In the popular Haynes series and published in association with the Big Pit Museum Wales, the book reveals what it was really like to work in a coal mine and live in a community it fostered and includes interviews and anecdotes from miners and engineers. It explains in detail all the core engineering processes of underground mining from early bell-pits to modern long wall continuous mining. It explains key elements that made a mine function from shaft thinking, cage winding and mine layout, to manual and powered haulage, coal-cutting technologies and surface coal processing. It also looks at how successive generations of mining engineers have met perennial dangers through innovations in props and supports, ventilations, illumination, drainage systems, gas detection and much more. At its peak in 1920s, the British coalmining industry employed 1.1 million people with more than 1,300 mines across the nation producing nearly 300 million tonnes of coal for domestic and industrial use. Dirty and dangerous, and with complex engineering, extracting a raw material at depths of up to 1,400 metres below the surface, the roadways spread out from the pit bottom for many miles beneath town and country. Here are hundreds of colour and archive photos such as traditional safety lamps, an impressive diagram from 1908 showing a coal-washing plant, a duckbill loader, a continuous miner machine with a combined cutter and conveyer, a lattice steel headframe, pit ponies and early tram sledges pulled by a young woman in ropes and chains crawling on all fours along a basic wooden roadway. Covers history, engineering, technology and safety. 156 very large pages. Colour illus.

For Little Slugs aged 5+ and every fan of Matilda, this quality product from The Book People is a light up canvas artwork measuring 19.5cm across and 30cm or 12" tall, white stretched canvas across a wooden frame with the text 'I'm wondering what to read next' and the unmistakeable line art of Quentin Blake showing Matilda herself with a book wide open, standing on a pile of books reading aloud to a crowd of eight merry children with their hands raised and smiling gleefully, throwing pens and books and bags and shoes into the air. Non-replaceable LED bulbs are supplied and 3 x AA batteries (not included) are required. Best of all, the LED lights can change colour as the artwork YOU have coloured in is illuminated: the book can become pink, Matilda's face a fleshy colour and her long hair darkened. Very clever stuff and a quality gift product.

Fluid and glossy ink allows you to let the pen slide on paper with minimal pressure, particularly useful for older hands. The four colours are green, orange, purple and blue with a fine 1mm tip to make writing a (n-ink) joy.

Winner of the 1973 Booker Prize, Hilary Mantell said of this novel 'Original and endlessly entertaining, it repays repeated readings.' Krishnapur 1857 - India is on the brink of a violent and bloody mutiny. In this remote town on the vast North Indian plain, life for the British is orderly and genteel, but when the sepoys at the nearest military cantonment rise in revolt, the British community retreats with shock into the Residency. They prepare to fight for their lives with what weapons they can muster. As food and ammunition grow short when the British find themselves under actual siege, the true character of their domination - at once brutal, blundering and wistful - is soon revealed. A superb portrayal of the physical horrors and psychological fallout, the novel is wonderfully funny and written with a devastating wit and rambunctious humanity. Inspired, funny it is ultimately a tragic look at colonialism in India. Paperback, 375pp with Afterword.

Lie back and relax and drift off as peace is within easy reach as we enjoy these colour pictures of stunningly beautiful cats and kittens, one per full page and each with a relaxing caption to make you happy such as All is well, You are the best thing, Peace at last, I am at ease, Soft and cosy, Put your feet up, Lie down to calm down, Enjoy the moment. Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths. Carve out and claim the time to care for yourself and kindle your own fire (Amy Ippoliti). A little drowsing cat is an image of perfect beatitude (Champfleury). Cats have mastered the art of chilling out and with a little help from this book now you can too. Breathe in... and out... Colour photos.
Click YouTube icon to see this book come to life on video.

