Antiquities & Oddities

//Antiquities & Oddities
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  • Hilarious. Incredible. Bizarre. Witty. Deliciously malicious! Where There's a Will is an absorbing collection of odd and curious wills from many countries and many times. Vindictive wills, revealing wills, wills written on nurses' petticoats, eggshells, tractor fenders and wills found in a bottle at sea included in the book reflect the full range of man's virtues and vices. The colorful individuals whose Last Will and Testament grace the pages of this book give more than their money away - they give themselves away. They use their wills to get back at obnoxious relatives, to maintain control beyond the grave, to reward, to punish, to defy those who say you can't take it with you. And to have the last word. Among the famous and the infamous whose wills are featured are: George Bernard Shaw, W.C. Fields, Patrick Henry, Janis Joplin, Napoleon, Jack Kelly, Howard Hughes, William Shakespeare, Ian Fleming, Billy Rose, Picasso, Marilyn Monroe, Aristotle Onassis. . . and many more.
  • This highland tale focuses on Alistair, a young American laird, and his cousin Don. When they fight over Norray, an actress who has bewitched both young gentlemen, Alistair is left battered. Aleac, an occasional poacher, finds the laird and brings him home to be nursed back to health. There, he meets Aleac's niece Margaret...and the action really begins.
  • Book VIII of the Jalna chronicles of the Whiteoaks family. It is the successor to Jalna in which the central characters were Piers and Eden. Here it is their younger brother Finch, sensitive, misunderstood and musical, and finding growing up a torturing business.  Twice he tries to escape, but the spell of the old red-brick house drags him back with that peculiar haunting power that influences every character in this striking saga of Canadian country life.

  • Nigel Molesworth - St. Kustards - offers a guide to survival for the 20th century with advice on how to obtain More Culture and a Cleaner Brane; The Peason-Molesworth atommic pile; End of term marks; The Molesworth Report on Masters and a discourse on the topic that all books which boys hav to read are wrong. Illustrated by Ronald Searle. All misspellings contained herein are Nigel's own.
  • Welcome to St. Kustards  and your tour guide, Nigel Molesworth and his 'grate frend' Peason.  This is the boys' version of St Trinians and from the same creators.  Illustrated lavishly by the irrepresible Ronald Searle.  Chapters include How to Be a Young Elizabethan and How to Survive in the Atommic Age - with a 'guide to gurls'.
  • We often use expressions without thinking about it, but why do we use them and what are their origins?  Such as cheesed off to denote irritation; and what does it mean to cock a snook?  Why a kangaroo court?  All these and so much more, great potential for trivia nights. A great little volume to browse now and then.
  • A fascinating history of Christmas carols and their meanings. Who was Good King Wenceslas? What are the pagan origins of  The Holly And The Ivy? And - of course - what was the partridge doing in the pear tree? Carols first appeared in the Middle Ages, when a carol was any song sung with the singer standing in a circle; they were banned under Puritan law and united the soldiers on both sides on the Western front; and they are the longest running tradition of Christmas.
  • Somerset Maugham -  husband, father, bi-sexual; homosexual; playwright, author, thorough-going agnostic and - spy, recruited to the network of British agents who operated against the Berlin Committee during World War 1. Published in 1937, the aim of this book - which, according to the author, makes no attempt to be biographical in the strict sense - is to trace the developments of Maugham's style, technique and choice of subject matter in his novels, plays and short stories. There is also speculation of the the thought and philosophy of which Maugham's work is his eloquent expression.
  • Into this quiet Old country castle on its rounded hill-top there came, one April day in the year 1533, a baby boy - quite an ordinary mite in every way. No one guessed then all that the helpless little one would do when he came to manhood, or that centuries after his death his name would be held in loving reverence by a nation living far from quiet Dillenburg. The story of William, eldest son of Count William of Nassau and the beginnings of the Protestant Church.