Superbly illustrated heavyweight edition of the most famous and influential work of English fantasy ever published, reimagined for a new generation of readers by John Matthews, one of the world's leading Arthurian experts, and illustrated by internationally acclaimed Tolkien artist, John Howe. The tales of how the boy Arthur drew the Sword from the Stone, or the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, or how the knights of the Round Table rode out in search of the Holy Grail are known and loved the world over. It all began when an obscure Celtic hero named Arthur stepped on to the stage of history, sometime in the 6th century, and oral tales led to a vast body of stories from which, 900 years later, Thomas Malory wrote the famous Le Morte D'Arthur. The Great Book of King Arthur presents these well-loved stories for a modern reader, for the first time collecting many tales of Arthur and his knights either unknown to Malory or written in other languages. Here, you will read of Avenable, the girl brought up as a boy who becomes a famous knight. You will learn of Gawain's strange birth, his upbringing amongst poor folk and his final rise to the highest possible rank - Emperor of Rome. There is also the story of Morien whose adventures are as fantastic and exciting as any to be found in the pages of Malory. In addition, there are some of the earliest tales of Arthur, deriving from the tradition of Celtic storytelling. Here is the original Arthur, represented in such powerful stories as 'The Adventures of Eagle-Boy', and 'The Coming of Merlin', based on the early medieval text Vita Merlini, which gives a completely new version of the great Enchanter's story. These age-old stories, still as popular today as they were from the Middle Ages onwards, are dramatically brought to life by the luminous paintings and delicate detailed line drawings of John Howe, whose work on the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film trilogies has brought him a world-wide following. Foreword by Neil Gaiman. Large 9.5 x 25.2cm, 406 glossy colourful pages.
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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.

Beginning with the work of the master builders of antiquity, Frank Joseph shares his personal investigations into ancient mysteries and paranormal enigmas in America and abroad examining Old World connections with the New World sacred centres. These include similarities between Ohio's Mound City and the pyramids and tombs of the Giza Plateau, ancient American cities of the Sun, China's Great Pyramid, and the possibility of a Templar treasure on Oak Island. He explores modern sacred sites such as Iowa's Grotto of Gems, Tennessee's Greek Temple of the goddess Athena, and Florida's Coral Castle. He investigates pre-Columbian sites and underwater pyramids in the Midwest, Wisconsin's UFO hot-spot, lost Aztec Cities of Gold in Kansas, and giant-built constructions in Illinois and the afterlife. He details how the intriguing acoustics of Newgrange in Ireland are echoed in its spiral carvings, and explores ritual uses of altered states, looking at the practices of Minoan snake handlers, Mayan shamans, and prophets through the ages. Plus EVP or Electronic Voice Phenomena, the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, and the Ark of the Covenant and extraordinary personalities including Jules Verne, Sir Francis Bacon, Mother Shipton and the real-life inspiration for Indiana Jones. 308pp in large well illustrated softback.

A beautifully illustrated collection of some of the finest examples of liturgical art and the culture that produced it, this medieval church treasury assesses the artistic techniques and methods, and places objects in the context of their practice and piety. Fliegel explores the origins from late antiquity and their ultimate disappearance as a result of the Reformation, French Revolution, and political upheavals of the early modern period. Reliquaries, censers, monstrances, chalices, patens and vestments, liturgical objects were usually crafted from precious metals such as silver, gilt-silver and gold to which costly gemstones, enamels, carved ivory plaques were often applied. They were often displayed only in a church sacristy, or a 'treasury', and important objects were displayed openly on or near the altar for all to see. The many books produced during the Middle Ages to celebrate the Mass were handmade and often costly to produce, decorated or illuminated with silver and gold leaf and colourful paint, these illuminated manuscripts were among the most prized possessions of any cathedral, parish church or monastery. Sometimes they were bound between bejewelled covers, befitting their function on the altar. Some of these great medieval treasuries have survived in situ in cities such as Venice, Hildesheim, Aachen, Trier and elsewhere. The medieval churchgoer would be overwhelmed by the sensory richness of the setting, the coloured light emanating from stained glass windows, the flickering lights from candles and the smell of incense and of course the crosses and chalices which dazzled and inspired the faithful in a world embellished with sculpture, icons and frescoes of God, the angels and saints. This is a rich treasury in a rare import of 108pp, 22.5 x 28.5cm.

