Michael Symmons Roberts’s fourth book of poetry, Corpus, was the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize, and the Griffin International Prize. His sixth collection, Drysalter, was the winner of both the Forward Prize and the Costa Poetry Prize in 2013. He collaborated with Paul Farley on Edgelands (Cape/Vintage) and will do so again in The Deaths of the Poets (Cape, 2017). He has also worked many times with the composer James MacMillan. He has published two novels, and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Michael Symmons Roberts

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Mark Ovenden

Maxwell Roberts

In this gorgeously illustrated collection of airline route maps, Mark Ovenden and Maxwell Roberts look to the skies and transport readers to another time. Hundreds of images span a century of passenger flight, from the rudimentary trajectory of routes to the most intricately detailed birds-eye views of the land to be flown over. Advertisements for the first scheduled commercial passenger flights featured only a few destinations, with stunning views of the countryside and graphics of biplanes. As aviation took off, speed and mileage were trumpeted on bold posters featuring busy routes. Major airlines produced highly stylized illustrations of their global presence, establishing now-classic brands. With trendy and forward-looking designs, cartographers celebrated the coming together of different cultures and made the earth look ever smaller. 
 
Eventually, fleets got bigger and routes multiplied, and graphic designers have found creative new ways to display huge amounts of information. Airline hubs bring their own cultural mark and advertise their plentiful destination options. Innovative maps depict our busy world with webs of overlapping routes and networks of low-cost city-to-city hopping. But though flying has become more commonplace, Ovenden and Roberts remind us that early air travel was a glamorous affair for good reason. Airline Maps is a celebration of graphic design, cartographic skills and clever marketing, and a visual feast that reminds us to enjoy the journey as much as the destination.

Airline Maps

A Century of Art and Design

Steven Lovatt

When Steven Lovatt’s grandmother died, he lost not only a beloved family member but also his last link to the way of life she had represented: rooted in place, socially democratic, ecologically rich. Cut loose from the past and confronted with a present missing even the birds of his childhood, Steven’s mind cracked. 
 
Drawing on field work, local library archives and oral history, as well as dreams, diaries and visions, Enchanted Ground charts a fractured course from breakdown to belonging. For if he is to survive, Steven realises he must set out, like a pilgrim, across the motorways and monoculture wastes of Britain in search of enchanted ground – and those who have begun to rebuild it.

Enchanted Ground

Growing Roots in a Broken World

Charlie Porter

A FOYLES AND GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 
 
‘A work of genius’ Philip Hoare 
‘One of the best things I’ve read in many many years’ Hilton Als 
'Beautifully provocative' Eimear McBride 
 
A story of loss and grief, sex and love, and refusing to relinquish dreams 
 He said he would understand if it was too much for me, that I could leave him, that I was young, I should be living, I said to him, I am living. 
 
Johnny Grant faces stark life decisions. Seeking answers, he looks back to his relationship with Jerry Field. When they met, nearly thirty years ago, Johnny was 19, Jerry was 45. They fell in love and made a life on their own terms in Jerry’s flat: 1, Nova Scotia House. Johnny is still there today – but Jerry is gone, and so is the world they knew. 
 
As Johnny’s mind travels between then and now, he begins to remember stories of Jerry’s youth: of experiments in living; of radical philosophies; of the many possibilities of love, sex and friendship before the AIDS crisis devastated the queer community. Slowly, he realizes what he must do next—and attempts to restore ways of being that could be lost forever. 
 
Nova Scotia House takes us to the heart of a relationship, a community and an era. It is both a love story and a lament; bearing witness to the enduring pain of the AIDS pandemic and honouring the joys and creativity of queer life. Intimate, visionary, and profoundly original, it marks the debut of a vibrant new voice in contemporary fiction, and a writer with a liberating new story to tell.

Nova Scotia House

A Novel

Matthew Rice

Matthew Rice is a long-time observer and illustrator of cities, buildings and all those who inhabit them, with an uncanny ability to express the energy of a place through a few lines of ink and splashes of paint. In the first book in this new sketchbook series, he explored the glittering canals of Venice: now he turns his attention to Rome, the Eternal City. 
 
