About 	 Lucy Rycroft: Lucy is the founder of The Hope-Filled Family, a ministry encouraging Christian parents, carers and all those investing in the younger generation. She is the author of several books for adults and children, including Busy Family Devotional and the Mighty Girl, Mighty God series. She is mum to four children ages 11 to 16, who arrived by birth and adoption, and is married to Al, a church leader in York, England.

	 Lucy Rycroft

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A A Gill

About A D Swanston: Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

About A J Baime: A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

About A J Pollard: Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

About A K Benjamin: A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

About A L Berridge: A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

About A L Gaylin: Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

About A S Webb: A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

About A. A. Dhand / A. A. Dhand: A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

About A. B. Poranek / A. B. Poranek: A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

About A. C. Grayling / A. C. Grayling: Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

About A. D. Miller / A. D. Miller: A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

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Adrian Tinniswood

'A whirling, waltzing panorama through the last carefree age of British nobility’ New Statesman 
 
In the decades before the First World War, the owners of the nation’s stately homes revelled in a golden age of glory and glamour. This was a time when the ancestral seats of ancient nobility stood side by side with the fabulous palaces of Jewish bankers and Indian princes, when dukes and duchesses mixed with self-made millionaires and society hostesses who had learned to dance in the chorus line. 
 
Adrian Tinniswood opens the doors to the country house during this glittering golden age, when – for the privileged few – life in the country house was the best life of all. 
 
‘Scintillating and brilliant, from a master of the subject’ Gareth Russell 
 
‘Shot through with Tinniswood’s signature sardonic wit and delicious one-liners... The range and scop of his book is breathtaking’ Country Life

The Power and the Glory

The Country House Before the Great War

Adam Weymouth

In 2011, a young wolf named Slavc set out from Slovenia. Traced by GPS, he travelled a thousand miles through the Alps, arriving four months later on the Lessinian plateau, north of Verona. There had been no wolves in northern Italy for a century, but here he crossed paths with a female wolf on a walkabout of her own. A decade later and there are more than a hundred wolves back in the area, the result of their remarkable meeting. 
 
In Lone Wolf, Weymouth walks Slavc's path, examining the changes facing these wild corners of Europe. Here, the call to rewild meets the urge to preserve culture; nationalism and globalisation pull apart; climate change is radically changing lives; and migrants, too, are on the move. 
 
The result is a multifaceted account of a region caught in a moment of kaleidoscopic flux, from an award-winning writer with a uniquely perceptive eye for detail.

Lone Wolf

A Journey Into the Wild Heart of the Alps

Walking the Faultlines of Europe

Matthew Campbell

In the shattered aftermath of Cambodia’s civil war, temples that had stood for centuries were found ransacked, sacred sculptures hacked from pedestals, towering statues of Hindu gods and priceless relics of the Khmer Empire vanished. At the center of this vast plunder, British expat Douglas Latchford, whose decades-long obsession fueled one of the most audacious cultural thefts of modern times. From the Killing Fields to the marble galleries of New York and London and the private collections of the rich and famous, The Man Who Stole the Gods unravels a breathtaking story of power, greed and corruption, and questions what you take from a nation when you steal its past. 
 
Drawing on years of investigation and exclusive access to the stories’ key players – from temple looters and traffickers to the investigators and archaeologists fighting to bring the gods home – award-winning writer Matthew Campbell reveals how the treasures of one of the world’s greatest civilizations were stolen, sold, and finally found.

The Man Who Stole the Gods

A True Story of War, Obsession, and the World's Biggest Art Heist

Jan-Werner Müller

Building requires power and resources – then, once created, our environment structures how we relate to each other. But what would a distinctly democratic built environment look like? Should we prioritize an inclusive process by which as many citizens as possible can decide how a building is designed? Or is it about how architecture and urban spaces can best represent democracy to citizens – and how building and city planning can concretely facilitate democratic action by citizens?In Street, Palace, Square, political theorist Jan-Werner Müller offers an elegant new account of architecture and democracy that draws on examples from Washington DC to Dhaka, Cairo to Berlin. Ranging widely across political philosophy, history and design, he shows that bringing architecture and democracy together has an unexpected benefit. As we reflect on spaces and symbols on the one hand and our understandings of democracy on the other, we might see possibilities we did not see before: how to create spaces for citizens to make politics their own.

Street, Palace, Square

The Architecture of Democratic Spaces

Eyal Weizman

Eyal Weizman is one of the world’s leading experts on the relationship between violence, conflict and the environment, both built and natural. As director of the organisation Forensic Architecture, he and his team of interdisciplinary researchers document acts of state crimes and human rights violations around the world. Since 2023, the group has worked to produce evidence for the International Court of Justice’s genocide case against Israel. 
 
