Wilfred Thesiger, the last of the great gentlemen explorer-adventurers, became a legend in his own lifetime. This authorised biography by a long-standing friend and associate, delves into his little-known character and motivations, as well as recounting the details of his extraordinary life. While Wilfred Thesiger's own classic writings, (including "The Marsh Arabs", "Arabian Sands", "Desert, Marsh and Mountain", "The Life of My Choice" and" My Kenya Days") comprehensively cover his classic journeys amongst the Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq, across the Empty Quarter in Arabia, they fail conspicuously to shed light on his character and motives, which have remained an enigma. Maitland's biography had Thesiger's support before he died in 2003, and has been written with full access, granted to no one else, to the rich Thesiger archive - vivid, intimate family correspondence, and his own letters, diaries and notebooks, which are far more confiding than his scrupulously edited published accounts. Maitland investigates in depth Thesiger's parents and family influences; his wartime experiences and the ethos of conflict; his philosophy as a hunter and conservationist; his development as a writer and photographer; his close friendships with the Arabs and Africans, amongst whom he lived; and his sexuality. In all, this major biography of a great and unusual man will take its place on the shelf of outstanding lives of the great explorers.

Heavy book, postage will be extra.

Hardcover, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed, Quoted and Dated by author to the title page. Book comes with a flyer from the signing event and a Signed Promotional Newspaper.

WINNER of The Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2008

Short listed for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction 2008

It is a summer's night in 1860. In an elegant detached Georgian house in the village of Road, Wiltshire, all is quiet. Behind shuttered windows the Kent family lies sound asleep. At some point after midnight a dog barks. The family wakes the next morning to a horrific discovery: an unimaginably gruesome murder has taken place in their home. The household reverberates with shock, not least because the guilty party is surely still among them. Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard, the most celebrated detective of his day, reaches Road Hill House a fortnight later. He faces an unenviable task: to solve a case in which the grieving family are the suspects. The murder provokes national hysteria. The thought of what might be festering behind the closed doors of respectable middle-class homes - scheming servants, rebellious children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing - arouses fear and a kind of excitement. But when Whicher reaches his shocking conclusion there is uproar and bewilderment.

A true story that inspired a generation of writers such as Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, this has all the hallmarks of the classic murder mystery - a body; a detective; and, a country house steeped in secrets. In "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher", Kate Summerscale untangles the facts behind this notorious case, bringing it back to vivid, extraordinary life.

Hardcover, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed by author to the title page. Book comes with promotional newspaper.

WINNER of The Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2008

Short listed for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction 2008

It is a summer's night in 1860. In an elegant detached Georgian house in the village of Road, Wiltshire, all is quiet. Behind shuttered windows the Kent family lies sound asleep. At some point after midnight a dog barks. The family wakes the next morning to a horrific discovery: an unimaginably gruesome murder has taken place in their home. The household reverberates with shock, not least because the guilty party is surely still among them. Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard, the most celebrated detective of his day, reaches Road Hill House a fortnight later. He faces an unenviable task: to solve a case in which the grieving family are the suspects. The murder provokes national hysteria. The thought of what might be festering behind the closed doors of respectable middle-class homes - scheming servants, rebellious children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing - arouses fear and a kind of excitement. But when Whicher reaches his shocking conclusion there is uproar and bewilderment.

A true story that inspired a generation of writers such as Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, this has all the hallmarks of the classic murder mystery - a body; a detective; and, a country house steeped in secrets. In "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher", Kate Summerscale untangles the facts behind this notorious case, bringing it back to vivid, extraordinary life.

The aging of the dust jacket is 'representative of the era' and is part of the the artwork design.

Hardcover, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed by author to the title page.

A companion to The RHS Treasure of Garden Verse, this anthology presents a selection of garden writing spanning the globe and the centuries. Writers from Francis Bacon to Thoreau, Jane Austen to Karel Capek have been inspired by gardens and gardening, and here there is something for everyone - classic pieces and perennial favourites, and some surprising finds. Each pieces is illustrated with a botanical print, and engraving or a watercolour drawing from the remarkable collection of the Royal Horticultural Society's Lindley Library. The only illustrated book of garden writing on the market An ideal gift book, to appeal to lovers of literature and gardening Will showcase some of the most beautiful artwork from the enormous range of material in the RHS Lindley Library.

Hardcover, US HarperCollins, New York, US First Edition, First Printing, Signed by author to the title page.

The dustjacket opens to reveal a beautiful detailed colour replica of William Smith’s geological map.

