An extraordinary yet little-known scientific advance occurred in the opening years of the nineteenth century when a young amateur meteorologist, Luke Howard, gave the clouds the names by which they are known to this day. By creating a language to define structures that had, up to then, been considered random & unknowable, Howard revolutionized the science of meteorology & earned the admiration of his leading contemporaries in art, literature & science. Richard Hamblyn charts Howard`s life from obscurity to international fame, & back to obscurity once more. He recreates the period`s intoxicating atmosphere of scientific discovery, & shows how this provided inspiration for figures such as Goethe, Shelley & Constable. Offering rich insights into the nature of celebrity, the close relationship between the sciences & the arts, & the excitement generated by new ideas, ” The Invention of Clouds” is an enthralling work of social & scientific history. ...

ORPHAN, CLOCK KEEPER, & THIEF, twelve-year-old Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets & anonymity. But when his world suddenly interlocks with an eccentric girl & her grandfather, Hugo`s undercover life, & his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy. A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, a mechanical man, & a hidden message from Hugo`s dead father form the backbone of this intricate, tender, & spellbinding mystery. ...

` We are a trading community, a commercial people. Murder is doubtless a very shocking offence, nevertheless as what is done is not to be undone, let us make our money out of it.` Punch Murder in the 19th century was rare. But murder as sensation & entertainment became ubiquitous
- transformed into novels, into broadsides & ballads, into theatre & melodrama & opera
- even into puppet shows & performing dog-acts. In this meticulously researched & compelling book, Judith Flanders
- author of ` The Victorian House`
- retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murder
- both famous & obscure. From the crimes (and myths) of Sweeney Todd & Jack the Ripper, to the tragedies of the murdered Marr family in London`s East End, Burke & Hare & their bodysnatching business in Edinburgh, & Greenacre who transported his dismembered fiancee around town by omnibus. With an irresistible cast of swindlers, forgers, & poisoners, the mad, the bad & the dangerous to know, ` The Invention of Murder` is both a gripping tale of crime & punishment, & history at its most readable.




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Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist: more things are named after him than anyone else. There are towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the South American coast, there`s a penguin, a giant squid
- even the Mare Humboldtianum on the moon. His colourful adventures read like something out of a Boy`s Own story: Humboldt explored deep into the rainforest, climbed the world`s highest volcanoes & inspired princes & presidents, scientists & poets alike. Napoleon was jealous of him; Simon Bolivar`s revolution was fuelled by his ideas; Darwin set sail on the Beagle because of Humboldt; & Jules Verne`s Captain Nemo owned all his many books. He simply was, as one contemporary put it, `the greatest man since the Deluge`. Taking us on a fantastic voyage in his footsteps
- racing across anthrax-infected Russia or mapping tropical rivers alive with crocodiles
- Andrea Wulf shows why his life & ideas remain so important today. Humboldt predicted human-induced climate change as early as 1800, & The Invention of Nature traces his ideas as they go on to revolutionize & shape science, conservation, nature writing, politics, art & the theory of evolution. He wanted to know & understand everything & his way of thinking was so far ahead of his time that it`s only coming into its own now. Alexander von Humboldt really did invent the way we see nature.


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The Invention of Paris is a tour through the streets & history of the French capital under the guidance of radical Parisian author & publisher Eric Hazan. Hazan reveals a city whose squares echo with the riots, rebellions & revolutions of the nineteenth & twentieth centuries. Combining the raconteur`s ear for a story with a historian`s command of the facts, he introduces an incomparable cast of characters: the literati, the philosophers & the artists-Balzac, Baudelaire, Blanqui, Flaubert, Hugo, Maney, & Proust, of course; but also Doisneau, Nerval & Rousseau. It is a Paris dyed a deep red in its convictions. It is haunted & vitalized by the history of the barricades, which Hazan retells in rich detail. The Invention of Paris opens a window on the forgotten byways of the capital`s vibrant & bloody past, revealing the city in striking new colors. ...

