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In 1997 sixty-two containers fell off the cargo ship Tokio Express after it was hit by a rogue wave off the coast of Cornwall, including one container filled with nearly five million pieces of Lego, much of it sea themed. In the months that followed, beachcombers started to find Lego washed up on beaches across the south west coast. Among the pieces they discovered were octopuses, sea grass, spear guns, life rafts, scuba tanks, cutlasses, flippers and dragons. The pieces are still washing up today.

First published in 1956, Swifts in a Tower still offers astonishing insights into swifts' private lives along with thoughts about their life style and wider issues. Now more than sixty years later swifts have been studied even more thoroughly, with technology unimaginable in the 1950s. This continues to reveal even more of their secrets, so this edition, published in association with the RSPB for their Oxford Swift City project includes a new chapter by Andrew Lack, bringing the story of this remarkable bird into the 21st Century.

Writers and poets, academics and art critics, mathematicians and experimental scientists, churchmen and politicians, women of strong opinions gather for a summer weekend in the 1870s.Is it real, or is it a fantasy?One thing’s sure: their debates – about life’s aims, rural and urban living, love and money, civilization and belief, the social framework, the past, the present and the future take us to the heart of the Victorian dream and its reality: the idea that their society exemplified ‘Progress’.What did ‘Progress’ mean? Were things (and which things) getting better? What did ‘better’ mean? And for whom?The history of the world before the Victorians, from Aberdeen to Africa, showed a particular form of equality for almost everyone: an equality of poverty and no prospects, with kindness often in short supply. Victorians wanted to change that world, thought they were changing it, did change it. They did it in a human way: a melange of muddle, vision, certainty, doubt, too slow for many, too fast for some. Yet their changes were decisive both for creating the modern world, but also for revealing the dilemmas attached to mass living in urban, technological societies, as well as the moral flaws in imposing one civilization’s or one person’s beliefs on another. Most remarkably of all, the upheaval in making major transitions in every area of life, which produced revolutions and violence across Europe, in the Americas and in Asia, was carried out – at least in Britain itself – almost entirely peacefully.The past will always be a foreign country for those unwilling to engage with its people. Whether viewing the lives of rulers or the ruled, 'Being Victorian' corrects innumerable preconceptions.

If there is a typical example of Annabel Fairfax’s oil painting, it is a bowl full of abstracted flowers and foliage, her bright bold brushstrokes and markings setting them apart from the mundane. Her watercolours of animal life and picturesque locations capture the moment and are painted with energy and freshness. In ‘Delightful, Enchanting’ Annabel Fairfax shows us the imaginative humour of her oil and watercolour paintings – from her travels around the world to the peaceful haven of her studio on the Isle of Wight. Her paintings are harmonious and decorative, the very opposite of photographic; she paints with her eyes, the subject matter becoming an idyllic version of reality. She exhibits regularly, is in private collections around the world and her work is frequently used for cards, prints and giftware.

The Ends of Art Studies explores the goals and limitations of fin de siècle art studies (Kunstwissenschaft) as a field, and aims to contribute to future academic research. It is structured around several representative art scientists and their key texts, exploring the theories of influential figures in the field, such as Erwin Panofsky and Aby Warburg. This approach allows the book to present the universal construction goals, theoretical sources, thinking logic and academic dilemmas of art history in an interdisciplinary context at that time.

Energy is Life: Why Environmentalism Went Nuclear follows Zion Lights’s personal and powerful journey: from grassroots green activism to becoming one of the UK’s leading advocates for nuclear energy. In a time of climate crisis, energy poverty and growing demand for clean power, she examines why long-established environmentalists like herself once feared nuclear energy, why many have since come to embrace it, and makes a compelling case for why nuclear energy must be part of the solution. Accessible, evidence-based, and deeply human, this book challenges common myths and invites readers to rethink what it really means to care for people and planet alike. If you believe in a greener, fairer future, this book just might change your mind – and give you hope.