In this revelatory new project, Weizman draws on that research to bring us on an eye-opening journey across time and into the 'deep cartography' of the area extending from Gaza’s subterranean tunnels through to its militarised topography, its unique soil, settlements and barriers. He catalogues, in unflinching and forensic detail, the Israeli campaigns of violence and displacement that have reshaped the region in an effort to make Gaza and its surrounding areas unliveable. Taking us through the broader geographic and historical context, from the Nakba in 1948 to the present day, Ungrounding establishes that architectural and territorial analysis is key to understanding the relationship between coloniser and colonised – and how Israel’s actions after 7 October escalated into violence so extreme and so far-reaching as to, Weizman argues, meet the definition of genocide. 
 
Deeply informative and profoundly affecting in its scope and precision, and illustrated with dozens of original images, maps and diagrams, Ungrounding is an essential document of atrocity in our time.

Ungrounding

The Architecture of Genocide

Imani Perry

Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways. Blue skies and blue water offer hope for a life beyond the current conditions. But blue is also the color of deep melancholy and heartache, echoing Louis Armstrong’s question, "What did I do to be so Black and blue?" In Black in Blues, celebrated author Imani Perry uses the world’s favorite color as a springboard for a riveting emotional, cultural, and spiritual journey—an examination of race and Blackness that transcends politics or ideology. 
 
Drawing deeply from her own life as well as from art and history, Perry traces both blue and Blackness from their earliest roots to their many embodiments of contemporary culture: The dyed indigo cloths of West Africa that were traded for human life in the 16th century. The mixture of awe and aversion in the old-fashioned characterization of dark-skinned people as "Blue Black". The fundamentally American art form of blues music, sitting at the crossroads of pain and pleasure. The blue flowers she plants in memory of a loved one. 
 
Attuned to both the harrowing and the sublime aspects of the human experience, Black in Blues is a poignant, spellbinding, and utterly original work from one of our greatest thinkers.

Black in Blues

How a Color Tells the Story of My People

Katie McCrory

If home is where the heart is, why do we neglect our domestic lives? 
 
Amid unattainable interiors trends and a growing housing crisis, it's unsurprising that one in three people don't feel at home where they live, and only 56% experience joy there. Worse still, our feelings about home have a significant bearing on how we feel about ourselves. 
 
The good news? Nothing has to change in our homes for them to feel like a completely different place. 
 
Since 2017, Katie McCrory has led the annual IKEA Life at Home Report, identifying eight universal emotional states that create the ‘feeling of home’. Blending personal experience with this global research, and through clear advice and simple strategies, whether we rent or own, live solo or are growing a family, we learn to cultivate: <ul><li>comfort</li><li>control</li><li>security</li><li>accomplishment</li><li>belonging</li><li>nurture</li><li>enjoyment, and</li><li>aspiration </li></ul>From reframing our expectations to creating domestic ‘zones’ that help us accomplish our goals, this clarifying and compassionate roadmap empowers us to rethink our relationship with home, in order to transform our life. 
 
 
'Will have you falling in love with your home all over again, without having to lift a paintbrush or a hammer' Penny Wincer 
 
'I absolutely love this book. Understanding the emotional quotient of the places we live is everything to do with feeling at home' Michelle Ogundehin 
 
'There is both solidarity and action to be gleaned and you will come away feeling both validated and motivated. Katherine Ormerod

Where the Heart Is

Eight Ways to Transform Your Life at Home, No Matter Where You Live

Tom Jamieson

Nev Fountain

The impressions show that needs no introduction - with bonus End of Year specials 
 
Radio 4’s award-winning and hugely popular comedy show is back with yet another helping of political-vituperation, media-mauling and celebrity-savaging. Sit back and treat your ears to a bumper edition of superb satirical impressions from the team - Jon Culshaw, Lewis MacLeod, Jan Ravens, Jess Robinson, Duncan Wisbey and Jason Forbes. 
 
Series 26 delivers Greta Thunberg coming to Rachel Reeves’s rescue and Gary Lineker trying something new… Enjoy a mad mix of super injunctions, super heroes, the Epstein files and, er, Diane Abbott. In this series the team's vocal firepower has Iran playing host to a surprising WMD Inspector, Laura Kuenssberg being de-escalated, and Ross Kemp on Grooming Gangs. Trump drops the F-Bomb, Lammy drops another clanger, money saving expert Martin Lewis drops into NATO and in a moment of pure, meta-madness Netanyahu, Trump and Putin play Just A Minute. 
 
Since January 2000, Dead Ringers has served up razor-sharp caricatures and explosively satirical truth-bombs and this latest offering is no exception. Laugh-out-loud as these impressive impressionistas make listening magic out of current affairs. 
 
