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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Maggie Campbell-Culver

Given the extent of his influence on 17th-century life, and his lasting impact on the British landscape it is remarkable that no book has been written before about John Evelyn. He was a longstanding friend of Samuel Pepys (who wrote of him, ' A most excellent person he is, and must be allowed a little for conceitedness; but he may well be so, being a man so much above others.'), a founder-member of the Royal Society and a prolific writer and diarist. He was an early advocate of the garden city but his most important work was Sylva: a Discourse of Forest Trees. Sylva was presented to the Royal Society to promote the planting of timber trees 'for the supply of the Navy, the employment and advantage of the poor as well as the ornamenting of the nation.' He was responsible for the first great raft of tree-planting and for a great influx of tree introductions to Britain. 
 
Maggie Campbell-Culver's book, like Sylva, has at its core a section detailing the characteristics, history and uses of 33 trees incorporating the advice Evelyn gave and demonstrating its relevance still in the 20th-century. Not only was Evelyn probably the first horticultural writer to show an appreciation of the aesthetic benefits of trees in our landscape, he is shown to be a founder-father of the modern conservation movement.

A Passion For Trees

The Legacy Of John Evelyn

Ruth Scurr

'Glorious... Scurr is one of the most gifted non-fiction writers alive' Simon Schama, Financial Times 
 
A revelatory portrait of Napoleon written for our own time, exploring his love of nature and the gardens that gave his revolutionary life its light and shade. 
 
Napoleon's gardens range from his childhood olive groves in Corsica, to Josephine's menageries in Paris, to the walled garden of Hougoumont at the battle of Waterloo, and ultimately to St Helena, where he could sit and scan the sea in his final months. 
 
In this innovative biography, Ruth Scurr follows the dramatic trajectory of Napoleon's life through the land he cultivated and that offered him retreat from the manifold frustrations of war and politics. Seen through the eyes of those who knew him in the shade of his gardens, Napoleon emerges a giant figure made human - both as the Emperor hunting for glory and the man in an old straw hat, leaning on his spade. 
 
'Immensely satisfying and captivating... Charming and intelligent' Andrew Roberts, TLS 
 
'Grippingly original' The Times 
 
'A delight to read' Daily Telegraph 
 
* A Book of the Year in The Times, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Sunday Telegraph and History Today * 
 
Winner of a Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award 2022

Napoleon

A Life in Gardens and Shadows

Michael Braungart

William McDonough

Recycling is good, isn’t it? 
 
In this visionary book, chemist Michael Braungart and architect William McDonough challenge this status quo and put forward a manifesto for an intriguing and radically different philosophy of environmentalism. 
 
"Reduce, reuse, recycle”. This is the standard “cradle to grave” manufacturing model dating back to the Industrial Revolution that we still follow today. In this thought-provoking read, the authors propose that instead of minimising waste, we should be striving to create value. This is the essence of Cradle to Cradle: waste need not to exist at all. By providing a framework of redesign of everything from carpets to corporate campuses, McDonough and Braungart make a revolutionary yet viable case for change and for remaking the way we make things.

Cradle to Cradle

Mark Wallington

Mark Wallington has a dream. He is going to change the face of British comedy. 
 
Unfortunately for the residents of north London, he's going to finance this dream by becoming a gardener. 
 
The result is The Day Job, an account of a year spent working in other people's gardens: people like Mrs Fleming who is convinced there is buried treasure in the bottom bed; Mr Walters who is trying to create a fascist state policed by gnomes in his well-guarded plot in Gospel Oak; Mrs Glover who is probably the most attractive woman living in Britain; and poor Mr Nugent, who likes to save his urine in jam jars and pour it over his compost. 
 
Over four seasons Wallington crosses Hampstead Heath from job to job. He survives brushes with the evil contract gardeners who keep trying to knock him off his bicycle. He strives to impress literary agent Herman Gapp who might represent him - depending on what sort of job he does on Gapp's Alpine Terrace. He even finds time to fall for a housecleaner-cum-actor named Helen, as he becomes part of a strange band of artistes, each with a day job of their own, all waiting for that first break. 
 
