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74945 CLEOPATRA: The Last Pharaoh by Prudence Jones


We owe much of our knowledge of Cleopatra to her enemy Octavian, the man who had become Rome’s first Emperor Augustus. Cleopatra VII (69- 30BC) was the last monarch of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt. Daughter of Ptolemy XII, she ruled with her two brother- husbands, Ptolemy XIII and


Ptolemy XIV both of whom she had killed, and with her son Ptolemy XV or Caesarion (44-30BC). This new biography illustrates in full colour the fascinating aspect of her ever-shifting identity. A master of self- presentation, she was the first to craft for herself an image or to be precise a number of images as a goddess, a political leader, or an alluring and exotic woman. Roman statesmen manipulated her image for their own political ends. The tension embodied in our sources for Cleopatra’s life make her story especially captivating. Beautifully illustrated, much in colour. 160pp in softback published by the American University in Cairo Press. 9 x 7".


$17.95 NOW £5


73930 ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA by Adrian Goldsworthy


Here, a distinguished historian transcends myth to create a nuanced portrayal of the pair who placed politics and ideology at the heart of their turbulent and intensely erotic relationship. Cleopatra was not an Egyptian but a Greek, and her rule was contingent on Roman support. It was Rome that dominated the world and Antony was an aristocrat who implicitly believed that it was his birthright to lead the Republic. His own propaganda styled him as a great soldier, but the truth was that he spent very little time with the army and displayed only a modest talent. Yet their earlier lives were every bit as thrilling. 470 turbulent pages, colour photos, family trees, maps.


$35 NOW £5 73547 CLEOPATRA AND


ANTONY by Diana Preston On a stiflingly hot day in August 30BC, the 39 year old Queen of Egypt Cleopatra took her own life rather than be paraded in chains through Rome by her conqueror, Octavian - the first future emperor, Augustus. A few days earlier, her lover of 11 years Mark Antony had himself


committed suicide and died in her arms. Preston shows their personal lives as an integral part of great military, political and an ideological struggle that culminated in the fully-fledged rise of the Roman Empire, joining East and West. Cleopatra’s lengthy affair with Julius Caesar linked the might of Egypt with that of Rome. Her alliance with Antony and his subsequent spilt with Octavian set the stage for the end of the Republic. 333pp, colour photos and map. $26 NOW £7


73109 CHARLOTTE AND LIONEL: A


Rothschild Marriage by Stanley Weintraub Heirs to the fabulous Rothschild banking empire, the cousins Charlotte and Lionel had an arranged betrothal. The beautiful 17-year-old Charlotte missed the social whirl of Frankfurt and Naples. Lionel’s circle of friends such as Rossini and Disraeli made it easy for Charlotte to set about creating one of the greatest cultural and political salons of the Victorian era. As an M.P. Lionel made full use of his access to money. After the Franco- Prussian war, Bismarck demanded not only the return of Alsace but also six billion francs. By no means a doctrinaire Liberal, Rothschild opposed Gladstone’s proposal to abolish income tax. He predeceased Charlotte who lived in retirement until her death in 1884. 345pp, illus and family tree.


£7.99 NOW £3.50


73563 MAGNIFICENT MRS TENNANT by David Wallace


Sub-titled ‘The Adventurous Life of Gertrude Tennant, Victorian Grande Dame’. Gertrude Tennant’s life was remarkable for its length (1819-1918) but even more so for the influence she achieved as an unsurpassed London hostess. The salon she established when widowed in her early 50s attracted legions of celebrities, among them Gladstone, Joseph Chamberlain, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Thomas Huxley, John Everett Millais, Henry James and Robert Browning. In her youth she had had a flirtation with Gustav Flaubert, and in her later years she became the redoubtable Mother-in-law to the explorer Henry Morton Stanley. Gertrude is placed at the centre of European social, literary and intellectual life for the best part of a century. 304pp with 39 illus. $35 NOW £5


73988 QUEEN OF THE WITS: A Life of Laetitia Pilkington by Norma Clarke


Poet, fallen woman and wit, admired by Jonathan Swift in the 1730s but later dismissed by him as ‘the most profligate whore in either kingdom’, this colourful biography tells of a woman determined to be known as a writer on equal terms with men. Divorced by her husband after she was uncovered as an adulteress, Laetitia Pilkington led a life of precarious self-sufficiency. Through humour, intelligence and her skilful use of scandal, most notably in her Memoirs, she survived on the very fringes of respectability. 364 pages in paperback with colour and b/w plates. £10.99 NOW £4


73549 ELIZABETH: The Struggle for the Throne by David Starkey


Elizabeth I is famed as England’s most successful ruler. From princess and heir apparent to bastardised and disinherited royal, accused traitor to head of the princely household, Elizabeth experienced every vicissitude of fortune and extreme of condition in Tudor England. She


HISTORY CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1


those who remain little known outside the world of a few professional archaeologists and historians but whose lives deserve a wider audience. This is the 3rd (paperback) reprint of the second edition of this excellent primer, which sets out to provide a mix of representatives from across the entire dynastic period. As well as its concise and informative text, it also offers 73 b/w photos and maps and appendices of rulers, dynasties and royal tombs. 238pp.