Written with great literary flair, inquisitiveness, soul-searching and humanity, this is a haunting work of resurrection and an odd fictional encyclopaedia of disappeared cities, lost towns and ghost villages. Matthew Green reimagines the lives of those who walked their streets as he peers through the cracks of history to find Dunwich, a medieval city plunged off a cliff by sea storms, the abandoned village of Wharram Percy, wiped out by the Black Death, the lost city of Trellech, unearthed by moles in 2002, and a Norfolk village zombified by the military and turned into a Nazi, Soviet, and Afghan village for training. British historian and broadcaster Matthew Green tells the astonishing tales of the rise and demise of these places, animating the people who lived, worked, dreamed and died there as he travels across Britain exploring their haunting and often-beautiful remains. Mourned by evictees and reimagined by artists, writers and mavericks, he gives us the taste of medieval wine or the sights of puffin hunting on the tallest cliffs in the country. His first discovery lay in one of the remotest corners in Scotland, Skara Brae, to find houses beneath the sand before we travel to the obliterated port of Winchelsea and the abandoned island of St Kilda. Tiny remainder mark, 358pp, illus.

The Victorian Underworld in film and fiction is a place of twisting alleys, shrouded in fog as we "enter a world of gin spinners, sneaksmen and Covent Garden nuns, where bare-knuckled boxers slog it out for dozens of rounds, children are worth more dead than alive, and the Thames holds more bodies than the Ganges". This fascinating book takes the lid off the stereotype, showing where our ideas come from, based on real incidents such as the massacre of the Marr family on the notorious Ratcliffe Highway. The author's discussion includes speculation as to who the real murderer may have been, and his well-informed section on the Ripper murders also identifies a strong contender for the role. Bareknuckle fighting was illegal until boxing was gentrified by the Queensberry Rules, and the 19th century writer Hazlitt gave a famous account of a fight between The Gasman and his cannier opponent Bill Neale, accompanied by high-stakes betting. A best-selling Gothic Underworld writer was Harrison Ainsworth with novels such as his Jack Sheppard series, based on the short life of a real villain. Ainsworth popularised the idea of Flash, the special language used by criminals, satirised by the novelist Thackeray in Vanity Fair with expressions such as "Nuffle your clod" and "I'll bimbole the clicky in a snuffkin". Public controversy followed as to whether such books corrupted morals. Prostitution and pornography were also the subjects of moral panic and venereal disease was rampant, although some prostitutes made a profit out of the trade and married well. In the words of one, "we are pretty, we dress well, we can talk and insinuate ourselves into the hearts of men". Another abuse was the sale of dead bodies for dissection, a trade that occasionally led to murder, and in 1832 preventive legislation was passed. In 1849 Henry Mayhew began his revolutionary investigation into London's poor. 209pp, 15.9 x 23.5cm, black and white reproductions.

The silhouette as an art form reached the height of its popularity in the late 18th and 19th centuries, demanding considerable skill and dexterity from the artist, while the act of having a silhouette made was a performative process that enhanced the sitter's importance. The medium also raises interesting theoretical questions about the way we perceive negative space. Leading experts to shed light on the surprisingly complex historical, political, and social underpinnings of this ostensibly simple art form. This book is largely based on an exhibition of American silhouettes in the Washington National Gallery, which includes a well-known painting by the UK's 18th century master Joseph Wright of Derby, The Corinthian Maid, in which a young woman traces the silhouette of her sleeping lover on a nearby wall. In 1803 Charles Willson Peale installed the "physiognotrace" machine in his museum in Philadelphia, where a likeness could be mechanically created quickly and cheaply. Women and African Americans were often excluded from the privileged group of self-made men pushing the industry forward, but two of Peale's best cutters were disadvantaged people, with the mixed race Moses Williams specialising in studies of Native Americans, and Martha Ann Honeywell born without arms and manipulating the silhouette cutter with toes, mouth and a stump of an arm. Martha has a chapter to herself, including a discussion of her belief that the tiny patterns in the cosmos revealed the divine nature. A major silhouettist of the mid-19th century was Auguste Edouart, who specialised in full-length portrait silhouettes, a fashion he brought with him when he emigrated to America from France. Many of his silhouettes were sold as lithographs, generating a far bigger income, and among his sitters was John Quincy Adams, the sixth president. The exhibition also featured the work of four contemporary silhouette practitioners. Particularly striking are the cut-outs of Kara Walker depicting often brutal scenes from antebellum plantation life, exposing the inequity of power and exploitative relationships between master and slave. Kristi Malakoff, Kumi Yamashita, and Camille Utterback - all take the silhouette to unique and fascinating new heights. 182pp, reproductions on most double spreads.
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Celtic languages are now spoken only at the extreme edges of Europe, in Wales, Ireland, Scotland and Brittany, but when Caesar conquered Gaul his subjects were described as Celts, while the ancient Greek historian Herodotus mentions Celts living on the Danube and in Spain. Modern scholars have had widely different opinions as to whether these peoples were in any way related, and there is no doubt that original Celtic literature was overlaid in the Middle Ages by mythologising. For instance, the 12th century Geoffrey of Monmouth "wallowed in nostalgia for a golden Celtic past" and extrapolated origin stories from the doubtful evidence of placenames. The author of this book applies DNA analysis to ancient artefacts, using the results to construct a logical pattern of settlement and interrelationship. Julius Caesar remarked on the similarity of culture between the Gauls and the island Celts, and the possible explanation that La Tene culture was responsible for the spread is too simplistic given the evidence of earlier place-names. The author considers that the Bell-Beaker community and a Proto-Indo-European language may hold the key, arguing that genetic evidence supports a Steppe homeland, together with archaeological evidence such as distinctive humanoid stelae or standing stones carved with arms, belt and footprints. When the people of the Steppes moved up the Danube in the Iron Age they introduced swords, horse gear and wagon burials to the developing Hallstatt warrior culture, and the author traces westward displacement through genetic analysis of skeletons and remains. The Roman world created separate Celtic provinces and Christianity continued the fragmentation, but the author's argument that the Celts once united Europe is persuasively developed. 240pp, 16.5 x 24.4cm, maps, black and white photos.

