A beautifully illustrated introduction to mudlarking which tells the incredible, forgotten history of London through objects found on the foreshores of the River Thames.Often seen combing the shoreline of the River Thames at low tide, groups of arch…
The sweeping crinolines, corsets, bustles, bonnets and parasols of Victorian Britain are indispensable to our period dramas, and their influences can still be seen within burlesque and steampunk fashions. This is no surprise, as nineteenth-century c…
This book reveals the impact of wartime and austerity on British fashion and tells the story of how a spirit of patriotism and make-do-and-mend unleashed a wave of new creativity among women who were starved of high fashion by shortages and rationin…
Almost eighty years after her death, Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) is still one of the most influential of all English garden designers. Best known for the superb use of colour schemes in her hallmark flower borders, she combined an early training in…
Fashion in the Edwardian period underwent some quite revolutionary changes. The delicately coloured, flower-and-lace-trimmed trailing gowns and elaborate hairstyles worn by tightly corseted fashionable ladies in the early years of Edward VII's reign…
The 1970s was a decade of style contrasts: every extreme of fashion was met by an equally trendy opposite reaction. Ankle-length maxi skirts vied for attention with super-short hot-pants. Outfits in vibrant prints and obviously man-made fabrics cont…
More than a footnote to the Second World War, or a foreword to the youth-obsessed exhilaration of the Sixties, the Fifties was a thrilling decade devoted to newness and freshness. The British people, rebuilding their lives and wardrobes, demanded mo…
The earliest known dolls' house was made in Bavaria in the mid-sixteenth century. Like most of those built in the following 250 years, it was designed not to be played with, but to be a perfect representation in miniature of a princely house, and to…
The source of tremendous power and the focus of incredible devotion, throughout history notions of beauty have been integral to social life and culture. Each age has had its own standards: a gleaming white brow during the Renaissance, the black eyeb…
The Great Gatsby is that rare classic that inescapably defines the age from which it sprang: the Roaring '20s, an era of economic boom, stylish excess and above all an explosion of new and exciting fashions. This book chronicles the sparkling specta…
Hollyhocks and cabbages, roses and runner beans: the English cottage garden combined beauty and utility, pride and productivity. But what was the reality of the space immortalised in images of thatched cottages with floral borders and ducks on the p…
Across the world hundreds of botanic gardens combine scientific research, conservation and beauty with public access, with Kew Gardens alone attracting around one million visitors a year. For centuries they have variously focused on cultivating medi…
Vespa and Lambretta remain the two most iconic motor scooter brands, even four decades after the latter's demise. But what made them such a European sensation in the postwar era? And why were they particularly popular in Britain in the 1950s and '60…
Matchbox toys were ubiquitous items for children across the Western world. Originally labelled Christmas-cracker trash by retailers and shopkeepers, the small-scale 1-75 series soon began to see unprecedented worldwide sales in the 1950s. Smaller an…
In the early years of the Industrial Revolution, canals formed the arteries of Britain. Most waterways were local concerns, carrying cargoes over short distances and fitted into regional groups with their own boat types linked to the major river est…
In the 1950s and 1960s, British sports car ruled the road, and their charge was led by Triumphs. From the TR2, its first modern sports car, Triumph went on to produce a host of classic sports designs such as the Spitfire, GT, and Stag, as well as mo…
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the long-established Rover company of Solihull was fighting to survive. It needed a vehicle that would give it an advantage over its rivals. Taking the American Willys Jeep as inspiration, Rover designers ca…
Rolls-Royce is one of Britain's legendary car brands, representing the pinnacle of engineering quality and luxury like no other manufacturer. Since 1904, when Charles Stewart Rolls and Frederick Henry Royce began their collaboration, the Rolls-Royce…
The Arts and Crafts Movement espoused values of simplicity, craftsmanship and beauty quite counter to Victorian and Edwardian industrialism. Though most famous for its architecture, furniture and ornamental work, between the 1890s and the 1930s the…
For the first half of the twentieth century, Great Britain led the world in motorcycle design and production, exporting its products to countries all over the globe. However, by 1960 this once-great industry had fallen into what was to be a terminal…
Well over half a century after it first appeared in 1948, the Morris Minor has become a much-loved classic car. It is as popular now as when in production. During the Second World War, when Alec Issigonis and his team began to design a prototype sma…
Though the prospect may fill us with dread, most of us need dental treatment at some stage - and the reality is that better care has never been available, as this fully illustrated book shows. Early dentistry was amateurish and limited to barber-sur…
The name of Robert Adam is today equated, as it was by his contemporaries, with taste, style and elegance. Since his death, the term 'Adamesque' has been used to describe not only ceilings, doorways and fireplaces but objects as various as the City…
Death has been a source of grief and uncertainty for humanity throughout history, but it has also been the inspiration for a plethora of fascinating traditions. The covering of mirrors to prevent the departed spirit from seeing itself; the passing b…
