Where is Ireland's answer to the Taj Mahal? What is the world's longest running chat show? Who was the first woman to be elected to the House of Commons? Embracing legends and folklore, wonderful wordsmiths, giant steps to baby steps, the Emerald Isle has naturally preserved bog men, produced leprechauns, the Irish wolfhound, the Holy Trinity and its importance in the spread of Christianity, the Book of Kells, Waterford crystal, Irish stout, RMS Titanic, Gaelic football, and the National Ploughing Championships, the Rose of Tralee, bridges over the Liffey, Cork and the Model T Ford to the Riverdance phenomenon. Here are insights into the many characters, legends, laws and inventions that have shaped a nation. 144pp, woodcut and other illus.

You cannot move far in London without being reminded of the personalities who made its history - Dick Whittington who helped make London the centre of the trade in wool, Thomas Gresham who ensured that London would become the financial centre, Prince Albert who left behind the Kensington museums. Then there is Big Ben which caused its creator so much trouble that he died prematurely, and the Underground Railway. Whatever is that strange London Stone almost hidden behind a grill attached to a bank in Cannon Street, not to mention the metal tube which passes above the trains within Sloane Square underground station? Why that's the River Westbourne of course. Here are amphitheatres and temples, bars, taxes and taxis, Bazalgette and the Great Stink, rhyming slang, smog, parks, how the posh streets got their names, retail therapy and the story of Leicester Square along with royal rowing and dodgy dealing, fountains, lost rivers, hidden tube stations, famous prisons, police forces and power stations, Art Deco, philanthropy and the poor, tea shops and corner houses, theatreland and life beyond the fringe, London's drinking culture and its cemeteries, all the colourful characters and history, surprising events and iconic buildings of our capital city. 144pp, woodcut illus.

We begin with culture and the beginnings of the clan system, how the Scots have been led into battle by bagpipes, the tartan myth, the Gaelic language, cattle driving in the Highlands as we go on to makers of history, the real Macbeth, the King who helped create Scotland Malcolm III, Robert the Bruce its most famous monarch, the Normans who ruled the country, the tragedy of Mary Queen of Scots, the African adventures of Mary Slessor. In food and drink we meet Robert Burns, moonshiners, Heather Ale. There is Scotland at war with the death of kings, the building of the Caledonian Canal, planes, trains and rocket science, curling and jousting, cricket and football and tales from the dark side like the Dundee killer's final confession. Scottish history has been called 'the long brawl' with its clan wars, family feuds and invasions and this book explores the culture surrounding the many characters, food, sporting heritage and murder most foul in a concoction of trivia and stories. 144pp, woodcut illus.

At the time of writing, over 200 underground railways are in service or under construction and here are the technical challenges they faced and the colourful personalities involved in their stories. In January 1863, London's Metropolitan Railway, running from Paddington to Farringdon, became the world's first underground railway. Budapest and Glasgow followed London in 1896 and in 1900 Paris added its Métro. Another 10 cities joined the underground club by 1939, many only a few kilometres in length with some tracks above ground. Since 2001, 79 underground railways have entered service, mostly in Asia with Chinese cities leading the way, in particular Beijing and Shanghai with its 420 miles of track, with both approaching four billion passengers a year. The deepest station is in St Petersburg at 86 metres or 282ft below ground built in the 1950s. From Auckland and Berlin's U-Bahn, Buenos Aires, the Chicago 'L', Crossrail, the Madrid Metro, we travel to Mexico City, Moscow, the New York subway, Pyong Yang, Stockholm, and Vienna, absorbing stories and trivia from innovative engineers and corrupt politicians, earthquakes and morning rush hours to great successes and terrible tragedies. With tales of secret networks and nuclear shelters, Art Nouveau and woolly mammoths, we delve deep underground. 144pp, well illus. with photos and line art.

Archaeology, architecture, culture and customs, national costume, national parks, movers and shakers, art, literature and language, celebrities, Tom Jones's telephone box, black gold and industry, fun and games and weird sports like snorkelling which saved a Victorian spa town and the great Orme Tramway where day trippers share their journey with a coffin, to the Welsh lad Arthur Linton (1868-1896) who got on his bike and became the Champion Cyclist of the World. Wales is a small country but one with a rich and varied history despite its size with contributions and a passion for song, poetry, sport, food, fun and humour, an ancient land of myths and legend and curious traditions. Discover how Welsh pioneers changed the world, powered flight, and all about the world's first industrialised nation with its prehistoric copper mines to the black gold that fuelled the Industrial Revolution. Facts to amuse and intrigue. 144pp, well illus.

