Unicorn – The Bell Bookshop

Desperado: The Untamed Life of Clare Sheridan

Emma — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Clare Frewen was born in 1885 into what seemed the lap of luxury, raised by a glamorous socialite and a descendant of English and Irish gentry. After a marriage to Wilfrid, a descendant of the famed playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan ended in tragedy, she embraced her independence – travelling to Russia in the wake of the revolution, becoming the first woman hired by the New York World, and honing her craft as a sculptor – with a sensational catalogue of subjects – including cousin Winston Churchill, H.G. Wells, Gladys Cooper, Mahatma Gandhi, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Herbert Henry Asquith, Charlie Chaplin, Benito Mussolini and composer Dimitri Shostakovich. Captivated by her fearlessness and talent, Clare attracted a remarkable coterie of lovers throughout her lifetime – from Russian revolutionaries to American millionaires, to Arab Shieks. Clare also became an acclaimed travel writer, memoirist, diarist, and novelist. As well creating over 100 works of art, she wrote 20 books, in addition to dozens of newspaper and magazine articles for The Times, the Daily Mail, The New York Herald, Boston Globe and others.

Why Read?

Emma — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In Why Read? The Battle Between Book and Screen Kenneth Baker recalls how reading was so important to him as a child, and why in this National Year of Reading, and working together with the National Literacy Trust, he would like to encourage today’s young people to share his love of reading.

'I first came across poetry at my primary school in a book containing Blake’s ‘The Tiger’. I had never seen one, but it came alive by reading about it. My father read to my sister and myself extracts from Dickens and I still reread all his novels – my favourite is Bleak House.'

‘In my life I’ve spent more time reading books than any other activity. I want to share the joy and pleasure with those who are not natural readers. Opening a book spells the end of ignorance and it frames our imaginative life forever.'

‘This book has over 100 illustrations for as Alice in Wonderland said ‘what is the use of a book without illustrations?’

Eric Butcher – Trace Elements

Emma — Thu, 07 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The clock is ticking on the art of Eric Butcher. In 2020, motivated by environmental anxiety, the artist made an extraordinary commitment; to use only those materials already available in his studio – using up, repurposing and recycling what he already has without consuming more. When he has run out of materials he will simply stop making art.

Over the past six years Butcher has relentlessly pursued the logic of this enquiry, destroying his own work in the process and re-presenting the fragments of paint sandwiched between sheets of glass like specimens; a ‘natural history’ of his creative past.

Sumptuously documented by photographer Peter Abrahams with a fascinating essay by Jonathan Watkins and a revelling ‘in conversation’ between Eric Butcher and artist/write David Batchelor, Trace Elements chronicles this unique and compelling on-going project.

Tracks

Emma — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Tracks: A Journey Through Metroland tells the story of Metroland and the development of suburbia that grew alongside the Metropolitan Railway. Originally the brainchild of eminent Victorians, the Metropolitan grew to become the queen of underground lines, eventually expanding to a point some fifty miles outside London. Author Kevin J. Last describes how the concept of Metroland was an aspiration for several levels of society, promising a better lifestyle well away from the deprivations of wartime. The idea that the working man could live comfortably outside the smoke in individually designed houses would mean that he could also thrive at work, largely due to the regular service offered by the new railway. This was quite exceptional in that, while nominally an underground line, most of the Met’s route was above ground and, in length, went far beyond other similar lines, far out into the Buckinghamshire countryside. Not marked on any map, Metroland is as much a concept of the mind as a real place.

Jeremy Catto

Emma — Sat, 05 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

If Hollywood wanted to make a film about Oxford University, the casting team would have to find someone to play Jeremy Catto. Born in 1939, this composite of Goodbye Mr Chips, Porterhouse Blue, and C.P. Snow was the quintessential Oxford don. A gifted teacher, noted scholar, and devoted college man, he enjoyed the most extraordinary network and seemed to know everyone: he was friends with Bryan Ferry, became Harold Macmillan’s drinking companion, taught Princess Margaret her family’s history, had a part to play in General Pinochet’s extradition trial and was even rumoured to be a spy. But he was no mere caricature. Over four decades, he shaped the minds and characters of generations of men and women who went on to prominent roles at Westminster, in the City, in the Church, and in the world of academia. In 2018, his memorial service was attended by over 500 people and his death marked the end of an era in British social, political and academic life.

The Sword of Monmouth

Emma — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Sword of Monmouth tells the extraordinary story of King Charles I Prince of Wales sword and how it was handed down to King Charles II and then onto his eldest son the Duke of Monmouth. After the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Sedgemoor, the sword was first hidden in a haystack, then discovered centuries later as a prop in a pantomime.

A short and beautiful life

Emma — Mon, 15 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Few have heard of the Shakespeare Head Press, although it ranks alongside William Morris’s Kelmscott, Emery Walker and Cobden-Sanderson’s Doves, Eric Gill’s Golden Cockerel and St John Hornby’s Ashendene. Its origins date to the 1860s, when a young Arthur Henry Bullen, dreamt of printing the whole of Shakespeare. Making his dream a reality, Bullen founded the Shakespeare Head Press in 1904 in an old Tudor house, where Shakespeare would have been a guest.There are many backstories associated with the Shakespeare Head Press and of the perennial dashed hopes of small presses’, which plagued Bullen. When the Press passed to Basil Blackwell (1921), Bullen’s mantle was assumed by the scholar-printer Bernard Newdigate. For twenty years, he produced a series of finely printed books, yet these were not commercially successful. Blackwell blamed the commodification of literature, and the metamorphoses of books from handcrafted works of art to manufactured objects.A Short and Beautiful Life reconstructs the lives of Bernard Newdigate and A.H. Bullen, and that of the Shakespeare Head Press. For Sir Basil Blackwell, ‘the exact record of events was secondary to the universal truths it served to illustrate.’ And there is something remarkably contemporary about them.

Master of the House

Emma — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Cameron Mackintosh is the world’s leading theatrical producer of musicals such as Cats, Les Misérables and The Phantom of the Opera. He is also a significant theatre owner and has completed a two-decade campaign of refurbishment and rebuilding of eight London theatres that has set the tempo for maintaining one of Britain’s greatest cultural heritages for the next century.

Master of the House charts the stories of these eight historic London buildings – their origins, their iconic shows and productions, the stars and the glamour. Lavishly illustrated with images from the Delfont Mackintosh archive, the book also contains original architect drawings, specially-commissioned photographs of the refurbishment, show posters and other theatre ephemera, and many sweeping panoramas of the exquisitely finished spaces.

Churchill in Punch

Emma — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Punch featured Winston Churchill in more than 600 cartoons between 1899 to 1988. Some were laudatory, some were critical, and others, like the man himself, usually humorous. For the first time this book catalogues all the cartoons and provides a context of the events and people being satirised and places them in historical perspective. Early on Punch often made Churchill into a caricature of himself, promoting exaggerated images of his physical characteristics such as his forward leaning gait, his prominent jutting jaw, his cigar, and his hands on hips when speaking. His hobbies were frequently caricatured such as his love of polo, painting, writing skills and brick-laying. This book is not just for fans of Churchill, but for anyone interested in history, British life over the past 120 years, media and their response to government and politicians, cartoon aficionados and general society. It is an easy and fun read for the casual reader but also the academic who wants more depth through the appendices and an analysis of major world events through the eye of Punch.