Material culture

  • National Treasures

    £10.99

    As Hitler prepared to invade Poland during the sweltering summer of 1939, men and women from across London’s museums, galleries and archives formulated ingenious plans to send the nation’s highest prized objects to safety. Using stately homes, tube tunnels, slate mines, castles, prisons, stone quarries and even their own homes, a dedicated bunch of unlikely misfits packed up the nation’s greatest treasures and, in a race against time, dispatched them throughout the country on a series of top-secret wartime adventures. ‘National Treasures’ highlights a moment from our history when an unlikely coalition of mild-mannered civil servants, social oddballs and metropolitan aesthetes became the front line in the heritage war against Hitler.

  • Antarctica

    £25.00

    This powerfully relevant work tells the history of Antarctica through 100 varied and fascinating objects drawn from collections around the world. Retracing the history of Antarctica through 100 varied and fascinating objects drawn from collections across the world, this book is published to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the first crossing into the Antarctic Circle by James Cook aboard Resolution, on 17th January, 1773.

  • Tutankhamun’s Trumpet

    £25.00

    Published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the moment that Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon broke open Tutankhamun’s tomb, a riveting account of the treasures they found, by one of Britain’s leading Egyptologists.

  • The Children of Ash and Elm

    £16.99

    The Viking Age – between 750 and 1050 – saw an unprecedented expansion of the Scandinavian peoples. As traders and raiders, explorers and colonists, they reshaped the world between eastern North America and the Asian steppe. For a millennium, though, their history has largely been filtered through the writings of their victims. Based on the latest archaeological and textual evidence, this book tells the story of the Vikings on their own terms: their politics, their cosmology, their art and culture. From Björn Ironside, who led an expedition to sack Rome, to Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, the most travelled woman in the world, Price shows us the real Vikings, not the caricatures they have become in popular culture and history.

  • A Simpler Life

    £15.00

    Exploring ideas around minimalism, simplicity and how to live comfortably with less.

  • Murakami T

    £14.99

    Here are photographs of Murakami’s extensive and personal T-shirt collection, accompanied by essays that reveal a side of the writer rarely seen by the public. Haruki Murakami’s books have galvanized millions around the world. Many of his fans know about his 10,000-vinyl-record collection, and his obsession with running, but few have heard about a more intimate, and perhaps more unique, passion: his T-shirt-collecting habit. In Murakami T, the famously reclusive novelist shows us his T-shirts – including gems found in bookshops, charity shops and record stores – from those featuring whisky, animals, cars and superheroes, to souvenirs of marathons and a Beach Boys concert in Honolulu, to the shirt that inspired the beloved short story ‘Tony Takitani’.

  • National Treasures

    £16.99

    As Hitler prepared to invade Poland during the sweltering summer of 1939, men and women from across London’s museums, galleries and archives formulated ingenious plans to send the nation’s highest prized objects to safety. Using stately homes, tube tunnels, slate mines, castles, prisons, stone quarries and even their own homes, a dedicated bunch of unlikely misfits packed up the nation’s greatest treasures and, in a race against time, dispatched them throughout the country on a series of top-secret wartime adventures. ‘National Treasures’ highlights a moment from our history when an unlikely coalition of mild-mannered civil servants, social oddballs and metropolitan aesthetes became the front line in the heritage war against Hitler.

  • Poor

    Poor

    £9.99

    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.

  • Pulse Glass: And the beat of other hearts

    £16.99

    Before doctors had access to accurate pocket watches, they timed a patient’s pulse with a 30-second sandglass. A ‘pulse glass’ was a functional piece of medical equipment, designed to measure a life, never intended to survive for centuries. But Gillian Tindall inherited her great-great-grandfather’s pulse glass, which holds the heartbeats of many by-gone generations and offers a portal to 19th-century Anglo-Irish life, to her grandmother’s marriage and the assorted fates of the next generation. A personal and global history in objects, Gillian Tindall traces the memories and meanings that accrue to the artefacts of human lives through time.

  • Fierce Bad Rabbits: The Tales Behind Children’s Picture Books

    £14.99

    ‘Fierce Bad Rabbits’ takes us on an eye-opening journey in a pea-green boat through the history of picture books. From Edward Lear through to Beatrix Potter and contemporary picture books like ‘Stick Man’, Clare Pollard shines a light on some of our best-loved childhood stories, their histories and what they really mean. Because the best picture books are far more complex than they seem – and darker too. Monsters can gobble up children and go unnoticed, power is not always used wisely, and the wild things are closer than you think. Sparkling with wit, magic and nostalgia, ‘Fierce Bad Rabbits’ weaves in tales from Clare’s own childhood, and her re-readings as a parent, with fascinating facts and theories about the authors behind the books. Introducing you to new treasures while bringing your childhood favourites to vivid life, it will make you see even stories you’ve read a hundred times afresh.

  • History Of The World In 100 Objects

    History Of The World In 100 Objects

    £16.99

    Neil MacGregor’s radio series ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’ has been a unique event that has set a benchmark for public service broadcasting in the UK and across the world. This book is the tie-in to that event, reproducing the scripts describing the objects that made us who we are.