This is the story of long nights spent in the back room of a pub trying to write unsolicited scripts, and of much longer days spent trying to understand the British and their strange obsession with gardening.

The Day Job

Adventures of a Jobbing Gardener

Arthur Parkinson

Most of us want a dog, or a cat, or a pony when we are young &ndash; but for Arthur Parkinson, it was always hens. Growing up in an ex-mining town in Nottinghamshire, the other kids in the playground called him 'Chicken Boy'. The quiet fulfilment of keeping hens became his sanctuary, a tonic for mental and physical health, a connection with his family and the natural world. Illustrated with Arthur's own characterful watercolours and photographs of his &lsquo;girls&rsquo;, Chicken Boy is a one-of-a-kind memoir of a life in nature.

Chicken Boy

My Life With Hens

Robert Penn

An exuberant tale of craftsmanship for nature lovers and rugged outdoor types everywhere 
 
Robert Penn cut down an ash tree to see how many things could be made from it. After all, ash is the tree we have made the greatest and most varied use of over the course of human history. Journeying from Wales across Europe and Ireland to the USA, Robert finds that the ancient skills and knowledge of the properties of ash, developed over millennia making wheels and arrows, furniture and baseball bats, are far from dead. The book chronicles how the urge to understand and appreciate trees still runs through us all like grain through wood.

The Man Who Made Things Out of Trees

Tom Hart Dyke

Tom Hart Dyke has a bit of a thing about plants. You might call it an obsession. You might call him certifiable, in fact. But it's a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large ramshackle country estate and an obsession with plant collecting could want for only one thing - in Tom's case it's a walled garden containing examples of plants collected from every corner of the globe. 
 
Tom's infectious enthusiasm for anything with chlorophyll in it and the hugely ambitious World Garden project he has undertaken at his family home, Lullingstone Castle, in Kent have been documented in a 12-part television series for BBC 2. The first six parts (Save Lullingstone Castle) were shown in spring 2006, and the second six episodes (Return to Lullingstone Castle) in spring 2007. 
 
Tom's attempts to set up the World Garden aren't exactly straightforward. You might imagine, for example, that the easiest way to start preparing the ground inside the walled Elizabethan garden which he transforms into the main part of the world garden would be to enlist the help of a few people and a lot of hard digging. Well not for Tom, who enlists instead two large pigs, who do indeed do a great job of turning over the earth and fertilising it with great organic manure. But the problem is that they keep escaping into the Hart Dyke family burial plot next door where they start digging up Tom's ancestors... 
 
The World Garden is created to bring together a truly amazing collection of plants from every continent and so to show the global origins of the plants we all grow in our gardens. It's already establishing itself as a tourist attraction of some note as well as an educational resource. 
 
This is a book for all those who bought Tim Smit's Lost Gardens of Heligan. It's stuffed full of fascinating botanical information as well as the story of Tom's hapless struggle to overcome huge logistical nightmares. It's a riveting, hilarious story of English eccentricity in full bloom.

An Englishman's Home

The Adventures of an Eccentric Gardener

Eleni Gage

Eleni Gage, a young journalist living in New York, leaves her Manhattan flat to return to the remote but beautiful Greek village of Lia in northern Greece and rebuild her ruined ancestral home. But this is not just another tale of quaint rustic DIY - the house was the scene of imprisonment and torture, and its ruins are stalked by the ghosts of the Greek Civil War. 
The story is played out in the stunning mountainous landscape of Epiros, one of the least-visited regions of Europe. As Eleni becomes part of the village, her neighbours and the house come vividly to life while her own disasters, triumphs and self-discoveries are alternately poignant and hilarious. The cast of characters includes Eleni's formidable yet miniscule aunts - the thitsas, who fear that she will be eaten by wolves; her immigrant Albanian builders; and the residents of modern-day Lia, whose feelings about the rebuilding of a house where such terrible events took place are ambivalent at best. 
 
Informed by her knowledge of Greece's folklore, literature, language and history, Eleni's story is unfailingly witty and wise. But beneath it all lie the indelible stains of a real-life Greek tragedy.