We live in a world made by science. How & when did this happen? This book tells the story of the extraordinary intellectual & cultural revolution that gave birth to modern science, & mounts a major challenge to the prevailing orthodoxy of its history. Before 1492 it was assumed that all significant knowledge was already available; there was no concept of progress; people looked for understanding to the past not the future. This book argues that the discovery of America demonstrated that new knowledge was possible: indeed it introduced the very concept of `discovery`, & opened the way to the invention of science. The first crucial discovery was Tycho Brahe`s nova of 1572: proof that there could be change in the heavens. The telescope (1610) rendered the old astronomy obsolete. Torricelli`s experiment with the vacuum (1643) led directly to the triumph of the experimental method in the Royal Society of Boyle & Newton. By 1750 Newtonianism was being celebrated throughout Europe. The new science did not consist simply of new discoveries, or new methods. It relied on a new understanding of what knowledge might be, & with this came a new language: discovery, progress, facts, experiments, hypotheses, theories, laws of nature
- almost all these terms existed before 1492, but their meanings were radically transformed so they became tools with which to think scientifically. We all now speak this language of science, which was invented during the Scientific Revolution. The new culture had its martyrs (Bruno, Galileo), its heroes (Kepler, Boyle), its propagandists (Voltaire, Diderot), & its patient labourers (Gilbert, Hooke). It led to a new rationalism, killing off alchemy, astrology, & belief in witchcraft. It led to the invention of the steam engine & to the first Industrial Revolution. David Wootton`s landmark book changes our understanding of how this great transformation came about, & of what science is.
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This book argues that while Anglo-Saxon culture has given rise to virtually no myths at all, myth has played a central role in the historical development of Scottish identity. Trevor-Roper explores three myths across 400 years of Scottish history: the political myth of the 'ancient constitution' of Scotland; the literary myth, including Walter Scott as well as Ossian & ancient poetry; & the sartorial myth of tartan & the kilt, invented
- ironically by Englishmen
- in quite modern times. Trevor-Roper reveals myth as an often deliberate cultural construction used to enshrine a people's identity. While his treatment of Scottish myth is highly critical, indeed debunking, he shows how the ritualisation & domestication of Scotland's myths as local colour diverted the Scottish intelligentsia from the path that led German intellectuals to a dangerous myth of racial supremacy. This compelling script was left unpublished on Trevor-Roper's death in 2003 & is now made available for the first time. Written with characteristic elegance, lucidity & wit, & containing defiant & challenging opinions, it will absorb & provoke Scottish readers & intrigue many others.

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' All modern nation states have a story of their origins, passed down through both official & popular culture, & yet few of these accounts have proved as divisive & influential as the Israeli national myth. The well-known tale of Jewish exile at the hands of the Romans during the first century AD, & the assertion of both cultural & racial continuity through to the Jewish people of the present day, resonates far beyond Israel's borders. Despite its use as a justification for Jewish settlement in Palestine & the project of a Greater Israel, there have been few scholarly investigations into the historical accuracy of the story as a whole. In this bold & ambitious new book, Shlomo Sand shows that the Israeli national myth has its origins in the nineteenth century, rather than in biblical times
- when Jewish historians, like scholars in many other cultures, reconstituted an imagined people in order to model a future nation. Sand forensically dissects the official story
- & demonstrates the construction of a nationalist myth & the collective mystification that this requires. A bestseller in Israel & France, Shlomo Sand's book has sparked a widespread & lively debate. Should the Jewish people regard themselves as genetically distinct & identifiable across the millennia
- or should that doctrine now be left behind & if the myth of the Jewish state is dismantled, could this open a path toward a more inclusive Israeli state, content within its borders?'


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Fantastic new fiction from the team behind the wildly successful ` The Princess & the..` picture book series. A single story in two colour printing this is a lovely beginner-reader series for 5/6 year olds which is hilarious &, just about, true to life. In this first story, troublesome twosome Nell & Freddie go on a school trip to a farm, where they pet the animals & learn about how they live, & Freddie smuggles a piglet out in his backpack. He thinks he`s saving it from becoming sausages. So Nell keeps it in her bedroom, gives it a bath & gets it involved in bringing a local crime wave to an end... ...

Paris, 1937. Andras Lévi, an architecture student, has arrived from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, & a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver to Clara Morgenstern a young widow living in the city. When Andras meets Clara he is drawn deeply into her extraordinary & secret life, just as Europe’s unfolding tragedy sends them both into a state of terrifying uncertainty. From a remote Hungarian village to the grand opera houses of Budapest & Paris, from the despair of Carpathian winter to an unimaginable life in forced labour camps & beyond, The Invisible Bridge tells the story of a marriage tested by disaster & of a family, threatened with annihilation, bound by love & history. ...