pimpernel press ltd london (28 results)

Paperback. Condition: Good. In the pieces brought together in Writing Home, Polly Devlin OBE, most bewitching of writers, covers subjects that range over her whole life and thought. She writes about places: about her childhood deep in the countryside of Northern Ireland (where, in the late 1950s, the first electricity poles looked literally out of place); her sudden transition, at the age of twenty-one, to Swinging Sixties London, where she worked for Vogue and became very much part of the scene (although its like being a provincial at Versailles), on to New York, back to London, then to the English countryside, and to Paris, Venice, the world over and always back to Ireland, London and New York. She writes about the people she has known, among them Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Mick Jagger, Peggy Guggenheim, Diana Vreeland (as fantastical as a unicorn), Jean Shrimpton (she looks as though she sleeps in cathedral pews and sucks artichoke hearts for sustenance), Princess Margaret (who came to dinner and did the washing up, which I gabbled she didnt need to she looked at me frostily and the royal hands went back into the Fairy Liquid). And she writes about the issues that have preoccupied her: about emigration, feminism (I grew up in a society where men were fundamental and women were secondary), reading, writing, collecting, shopping, houses, dogs, rooks, hares, dreams, friendship and the kindness of strangers; about daughters and mothers; and about wishes . . . The book has been read but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact and the cover is intact. Some minor wear to the spine.

Soft Covers in Slipcase. Condition: As New. "A facsimile of the 'little anthology' of favourite poems written out and illustrated, in an exercise book, by the artist Rex Whistler in 1923, with a separate booklet including new material", soft covers in a burgundy cloth-covered slipcase which is lettered in silver with illustrated label, with separate 8pp notes booklet. Size: 8 x 6.5 Inches. Poetry.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Rebecca John was born into a family of painters, the most famous among them being her grandfather, Augustus John, and her great-aunt, Gwen John. And the last thing she wanted was to become a painter herself. So how did this happen? In Thinking the Plant she traces the path that led to her beautiful botanical watercolours. She takes us through her childhood the cottage in the Cotswolds 'where I first became intensely aware of nature in its wild state', her grandfather's home at Fryern Court in Hampshire and her parents' London house, both of them forever associated in her mind with 'growing things'; the Fine Jewellery course where 'I learned to draw and to concentrate on things close up', her days as a picture researcher and her growing delight in botanical paintings. Rebecca John was in her thirties when she began to 'make tentative pencil studies of flowering plants'. In 1994 she enrolled for the new Botanical Painting course at the Chelsea Physic Garden. Soon after, she began to spend more time at her mother's cottage in Wales where she could work close to nature. She achieved recognition as an artist when she was in her 50s. Drawing on contemporary diary entries and notes Thinking the Plant is a unique record, illustrated with Rebeccca John's exquisite watercolours. Rebecca John describes her journey towards becoming a botanical painter Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. First published in 1996, this Pimpernel Classic edition has been completely redesigned and includes a new foreword by Andrew Lawson. Using his artist's eye and scientist's training, distinguished garden photographer and writer Andrew Lawson shines a new light on using colour in the garden. This book shows myriad ways to put colours together, and demonstrates the extraordinary power of colour to change the sense of space, to suggest coolness or warmth and to evoke different moods. The basis of creating harmonizing and contrasting schemes is explained and illustrated with dramatic examples. All the major schemes are supported by keyline drawings giving full planting details. In addition, illustrated plant directories, arranged by colour and flowering season, provide cultivation details for over 850 plants, enabling you to assemble the right plants for your chosen scheme and to carry that scheme through the year. "At the top of the heap of gardening glitterati, Andrew Lawson has produced a book that combines all his talents: it gives you this Renaissance man as painter, photographer, writer and gardener . . . You need this book." - Country Living Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Hardcover. Condition: new. Tankard, Judith (illustrator). Hardcover. First