North Of Ithaka

Nick Offerman

"Want to have some fun? Little Woodchucks is for every kid and 50-year-old woman who wants to make something cool with their hands." - Amy Poehler 
 
Many know Nick Offerman from his role as Ron Swanson in Parks and Recreation. But in addition to acting and comedy, woodworking is one of the great passions of Nick’s life. (The others are his wife, family, and friends, his dogs, music, cheese curds, the great outdoors, bacon and eggs, his bride, the Chicago Cubs, puzzles, Beef Wellington, the theatre, his canoe, his wife, Wilco, and single-malt Scotch whisky.) In Little Woodchucks, Nick and his team at the Offerman Woodshop open their doors to woodworkers of all ages, sharing their passion for their craft and showing you how to make a range of their most popular and accessible projects. From carved twig animals and box kites to tool boxes and simple hayloft benches, these twelve family-friendly projects are the perfect way to discover the joys of woodworking, and share the love of crafting with others. 
 
Written with Nick’s signature wry humour an charm, and with clear illustrated step-by-step instructions, Little Woodchucks is a quality piece of bookery from an American original.

Little Woodchucks

Offerman Workshop’s Guide to Tools and Tomfoolery

Terry Walton

'Every time he appears on the programme we feel that life is worth living. He has that power to lift your spirits.' - Jeremy Vine 
 
Terry Walton has kept an allotment in the Rhondda Valley in South Wales for over fifty years. He started when he was four, helping on his father's plot on the side of the mountain, cutting bracken and collecting sheep manure to feed the vegetables. 
 
He was farming his own plot at eleven and he went on to build an allotment empire, selling his vegetables and flowers to local customers. The proceeds paid for his first car, a canary yellow Ford Popular, when he was just seventeen. Then, in 2006, after half a decade of happy gardening, Terry's allotment was adopted by the Jeremy Vine Show and he became an unlikely media star. 
 
In this absorbing and entertaining memoir, Terry documents how the valley has changed over the years, his own conversion to organic gardening, and the colourful characters he meets; interspersing his anecdotes with topical tips, family recipes and quirky line drawings. 
 
My Life on a Hillside Allotment is the perfect read for gardeners, allotmenteers and anyone who loves the great outdoors.

My Life on a Hillside Allotment

Andrea Wulf

One January morning in 1734, cloth merchant Peter Collinson hurried down to the docks at London's Custom House to collect cargo just arrived from John Bartram in the American colonies. But it was not bales of cotton that awaited him, but plants and seeds... 
 
Over the next forty years, Bartram would send hundreds of American species to England, where Collinson was one of a handful of men who would foster a national obsession and change the gardens of Britain forever: Philip Miller, author of the bestselling Gardeners Dictionary; the Swede Carl Linnaeus, whose standardised botanical nomenclature popularised botany; the botanist-adventurer Joseph Banks and his colleague Daniel Solander who both explored the strange flora of Tahiti and Australia on Captain Cook's Endeavour. 
 
This is the story of these men - friends, rivals, enemies, united by a passion for plants. Set against the backdrop of the emerging empire and the uncharted world beyond, The Brother Gardeners tells the story how Britain became a nation of gardeners.

The Brother Gardeners

Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession

Christopher Stocks

In Forgotten Fruits, Christopher Stocks tells the fascinating - often rather bizarre - stories behind Britain's rich heritage of fruit and vegetables. Take Newton Wonder apples, for instance, first discovered around 1870 allegedly growing in the thatch of a Derbyshire pub. Or the humble gooseberry which, among other things, helped Charles Darwin to arrive at his theory of evolution. Not to mention the ubiquitous tomato, introduced to Britain from South America in the sixteenth century but regarded as highly poisonous for hearly 200 years. 
 
This is a wonderful piece of social and natural history that will appeal to every gardener and food aficionado.

Forgotten Fruits

The stories behind Britain's traditional fruit and vegetables

Len Howard

Enter the secret lives of Britain's ordinary garden birds and the brilliant, unconventional woman who opened her doors to them. 
 