 
Cast and credits 
Starring Jan Ravens, Jon Culshaw, Lewis Macleod, Jess Robinson, Jason Forbes, Duncan Wisbey and Kieran Hodgson 
 
Written by Nev Fountain, Tom Jamieson, Laurence Howarth, Tom Coles, Sophie Dickson, Toussaint Douglass, Rob Darke, Cody Dahler, Edward Tew, Jon Holmes, Davina Bentley, Katie Sayer, Alice Bright, Chris Donovan, Peter Tellouche, Lizzy Mansfield, Rachel E. Thorn, Jennifer Walker, Cooper Mawhinny-Sweryt, Alex Buchanan, Chris Ballard, Joe Topping, Phoebe Butler, David Whitehead, Nicky Roberts, Pete Redfern, Vicky Richards, Ali Panting and Declan Kennedy 
 
Created by Bill Dare 
Produced by John Holmes 
Executive Producers: James Robinson, Peter Strauss and Richard Morris 
Production Co-ordinators: Caroline Barlow and Jodie Charman 
 
First Broadcast BBC Radio 4, 13th Jun - 18th Jul 2025 (series 26), Dec 2025 (Specials) 
 
©2026 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2026 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Dead Ringers: Series 26 Plus Christmas Specials

The BBC Radio 4 Impressions Show

Dolly Parton

A stunning celebration of Dolly Parton’s iconic career as a performer, featuring entertaining personal stories alongside 350 full-color photographs, including exclusive images and ephemera from her archive, and an eight-page gatefold listing her lifetime of performances. 
 
In Star of the Show, the culminating book in Dolly Parton’s photographic trilogy—following Songteller (lyrics) and Behind the Seams (fashion)—the global superstar finally shares a definitive look at her career as one of the world’s most dazzling and beloved performers. 
 
Featuring engaging stories and memories from Parton’s dynamic life behind the microphone, this book spotlights her signature performances and star-making moments, from singing in front of her family to premiering on the Grand Ole Opry stage and beyond. Her formative years performing with country legend Porter Wagoner are chronicled as she learns hard lessons from life on the road. Breaking out on her own at state fairs and critically acclaimed venues, she toured the world performing for millions of fans in arenas, stadiums, and at festivals. From making her onscreen debut in the blockbuster feature film 9 to 5 to playing the Dallas Cowboys’ 2023 Thanksgiving halftime show to 42 million viewers, this global superstar knows no limits. Along the way, Dolly shares the stage with Kenny Rogers, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, and others, while offering insight on touring big, singing strong, and staying on top for seven decades. 
 
Brimming with Parton’s trademark wit and heartfelt sincerity, Star of the Show: My Life on Stage is not only an homage to one of history’s most cherished artists, but also a must-have collector’s item for—and love letter to—any fan of the one and only Dolly Parton.

Star of the Show

My Life on Stage

Katy Hessel

The year ahead is a gift that has been given to you. What might you do with it?Dive into the year with the wisdom of artists. Gathered from interviews, personal conversations, books and talks, How to Live an Artful Life moves through the months of the year offering you thoughts, reflections and encouragements from artists such as Marina Abramovic, Nan Goldin, Lubaina Himid, Louise Bourgeois and many more. With a thought for every day of the year, whether looking for beginnings in January, freedom in summer, or transformation as the nights draw in, this is a book of words to cherish. The year is full of the promise of work that has yet to be written, paintings that are yet to be painted, people who have yet to meet, talk, or fall in love. With this book in hand, pay attention, and see the world anew. Go out and find it, taste it, seize it, and live it – artfully.

How To Live An Artful Life

366 Inspirations from Artists on how to Bring Creativity to Your Everyday

Andrew Graham Dixon

The paintings of Johannes Vermeer of Delft are some of the most beautiful, even sublime, in the history of art. Yet like the life of Vermeer himself, they are mysterious and have for centuries defied explanation. Following new leads, and drawing on a mass of historical evidence, some of it freshly uncovered in the archives of Delft and Rotterdam, Andrew Graham-Dixon paints a dramatically new picture of Vermeer, revealing many of the painter’s hitherto unknown friendships as well as his previously undetected allegiance to a radical movement driven underground by persecution. 
 
He also vividly evokes the world of the Dutch Republic as it was in its so-called Golden Age. This was a watery world of fortresses and flood plains, taverns rocked by argument and cities stunned by devastating attacks and explosions: all linked by a network of canals where a uniquely efficient public transport system, operated by horse-drawn passenger barge, enabled people, goods and ideas to glide effortlessly from one place to another. The author sets Vermeer firmly in the context of his time, revealing the patterns of patronage that make sense of his work, and also exposing the difficulties posed by his home life, which was dominated by his Jesuit mother-in law and disturbed by the psychotic behaviour of her only son. 
 
