'Edward I and the Scottish Wars of Independence' is the subject of this convincing description of Edward's campaigns in Scotland. Known to posterity as Scottorum Malleus, the Hammer of the Scots, Edward I was one of medieval England's most formidable rulers. Santiuste offers a fresh interpretation of Edward's military career in what is in part a study of personality. Edward struggled with tenacious opponents including Robert the Bruce and William Wallace which have become the stuff of legend. Whilst also exploring the political background, Edward emerges as a man of great conviction who sought to bend Scotland to his will, but also on occasion as a surprisingly beleaguered figure. There is a clear and perceptive account of important military events, notably the Battle of Falkirk, and the narrative also encompasses the wider impact of Edward's campaigns. Edward attempted to mobilise resources including men, money and supplies on an unprecedented scale and his wars affected people at all levels of society throughout the British Isles. There is insight into the tactics, technology and logistics of medieval warfare and incisive discussions of important battles and sieges. 236pp, eight pages of photos plus maps for example of the Battle of Stirling Bridge.

'Visions and Voyages Through the Ages', nautical charts are visual tools which convey a plethora of information quickly. They help a navigator find their bearing, indicate possible dangers and obstructions and in many cases estimate distance. Charts employ a specific set of symbols and features distinctive from terrestrial maps born of centuries of development. The stories of how the styles and structures of charts have shifted over time are the work of this magnificent huge, illustrated volume. It shows the history of charts and nautical maps from the earliest known examples to today, with special focus on the mapmakers and methods of use from 1300 to 1900 which were designed not only with utility in mind, but also aesthetics. They were created as presentation items for patrons and institutions, or were made for a land-bound audience eager to understand more about the watery edges of empire and commerce. They were meant to convey the power and wealth of a company or state, and they suggest the centrality of seafaring trade and travel to human history. In the European context, which is the main focus of this book, navigation shifted from practice based on experience and intuition to one dominated by mathematics and instrumentation over the course of nearly a millennium. Currently it is undergoing another shift from mathematics and instrumentation to electronics and data analysis, but the modern charts in use today find their lineage in the portolan charts of the Mediterranean from the late Medieval period, as this book will show chapter by chapter and century by century. Chapters cover Dutch Hydrography in the Golden Age (1600-1700), National Hydrographic Services and Organisations, Private and Corporate Chart and Mapmaking in the 19th Century and The Continued Mapmaking Tradition of Sea Charts. They are indeed works of art in themselves, decorated with castles, lions, elephants and stars, flying fish and great galleons from the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa and the Philippine Islands to the Bahamas and 'Sincapour', the north of Japan to Macao as surveyed by Captain Peter Heywood's HMS Dedaigneuse in 1804. Katherine Parker is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a specialist in the history of maps and mapping and the history of the book. Charming and full of aesthetic appeal, these maps truly are a window to a past world, oceans, seas, rivers and ports. A magnificent heavyweight 208 pages, 27.4 x 31.5cm. Colour throughout, full page illus.

The lives of notorious offenders have been sensationalised for an enthusiastic and hungry audience for centuries and it is from such books as The Newgate Calendar of 1774 and The Criminal Recorder of 1804 that people have gained an understanding of crime and of the criminal underworld. For many of the medieval and early modern outlaws who are featured in this book much of what we know of their lives comes not from trial reports, but from ballads and pamphlets printed after their deaths. The 11 chapters each features a notorious criminal beginning with Robin Hood 'That celebrated English outlaw', Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough, and William of Cloudeslie, three outlaw archers who rivalled Robin Hood in their fame and popularity and whose tales were first printed in 1536. The forest in outlaw ballads is envisaged in a place where men are free, and an environment in which food is plentiful. Other chapters cover the highwaymen Gamaliel Ratsey, Captain James Hind and Claude du Vall, and Sawney Beane, Rob Roy, Jack Sheppard, Jonathan Wild London's first mob boss, Dick Turpin the knight of the road, and Sir William Dodd, the rogue clergyman. There is also an appendix detailing an account of the life of Bulla Felix, the Roman Robin Hood who was perhaps the first 'good outlaw'. 143 page large softback.

Nothing short of heroic in their daring and discoveries, Frédéric Cailliaud's personal narratives of travels far up the Nile and of the arts and crafts of the Ancient Egyptians, Nubians and Ethiopians are exquisitely illustrated with art on par with those in Description de L'Egypte. The travel accounts, drawings and collections he created were an important contribution to the birth of the new scientific discipline of Egyptology in the first half of the 19th century. But one of Cailliaud's major works on the arts and crafts of Ancient Egypt was never published. Here for the first time here, his exquisite colour plates are presented alongside a translation of his original French text with explanatory material to put the work in context. Arriving in Egypt in 1815, Cailliaud embarked upon a series of explorations that included the rediscovery of the Roman emerald mines at Mount Zabora and the ancient routes to the Red Sea, and expeditions in the Eastern and Western Deserts and the land we know today as Ethiopia. He made copious notes on the flora and fauna, people and antiquities he saw, and took a collection of over 2,000 objects back to France (of course today this would be the subject of great controversy). His beautifully rendered watercolours of scenes on Ancient Egyptian tombs and temples (viewed before Champollion's deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs), show animated scenes of ancient daily life like spinning and weavers, sculptors, a boat with rowers, a funerary barque, constructing a temple, statuettes and amulets and painted ceilings in glorious colour, royal chairs and benches and figures painted on a mummy case. He draws parallels to the 19th century activities he observed around him in a work which appeals to historians, art historians and Egyptologists of all levels. With 33 maps and tomb plans and 66 of Cailliaud's Plates. Colour. 288 pages published by the American University in Cairo Press, 28.7 x 20.8cm.