In the late 1930s, Len Howard packed up her life in London, bought a plot of land in Sussex and built herself a little house there. This was to be Bird Cottage, a place where the doors of the house were open to the birds of the garden – great tits, blue tits, robins, blackbirds, willow warblers and many others. Len lived the rest of her life alongside her bird neighbours, with some sleeping in her bedroom and many flitting in and out all day long. 
 
This is the book she wrote about the birds – a study not just of their behaviour but their individual personalities. We learn about their intelligence, emotional lives, and characters, their capacity for play and humour, the range of their song, their likes and dislikes, and their bond with Len. 
 
Enchanting, life-enriching, revelatory and completely original, this is a gorgeous evocation of a life lived in intimate contact with nature and a book about birds unlike any other. 
 
‘A unique, engaging and elegant insight into the lives of our precious and magical songbirds’ Arthur Parkinson 
 
‘A quiet revelation of attentiveness and sympathy. It impressed and moved me very much’ Steven Lovatt, author of Birdsong in a Time of Silence

Birds as Individuals

Alan Titchmarsh

Home to sixteen generations of the Cavendish family over nearly five centuries, Chatsworth has played host to as rich a cast of characters as you are likely to find anywhere in the world. They have been, in turn, loved, reviled, extravagant, parsimonious, reclusive and sociable, but they have all left their mark on the landscape that surrounds their fabled family home, the Palace of the Peaks. 
 
Follow Alan Titchmarsh into this irresistible world of visionaries, mavericks and English eccentrics. 
 
Meet the indomitable Bess of Hardwick and her second husband Sir William Cavendish, who bought the Manor of Chatsworth for £600 in 1549 and built the first house there. Since then, the Estate has evolved with each generation, from the 4th Duke and Lancelot 'Capability' Brown in the 1700s, to the Bachelor Duke and the indefatigable Joseph Paxton the following century. From Andrew and Deborah Devonshire, who inherited an Estate that was on its knees in 1950 and ensured its survival when all seemed lost, to the 12th Duke and Duchess, Stoker and Amanda Devonshire, who have taken the reins since 2004. Alan explores the gardens they created. He discovers the real-life stories behind each horticultural triumph and architectural wonder, and we see how this great house and estate has flourished in all its beauty through changing times 
 
With stunning, specially commissioned photography alongside long-forgotten images and memorabilia newly unearthed in the estate archives, this landmark new book is a glorious way to experience the magic of Chatsworth, past and present, wherever you are.

Chatsworth

The gardens and the people who made them

Mollie Moran

'No one ever thinks of the poor scullery maid. The lowest of the low' 
 
When Mollie Browne became a 'skivvy' in a stately London townhouse aged just 14, she quickly learned that a large amount of elbow grease and a sense of humour would be tantamount to surviving there. Through Mollie's eyes we are offered a fascinating glimpse into London's invisible 'downstairs', a world that has long-since vanished: cooking huge roast dinners, polishing doorknobs, scrubbing steps - and covering up her employers' scandals. Going to dances with her fellow servants and flirting with Harrods' errand boys, she had no idea that the oncoming war in 1939 would change her world, and that of those she served, forever...

Aprons and Silver Spoons

The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid

Raynor Winn

Nature holds the answers for Raynor and her husband Moth. After walking 630 homeless miles along The Salt Path, living on the windswept and wild English coastline; the cliffs, the sky and the chalky earth now feel like their home. 
 
Moth has a terminal diagnosis, but against all medical odds, he seems revitalised in nature. Together on the wild coastal path, with their feet firmly rooted outdoors, they discover that anything is possible. 
 
Now life beyond the Salt Path awaits and they come back to four walls, but the sense of home is illusive and returning to normality is proving difficult - until an incredible gesture by someone who reads their story changes everything. 
 
A chance to breathe life back into a beautiful farmhouse nestled deep in the Cornish hills; rewilding the land and returning nature to its hedgerows, becomes their saving grace and their new path to follow. 
 
The Wild Silence is a story of hope triumphing over despair, of lifelong love prevailing over everything. It is a luminous account of the human spirit's instinctive connection to nature, and how vital it is for us all.