Fully illustrated and brilliantly researched, this book breaks new ground in bringing together the wide range of material culture that has supported rulers in their power from the 1st to the 16th centuries, from Prague and Seville to Palermo and the Oslo Fjord. The author draws on the work of historians, archaeologists and art historians to afford constant insights not only into the nature of power itself, but also into the ways rulers wished to represent themselves to the outside world. Power can be categorised within a framework of bureaucratic power, including legal and fiscal structures, personal power, covering the relationship of a ruler to his or her subjects including the military, and finally ideological power, the position of the ruler relative to belief systems. An interesting comparison can be made between Diocletian's early fourth century complex at Split in Croatia, a lavish retirement home with an impressive balcony that may have been used for imperial appearances, and the palace of Pedro the Cruel, ruler of Castile and Leon in the 14th century. External staircases, for instance at Saumur or the Doge's palace in Venice, became increasingly common ceremonial devices as the ruler ascended above his subjects. Cities were the location of the Roman triumphs, parades of military success, depicted for instance in a relief on the arch of Constantine showing the emperor in his quadriga or chariot. Holy places include not only Christian cathedrals and shrines but also mosques, for instance the Great Mosque in both Cordoba and Damascus. Monreale Cathedral in Sicily was founded in the 12th century by the ruler, answering directly to the Pope and decorated with mosaics relating to kingship, with the most prominent features a mosaic of Christ the Ruler and secondly the royal throne, comparable with what was probably a royal pew in Westminster Abbey. The author discusses the prehistoric Hill of Tara in Ireland and Scotland's Stone of Scone in their later functions in rituals of inauguration. Finally this comprehensive book covers tombs and mausoleums and their links with ideas of divine rulership. 458pp, black and white photos and a colour section.
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Deep Time, the 2.8 million years in which our earliest ancestors began to be toolmakers, is a period shrouded in mystery. It is still uncertain at what point hominins came on the scene, given that chimpanzees have also been shown to be capable to making tools. Controlled fire for cooking is a pointer, but how does an archaeologist distinguish between controlled and uncontrolled fires? Until the era of Darwin, it was believed that the world was created in 4004 BC, but late Victorian archaeologists started to push back the dates of the Neolithic by several millennia before settling down together, investing in agricultural plots, and collectively erecting massive ceremonial monuments to cement new communal identities. The author's personal experience of digging at early African sites illuminates a fascinating journey of understanding in which he takes the axe-head as the focus. His starting point is a green neolithic axe brought to him by a construction worker at the Devil's Quoits henge at Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire. 5000 years old, the stone originated in the Lake District and was thus testimony to the movement of people and implements. He discusses the evidence for migration at several significant archaeological sites such as Creswell Crags in Nottinghamshire, a complex of caves with close similarities to the cave systems in the Dordogne. In the 1930s Gordon Childe theorised that the Neolithic was a period in which humans changed from hunters to farmers, and this was supported by the work of Kathleen Kenyon at Jericho in the 1950s, who proposed that hunter-gatherers had settled by a spring in Jericho around 10,000 BC, creating a "man-made tell (settlement mound)" including a sanctuary in a significant transitional stage towards domestication. The author's section on Stonehenge is particularly fascinating, covering several theories about how the blue stones got to Stonehenge from the Preseli mountains. Shipment from Milford Haven is now considered unlikely, and various overland routes are discussed including fording the Severn north of Gloucester. A thread throughout the book is the author's discussion of war and peace, whether aggression was innate in early societies and how this impacts on the future of our world. 2.9 x 19.8cm, 432pp, maps, diagrams, colour photos.