Practical advice and invaluable lessons for everyday life from a former Royal Marines Commando.

Mark Hardie MBE has trained Royal Marine Commandos for operations in the world’s harshest environments. In this inspirational guide he shows that being part of an elite fighting force doesn’t only take stamina and strength, it takes the right mindset. Once you can take charge of your mind, you can unlock your potential.

Whether you are heading into battle or facing the challenges of modern life, there are marine training techniques that will help you to think clearly, grasp the situation at hand and achieve your goals. Building on the author’s own first-hand experience of operations and training Royal Marines, the book covers:

• Learning what you can and can’t control, when to use intuition and analysis.
• How to remove distractions, avoid procrastination and maximise your efficiency.
• How to increase your strength with equipment-free exercises.
• How to take charge of stress, sharpen your senses and learn essential survival techniques.
• Discover what makes a good leader and learn how to manage conflict.
• How to make decisions, solve problems and employ the commando spirit in your everyday life.

Highly illustrated and easy-to-follow, this book is suitable for all ages and all walks of life. When you can anticipate, adapt and achieve, you can Think Like a Marine.

An instructional book about the crucial questions that masters ask themselves before committing to a move – a checklist for all players to ask themselves before making their own moves.

Beginners learn to ask themselves the key questions. As they improve, they ask more sophisticated questions: ‘What did my opponent’s last move allow me to do?", ‘Where is his position weakest?", ‘Should I take an irrevocable step now or wait?’, ‘What does my opponent want me to do?’. For chess master players these are almost subconscious checklist. Andy Soltis runs through the checklist of things to ask before making a move with fascinating and illuminating examples of real chess games,  from Karpov to Judith Polgar, from Magnus Carlsen to Fabiano Caruana. 

A key to improving is to ask all of these questions and find the right answers, for players looking to improve. The advice of Chess Masters is good advice for all chess players and the best way to take your play to the next level.

Harness the beauty of the natural world to create unique textile art pieces.

Learn how to create beautiful textile art inspired by details in nature in this practical and inspirational guide. Acclaimed textile artist Marian Jazmik shows how to use unusual recycled and repurposed materials combined with traditional fabric and thread.

Marian reveals the secrets of her lushly textured and sculptural embroidered pieces, from initial photograph to finished object. Exploring nature as a constant source of inspiration, she shows how to turn a chance spotting of lichen on a tree trunk or a scattering of autumn leaves into glorious textile or mixed-media art. Marian goes on to explore the myriad of techniques she uses in her work, including:

• How to begin with photography, homing in on details in nature.
• How to manipulate images to create microscopic and surprising detail.
• How to translate the images into 3-D work, using an eclectic mix of natural and man-made textiles, as well as unusual recycled materials otherwise be destined for landfill (packaging, plastics and household DIY products).
• Hand and machine embroidery.
• Dyeing, printing and painting.
• Using heat gun and soldering iron to create heavily textured surfaces.

Packed with practical tips, inspiration and illustrated throughout with glorious examples of Marian’s work, this book will provide you with endless imaginative ideas for distilling the wonders of nature into your own textile art.

Discover the rich creative possibilities of fragmentation and repair in textile art.

Fragmentation and repair are two of the biggest buzzwords in textile and mixed-media art. In this fascinating book, renowned artist Shelley Rhodes explores both concepts, with a wealth of fresh ideas and practical advice.

Drawing on her own practice, Shelley explains how she reconstructs and reassembles cloth, paper and other materials to create new pieces, often incorporating found objects and items she has collected over the years to add depth and emotional resonance. From piercing and devoré to patching and darning, techniques include:

• Fragmentation of materials, text and image.
• Repair using darning and patching along with pins, tape, adhesive and plaster.
• The Japanese concepts of wabi-sabi (finding beauty in imperfection) and mottainai (using every last scrap).
• Using salvaged and recycled materials, and repurposing household items.
• Methods of distressing and manipulating surfaces including weathering, abrasion, burning, piercing, staining and burying.
• Collage, working in a series and collecting fragments.

Beautifully illustrated with Shelley’s own pieces alongside those of other leading artists, this fascinating book is the ideal companion for any textile artist wanting to bring notions of fragility, fragmentation and repair into their own work.

Dive into figure painting with this fresh take on capturing the human form in watercolour.

Painter Leo Crane and art model Roy Joseph Butler explore how to interpret the gestures and movements of the figure through the language of paint. Through a range of exercises, they show how to work with the fluidity and immediacy of watercolour to create lively paintings that are bursting with character and narrative possibility.

With experience in both fine art and animation, they share tips on bringing life to the figure, and encourage you to discover a liberating and enjoyable approach to paint. Packed with techniques, exercises and step-by-step demonstrations, the book covers:

• The Figure: Observing the human figure and working with life models.
• Watercolour: Materials, tools, techniques and colour theory.
• Speed: Capturing movement and painting at speed, with two-minute studies.
• Gesture: Poses, sequences and conveying expression.
• Story: Creating mood, context, composition and narrative.
• Beyond the Figure: Bringing human energy and movement to still life, animals and landscapes.
• From the models: Life model case studies.

Paintings by Leo feature throughout to demonstrate the working process through to finished product. With a focus on the dynamic exchange between artist and subject, speed, gesture and story, this book will appeal to artists looking anew at life painting and who are eager to capture the essence of character in movement.

This fascinating book explores how to introduce notions of time and place to your textile art practice, to give deeper meaning and emotional resonance to your work.

