London abounds with all manner of ludicrous laws, & not all of these curious statutes have been relegated to the past. Despite the efforts of the Law Commission there are medieval laws that are still in force, & the City of London & its livery companies have their own legal oddities. Laws are made in the capital because parliament is here; so are the Old Bailey, the Law Courts, the House of Lords &, now, the Supreme Court. The privy council, which sometimes has to decide cases, also sits in London, & there were other courts that used to sit in London, from prize courts concerning war booty to ecclesiastical courts. Having maintained its `ancient rights & freedoms` under Magna Carta, the City felt free to enact its own laws, many of which seem to have had to do with what people could wear. Until quite recently, for example, a man could be arrested for walking down the street wearing a wig, a robe & silk stockings
- unless he was a judge. & all human folly has been paraded through the law courts of London, to the extent that it is difficult to know where the serious business of administering justice ends & where farce begins. As law is made in the courtroom as well as in parliament & elsewhere, judges like to keep a firm h&, but sometimes so-called jibbing juries will simply not do what they are told. All sorts of oddities get swept up into the law. Legislators particularly love to pass Acts about sex. If sexual services are being offered in a London massage parlour, for example, a police officer must then search the premises for school children. According to The Children & Young Persons Act of 1933 it is against the law for children & `yowling persons` between the age of four & sixteen to frequent a brothel. A writ was introduced under both Edward III & Henry IV to ban lawyers from parliament as there were too many of them, the reason being that it was easier for a lawyer to spend his time in London attending parliament that it was for a knight of the shires. But because parliament was already packed with lawyers it was difficult to make any such rule stick. Then an effective way of excluding them was found. They were denied the wages paid to members in those days. Sadly, these days, parliament & the government are packed with lawyers once again. & they are being paid.A law passed in 1540
- & still in force today
- makes it illegal for barbers in the City of London to practise surgery; with impeccable impartiality, the Act also forbids surgeons to cut hair. Finally, never forget that under the Vagrancy Act of 1824, you can be convicted of being `an idle & disorderly person, or a rogue, vagabond, or incorrigible rogue`. The same act also outlaws people `professing to tell fortunes`, including `palmistry`. Under the Act, it is an offence merely to be suspected.


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Anna lives in Brooklyn. But she didn`t always. She grew up in Kielce, Pol&, where the summers were long & the politics communist. When her parents were indicted for their alliance with anti-government forces, Anna had to flee her homel&, leaving her closest friends behind. Now an adult, she lives in the US & has lost touch with the girls she once knew, the ones she missed so much as a teenager that she`d sneak back into Kielce hidden in the back of a car just to share another summer. When she learns that one of them has suffered a terrible tragedy, she hurries home to Kielce. But when she arrives, she`ll find more than she`d ever imagined. It`s finally time to face everything that happened during those childhood summers long ago. ...

Man Booker Prize Winner 2013. It is 1866, & Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a whore has tried to end her life, & an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates & fortunes that is as complex & exquisitely patterned as the night sky. The Luminaries is an extraordinary piece of fiction. It is full of narrative, linguistic & psychological pleasures, & has a fiendishly clever & original structuring device. Written in pitch-perfect historical register, richly evoking a mid-19th century world of shipping & banking & goldrush boom & bust, it is also a ghost story, & a gripping mystery. It is a thrilling achievement & will confirm for critics & readers that Catton is one of the brightest stars in the international writing firmament. ...

It is 1866, & Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a whore has tried to end her life, & an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates & fortunes that is as complex & exquisitely patterned as the night sky. The Luminaries is an extraordinary piece of fiction. It is full of narrative, linguistic & psychological pleasures, & has a fiendishly clever & original structuring device. Written in pitch-perfect historical register, richly evoking a mid-19th century world of shipping & banking & goldrush boom & bust, it is also a ghost story, & a gripping mystery. It is a thrilling achievement for someone still in her mid-20s, & will confirm for critics & readers that Catton is one of the brightest stars in the international writing firmament. ...