In the past Vermeer has been imagined as a remote and enigmatic figure, but he emerges from this new account as a man deeply engaged with his own society: well-travelled, a reader of books, a man personally connected to many of the most interesting people of his time, including merchants, philosophers, preachers, bankers and regents, as well as his childhood friend, a philanthropic baker named Hendrick van Buyten. Vermeer was also deeply affected by the struggles that shook his world, the Eighty Years War for Dutch independence and the yet more terrible Thirty Years War, which ravaged the neighbouring German lands and resulted in the deaths of millions. The author shows how he was moved to become a pacifist by such atrocities, and thereafter made many of his closest friends in the ranks of Europe’s first peace movement. A further revelation is that Vermeer’s closest collaborator and chief patron was a woman, as were many others in his immediate circle. These are all previously untold stories. 
 
The many piercingly direct descriptions of Vermeer’s pictures, which are the heart of the book, shed new light on the intentions of the artist. Nearly all of his best loved works, Graham-Dixon shows, were originally painted for a single significant location in Delft. In light of such discoveries every one of Vermeer’s major paintings, including The Girl with a Pearl Earring, A View of Delft and The Milkmaid, are reassessed and their meanings rethought. As a result the two great unresolved questions about Vermeer – why did he paint his pictures, and what do they mean? – are persuasively answered here for the first time.

Vermeer

A Life Lost and Found

The White Pube

Gabrielle de la Puente

Zarina Muhammad

At a moment in which working as a professional artist is an increasingly unattainable luxury, art criticism duo The White Pube investigate why so many artists try anyway. Labelled “the Diet Prada of the art world” by British Vogue, in Poor Artists writers Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad ridicule a contemporary art world that has turned art into artworks, art schools into art universities, and creative expression into cut-throat competition. 
 
Poor Artists follows aspiring artist Quest Talukdar as she embarks on a surreal journey into the creative industry, where she must decide whether she cares more about success or staying true to herself. Featuring dialogue from anonymous interviews with real people who have all had to ask themselves the same question – including a Turner Prize winner or two, a recluse, a Venice Biennale fraudster, a communist messiah, a ghost, and a literal knight – The White Pube tell the story of art like never before.

Poor Artists

Kate Bryan

David Shrigley

What is art, where do I find it, and once I’m in front of it, what am I supposed to think about it? 
 
Kate Bryan is a self-confessed art addict who has worked with art for over twenty years. But before she studied art history at university, she’d been into a gallery just twice in her life and had no idea she was entering an elitist world. 
 
Now, she’s on a mission to help everybody come to art. Like playing or listening to music, or cooking and eating great food, reading or watching films, making art or looking at other people’s deserves to be an enriching part of all our lives. 
 
So here, in HOW TO ART, is a nifty way to take art on your own terms. From where it is to what it is, to tips on how to actually enjoy really famous artworks like the Mona Lisa, to how to own art and make art at home, through to vital advice for making a career as an artist and even how to make your dog more cultural, How to Art gives art to everyone, and makes it fun. 
 
Laced throughout with original artworks by the very down-to-earth artist David Shrigley.

How To Art

Bringing a Fancy Subject Down to Earth so We Can All Enjoy It

The Countess of Carnarvon

Join Lady Carnarvon as she exclusively reveals into the daily rhythms, seasonal changes and timeless traditions of one of Britain’s most iconic stately homes. 
 
Built in a bygone era, Highclere Castle and its surrounding five-thousand-acre estate is a place steeped in history both within its walls and verdant landscapes. From the grandeur of Victorian architecture to the whispers of Anglo-Saxon roots, the estate's sweeping ground encapsulate a rich British heritage. Lady Carnarvon shares tales of past residents, from Lady Almina's legendary 1920s parties to the enigmatic ghosts that roam the halls of the castle. 
 
With the passing months and seasons, Lady Carnarvon reveals what it truly means to live and work in this extraordinary home. From gardening, entertaining, exploring the outdoors with their eight dogs to opening the gates to a film crew — for many weeks and seasons — culminating in the latest Downton Abbey film. 
 
Highclere is where history, royalty, nature and community weave together — enchanting its residents, staff and guests.

A Year At Highclere

Secrets and Stories from the Real Downton Abbey

James Fox

Britain has always been a craft land. For generations what we made with our hands defined our identities, built our communities and shaped our regions. Craftland chronicles the vanishing skills and traditions that once governed every aspect of life on these shores. 
 
Travelling the length of Britain, from the Scilly Isles to the Scottish Highlands, James Fox seeks out the country’s last remaining master craftspeople. Stepping inside the workshops of blacksmiths and wheelwrights, cutlers and coopers, bell-founders and watchmakers, we glimpse not only our past but another way of life — one that is not yet lost and whose wisdom could shape our future. 
 
For as long as there are humans, there will be craft. It is all around us, hiding in plain sight, enriching even the most modest things. And in this increasingly digital age, it is perhaps more valuable than ever. Craftland is a celebration of that deeply necessary connection between our creative instincts and the material world we inhabit, revealing a richer and more connected way of living.