Rome is a place where the ancient, the baroque and the modern clash, and this tension runs through Matthew's paintings. In this guide, he makes sly juxtapositions of people and animals against the backdrop of the city's architectural and artistic wonders, its ruins and its ristoranti. Matthew's ability to notice detail, his sense of light and dark, his expert's knowledge of architecture and how it creates an atmosphere allows him to present Rome, in these pages, in its all its living, breathing splendour. 
 
Following the same landscape format as Matthew's real-life sketchbooks, Rome: A Sketchbook will combine enchanting watercolour illustrations with an informed, personal and witty text, and promises to delight all visitors to Rome, armchair or actual.

Rome

A Sketchbook

John-Paul Stonard

No house embodies the spirit of one dynasty better than Chatsworth. Set in an unspoilt Derbyshire valley, surrounded by wild moorland, and home to the Cavendish family for sixteen generations, this treasure house is filled with works of art and objects - from Nicolas Poussin's The Arcadian Shepherds and Antonio Canova's Endymion to great contemporary paintings by Lucian Freud and David Hockney - which have all, in their time, represented the very best of the new. As Stoker Cavendish, the twelfth Duke of Devonshire, likes to point out: 'Everything was new once.' 
 
Following the completion of a decade-long programme of renovations, the exterior of Chatsworth is gleaming, its stone façade newly cleaned and its window frames freshly gilded. Inside, through the inspired juxtaposition of old and modern, its rooms fizz with creative energy. Chatsworth, Arcadia, Now tells the story of this extraordinary place through seven scenes from its life, alongside a stunning photographic portrait of the house and its collections, captured at a moment of high optimism in its long history.

Chatsworth, Arcadia, Now

Seven Scenes from the Life of a House

Elena Favilli

Francesca Cavallo

Based on the phenomenal bestseller Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, this set of postcards celebrates some of the most inspiring heroes, from Malala and Michelle Obama to Ada Lovelace and Zaha Hadid. Beautifully designed, these are postcards that will inspire generations with the extraordinary stories of fifty women who have changed the world. With a short bio of the woman on each card and powerful quotes, this is a perfect gift for all the rebels in your life. 
 
The rebels include: 
 
Creators: Frida Kahlo, The Brontë Sisters, Julia Child, Nina Simone, Zaha Hadid, Xian Zhang, Ada Lovelace, Maud Stevens Wagner, Maria Callas, and Millo Castro Zaldarriaga 
 
Leaders: Queen Elizabeth I, Fadumo Dayib, Yaa Asantewaa, Jingu, Hatshepsut, Nanny of the Maroons, Lakshmi Bai, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Eufrosina Cruz 
 
Pioneers: Sylvia Earle, Ann Makosinski, Jane Goodall, Alek Wek, Maria Sibylla Merian, Balkissa Chaibou, Wang Zhenyi, Mae C. Jemison, Cholita Climbers, and Maria Reiche 
 
Champions: Yursa Mardini, Maya Gabeira, Wilma Rudolph, Serena and Venus Williams, Mary Kom, Alfonsina Strada, Amna Al Haddad, Misty Copeland, Simone Biles, and Ashley Fiolek 
 
Warriors: Sonita Alizadeh, Claudia Ruggerini, Malala Yousafzai, Manal Al-Sharif, Maya Angelou, Rosa Parks, Anna Politkovskaya, Harriet Tubman, Miriam Makeba, and Irena Sendlerowa

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 50 Postcards

Nora Krug

Immediately following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Nora Krug connected with two anonymous subjects - 'K.', a Ukrainian journalist, and 'D.', a Russian artist - and began what would become a year of correspondence. Deeply moved by the rawness of their responses, she felt that through the personal accounts of these individuals who, directly and indirectly, experienced the war firsthand, she might be able to communicate something of the war and its human impact. Over the course of the next twelve months she communicated with each of them individually via phone chat, condensing their sometimes fluid, sometimes fragmentary answers into a consistent narrative and then created illustrations to go with each entry. The personal accounts contained in this book chronicle the first year of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in an intimate, epistolary format. 
 