published in the UK in 1996, this Pimpernel Classic edition has been redesigned and includes new photography. Gertrude Jekyll was probably the most influential garden designer of the early twentieth century. In this book Judith Tankard and Martin Wood explore her life and work at the home she created for herself at Munstead Wood in Surrey, England. Taking as a basis her own photograph albums, scrapbooks and notebooks, and the recollections of contemporaries from Edith Wharton and Vita Sackville-West to William Robinson and Henry Francis du Pont, they describe not only the building and development of the house and garden but also her skills both in the arts and as a businesswoman and her collaborations with architects - pre-eminently Edwin Lutyens, but also Oliver Hill and M.H. Baillie Scott. Munstead Wood, home of Gertrude Jekyll for many years, was acquired by the National Trust in June 2023 Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. Osbert Lancaster (illustrator). First thus. Yellow boards, scarlet pimpernel titles to spine and Lancaster cartoons in similar to both front and back boards. Unread condition.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Sir John Soane's Greatest Treasure describes one of the most important antiquities ever found in Egypt - the beautiful calcite sarcophagus of the pharaoh Seti I. Discovered in 1817 in the tomb of Seti I in the Valley of the Kings by the flamboyant explorer Giovanni Belzoni, the sarcophagus now resides in Sir John Soane's Museum in London's Lincoln's Inn Fields. Leading Egyptologist John H. Taylor outlines the life of Seti I, the background to the creation of the sarcophagus, the excitement surrounding its discovery and the fascinating story of its journey to London and its acquisition by Sir John Soane. At the heart of the book is a fully illustrated interpretation of the complex imagery and hieroglyphic inscriptions which cover the delicately carved surfaces of the sarcophagus. The book also includes an essay by Helen Dorey on the celebrations held at the Museum to welcome the arrival of the sarcophagus of Seti I in 1825. Sir John Soane's Greatest Treasure is published to mark the 200th anniversary of the discovery of the sarcophagus in 1817, and to accompany a major exhibition at Sir John Soane's Museum, opening in October 2017. The first ever book about Sir John Soane's greatest treasure - one of the most important Egyptian antiquities anywhere in the world - the unique sarcophagus of the Pharoah Seti I Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Cruelty, greed and sexual entitlement. Sound familiar? But in the seventeenth century women had far more to fear from powerful men. This darkly evocative and fast-paced novel - complex and glittering as a tapestry, its blackness lit by flashes of humour - challenges contemporary notions of race and class to chart the career of a manipulative mogul and the women who staked everything to overcome his attempts to destroy them. Two women, one white, one black. Zenobia, born in poverty, grasps that her only hope of controlling her own life is to capitalize on her looks; Lily, brought to London on a sugar and slave ship as a `toy', educated alongside her mistress but used by her master, lives as a kept woman. As the complex story weaves and folds through a murky and merciless London, both find themselves pitted against a ruthless magistrate the world knows as John Crace. Late seventeeth-century London's festering but rich possibilities as a rapidly-changing multinational city are breathtakingly painted. Pungent milieux range from plague pits to prisons to pastry kitchens - and Pickled Herring Wharf. Cruelty, greed and ruthless ambition seethe under the surface of a society where life is cheap and feelings are ruthlessly exploited. Born worlds apart, Lily and Zenobia unite and fight to survive in murderous 17th century London, in a hard-edged, glittering novel Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Featuring fifty paintings from the fourteenth through to the early twentieth century, Old Masters Rock: How to Look at Art with Children demonstrates that art is accessible to all of us - adults and children alike. Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. Since the first edition in 1897, dogs have featured prominently in Country Life Magazine, and Posh Dogs is a selection of the best. From wolfhounds to dachshunds, working dogs to lapdogs, puppies to pensioners, Posh Dogs showcases dogs of all shapes and sizes, featuring them at home, at work, and having fun in the countryside. This is a must-have gift book for all dog lovers. The images are predominantly in color, with some historical black and white photographs. Showcases posh dogs of all shapes and sizes, featuring them at home, at work and having fun in the timeless beauty of the British countryside Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. A story of social change and the evolution of a neighbourhood, full of human interest and the richness and sadness of the passing of time - I loved the irrepressible character who combined the skills of barrister, chef and advertising genius, and the poor first owner with her aesthetic aspirations and her artwork - the kind of history we imagine for our houses (but not so fully), assembled from small relics and suggestions. - Margaret Drabble In a vivid blend of history and fiction, Clare Hastings tells the story of a house in London's Little Chelsea - the house in which she lives - and its inhabitants, from 1871, when it was `topped out', to the 1920s. Detailed in the census records and other sources, these very real residents - ranging from bodice-makers by way of booksellers (and a bigamist) to that glamorous, though unemployed, Irish barrister - are all now long gone, but their footsteps are etched into the floorboards at Finborough Road, and into the imagination of the author. In these pages, Clare Hastings's warmth, humour and compelling storytelling bring them back to life. A unique history of a Victorian house, brought to life in a witty and compelling fictional form Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. Rex Whistler (1905-1944) was one of the most intriguing artists of the interwar years. His work encompassed all areas of art and design, from set design for opera, ballet and the West End theatre to book illustration. He painted moving and memorable portraits, of people and of their houses. And he was the outstanding mural painter of his day. As a 20-year old student at the Slade School he pained a mural which an still be seen on the walls of the restaurant at Tate Britain. Later murals are to be seen at Port Lympne in Kent, Mottisfont Abbey in Hampshire, Dorneywood in Buckinghamshire and - his masterpiece, Plas Newydd on Anglesey. At the outbreak of the Second World War he volunteered to serve in the army. He became a dedicated tank commander in the Guards Armoured Division. He was killed in Normandy on 18 July 1944. Family, Friendships and Landscapes describes the sources of inspiration Rex Whistler drew on for his work, including his family, his many friendships and the landscapes of his beloved 'Wessex' and Italy. Celebrates the artist Rex Whistler, portrait painter, designer, illustrator and the outstanding mural painter of the interwar years. Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. Rex Whistler (1905-1944) was one of the most intriguing artists of the interwar years. His work encompassed all areas of art and design, from set design for opera, ballet and the West End theatre to book illustration. He painted moving and memorable portraits, of people and of their houses. And he was the outstanding mural painter of his day. As a 20-year old student at the Slade School he pained a mural which an still be seen on the walls of the restaurant at Tate Britain. Later murals are to be seen at Port Lympne in Kent, Mottisfont Abbey in Hampshire, Dorneywood in Buckinghamshire and - his masterpiece, Plas Newydd on Anglesey. At the outbreak of the Second World War he volunteered to serve in the army. He became a dedicated tank commander in the Guards Armoured Division. He was killed in Normandy on 18 July 1944. Love and War tells the story of the years immediately before Rex Whistler's tragic early death in battle in the Second World War. Celebrates the artist Rex Whistler, portrait painter, designer, illustrator and the outstanding mural painter of the interwar years. Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Chicago started life with a split personality. By the end of the Civil War wealthy Chicagoans and their wives were struggling to prove that their city was as affluent and civilized as its East Coast counterparts, New York, Philadelphia and Boston. Mansions rose, an art museum was founded, and music halls lured opera stars. Yet, all the while, stockyards, rowdy cowboys and slaughterhouses continued to brand Chicago as a western outpost. When the great fire of 1871 destroyed much of the city, Chicago emerged determined to take its place as a leading metropolis. The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 changed American architecture and put Chicago on the international map. This trend continued in the twentieth century with architects like Louis B. Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, and Chicago-based architectural movements such as the Prairie School and the Chicago Style. But impressive and important as Chicago's architectural and sculptural landmarks are, there is more to them than design and style. Seeking Chicago explores the human stories of the city's buildings. In these pages you will find a priest who dodged gangland bullets in the garden of his church; a socialite who complained to a judge that Prohibition had raised her husband's excessive drinking to intolerable levels; a millionaire whose search for privacy resulted in a mansion with its windowless back to the street; and much, much more. Intriguing and informative, Seeking Chicago is a must-read for those interested in Chicago and how it got that way. Intriguing and informative, Seeking Chicago is a must-read for anyone interested in Chicago and its history Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. Our planet, the Earth, is under threat, with potentially catastrophic consequences for ourselves and the other lifeforms it sustains. Yet Nature itself can still rescue us - with plants playing a pivotal role, in the countryside - and everywhere. In gardens and parks, plants are the mainstay of our relationship with the natural world, and we celebrate them for the pleasures they bring. However, that can be part of the problem: too often we value plants for their aesthetic qualities rather than the vital role they play in the ecology of the Earth. In Gardening in a Changing World Darryl Moore explores how gardens can be better for human beings and for all the other lifeforms that inhabit them. Recent developments in horticulture and plant science show us that we need to rethink our attitude to plants beyond purely aesthetic concerns, and to adopt more holistic approaches to how we design, inhabit and enjoy our gardens. He looks at the history of garden design, to show how we got to where we are today, and recommends ways of changing to new principles of sustainable ecological horticulture. This challenging and important new book will be essential reading for professionals and students of horticulture and garden and landscape design, as well as for anyone interested in making gardens part of the solution to the future of life on Earth. Rethinking our relationship with plants in the light of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss; and an exploration of the science behind sustainable ways of engaging with the natural world Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.

Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. A facsimile edition of the 'little anthology' of favourite poems compiled and illustrated by Rex Whistler in 1923. This is a personal collection, hand-written and embellished, by a young artist who had recently discovered poetry. Rex Whistler was just eighteen and in his first year at the Slade when he began to compile it, using an ordinary ruled exercise book to keep his handwriting straight. The poems are well known and well loved, the watercolours are enchanting. Every page shows Rex Whistler's new-found delight in verse of a romantic kind: Keats, Marvell, de la Mare, Emily Dickinson, Shelley, Tennyson, Gray, Edith Sitwell and others. But, though serious about the poems, he could not, being Rex Whistler, deny himself flippancy on a title page, or in a pencilled comment added to Keats' woebegone knight-at-arms. Whistler made this earliest of all his illustrated books for his own pleasure. It was first published, in an abbreviated edition, in 1981, almost sixty years after Whistler compiled it, and has long been out of print. This splendid new edition, an exact facsimile of the original, is alive with the youthful pleasure that first inspired the brightly coloured fantasies of 1923. A separate booklet includes Laurence Whistler's afterword to the 1981 edition, a new introduction by Hugh and Mirabel Cecil, and a note from the publishers describing the process of producing the facsimile. A stunning, clothbound boxed set containing a facsimile edition of the "little anthology" of favourite poems compiled and illustrated by Rex Whistler in 1923, with new material in a separate booklet Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Illustrated card cover. First Edition. 230mm x 240mm (9" x 9"). 255pp. Signed by Frank and Margorie Lawley on half title. Frank and Marjorie Lawley have spent over 40 years at Herterton House, a 16th century farmhouse on the Wallington Estate, near Cambo (birthplace of Capability Brown) in Northumberland. When they leased Herterton from the National Trust in 1976, the Lawleys took on a series of derelict farm buildings. This highly original and personal book describes in detail how, with patience and passion, they restored Herterton House and created an exquisite and unique garden. Within its mere acre, the garden at Herterton House provides more visual interest and more interesting plants (plants you can also buy from its small nursery) than many gardens twenty times its size. With photographs by Val Corbett and an introduction by Charles Quest-Ritson. VG : in very good condition without dust jacket as issued.

Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. Michael Holroyd, perhaps the most distinguished of contemporary biographers, has in recent years turned his attention to the stories hidden within his own fascinating (not to say eccentric) family. In Ancestors in the Attic he teases out two especially intriguing episodes, the tales of his great-grandmother and his aunt: which he categorizes respectively as tragedy and comedy. As well as telling their stories in words, he does it visually, through two very different collections made by the women, which he discovered, long after their deaths, in the attic of a house in Maidenhead: the ferns preserved and stitched into beautiful, intricate patterns by his tragic great-grandmother in the 1870s; and the photographs of silent movie actors collected by his lively young aunt in the 1920s. This handsome cloth-bound boxed set contains two volumes - My Great Grandmother's Book of Ferns and My Aunt's Book of Silent Actors - and is a delightful celebration of the appeal of collecting, as well as a fascinating record of a unique family history. A stunning boxed set, celebrating a unique family history Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Both 88 pages. Colour and black and white illustrations throughout. Hardback in a slipcase 19x24cms. ISBN: 9781910258422. Text in English.

Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. For four hundred years there has been a special relationship between Britain and what is now the United States of America in many aspects of life, not least in gardening. From the early settlers taking their familiar English plants to the New World and early plant-hunters bringing back exciting new plants for English gardens to the twenty-first-century English infatuation with `prairie gardening', ideas and plants have been crossing and re-crossing the Atlantic. In Gardening Across the Pond, Richard Bisgrove explores four centuries of translantic influences, from the Tradescants, plant-hunting in seventeenth century Virginia, to the prairie landscapes of the 2012 London Olympic Park, and attempts to answer that thorny question - is the English cottage garden an American invention? Is the English cottage garden an American invention? Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. London was but is no more!' In these words diarist John Evelyn summed up the destruction wreaked by the Great Fire that swept through the City of London in 1666. The losses included St Paul's Cathedral and eight-seven parish churches (as well as at least thirteen thousand houses). But London rose from the ashes, more beautiful - and certainly more spectacular - than ever before. The catastrophe offered a unique opportunity to Christopher Wren and his colleagues - including Robert Hooke and Nicholas Hawksmoor - who, in the course of remarkably few years, rebuilt St Paul's and fifty-one other London churches in a dramatic new style inspired by the European Baroque. Forty years after the Fire, the Fifty New Churches Act of 1710 gave Nicholas Hawksmoor the opportunity to build breathtaking (and controversial) new churches including St Anne's Limehouse, Christ Church Spitalfields and St George's Bloomsbury. But by the 1720s the pendulum was already swinging away from Wren and Hawksmoor's Baroque towards the less extravagant Palladian style. It was the more restrained churches built by James Gibbs (including St Martin-in the-Fields) that were to provide the prototype for churches the world over - but especially in North America - for the next hundred years. In After the Fire, celebrated photographer and architectural historian Angelo Hornak explores, with the help of his own stunning photographs, the churches built in London during the sixty years that followed the Great Fire. A glorious photographic survey of the London churches built in the sixty years after the Great Fire Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. Henbury Hall in Cheshire has been described as the most beautiful house built in Britain in the last hundred years. This late twentieth-century house rises from the rolling contours of its ancient parkland as a Palladian masterpiece of symmetry, elegance and simplicity. Full of intriguing historic references, its form both venerable and familiar, it is unique in the story of twentieth-century British architecture. Writing in Country Life in 2002, Jeremy Musson highlighted the enduring English love affair with the Palladian tradition, which, for lovers of classic country houses, makes 'a first sight of the great villas of the Veneto feel like coming home'. For the de Ferranti family, the Veneto was indeed home. So perhaps it is hardly surprising that when Sebastian de Ferranti (1927-2015), came to realize his vision for his house it should be based on Palladio's villa La Rotunda at Vicenza. Henbury Hall was designed by Julian Bicknell and Felix Kelly and built in the mid-1980s, with interior design by David Mlinaric. This book, written by Jeremy Musson and drawing on more than thirty years of superb photography, is the complementary vision of Sebastian de Ferranti's widow, Gilly de Ferranti, her tribute to her husband's creation, and as beautiful a book as Henbury Hall is a house. A stunning record of a house unique in the story of twentieth-century British architecture Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. Profusely with colour plates throughout. (illustrator). 1st Edition. First edition 2015. Colour Photography throughout by Tom Hatton. Near fine in a near fine dustwrapper. 304 p. Book.