Steve Roud was Local Studies Librarian for the London Borough of Croydon and served as Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society for over fifteen years. He has been researching British folklore for over thirty years and is the joint author of the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, plus other books on traditional drama and folk song, and the Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland, which won the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award in 2004. His publications include London Lore (2008) and The Lore of the Playground (2010). He also compiles the Folk Song Index and the Broadside Index, two internationally acclaimed computer databases of traditional folk and popular song. He lives in Sussex.

Steve Roud

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Tristram Hunt

Josiah Wedgwood, perhaps the greatest English potter who ever lived, epitomized the best of his age. From his kilns and workshops in Stoke-on-Trent, he revolutionized the production of ceramics in Georgian Britain by marrying technology with design, manufacturing efficiency and retail flair. He transformed the luxury markets not only of London, Liverpool, Bath and Dublin but of America and the world, and helping to usher in a mass consumer society. Tristram Hunt calls him 'the Steve Jobs of the eighteenth century'. 
 
But Wedgwood was radical in his mind and politics as well as in his designs. He campaigned for free trade and religious toleration, read pioneering papers to the Royal Society and was a member of the celebrated Lunar Society of Birmingham. Most significantly, he created the ceramic 'Emancipation Badge', depicting a slave in chains and inscribed 'Am I Not a Man and a Brother?' that became the symbol of the abolitionist movement. 
 
Tristram Hunt's hugely enjoyable new biography, strongly based on Wedgwood's notebooks, letters and the words of his contemporaries, brilliantly captures the energy and originality of Wedgwood and his extraordinary contribution to the transformation of eighteenth-century Britain.

The Radical Potter

Josiah Wedgwood and the Transformation of Britain

Leander Kahney

Steve Jobs discovered Ive in 1997, when he found the scruffy British designer toiling away in a studio surrounded by hundreds of sketches and prototypes. Jobs instantly realised he had found a talent who could reverse Apple's decline, and become his 'spiritual partner'. 
 
Their collaboration produced iconic products including the iMac, iPod, iPad and iPhone. Designs that overturned entire industries and created the world's most powerful brand. 
 
Little has been known about this shy, softly-spoken designer. Until now. This riveting book tells the story of a creative genius, from his early interest in industrial design to his meteoric rise, as well as the principles and practices that led Ive to become the designer of his generation.

Jony Ive

The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products

Minoru Mori

From building office blocks in the charred ruins of post-war Tokyo to creating Japan's largest ever urban development, Mori Building Co. has revolutionized how cities are made. 
 
In the late 1960s, after the success of its early 'number buildings', the company changed its focus from individual sites to whole neighbourhoods as Japan's economic miracle fuelled a building boom. By the 1980s Mori had completed the groundbreaking redevelopment at Ark Hills, home to the country's first 'intelligent building' which became Tokyo's international finance hub. This was the forerunner to the Roppongi Hills project - a cultural quarter which has attracted 40 million visitors a year since it was completed in 2003 and is Japan's biggest private development to date. 
 
In this book, Minoru Mori tells the story of the remarkable growth and pioneering vision that made Mori Building Co. Japan's leading developer. He traces the entire history of the company and shows how the unconventional thinking championed by Mori will be vital as Japan faces the challenges of recovering from a devastating tsunami while dealing with a shrinking population and a turbulent global economy.

MORI Building

The Making of Vertical Garden Cities

Charlie Porter

Most of us live our lives in our clothes without realizing their power. But in the hands of artists, garments reveal themselves. They are pure tools of expression, storytelling, resistance and creativity: canvases on which to show who we really are. 
 
In What Artists Wear, style luminary Charlie Porter takes us on an invigorating, eye-opening journey through the iconic outfits worn by artists, in the studio, on stage, at work, at home and at play. From Yves Klein's spotless tailoring to the kaleidoscopic costumes of Yayoi Kusama and Cindy Sherman; from Andy Warhol's signature denim to Charlotte Prodger's casualwear, Porter's roving eye picks out the magical, revealing details in the clothes he encounters, weaving together a new way of understanding artists, and of dressing ourselves. 
 