Sub-titled 'Magnificent Ocean Liners and the Women Who Travelled and Worked Aboard Them', this is an engaging and anecdotal social history which explores how women's lives were transformed by the golden age of travel between Europe and North America. Transatlantic travel was the province of the great ocean liners and an extraordinary undertaking made by many women. Some travelled for leisure, some for work and others to reinvent themselves or find new opportunities. They were celebrities, migrants and millionaires, refugees, aristocrats and crew members whose stories have remained mostly untold until now. The ocean liner was a microcosm of contemporary society, divided by class: from the luxury of the upper deck, playground for the rich and famous, to the cramped conditions of steerage or third class travel. In first class you will meet A-listers like Marlene Dietrich, Wallis Simpson and Josephine Baker; the second class carried a new generation of professional and independent women like pioneering interior designer Sibyl Colefax. Down in steerage you will follow the journey of émigré Maria Riffelmacher as she escapes poverty in Europe. Bustling between decks is a crew of female workers including Violet 'The Unsinkable Stewardess' Jessop, who survived the Titanic disaster and Maida Dixson who reluctantly went to sea as a stewardess in 1937 and defied wartime torpedoes to escort evacuees to safety around the globe. And Austrian-born Hedwig Kiesler who embarked on the Normandie in 1937 and arrived in New York a week later as MGM's latest signing, renamed Hedy Lamarr. Here are the GI brides and their babies during Operation Diaper Run, newly married British born wives reunited with their husbands in America. Victoria Drummond MBE, Britain's first female seagoing marine engineer, is pictured with anti-aircraft guns in March 1942. Deck games, chic swimwear and swimming pools, formal evening dress, refreshments on deck, the interior designed by the Ritz Hotel recalling aristocratic country houses in the luxurious Aquitania and a poster for the Cunard Line are among the 16 pages of illustrations. 354pp with fairly large print and by the author of Queen Bees code 92482.

John Ruskin once said 'When we build, let us think that we build forever', and this book is a superb gallery of the timeless beauty of classicism. There are essays from writers and scholars such as Creating the Private Arcadia by Jeremy Musson, Music and Architecture by David Watkin and On Mathematics and Symmetry by Robert Chitham. Also the language of classical architecture and classical ornament. From the architects are essays including Swimming Against the Tide, Tradition and Invention, the Arabesque in Classical Architecture and Design, Development and the Analytique. From the craftsmen and artisans is The Importance of Joinery in the Classical Home, Metalwork: The Jewellery on a House, The Centrepiece of a Room, Decorative Painting and Gilding: Classical Origins and Exotic Influences, The Permanence of Stone, Ornamental Plasterwork and The Beauty of Handmade Bricks. By then we have reached page 129 and The Projects themselves including Robert Adams A New Country House, Henbury Hall, A Park Avenue Apartment, A Classical Pool Pavilion by Curtis & Windham Architects, Farmlands, Hollywood Regency, A Cotswold Manor House, A Georgian Country House, A Regency Villa, A Georgian Manor, A Colonial House, A Greek Revival Country House, A Neo-Classical Penthouse and one of John Simpson's earliest commissions, Ashfold House in Sussex whose inspiration can easily be found in the work of Sir John Soane. There are four distinct façades on a symmetrical Palladian square plan with a triumphal arch entrance, a glazed bow window and stucco with stencilled classical decoration reflecting that of Soane's own house at Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. With each there are details and scale, and composite order, the name of the architects and the location, together with quotes, hundreds of colour images of the 25 classically-inspired homes in the US and Great Britain. 256 large pages, 24.3 x 24cm. Sheer luxury, we can ask ourselves time and again ?Who lives in a house like this?? and dream on.
Click YouTube icon to see this book come to life on video.

