Marion Boyars: 50 books

With reference to drug-induced visions and the perceptual capacities of bees, Carnie deconstructs the work of Descartes, Newton and Berkeley to produce a new persepective on the way our senses operate.'All credit to him for building the case for an unfashionable theory, and making the reader think...

Judith Williamson does not simply criticize advertisements on the grounds of dishonesty and exploitation, but examines in detail, through over a hundred illustrations, their undoubted attractiveness and appeal. The overt economic function of this appeal is to make us buy things. Its ideological function...

Judith Williamson explores how our cultural tastes, in films, food, television, advertising, music poetry, song lyrics,photography,political movements and even the BritishRoyal Family influence our thinking and how we govern our own lives, and shape those of our children

Edna the Inebriate Woman was written when Jeremy Sandford, whose documentary Cathy Come Home had focused public attention on the plight of homeless families, decided to study the equally grave problems faced by Britain's thousands of single homeless people. The author follows Edna on her continuous...

A well informed study that champions the unsung heroes and heroines of DIY distribution in art, music, literary zines and culture. This exploration of lo-fi culture traces the origin of the DIY ethic to the skiffle movement of the 1950s, mail art, Black Mountain poetry and Avant-Garde art in the 1950s,...

An entertaining story of a Budapest vampire dynasty. Jerne Voltampere's Grandmother doesn't look her age, but she is 284 years old. She looks like a young woman. No wonder, as every night she sucks the blood of assorted men. She is a vampire and wants her grandchild to follow the family tradition....

Sandford's 'Cathy Come Home' details the issue of homelessness and the life of a young woman in 1960s London as she moves from her own home, to council accomodation, and finally emergency accomodation for the homeless before being evicted and her children taken into care. It is a harrowing and emotive...

A tense thriller about the return of an investigative journalist to Istanbul from America, the scene of Jeannie's teenage love affair with Sinan, a Turkish boy, as well as the place of operation of her father, a CIA agent. Jeannie is forced to confront her past when Sinan's wife asks her for help...

A young woman is employed by a maid by a music publisher in Amsterdam, in the eighteenth century. She is confronted with his homosexuality and the penalties that follow on discovery.

A book tracing the development of Anglo-Indian cookery, in other words the curry, in English and Scottish cookery books from its earliest appearance in the 18th century through to modern works by Camilla Punjabi and Marguerite Patten. It wanders the lanes and byways of the British occupation of India,...

Henning Mankell described The Serious Game as one of Sweden's lost classics. 'Söderberg wrote a contemporary novel. He wants the reader to look upon that time and to understand that love is not a secluded island, it is always affected by the 'big' world; by society; politics, disasters and scandals....

This book looks at the way in which food was employed in Greek and Roman literature to impart identity, whether social, individual, religious or ethnic. In many instances these markers are laid down in the way that foods were restricted, in other words by looking at the negatives instead of the positives...

Spike Bucklow sets out to unravel the myths behind the pigments, like dragonsblood, which is said to be a mixture of elephant and dragon blood. Examining both the medieval palette and the often cloak-and-dagger science that created it, he uncovers the secret recipes behind the luxurious colours we...

When Tamsin Omond left university, she had no idea that within a year she would be up on the roofs of Parliament, breaking the law for her beliefs about climate change. The book is a candid account of her journey from student to rebel with a cause. She takes her first steps in eco-utopia, joins Climate Camp and forms the activist group Climate Rush.