Part love letter, part guide to chic, and featuring generous photographic spreads, What Artists Wear is both a manual and a manifesto, a radical, gleeful, inspiration to see the world anew-and find greater pleasure and possibility in the clothes we all wear.

What Artists Wear

Tim Benson

In Britain's Best Political Cartoons 2022 the nation's finest satirists turn their eyes and their pens to the biggest, funniest and most poignant news stories of the year so far. Bringing much needed humour to a tumultuous year in politics, this companion features the work of Peter Brookes, Steve Bell, Morten Morland, Nicola Jennings, Christian Adams, Dave Brown, Brian Adcock and many more, alongside captions from Britain's leading cartoon expert. The result is a razor-sharp, witty and essential companion to another year like no other. 
__________________________________________________________________ 
 
'A wonderful book . . . A beautiful thing to look at . . . Our brilliant cartoonists show there is still something to satirise . . . A great stocking filler.' Giles Coren 
 
'A blockbuster collection of the year's funniest political cartoons . . . [compiled by] Britain's leading authority on political cartoons . . . It made us chuckle.' Eamonn Holmes

Britain's Best Political Cartoons 2022

Choking the chicken, spanking the monkey, airing the orchid-whatever you call it, none of the images in this book will encourage the gentle art of self-pleasure. This deceptively simple and strangely addictive book presents a laugh-out-loud collection of random pictures virtually guaranteed to dampen the urge of even the strongest libido.

Images You Should Not Masturbate To

Grayson Perry

'I have never read such a stimulating short guide to art' Lynn Barber, Sunday Times 
 
Now Grayson Perry is a fully paid-up member of the art establishment, he wants to show that any of us can appreciate art (after all, there is a reason he's called this book Playing to the Gallery and not 'Sucking up to an Academic Elite'). Based on his hugely popular BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures and full of pictures, this funny, personal journey through the art world answers the basic questions that might occur to us in an art gallery but seem too embarrassing to ask.

Playing to the Gallery

Helping Contemporary Art in its Struggle to Be Understood

Dana Thomas

In Gods and Kings Dana Thomas, author of Deluxe, tells the story of how John Galliano and Alexander McQueen changed the face of fashion 
 
In the first decade of the 21st century the fashion world was dominated by two different but equally successful and turbulent figures. Within twelve months, Alexander McQueen had committed suicide, and John Galliano had professionally imploded. Who was to blame? And how was fashion changed by their rise and fall? Spanning the 80s, 90s and noughties, Gods and Kings tells the story of these two charismatic figures and times of great change in the world of fashion, from London's raucous art and club scene to the old-world glamour of Parisian couture, and reveals the machinations of this notoriously secretive industry.

Gods and Kings

The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano

Keri Smith

Perhaps you're a seasoned Wreck-er, having made your way through one or more copies of Wreck This Journal. Or maybe you're new to the phenomenon (little do you know, this experience might just change your life). Whatever the case, you've found the perfect book to inflict damage on... 
 
The revolution is now in colour. Why colour? Because it's dangerous. And if it isn't dangerous, then it isn't worth doing. You are hereby challenged to now try everything you've never done with colour. Everything. Mixing, ripping, spewing, streaming, hurling, blowing up, throwing, dropping, exploding. 
Welcome to an all new-edition of Wreck This Journal, now in spectacular full colour! With a mix of new, altered, and favourite prompts, Wreck This Journal: Now in Colour invites you to destroy with colour. What colours will you use to &amp;*%$ it up?

Wreck This Journal: Now in Colour

Alastair Sooke

Whaam! Roy Lichtenstein - architect of Pop art, connoisseur of the comic strip, master of irony and prophet of popular culture. From exhilarating images of ice-cool jet pilots in dog fights, to blue-haired Barbie dolls drowning in scenes of domestic heartache, Lichtenstein's instantly recognisable paintings, with their Ben-Day dots and witty one-liners, defined the art of a generation. But how did a jobbing, unassuming painter of the Fifties become a world-famous Pop artist whose work today sells for millions? What do his paintings really tell us? And what is his legacy? 
 
