Humayun, the son of Babur and the second Mughal ruler, reigned in Agra from 1530 to 1540 and then in Delhi from 1555 to 1556. Until now, his numerous achievements, including winning back the throne of Hindustan, have not been well recorded. The Planetary King follows Humayun’s travels and campaigns during the political and social disturbances of the early 16th century. It delves into Humayun’s extraordinary social and intellectual life; demystifies his magico-scientific world view, draws attention to his deep involvement with literature, poetry, painting, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, occultism and extraordinary inventions, and offers a new analysis of Humayun’s mausoleum as the posthumous sum of his visions and dreams.

The book accompanies the new site museum at Humayun’s tomb created by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture upon the culmination of two decades of conservation work on the World Heritage Site.

Co-published with Aga Khan Trust for Culture, New Delhi. 

Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944) was one of the great architects of the twentieth century. His Edwardian country houses, surrounded by rhapsodic gardens, beguiled clients with their romance and wit. After 1918, the war memorials that he created symbolized a grieving nation’s sense of loss. In the new capital of the British Raj, New Delhi, the Viceroy’s House or Rashtrapati Bhavan had a footprint bigger than Versailles. His unfinished Liverpool Cathedral would have rivalled St Peter’s in Rome.

Intensely shy, Lutyens hid his personality behind puns and jokes – and yet he could be called ‘part mystic’, a reference to an inner profundity. Rich in stories, this entertaining and stylish short biography is a major new study incorporating fresh research which shows this most charismatic of architects in a new light.

Too many smart people build visibility without income. They collect followers, likes, and applause while real clients stay away. Personal Branding like a PRO fixes that problem. This handbook is for experts with serious knowledge who struggle to attract high-paying work, and for creators with an audience they do not know how to monetize. It replaces guesswork with a practical system to turn your personal brand into a reliable engine for leads, clients, and revenue. No hype. No vanity metrics. Just a clear framework to move from getting famous to getting paid.

“In a world full of noise, a sharply positioned personal brand has become an absolute necessity. This book provides the strategic blueprint to build that reputation systematically and with real impact. It’s essential reading for every expert who wants to be taken seriously.” — Peter Hinssen, Entrepreneur, Advisor, and Author of The Uncertainty Principle.

“Personal Branding Like a PRO is the essential guide for anyone ready to turn intentionality into influence and high-tech tools into high-touch human trust. Clo Willaerts cuts through the vanity metrics to show you how to build a reputation that actually generates revenue, making it a most strategic business asset for the modern professional.” — Steven Van Belleghem, Customer Experience Expert and Author of A Diamond in the Rough 

Ten more handscrolls from the series Collection of Ancient Calligraphy and Painting Handscrolls: Paintings have rich themes and diverse styles, such as vivid portraits, exquisite landscape paintings, and meticulous paintings of flowers and birds. The paintings are accompanied by texts written by experts, offering detailed analysis of the artists’ works. It is a powerful tribute to Chinese ancient paintings and provides original insight into the work itself. In this series (volumes 11-20), most of handscrolls are painted in Song Dynasty, in which painting became an art of high sophistication and reached a new level of sophistication with further development of landscape painting. The original paintings have been in the collection of the Palace Museum or the Taipei Palace Museum for many years.

The artworks are presented in the traditional format of a handscroll which can be extended indefinitely, so that the postscripts and observations of later generations can be directly followed by the end of the works.

Miyamoto Musashi (c. 1584-1645) is the most revered and celebrated swordsman in Japanese history; in Japan alone close to a thousand works have taken the ancient warrior as its subject. Unfortunately, our modern portrait of this folk hero is derived mainly from popular books, comics, and film, with little heed paid to the early denki, chronicles recorded by men who, though they had not known Musashi in his lifetime, faithfully recorded what was passed down by those who had. The Bushû Denraiki is the earliest such record still in existence. Completed in 1727 by Tachibana Minehide, the fifth generation master of Musashi’s Niten Ichi school of fencing, it is the most reliable record of Musashi’s life and exploits outside those from the hand of the master swordsman himself. Now, after three centuries, Minehide’s insight into this enigmatic and solitary swordsman are available to the English reader. His text throws a new and refreshing light on many aspects of especially Musashi’s early life-his troubled relations with his father, his first battle experience during Japan’s period of unification, the sad death of his illegitimate child, and of course his legendary duel on Ganryû island.