The Wild Silence

Alex Dingwall-Main

What happens when you relocate to the perfect house, in the perfect village in Provence, and nearly ten years later the shine has gone? Garden designer Alex Dingwall-Main is facing lavender fatigue, strife at home, neighbourly warfare and non-paying business clients. He is on the verge of packing his bags and starting all over again, back in England. 
 
Until one Spring day he is offered an opportunity by a wealthy and very grateful client; a treasure hunt for 12 bottles of exquisite French wine. It would be a journey through the country's finest vineyards, chateaux and villages. With a hangover and an uncertain heart, Alex decides to give it one more try and sets off in search of the France he fell in love with so many years ago. The people, the gardens and the wine that he encounters make for an adventurous and beautiful summer, and life-changing decisions are reached...

The Vine Garden

A search for home in the gardens and vineyards of France

Jane Brown

Lancelot Brown changed the face of eighteenth-century England, designing country estates and mansions, moving hills and making flowing lakes and serpentine rivers, a magical world of green. This English landscape style spread across Europe and the world. At home, it proved so pleasing that Brown's influence spread into the lowland landscape at large, and into landscape painting. He stands behind our vision, and fantasy, of rural England. 
 
In this vivid, lively biography, based on detailed research, Jane Brown paints an unforgettable picture of the man, his work, his happy domestic life, and his crowded world. She follows the life of the jovial yet elusive Mr Brown, from his childhood and apprenticeship in rural Northumberland, through his formative years at Stowe, the most famous garden of the day. 
 
His innovative ideas, and his affable and generous nature, led to a meteoric rise to a Royal Appointment in 1764 and his clients and friends ranged from statesmen like the elder Pitt to artists and actors like David Garrick. Riding constantly across England, Brown never ceased working until he collapsed and died in February 1783 after visiting one of his oldest clients. He was a practical man but also a visionary, always willing to try something new. As this beautifully illustrated biography shows, Brown filled England with enchantment - follies, cascades, lakes, bridges, ornaments, monuments, meadows and woods - creating views that still delight us today.

Lancelot 'Capability' Brown

The Omnipotent Magician, 1716-1783

Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, 1716-1783

The Omnipotent Magician

Rosina Harrison

'I was able to get on well with everyone below stairs and above, or so I thought until I began working for Lady Astor...' 
 
In 1929, Yorkshire lass Rosina Harrison became personal maid to Lady Astor: the first female Member of Parliament to take her seat and wife of one of England's wealthiest lords. 
 
Lady Astor was brilliant yet tempestuous, but outspoken Rose gave as good as she got. For 35 years the battle of wills and wits raged between the two women, until an unlikely friendship began to emerge. 
 
The Lady's Maid is a captivating insight into the great wealth 'upstairs' but also the endless work 'downstairs', but it is Rose's unique relationship with Lady Astor that makes this book a truly enticing read. 
 
Please note, The Lady's Maid is the new title for the book originally published as Rose.

The Lady's Maid

My Life in Service

Geraldine Bedell

"We didn't intend to build a house. We just wanted to move - somewhere a bit bigger, with more of a garden: commonplace enough ambitions, especially for families with young children, especially in Britain, where property is wealth, and so, in some vague and unexamined sense, identity. Not that we were thinking about anything like that." 
 
 
The true and very funny story of how journalist, Geraldine Bedell and her husband Charlie Leadbeater, with no savings and no knowledge of architecture nearly make themselves bankrupt in an attempt to build their dream home. Far more than that, it's about the ultimate fantasy - creating your own made to measure living space. 
 
The Handmade House tells the story, alternately comical and horrifying, of one family's ambitious and inept attempt to build the perfect home.

The Handmade House

A Love Story Set in Concrete

Paul O’Leary

Helen Parker

Robin McLellan

A stunningly photographed guide to designing and styling the most used and important room in the home. Showcasing the philosophy and fundamentals of deVOL's iconic values, design principles and now widely recognised kitchen styling, this book is for anyone who values great design and beautiful styling and craftsmanship, for those looking for inspiration for their own kitchen project and everyone who has discovered deVOL's For The Love of Kitchens TV series. 
 
