It is 1938 and the prospect of war hangs over every London inhabitant. But the city doesn't stop. Everywhere people continue to work, drink, fall in love, fight and struggle to get on in life. At the lodging-house at No.10 Dulcimer Street, Kennington, the buttoned-up clerk Mr Josser returns home with the clock he has received as a retirement gift. The other residents include faded actress Connie; tinned food-loving Mr Puddy; widowed landlady Mrs Vizzard (whose head is turned by her new lod...

A collection of the most famous cases faced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's peerless creation, the inimitable detective Sherlock HolmesThis collection includes many of the famous cases - and great strokes of brilliance - that made the legendary Sherlock Holmes one of fiction's most popular creations. With his devoted amanuensis Dr Watson, Holmes emerges from his smoke filled room in Baker Street to grapple with the forces of treachery, intrigue and evil in such cases a...

'The funniest book in the world' Evelyn Waugh'The jewel at the heart of English comic literature' William TrevorMr Pooter is a man of modest ambitions, content with his ordinary life. Yet he always seems to be troubled by disagreeable tradesmen, impertinent young office clerks and wayward friends, not to mention his devil-may-care son Lupin with his unsuitable choice of bride. In the bumbling, absurd, yet ultimately endearing character of Pooter, the Grossmi...

As a dense yellow fog swirls through the streets of London, a deep melancholy has descended on Sherlock Holmes, who sits in a cocaine-induced haze at 221B Baker Street. His mood is only lifted by a visit from a beautiful but distressed young woman - Mary Morstan, whose father vanished ten years before. Four years later she began to receive an exquisite gift every year: a large, lustrous pearl. Now she has had an intriguing invitation to meet her unknown benefactor and urges Holmes and Wats...

In the same format as the successful London Compendium, the Manchester Compendium relates the remarkable and diverse history of England's second city. Manchester's town hall and its Royal Exchange epitomise the city's architectural grandeur and its industrial heritage., Peterloo and Engel's treatise on the conditions of the working classes its political history and the Manchester Guardian and Factory Records its cultural and social history. From Thomas de Quincey to Alan Touring, Neville C...

The streets of London resonate with secret stories, from East End lore to Cold War espionage, from tales of riots, rakes, anarchy and grisly murders, to Rolling Stones gigs, gangland drinking dens, Orwell's Fitzrovia and Lenin's haunts. Ed Glinert has walked the length and breadth of the city to unravel its mysteries, travelling through time from the Romans' London wall to the new Olympic site at Stratford. This is London as you have never seen it before.

The East End: Roman burial ground, medieval rubbsih tip, Victorian hell hole, WW2 bombing aarget, 21st century gentrification template. Always a rum place, the industrial revolution replaced rose bushes and hedgerows with metallic roads and iron railways, mud banks gve way to deeo-water docks and sweatshops. East End Chronicles tells the story of this part of London tht has always enthralled writers and readers through the bizarre, the unusual, the arcane and the mysterious. Chapters on th...

From the Globe at Bankside to the Wimpole Street home of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, London is, and always has been, crammed with literary life. Playwrights, novelists, diarists, poets and essayists throughout the centuries have roamed its streets, met in its cafes and retaurants and strolled in its parks and gardens. They have been inspired by its monuments, churches, law courts and theatres and have created fictional Londoners as diverse as Mr Pickwick, Sherlock Holmes, Bertie Wooster, M...

A guided tour of Britain’s spiritual heritageDid Joseph of Arimathea really bring the holy grail to Glastonbury? Why do many conspicracy theorists believe architects such as Wren and Hawksmoore secretly built London according to principles from the Old Testament? What were the true reasons for the executions of martyrs such as Ridley, Wycliffe and Cranmer?All these intriguing questions, and many more, are answered in Ed Glinert’s unusual and fascinating new book. Glinert tr...

The streets and squares of the West End of London, some of the most famous in the world, have been home to poets and pop stars, world-renowned artists and revolutionary anarchists. They have been a playground of gangsters and gamblers, secret agents and religious visionaries. The exploits of these and many other colourful characters are recounted in Ed Glinert's latest volume. Packed with atmospheric incident and detail, it's a treasure trove of stories of the people, places and events at ...

Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas are some of the world’s best-loved musical works, delighting audiences with their joyous wit, topsy-turvy logic and extravagant wordplay. This glorious treasury is the definitive annotated edition of all fourteen of their operas.From the partially lost work Thespis, the first collaboration between W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, through the triumphant comic romps The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado, to lesser-performed ...

**'Still an acknowledged masterpiece and a model for historical fiction ... sympathetic and intensely involving: a great feat of imagination' Hilary MantelBringing to life the intrigue of ancient Rome, Robert Graves's I, Claudius is one of the most celebrated, gripping historical novels ever written**Despised for his weakness and regarded by his family as little more than a stammering fool, the nobleman Claudius quietly survives the bloody purges and mounting cruel...