This book, which can be read in two hours or less, is a perfect introduction to the artist and his work. Spanning Lichtenstein's career, and explaining his unique style, it is a journey through the life of one of the twentieth century's greatest artists.

Roy Lichtenstein

How Modern Art Was Saved by Donald Duck

Luke Stephenson

Helen Champion

For clown lovers and art lovers alike, the only collection of clown faces painted on eggs anywhere in the world 
 
The Clown Egg Register is a unique record of two hundred and fifty clown faces, each one painted on to an egg. The eggs act as copyright for a clown's personal visual identity, preserving the unwritten rule that a clown must never copy the face of another. It is a tradition that began in the United Kingdom in the 1940s at Clowns International, the oldest established club for clowns. 
 
In this book, the inimitably eccentric collection of images is paired with biographies of each clown, revealing details of their private and public lives, and giving a glimpse into this outmoded art form that continues to delight and terrify children everywhere.

The Clown Egg Register

Stephen Bayley

With all the wit, knowledge and wisdom of one of the UK's foremost cultural commentators, Stephen Bayley takes the reader on a satirical roller-coaster ride through the world of art and design in the late 20th century. 
 
'Brilliantly drawn ..the pages are full of Wildean paradoxes' The Spectator 
______________________________ 
 
Someone once said you can find beauty anywhere. But all Eustace Dunne can see is ugliness. 
The buildings are grey, the people are tired and unimaginative, the food is inedible and life is drab, drab, drab. 
 
Growing up in an England ravaged by the Second World War, Eustace resolves to make things beautiful again. A mercurial stint in art school gives him a springboard into a world that is changing so fast you have to hold on tight to keep up. And in that world, ambition, timing and a modicum of talent can transform you into anything you want to be. 
 
Before long he's an artist, a designer, a restaurateur, an entrepreneur, a genius. But becoming a bastion of perfect taste can be a grubby business. Eustace's charm may have secured his influence on the homes and hearts of a nation, but there are still people out there who know where the bodies are buried...

The Art of Living

A satirical novel

Riccardo Falcinelli

Have you ever wondered why so many pencils are yellow? Why black is the colour of mourning? Or why carrots are orange? 
 
In Chromorama, acclaimed graphic designer Riccardo Falcinelli delves deep into the history of colour to show how it has shaped the modern gaze. With over four hundred illustrations throughout and with examples ranging widely across art and culture - from Flaubert's novels to The Simpsons, from Byzantine jewellery to misshapen fruit, from the black lines of Mondrian to the thrillers of Hitchcock - Falcinelli traces the evolution of our long relationship with colour, and how first the industrial revolution, and then the dawn of the internet age, changed it forever. 
 
Beautiful, warm and wise, taking in the lives of philosophers, entrepreneurs, designers, astrologists, shop assistants and pastry chefs, Chromoroma is an engrossing account of shade and light, of tone and hue, of dyes, pigments, and pixels. It is the story of why we now see the world the way we do.

Chromorama

How Colour Changed Our Way of Seeing

Lilly Singh

From actress, comedian and YouTube sensation Lilly Singh (a.k.a Superwoman) comes the definitive guide to being a BAWSE - a person who exudes confidence, reaches goals, gets hurt efficiently, and smiles genuinely because they've fought through it all and made it out the other side. 
Told in her hilarious, bold voice that's inspired over 9 million fans, and using stories from her own life to illustrate her message, Lilly proves that there are no short-cuts to success. 
 
WARNING: This book does not include hopeful thoughts, lucky charms, and cute quotes. That's because success, happiness and everything else you want in life needs to be fought for - not wished for. In Lilly's world, there are no escalators. Only stairs.