Using the formalist conventions of an ironic heritage, William Ludwig Lutgens attains the expression of something sincere. Like the philosophical idiot who did his utmost best to unlearn all the fallacies he was acquitted with since birth and now only knows he knows nothing, the artist made the world into his own theater wherein he can stomp around like a bull in a china shop with the grace of a prima ballerina. Forcing a pathway to possible exits by presenting us with the alloy of his observations, imagination and scattershot references. Not merely asking questions, which seems to be the hype in contemporary art nowadays, he is unraveling the framework wherein these questions originate. The image deconstructed by the story of its creation, alternating between the power and impotence of the theatrical madness at the end of the world as we know it. William Ludwig Lutgens presents with his Comedy of Humours the dysfunctional family of man.

Text in English and Dutch.

Although Vitis vinifera vines have been grown in the American southwest for nearly 400 years, its modern wine era only really began with the new pioneers of the 1960s and 1970s. All four states can boast growing wine industries, each with its own distinct identity. Although home to those first wine grapes, New Mexico may be the least experienced player, with a few major producers and many smaller, new arrivals. The Texas industry is bigger, more developed and more polished, with at least 350 wineries operating and plenty of room for growth. Arizona has perhaps made the most progress in the shortest time; some impressive growing conditions, educational initiatives, and a tight-knit band of producers have led to promising quality wines. Colorado, long known for its fruit orchards, is now home to vineyards too, with many producers also farming other fruit and creating wines from both.

Taking each state in turn, Jessica Dupuy guides us expertly through its history before presenting a thorough summary of its climate and geology, discussing the grapes grown, explaining the sub regions (AVAs), and appraising the challenges wine growers face. Influential and innovative producers are profiled, and each section concludes with ideas on where to visit, dine, and stay. Boxes throughout the text supply asides on historical, geographic, and cultural points of interest. For anybody interested in discovering a truly up-and-coming wine region this book makes for fascinating reading.

Spirit of the Amazon is the work of photojournalist Sue Cunningham and writer Patrick Cunningham. It is a celebration of cultural difference and a call for better stewardship of the world. Sue’s stunning photographs demonstrate the spiritual and material value of the Xingu tribes to all mankind; they keep the forest alive and they protect the climate of South America and the rest of the world. Their spiritual connection to their environment and the wider Earth shows us an alternative way to connect to the natural richness of the planet, built on foundations completely different from those of global materialism. During their expedition by boat, the authors followed the course of the Xingu river, a tributary of the Amazon, traveling 2,500 km through the heart of Brazil. They visited forty-eight tribal villages in this remote part of the Amazon, accessible only by small plane or by negotiating the rapids of the Xingu. This is the story of the tribal communities they met; their daily lives, their connection to the land and to the rivers, the threats which pervade each day of their lives. It is also a validation of their importance to the rest of the world; why these small, remote and often secretive indigenous communities are so important to our own lives and to our shared planet. It is a celebration of their vibrant cultures, their rituals and their rites of passage, of cultures very different from each other, but with a shared spiritual basis which respects the trees, the rivers and the rain. And it is a call for the world to protect them, their lands and their forests and rivers from the destruction which our avaricious greed for natural resources drives ever closer and deeper into their realm.

Step into the world of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty, and desire – later worshiped by the Romans as Venus. Today she is thought of as a symbol of passion and beauty, but her story is far older and more complex. This catalogue explores Aphrodite’s beginnings on the island of Cyprus, where she was worshiped as an all-powerful goddess over 3,000 years ago, and traces her journey through the Greek and into the Roman world, where she became Venus.

This book reveals how, over the centuries, Aphrodite evolved into an iconic figure symbolizing love and beauty as her myths and images flourished – inspiring art, literature, and imagination from the Renaissance to the present day. Illustrated with more than 200 extraordinary objects – from sculpture and bronzes to gems and terracottas from Cyprus, Greece, and Italy, dating back from around 1400 BCE to the 21st century – this catalogue uncovers the making of a goddess whose legacy still shapes our ideas of love and beauty today.

This beautiful coloring and drawing book contains intricate illustrations, decorative details and a fabulous fold-out map. This is the perfect starting point for your art adventure around the National Galleries of Scotland. Color in the buildings, draw your favorite artworks and add your friends and family into your pictures.

The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, part of the National Galleries of Scotland, provides a unique visual history of Scotland, told through portraits of the figures who shaped it: royals and rebels, poets and philosophers, heroes and villains. The Gallery is home to Scotland’s collection of portrait miniatures which date from the mid-sixteenth century to the present day.
This book illustrates a selection of works by key miniaturists and features portraits of many important Scottish historical figures such as James Hepburn 4th Earl of Bothwell, the third husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, James VI and I and Robert Burns who was depicted in the last year of his life. A complete list of all the works in the collection is also included.

