A charming guide to potatoes, covering everything from how to grow them to their origins and history. "Everybody who possibly can ought to grow potatoes". First published towards the end of the First World War, this charming little book is a love le...

Medieval England was full of books, many times the number that have survived. The great moment of loss was when the country's religious houses were suppressed by King Henry VIII and their libraries scattered and destroyed. Twentieth-century scholarsh...

How long is an ell? What is the largest size of champagne bottle? How do you measure the heat of a chilli pepper? Why is the depth of water measured in fathoms? And what is a cubit? "The Curious History of Weights & Measures" tells the story of how...

Buy my Dish of great Eeles, Any Old Iron take money for, Twelve Pence a Peck Oysters, Buy my fat Chickens, Fair Lemons & Oranges Marcellus Laroon's "The Cryes of the City of London drawne after the Life" presents, in seventy-four striking portrait...

The punctuation marks, mathematical symbols and glyphs which haunt the edges of our keyboards have evolved over many hundreds of years. They shape our understanding of texts, calculations and online interactions. Without these symbols all texts would...

Reynard – a subversive, dashing, anarchic, aristocratic, witty fox from the watery lowlands of medieval East Flanders – is in trouble. He has been summoned to the court of King Noble the Lion, charged with all manner of crimes and misdemeanours. How...

What did a gongfarmer do? How is a chaperone connected to a bird of prey? What is the etymology behind cloud architect? And is there a link between secretaries and secrets? The story behind these (and many more) job titles is rarely predictable and...

Which are the oldest museums in the world? What is a cabinet of curiosities? Who haunts Hampton Court? What is on the FBI's list of stolen art? "A Museum Miscellany" celebrates the intriguing world of galleries and museums, from national institution...

Pronunciation governs our regional and social identity more powerfully than any other aspect of spoken language. No wonder, then, that it has attracted most attention from satirists. In this intriguing book, David Crystal shows how our feelings about...

Epitaphs are a unique artform. In previous centuries they were regarded as an opportunity to celebrate, mourn, reflect on, philosophize, lament, or affirm the individual and the mystery of life and death, often giving rise to carefully crafted verse....