John Julius Cooper, 2. Viscount Norwich Books

From the bestselling author of 'Christmas Crackers', 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' records the daily thank-you letters from one increasingly bemused young lady to her unseen admirer.

Chronicling the 'other Norman invasion', The Normans in the South is the epic story of the House of Hauteville, and in particular Robert Guiscard, perhaps the most extraordinary European adventurer between the times of Caesar and Napoleon. In one year, 1084, he had both the Eastern and Western Emperors retreating before him and one of the most formidable of medieval Popes in his power. His brother, Roger, helped him to conquer Sicily from the Saracens, and his nephew Roger II went on to create the cosmopolitan kingdom whose remaining monuments still dazzle us today. The Normans in the South is the first of two volumes that recount an extraordinary chapter in Italian history.

'He is brilliant ... He writes like the most cultivated modern diplomat attached by a freak of time to the Byzantine court, with intimate knowledge, tactful judgement and a consciousness of the surviving monuments' IndependentIn this exciting narrative history, John Julius Norwich, one of most accomplished popular historians, reveals the beginning of Byzantium. He tells of the five formative centuries of an empire that would enthral the western world for more than eleven hundred years.

Chronicles events up to the coronation of the heroic Alexius Comnenus in 1081.

When on Christmas Day, 1130, Roger de Hauteville was crowned first King of Sicily, the island entered a golden age. In this second volume of John Julius Norwich's scintillating history of the Normans in Sicily, Norwich describes the 'happiest and most glorious chapter of the island's history.'

This omnibus volume is made up of John Julius Norwich's first two works of history published 20 years ago - The Normans in the South and The Kingdom in the Sun. The books tell the story of the dazzling Norman kingdom of Sicily founded in the 11th century by an enterprising band of adventurers from Normandy under Robert Guiscard. The state they founded was outstanding in medieval civilization.

The most visually appealing of all eight volumes of the Oxford Illustrated Encyclopedia , this extensively illustrated volume offers a wealth of color photographs and drawings to match the exceptional breadth of its subject. With over 3,000 entries, it covers art, architecture, dance,decorative art, music, musical instruments, theatre, and literature from pre-history to the present. Including art from every continent, familiar and unfamiliar masterpieces, and descriptions of the world's greatest literary, artistic, and musical figures--ranging from Aeschylus to Louis Armstrongand Fred Astaire to Diane Arbus--this extensive reference is an indispensable introduction to the engaging world of the arts.

"John Julius Norwich tells the story of what really happened in the century and a half between 1337 and 1485 by examining the history plays, from the recently authenticated Edward III through to Richard III." "He establishes just how real Shakespeare's characters and events are and what liberties he took with the facts to improve the pace of the plays and to entertain his audience. Events include the Wars of the Roses, the death of the Princes in the Tower and the Battle of Bosworth."--BOOK JACKET

Henry James wrote of Venice: 'You desire to embrace it, to caress it, to possess it . . .' whereas Mark Twain found St Mark's 'so ugly . . . propped on its long row of thick-legged columns, its back knobbed with domes, it seems like a vast, warty bug taking a meditative walk'. Reactions to Venice have been, throughout the ages, astonishingly different. John Julius Norwich has put together a dazzling anthology, drawing on the writings of Byron, Goethe, Wagner, Casanova, Jan Morris, Robert Browning and Horace Walpole, among many others. The pieces range from the sixth century, when the early lagoon-dwellers lived 'like sea-birds in huts, built on heaps of osiers' to the exquisite city of eighteenth-century revellers and nineteenth-century art lovers. The city's many diferent guises are shown as both its citizens and visitors saw them. This wonderful volume from the Traveller's Reader series also contains maps, engravings and notes on history, art, architecture and everyday city life.