The Norman conquest of England in 1066 was a predictable event, but the Norman conquest of Sicily is in another category altogether, relating to a kingdom at a great distance and happening over two centuries rather than in a single battle. This well-researched account gives the detail of how Norman mercenary soldiers employed in southern Italy by the Hauteville family gradually took over as rulers. The region was part of the Byzantine empire, but the Italian Lombards wanted control, while the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor both took issue with the dominance of the Orthodox Church under Byzantine rule. Over a century of fast-moving power politics and pitched battles the Norman mercenaries gradually defeated the forces ranged against them, culminating in the control of Robert Guiscard and his brother Roger I in Sicily, a largely Muslim region. Defining the precise nature of the military administration in the region ruled by Lombards and Byzantines is not an easy task, and the author examines in detail the elite cavalries of Salerno and an infantry of archers and slingers, some of whom were mercenaries. In the early 11th century the Normans were a cavalry-based force, vassals recruited through a promise of land. They conquered other portions of the Byzantine empire and Syria, much of which was under Arab rule under the Seljuk dynasty, and like southern Italy was peopled by various ethnicities and faiths. The author looks at methods of siege warfare and battle line-ups, including details such as overhand versus underhand striking on the Bayeux Tapestry. The social and political career of Guiscard included the ducal title received from Pope Nicholas in 1059, following a marriage which improved the position of the Hauteville family and was also beneficial to the Prince Gisulf II of Salerno. By 1074 Guiscard was excommunicated and at war, but in 1081 he made peace for the battle of Dyrrachion in Albania against the Byzantine emperor Alexios Komnenos. The book concludes with the defence of the kingdom by Roger II and William II. 251pp, colour photos.

Following in the footsteps of Edward S. Curtis and Orlando Scott Goff, North Dakotan Shane Balkowitsch pays homage to his home state and Native American heritage and culture. As a self-taught 'image-maker', and one of the fewer than 1,000 wet plate collodion artists practicing around the world, Balkowitsch has fully devoted himself to mastering the obsolete photographic technology since 2012. The practice dates back to 19th century Victorian origins and involves preparing a glass plate with collodion and silver nitrate solution for an extended exposure in the camera. In his natural light studio, a roper exposure takes around 10 seconds, about 600 times longer than an iPhone camera. The resulting ambrotypes attest to the unparallelled beauty of this archaic photographic form at the intersection of art and science. This fantastic image archive includes such characterful faces as Blue Bead Woman, White Shawl Eagle Woman, Dancing Red Horse, Scatter Corn, Medicine Horse and Charlie James Daniel 'Eagle Shield'. For each there is the name of their tribe and the date the photograph was taken at the studio. 'Wolf Eyes Looking' features a very dignified elderly gentleman with an actual dead wolf's face over his own, wearing full furs and bone and beaded jewellery; in another image the proud pockmarked face of a middle-aged warrior with bandana and a scarred face of a soldier boy and beautiful young squaws with perfect skin. The traditional costumes are truly astonishing and here in monochrome have a most powerful impact in these close-up photographs. There is one gatefold page of the Nostalgic Glass Natural Light Studio with the photographer seen on the left. 128 large pages, 25 x 32.6cm.

The English formal garden of the late 17th and early 18th centuries reinvented the Ornamental Wilderness with its ornamental grove. In its mature form, the wilderness constituted mostly of the garden, shady and private, a place for retreat as well as social activity, with a seeming naturalness achieved through artifice. James Bartos celebrates the layout at Wrest Park, Chiswick and Stowe and many more besides. He begins with groves and trees in the English imagination, the Druids and patriotic plantations, he looks at design, hedges and planting, cabinets and open spaces for entertainment and continental precedents in Italy, France and Holland. He looks at the wilderness in England with its maze of hedges, simple geometry, complex geometry, the English Bosco, block planting, curves, the Artinatural, forest gardens and the shrubbery. There is the domed building of Chiswick Pavilion, alleyways and precise architecture as an arbiter of taste with Burlington and his attempt to imitate the Classical Roman world, Palladio and Jones. We meander into dead ends and walk on to other wildernesses along a serpentine river, an elm grove, an amphitheatre or a woodland at Castle Howard in Yorkshire; Vanbrugh with his first country house commission, London garden makers to the nobility and gentry and even Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661-1736), who designed the rockwork, caves, cascades and watercourses within Wray Wood. Then of course there is the splendour of Hampton Court Palace and the walkways and mazes. This heavyweight beautiful publication is packed with colour photographs and examples throughout focussing on design manuals and individual gardens and landscapes with a wealth in engraved prints, maps and present-day photographs. Bartos considers the making, planting and maintenance of wildernesses, their continental precedents and thematic resonances - Classical, Biblical, Druidic, Patriotic - and their inevitable demise. Engagingly written and visually very pleasing. 296 large pages, 19 x 24.8cm. Satin pagemarker.