As the clock chimed the turn of the twentieth century, Lilly Nelly Aphrodite took her first breath. Born to a cabaret dancer & soon orphaned in a scandalous double murder, Lilly finds refuge at a Catholic orphanage, coming under the wing of the, at times, severe Sister August, the first in a string of lost loves. There she meets Hanne Schmidt, a teen prostitute, & forms a bond that will last them through tumultuous love affairs, disastrous marriages, & destitution during the First World War & the subsequent economic collapse. As the century progresses, Lilly & Hanne move from the tawdry glamour of the tingle-tangle nightclubs to the shadow world of health films before Lilly finds success & stardom in the new medium of motion pictures & ultimately falls in love with a man whose fate could cost her everything she has worked for or help her discover her true self. Gripping & darkly seductive, The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite showcases all the glitter & splendour of the brief heyday of the Weimar Republic, & the rise of Hollywood to its golden age. As it foreshadows the horrors of the Second World War, the novel asks what price is paid when identity becomes unfixed & the social order is upended. ...

This guidebook offers a wide range of walks from the source of the river Lune in the Howgill Fells to Glasson Dock, just below Lancaster. The 40 day walks range between 3 & 11 miles in length & are all illustrated with extracts of 1:50, 000 OS mapping. They explore the infinitely varied landscape as the river Lune flows between the Lake District & Yorkshire Dales national parks & the Forest of Bowland & Arnside & Silverdale Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Also included is a suggested 60-mile, 6-day route walking the River Lune from end to end, with lots of background information about the area`s history, geology & also all the local facilities to help you plan your trip. There are magnificent views from the empty hilltops, delightful natural woodlands full of wildlife, stunning secluded side valleys & open moorland vistas to be explored in Yorkshire, Cumbria & Lancashire. & the walks are equally superb at any time of the year. ...

In 1967, at the age of 23, Elizabeth Laird set off for Addis Ababa to take up her first teaching post. She was introduced to Haile Selassie, made a pilgrimage across the mountains on foot to the ancient city of Lalibela, hitched a ride on an oil tanker across the Danakil Desert, & was arrested for a murder she had not committed. Back in Britain, Laird established herself as a major author of fiction for children & young adults, but she always wanted to return to Ethiopia. Her chance came in the late 1990s, when the British Council in Addis Ababa invited her to collect folk stories from every region of the country. Encountering ex-guerrilla fighters, camel traders, Coptic nuns & tribespeople en route, Laird has written a remarkable account of her journey interwoven with a treasure trove of stories featuring princes & maidens, snakes & lions, zombies & hyena-women. ...

The Lure of the Lake District describes Steve Goodier’s passion for fell-walking & explores lesser-known routes around the region, including some of the author’s favourite but generally disregarded hills & a few of the area’s oddities. Famous writers, such as Coleridge, Wordsworth & Wainwright, who have celebrated The Lakes in their work & share the author’s love of the district, are called upon to further evoke the region. ...

” If you give anything to a Norwegian (old meat tins are always thankfully received), he will give your hand a silent grip more expressive than many words” The Lure of the North is part of ` Found on the Shelves`, published with The London Library. The books in this series have been chosen to give a fascinating insight into the treasures that can be found while browsing in The London Library. Now celebrating its 175th anniversary, with over 17 miles of shelving & more than a million books, The London Library has become an unrivalled archive of the modes, manners & thoughts of each generation which has helped to form it. This book is special to us because it contains an essay by Edward Stanford Junior, the son of our founder who later took over the business. He wrote `A Cruise on the Hardanger Fiord` in 1881 about his tour to Norway. It`s an exceptional piece of travel writing, if we do say so ourself. ...

Vladimir Nabokov`s early novel is the dazzling story of the coarse, strange yet oddly endearing chess-playing genius Luzhin. Discovering his prodigious gift in boyhood & rising to the rank of International Grandmaster, Luzhin develops a lyrical passion for chess that renders the real world a phantom. As he confronts the fiery, swift-swooping Italian Grandmaster Turati, he brings into play his carefully devised defence. Making masterly play of metaphor & imagery, ” The Luzhin Defense” is the book that, of his early works, Nabokov felt `contains & diffuses the greatest warmth`. ...