into being, its subsequent expansion and diversification, controversies and the legacies and influence nationally and globally. Colour illus. 208pp, pagemarker.

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.