Written by the inimitable Zahi Hawass in collaboration with underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio, this richly illustrated book chronicles the life of Cleopatra and the centuries-long quest to learn more about the queen and her tumultuous era, the last pharaonic period of Egyptian history. A legendary temptress, Cleopatra has captivated the world for 2,000 years and here is her story, illustrated with stunning artefacts in book form for the first time ever. Gods and sphinxes, sacred objects of worship, priceless jewellery, and the simple relics of everyday life all saved from the desert or the sea, they bring back the humanity, culture and beliefs of the people who made them, and who served the empire ruled and lost by Queen Cleopatra. In a deep green sea, flanked by sphinxes on either side, a priest stands as if about to process through the murky water in a superb double page colour photograph. On coins we see the head of Ptolemy I, with diadem and aegis around his neck. Measuring nearly 5m tall and found in separate pieces in Heracleion's underwater ruins, a magnificent Ptolemaic king wears a double crown signifying the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the Pharoah. Made of red granite, there is a fantastic photograph of the researchers hoisting the immense statue out of the water. Basins, strainers, braziers, amphora, columns engraved with Greek descriptions, ancient documents and the gleaming golden jewellery collection are among the hundreds of colour photographs in this heavyweight softback of 256pp. 20.3 x 25cm.

'The Poetry, Letters and Art of The Great Master' here is a beautifully designed book with dozens of sketches, architectural drawings, facsimiles of poems and letters and finished works of art in glowing colour, a rare and revealing picture of Michelangelo, one of the towering figures of the Renaissance. Best known as a sculptor, painter and architect of exceptional genius, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, David sculpture, and the dome of St Peter's Basilica are among the most celebrated artistic achievements of all time. He is also considered one of the greatest poets and writers of the 16th century, and his life is documented in revealing letters to family and friends. He also filled hundreds of sheets of paper with exquisite drawings, many of which form the basis for masterpieces. Many of those sketches of the human form served as studies for the ceiling. One of his sonnets describes how he stood up with his head tilted back to paint the ceiling, not lying on scaffolding as often thought. Along with these more technical insights, his letters also reveal aspects of his character which could be by turns proud, cranky, paranoid, and incisively wise, as well as his deep affection for the two great loves of his life. Nearly 500 letters written by him exist and a fair selection are reproduced here including correspondence with his friend and fellow artist Sebastiano del Piombo, Giorgio Vasari, not to mention popes, dukes, and Francis I, the King of France and letters about financial transactions or shipments, or advice about marriage. Above all he was an artist who drew and drew and drew on the backs of receipts, poems, letters he had received and drafts of his own letters. Curmudgeonly, yet Michelangelo did have a sense of humour as clearly on display in his satirical letter date December 1525 about a colossal statue of Pope Clement VII. Michelangelo lived to be 89 years old and lived through a century of upheaval in politics, religion, society and art, yet his letters rarely discuss his theories about his art but he often expresses his ideas about the making of sculpture. With beautiful quotations and many fine illustrations throughout 384 nicely designed pages with curved corners. Organised chronologically and selected by Carolyn Vaughan, former editor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Softback.

