How did the jaguar get his spots? What happened to the four suns that came before our own? Where was Aztlan, mythical homeland of the Aztecs?For decades, the popular image of the Mexica...
Surprising, questioning, challenging, enriching: the Pocket Perspectives series celebrates writers and thinkers who have helped shape the conversation across the arts. Mixing classic and contempora...
A concise history of Paris and the great events and personalities, from prehistory to the present, that have shaped its unique cultural legacy.Once described as "that metropolis of...
The story of modern British art history told through the stories of its women.Consider for a moment the history of modern art in Britain; you may struggle to land on a narrative that fe...
Tells the fascinating story of the journey taken by the Bauhaus – both the concept behind the school and some of the individuals who represented it – from Germany to Britain and the USA...
While highly finished drawings and paintings frequently feature in histories of botanical art, the preparatory sketches, first impressions and creative thoughts on paper behind them are rarely seen...
A fresh look at the stories at the heart of Norse mythology, exploring their cultural impact right up to the present day. The heroes and villains of Norse mythology have endured for centuries, inf...
Karl Lagerfeld is a modern master of couture. He is also famously outspoken: his wise, surprising statements pop up like offbeat news flashes. This compact collection of quotations pays homage to t...
Trail running is as simple as it sounds: just put one foot in front of the other, somewhere unpaved and outdoors. The opportunities it presents are endless, with a wide variety of routes that stret...
The first century AD was one of momentous events: the end of the Roman empire, the rise of Christianity across western Europe and the disappearance of Persia from the Near East; an era in which the...
No other art movement in history has contained two artists as different as Magritte and Miró. This is because Surrealism was not in origin an art movement, but a philosophical strategy. It w...
Bestselling author of Modernists & Mavericks Martin Gayford recounts some of the extraordinary journeys he has made in the name of art. In the course of a career thinking and writing about art,...
A concise yet wide-reaching survey, this book presents visual art in California from the early twentieth century to the present day as a microcosm of the global contemporary, shaped by a compelling...
Described by an admirer as 'the High Druidess of fashion, the Supreme Pontiff, Perpetual Curate and Archpresbyter of elegance, the Vicaress of Style', Diana Vreeland is the cloth from which 21st-ce...
Discover the lives of the ancient Romans, pieced together from inscriptions, discarded letters, biographies and myth over two thousand years of history. The Roman empire witnessed a huge diversity...
First published in 1950, this enchanting picture book by the creator of Madeline tells the story of a music teacher whose greedy landlord is foiled in his efforts to evict her on Christmas Eve. In ...
Acknowledging how architecture, painting, sculpture and the decorative arts reflect the culture and society of their time, this book in the Art Essentials series invites the reader to experience an...
Star Trek Pop-Ups delivers seven iconic Star Trek images in a new way - popping off the page in three dimensions. From the Enterprise NX01 in flight to the dreaded Borg cube from The Next Generatio...
Revolutions hold a distinct place in the popular imagination. This may be because their rhetoric, such as ‘liberty, fraternity, equality’, articulates aspirations with which we identify...
Salvador Dalí was, and remains, among the most universally recognizable artists of the twentieth century. What accounts for this popularity? His excellence as an artist? Or his genius as a s...