£17.95 NOW £6


74893 FOR HONOUR AND FAME: Chivalry in England


1066-1500 by Nigel Saul In the first book to treat chivalry as part of the wider history of medieval England, a Professor of Medieval History tells the compelling story of England from the Norman Conquest to the aftermath of Henry VII’s triumph at Bosworth at the end of the Wars of the Roses. The world of medieval


chivalry is at once glamorous and violent, alluring yet alien. Our popular views of the period are largely inherited from the 19th century Romantics, for whom the concept evoked images of knights in shining armour (never tarnished or covered in blood) competing for the attention of beautiful young (never plain or old) ladies with white hands, spotless clothing and house-trained pets. But what was the reality? Were the rituals and romance of chivalry designed to provide an escape from the brutal facts of almost continuous warfare? Or, on the contrary, did they help to regulate the conduct of war and moderate its violent excesses? Structuring his analysis around the related themes of War, Politics and Knighthood, the Professor charts the introduction of chivalry by the Normans, the rise of the knightly class as a social élite, the fusion of chivalry with kingship in the 14th century, and its wide-ranging influence on literature, religion and architecture. He takes us into a world of kings and barons, castles and cathedrals, and shows us how it was shaped by Richard the Lionheart and the Crusades, by Magna Carta and the Rule of Law, by battles like Bannockburn and Crecy, by the Black Death and also by tournaments, round tables and the cult of Arthurianism. 416 authoritative pages with colour plates.


£25 NOW £8


74685 MOCTEZUMA AND THE AZTECS


by Elisenda Vila Llonch “And some of our soldiers even asked whether the things they saw were not a dream” - such was the first impression of the Spanish as they first caught their first sight of Moctezuma’s island city Tenochtitlan in 1519. With their horses, steel


armoury, lust for gold and no respect for the Aztec (or, more precisely, Mexica) world order, within months of the conquistadores’ arrival this awesome metropolis was a ruin, its king was dead and a mighty empire had been destroyed. Moctezuma II (c.1466 -1520) was the last ruler of the Mexica, coming to power in 1502. Under his rule the empire of the Mexica reached its zenith, with a territory that stretched from the Gulf Coast to the Pacific and wealth and buildings that rivalled anywhere in the world. Richly illustrated using the finest examples of the British Museum’s pre-Columbian art and archaeology collection, one of the Museum’s assistant curators presents here a concise portrait of this remarkable semi- divine figure from coronation to dramatic downfall. On the way we learn all about Mexica society and empire - palaces, court, warfare, gods, sacrifice, patronage and public image - and the aftermath of its annihilation by Cortes’s men. British Museum Press, 96pp, 61 colour illus.


£9.99 NOW £5


74783 DISCOVERING FORTIFICATIONS FROM THE TUDORS TO THE COLD WAR by Bernard Lowry


Looks at the decline and fall of feudal fortresses and British fortifications that were built in the age of artillery. The fortifications of Henry VIII resembled and were still called castles, but new influences from the Continent brought in the angled bastion and the age of the great forts such as Fort George in Scotland. Fortresses had to be strengthened and the introduction of concrete revolutionised later fortifications. Here is described how London was ringed by a chain of fortifications in the 19th century, how in 1940 Britain put its faith in pillboxes and secret structures built for defence in the Cold War. 136pp in Shire softback, colour photos and maps. £10.99 NOW £4.50


rose above it all to reign during a watershed moment in history. Starkey stirringly relies on Elizabeth’s eloquence and ability to use words to move people. Remainder mark. 363pp in paperback, colour plates. $14.99 NOW £4


73145 SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII by Antonia Fraser


Henry VIII changed the course of history with his exorbitant sexual appetite and his possibly genuine belief in the Protestant Reformation. The six wives were all exceptional women in their own right. Katherine of Aragon knew him when he was young and maintained a genuine love for her long-term partner in spite of being thrust aside for Anne Boleyn. Anne’s fierce Protestantism was allied with an aura of sexuality she could not control had she wished to. Jane Seymour achieved a permanent place in Henry’s volatile heart by dying quickly in childbirth. Humiliated by Henry for her ugliness, Anne of Cleves remained as a valued member of the court after the divorce. Katherine Howard was coached by her relatives to attract Henry. Catherine Parr was a woman of education, the author of several devotional works. Unites scholarship with readability. 589pp, paperback. Colour.