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-79) was one of the most important and innovative photographers, criticised in her lifetime for her unconventional techniques. Right now a new exhibition with a modern photography is being staged at the National Portrait Gallery. She is now celebrated as a pioneering portraitist and to mark the bicentenary of her birth and the 150th anniversary of her first museum exhibition, the only one in her lifetime, held at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1865, Bibliophile has got hold of this rare 2015 exhibition catalogue. Drawing on the V&A's significant collection of photographs acquired directly from Cameron and letters she wrote to the museum's founding director, Curator Marta Weiss tells the story of Cameron's artistic development and presents for the first time a group of photographs recently revealed to have belonged to her friend and mentor the artist G. F. Watts which shed light on previously unacknowledged aspects of Cameron's experimental approach. There is a modernity and contemporary spirit to her visual language and themes at a time when photography was still in its infancy. Her delicacy of touch is shown in her portraits of naked children, beautiful women with long flowing hair decorated with flowers and women portrayed not only as seductresses and paramours but as caring mothers and grandmothers with children and grandchildren, affection, caressing and kissing, and in home theatricals with mythological, biblical and allegorical scenes. She attached heavy swans' wings to children's shoulders and created great beauty in such tableau as King Ahasuerus and Queen Esther in Apocrypha, the bearded old man, the beauty resting on the shoulders of another woman captured so artistically. Simple and beautiful is the first example entitled Annie, 1864, a little girl of around seven years with unbrushed hair gazing wistfully as are many of these subjects. Page after page of sepia and black and white beautifully reproduced full page photographs. 224pp, marbled endpapers, cloth binding and silver tooling for the title, 26 x 22cm. The paperback sells at £30 and we have the glamorous hardback first edition with English intro and further text in German and French .
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Sub-titled 'Forty Years of Letters Between Winston Churchill and His Mother', carefully edited and put into their historical context by David Lough. The early letters sent home from boarding school constantly ask his parents for more money and foreshadow Churchill's later financial recklessnesses. His mother Jennie Lady Randolph Churchill corresponded with her young son age six, and in 1921 the year of her death, mother and son were still prolific letter writers. Over those 40 years, Churchill's life saw army service in India, escape from a Boer POW camp, his swift ascent from Conservative MP for Oldham to Liberal First Lord of the Admiralty, resignation in the wake of the debacle of Gallipoli, and eventual return to the Cabinet in 1917. His mother's life by contrast is an extravagant and indolent life of the monied classes touring the houses of aristocratic friends and taking advantage of their hospitality. Her second marriage flounders and she becomes a lonely figure. As Winston joins Asquith's Cabinet and meets his wife-to-be Clementine, Jennie is getting divorced and making faltering attempts to embark on a literary career. Winston's letters back from India, Egypt and the First World War trenches demonstrates his disregard for personal safety. The letters reflect Churchill's emotional, intellectual and political development as confided to his mother as his mentor and charts a mother-son relationship characterised at the outset by young Winston's dependence on Jennie, which is dramatically reversed as her life crumbles towards its end. Brimming with gossip, name-dropping and chutzpah, and populated by a cast of the great and good of late Victorian and Edwardian England, there are very illuminating introductions to each exchange. A beautifully designed and illustrated tome of 610pp with satin pagemarker.

Updated new edition combining the most up-to-date research with vivid descriptions of the medieval world, the book was written to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the enthronement of Robert I of Scotland. The life of Bruce is one of the greatest comeback stories in history. Heir and magnate, shrewd politician, briefly 'king of summer' and then a desperate fugitive who nevertheless returned from exile to recover the kingdom he claimed, Bruce became a gifted military leader and wise statesman, a leader with vision and energy. McNamee peels back the layers of misconception with a lucid explanation of the medieval context and Bruce's enormous contribution to the historical impact not just on Scotland, but on England and Ireland too. It is a major popular reassessment of Bruce as politician, warrior, monarch and saviour of Scottish identity from extinction at the hands of the Edwardian superstate. 374pp, very well illustrated paperback, 16 maps and photos and chronology.

'A Memoir of Enlightenment, Commerce, Politics, Arts and Science', this is the first publication of a memoir drafted 150 years ago by William Nicholson's eldest son, William Junior, who was 80 when he wrote the book in 1868. Nicholson is recognised among historians of science for his many contributions to electro-chemistry, cylindrical printing, slide rules and horology, and for launching the first monthly scientific journal in Britain: 'A Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and the Arts.' His activities extended beyond science and encompassed work for the East India Company and Josiah Wedgwood, the establishment of a school in Soho Square, consulting as one of the earliest patent agents and as a civil engineer. His writing, translating and publishing was extensive, ranging from works on navigation and historical biographies to important scientific translations and textbooks. During a period of three revolutions, scientific, industrial and political, Nicholson managed to build a reputation as a trusted advisor and 'scientific umpire'. His circle included the radical liberals Joseph Johnson, Thomas Holcroft, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, industrial pioneers Josiah Wedgwood, Matthew Boulton, Jabez Hornblower and Richard Trevithick, scientific innovators Richard Kirwan, Humphry and John Davy, and establishment figures such as Sir Joseph Banks, Count Rumford, the 2nd Baron Camelford and Earl Dundonald. 124 page paperback.

