Last Chance to Buy

Ever since Chaucer’s day, when the host of the Tabard Inn in Southwark rose to welcome the Canterbury Pilgrims with a joke, the After Dinner Speech, designed, if possible, to reduce the assembled company to helpless merriment, has presented the ultimate challenge.

Spectacular colour images illustrate this highly acclaimed exploration of space and time.

One of the most beloved children’s classics of all time tells the story of how a little girl named Fern, with the help of a kind spider, saved one special pig.

A landmark title in Russian literature, Crime and Punishment is presented here with stirring wood engravings by Harry Brockway.

With their outrageous tastes and boundless energy, the Larkins have charmed many a reader. Alice Tait’s illustrations for Folio capture the epicurean excesses of this flamboyant family.

An idyllic existence brought to life in the famously charming diary of Parson Woodforde.

In his ‘intimate history’, Richard Fortey unlocks the geological secrets of the Earth – its origin and the constant processes that destroy and create it. His aim is to unite the natural and human history of particular places with the geological realities that underlie them.

Bede, the father of English history, created a dramatic narrative which remains the most valuable chronicle of Anglo-Saxon England in existence, and an unrivalled account of the early days of Christianity.

John Adams – revolutionist, political theorist. An acclaimed biography of one of America’s Founding Fathers in a superb Folio edition.

G. E. R. Lloyd traces the birth of science from Thales to Galen. A new foreword by Lewis Wolpert, Emeritus Professor at University College London, pays tribute to the Ancient Greeks and to Lloyd’s exploration of their fundamental role.

Edward Bawden illustrates this softbound edition – one of the first in the Folio Collectables range.

Capote’s masterpiece of suspense was an immediate sensation when it was serialised in the New Yorker in 1965. Our edition, introduced by Rupert Thomson, includes rare courtroom photographs.

The Middle Ages have often been depicted as a period in which life had few comforts. Nonsense, says the great medieval scholar Chiara Frugoni, in this delightful examination of the many inventions we owe to the period.

Skilfully interweaving a spellbinding retelling of the Arthurian myths with the parallel story of an ordinary boy in the middle ages, this is the second book in the award-winning trilogy that is a landmark in children’s fiction.

Skilfully interweaving a spellbinding retelling of the Arthurian myths with the parallel story of an ordinary boy in the Middle Ages, this is the third and final book in the award-winning trilogy which is a landmark in children’s fiction.

Aubrey, cast ashore and suffocated by a landlubber's life, joins Maturin on a mission to take the French-occupied islands of Mauritius and La Réunion. The fourth installment of the Aubrey-Maturin series.

The story of Italy’s first family is one of political cunning, artistic genius, infidelity, execution and revenge. With sumptuous colour illustrations.

A brilliant overview of prehistory by a 'towering influence' in archaeology.

An exacting and illuminating dual biography, complemented by colour photographs.

Compelling romance, epic tale of misadventure, cutting parable of cultural imperialism, Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda is overwhelmingly a story of all-consuming passions.

A rousing tale of mistaken identity, The Prince and the Pauper reveals a side of Mark Twain seldom seen. The young prince suddenly becomes the pauper and the pauper, Tom, heir to the throne of England.

The poetic account of Jason’s quest for the golden fleece, written in the 3rd century BC and now an inspiration for artist Daniel Egnéus.

J. E. Gordon reveals the unseen forces that hold up buildings, bridges and aeroplanes – but also animals, plants and humans. From space travels to the complexity of the human body – all the answers are here.

The ‘longest girl that was ever seen’, with her hair in a tangle, dress torn and bootlaces trailing, Katy is one of the most lovable heroines ever to leap from the pages of a book.

Introduced by the poet, this selection of Yeats’s greatest poems is paired with paintings by his brother Jack B. Yeats.