William Adams was an English seafarer who became the first Englishman to reach Japan. After living there or many years, Adams had taken a Japanese name, risen to the highest level in the ruling Shogun's court, an advisor to Tokugawa Ieyasu as portrayed in Richard Clavell's Shogun, and his life was just as exciting. In 1611, he wrote a letter to the merchants of London's East India Company offering his services as an adviser and interpreter. Seven adventurers were sent to Japan with orders to find and befriend Adams in the belief that he would help them gain access to a country that had sealed itself off from the rest of the world under the Edo Shogunate. Their arrival was to prove a momentous event in the history of Japan, and the Shogun suddenly found himself facing a stark choice - expel the foreigners and continue with his policy of isolation, or open his country to the world. Two thirds of the book concentrates on this English trade mission to Japan and what followed over the next decade as Adams helped the English attempt trade with the Shogun, but was confounded by cultural misunderstanding, scheming Jesuit priests, and fearsome Dutch rivals. Beautifully written and easy to read, this is a fascinating tale of an encounter between two civilisations, centred on an individual as extraordinary as the world in which he lived. Superbly researched and told with great gusto. 352pp in well illustrated softback.

A young woman's fight to bring her rapist to justice was even more problematic in 1793 Manhattan than it is today. This gripping true-crime narrative tells the story of 17-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer, who had been walking out with a young man posing under a pseudonym who was in fact the notorious seducer Harry Bedlow. One evening as it grew dark Harry took Lanah to an alley of brothels, forcing her into the establishment of Mother Carey, although Carey initially tried to resist, perhaps realising that Lanah was a respectable girl. Harry persisted and in spite of Lanah's repeated refusal to consent to sex, he raped her, leaving her clothes torn and bloodstained. The following day Lanah remained at the house while she mended her clothes, treating Mother Carey scornfully, then went to a friend's to get her help with breaking the story to her stepfather. John Callanan was a man of spirit who believed in his step-daughter, and together they brought a criminal case against Bedlow. The author, a professor of history, has researched the trial fully and gives a detailed account of the claims and counter-claims. The defence rested their main case on the claim that Lanah had herself visited Mother Carey's brothel looking for Harry the day before. Although the prosecution was able to establish that Lanah had been occupied in visits that left her no time to detour via the brothel, the ultimate decision of the jury was that Bedlow was Not Guilty. Lanah and her stepfather were not willing to give up, although Lanah made a suicide attempt that was intercepted. Public opinion ran in Lanah's favour, with articles and protests in the press from women who were starting the movement for women's rights. One defender, with the pseudonym Justitia, controversially proclaimed that "There is no natural difference in the intellectual faculties of the two sexes." When John Callanan brought a civil case for defamation of character, Bedlow had to pay crippling damages. Meanwhile letters had surfaced, handled by Bedlow's celebrated attorney Alexander Hamilton, which purported to be Lanah's confession of lying in court, but they were widely regarded as forgeries. 365pp, colour reproductions. Remainder mark.

Auxiliary Nurse Vera Brittain serving with the Red Cross in France remembered being 'completely unaware that...the Representation of the People Bill, which gave votes to women over the age of 30, had been passed by the House of Lords.' For Vera, 'the spectacular pageant of the Woman's Movement' had 'crept to its quiet, unadvertised triumph in the deepest night of wartime depression'. The struggle for women's parliamentary enfranchisement had been long and bitter, and those known as the 'Suffragettes' had fought for the vote through militant and at times violent campaigns, imprisoned, undertaken hunger and thirst strikes and suffered the torture of forcible feeding. Non militant suffragists had used legal and passive resistance in a movement that was not premeditated or controllable, 'it just happened'. Now we join Dr Vivien Newman, arm in arm, with some of the most formidable women who turned their considerable skills, honed over 50 years of active campaigning, to both support the war and the pursuit of peace. An explanation of the acronyms includes the Actress' Franchise League, Conchies, East London Federation, International Women's Suffrage Alliance, Men's League for Opposing Women's Suffrage, National Vigilance Association, Passmore Edwards Settlement, Queen Mary's Auxiliary Army Corps, Society for Overseas Settlement of British Women, Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service, The Tax Resistance League, The Women's Volunteers Reserve and many more. 158pp, archive photos.