A stunning collection of travel drawings and anecdotes by renowned author-illustrator Michael Foreman.

"One of my earliest memories is lying on the floor in front of the kitchen fire, drawing..." Michael Foreman During the war, paper was in short supply but, the large biscuit tins delivered to his Mum's shop were lined with white paper. The tins were about twelve inches square, so unfolded, the paper would be four feet long. Perfect for drawings of marching soldiers and convoys of tanks, the village traffic of his childhood. This is a celebration of Michael's life as a master storyteller and illustrator told through his own autobiographical tales, diary extracts, original sketches and illustrations from his award-winning publications. Beginning with his childhood in wartime Suffolk and his early career as a young artist, and culminating with his collaborations with world-famous authors Terry Jones, Michael Morpurgo and Quentin 'BLOOMIN' Blake, this book showcases his 'greatest hits', and reveals the places, stories and people that inspired him along the way. Divided into three parts: Memories of Childhood (Looking through War Boy, After the War Was Over and War Game.) Far-Flung Places (Looking through Treasure Island, Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, World of Fairy Tales and Classic Fairy Tales.) Friends and Collaborators (Looking through Eric the Viking, Fairy Tales, Nicobobinus, Animal Tales, Fantastic Stories, Arthur, Robin Hood, Joan of Arc, Billy the Kid and Farm Boy.) 'I have been lucky with writers. None have been real trouble. Some I never met. Some I meet only after the book is finished, and some, the easiest to get along with, are the dead ones. Most become friends.' Michael Foreman

Stubby was a brave soldier, a loyal friend... and a dog. From an army training camp to the trenches in France, this is the incredible true story of Sergeant Stubby, the dog who served bravely in the First World War, sniffing out gas attacks, catching spies and winning the hearts of his fellow soldiers.

Since precious few architectural drawings and no theoretical treatises on architecture remain from the premodern Islamic world, the Timurid pattern scroll in the collection of the Topkapi Palace Museum Library is an exceedingly rich and valuable source of information. In the course of her in-depth analysis of this scroll dating from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, Gülru Necipoğlu throws new light on the conceptualization, recording, and transmission of architectural design in the Islamic world between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. Her text has particularly far-reaching implications for recent discussions on vision, subjectivity, and the semiotics of abstract representation. She also compares the Islamic understanding of geometry with that found in medieval Western art, making this book particularly valuable for all historians and critics of architecture. The scroll, with its 114 individual geometric patterns for wall surfaces and vaulting, is reproduced entirely in color in this elegant, large-format volume. An extensive catalogue includes illustrations showing the underlying geometries (in the form of incised “dead” drawings) from which the individual patterns are generated. An essay by Mohammad al-Asad discusses the geometry of the muqarnas and demonstrates by means of CAD drawings how one of the scroll’s patterns could be used co design a three-dimensional vault.