There is a young fellow named Mick

Who’s adapted the old limerick

To cover, with mirth

The whole history of Earth

And what made its characters tick.

These 100 lively and humorous limericks take us back to before the beginning of time itself, to the Big Bang, to the present day. Covering everyone’s favourite history lessons (and some surprising ones too!), humourist and puzzle guru Mick Twister has cleverly raided the tomes of the past, picked at the bones of the world’s greatest figures, moments and events, and condensed the most complex of human activities into short and hilarious poems to make you chuckle.

From a geezer called Caesar to the advent of the World Wide Web, this is the funniest way to learn about the past. Henry VIII, Mary Wollstonecraft, Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela and Alan Turing all get the limerick treatment along with important world events such as the Boston Tea Party, the Berlin Wall’s rise and fall and the Watergate scandal.

Accompanied by amazing illustrations and witty commentary, you’ll learn so much about the history of the world in this book – and laugh out loud as you do so. Whoever said that history was boring has clearly not discovered this book! 

THE IRISH TIMES BESTSELLER, NOW IN PAPERBACK.

‘A brilliant, entertaining read.’ – Irish Times

The head of the Guinness family tells the dramatic true story of how his ancestors created the largest brewery in the world.

Growing up at Farmleigh, the country house outside Dublin, Arthur Edward Guinness – Ned for short – was fascinated by the secrets and legends that surrounded the early generations of his famous family of brewers.

Against the backdrop of epic and convulsive times in Ireland and Britain, he explores the struggles and passions of his ancestors, who went from obscurity in Kildare to the pinnacle of Irish and British society.

Each generation confronted new challenges until the dramatic events when the author’s great-great-grandfather bought out his glamorous older brother and floated Guinness on the stock exchange. Overnight Edward Cecil Guinness became Ireland’s richest man.

This is a tale in which brewing genius, sibling rivalry, bounteous philanthropy and astonishing social mobility are interwoven with historic national events, including the Act of Union, Catholic Emancipation, the Famine, the Home Rule movement, the Dublin Lockout and ultimately Irish independence. It is the inside story, as told by Ned Guinness.

‘The definitive history of the Guinness brewing dynasty.’ – Irish Independent

‘A fantastic book.’ –The Business (RTÉ Radio 1)

‘Really, really fascinating. More than a family biography, it’s a book that positions Guinness and its commercial story against the backdrop of a city.’ – Donal Fallon

An illustrated guide to the life and times of one of the most romantic and tragic figures in British history, Mary Queen of Scots.

Taking you through the story of her life, it outlines Mary’s early years as the Infant Queen before her childhood in France and her short-lived marriage to Francis I. It then moves on to her time in Scotland and her scandalous marriage to Lord Darnley and her abduction by her third husband, Lord Bothwell. It also covers her long years of imprisonment and ultimately her execution by her own cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, after being accused of treason.

Reissued in a brand new hardback format and beautifully illustrated with images from the time of key sites, portraits and artefacts, this fascinating book uncovers the secrets of a tragic life and reveals why her story still resonates today. It’s a must-read for any student of history or visitor to Britain.

Awarded History Book of the Year 2025 by London Historians – ‘A complete joy.’

SHORTLISTED for the British Book Design and Production Awards 2026.

A stylish collection of beautifully designed maps of each individual London borough, paired with quirky and fascinating facts about what you’ll find there.

Cartographer and illustrator Mike Hall is renowned for his retro-themed print collection of boldly coloured, highly detailed maps of every London borough, inspired by classic 1960s graphic design. Published to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the boroughs’ establishment, The Boroughs of London brings together all of Mike’s London maps in one elegant volume to pore over.

But that’s not all: alongside the maps is a wealth of authoritative but chatty commentary on each borough from Matt Brown, author of many Batsford books and acknowledged London expert. Packed with interesting facts, anecdotes and trivia, the book provides an introduction to each borough and its constituent neighbourhoods, as well as coverage of ten key places of interest per borough, including historic buildings, monuments, squares, parks and street markets, accompanied by quirky illustrations. It all adds up to a fascinating snapshot of the borough’s rich history and present-day diversity and culture.