From total rebuilds to a more modest sink and cupboard upgrade, it will inspire you to design and style the space available to create a unique and stylish kitchen whatever your budget. Encouraging you to throw out the conventional rule book, draw your own plans and incorporate fitted and existing free-standing furniture and found objects to create a beautiful unique room that is perfect for your needs. With inspiration on how reorganise or elevate a current kitchen using colour, a single brass fitting, a decorated cupboard, a new light or piece of furniture to effortlessly style up for glamour or down for simplicity. 
 
Written by deVOL founder Paul O'Leary, inspirational Creative Director, Helen Parker and Robin McLellan and illustrated throughout with stunning photography of many of the unique kitchens and furniture deVOL have designed and made over the last 34 years, including The Real Shaker, The Classic English, The Sebastian Cox and the Haberdasher's Kitchens. Accompanied by the stories of the woodwork, ceramic and metal designers and makers and a styling and decorating guide by Helen Parker, deVOL's inspirational Creative Director.

The deVOL Kitchen

Tricia Guild

In Colour Deconstructed, Tricia Guild aims to unlock the secrets of her distinctive style. Why are we drawn to certain colours and patterns? Where does inspiration come from and, most importantly, how do we translate that into a workable plan for our own homes? The book focuses on colour as a starting point but, through careful dissection, looks at how other elements of a room come together. Pattern, texture, function and atmosphere are all vital aspects that can make a room not only look stunning but also serve its purpose and establish the right mood and spirit. Featuring more than 25 decorative schemes arranged in seven colour chapters, it is this seemingly invisible equation that Colour Deconstructed aims to capture and analyse.

Colour Deconstructed

Jason Hazeley

Joel Morris

These delightful books are the latest in the series of Ladybird books which have been specially planned to help grown-ups with the world about them. 
 
The large clear script, the careful choice of words, the frequent repetition and the thoughtful matching of text with pictures all enable grown-ups to think they have taught themselves to cope. The subject of the books will greatly appeal to grown-ups. 
 
The eight books in the series feature original Ladybird artwork alongside brilliantly funny, brand new text. The other books in the series are: 
 
- The Ladybird Book of Mindfulness 
 
- The Ladybird Book of Sheds 
 
- The Ladybird Book of The Hipster 
 
- The Ladybird Book of the Mid-Life Crisis 
 
- The Ladybird Book of the Hangover 
 
- The Ladybird Book of Dating 
 
- How it Works: The Husband 
 
- How it Works: The Wife

This delightful book is the latest in the series of Ladybird books which have been specially planned to help grown-ups with the world about them. 
 
The large clear script, the careful choice of words, the frequent repetition and the thoughtful matching of text with pictures all enable grown-ups to think they have taught themselves to cope. The subject of the book will greatly appeal to grown-ups. 
 
The eight books in the series feature original Ladybird artwork alongside brilliantly funny, brand new text. The other books in the series are: 
 
- The Ladybird Book of Mindfulness 
 
- The Ladybird Book of Dating 
 
- The Ladybird Book of The Hipster 
 
- The Ladybird Book of the Mid-Life Crisis 
 
- The Ladybird Book of the Hangover 
 
- How it Works: The Husband 
 
- How it Works: The Wife

The Ladybird Book of the Shed

Susan Orlean

Susan Orlean first met John Laroche when visiting Florida to write for the New Yorker about his arrest for stealing rare ghost orchids from a nature reserve. Fascinated both by Laroche and the world she uncovered of orchid collectors and growers, she stayed on, to write this magical exploration of obsession and the strange world both of the orchid obsessives and of Florida, that haunting and weird 'debatable land' of swamps and condos, retirement communities and real-estate scams. 
 
The world of the orchid hunters, breeders and showmen, their rivalries, vendettas and crimes, smuggling, thefts and worse provide the backdrop to a fascinating exploration of one of the byways of human nature, the obsessive world of the collector, and the haunting beauty of the flowers themselves.

The Orchid Thief

Brendan O'Carroll

The first and only official Mrs Brown's Boys book, Mrs Brown's Family Handbook uniquely takes us into the wonderful world of Britain's favourite potty-mouthed mother and housewife. 
 
