‘Chris Beetles’ book is a joy, an inspiration and as thorough a document into understanding the life and times of Louis Wain as one could hope to read’ – Benedict Cumberbatch

‘Louis Wain invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world’. Broadcast in 1925 by H.G. Wells, these words characteristically foretold the future of the Wain cat which has, once more, become the century’s most recognisable image in cat art. During their heyday, in the time before the First World War, Louis Wain’s cats, dressed as humans, portrayed that stylish Edwardian world having fun: at restaurants and tea parties, going to the Race and the Seaside, celebrating at Christmas and Birthdays, and disporting themselves with exuberant games of tennis, bowls, cricket and football. This is a titillating world of cats at play, uninhibited and slightly dangerous, with most group activities likely to turn into mishap, mayhem and catastrophe. This is Wain’s world, funny, edgy and animated: a whole cat world.

The first comprehensive exhibition of Wain’s work was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1972 and, since then, Louis Wain has steadily become more fashionable, and collected worldwide. This biography contains 300 plates of richness and variety, all of which are reproduced faithfully from the original artwork.

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A sumptuous large-format hardback containing sketches and paintings from the illustrated Lord of the Rings, together with brand new and previously unseen material.

In this large-format hardback Alan Lee reveals in pictures and in words how he created the images in the authorised illustrated edition of The Lord of the Rings. These images would prove so powerful, matching perfectly with Tolkien’s own vision, that they would eventually define the look of Peter Jackson’s movie trilogy and earn Alan a coveted Academy Award.

The book is filled with over 150 of his sketches and early conceptual pieces to show how the project progressed from idea to finished art. It also contains 20 colour paintings reproduced in full-page glory, together with numerous examples of his conceptual art produced for the films and brand new pieces drawn specially for this book. It also includes an exclusive foreword written by Sir Ian McKellen.

The Lord of the Rings Sketchbook provides a fascinating insight into the imagination of the man who painted Tolkien’s vision, firstly onto the page and then in three dimensions on the cinema screen. It will also be of interest to many of the 100,000 people who have bought the illustrated Lord of the Rings as well as for budding artists and illustrators interested in unlocking the secrets of book illustration.

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The illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages are among the greatest works of European art and literature. We are dazzled by them and recognize their crucial role in the transmission of knowledge. But we generally think much less about the countless men and women who made, collected and preserved them through the centuries, and to whom they owe their existence.

This entrancing book describes some of the extraordinary people who have spent their lives among illuminated manuscripts over the last thousand years. A monk in Normandy, a prince of France, a Florentine bookseller, an English antiquary, a rabbi from central Europe, a French priest, a Keeper at the British Museum, a Greek forger, a German polymath, a British connoisseur and the woman who created the most spectacular library in America – all of them were participants in what Christopher de Hamel calls the Manuscripts Club.

This exhilarating fraternity, and the fellow enthusiasts who come with it, throw new light on how manuscripts have survived and been used by very different kinds of people in many different circumstances. Christopher de Hamel’s unexpected connections and discoveries reveal a passion which crosses the boundaries of time. We understand the manuscripts themselves better by knowing who their keepers and companions have been.

In 1850 (or thereabouts) John Ruskin bought his first manuscript ‘at a bookseller’s in a back alley’. This was his reaction: ‘The new worlds which every leaf of this book opened to me, and the joy I had in counting their letters and unravelling their arabesques as if they had all been of beaten gold – as many of them were – cannot be told.’ The members of de Hamel’s club share many such wonders, which he brings to us with scholarship, style, and a lifetime’s experience.

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