In the summer of 1815 an extraordinary hand-painted map was published in London. Some eight feet tall and six feet wide, brightly coloured - in sea-blue, green, bright yellow, orange, umber - it presented England and Wales in a beguiling and unfamiliar mixture of lines and patches and stippled shapes. It was the product of one man's obsession with rocks, a passion that sustained him whilst the rest of his life slid into ruin. For nearly 20 years, an Oxfordshire blacksmith's son named William Smith journeyed across Britain investigating and naming the layers of rock beneath his feet. Self-taught and determined, Smith had great expertise in practical geology, and this evolving science demanded a new sort of delineation. The beautifully executed map he produced was the first of its kind and transformed the way in which the world was understood. It was a document that laid the groundwork for the making of great fortunes in oil, iron and tin, and, elsewhere, in diamonds, platinum and silver, and was key to the development of one of the great fields of modern science. Smith's was a remarkable achievement, and all the more astonishing for having been completed single-handedly and without financial or professional support. Shatteringly, such heroic and painstaking work exacted a terrible price: imprisoned for debt, Smith was turned out of his home; his work was plagiarized; the scientific establishment turned its back on his trouble; and Smith's wife was diagnosed insane and he himself fell ill. It was not until 1829 that, in a fairy-tale twist of fate, Smith returned to London in triumph, to be hailed as a genius. Simon Winchester, best-selling author of "The Surgeon of Crowthorne" and himself the holder of a degree in geology, enters the dramatic world of "Strata Smith" to tell his moving and inspiring story. Celebrating the unique geology of the British Isles, "The Map That Changed the World" resurrects the forgotten pioneer whose passion for fossils came above all else.

Hardcover, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed & first lined (a very long first line as shown in image) by author (The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson!) to the title page.

Focussing on how the Romans made Europe work as a homogenous civilisation and looking at why we are failing to make the EU work in modern times, this is an authoritative and amusing study from best selling author Boris Johnson. In addition to his roles as politician, editor, author and television presenter, Boris Johnson is a passionate Roman scholar. A new television series, airing in March 2005, will see him travelling throughout the Roman Empire in order to uncover the secrets of the governance of the empire, and the reasons behind why the Romans held such power and prestige for so long. Fiercely interested in Europe and the current issues facing the European Union, Boris Johnson will look at the lessons we could learn from the Romans and how we could apply them to our modern politics. This illustrated book, full of witty descriptions, insight, politics, and more than a few jokes, will accompany the television series. Boris Johnson is the editor of the Spectator, MP for Henley, writes a column for the Daily Telegraph. He lives in London and Oxfordshire with his wife and their children.

Book comes with a first chapter sampler.

In 480 BC, Xerxes, the King of Persia, led an invasion of mainland Greece. Its success should have been a formality. For seventy years, victory - rapid, spectacular victory - had seemed the birthright of the Persian Empire. In the space of a single generation, they had swept across the Near East, shattering ancient kingdoms, storming famous cities, putting together an empire which stretched from India to the shores of the Aegean. As a result of those conquests, Xerxes ruled as the most powerful man on the planet. Yet somehow, astonishingly, against the largest expeditionary force ever assembled, the Greeks of the mainland managed to hold out. The Persians were turned back. Greece remained free. Had the Greeks been defeated at Salamis, not only would the West have lost its first struggle for independence and survival, but it is unlikely that there would ever have been such and entity as the West at all. Tom Holland's brilliant new book describes the very first 'clash of Empires' between East and West. Once again he has found extraordinary parallels between the ancient world and our own. There is no competing popular book describing these events.

Hardcover, no dust jacket as issued. UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed by author to the title page.

Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2008

'I don't believe in God, but I miss Him'. Julian Barnes' new book is, among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his brother (a philosopher), a meditation on mortality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God, and a homage to the French writer Jules Renard. Though he warns us that 'this is not my autobiography', the result is like a tour of the mind of one of our most brilliant writers. When Angela Carter reviewed Barnes' first novel, Metroland, she praised the mature way he wrote about death. Now, nearly thirty years later, he returns to the subject in a wise , funny and constantly surprising book, which defies category and classification - except as Barnesian.

Hardcover, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed and Dated (publication date) by author to the title page.

Before fate intervened, Joseph Needham was a distinguished biochemist at Cambridge University, married to a fellow scientist. In 1937 he was asked to supervise a young Chinese student named Lu Gwei-Djen, and in that moment began the two greatest love affairs of his life - Miss Lu, and China. Miss Lu inspired Needham to travel to China where he initially spent three dangerous years as a wartime diplomat. By the end of his life, Needham had become the pre-eminent China scholar of all time, a truly global figure, travelling endlessly and honoured by all. And in 1989, after a fifty-two year affair, he finally married the woman who had first inspired his passion. "Bomb, Book and Compass" is Simon Winchester at his best - at once a magnificent portrait of one man's remarkable life and a riveting exploration of the country that so engaged him.