The Celtic, Pictish, Anglo-Saxon and Viking peoples who inhabited the British Isles and Ireland from late prehistory to the Norman Conquest left a rich visual heritage whose influence continues to be felt. This is the first book to present an illust...

Behind every typeface is a story – who designed it, and why? What are its distinctive characteristics, and what cultural baggage does it carry? This book explores fifty of the most remarkable typefaces, dating from the birth of European printing in...

W. Heath Robinson is best known for his hilarious drawings of outlandish contraptions, though his work ranged across a wide variety of topics covering many aspects of British life. Collections of his drawings became so popular as to transform Heath R...

In 1934 Sir Giles Gilbert Scott began work on designs for a substantial new library building opposite the Old Bodleian Library site in Broad Street, Oxford in order to provide much-needed space for the growing numbers of books housed in the library a...

"No freeman is to be taken or imprisoned, or dispossessed... except through the lawful judgment of his peers or through the law of the land". "To no one shall we sell, to no one shall we deny or delay right or justice" "Magna Carta" (or "Great Char...

Pyramus: "Now die, die, die, die, die". [Dies] "A Midsummer Night's Dream" "Shakespeare's Dead" reveals the unique ways in which Shakespeare brings dying, death, and the dead to life. It establishes the cultural, religious and social contexts for th...

Veronica the hippopotamus lives with her large family on the cool muddy river bank, swimming in its clear waters. But she is not happy. She dreams of becoming a conspicuous hippopotamus, even perhaps, a famous one, noticed by everyone. So she sets o...

Thames aficionado Robert Gibbings once wrote that "the quiet of an age-old river is like the slow turning of the pages of a well-loved book". "Writing the Thames" tells a much-loved river's story through the remarkable prose, poetry and illustration...

Epitaphs are a unique artform. In previous centuries they were regarded as an opportunity to celebrate, mourn, reflect on, philosophize, lament, or affirm the individual and the mystery of life and death, often giving rise to carefully crafted verse....

Who said "I should have drunk more champagne"? Did Nelson really utter "Kiss me Hardy" from his deathbed? Which statesman was, at the end, "bored with it all"? Which king begged, "Let not poor Nelly starve..." An extraordinary number of deathbed say...