Julian Mackenzie

No stretch of water anywhere in the world has the same significance for all manner of ...

The Elgin Marbles, Benin Bronzes, Pharaonic remains, the list of British ‘souvenirs�...

Today we are most familiar with the Silk Routes through Chinese ‘soft power’ as ex...

March 19th marks the birthday of David Livingstone, who, along with captains Cook and ...

I was in my garden this bright sunny morning (albeit a bit chilly) watching a great sp...

Inspired by the current exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society of British Women...

Ahead of the festive season, we are delighted to present our seasonal catalogue Prese...

When we watch Bridgerton or the many film adaptions of Jane Austen novels, it is easy ...

I knew next to nothing about William Beckford (1759-1844) until, a year or so after I ...

To do an injustice to Tennyson, it’s usually at this time that my fancy turns to get...

Mary Wollstonecraft SHELLEY Rambles in Germany and Italy, in 1840, 1...

Last week I was fortunate to buy a small quantity of the original 19...

I suppose that whenever people think of the Himalayas, they think of...

Following on from President Erdogan’s December 2021 statement, the...

The joy of book collecting is the freedom to form a library exactly ...

PERSIA & AFGHANISTAN. Seen in the light of the past forty years, sinc...

Nowadays India is one of the largest and most important centres of printing and publis...

The first thing that needs saying is that not everybody that sets out for Timbuctoo ge...

Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890), although born almost 200 years ago, seems very much a...

Today marks the 150th anniversary of one of those moments that scho...

When putting our new travel catalogue together, one of the first ...

As book lovers we all owe a debt of gratitude to the Sumerians, the ...

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw the publicati...

Thinking of the British and Africa, I suppose the things that comes ...

The Tibetan plateau, situated at some 15,000 feet (4500 metres), sur...

Did they really do that? Some of the greatest feats o...

The other day I received an e-mail offering me a copy of Brand’s H...

The Mutiny on the Bounty William Bligh (1754-1815) wi...

An interview with Angus Robb as part of our Books not Border series, wherein we're bre...

The great natural history museum collections have at their foundation, specimens collected by 1...

Dr Philip Mansel's top picks at Shapero Rare Books

Lines in the Ice: Marginalia My recent talk at Shapero Rare Books gave me the opportun...

On 28 April 1789, disaffected crewmen took control of the HMS Bounty and cast the capt...

Today we are all too aware of the appalling damage inflicted by ISIS on the ancient si...

The extraordinary success of a megalomaniac, an uncharted world, and a team of savant explorers

Frequently described within his own lifetime as the most interesting figures of the ni...

Ernest Shackleton, born in County Kildare, Ireland, in 1874, was for many years the forgotten m...

Civil servant, naval secretary, developer, publicist, settler, author and all-round-ad...

From a workhouse in Wales to establishing one of the ...

The industrial revolution in the United Kingdom spawned a host of great British explor...