London's sewers could be called the city's forgotten underground: mostly unseen subterranean spaces that are of absolutely vital importance, the capital's sewers nonetheless rarely get the same degree of attention as the Tube. Paul Dobraszczyk here…
During their heyday in the mid-eighteenth century the pleasure gardens were one of the hubs of polite society. Laid out with formal gardens and buildings for dining and amusement, the pleasure gardens were the scene of upper class exercise and enter…
Enamel signs emerged as the jewel in the crown of British advertising in the late Victorian era, commanding public attention for over half a century before technological, economic and social change combined to render them redundant. From the 1950s o…
Although steel and glass dominate modern cities, Britain boasts innumerable beautiful examples of more traditional construction methods. Many date from the period before easy nationwide transportation, when materials were usually grown or extracted…
Churches contain much of the most interesting medieval sculpture in the country. Magnificent effigies, whether of cast copper-alloy or stone, never cease to provoke awe and wonder, conjuring up glamorous images of an age of chivalry. Yet in their in…
Ice cream has been served in Britain since the seventeenth century: it has graced the bowls of kings and the cones of the working man, and has been served plain, flavoured, moulded, sliced, squirted and scooped. It has made the fortunes of industria…
It is generally accepted that Karl Benz was the inventor of the motor-car in 1885 - what is less well known is that his car was a three-wheeler. In the motor-industry's early years, the threeand four-wheeled types were developed side by side, but th…
Sheep have been farmed in Britain for hundreds of years and more than thirty million sheep now inhabit these islands. The many breeds developed over this time have been carefully matched to their surroundings - from the hardy, seaweed-eating North R…
From lumbering house-shakers on solid tyres to smooth turbo-power in the 1970s, the lorry has come a very long way in a remarkably short time. In the early competition between steam, petrol and electricity, the internal combustion engine had more or…
Sir William Lyons enjoyed a seemingly unstoppable rise to fame and fortune in the motor industry, and the Jaguar brand that he introduced became world-famous. Yet it did not happen overnight. In the 1920s he was in Blackpool, styling motorcycle side…
Planned with the same passion as a landscape garden, filled with monuments that represented the start of the art of craftsmanship in stone, and equipped with expensively constructed and fashionably designed gatehouses and chapels of rest, the Victor…
A great number of monuments dating from the twelfth to the twentieth centuries can be seen in cathedrals and churches throughout England, and they make up a valuable part of the country's cultural heritage. Not only are they important as works of ar…
During the reign of Queen Victoria, industrialisation changed every aspect of rural life. Industrial diversification led to a decline in agriculture and mass migration from country to town and city - in 1851 half the population lived in the countrys…
Over the course of the nineteenth century, gardening came to be considered a respectable profession, providing a means to an education, a good chance of advancement and decent working conditions. The hierarchy of the garden staff became just as regi…
The rood screen was the visual focus of the medieval parish church, dividing the nave from the chancel. Most were built of wood and were adorned with intricate carved decoration painted in bright colours, often with images of saints. Defaced and oft…
Children of the 1950s have much to look back on with fondness: Muffin the Mule, Andy Pandy, and Dennis the Menace became part of the family for many, while for others the freedom of the riverbank or railway platform was a haven away from the watchfu…
The steam locomotives which served industry spent their working lives mainly behind the walls of factories, docks and shipyards, unseen by most people, and only in the colliery districts and in the iron-ore quarrying areas of the East Midlands were…
Postcards sent by men on the front, and to them by their families, are among the most numerous, and most telling, surviving artefacts of the Great War. They tell us much about attitudes towards the war, and provide a great insight into men's lives,…
Spectacles have been used since the thirteenth century, at first by the few people who needed to read, such as churchmen and clerks. This book traces the development and use of eyeglasses from the fourteenth century onwards. In the eighteenth centur…
The churches of Britain contain a remarkable heritage of exquisitely embroidered vestments, and cathedrals in particular hold some of the most beautiful textiles ever produced in Europe. The history of these priestly garments and how their use devel…
This title contains Ancient history: the prologue; The golden age of motoring; The post-war years: changing times, change, and change again: the arrival of computers; Modern times: a fresh start; Collectors' gold; Islands and Ireland; Curiosities an…
Almshouses - shelter offered by religious institutions to needy elderly people - come in a variety of architectural styles and often have interesting features, including coats of arms, clock-towers and sundials, many have chapels and gardens.
This colourful introduction to the first decades of the motor car covers its earliest iterations, when the automobile represented the very peak of technological innovation. It is packed with fascinating facts about the experimental origins of the mo…
This book outlines the medals issued to British soldiers and sailors for military service across the globe. At a time of imperial expansion, British forces were almost constantly in action - against major powers (like Russia in 1854), in wars of con…
Although the European sailing cargo boat is now a thing of the past, in 1900 the majority of British shipping was still under sail. Vessels such as the River Thames Spritsail sailing barge, still to be seen sailing under charter for sail training an…