With gold embossed linen cover and magnificent design and presentation as befitting a Thames & Hudson publication and with marbled endpapers, Martin Rees Astronomer Royal introduces us to the starry sky, the 'Vault of Heaven' which has been viewed with awe throughout human history. Over the centuries geocentric cosmology was 'improved' to take account of successively more accurate data as proposed by the great Tycho Brahe and Nicolaus Copernicus with his heliocentric system which eventually triumphed, losing some of its complicity after Kepler (1571-1630) discovered planetary orbits to be ellipses rather than circles. In Atlas Coelestis, Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr (1677-1750) masterfully presents a panorama of what was believed about the cosmos in the early 18th century. The splendid ornamentation of his illustrations reflect the cultural breadth and intelligence of his intended readers. His sky maps portray the most prominent stars, the tracks of comets, and the orbits of Saturn's and Jupiter's moons, themselves 'cosmic clocks', observable in principle by navigators. Some of Doppelmayr's most remarkable illustrations depict how the solar system would appear if viewed not from Earth but from another planet. Today we are sending probes to these other worlds. Across 30 remarkable colour plates published by a great cartographic house in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1742, this spectacular outsized guide showcases the 1742 Map of the Cosmos and is a superb introduction to the fundamentals and history of astronomy. Charting constellations, planets, comets and moons, the Atlas presents the ideas of all the famous influential astronomers including Copernicus, Riccioli, Kepler, Newton and Halley. The intricate colour plates interweave annotated diagrams and tables with figurative drawings and ornamental features. At this size we can appreciate the beauty of these exquisite plates which are also presented in a step-by-step deconstructed form by astronomer Giles Sparrow who elucidates the scientific ideas inherent in each plate. He expertly decodes and analyses the complex information in them in this spectacular, revelatory celestial compendium of the cosmos. All in colour, 256 massive pages, 37.5 x 27cm.
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Let us go back to Christopher Columbus, to his diary of his first journey, as well as some of his other writings. The originality of the sites confronting the Discoverer, new landscapes, a flora and fauna never seen before, and even human beings different from Europeans, seems to often excite the senses of the Navigator and his mates, but it was hard to convey. His observation is striking. Gerbi wrote that through Columbus's eyes America had 'emblematic parrots and lizards. Myriads of singing birds fill the sky while the ocean is teeming with shoals of playful, multi-coloured fish.' Landscape and nature, portraits, feather-dressed natives, pygmies fighting cranes, depictions of the fountains of youth, engravings, ink, watercolour, gold and silver on paper illustrations plus woodcuts, there is even iconography on cannibalism. 655 pages on special watermarked Italian paper, profusely illustrated, much in colour. Printed on special watermarked paper (as in all this series) in Rome, 1996 First Edition.

The Genoese Cartographic Tradition and Christopher Columbus. A staggeringly beautiful, watermarked 1997 first edition, this comes with mostly full colour gatefold, fold-out maps, 31 in total, 23 in colour. The history of cartography is also that of methods of surveying and techniques of representation, ranging from rock carvings and rudimentary sketches, to the parchment manuscripts of medieval nautical charts, and the first engravings cut into wood, copper or stone, and later reproduced on paper in relatively limited quantities. Such are the cartographic documents reproduced in this entire series. Together with many other plates, volume XII in the series has 216pp.

Pull open the first gatefold page to see fine cut-away line drawings of the 'Pinta', the caravel of Columbus's first fleet, 1492. Next is the 'Santa Maria', a theoretical reconstruction, followed by detailed line drawings of tackle, blocks, a sketch of a 15th century sail, and superb detailed drawings from as early as 1892, reconstructions, woodcut illustrations and even reproductions of coloured 16th century nautical charts. These luxury editions were certainly not the type used by ship's pilots. Charted are the place names or coastal toponyms, densely drawn and with the rhumblines networked marking the intercepting courses. Printed on special watermarked paper (as in all this series) in Rome, first edition 1997. 310pp.

Sub-titled 'Madagascar from the Deep Past to the Uncertain Present', this is a moving account of Madagascar is told by a researcher who has spent over 50 years investigating the mysteries of this remarkable island. A place of change, a biodiversity hotspot, and the fourth largest island on the planet, Madagascar has been home to a spectacular parade of animals from giant flightless birds and giant tortoises on the ground, to agile lemurs leaping through the treetops. Some species live on and many have vanished forever. Spanning everything from botany to geology to climatology and the binding of the Malagasy people and their relationship to the landscape, Madagascar's forests have expanded and contracted in response to shifting climates and the impact of human activities during the last thousand years or so. Today it is a microcosm of global trends - what happens there in the decades ahead could provide helpful insights into the battle to turn the tide of the environmental crisis now sweeping the world. Alison Richard takes us on a journey through space and time, from Madagascar's ancient origins as a landlocked region of Gondwana and its emergence as an island, to the modern-day developments that make the survival of its plants and animals increasingly uncertain. She weaves together scientific evidence with her own experiences and captures the magic as well as the tensions that swirl around this island nation. The text is peppered with interesting photographs, a table of major national actions concerning the environment since 1970, plus 31 beautiful colour plates including the stunning blue Babakoto singing and the almost human shape of the Baobab tree standing sentinel. 342pp.