Cinema King

A granddaughter's memoir

JENNIFER KING

This book tells the story of Sam King and his remarkable journey from an impoverished Jewish family escaping Russian pogroms to the East End of London and a life of wealth, glamour and tragedy. Sam's life was itself the stuff of movies and now, fifty years after his death, his granddaughter tells the extraordinary story of his rise from violinist in silent picture houses to a much-loved partner in Shipman and King Cinemas and loyal and generous family man.

Sam and Peter King represented the very best among those who gave energy to an enlightened view of our medium, its audience, and its purpose. David Puttnam

Beautifully illustrated, hardback £17.00 ORDER FROM: The Great British Bookshop

Thomas Sydenham is a name unfamiliar to most people and yet, in his day, his simple observational approach to Medicine appealed to some of the greatest minds of the 17th century – and made him an outlaw of the establishment.

The Civil War claimed the lives of two brothers and his mother, and he fought for Parliament in the Dorset Militia. In London he treated the wealthy and the poor alike and lived through the Plague and the Great Fire.

Castles in the Air

A Life of Dr Thomas Sydenham

MICHAEL DENNY

In his new biography Michael Denny explores Thomas the reformer and the man, his kindness, irascibility and his uncommon good sense and scientific endeavour.

Beautifully illustrated, softback £20.00 Order your copy at: drmikedenny@yahoo.co.uk or at your local bookshop

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Unbuilt Bath

The City as it might have been

TIM MOWL, JULIAN ORBACH

A triumph of Georgian classicism, ‘incredibly dingy and wretched’, or a city spoilt by attenuated imagination and mediocrity, over the last 300 years Bath has seen grand architectural schemes realised – and many more abandoned. In Unbuilt Bath - the city as it might have been, Timothy Mowl and Julian Orbach explore what wasn’t built – immense crescents, vast piazzas, a concert hall, crystal palace, law courts... The authors describe how close Bath then came to self-destruction when schemes that were built lasted just long enough to be loathed and demolished. From an enormous column celebrating the Great Reform Act to a dual carriageway behind the Royal Crescent, Unbuilt Bath is a fascinating depiction of the city that nearly was.

Beautifully illustrated, softback £20.00 ORDER FROM: unbuiltbath@gmail.com

Architect of Obsession

John Wood and the Creation of Georgian Bath

TIM MOWL, Brian Earnshaw

John Wood, the most successful town planner of English eighteenth-century architects, was ferociously eccentric. The very idea that Bath, his grand artefact and a byword for classical order, should owe as much to the prehistoric stone circle at Stonehenge and the Second Temple in Jerusalem strains credibility, but that is the historic truth presented here through Wood’s own writing and a whole body of archival material. A fervent Freemason, he revived certain mystical emblems of Stuart religiosity and had them carved on a major building project – the King’s Circus – to evoke the sun worship of a lost Druid civilisation which had everything to do with his imagination, nothing to do with reality.

sold out

Nature's Favourite Child: Thomas Robins and the Art of the Georgian Garden Cathryn Spence

Privileged Horses The Italian Renaissance Court Stable

Sarah G Duncan

Tim Pomeroy

Nicholas Usherwood David Bell

Winter River David Whitwell

Marking Time: Poetry and Thought During the Pandemic David Cook

In this pioneering study of equine culture Sarah Duncan takes us to the great Renaissance courts, their magnificent stables populated by monarchs, princes and magnates, and a quasi-religious community of grooms, trainers, saddlers, bit-makers, virtuosi in equine health and even astrologers. So beautifully designed and so much color. This is wonderful. Sheila ffolliott Vice Chair Medici Archive Project

288 pages softback superbly illustrated ISBN 9781916095366 £30.00

Recently published

Forgotten for almost 200 years, a new biography by Cathryn Spence charts the varied career of this most gifted of Rococo artists, Thomas Robins.

Robins made delicate watercolours of gardens caught at that moment in the mid 18th century when sinuous layouts glittered with garden buildings of every conceivable style — chinoiserie tea houses, Gothic summer-houses, Turkish tents and Classical temples — the so-called ‘Rococo Gardens’. His views are matchless records of gardens either long gone or now in decay. Without them, we would know next to nothing about this short-lived period of garden history.

312 pages hardback, superbly illustrated ISBN 9781838472634 £40.00

Working in marble, granite, sandstone and wood, Tim Pomeroy’s beautifully carved and polished work is a paean to sacred forms and natural wonders. It’s a measure too of his unflinching determination to learn and master the skills needed. His font for St Andrew’s Cathedral comes from learning the stonemason’s craft and, like the fountain for Provand’s Lordship in Glasgow, is distinctly his in form and thought: fresh ideas laid on timeless beauty.

112 pages hardback superbly illustrated ISBN 9781838472641 £30.00

Convoy KMF-5 Dr AD Chissel

the greatest (and little-known rescue) in the history of naval warfare, a compelling and meticulous account from diaries, interviews and official papers. ISBN_9781838472658

Tanks on the Lawn Colin Tagg

a mapmaker's adventures in a troubled world ISBN_9781838472665

'this beautifully produced book' Sunday Telegraph

Short-listed for the Berger Prize for Art History

Architect of Obsession John Wood and the Creation of Georgian Bath

A new and beautiful edition of Tim Mowl and Brian Earnshaw's masterly and contentious account of John Wood: the great eccentric, visionary and creator of Bath, symbol in stone of Wood's bewildering antiquarianism. With rarely-seen illustrations, new photography and contributions from fellow expert Cathryn Spence, Architect of Obsession takes the reader from Stonehenge to Delphi, to Bath World Heritage City and beyond – to country villas, to grand civic buildings in Bristol and Liverpool and into the imaginings of an eccentric and a genius.

£35 304 pages hardback colour throughout ISBN 9781739605001

Order direct at johnwood1754@gmail.com