Although Chinese scholars’ stones fascinate, they do not speak; they reveal their mysteries only grudgingly to those who take the time to observe and to investigate. In seven essays the author relates important lessons learned over a lifetime of collecting and researching these intriguing creations of nature. What did Chinese connoisseurs of a thousand years ago mean by the enigmatic terms shou, zhou, lou, and tou? Were ‘ink mountain stones’ the earliest collected stone form, and were they valued primarily for their utilitarian function? What are the ‘Qingzhou stones’ mentioned in one early text, but ignored in subsequent writings? What should we be looking for when we evaluate an ancient stone? How can we tell if it is ancient without written records and how much weight can be given to any documentation? Finally, using the tools of connoisseurship and textual evidence, is it possible to verify that a stone first collected in the former Han dynasty is the stone we are looking at today? In exploring these and other issues, Kemin Hu illuminates a depth and complexity of stone appreciation not touched upon in other publications, yet understood and appreciated by serious modern collectors as well as Chinese stone lovers of old.

Empirical evidence is scant and scattered. Between these fragments, historians have filled the voids with legends. Though legends are not evidence per se, they do carry a seed of truth – and hopefully, their incorporation in this volume will inspire new interest in the mystery of the world’s greatest temples. The engineering techniques that allowed ancient civilizations to construct such marvellous edifices have been lost to us for generations. Unfortunately, they have not received the attention they deserve, as relics of human culture and faith. This is especially true for Konark. In The Sun Temple of Konark, the author attempts to separate chaff from grain, utilizing scientific tools and methodologies. The Sun Temple has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is considered one of the seven wonders of India. This seminal volume is the result of extensive research by the author into not only the history and legends related to the temple, but also the temple structure itself. An engineer and architect by profession, the author examines the temple in great detail. He questions several of the established theories regarding construction in its various stages and forwards his own theories with reasonable conviction. He takes great pains to go into as much detail as possible with regard to each and every portion, monument, and sculpture of the temple. With 415 images and 21 detailed architectural drawings, the book is a treasure trove for any admirer or student of Konark, or a researcher of its art, history, and architecture.

Make the most of Norwich with this new guide to the sights and secrets of East Anglia’s premier city, from the unknown treasures of its magnificent cathedral to the legends and stories behind its historic pubs. It’s a place of numerous historical layers, with intrigue and interest lurking on every corner, from the black circus proprietor who inspired one of The Beatles’ most famous songs to remnants of England’s most notorious red-light districts. It’s eminently walkable, too, but you can also bike or even canoe your way around the center, maybe even heading out to explore the natural beauty of Broads National Park which lies just beyond.

The first biography of Ralph Dutton, collector, connoisseur, writer, philanthropist, who created one of the National Trust’s most popular houses and gardens, Hinton Ampner.  

“Ralph Dutton grows on you as John Holden engagingly unpeels the layers of this complicated traveller, connoisseur, philanthropist and friend.” –  Dame Rosalind Savill, former Director of the Wallace Collection

“Ralph Dutton is someone most of us have never heard of, yet he created a place of exceptional grace and beauty in Hinton Ampner. John Holden unravels the mystery of the man for us, and gives us a compelling account of why and how it all happened. It’s an enchanting read.” – Lord Smith of Finsbury, Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge and Chairman of The Art Fund

“This is a real discovery. The story of a modest gentleman who nonetheless played an important role in 20th-century English culture. He put his life into his house, and his house into his life. Both are an engaging case study in heritage history.” – Professor Robert Hewison, Cultural Historian

Unfinished paintings can be seen in many of the world’s great collections, including that of the National Gallery of Scotland: they fascinate the viewer and raise intriguing questions. What circumstances left them incomplete? What do they tell us about the ways that painters worked? How do we define ‘finish’, and when did an artist consider a work to be finished? These and other questions will be considered by David Bomford, in an exploration of the non-finito from the Renaissance to the 20th century. The Watson Gordon Lecture Series: The Watson Gordon Lectures, established in 2006, typify the long-standing collaboration between the University of Edinburgh and the National Galleries of Scotland. Each lecture is by a leading scholar and reveals new research on a focused topic. The lectures are delivered and published annually, and now number eight titles in the series. Also available: ‘The Hardest Kind of Archetype’: Reflections on Roy Lichtenstein ISBN 9781906270384 Picasso’s ‘Toys for Adults’, Cubism as Surrealism ISBN 9781906270261 Roger Fry’s Journey: From Primitives to the Post-Impressionists ISBN 9781906270117 Sound, Silence, and Modernity in Dutch Pictures of Manners ISBN 9781906270254

Benjamin West’s The Death of a Stag, a tour de force of pictorial theater and his own unique Scottish masterpiece, has been the focus of high drama for over two centuries. Painted for the Clan Mackenzie in 1786, the gigantic canvas, measuring twelve by seventeen feet, is still the largest in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland. The painting almost moved to America, but after a successful campaign, it was purchased in 1987. In 2004, the work was conserved in situ in the National Gallery of Scotland and this book tells the story of the picture, both in terms of its history and the conservation process.