How to Be a Bawse

A Guide to Conquering Life

Christoph Keller

Most stories of disability follow a familiar pattern: Life Before Accident. Life After Accident. For Christoph Keller, it was different: his childhood diagnosis with a form of Spinal Muscular Atrophy only revealed what had been with him since birth. SMA III, the 'kindest one', allows those who have it to live a long life, and it progresses slowly. There is no cure. By the age of 25, he had to use a wheelchair some of the time. 'There were two of me: Walking Me. Rolling Me.' By 32, he could still walk into a restaurant with a cane or on somebody's arm. At 45, 'Rolling Me' took over altogether. 
 
Intimate, absurdist and winningly frank, Every Cripple a Superhero is at once a memoir of life with a progressive disorder, and a profound exploration of the challenges of loving, being loved, and living a public life - navigating restaurants, aeroplanes, museums and artists' retreats - in a world not designed for you. Threaded throughout are Keller's own photographs of the unexpected beauty found in puddle-filled 'curb cuts', the pavement ramps that, left to disintegrate, form part of the urban obstacle course. Those puddles become portals into a different, truer city; and, as they do, so this book - told with humour and immense grace - begins to uncover a truer world: one where the 'normal' is not normal, where disability is far more widespread than we might think, and where there always exist, just alongside our own, the lives of everyday superheroes.

Every Cripple a Superhero

Carley Fortune

Good things always happen at the lake. After all, it's where Alice took that photo, the image that changed her life. Alice loves her career as a photographer, but sometimes she just needs to be in that magical place, back by the lake at Barry’s Bay. Charlie was only nineteen when Alice unknowingly took his picture. Now, Alice is faced with the man who helped make her career. Summer with Charlie is a balm for Alice’s soul. But one night, when she looks up and sees his piercing blue gaze on her, things start to feel different. 
 
But will the truth of their past drive a wedge between them, or bring them closer together?

One Golden Summer

Caleb Femi

What is it like to grow up in a place where the same police officer who told your primary school class they were special stops and searches you at 13 because 'you fit the description of a man' - and where it is possible to walk two and a half miles through an estate of 1,444 homes without ever touching the ground? 
 
In Poor, Caleb Femi combines poetry and original photography to explore the trials, tribulations, dreams and joys of young Black boys in twenty-first century Peckham. He contemplates the ways in which they are informed by the built environment of concrete walls and gentrifying neighbourhoods that form their stage, writes a coded, near-mythical history of the personalities and sagas of his South London youth, and pays tribute to the rappers and artists who spoke to their lives. 
 
Above all, this is a tribute to the world that shaped a poet, and to the people forging difficult lives and finding magic within it. As Femi writes in one of the final poems of this book: 'I have never loved anything the way I love the endz.'

Poor

Caz Hildebrand

Philip Cowell

Introducing: 
The dashing dash - 
So-called "quotation marks" 
The colon: and on and on. 
The shouty exclamation! 
The three dots of... 
(Not forgetting the brackets) 
And many more. 
 
Take a witty and typographical journey through the art, pleasures and playfulness of the punctuation marks we use every day.

This Is Me, Full Stop.

The Art, Pleasures, and Playfulness of Punctuation

Damian Dibben

Artists flock to Renaissance Venice for wealth, fame and revolutionary colour. Yet for Giorgione 'Zorzo' Barbarelli, competition is fierce and debts are mounting. Then Zorzo hears of a brand new pigment, owned by merchant Jakob Fugger, which could change his fate. 
To get closer to Fugger, Zorzo befriends his wife, Sybille. Soon, he's lost - enchanted by her - but acting on his feelings would put him in huge danger. 
As water levels rise and the plague creeps closer, Zorzo isn't sure whom he can trust. Will Sybille be the key to Zorzo's success, or the reason for his downfall?

The Colour Storm

Winner of the HWA Gold Crown Award 2023

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

Stanley Donwood

A wild seascape, a distant island, a full moon. Gradually the island grows nearer until we land on a primeval wilderness, rich in vegetation and huge, strange beasts. Time passes and things do not go well for the island. Civilization rises as towers of stone and metal and smoke, choking the undergrowth and the creatures who once moved through it. This is not a happy story and it will not have a happy ending. 
 