Does size matter? This ground-breaking book explores human size difference, specifically unusual bodies big and small, as a cultural marker in western scholarship, exploring miniaturism, giganticism, obesity, and the lived experiences of actual big and small people. The work addresses the use of physical measures to judge normalcy, goodness, gender identity and beauty while examining art, literature, folklore, social practices and scientific discourse ranging from the 17th century to the present. The book begins looking at the 'little man' (how Edmund Burke believed the miniature man inspired wonder) and small bodies, before moving on to big bodies and the concept of the "monstrous giant". Discover that the much loved fairy tale character Tom Thumb aligns with three characters in legend, a miniature valiant knight in King Arthur's court, a lustful and over-confident person who attempted to ravish a Queen and someone of similar stature who found success as an instructor, teaching children their letters and moral lessons in words of few syllables. One section of the book looks at the figure of the pygmy in postcolonial revision and brings Roald Dahl's 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory under the lens, critiquing the Oompa-Loompa characters who are 'clearly constructed as African pygmies' as they are described as 'pure black' with 'fuzzy heads' and are no taller than Wonka's knee. While considering larger bodies, the author considers how giants have historically been thought of as not smart, whether that is Homer's Polyphemus tricked by Odysseus or an early edition of Jack the Giant Killer in which the young boy outsmarts the two-headed Welsh giant through clever sleights and illusions. The study also considers Ted Hughes' fable The Iron Giant and the modern idea of a friendship between boy and giant or boy and technology as the iron man (who also happens to be an enormous sentient machine) consumes metal in order to survive but handles the human boy sensitively. To bring the ideas and theories to life, the book also includes fantastic images such as the cover design for Tom Swift and His Giant Robot in 1954, Louise Lentz Woodruff's sculpture featuring an enormous robot guiding a young male and female figures, and a painting by Anthony van Dyck of Queen Henrietta Maria with Sir Jeffrey Hudson in 1633 which portrays the monarch with a favoured member of her household, the 'court dwarf' Jeffrey Hudson. Colour images, 346pp.

The growth of the scientific study of earthquakes is woven into this far-reaching history. The story begins with a series of earthquakes in England in 1750. Today seismologists can monitor the vibrations of the planet second by second, and the movement of tectonic plates millimetre by millimetre, yet even in the 21st century great earthquakes are still essentially 'acts of god', striking with much less warning than volcanoes, floods, hurricanes and even tornadoes and tsunamis. Since antiquity on every continent human beings in search of attractive landscapes and economic prosperity have made a Faustian bargain with the risk of devastation by an earthquake. Today around half of the world's largest cities, as many as 60, lie in areas of major seismic activity. Many such as Lisbon, Naples, San Francisco, Teheran and Tokyo have been severely damaged or destroyed by earthquakes in the past. Throughout history starting with ancient Jericho, Rome and Sparta, cities have proved to be extraordinarily resilient. Only one, Port Royal in the Caribbean, was abandoned after an earthquake. The book seeks to understand exactly how humans and earthquakes have interacted. In some cases, physical devastation has been followed by decline but in others, the political and economic reverberations of earthquake disasters have presented opportunities for renewal. After its wholesale destruction in 1906, San Francisco went on to flourish, eventually giving birth to the high-tech industrial area on the San Andreas fault known as Silicon Valley. An earthquake in Caracas in 1812 triggered the creation of new nations in the liberation of South America from Spanish rule. Another in Tang Shan in 1976 catalysed the transformation of China into the world's second largest economy. Other chapters look at grief and growth in the land of Gandhi, Gujarat 2001, the tsunami in the Indian Ocean 2004, and meltdown and after in Fukushima 2011. With chronology of earthquakes, maps and references, a very well illustrated 256 page Thames & Hudson 2016 first edition.

Born in 1541 in Crete, El Greco lived in an island under the control of the Republic of Venice since 1204 and left his native island in 1567. He spent ten years travelling before he settled in Toledo, Spain, in 1577 where he died in 1614 having established himself and developing a reputation for his art. His portraiture work, immortalising the faces of his friends and patrons of the intellectual elite, his final style is known for his whirling, elongated figures outlined in black, his cool palette, dominated by blue and grey illuminated by supernatural rays of light, and his broad brushstrokes, possibly due to his visual impairment. El Greco was the first Master of the Spanish Golden Age. Here is Christ on the Cross, Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple depicted in a glorious double gatefold page with close-up details to compare easily alongside, The Fable and lift the flap to see a gatefold in the vertical direction. Further gatefolds show individual portraits or studies for such artworks as St Peter and St Paul, The Assumption of the Virgin and The Penitent St Mary Magdalene. This glorious small publication has just 56 pages but these nearly double up with the many gatefolds. Published in conjunction with El Greco Exhibition in Paris October 2019-February 2020. 12.5 x 17.5cm.