Most guitarists today think of the USA as the land of the guitar. Classical guitars come from Spain but rock, jazz and folk guitars must surely be American? They know the ‘great’ names – Gibson, Epiphone, Fender, Gretsch, Martin but few non-German speakers know that Bohemia and neighbouring Saxony, where Christian Friedrich Martin was born in 1796, produced for over three centuries a massive proportion of the world’s stringed instruments – lutes, fiddles, cellos, double basses and guitars.Authors Cameron Brown and Stefan Lob are two of the world’s experts on the subject and this book, the first in the English language, is informed by many years of research. The Bate Collection is a museum of musical instruments at the University of Oxford and it owns a collection of 110 guitars donated by Cameron Brown. Half of them were made by German speaking Czech craftsmen expelled from their homeland after the Second World War, resettling in Bavaria, the other half by their former neighbours in Saxony, now behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany. This book shows the complete collection (and more), summarises the socio-political background and the way it led to the decline – and almost the extinction – of what was once the most productive centre of stringed-instrument making in the world, plus a unique guide to help collectors identify the makers of their instruments.

The beautiful Anglo-Italian artist Maria Cosway was one of the most talented and dynamic women active in Regency England, but one whose achievements have been largely overlooked. Born in Florence in 1760, she was acclaimed at an early age as both a painter and a musician. She exhibited forty-one paintings at the Royal Academy summer exhibition between 1781 and 1801, and hosted regular musical soirées at the Pall Mall house she shared with her husband, Richard Cosway. They were attended by the political and cultural elite of London.Maria’s extraordinary network of connections to the great and the good of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, included friendships with, among others, Thomas Jefferson, the Prince of Wales, Pasquale Paoli, the artist Jacques-Louis David, the opera singer Luigi Marchesi, the Duchess of Devonshire, the actress and writer Mary Robinson, and members of the Bonaparte family. Estranged from her husband by 1801, Maria Cosway largely gave up painting and reinvented herself as a progressive educator, founding schools for young women: first in Lyon, later in Lodi, Italy. In recognition of her achievements at Lodi, the Emperor of Austria made her a baroness.

Written by Bernard Leach, the father of British studio pottery, this seminal book is the first treatise to be written by a potter on the workshop traditions handed down from the greatest period of Chinese ceramics in the Sung dynasty. With this book, potters can learn everything from how to adapt recipes for pigments and glazes to designing kilns.

Forget polished playbooks and sanitized lessons. This is a business memoir and career journey rooted in lived experience, not theory. It's the raw, unfiltered story of a woman who began as a casino dealer and went on to sell her startup in one of the fastest exits in the industry.What if the greatest gambles are not on the cards, but on the life you dare to build? Karolina Pelc wasn't born into boardrooms. Her story started on the casino floor in post-communist Poland, launching a non-linear career that took her across countries and continents through the global gaming, entertainment, and technology industries — before she founded, scaled, and sold her disruptive startup to FanDuel, the number-one gaming brand in the U.S., in under three years.But Her Play: Make Your Own Luck is not a startup manual or a how-to guide.In this fiercely honest leadership memoir, Karolina plunges readers into the realities of career and chaos, power dynamics and personal pivots, bold decisions, and private reckonings that shaped an unconventional path. From gritty encounters and psychedelic insights to building a career while navigating profound personal challenges, she shares raw stories from high-pressure environments in a male-dominated industry.Before she built and exited her company, Karolina navigated a world of sustained pressure, uncertainty, and scrutiny. From casino floors where every decision was visible to the complex dynamics of international business, gaming, and technology, her career unfolded far from predictable paths. Alongside the visible hustle ran the private battles: doubt after public setbacks, heartbreak behind closed doors, ambition, and the audacity required to keep moving forward when outcomes were anything but guaranteed.As this business memoir and career journey unfolds, Karolina reflects on inherited beliefs, broken assumptions, and the risks she took before knowing whether they would cost her everything. From sailing the globe on cruise ships to taking early leaps into the emerging world of online gaming and tech, Her Play lays bare the experiences that forged her leadership mindset.More than a chronicle of professional milestones, Her Play explores the internal mechanics of risk, confidence, and decision-making under pressure. Drawing on Karolina Pelc's original mindset framework, the book offers a reflective lens on how setbacks can be reframed and how opportunities are often created long before they appear. It is an inspirational leadership memoir about learning to trust your instincts, rewrite the rules on your own terms, and practise the art of engineered serendipity — making your own luck, one bold decision at a time.This book is for readers who:● Are building ambitious careers without a clear or linear map — and feeling the cost of it● Have taken risks that came without guarantees, applause, or safety nets● Are navigating leadership, identity, and pressure at the same time, often in silence● Want insight, not instruction — and lived experience, not templates