Packed with tips for running the perfect home - why every mammy's secret weapon is a tea towel; how to clean up Granddad - as well as contributions from members of the extended family - Dermot's Guide to Farting; Winnie's Joy of Seks - Mrs Brown dispenses advice in her own inimical fecking style. 
 
The perfect gift for the house proud and the slovenly, Mrs Brown's Family Handbook should offend all who receive it.

Mrs Brown's Family Handbook

Kit Kemp

This lavishly photographed interiors book shows how to leave behind design "rules" to create truly beautiful, original interiors. For over 20 years, Kit Kemp has been at the forefront of the international design community, with her signature style that mixes contemporary elements with antiques and junk-shop finds, luxurious fabrics with printed wallpapers and hand finished detailing with collections of simple objects that create impact. She avoids taking design too seriously, playing with scale, colour and pattern to create very personal, handcrafted spaces. Alongside the stunning images of room sets and detailed close-ups will be the inspiration behind Kit's work and her tips for creating your own version of her style at home. Interiors are meant for living in, and the key is to create a space that is comfortable, beautiful and reflects who you really are.

A Living Space

Miv Watts

In The Maverick Soul, Miv Watts opens the doors to twenty-five authentic bohemian homes, occupied by some of the world&rsquo;s most inspirational free spirits. 
 
 From artists and musicians, to writers, actors, stylists, farmers and more, this is a collection of people who have the courage to live life on their own terms, and are comfortable in their own skin. 
 &#160; 
 From Paris to London, Sydney to New York and various other places across the globe, subjects include Marianne Faithfull, Simon Finch, Wendy Whiteley, Griffin Dunne, Linda Rodin and more. 
 &#160; 
 No one person is a reproduction of another; each of us is unique, shaped by the diversities of our own individual layers, and this book is a celebration of just that.

The Maverick Soul

Inside the Lives & Homes of Eccentric, Eclectic & Free-spirited Bohemians

Monty Don

What do our gardens say about us? 
 
Monty Don has spent many years travelling the world, from America to Japan, from Italy and the Adriatic to Spain and the Mediterranean, getting under the skin of a country through its gardens and gardening traditions. In British Gardens, he finally brings his focus to home, journeying from the northern tip of Scotland to the Cornish coast, seeking to understand what our gardens tell us about ourselves as a nation. 
 
Encompassing historical gardens and public parks, mountains and seascapes, urban gardens and rural nurseries, glasshouses and community plots, each encounter is another link in a larger story of British identity: marks of ingenuity, eccentricity, and adaptation to changing environments. From Northumbria’s Alnwick Gardens and Beatrix Potter’s Lake District farmhouse to the rewilded walled garden on the Knepp Estate and the story of Britain’s first garden gnome, Monty’s account brings in an astonishing range of British experience. 
 
Accompanied by a landmark five-part series on BBC2, and illustrated by stunning photography from Monty’s long-time collaborator Derry Moore, British Gardens is a definitive, and uniquely British, account of a nation like no other.

British Gardens

George Clarke

Jane Fields

George Clarke shows how amazingly unexpected small spaces can be adapted into really practical living areas.Combining the eccentric and the inspirational with down-to-earth guidelines and information, the book will appeal not only to those dreaming of a get-away but to everyone who wants to make the most of their space at home.The book will showcase the spaces featured in the series, explaining how each build was achieved but also including new material showing how the designs might be adapted to more conventional small spaces. The spaces, and resultant possibilities, are incredibly varied, including work areas, complete homes, sleeping areas - and the ultimate fantasy escapes.There are mobile spaces, such as the old 1970s caravan that is converted into a travelling ice-cream parlour, existing structures needing a makeover, such as the canal boat that&#39;s been revamped as the ultimate bachelor pad, and the change of function of an underground public toilet that is converted into a one-bed flat.Illustrated throughout with practical artwork, before and after photos, and inspiring end results, the book also gives brilliant ideas for effective decorating, with suggestions for window, wall and floor coverings, and tips on using colour, texture and lighting.

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