Traveling in a battered camping van, Malise Ruthven set out across America in search of the manifestations―often bizarre and sometimes terrifying―of its religious spirit. The journey took him from the dark woods of Puritan New England to neo-Nazi cults in the Rockies; from Mormons and snake handlers to fundamentalist groups who challenge the teaching of evolution; from channelers in California to the sexual and financial scandals surrounding millionaire TV preachers. The Divine Supermarket is his quirky and brilliantly-observed account of the journey, offering illuminating and humorous insights into the baffling soul of modern America.

The Divine Supermarket: Travels in Search of the Soul of America (Tauris Parke Paperbacks)

History

Ruthven, Malise

World

Tauris Parke Paperbacks

Lytton Strachey's acclaimed portrayal of Queen Victoria revolutionized the art of biography by using elements of romantic fiction and melodrama to create a warm, humorous, and very human portrait of this iconic figure. We see Victoria as a strong-willed child with a famous temper, as the 18-year-old girl queen, as a monarch, wife, mother, and widow. Equally fascinating are the depictions of her relationships: with her governess “precious Lehzen,” with Peel, Gladstone, and Disraeli, with her beloved Albert, and, in later life, her legendary devotion to her Highland servant John Brown, all of which show a different side of the staid, pious image that is so often attached to her.

Queen Victoria: A Life (Tauris Parke Paperbacks)

Biographies & Memoirs

Strachey,Lytton

Community & Culture

One of the most famous and tortured romances in history―between Elizabeth I, Queen of England, and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex―began in 1587, when she was fifty-three and he was nineteen. Their passionate affair continued for five years, until Essex was beheaded for treason in 1601. In a fast-paced succession of brilliantly-rendered scenes, Lytton Strachey portrays Elizabeth and Essex’s compelling attraction for each other, their impassioned disagreements and their mutual struggle for power, which culminated so tragically―for both of them. Alongside the doomed love affair, Strachey pins colourful portraits of the leading characters and influential figures of the time: Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, Robert Cecil and other members of her glittering court who fought to assert themselves in a kingdom and a country defined by Elizabeth’s incomparable reign. Lytton Strachey here illuminates, in spellbinding prose, one of the most poignant affairs in history alongside the glamour and intrigue of the Elizabethan era.

Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History (Tauris Parke Paperbacks)

Historical

Life at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette has long captivated readers, who have been drawn by accounts of the intrigues and pageantry that were to come to such a sudden and unexpected end: the fourteen-year-old who took Versailles by storm, her frustrations with an aloof and inattentive husband, her affair with the Swedish Count von Fersen, her lavish tastes and spending and, ultimately, the chaos of the French Revolution and the savagery of the Terror. An impassioned narrative, Zweig's classic account, a combination of history and literary flair, focuses on the human emotions of the participants and victims of the French Revolution, making it both an engrossingly compelling read and a sweeping and informative history.

Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman

Zweig,Stefan

Weary of what he called the “tyranny” of western art, Brian Sewell first visited Turkey―a country that had captivated him since he was a boy―in 1975. He thought that there, anything he found would have no relevance to the European art that he had so compulsively “stitched in to the dense fabric of my art-historical memory” and that he could therefore enjoy the art for its own sake. But Turkey surprised him, and he delighted in the unexpected wealth of Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic cultures there, returning three of four times a year until 1990. The bulk of this book focuses on his journey from Ephesus to Side one winter. With typically acerbic commentary, Sewell describes (not always favorably) the archaeological and historical sites he comes across, the landscapes that so clearly thrill him, the encounters he has along the way, and the fractious, though wonderfully funny, relationship he forms with Ayhan, his driver. This is a book that could only have been written by Sewell and has become a quirky classic of travel literature. 
This edition features a new Preface by [Sewell].

South From Ephesus: Travels Through Aegean Turkey (Tauris Parke Paperbacks)

Arts & Photography

Sewell, Brian

History & Criticism

Richard Halliburton's fifth and last book, Seven League Boots, illustrates how he followed the orders to move fast, visit strange places, and meet anyone who was interesting with passion and abandon. America's favorite adventure writer dined with, Haile Selassie and rode the Rhinocerous Express in Ethiopia, had an audience with King Ibn Saud outside the gates of Mecca (which he had tried to sneak into), and finally rode an elephant over the Alps, following the tracks of Hannibal. This is Halliburton at his best, reckless and romantic, and it is the last chapter of a life grown tragic. Nearing 40, physically exhausted, and in financial trouble, Halliburton thought to roll the dice once again, hoping that the charm that had always saved him in the past would materialize one more time. Soon after finishing this book, he embarked on his last, fatal, journey.