Craftland

A Journey Through Britain’s Lost Arts and Vanishing Trades

Sheehan Quirke

'The Cultural Tutor is dedicated to a cosmopolitan view of culture. It writes about every continent, every religion, every tradition of art and poetry' TOMIWA OWOLADE, THE TIMES 
 
'For anyone who has enjoyed The Cultural Tutor on X, this book will be more of the same delight. Expect nuggets of insight and wisdom, wrapped in the author's trademark warmth and wit' ALAIN DE BOTTON 
 
'A remarkable book. The Cultural Tutor is a witty, wide-ranging, and engaging exploration of humanity's shared heritage, from ancient history to modern art.' DONALD ROBERTSON 
 
 
Who does the Mona Lisa actually depict? 
Why do we still look to the Greeks and Romans to inform our politics? 
Where do we find meaning in a world dominated by technology? 
 
* 
 
Culture is like a language. Art, architecture, history and philosophy are its grammar. And, like a language, anyone can learn it. 
 
In 2022, Sheehan Quirke took to Twitter (now X) as The Cultural Tutor with the aim of making culture accessible for everyone. He wrote about poetry, paintings, building design, and counter-intuitive but fascinating facts about history and geography. It wasn’t the sort of content you usually find on a newsfeed – and yet it has flourished, gaining over 1.7 million followers. 
 
Taught in forty-nine short lessons – from Babylon to Brutalism, Ronaldo to Ragnarök – Sheehan takes readers on a delightful and fascinating journey through culture. He explores provocative questions (is mythology any different to science?) and uncovers illuminating stories (did you know that the highest paid athlete in history was a Roman charioteer?). 
 
This is a witty and thought-provoking exploration of everything you need to know to begin your own adventures in the world of culture and see the everyday wonders around you.

The Cultural Tutor

Forty-Nine Lessons You Wish You’d Learned at School

Andy Saunders

When we think of the history of space exploration, we can’t help but think of the Apollo missions and Neil Armstrong’s one giant leap. But what about the small steps that enabled NASA to reach for the Moon? 
 
Astronauts working on the earliest space missions, from Project Mercury to the Gemini missions of the mid-1960s, answered fundamental questions about the possibilities of long-duration space travel, paving the way for the Apollo missions and, ultimately, the Moon landings. They also took the first, and still some of the finest, images of Earth ever captured on film. 
 
Now, the bestselling author of Apollo Remastered, Andy Saunders has restored images from these first missions to show them in unprecedented detail and tell their full story, filled with dramatic life or death moments, mischievous pranks and astonishing triumphs. This stunning visual odyssey brings to life the pivotal, intimate moments of early space travel, unveiling the raw beauty and profound challenges faced by the pioneering astronauts pushing the boundaries of human achievement. Gemini and Mercury Remastered is a striking tribute to the visionaries who dared to dream beyond our world and a testament to the enduring power of exploration.

Gemini and Mercury Remastered

Andrea Long Chu

This highly anticipated book by the Pulitzer Prize winning critic Andrea Long Chu asks one of the most urgent questions of our time: what is authority when everyone has an opinion on everything? 
 
'A rigorous thinker armed with a killer turn of phrase' 
Observer 
 
'Her writing is razor-sharp, personal, and vociferous in its proclamations, but it’s also fun – it’s got bite' 
New Statesman 
 
'Fun reading' 
Guardian 
 
'A galaxy-brain-level thinker' Torrey Peters 
 
'One of the most charismatic and original thinkers at work today' Brandon Taylor 
 
'Thrilling... Authority reminds us we haven't yet felt all there is to feel' Kaveh Akbar 
'A pure joy to read' Claire Dederer 
Since her canonical 2017 essay ‘On Liking Women’, the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Andrea Long Chu has established herself as one of the most provocative, funny, brilliant and stylish critics at work today. With devastating wit and polemical clarity, she defies the imperative to leave politics out of art, instead modeling how the left might brave the culture wars without throwing in with the cynics and doomsayers.Authority brings together Chu’s critical work across a wide range of media—novels, television, theater, video games—as well as an acclaimed tetralogy of literary essays first published in n+1. As a critic, Chu places The Phantom of the Opera within a centuries-old conflict between music and drama; questions the enduring habit of reading Octavia Butler’s science fiction as a parable of slavery; teases out the ideology behind Hillary Clinton’s (fictional) sex life; and charges fellow critics like Maggie Nelson and Zadie Smith with a complacent humanism. 
 
The unifying theme of the book is authority and taste in literature, art, culture and politics: how do we decide what's good, and how do we convince others that our judgement is correct?