Working in his distinctive, monochromatic linocut style, Stanley Donwood carves out a mesmerising, stark parable on environmentalism and the history of humankind.

Bad Island

Tamara Mellon

'From her troubled childhood and her time as a young editor, to her partnership with Jimmy Choo and her very public relationships, Mellon offers a gripping account of the episodes that have made her. A book Jackie Collins would be proud of, with the added bonus that it is all true. A voyeuristic joy from start to finish' Harpers Bazaar 
 
'Pure Danielle Steel, with added MBA, that jets from Vogue shoots in Nepal and dates with Christian Slater, to trade fairs, boardroom takeovers and a family showdown over missing millions. Perfect for grown-up fashionistas and wannabe entrepreneurs' Sunday Times 
 
'A juicy and honest memoir from one of the most successful and self-made British businesswomen of her generation' Financial Times

In My Shoes

A Memoir

Millie Marotta

We know the plight of the mighty elephant and the charismatic chimpanzee-but what of other vanishing species, whose stories are not so often told? 
 
 
Mysterious baby dragons of the underworld, the dodo's long-lost cousin, gargantuan lobsters and incredible shrinking reindeer-all need our help and our attention. In this exquisite treasury, bestselling illustrator Millie Marotta celebrates the lesser-known species that are at risk of disappearing from the world today. With each animal intricately illustrated in full colour, alongside their own unique story, this is a wonderful and surprising gift, offering the chance to fall more in love with the natural world, and think about how to help save it.

A Wild Child's Guide to Endangered Animals

Keith Houston

Where does the ampersand get its name from? What does the hashtag have to do with commerce in ancient Rome? Keith Houston gives the answers in this delightfully entertaining book. 
 
From the pilcrow ¶ to the ampersand, the entire cast of Shady Characters reflects the changes in written communication through the ages, charting how punctuation has adapted to each new technological innovation. Together, these shady characters form a rich, entertaining and surprising history of the written word and our ongoing attempts to shape it. 
 
'Engaging typographical journeys . . . Houston brings to life a history of ingenuity and imagination' The Times 
 
'Entertaining, informative, a must-read. If ever a book deserved its hardbacked, reverse-embossed, lavishly illustrated, thick white heavy paper incarnation, and a place on an actual bookshelf, it is Shady Characters' Guardian 
 
'Houston brings considerable wit to the 5,000-year-old enigma of how we attempt to communicate our thoughts through visible signs . . . Shady Characters might make you look at books - in print or online - in an entirely new way' Nature 
 
'Refreshing . . . the stories he uncovers along the way are fascinating' Telegraph 
 
'Ventures into the previously untrodden history of punctuation marks . . . scholarly, highly readable' Spectator 
 
Keith Houston is the founder of ShadyCharacters.co.uk, where he writes about the unusual stories behind some well-known - and some rather more outlandish - marks of punctuation.

Shady Characters

Ampersands, Interrobangs and other Typographical Curiosities

Will Gompertz

Artists have learnt to pay attention. The rest of us spend most of our time on auto-pilot, rushing from place to place, our overfamiliarity blinding us to the marvellous, life-affirming phenomena of our world. But that doesn't have to be the case. 
 
In his typical engaging style, Will Gompertz takes us into the minds of artists - from contemporary stars to old masters, the well-known to the lesser-so, and from around the world - to show us how to look and experience the world with their heightened awareness. 
 
In See What You're Missing we learn, for example, how Hasegawa Tohaku can help us to see beauty, how David Hockney helps us to see colour, and how Frida Kahlo can help us see pain. In doing so we come to know the exhilarating feeling of being truly alive.

