Secondhand History & Culture Bargain Book Box SP2909

Secondhand History & Culture Bargain Book Box SP2909

Twenty-one books from the golden age of Pelican and Penguin non-fiction — history, biography, literature, espionage, and a Spike Milligan memoir alongside the worst journey in the world. It takes real confidence to curate a box this eclectic, and every title justifies its place.

1. Glass Through the Ages — E. Barrington Haynes (Pelican) — a beautifully illustrated history of glassmaking from antiquity to the twentieth century.
2. Strike Hard, Strike Sure — Ralph Barker (Pan, illustrated) — the RAF Bomber Command story told through the crews who flew the missions over Germany.
3. The Most Dangerous Moment: The Japanese Assault on Ceylon 1942 — Michael Tomlinson — the largely forgotten turning point in the Pacific War, when Japan's naval air power was at its most destructive.
4. The Fall of Singapore — Timothy Hall — a comprehensive account of the greatest military disaster in British history and the human stories behind it.
5. The History of Surrealism — Maurice Nadeau (Pelican) — the definitive history of the movement, from its Dada roots to its global influence, still essential reading.
6. The Crowning Privilege: Lectures and Essays on Professional Standards in Poetry — Robert Graves (Pelican) — Graves's characteristically combative views on what poetry is for and who writes it well.
7. A Word from Paris: Radio Broadcasts from the Sixties — Alister Kershaw (Imprint Travel) — an Australian expatriate in Paris broadcasting his observations of French life in the decade that changed everything.
8. The Penguin Story — the history of one of the twentieth century's most transformative publishing houses, from Allen Lane's sixpenny paperbacks to a global empire.
9. The End of the Russian Empire — Michael T. Florinsky — a scholarly account of the forces that brought down the Romanovs and the world they ruled.
10. Philby: The Long Road to Moscow — Patrick Seale and Maureen McConville — the definitive biography of Kim Philby, Britain's most damaging spy, and the double life he sustained for decades.
11. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography — Humphrey Carpenter — the authorised biography, drawing on unprecedented access to Tolkien's papers, letters, and family. Essential for any Tolkien reader.
12. The Older Hardy — Robert Gittings (Penguin) — a biography of Thomas Hardy's later life, tracing the poet and novelist through his long second chapter.
13. The Worst Journey in the World — Apsley Cherry-Garrard (Penguin) — the great classic of polar exploration: Cherry-Garrard's account of Scott's fatal Antarctic expedition.
14. Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall — Spike Milligan — the fourth volume of Milligan's war memoirs, as funny and as savage as the others, covering the Italian campaign.
15. The Autobiography of Michel de Montaigne — selected and edited by Marvin Lowenthal (Vintage) — Montaigne as autobiographer, assembled from the Essays, revealing the man behind the method.
16. Europe of the Dictators 1919-1945 — Elizabeth Wiskemann (Fontana History of Europe) — a lucid account of how Europe's democracies fell to authoritarian governments between the wars.
17. Vatican Finances — Corrado Pallenberg (Pelican) — a penetrating investigation into the financial operations of the Holy See.
18. The Renaissance — Wallace K. Ferguson (Berkshire Studies in European History) — a scholarly but readable history of the period that remade European civilisation.
19. Russian Literature Since the Revolution — Edward J. Brown — a comprehensive survey of what Soviet-era writers managed to create under the conditions they faced.
20. Cut Stones and Crossroads: A Journey in Peru — Ronald Wright (Penguin Travel Library) — the Canadian author of A Short History of Progress travels the Inca road, past and present overlapping at every turn.
21. Harpo Speaks! — Harpo Marx — the riotous autobiography of the most lovable Marx Brother, full of stories that explain why everyone who ever met him adored him.