Authority

Essays on Being Right

Joseph Hone

‘A page-turner about page-turners’ Janice Hallett 
‘The perfect piece of armchair detection’ Ruth Ware 
‘Hugely entertaining and unexpectedly gripping’ London Review of Books 
 
A true detective story from the age of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers: the literary crime that fooled the world - and the daring young booksellers who uncovered it 
 
London, 1932. Thomas James Wise is the toast of the literary establishment. A prominent collector and businessman, with friends in high places, he is one of the most powerful men in the field of rare books. 
 
One night, two young booksellers stumble upon a strange discrepancy leading them to suspect Wise and his books are not all they seem. Inspired by the vogue for Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes, the pair harness the latest developments in forensic analysis to crack the case. By the time they are done, their investigation will have rocked the book world to its core. 
 
‘A thrilling unravelling of bookish fraud that reads like a detective story from the golden age’ Roland Philipps, author of A Spy Named Orphan 
 
‘Hone is a lively and fluent writer, ratcheting up the temperature with snappy sentences and chapters ending on cliffhangers’ Sunday Telegraph

The Book Forger

The true story of a literary crime that fooled the world

Mathelinda Nabugodi

Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Keats – the Romantic poets are titans of English literature, taught and celebrated around the world. Their work is associated with sublime passions, violent stormscapes and a questing search for the inner self. It is rarely associated with the racial politics of the transatlantic slave economy. 
 
But these literary icons lived through a period when individual and collective resistance by Black people in Britain and her overseas colonies was making it increasingly difficult – and increasingly costly – to ignore their demands for freedom. A time when popular support for the abolition movement exploded across the country – and was met by a vehement, reactionary campaign from the establishment. A time when white supremacist ideologies were fomented to justify the abuse and exploitation of non-white 'races'. This cultural context is not immediately obvious in the canon of Romantic poetry. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there. 
 
The Trembling Hand turns an urgent critical gaze onto six major Romantic authors, examining how their lives and works were entangled with the racist realities of their era. Mathelinda Nabugodi pores over carefully preserved manuscripts, travels to the houses where these writers lived and died, examines the personal objects which survived them: a teacup, a baby rattle, a lock of hair. Amid this archive, she searches for traces of Black figures whose lives crossed paths with the great Romantics. And she grapples with the opposing forces of reverence and horror as her fascination with literary relics collides with feelings of sorrow and rage.

The Trembling Hand

Reflections of a Black Woman in the Romantic Archive

Alayo Akinkugbe

“Akinkugbe is a brilliant new writer and thinker challenging art history. This book is urgent, essential, accessible and it needs to be on every art history reading list." -- Bernardine Evaristo 
 
Since the inception of mainstream art history, Blackness has been distinctly ignored. 
 
In Reframing Blackness, art historian and founder of @ABlackHistoryOfArt, Alayo Akinkugbe challenges this void. 
 
Exploring the presentation of Black figures in Western art, as well as Blackness in museums, in feminist art movements and in the curriculum, Alayo unveils an overlooked but integral part of our collective art history. 
 
Refreshing and accessible, this promises to start a much-needed conversation in culture and education.

Reframing Blackness

What’s Black about “History of Art”?

Robin Givhan

BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025: Washington Post, New Yorker, Elle 
 
'Captivating, emotional and illuminating' Tom Ford 
 
'Thoughtful, intelligent, honest and masterfully crafted' Marc Jacobs 
 
'A thrilling journey into the mind of a genius.' Edward Enninful 
 
'A must-read' Elaine Welteroth, bestselling author of More Than Enough 
 
-- 
 
From Pulitzer Prize-winning culture critic Robin Givhan comes a groundbreaking chronicle of the legacy of Virgil Abloh, whose iconic rise to the top of the fashion industry transformed our ideas about the connection between who we are and what we wear 
 
In 2018, shockwaves were sent around the fashion industry when Virgil Abloh was appointed the head of menswear for Louis Vuitton. Despite no formal training in pattern-making or tailoring, Abloh had become the first Black designer to serve as artistic director in the brand’s 164-year history. 
 
Make It Ours tells the story of how that moment came to be and how Abloh came to symbolise and embody the industry’s way forward. Using Abloh’s surprising path to the top of the luxury establishment, Givhan unfolds the larger story of how the cloistered, exclusive fashion world faced a revolution from below in the form of streetwear and designers unafraid to storm the gate, and how a simple t-shirt came to hold as much cultural power as a haute couture gown. 
 
With unparalleled access to Abloh’s family, friends, collaborators, and contemporaries, and featuring a cast of fascinating characters ranging from groundbreaking Black designers like Ozwald Boateng to Abloh’s mercurial but critical employer and mentor Kanye West, Givhan weaves a spellbinding tale of a young man’s rise amidst a cultural moment that would upend a century’s worth of ideas about luxury and taste. This is at once a remarkable biography of a singular creative force and a powerful meditation on fashion and race, taste and exclusivity, genius and luxury.