The America’s Cup has been the world’s most prestigious yacht race for over 170 years. This beautifully illustrated and fully updated new edition tells the story of the cup from its inception through to the most recent race, held in 2024.

Named in 1851 in honor of the first winner (New York pilot, ‘America’), the Cup was dominated by American yachts for well over a century. At last, in 1983, Australia II wrestled the trophy away from the USA, albeit briefly. At Barcelona in 2024, the Cup produced one of the best contests yet, with the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron winning the race for a fifth time, and a British yacht, Britannia, competing in the finals for the first time in 60 years.

With a painting of each race since 1851, by marine artist Tim Thompson, and detailed descriptions of the boats involved, The Story of the America’s Cup 1851-2024 is an elegant, insightful celebration of a storied contest.

Focusing on Calouste Gulbenkian’s determination to preserve his cherished art collection intact after his death, this book tells the story of the creation of the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. It begins with the efforts of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, founded in 1956, to reunite an exceptional art collection then dispersed between Paris, Washington D.C. and London. The book examines the legal, diplomatic and practical measures that made this mission possible and follows the planning of a museum shaped by the most advanced museological thinking of the 1950s and 1960s, whereby the artworks themselves guided decisions across architecture, exhibition design and museography. It also highlights the key roles played by the first generation of Portuguese women curators and international consultants, from cataloguing the works to trial exhibitions and final installation. Ultimately, the volume shows how the Foundation interpreted and translated Gulbenkian’s taste and character into museum form, resulting in a unique and enduring institution.

The Inside series focuses on the mission and organization of an institution rather than the collections within it – the context in which it operates and the people who make it work. It tells the story of how an institution has evolved through its people, history, architecture, purpose and practice.

The history of the erstwhile State of Jodhpur is a record of heroic exploits, epic victories and magnificent gallantry displayed by its army. The Story of the Jodhpur Lancers is a remarkable narrative of the warriors of this Indian Princely State – prior to, and during the First and Second World Wars – and of how the friendship between an Indian Prince, Sir Pratap Singh, and British royalty contributed to the Allied War efforts. This book provides a comprehensive historical account of the Jodhpur Lancers – their origin, their deeds and dash and their role in the armies of British India and their Princely State. Featuring rare photographs, maps, documents and sketches, this book is a richly illustrated kaleidoscope packed with historical data assembled from a wide variety of sources, much of it previously unavailable. The author has taken the skeins of Jodhpur history and woven them expertly to create a fascinating story. Forewords by General Bipin Rawat, Chief of the Army Staff and Maharaja Gaj Singh, erstwhile Maharaja of Jodhpur, make the book even more memorable. The Story of the Jodhpur Lancers also reminds us, lest we forget, of the sacrifice of so many Indians who fought in the Great War and who died in foreign lands, as brave sons of India. The book contains detailed information about the Jodhpur Lancers and the mavericks who won fame at the Battle of Haifa in 1918, during the Great War. Ardently written and engrossing to read, it takes readers back to an era of royalty and pageantry, passion and valor.

Forgotten in Thailand’s troubled Deep South, stands a dilapidated wooden palace once home to a Malay ruler, the last of his dynasty. Locals call it the “House of the Raja,” a place suffused with loss and solitude, laden with the region’s glorious past and tragic present. Intrigued by this demonized, little-known borderland, photographer Xavier Comas chanced upon this mysterious house and felt compelled to delve into its past. The caretaker, a Muslim shaman who held rituals inside, invited the author to stay and initiated him into its hidden dimensions. As Comas builds a bond of trust with the inhabitants of the house, the missing pieces of its history gently fall into place, revealing an ancient culture long hidden and the building’s ties to the centuries-old struggles in this contested region.
 
Comas’ evocative black-and-white photographs take us into a realm of hauntings, mystic powers and fading memories. His first-hand account enthralls the reader with vivid descriptions in which the real and the magical entwine. The House of the Raja provides a missing key to controversial issues of legacy, belief and identity in Thailand’s Muslim South.

This book explores all continents and countries in search of the most extraordinary national parks around the world. Well-known and lesser-known parks are featured, but they are all special because of breathtaking views, a unique atmosphere, or exceptional fauna and flora. In these parks you will experience unforgettable treks and adventures and enjoy magnificent views. From desert parks to safari parks, from jungle areas to the highest mountains; each park has its unique story to tell. This book can serve as a practical travel guide but also as inspiration for those looking for the ultimate next travel destination. A traveler’s bucket list with a selection of the world’s most incredible natural parks.