From well-known, much-visited central London boroughs like Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to less famous, further-flung suburban areas such as Bexley and Hillingdon, this book provides endless revelations about one of the greatest cities of the world, borough by borough. It’s the perfect book for London-dwellers, London visitors and London obsessives, history fans, cartophiles and graphic design aficionados. Readers will want to visit every borough!

A fascinating look at fashion label Prada in its most iconic and foundational decade – the nineties.

Nylon backpacks, ugly chic, celebrities, ‘intellectual fashion’ – welcome to Prada in the Nineties, the decade when the Italian label redefined fashion. This fully illustrated guide examines the Italian fashion label in its transformative era, looking at the collections, the advertising, the impact and the story of the label.

Whether you are a fashion devotee, or you simply know Prada as what the devil wears, the label has transcended beyond high fashion, and become part of contemporary culture, as people track down its clothes on resale websites and obsessively discuss new collections. And while Prada is not the only designer label that has achieved this feat, it may be the only one to have done so while making clothes that are often described as ‘intellectual’.

Taking the leather-goods company founded by her grandfather in 1913, and turning it into one of the biggest fashion companies in the world, Miuccia Prada has achieved an outstanding feat, having only launched her first womenswear collection in 1988. And in the nineties, she would come to hit an unprecedented stride, with clothes that captured precisely the zeitgeist; that went against all other trends, bucked the norms of good taste, of beauty, of propriety, but also elevated a new kind of womanhood and a new kind of femininity that could live in tension with itself, that could be – and was – filled with contradictions. Indeed, one Prada dress, worn by Uma Thurman at the 1995 Academy Awards, is so famous it has its own Wikipedia page. 

Written by Harper’s Bazaar journalist and Prada obsessive Laia Garcia-Furtado, and illustrated by fashion stylist and artist Rachel Song, Prada in the Nineties is the story of this decade, this label, and the must-have for the fashion fan in your life.

This is the first in a series, with the next titles being Versace in the Eighties and Schiaparelli in the Thirties. 

Word count: 40,000

Stunning collection of early prints, exploring how they transformed art, belief, power, and the spread of ideas.

This richly illustrated volume offers fresh perspectives on iconic Renaissance and Baroque prints and their enduring impact on viewers. Featuring outstanding examples of over 100 prints by celebrated artists such as Dürer, Rembrandt, Goya, and other Old Masters, the book explores how printmaking sparked imagination, deepened faith, and elicited desire across four centuries.

The book also traces the technical evolution of print media and explores how prints became powerful tools of mass communication, fundamentally altering how ideas and knowledge spread. Its thematic focus reveals the striking ways prints shaped devotional practices, political critique, artistic self-promotion, and class- and gender-based identities in the pre-photographic world.

Poetic, immersive artist’s book blending narrative, technology, and resistance across time and space.

Contemporary artist Toni Dove creates media machines that blur the boundaries between performance and installation and fuse film, game, experimental theater and artificial intelligence-based interaction. This extraordinary artist’s book is a love story, a conversation between two characters connecting across time, each pushing back against an encroaching dark age. Hypatia, a Hellenistic astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher assassinated in 415 CE returns 10 years in our future as a furious ghost. As she navigates her new environment, she absorbs what has happened over time and encounters a NASA engineer building a solar array off-world power station. 

The book, part of a project that includes an installation and a performance, is a poetic and dream-like experience about resistance and the consequences of the fear of knowledge. Augmented Reality adds a magical third dimension, bringing characters and scenes off the page with sound and image using a phone or tablet.

A glorious celebration of Horrockses, the much-loved fashion brand that brought design, style and colour to post-war Britain.

Horrockses was the post-war British fashion brand that led the ready-to-wear market, empowered women designers and integrated avant-garde artistic ideas into its textile designs, transforming everyday clothing into wearable art.

