British Library Publishing

Stanfords London Book of the Month February 2017 London: one of the great historic cities of Europe, cultural capital, centre of music and fashion, hub of politics and business, Olympic city, home and workplace of millions. The city's long history is palpable - we can still see the London of Dickens, Dr Johnson, Defoe, Wren and even Shakespeare. The very names St Paul's, Smithfield, Char...

From the grand tour to the global village, novelists and poets have made particularly observant travellers. Many writers have been prone to wanderlust, eager to explore the world and draw inspiration from their travels. They recorded their notes in letters, journals, essays and books.

London - A History in Maps published by the British Library in association with the London Topographical Society beautifully illustrates the development of London over the past 750 years from a small town, snuggly fitted within its walls, into one of the world’s greatest and most dynamic capitals.

A History of the 20th Century in 100 Maps is a truly fascinating book, even for all of us in Stanfords who are well used to seeing interesting maps and posters! The 100 maps, many accompanied by additional photos and reproductions of posters or letters, show how the 20th century was a golden age of map-making and maps permeated almost every aspect of daily life.

No observer, ignorant of the situation, would have guessed that death lurked nearby, and that only a little distance from the glitter of silver and glass and the hum of voices two victims lay silent on a studio floor.'On a fine autumn weekend Lord Aveling hosts a hunting party at his country house, Bragley Court. Among the guests are an actress, a journalist, an artist and a mystery novelist. The unlucky t...

A car hurtles down the driveway of a luxury villa in Switzerland. The driver is a young woman, Lucia Bernardi. Inside the house, police find the body of her lover on the bedroom floor. The dead man - Ahmed Fathir Arbil - was an Iraqi refugee, who has been tortured and killed. Lucia vanishes into hiding in the South of France.Piet Maas, a journalist for the World Reporter, sets out on Lucia's trail, hoping f...

Arthur Simpson - 'British to the core', but without a passport to prove it - lives in Athens, scraping by as a driver, journalist and petty thief. When Simpson spots Harper at the airport he recognises him as a tourist new to the city and in need of a private driver. But an ill-judged attempt to relieve Harper of his traveller's cheques reveals him to be a highly sophisticated criminal, and entangles Simpso...

Mastery of the sea has been crucial in European history: the transition from the medieval to the modern world was marked by the emergence of European ships from their home waters out into the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. Solving the problem of ocean navigation was an essential prelude to achieving international powers. In their sea-charts the maritime nations left a unique visual record of their res...

One hundred years ago events in Russia took the world by storm. In February 1917, in the middle of World War I and following months of protest and political unrest, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated. Later that year a new political force, the socialist Bolshevik Party, seized power under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin. A bloody civil war and period of extraordinary hardship for Russians finally led to the establ...

Samuel Whitehead, landlord of the Rose and Crown, is a stranger in the lonely East Anglian village of High Eldersham. When the newcomer is stabbed to death in his pub, and Scotland Yard are called to the scene, it seems that the veil dividing High Eldersham from the outside world is about to be lifted.Detective-Inspector Young forms a theory about the case so utterly impossible that merely entertaining the ...

On a dark November evening, Sir Wilfred Saxonby is travelling alone in the 5 o'clock train from Cannon Street, in a locked compartment. The train slows and stops inside a tunnel; and by the time it emerges again minutes later, Sir Wilfred has been shot dead, his heart pierced by a single bullet.Suicide seems to be the answer, even though no motive can be found. Inspector Arnold of Scotland Yard thinks again...

Some men take to gun-running because they have a longing for danger and adventure. Girija Krishnan, an Indian clerk, is not one of them. Deep in the Malayan jungle, Girija stumbles on a cache of arms hidden during the communist insurgency. Selling the arms will help Girija achieve his lifelong dream of founding a transport company. Two American tourists in the Far East find more adventure than they bargaine...

After battling for justice, at great personal risk, in his first recorded case, Sergeant Caleb Cluff made a swift return to duty in this book. The story opens one wet and windy night, with the discovery of a young woman's corpse, lying face down on the cobblestones of a passageway in the Yorkshire town of Gunnarshaw. The deceased is Jane Trundle, an attractive girl who worked as an assistant in a chemist's ...

A fact-filled introduction to global history with stories and characters from the most important turning points from the dawn of civilisation to the Second World War, designed for children with an interest in the past who want to find out more about the people who made history - artists and architects, soldiers and explorers, politicians and religious leaders.

Prince's College, Cambridge, is a peaceful and scholarly community, enlivened by Prudence Pinsent, the Master's daughter. Spirited, beautiful, and thoroughly unconventional, Prudence is a remarkable young woman.

Lines in the Ice asks why Europeans have for so long been drawn to the Arctic, following the course of major journeys to the region, assessing the impact of this on the North's indigenous communities and revealing how important this exploration has been in making the modern world.

Revolution! Conflict! Gluttony! In this eclectic book of food history, Tom Nealon takes on such overlooked themes as carp and the Crusades, brown sauce and Byron, and chillies and cannibalism, and suggests that hunger and taste are the twin forces that secretly defined the course of civilization. Through war and plague, revolution and migration, people have always had to eat. What and how they ate provoked ...

'Already it looked as if the police were up against a carefully planned and cleverly executed murder, and, what was more, a murder without a corpse!' Two brothers, John and William Rother, live together at Chalklands Farm in the beautiful Sussex Downs. Their peaceful rural life is shattered when John Rother disappears and his abandoned car is found. Has he been kidnapped? Or is his disappearance more sinis...

Dr James Earle and his wife live in comfortable seclusion near the Hog's Back, a ridge in the North Downs in the beautiful Surrey countryside. When Dr Earle disappears from his cottage, Inspector French is called in to investigate. At first he suspects a simple domestic intrigue - and begins to uncover a web of romantic entanglements beneath the couple's peaceful rural life. The case soon takes a more co...