Make It Ours

Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh

Zandra Rhodes

Ella Alexander

'A vivid and compelling picture of the broader fashion landscape between 1960 and the present day. Anecdotes? The book is full of them.' The Times 
 
'Dazzling from start to finish.' Joanna Lumley 
 
In this insightful memoir, Zandra shares her life story for the first time. Told through a variety of mementos collected over the years, it is a vibrant account filled with rockstars and royalty, of life-changing friendships and poignant reflections on her personal triumphs and tragedies, as well as the fears, sacrifices and pressures that come with being an era-defining designer. 
 
Full of poignant reflections and life lessons on achieving success while defying convention, Zandra recounts being inspired by her avant-garde mother to her time at the Royal College alongside David Hockney; from a road trip to Rome with Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell, to opening her first London store thanks to a loan from Vanessa Redgrave with Joe Cocker singing With a Little Help From My Friends to the assembled crowd of London's 1960s fashion scene; from hanging out with Andy Warhol and Halston in New York's Studio 54 to lifelong friendships with legends such as Karl Lagerfeld and Diana Vreeland; from designing for everyone from Freddie Mercury to Diana Ross, Princess Diana to Barbra Streisand to founding the Fashion and Textile Museum. 
 
Capturing the rich and unexpected life of a British icon, this memoir explores what it is to defy the norm. 
 
‘Zandra Rhodes has changed the course of fashion history.' Suzy Menkes, fashion journalist

Iconic

My Life in Fashion in 50 Objects

Maggie Nelson

Like Love is a momentous, raucous collection of essays drawn from twenty years of Maggie Nelson’s brilliant work. These profiles, reviews, remembrances, tributes and critical essays, as well as several conversations with friends and idols, bring to life Nelson’s passion for dialogue and dissent. The range of subjects is wide – from Prince to Carolee Schneemann to Kara Walker to Bjork – but certain themes recur: intergenerational exchange; love and friendship; feminist and queer issues, especially as they shift over time; subversion, transgression and perversity; and the fruits and follies of a life spent devoted to making. 
 
The collection is a portrait of a time, an anarchic party rich with wild guests, a window into Nelson’s own development as a writer, and a testament to the profound sustenance offered by art and artists.Arranged chronologically, Like Love shows the writing, thinking, feeling, reading, looking and conversing that occupied Nelson while writing iconic books such as Bluets and The Argonauts. As such, it is a portrait of a time, an anarchic party rich with wild guests, a window into Nelson's own development and a testament to the profound sustenance offered by art and artists.Like Love is a portrait of a time, an anarchic party rich with wild guests, a window into Nelson’s own development as a writer, and a testament to the profound sustenance offered by art and artists.

Like Love

Essays and Conversations

Adam Smyth

The Book-Makers is a celebration of 550 years of the printed book, told through the lives of eighteen extraordinary men and women who took the book in radical new directions: printers and binders, publishers and artists, paper-makers and library founders. This is a story of skill, craft, mess, cunning, triumph, improvisation, and error.Some of these names we know. We meet jobbing printer (and American Founding Father) Benjamin Franklin. We watch Thomas Cobden-Sanderson conjure books that flicker between the early twentieth century and the fifteenth. Others have been forgotten. We don't remember Sarah Eaves, wife of John Baskerville, and her crucial contribution to the history of type. Nor Charles Edward Mudie, populariser of the circulating library – and the most influential figure in book publishing before Jeff Bezos. Nor William Wildgoose, who meticulously bound Shakespeare’s First Folio, and then disappeared from history.The Book-Makers puts people back into the story of the book. It takes you inside the print-shop as the deadline looms and the adrenaline flows – from 1492 Fleet Street to 2023 New York. It’s a story of contingencies and quirks, of successes and failures, of routes forward and paths not taken. The Book-Makers is a history of book-making that leaves ink on your fingers, and it shows why the printed book will continual to flourish.

The Book-Makers

A History of the Book in 18 Remarkable Lives

Simon Jenkins

The story of Britain is revealed through its buildings, and yet the language of architecture is a mystery to all but a few. In this enlightening history, spanning castles and cathedrals to factories and railway stations, Jenkins translates the hidden narratives infused in the facades we walk past every day. 
 
Britain’s history has been formed by its politics, religion and society and these influences can be seen in the architectural styles that have shaped its landscape. From pre-Roman and the Middle Ages, to the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, Classical and Gothic styles surged and retreated from favour only to then be challenged by a new player: Modernism, a style that reflected the stunning technological advances of the second half of the twentieth century. 
 
In this narrative history, Simon Jenkins – the bestselling champion of our national heritage – introduces us to the singular, eccentric and sometimes rather ordinary characters who shaped Britain. Jenkins teaches readers to see the world anew, demystifying the elitist language of architecture so that we can all appreciate the buildings around us.