Faberge: The Twilight Years introduces an incredible album of rare drawings from Carl Faberge's leading workshop in St Petersburg that have come to light in the National Archive of Finland by pure chance. The album, stored unnoticed in the archive for almost a century, contains beautifully watercoloured drawings of objects produced by Faberge during the period 1914 - 1917, among these a whole array of elegant cigarette cases, table clocks and enchanting flower studies. Most of the drawings have a completion date, which means that the finished object exists somewhere. This has sparked a treasure hunt for these pieces. A great number of objects matching the drawings have been found and are illustrated in the book. Altogether eleven well known experts on the oeuvre of Faberge have written fascinating essays related to the drawings, their history, provenance, style and technique. These contributions make the book an important addition to our knowledge and understanding of the art of the great St Petersburg jeweller.

William Carne’s life, like so many others in the 20th Century, was defined by the two World Wars. He joined the Royal Navy as a cadet aged just sixteen in 1914. This is his story of his life at sea, from his own memoirs, letters, diaries and photos. It is a humbling account of his time as a midshipman on HMS New Zealand at the Battle of Jutland, to Captain of HMS Coventry in 1941 during the evacuation of Crete. It is also a fascinating insight into society at that time, both in the Service and at home. It is the story of The Making of a Royal Naval Officer.

The first monograph on the first photographer to be awarded the Prize for Editorial, Advertising & Fashion Photography by the Royal Photographic Society, this extraordinary collection celebrates David Stewart’s surreal eye and his literal focus on the unusual, the bizarre and the deadpan presentation of the unexpected. Meticulously composed tableaux create off-centre observations of everyday life that are simultaneously familiar and disturbing. This groundbreaking survey of of a lifetime of looking, thinking, composing and creating exceptional photographic compositions of the absurdity, comedy and nightmarish potential of everyday life will resonate with all.

In 1940, Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines, both established artists with international reputations who had become disillusioned with the commercial aspects of the art world, moved to Benton End, overlooking the River Brett on the outskirts of Hadleigh, Suffolk. What they found there was a somewhat ramshackle but capacious sixteenth-century farmhouse, standing in over three acres of walled gardens lost beneath brambles and elder trees; the house had not been lived in for fifteen years. But Benton End became both their home and the new premises of the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing which, in 1937, they had founded together in Dedham, Essex. From 1940 until Lett Haines died in 1978 and Cedric Morris in 1982, Benton End was an exotic world apart where art, literature, good food, gardening and lively conversation combined to produce an extraordinarily stimulating environment for amateurs and professionals alike. Ronald Blythe recalls that 'there was a whiff of garlic and wine in the air. The atmosphere ...was robust and coarse, and exquisite and tentative all at once. Rough and ready and fine mannered. Also faintly dangerous.'The sharply contrasting characters and interests of Morris and Lett Haines ensured the widest range of contacts and visitors to Benton End who included Francis Bacon, Ronald Blythe, Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, David Carr, Beth Chatto, Randolph Churchill, Elizabeth David, Lucian Freud, Kathleen Hale, Maggi Hambling, Lucy Harwood, Glyn Morgan, John Nash, and Vita Sackville-West. There was no formal teaching and students were left free to pursue their own enthusiasms and to show their work to Morris or Lett Haines for advice. Without formal teaching, they were free to pursue their own enthusiasms, while Morris's skill as a plantsman and noted breeder of irises, contrasted with Lett Haines's intellectual sophistication, interest in food and wine, artistic experimentation, and a general lack of enthusiasm for the outdoors.

Paul Goldstein has spent many years at the business end of a camera trying for that elusive ‘impossible shot’. For him, though, his images are just a gateway to highlighting the plight of the Nine Lives species he so treasures. He has spent years putting his body through often tortuous pain to raise money for them, and his images are underwritten frequently by rage at humanity’s savage injustices to the animal kingdom. His campaigns frequently get him into trouble and yet he would have it no other way. He is a multi-award winning photographer, and as a guide has few equals and a massive following, yet his style is not for everybody and as he gets older his impatience grows with the inaction and corruption of those supposed to be protecting the species he values so much.

Published to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the Worshipful Company of Weavers, this richly illustrated book is a tribute to the creativity, resourcefulness, and passion behind weaving in Britain today. Visiting a wide range of makers, from handloom weavers creating individual works of art to industrial textile mills producing cloth for the world’s leading design brands, the authors take us into a vibrant, colourful, noisy world. They visit art schools and universities; the weavers of tweed, tartan, cashmere and silk, and the makers of high-tech fabrics used in spacecraft , aeroplanes and cars, medical and engineering applications, furnishings, upholstery, fashion and accessories. They also explore a variety of sustainable, vegan and eco-friendly fabrics.

