This veritable marine treasure trove of a book is richly illustrated by the author, with fifty of the most beautiful, easily encountered, and sometimes astonishing marine organisms found on British coasts, from seemingly exotic seahorses and starfish...

"I have struck a city – a real city – and they call it Chicago... I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages", so wrote Rudyard Kipling on his tour of America in 1899. From these inauspicious beginnings rose the 'windy city',...

"A murder of crows", "a charm of goldfinches", "an ostentation of peacocks": collective nouns for British birds have existed since at least the mid fifteenth century. They are thought to originate in texts about hunting, but have since evolved into e...

At which Oxford college does a trumpeter summon you to dinner? What does the appearance of a rose bowl signify? How would you use a grace cup as distinct from a sconce cup? The custom of dining in formal hall at Oxford and Cambridge dates back to the...

What common condition can be treated with cow dung? How do crushed oystershells ease heartburn? Can eels cure deafness? And how do you stop a stubborn case of the hiccups? If someone was struck down by illness or injury in the late eighteenth century...

Published to mark the 200th anniversary of Dickens's birth, this book celebrates the greatest of English novelists by illustrating some of his abiding preoccupations. Prompted by quotations from the novels and other writings, each themed chapter expl...

The process of secularization, which is one of the sources of present-day democracy, has its radical origins in eighteenth-century Europe. Criticism of religious norms and discipline, institutions and ideology led to the movement known as the Enlight...