Diaries of War explores the personal, the political, conflict, family and daily life under war with immense skill, compassion and moving thoughtfulness. Through these two individuals we see the granular effects of war on two lives, but they are emblematic of millions. Diaries of War is a harrowing record of a heart-wrenching historical event that has devastated the world and continues to alter countless lives.

Diaries of War

Two Visual Accounts from Ukraine and Russia

John Yorke

To command narrative is to control a sometimes frightening power. What is it that turbocharges some tales, and how is it possible to harness that potency? 
 
John Yorke’s groundbreaking bestseller, Into the Woods, revolutionised our understanding of story structure. This new book delves deeper into how to put that structure to work in the world. Trip to the Moon takes us on a journey not just through drama and fiction but through politics, religion and non-western narrative. Through these terrains, Yorke seeks out the role of story in all our lives, examining how to utilise its lessons to create life-changing tales – and, in a world aflame with conspiracy theories, to guard ourselves against their darker purpose too. 
 
Revealing the artful symmetry and underlying principles that connect Summer beach reads to Classical Chinese poetry, superhero flicks to Russian arthouse, and classical rhetoric to state propaganda, Yorke makes dazzling connections that show how stories have the power to transfigure the chaos of our existence into a new equilibrium, and make the world anew.

Trip to the Moon

Understanding the True Power Of Story

Edward Ross

Golden Axe. The Sims. Half Life. Mega Drive. SNES. Like many teenagers around the world, Edward Ross grew up on a steady diet of video games and fascinating gadgets. As he continued to obsess over video games while drawing comic books, he started wondering what it was that made them more than just a pastime. Why do we play? 
 
This gorgeously illustrated book takes us deep into the history of video games, from the early prototypes created in the late 1940s through the growth of the medium in the 1970s and into the modern era, in which games are a crucial part of mainstream culture. Exploring politics, history and personal stories, and moving seamlessly from the greatest hits to engrossing indie games, Gamish is a love letter to an obsession that has gripped more than two billion people around the world.

Gamish

A Graphic History of Gaming

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

Luke Edward Hall

Seán Hewitt

For centuries, evidence of queer love in the ancient world was ignored or suppressed. Even today, only a few, famous narratives are widely known - yet there's a rich literary tradition of Greek and Roman love that extends far beyond this handful of stories. Here, the poet Seán Hewitt and painter Luke Edward Hall collect together, for the first time, forty of the most exhilarating queer tales in the classical canon and bring them newly to life. A ground-breaking anthology that changes the way we see the ancient world - and invites us to reflect on the puritanism of our own - 300,000 Kisses is a riotous celebration of desire in all its forms.

300,000 Kisses

Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

Helena Attlee

For centuries, Mount Etna has sent lava to engulf the towns and villages, terraced fields, orchards, vineyards, and citrus groves that nestle across its slopes. But still it remains home to a quarter of Sicily’s population. Why? Because Etna has always rewarded her people after every eruption with a landscape of unparalleled fertility, richness and drama. 
 
In this extraordinary new book, Helena Attlee combines travel writing with history, mythology, geology, gastronomy and horticulture to tell a unique story of life in the shadow of Sicily’s most dangerous and alluring landmark. Venturing through lava-strewn fields and pistachio groves patrolled by armed guards; past dusky, basalt-built farmyards, and caves once used to store snow, Attlee gathers tales of the artists, writers, farmers, and scientists who have for centuries been drawn to this unpredictable landscape: from the early Roman, Arabic and Norman settlers, Romantic poets and Victorian geologists, to the local families who live and work there today. It is at once a compelling account of Sicily’s rich and varied past, and a powerful meditation on humanity’s ever-changing relationship with landscape.

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