When Iranian authorities arrested Morad Tahbaz in January 2018, they thought they were capturing a spy. They were wrong. Tahbaz was a conservationist—and they had handed him a new wilderness in which to survive. In this extraordinary memoir, Tahbaz reveals how nearly six years in Evin Prison, including solitary confinement and torture, taught him that the skills he'd developed tracking Persian leopards and Asiatic cheetahs could save his own life. He found forty-seven animals hidden in his cell's stone walls. He designed Persian carpets in his mind. And every dawn, he listened to the wild green parrots screaming in the prison's ancient poplars—proof that life persists even where designed to be denied. Green Parrots is not a victim's story. It's a survival manual for anyone facing darkness.

Explore the enduring wonder that is the story of Northern Mesopotamia - the Cradle of Civilisation - from an Irish perspective.Embark on an extraordinary odyssey through south-east Türkiye with Nicholas Mackey as he guides you through a captivating region embraced by the legendary Euphrates and Tigris rivers—the Cradle of Civilisation.Here he explores the ancient wonders of Antakya, Dara, Harran, Mardin, Gaziantep, and Diyarbakir, peeling back the layers of empires, cultures and peoples that have shaped millennia. Göbeklitepe and Karahan Tepe, near the contemporary city of Şanlıurfa/Urfa, stand as iconic archaeological landmarks with the promise to revolutionize our understanding of the past. Artefacts from these locations, dating back nearly 12,000 years, challenge established notions of the origins of civilisation.His daily journal serves as the genesis of this literary tour-de-force: a seamless blend of travelogue, memoir, history, archaeology, poetry, prose, and memorable imagery – evocative of Nicholas coming of age in Ireland with an unquenchable desire to travel, ‘to seek and find’ (Whitman).This is not just an eclectic tale but also will remain an enduring presence in your mind, while inviting you to rethink the fabric of our shared human history.Proceeds from the sale of this book will go directly to help the communities still affected by the earthquake of February 2023.

Forty years ago, London’s Docklands had become 6,000 acres of forgotten wasteland after over a century as the busiest port in the world. Now these once-derelict docks are again filled with ships and boats, forming homes and businesses for an extraordinary range of people. Whether millionaires visiting on their superyachts, country house executives needing a London base, young tech workers wanting a cheaper place to live, jobbing craftsmen keeping ancient marine trades alive or homeless people finding refuge, these are varied and dynamic communities. Highly acclaimed London photographer Niki Gorick focuses on St Katharine Docks, the Surrey Docks and the Isle of Dogs to illustrate the rich mix of personalities and activities in these converted commercial docks. They enjoy central London locations but as floating communities with their own nautical customs and rules, they are a world apart from their land-based neighbours. These images reveal the amazingly diverse modern-day life within these urban marinas.

From the ancient barbarians responsible for the fall of Rome, to the black-lipped teenager updating their Instagram from a graveyard, Goths have been with us for a long time. Ideas about what is Gothic have changed and mutated, but a fascination with the dark and dramatic has remained a constant. The History of Gothic Fashion charts Gothic dress from its ancient and medieval origins to its various revivals and romanticised rebirths, examining its cultural inspirations including folk lore, 19th-century novels, the silver screen and rock music.For a subculture associated with literature and historical fashion, there are surprisingly few books that focus solely on Gothic fashion. The History of Gothic Fashion provides an in-depth overview of the evolution of the darker side of style.

John O'Connor (1913-2004), a romantic but also a realist, recorded old endangered things, high and low: churches, canals, barges, dilapidated barns and garden sheds. With a keen eye, sure hand and way with words, he drew, engraved, painted and described what he valued most around him. Talkative, friendly as a teacher, humorous and hard-working, his curiosity about his fellow human beings and affection for, and knowledge of all things English, drove much of his best work. He enjoyed the process of engraving into his 90s, illustrating articles for The Oldie.A scholarship from Leicester Art School took him to the Royal College of Art in 1933 where his tutors were Eric Ravilious, and John Nash RA who shared his interest in plants and gardening. Illustrated with family photographs and reproductions of his father's work, this biographical account by his son, Michael O'Connor (Mike), was still unfinished when Mike died in 2021. It has been edited and seen into print by Josie, Mike's daughter.