A Short History of British Architecture

From Stonehenge to the Shard

Helen Molesworth

'A gem of a book' - Tracy Borman 
 
When Helen Molesworth joined the gem and jewellery industry she began her own love affair with one of humanity's oldest and richest fascinations. For as long as people have known about gemstones they have treasured them. Born of violent geological events and the chance meetings of minerals, their stories are an extraordinary journey through time, and are significant to the human narrative in as many ways as they boast sparkling facets. 
 
Selecting ten of nature's most dazzling jewels, Helen Molesworth makes journeys across the world to trace stones from their discovery to the moment a glimmering cut and polished masterpiece is traded, and then fought over, adorns emperors and kings, falls out of favour, and then raises eye-watering sums in another age. Touching on history and politics, archaeology and engineering, geography and geology, chemistry and physics, psychology and romance, fine art and high finance, her book is rich with great stories and has something for everyone.

Precious

The History and Mystery of Gems Across Time

Gordon Buchanan

"A terrific book" - ALASTAIR CAMPBELL 
 
"Gordon is a natural storyteller" - STEVE BACKSHALL 
 
"Stunning and moving" - LIZ BONNIN 
 
"A truly remarkable story told by a brilliant man." - SARA COX 
 
"A glorious love letter to the world." - DERMOT O'LEARY 
 
 
Our estate was built on land claimed from fields – we were at the foot of those rolling Kilpatrick hills, but over the roof of the school you could see more green fields and woods. I felt grateful to be on the edge of all that countryside – there was a magnetic pull towards what I thought that wild was, or could be. ‘One day, I’m going to walk to those hills and woods,’ I’d think to myself. 
 
Soon, it would become a sanctuary. 
 
Gordon Buchanan is probably the best-known natural history cameraman the BBC has ever produced. From wild snow wolf packs in Ellesmere and polar bears in Svalbard to leopards in Mumbai and equine therapy in Mongolia, he has filmed in the world's most far-reaching places for over 30 years. His dedication to his craft means he often spends weeks inside a cramped camera hide, tolerating extreme sleep deprivation and poor living conditions, all in search of that one extraordinary shot. 
 
But dangerous animals were not the only thing he was hiding from. 
 
In the Hide is Gordon's emotionally honest and raw account of a challenging childhood in Dumbarton and on Mull, and the escape and solace he found – and continues to find – in the natural world around him. An intimate and inspiring account of resilience in the face of hardship, In the Hide marks the arrival of a bold new voice in nature writing.

In the Hide

How the Natural World Saved My Life

Paul Kidby

Go behind the scenes of the iconic Discworld series with this beautiful, illustrated hardback, the perfect gift book for any fantasy fan this holiday season. 
 
'It's still magic, even if you know how it's done' SIR TERRY PRATCHETT 
 
Sir Terry Pratchett was one of the world's best-loved and bestselling fantasy writers, author of the iconic Discworld series. Now, for the first time, go behind the scenes of the incredible partnership between Pratchett and his ‘artist of choice’, Paul Kidby. 
 
This stunning new book shows how the Discworld was brought to visual life - from the earliest sketches to the final magnificent masterpieces - and how Terry and Paul absorbed influences from art and pop culture, fusing them into the Discworld landscape. 
 
Whilst Terry was the undisputed creative fountainhead, for three decades Paul has been the artistic force taking the people, places and piece of man-eating luggage from Terry's ever-fertile imagination right into our world. 
 
And, in a special final chapter, Designing Terry Pratchett's Discworld also outlines the images that we never got to see - the early covers of the great unwritten novels, taken from the world before their time. 
 
Packed full of hitherto unseen art and the real stories behind it, this is a unique insight into one of the greatest literary partnerships. 
 
'Paul Kidby has enriched us Discworld readers by visualizing the landscapes of our imagination . . . he has paved roads that allow us to walk throughout Discworld' 
from the Foreword by Colin Morgan

Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld

Neil Oliver

For longer than recorded history there have been tales of spirits and of places where our hackles rise and our skin turns cold. 
 
Bestselling historian Neil Oliver travels the British Isles on a deliciously spine-chilling tour that spans several centuries and explores more than 20 sites - castles, vicarages and towers, lonely shorelines and forgotten battlefields - to unpick their stories.. 
 
Oliver invokes his family's history alongside that of kings and queens past as he probes why our emotions and senses are heightened in certain locations where the separation between dimensions seems gossamer thin. Our landscape is riven with these places, creaking from the weight of the secrets they hold, the echoes of tragedy and dark deeds . From Inverness to Devon, Co Dublin to Norfolk, Hauntings casts an enjoyably eerie glow with stories that, told generation after generation, are inextricable from place - and considers why they matter.

Hauntings

A Book of Ghosts and Where to Find Them Across 25 Eerie British Locations

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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