The illustrations of Brian Cook from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s have become iconic. His heightened use of colour, in a flat colour poster style, is much imitated, but never surpassed. His jacket covers for the Batsford series of books that celebrated British life are now very collectable. This collection of his best work is a beautiful publication that should be enjoyed not only by collectors but all lovers of good design and illustration. Brian Cook describes his working processes, the then-new printing process that allowed him to pioneer his characteristic bold colours, and the design principles and practical methods of his craft. A stunning book for designers.

Distinctive in its drawing and brilliant use of colour, the work of Brian Cook originally appeared on Batsford book jackets from the 1930s to the early 1950s. These books have been enduringly popular; they are collectors items and for many were the beginning of a life-long interest in British landscape and architectural heritage. In this volume these jackets are brought together for the first time.

Brian Cook's illustrations of Britain, its cottages, churches, villages, and landscapes, are now iconic and highlight the best of Britain. These iconic images were originally commissioned for Batsford book jackets in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. His heightened use of color and flat poster style has been much imitated but never surpassed. Each notebooks is exquisitely finished with a cloth-bound cover, back pocket, and elastic closure. The inside pages are woodfree paper with alternate lined and plain pages. These journals are perfect for vintage book lovers.

The official TV-tie in to the popular Channel 4 programme 'Penelope Keith's Hidden Villages' Explore the most interesting and beautiful examples of British village life in this lavishly illustrated book, published as a companion volume to the highly successful Channel 4 television series, 'Penelope Keith's Hidden Villages'. Featuring gorgeous illustrations and dust jackets from Brian Cook's iconic designs, the book explores the villages as they appeared then and now. It's hard not to be enchanted by rural villages. From thatched roofs, charming churches, bunting, cream teas and the local landscape, they capture our imaginations. Structured by region, this book follows Penelope's journey through Britain across all four series, including the idyllic villages found in the Costwolds, the cosy cottages of East Anglia and the treasures nestled in the North Yorkshire moors. Pictured alongside Brian Cook's iconic illustrations, Hidden Villages of Britain takes you through the fascinating history and the curious customs and characters unique to each village and how they survive in the present. From bog snorkelling in Llanwrtyd Wells and gravy wrestling in Stacksteads to cheese rolling down Cooper's Hill in Brockworth and dwile flocking (where contestants seek to soak their opponents with a beer-soaked cloth outside the village pub), snippets of the history, life and traditions of each village are fully explored. Whether you are looking for a place for your next holiday, a guide to Britain's rural landscape or have a love for Britain's most inspirational settings, this book is perfect for the armchair traveller.

Winner of the Frederick Jackson Turner Award Winner of the George Perkins Marsh Prize Winner of the John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize “A major work of history that brings together African-American history and environmental studies in exciting ways.” —Davarian L. Baldwin, Journal of Interdisciplinary History Between 1915 and 1940, hundreds of thousands of African Americans left the rural South to begin new lives in the urban North. In Chicago, the black population quintupled to more than 275,000. Most historians map the integration of southern and northern black culture by looking at labor, politics, and popular culture. An award-winning environmental historian, Brian McCammack charts a different course, considering instead how black Chicagoans forged material and imaginative connections to nature. The first major history to frame the Great Migration as an environmental experience, Landscapes of Hope takes us to Chicago’s parks and beaches as well as to the youth camps, vacation resorts, farms, and forests of the rural Midwest. Situated at the intersection of race and place in American history, it traces the contours of a black environmental consciousness that runs throughout the African American experience. “Uncovers the untold history of African Americans’ migration to Chicago as they constructed both material and immaterial connections to nature.” —Teona Williams, Black Perspectives “A beautifully written, smart, painstakingly researched account that adds nuance to the growing field of African American environmental history.” —Colin Fisher, American Historical Review “If in the South nature was associated with labor, for the inhabitants of the crowded tenements in Chicago, nature increasingly became a source of leisure.” —Reinier de Graaf, New York Review of Books

A fascinating compendium of interesting details, facts, customs and lore, this is an unabashed toast to the English village, as well as a record of a disappearing world.

"For two thousand years images of Cleopatra have been distorted by the fantasies of European imagination and cultures. Our view of Cleopatra is structured not by the existence of the real woman but by the historical and cultural influences governing the various readings of her life. Each influence bears the traces of specific struggles for power and meaning. Mary Hamer recovers those traces. Cleopatra is often associated with desire but she also represents a woman's power to act for her own fulfilment. "Signs of Cleopatra" is a set of Cleopatra puzzles, using the Bakhtinian argument that a contest of meanings based around a figure allow issues of the widest importance to be organized and earthed through it. Taking particular images of Cleopatra from history, classics, literary studies and art history the author explores the differences between these images, concentrating on the specific social and historical formations which inform each reading and questioning the processes of representation itself."--from amazon.com.