Based in Lancashire, Horrockses Fashions made stylish garments accessible to women from all walks of life – from factory workers to royalty. Famously, in 1953–54 Queen Elizabeth II packed Horrockses cotton dresses for her Commonwealth tour. Their full-skirted dresses used colourful textile prints, with floral, geometric or avant-garde designs by artists including Eduardo Paolozzi or Graham Sutherland, and empowered women designers such as Joyce Badrock too.

Everyday Glamour is led by fashion historian and curator Scott Schiavone, with an introduction by renowned design historian Christine Boydell. Five more experts – Lisa Mason, Paige Blake, Matthew Storey, Liz Tregenza and Nadine Coyne – discuss the brand’s origins, impact and its appeal to vintage fashion followers today.

Everyday Glamour is published to mark the 80th anniversary of the first collection and a major exhibition at The Harris – showcasing the world’s largest Horrockses collection.

An arresting survey of photographic practice, drawn from the Eskenazi Museum of Art’s extraordinary collection.

Spanning from 1856 to 2017, this beautifully illustrated book includes iconic photographs by pioneers such as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, alongside contemporary innovators like Edward Burtynsky and Vik Muniz. Structured around five thematic chapters—ranging from motion and time to war, the body, industry, and nature—the book offers an expansive and enticing narrative of photography’s evolution in both form and function.

Drawn from the well-known and prestigious collection of Lee Marks and John C. DePrez Jr. recently donated to the Eskenazi Museum of Art, the book is designed for a broad audience, with more than 100 beautifully reproduced plates, insightful essays, and a candid interview with the collectors that reflects on how photography has changed, both as a medium and a market.

Through stunning, intimate photography, this book brings orchids vividly to life. Showcasing the collection of Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Florida— an international leader in the study and conservation of orchids and other epiphytes—it explores the extraordinary beauty and diversity of one of the largest and most admired families of flowering plants.

A visual feast and a celebration of botanical wonder, this volume will enchant all who are drawn to the unique splendor of orchids.

Fascinating illustrated survey of England’s churches in all their variety — one from every diocese in the country.

For centuries church buildings have defined the English landscape and acted as landmarks by land and sea. First and foremost places of worship and mission, they have often been used by the wider community, preserving local stories. But they have also been integral to the country’s history, telling the story of Christianity in England as well as marking significant events from our past.

The churches featured in this beautifully illustrated volume have been drawn from each of the Church of England’s 42 dioceses to showcase their varied architecture, art and uses. They are all extraordinary buildings and many of them contain exceptional treasures. This book pays tribute not only to the exquisite architectural and artistic heritage of our nation, but also to the remarkable unsung heroes of our church buildings: the clergy and the many volunteers who keep them open and sustainable. We hope it will encourage many more to visit, enjoy and support the Church of England’s unique heritage of nearly 16,000 church buildings.

A moving anthology of First World War poetry, including well-known poets alongside some lesser-known voices.

Reissued in a larger format with a new cover, this evocative collection brings you 80 poems from the First World War, from a broad selection of 24 poets including Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, Edward Thomas and Rupert Brooke. Also featured are less famous poets such as Leslie Coulson, the American poet Alan Seeger, and Charles Sorley, whom the midcentury Poet Laureate John Masefield considered the greatest loss of all the poets during the war. Many of the poets featured in the book were tragically killed during the war itself.

Some of the classic war poems appear here, such as John McCrae’s ‘In Flanders Fields’, Wilfred Owen’s ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and W. B. Yeats’s ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’, alongside some less familiar verse from soldiers such as ‘A Listening Post’ by R. E. Vernède and the heartbreaking ‘To My Daughter Betty’, penned by T. M. Kettle four days before the poet’s death in action in 1916.

Together, the poems in this book give a powerful sense of the futility and horror of the war, with some lighter moments of beauty and cameraderie, and help to keep the memory of these fallen heroes alive.