See What You're Missing

31 Ways Artists Notice the World – and How You Can Too

John Cleese

Creativity is usually regarded as a mysterious, rare gift that only a few possess. John Cleese begs to differ, and in this short, immensely practical and often very amusing guide he shows it's a skill that anyone can acquire. Drawing on his lifelong experience as a writer, he shares his insights into the nature of the creative process, and offers advice on how to get your own inventive juices flowing. 
____________________________ 
 
'Humorous and practical . . . Whether you're hoping to write a novel or paint a masterpiece, you're sure to feel inspired' OK Magazine 
 
'His candor is endearing . . . An upbeat guide to the creative process' Kirkus 
 
'A jovial romp . . . Cleese fans will enjoy, and writers and other artists will breeze through, picking up a few nuggets of wisdom along the way' The Festival Review 
 
'Wise words on the serious business of being silly' Sunday Business Post

Creativity

A Short and Cheerful Guide

William Morris

Visionary English Socialist and pioneer of the Arts and Crafts movement, William Morris argued that all work should be a source of pride and satisfaction, and that everyone should be entitled to beautiful surroundings &ndash; no matter what their class. 
 
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves &ndash; and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives &ndash; and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

Useful Work v. Useless Toil

Blake Gopnik

"Superb...Gopnik persuasively assembles his case over the course of this mesmerising book, which is as much art history and philosophy as it is biography" Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian 
 
When critics attacked Andy Warhol's Marilyn paintings as shallow, the Pop artist was happy to present himself as shallower still: He claimed that he silkscreened to avoid the hard work of painting, although he was actually a meticulous workaholic; in interviews he presented himself as a silly naïf when in private he was the canniest of sophisticates. Blake Gopnik's definitive biography digs deep into the contradictions and radical genius that led Andy Warhol to revolutionise our cultural world. 
 
Based on years of archival research and on interviews with hundreds of Warhol's surviving friends, lovers and enemies, Warhol traces the artist's path from his origins as the impoverished son of Eastern European immigrants in 1930s Pittsburgh, through his early success as a commercial illustrator and his groundbreaking pivot into fine art, to the society portraiture and popular celebrity of the '70s and '80s, as he reflected and responded to the changing dynamics of commerce and culture. 
 
Warhol sought out all the most glamorous figures of his times - Susan Sontag, Mick Jagger, the Barons de Rothschild - despite being burdened with an almost crippling shyness. Behind the public glitter of the artist's Factory, with its superstars, drag queens and socialites, there was a man who lived with his mother for much of his life and guarded the privacy of his home. He overcame the vicious homophobia of his youth to become a symbol of gay achievement, while always seeking the pleasures of traditional romance and coupledom. (Warhol explodes the myth of his asexuality.) 
 
Filled with new insights into the artist's work and personality, Warhol asks: Was he a joke or a genius, a radical or a social climber? As Warhol himself would have answered: Yes.

Warhol

A Life as Art

Henry Eliot

Quibe

As a rule, we take care not to get lost, so why should we willingly enter a maze? Illustrated with a single red line, Follow This Thread traces dozens of real and historical mazes, and their uses in literature, art and film, from Pac-Man and Picasso to Kubrick and Kafka. 
 
Henry Eliot reveals our abiding, ancient relationship with mazes and labyrinths, and unpicks the paradoxical psychology involved in walking them, combining the myth of the Minotaur with a quest for the legendary Maze King, who disappeared in 1979. The text coils around the pages, recreating the experience of walking a labyrinth, with its twists and turns, frights and fantasies.

Follow This Thread

A Maze Book to Get Lost In

Deyan Sudjic

We live in a world drowning in objects. But what do they tell us about ourselves? In The Language of Things, Design Museum Director, Deyan Sudjic charts our relationship - both innocent and knowing - with all things designed. From the opulent excesses of the catwalk, or the technical brilliance of a laptop computer, to the subtle refinement of a desk lamp, he shows how we can be manipulated and seduced by our possessions. Brilliant and courageous, The Language of Things defines the visual vocabulary of our time and gives us a powerful new way of seeing the world. With up to 100 colour illustrations throughout, this book itself is both a provocative and beautiful thing.

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