£12.99 NOW £4


74482 ENTHUSIASMS by Mark Girouard Born into aristocratic circles and brought up at Hardwick Hall, home of Aunt Evie, dowager Duchess of Devonshire, the architectural historian Mark Girouard developed an insatiable curiosity about history, literature and anything inexplicable. The 15 “enthusiasms” described in this book include the lives of his own ancestors. He starts with a discussion of Jane Austen’s unfinished novel Catherine and its relation to Austen’s unfulfilled romance with the dashing Tom Lefroy. The next topic is Oscar Wilde’s cultivation of the aristocracy and his progress through England’s country house parties, starting with his friend Frank Miles who gave him his initial entree into Aesthetic and probably homosexual circles. Lily Langtry, the Prince of Wales’s mistress, fell for Wilde in a big way. When Wilde was lampooned in Punch and in Gilbert and Sullivan’s opera Patience, though Bunthorne was in fact originally modelled on someone else, he felt he had finally arrived in high society. Still in the Victorian age, Girouard goes in search of “Walter”, the author of popular erotica, and of Pepita, mother of a claimant to the Sackville peerage. 192pp. £12.99 NOW £5


74612 CLASSICAL TRADITION: Harvard University


by Antony Grafton, Glenn


Most and Salvatore Settis A gigantic volume packed with colour plates and essays by one of the greatest scholars alive, this esoteric tool turns out to be a guide for living in the here and now. We


are shown how the Classical tradition has shaped human endeavour from art to government, mathematics to medicine, drama to urban planning, legal theory to popular culture. The fields of literature, philosophy, art, architecture, history, politics, religion and science, allegory and Aristotle, Atlantis to book manuscripts and production, Ganymede to music, the novel, Pliny the Younger, the professionalisation of classics, the French Revolution, Sparta to Xenophon and along the way there are some 150 colour images to add to our browsing pleasure. 1067pp in a big volume measuring over 6cm thick and 26 x 21 in a quality stitched hardback published by Harvard University Press. £36.99 NOW £17.50


74356 BRIEF HISTORY OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR by Helen Nicholson


Gives a full account of the Knights of the Order of the Temple of Solomon. Founded in the 12th century in Jerusalem, at the height of the Crusades it was a formidable fighting force which became powerful throughout Europe, eventually so rich and influential that it challenged the might of kings.


In a terrible wave of violence the Order was persecuted into extinction. Since then numerous theories have emerged from the tales of the Holy Grail to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and other novels. 351pp in paperback, photos. £8.99 NOW £4


23944 BOOK OF THE KINGS AND QUEENS OF


BRITAIN by G.S.P Freeman-Grenville Dr. Freeman-Grenville was the consultant for Burke’s Royal Families of the World and his major work was the Chronology of World History. This specially commissioned book is a magisterial and entertainingly written overview of British monarchs from Cerdic First, King of Wessex to George VI. All the regal chronology and insights into the foibles of one of the world’s most interesting and resilient constitutional monarchies. 245pp in paperback.


ONLY £4 74789 MEGALITHIC TOMBS AND LONG


BARROWS IN BRITAIN by Frances Lynch The dramatic stone monuments of Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and the Cotswolds and the less awe-inspiring earth and timber Megalithic tombs and long barrows of southern and north-eastern England are described and illustrated with plans and photographs. Discover huge stone chambers, earthen mounds as the various regional groups are defined. Includes list of sites to visit. Well illustrated 72 page Shire paperback.


£5.99 NOW £3


74360 CHRONICLE OF THE QUEENS OF EGYPT: From Early Dynastic Times to the Death of Cleopatra


by Joyce Tyldesley Surprisingly, this is the first book ever to recount the full history of the colourful queens of Egypt. Its vivid biographies cover 3,000 years of Egyptian


queenship from Early Dynastic times until the suicide of Cleopatra in 30 BC. There are stories of famous queens such as Hatshepsut, Nefertiti and Nefertari as well as lesser-known consort queens, which reveal the variety of roles a queen could play from supportive wife and mother to husband’s deputy in time of crisis, and even Pharaoh in her own right. Special features in each section, ranging from hairdressing to childbirth, female sphinxes to food, the oracle to sexual etiquette, and personal names to women in literature highlight different aspects of Egyptian culture. The second part documents the lives of individual queens on a dynasty- by-dynasty basis and the numerous wives and daughters maintained in pampered seclusion in the harem palaces? 224 pages 26cm x 20cm, 273 illus, 173 in colour.


