David Timson introduces London Labour and the London Poor and its author Henry Mayhew, who in 1841 founded the satirical magazine Punch before his social conscience moved him to...

Laughter is unique to man. This delightful anthology presents some of the funniest extracts in English literature. David Timson starts with Anglo-Saxon riddles and continues with...

David Timson talks about the relationship between Samuel Johnson and James Boswell—how they met, their unlikely friendship and extensive conversations—and the...

This new edition, which is reproduced from a first printing of the book, is introduced by the author Martin Edwards, archivist of the Detection Club, and includes a...

Charming, vibrant, witty and edifying, The Life of Samuel Johnson is a work of great obsession and boundless reverence. The literary critic Samuel Johnson was 54 when he first...

Jacques and His Master is a deliciously witty and entertaining "variation" on Diderot's novel Jacques le Fatalist, written for Milan Kundera's "private...

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has always maintained its initial appeal to both the general public and scholars alike. Its sheer scale is daunting, encompassing over a...

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has always maintained its initial appeal to both the general public and scholars of subsequent ages. The sheer scale of the subject is...

Father Brown is an eccentric priest with his own particular ways of dealing with crime. David Timson, having completed the whole of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes canon...

Dating from the last decade of the nineteenth century, Pelléas et Mélisande points the way into the twentieth century. The score is hauntingly beautiful, but there is more to...