Seven League Boots: Adventures Across the World from Arabia to Abyssinia (Tauris Parke Paperbacks)

Halliburton, Richard

Europe

The work of the great Roman poet, Horatius Flaccus (65 BC to 8 BC), spanned all aspects of Roman life—politics, the arts, religion, and the authority of the emperor—while his legendary poems ( Satires, Odes, Epistles ) about friendship, philosophy, love, and sex still have considerable appeal. This biography presents a complete picture of Horace's life and world. It considers the details of Horace's romantic liaisons and why he never married, what the status of his father—a freedman—meant to the poet, and his distinctive brand of philosophy. In this acclaimed biography, Peter Levi, a fellow poet, has produced a thrilling and eminently readable book, the definitive account of Rome's greatest poet and the times during which he lived.

Horace: A Life (Tauris Parke Paperbacks)

LEVI, Peter

Arts & Literature

Written just after World War II, Perseus in the Wind (named after the constellation) is perhaps the most personal, and haunting, of all Freya Stark's writings. Putting together memories and reflections, ""harvested from life and accident"", that have carried her through her travels, Stark muses on the seasons, the effect light has on a landscape at a particular time of day, the smell of the earth after rain, Muslim saints, Indian temples, war, and old age. Each chapter is devoted to a particular theme: Happiness (simple pleasures, like her father's passion for the view from his cabin in Canada); Education (to be able to command happiness, recognize beauty, value death, increase enjoyment); Beauty (incongruous, flighty, and elusive - a description of the stars, the burst of flowers in a park); Death (a childhood awareness of the finality of Time, the meaningfulness of the end); Memory (the jeweled quality of literature, pleasure, love, an echo or a scent when aged by the passage of time). Woven throughout this beautifully-crafted book are references to Stark's many travels, from Asolo to Aden, Iran to India. For those who have loved her travel writing, Perseus in the Wind illuminates the motivations behind her journeys and the woman behind the traveler.

Perseus in The Wind: A Life of Travel (Tauris Parke Paperbacks)

Travel

STARK, Freya

Travel Writing

In the spring and summer of 1931, Wyndham Lewis traveled to Morocco. Escaping the furor that surrounded the publication of his controversial book on Hitler, while in Morocco, Lewis explored the culture of the Berbers of Morocco. In Journey into Barbary, Lewis provides a first-hand look into the people and culture of the region. While uncomfortable and direct at times, Lewis goes beyond the typical stereotypes of the Berber people and produces a book unlike any other for this period. Journey into Barbary is a unique look of Morocco in the 1930s as well as of Europe’s involvement and attitudes toward the region.

Journey into Barbary: Travels Across Morocco (Tauris Parke Paperbacks)

Lewis, Wyndham

"Alexandria is still alive and alters even when one tries to sum her up... Only the climate, only the north wind and the sea remain as pure as when Menelaus, the first visitor, landed three thousand years ago..." - E.M. Forster In the autumn of 1915, in a slightly heroic mood, E.M. Forster arrived in Alexandria, full of lofty ideals as a volunteer for the Red Cross. Yet most of his time was spent exploring the magic, antiquity and complexity of the place in order to cope with living in what he saw as a "funk-hole". With a novelist's pen, he brings to life the fabled, romantic city of Alexander the Great, capital of Graeco-Roman Egypt, beacon of light and culture symbolized by the Pharaohs, where the doomed love affair of Antony and Cleopatra was played out and the greatest library the world has ever known was built. Threading 3,000 years of history with vibrant strands of literature and punctuating the narrative with his own experiences, Forster immortalized Alexandria, painting an incomparable portrait of the great city and, inadvertently, himself.

Alexandria: A History and Guide (Tauris Parke Paperbacks)

Forster, E.M.

Ancient Civilizations

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