The Royal Castle in Warsaw is one of the most important museums-residences in Poland. Its history and the provenance of its collections are extremely complex and symbolise the turbulent history of the country. The last king of Poland, Stanislaw August, created a great collection of works of art and commissioned the interior design in a classicist style. With the loss of independence by Poland, works of art and furnishings were transported to Russia, then later returned under the Treaty of Riga in 1921. Looted by the Germans during World War II, the Castle was blown up in 1944. The castle finished being rebuilt in 1984 and today is a museum of interiors and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The highlights of the Castle's collections include paintings by Rembrandt and Canaletto as well as valuable objects of decorative arts and historical memorabilia, showcased in this latest Director's Choice with the expertise of Director Wojciech Falkowski.

The fashion, history, and development of Jewish dress tells a story that spans the globe and crosses many cultures. In this colorful volume, Jewish communities--particularly those established for centuries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa--are revealed through their garments. Stunning photographs spin tales of family traditions and religious devotion, with a special section dedicated to jewelry worn by brides and grooms. Superb photographs of specific garments, with many close-up details, are juxtaposed with rare contextual photographs from the Israel Museum's archives to create a tapestry of a people revealed through textiles, costume, and images. More than 350 revelatory illustrations tell us how these precious articles of dress were originally worn.

Writers’ relationships with their surroundings are seldom straightforward. While some, like Jane Austen and Thomas Mann, wrote novels set where they were staying (Lyme Regis and Venice respectively), Victor Hugo penned Les Misérables in an attic in Guernsey and Noël Coward wrote that most English of plays, Blithe Spirit, in the Welsh holiday village of Portmeirion.

Award-winning BBC drama producer Adrian Mourby follows his literary heroes around the world, exploring 50 places where great works of literature first saw the light of day. At each destination – from the Brontës’ Yorkshire Moors to the New York of Truman Capote, Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin to the now-legendary Edinburgh café where J.K. Rowling plotted Harry Potter’s first adventures – Mourby explains what the writer was doing there and describes what the visitor can find today of that great moment in literature.

Rooms of One’s Own takes you on a literary journey from the British Isles to Paris, Berlin, New Orleans, New York and Bangkok and unearths the real-life places behind our best-loved works of literature.

An utterly charming and heart-warming love story and the perfect tonic for difficult times. Daisy is the night security guard at the Manchester Museum of Social History. She takes her job very seriously, protecting the museum from teenage troublemakers. Nate works the day shift, though he'd be more suited as a museum guide the way he chats with the visitors. Daisy doesn't approve: how does he find it so easy to talk to strangers? For five minutes each day their shifts overlap at handover. He passes the torch over to Daisy - always with a smile on his face, and she asks him for a full report of the day, which he gives reluctantly. It's the only interaction they have... until mysterious things begin to happen at the museum. They soon discover they have a lot more in common than they realised... and their investigations uncover more than just the truth. Could they have feelings for one another?

This highly-illustrated book reveals a brand-new story of the royal castle of Lincoln - how it was imposed on the late Anglo-Saxon town and how it developed over the next 900 years in the hands of the king or his aristocratic associates. Today, we have been left a surviving monument of three great towers, each with its own biography. Led by FAS Heritage, archaeologists, architectural historians and a large cohort of the general public have come together to produce a revealing and accessible account of the story of Lincoln Castle; in doing so, we gain further insight into the history, culture and society of medieval England.

A star par excellence, Dolly Parton is one of country music's most likable personalities. Even a hard-rocking punk or orchestral aesthete can't help cracking a smile or singing along with songs like "Jolene" and "9 to 5." More than a mere singer or actress, Parton is a true cultural phenomenon, immediately recognizable and beloved for her talent, tinkling laugh, and steel magnolia spirit. She is also the only female star to have her own themed amusement park: Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Every year thousands of fans flock to Dollywood to celebrate the icon, and Helen Morales is one of those fans. In Pilgrimage to Dollywood, Morales sets out to discover Parton's Tennessee. Her travels begin at the top celebrity pilgrimage site of Elvis Presley's Graceland, then take her to Loretta Lynn's ranch in Hurricane Mills; the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville; to Sevierville, Gatlinburg, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park; and finally to Pigeon Forge, home of the "Dolly Homecoming Parade," featuring the star herself as grand marshall. Morales's adventure allows her to compare the imaginary Tennessee of Parton's lyrics with the real Tennessee where the singer grew up, looking at essential connections between country music, the land, and a way of life. It's also a personal pilgrimage for Morales. Accompanied by her partner, Tony, and their nine-year-old daughter, Athena (who respectively prefer Mozart and Miley Cyrus), Morales, a recent transplant from England, seeks to understand America and American values through the celebrity sites and attractions of Tennessee. This celebration of Dolly and Americana is for anyone with an old country soul who relies on music to help understand the world, and it is guaranteed to make a Dolly Parton fan of anyone who has not yet fallen for her music or charisma.

Olympia is part of the volume entitled "treasures of the Greek Museums" which introduces the reader to the priceless works of art housed in the museums of Greece. The texts, written by experts, furnish details of the historical and cultural context of these masterpieces. The most important achaeological sites are also presented, with exclusive aerial photographs and other lavish illustrations.

Julius Baer, established in Zurich in 1890, is the leading Swiss wealth management group and an icon of Swiss banking tradition. For nearly as long, the founder family has been engaged in supporting visual and performing arts and in 1981, on the initiative of Hans J. Bar (1927-2011), the company began to build its own collection of contemporary art, guided by a firm belief that art in a business environment enhances the culture of discussion and is inspirational to employees and clients alike. Today, the Julius Baer Art Collection comprises more than 5,000 works in a range of media painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and video-by Swiss artists, internationally renowned ones as well as emerging talents. This book offers a survey of the collection that is on rotating display at the bank's offices around the world and highlights its origins and development over the past four decades. Artistic positions of 35 contemporary Swiss artists, such as John M Armleder, Silvia Bachli, Miriam Cahn, Lutz & Guggisberg, Markus Raetz, Shirana Shahbazi, and Roman Signer, are introduced through brief texts and illustrated with some 300 works from the collection.