From the human truths, brutalist architecture and packed tube trains of 1970s London to the vineyards, Renaissance châteauxand riotous festivals of Gascon France, Michael Fell (1939 – 2023) chronicled the world he saw. His exuberant paintings and printsexplore the sadnesses, humour and joys of ordinary people in work combining technical freedom with visual wit, compassion and delight. Fell’s visions of city, town and landscape raise intriguing questions about the relationship between perception and feeling. Motifs and images of day to day life, captured with Fell’s fine draftsmanship, appear alongside literary, religious andaesthetic allusion.The Art of Michael Fell, edited by art historian Andrew Wilton, explores the artist’s life, work and influences, withperspectives from leading figures in the world of art criticism, painting and print making. This richly illustrated study will bringa new appreciation and understanding of the original, technically inventive and wide ranging oeuvre of a notably private artist.

Jacqueline Duncan founded The Inchbald School of Interior Design in 1960, and the Inchbald School of Garden Design in 1972. War-time experiences as a young evacuee living in grand English country houses kindled her fascination with buildings and gardens before she met and married Michael Inchbald, aleading interior decorator.Britain had no equivalent of the Parsons School of Design, in the USA, so Jacqueline Duncan became determined to establish a school in London.An important component of Inchbald courses is Interior Design history, which Jacqueline Duncan outlines, explaining how the profession developed out of associated trades and gift ed amateurism. Many distinguished Interior Designers and Garden Designers are Inchbald graduates. Examples of theirwork are included in an appendix.

After the failure of Britain’s latest air-defence destroyers in the 1982 Falklands War, a public controversy began over an alternative: The S90 ‘Short Fat’ frigate designed and proposed by Peter Thornycroft and David Giles.This is the almost incredible but well-documented story of the author’s 40-year-long hard-fought battle with naval authorities and governments on both sides of the Atlantic, to prove the virtues of his designs which they had rejected on the basis of theory rather than fact, and then eventually to win substantialcompensation after they covertly infringed his patents in two new classes of warship.With a Foreword by the late Admiral Lord Hill-Norton, Former Chief of the Defence Staff; Technical Appendices; Glossary and Dramatis Personae.

New York's Fifth Avenue, America's 'Street of Dreams', is one of the most remarkable thoroughfares in the world. Shown on the Commissioners' map of 1807 emerging from a country road, then in the proposed grid plan of 1811 as one of the major boulevards, Fifth Avenue by the end of the century was synonymous with a lavish fashionable life, grand mansions and services catering to the wealthy. Above Washington Square, in the 1840s and 50s, mainly speculative brownstone rowhouses marched steadily northwards. The merchants of the port, the social fabric of the city, after the Civil War shunned the more aggressive arrivistes such as Alva Vanderbilt and Marie (R) a Stevens who employed European inuenced architects and decorators to build and furnish grand mansions in contrast to their brownstone neighbours.And then, it was all gone. Swept away in the shadow of tall buildings, the New York house was no longer the ultimate symbol of identity. All that exquisite and substantial work quickly fell before the wrecker's ball.This book seeks to recreate Fifth Avenue as it grew, flourished and failed. Over 200 archive photographs help tell the story of Fifth Avenue's nineteenth- and early twentieth-century architecture and society.

Delving into Frederick Sandys's unconventional life, Betty Elzea's research reveals much about his complicated andoften scandalous relationships.Born and educated in Norwich with an artisan background, Sandys was bohemian by nature, though from necessity, to the world at large, he appeared genteel and respectable. Unfortunately disorganised, un-businesslike and preferring to live alone as a bachelor in lodgings, he struggled to support two growing families of illegitimate children.From youth, developing skills as a draughtsman and painter, he moved to London, meeting Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates, while keeping a foothold in Norwich where he maintained friendships and enjoyed the support of the Norfolk gentry and several notable Norwich industrialists.Norfolk landscape painting and nature studies led to commissioned portraiture which became his main sourceof income. He is known for depictions of beautiful women in legendary disguises as well as meticulously-detailed portraits of elderly women. He also pioneered a new type of large-scale portrait drawing in chalks.

Glasgow Museums has the finest and most comprehensive collection of Italian paintings of any civic museums service in the United Kingdom.

A collection of Rudyard Kipling's articles describing Sikh soldiers' experiences of the First World War. Published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Rudyard Kipling's birth.