'Wainwright tells the story of the girl with the incredible voice who, by sheer force of her personality and power of her decibels, took the operatic world by storm and managed to escape from her violent husband.' - Daily Mail. This delightfully revisionist biography of Dame Nellie Melba rescues her from fusty Victorianism to analyse her struggles and resilience to overcome misogyny and social expectations and becoming one of history's greatest opera singers. Nellie Melba is remembered as a squarish, late middle-aged woman dressed in furs and large hats, an imperious Dame whose voice ruled the world for three decades and inspired a peach and raspberry dessert. She battled misogyny and perhaps would have preferred she stay a housewife in outback Queensland Australia rather than parade herself on stage. But she endured the violence of a bad marriage, was denied by scandal a true love with the would-be King of France, and suffered for more than a decade the loss of her only son - stolen by his angry, vengeful father. Despite these obstacles, Nellie built and maintained a career as an opera singer and businesswoman on three continents which made her one of the first international superstars. Award-winning biographer Wainwright presents a very different portrait of this great diva which celebrates both her musical contributions and her rich and colourful personal life. Includes many pictures including Nellie on her way to London in 1919 to reopen Covent Garden Opera House. 344pp.

Like reading one of Elizabeth Bowen's great novels, this award winning biography is gently elegiac, beautifully written and fascinating. Uncovering the hidden love triangle between novelist Elizabeth Bowen and the author's grandparents, this critically acclaimed biography deals with never-before-seen letters detailing the affair. A death in the family delivers Julia Parry a box of letters. Dusty with age they reveal a secret love affair between the celebrated novelist Elizabeth Bowen and the academic Humphry House, Julia's grandfather. So begins a life changing quest to understand the affair which had profound repercussions for Julia's family, not least her grandmother Madeline. Julia traces these three very different characters through 1930s Oxford and Ireland, Texas, Calcutta in the last days of Empire, and on into World War Two. With a supporting cast that includes Isaiah Berlin and Virginia Woolf, much is revealed about her bookish and kindly grandfather, and his sudden death, and Parry is a spirited narrator who is clearly a great admirer of Bowen's fiction but isn't blindsided by this. The affair lasted roughly from 1933 to 1935 and, obsessed with hauntings, journeys and houses, Bowen might even approve of this book. 373pp, paperback. Photos.

George and Cassandra Austen came from markedly different backgrounds so social class and the tensions it can cause played a part in Jane Austen's life even before her birth in 1775. George possessed 'a most exquisite taste in every species of literature'. Here are extraordinary aspects of Austen's life, work and legacy in this collection of stories and trivia from her unassuming family origins, secret life and loves, and intriguing tales behind the literary and screen adaptations of her works. Covers the Austen family's long tenure at Steventon until the Rectory was finally destroyed by floods, Jane's juvenile parody History of England, the lifelong attachment between sisters Jane and Cassandra, notorious cousin Eliza, the Tom Lefroy affair and a foretaste of Pride and Prejudice, problems with publishers, Jane's 'marriage', gold chains and topaz crosses as gifts from a little brother, Jane's aunt put in prison for theft and shocking news of the move to Bath. A close confidante falls from her horse and suddenly dies, the Austen brothers avert a financial crisis, the final move to Chawton, Mansfield Park pioneers the theme of meritocracy, John Murray publishes Emma which has considerable impact with Scott's adulatory review, here are insights into her remarkable novels and their characters, the changing reception to the novels over the years and her sweeping legacy today. A fascinating collection, 144pp, well illustrated with photos and line art.

The Upstart Crow, Shakespeare's heyday in theatreland, final stage performance, retirement speech, Philip Henslowe the Elizabethan impresario, Ben Jonson, the birth of London's Globe Theatre and its rebuilding, stage costumes in Elizabethan England, make-up concoctions some harmless others not, memorials to Shakespeare, his characters, mysteries of his portrait, priceless First Folio, and his stellar legacy, here is a chronology of Shakespeare's plays, possible models for the comic character, the 'lost' plays, hellraisers. Also public scandals, toe-curling homage and Star Trek littered with Shakespeare references, and in popular songs and novels, plus the historical settings for Shakespeare's plays, insights into his most famous characters, tales from the theatres around the globe in a rich concoction of stories and trivia. 144pp, woodcut illus.