Renowned British textile artist Claire Wellesley-Smith demonstrates how these two fundamental concepts are linked – we experience time through place, and vice versa – and make endlessly rewarding themes for textile art. Practical ideas for incorporating time and place into your work include:

• Taking the time: how to observe mindfulness and care in choosing materials, and how to stitch with intention to create a more meaningful piece of work.

• Textile temporalities: observing time passing through stitch, through daily embroidery journals and recording aspects of life, either environmental or personal, over certain durations of time.

• Gathering together: Using textile art within the wider community to record memories, share ideas and create a sense of togetherness.

• Geographies of making: creating site-specific embroidery pieces, for display or otherwise, that are tied to a specific place and time.

• Stitching connection: ideas for collaborating with other artists in group projects that are passed back and forth between the participants over time.

Illustrated with exquisite examples of the author’s own textile work and that of other artists from around the world who embrace similar topics, this thoughtful, contemplative book offers a wealth of inspiration on how to incorporate these important themes into your own textile art practice.

SHORTLISTED in The Creative Book Awards 2024.

A creative and beautiful book packed with inspiring ideas to help you capture likenesses and explore personalities in stitch, from a well-loved textile artist.

Anne Kelly’s evocative and nostalgic work often incorporates portraits – of friends, family, historical figures and even pets. Within these pages she shares her approach to textile portraiture, bringing in a wealth of different embroidery techniques, including hand and machine embroidery, quilting and appliqué, to render in cloth the nuances of facial expressions and the personalities of her subjects. The book covers:

• Selfies at Home: making the perfect self-portrait in cloth.

• Representation and Culture: how portraits have been used in textile art for cultural expression around the world.

• Stylized Imagery: going beyond the traditional portrait into abstraction.

• Place and Time: creating a sense of place with portraiture, sometimes incorporating photographs.

• Narratives: how to create a fuller story using deeply personal ephemera and related imagery.

• Pet Projects: immortalising your pets in your textile work.

Beautifully illustrated with stunning examples of her own work and that of intriguing textile artists who specialise in portraiture from around the world, this is the ideal book for embroiderers and textile artists who want to introduce this often tricky subject area into their work. 

366 prompts for noticing nature every day of the year.
Arranged in day-by-day format, this beautiful book is a celebration of the nature you can find in your city or town, such as urban foxes prowling in the street, wildflowers sprouting from a crack in the pavement, butterflies on your balcony and the joys of wandering along a canal path. 

Learn how to put up a bug hotel on the 5th January, search for cherry blossom on the 4th April and have a picnic underneath a willow’s branches on the 11th June. There are cloud formations to spot, avenues of trees to walk down and elderberries to harvest.

Over the past few years, many city dwellers have learned to appreciate the nature on their doorsteps, as part of the lasting legacy of lockdown. This timely book is a celebration of the vast variety of wildlife around us, proving that you don’t need a trip to the countryside to enjoy the natural world.

A guide to over 60 of Britain’s most notable abbeys and monasteries.

Taking you on a journey that has inspired pilgrims and visitors for centuries, Abbeys and Priories of Britain is the perfect introduction to some of the country’s oldest and most beautiful religious centres.

The guide will take you from the wilds of the Isle of Iona in Scotland and Iona Abbey to Tintern Abbey in the beautiful Wye Valley in Wales, to the pomp and circumstance of Westminster Abbey, shining regally in England’s capital. While many of the entries are now ruins due to Henry VIII’s ‘Dissolution of the Monasteries’ period, a visit still reveals the rich influence and legacy they have had on Britain’s history.

Beautifully illustrated with over 130 stunning colour images, and with concise and accessible history for each entry, this is both a perfect guide and a much-cherished souvenir of a visit.

Includes extended entries on Binham Priory, Blanchland Abbey, Buckfast Abbey, Dryburgh, Fountains Abbey, Glastonbury Abbey, Hexham Abbey, Holyrood Abbey, Jedburgh Abbey, Lindisfarne Priory, Melrose Abbey, Mountgrace Priory, Rievaulx Abbey, Selby Abbey, Strata Florida Abbey, Tewkesbury Abbey, Tintern Abbey, Westminster Abbey, Whitby Abbey and St George’s Windsor.

Join us on a behind-the-scenes tour of the filming locations for the award-winning Netflix series The Crown.

The series recreates the romance and intrigue at the heart of our very own royal family and within these pages we seek out the settings so integral to the story, linking each ‘fictional’ site to its real-life counterpart.

Covering the first four series, starting with Princess Elizabeth’s marriage to Prince Philip in 1947 and concluding in 1990 – in particular with the relationship of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer following their 1981 wedding – this is the perfect opportunity for every fan of The Crown to follow in the footsteps of royalty.

Stunning Ely Cathedral provides the backdrop to the iconic Westminster Abbey where Princess Elizabeth’s wedding took place, while Belvoir Castle, Hatfield House and Burghley House are just three of the fine locations that ‘double’ as Windsor Castle. Historic Winchester Cathedral transforms into St Paul’s Cathedral in the run-up to the wedding of Charles and Diana, its versatility also seeing it representing both Romsey Abbey and Westminster Abbey.

Sweeping across Britain from London and the home counties to the Welsh treasure that is Caernarfon Castle, heading north to Manchester and Liverpool and onwards to the majestic Scottish Highlands, The Crown’s Royal Britain takes you on a royal tour of Britain and the venues that were an inspiration for this special drama.

Many of the featured sites are open to the public so as well as learning about how these places played their part you can visit and enjoy the real spectacle in person.