£19.95 NOW £10


History


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History in a kaleidoscope 74626 A HISTORY OF THE


WORLD IN 100 OBJECTS by Neil Macgregor


Published in association with the British Museum, of which the author is director, and BBC Radio Four, this was a radio hit series as all listeners became engrossed in exploring past civilisations through the objects that defined them. Beginning 2 million years BC to 9,000 BC with the mummy of Hornedjitef and the clovis spear point, we move through the Ice Age, food and


sex, the first cities and states with objects like the Standard of Ur and the jade axe and early writing tablet, the beginnings of science and literature with the Flood Tablet and the statue of Ramesses II to gold coins, an Olmec stone mask, Chinese bronze bell, the head of Augustus, an Arabian bronze hand, a silk princess painting, Maya relief of royal blood letting, to a double headed serpent, a Hawaiian feather helmet, the credit card and a solar powered lamp and charger which is item number 100. Each is pictured in a close up colour


photograph. 707pp.


£45 NOW £20


74798 SHOEMAKING by June Swann Most village shoemakers had become repairers by the First World War and went out of business between the wars. The book tells the full story of shoemaking where two or three men would work on a pair of shoes with apprentices in larger towns serving the customer directly. It shows the growth of mass production in the 17th century with a recognisable factory system and warehouses in the cities. Northampton became synonymous with shoemaking and there is a rare image of a shoemaker from that city, arms outstretched. Finally the book shows the late development of mechanisation in the 1850s to today. Paperback, 32pp illus.


£3.50 NOW £2.75


71314 WATERMILLS by Martin Watts Another Shire publication written by the curator of Worsbrough Mill Museum, South Yorkshire. Watermills were once commonplace but, because of their domestic scale and their often picturesque waterside locations, many have now lost their original wheels and machinery and the building have been converted to other uses. Understanding the history and development of watermills as working buildings thus forms an important aspect of a wider appreciation of the economic and social development of Britain in the middle of the 18th century and the use of natural sources of power. 64 page paperback, colour photos, line art. £5.99 NOW £3


74614 COMMON SENSE AND RIGHTS OF MAN by Thomas Paine


Born in Thetford in 1737, Thomas Paine’s eloquent defense of individual freedom and a call for revolution was America’s first bestseller. The first part of his next most important work the Rights of Man was published in 1791 and is a fiery condemnation of the writings of Edmund Burke, a former friend with whom he broke ranks over the French Revolution. Paine believed in innovation, free thought and democracy. The Further Thought sections at the end of each chapter ask you to think and write about the many things and ideas found in the works. 480pp in compact softback.


£9.99 NOW £3.50 56595 LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON


POOR by Henry Mayhew A masterpiece of social observation. Mayhew takes us into the abyss, into a world without fixed employment where skills are declining and insecurity mounting, a world of criminality, pauperism and vice, of unorthodox personal relations and fluid families, a world from which regularity is absent and prosperity has departed. Making sense of this environment required curiosity, imagination and a novelist’s eye for detail, and Henry Mayhew possessed all three. 688 pages in paperback. ONLY £4


47915 JEWISH ANTIQUITIES by Flavius Josephus


The works of the Jewish writer Flavius Josephus represent one of the most important records of Judaism and the Jews that survives from the ancient world. It is an account in 20 books of Jewish history from the creation to the outbreak of the Jewish revolt against Rome in AD66. Here is a Testament transformed into an historical narrative of Greco-Roman character. More importantly, it is our only continuous account of Middle Eastern affairs that led up to the revolt. We have the famous translation of Josephus’ works by Cambridge professor William Whiston. 902 page paperback.


ONLY £4


72158 DISCOVERING ANTIQUE MAPS by Alan Hodgkiss


A perennial bestseller, first published in 1971. It begins with a discussion of two contrasting facets of map design - the topographical detail and the decorative treatment of features such as the cartouche, border and scale. This is followed by an outline of the earliest forms of cartography and an account of early printed maps from c.1500. Regional mapping in Britain from 1570 to the early days of the Ordnance Survey is dealt with chronologically. Plus town plans, route maps, marine charts, and finally mapmaking from tapestry to mosaic maps. 120pp in illustrated paperback.


£6.99 NOW £3


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