Symposium and Phaedrus
60.00 ₾Plato’s two dialogues on love, beauty, and the soul — the Symposium’s ladder of love culminating in Diotima’s vision, and Phaedrus’s meditation on beauty and the immortal soul. The richest account of Platonic love in philosophy, in an Everyman’s Library translation.
Cocktails at Larry’s
60.00 ₾Tom Onions’ warmly personal cocktail guide — organised around occasions and moods rather than spirit categories, for aperitivo hour, late nights, and everything in between. Genuine enthusiasm and no pretension: drinks that should be fun to make and even more fun to share.
The Social Contract
30.00 ₾Rousseau’s 1762 political masterwork — ‘man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.’ The concept of the general will and the intellectual foundation of democratic theory: a text that made revolutions and whose influence on political thought has never diminished. Essential in a Wordsworth Classics edition.
Utopia
30.00 ₾Thomas More’s 1516 foundational text of political philosophy — the ideal island society that gave us the word ‘utopia’ and launched a tradition of political imagination extending to Marx, Morris, and beyond. Simultaneously serious argument, humanist satire, and ambiguous meditation: a Wordsworth Classics essential.
Middlemarch
20.00 ₾George Eliot’s panoramic masterpiece — widely regarded as the greatest novel in English, tracing the aspirations and disappointments of a whole Midlands community in the 1830s. Dorothea Brooke and a cast of fully realised humanity: the novel at its greatest extent, in a Wordsworth Classics edition.
The Pickwick Papers
20.00 ₾The novel that launched Dickens’s career — the picaresque adventures of Samuel Pickwick and companions, episodic and exuberant with a comic energy uniquely its own. Published in 1836 and making Dickens famous overnight: an essential introduction to the greatest Victorian novelist in a Wordsworth Classics edition.
The Call of the Wild and White Fang
20.00 ₾Jack London’s two masterpieces in one volume — The Call of the Wild and White Fang, companion pieces tracing opposite journeys between civilisation and wilderness. Together they form London’s meditation on instinct, freedom, and the wild heart at the core of all living things.
Micromosaics Highlights from the Gilbert Collection
70.00 ₾Highlights from the Gilbert Collection’s world-class micromosaic holdings — miniature masterpieces of glass depicting Roman ruins and Italian landscapes, prized souvenirs of the Grand Tour. Heike Zech’s V&A publication with exceptional close-up photography reveals the extraordinary technical skill of the form.
Alexander McQueen
400.00 ₾The authoritative V&A companion to Alexander McQueen’s career — rigorous, richly illustrated scholarship examining the influences and techniques behind collections that redefined what fashion could mean. Claire Wilcox’s essential study of the most significant fashion designer of the twentieth century’s final decades.
Gemstones Understanding, Identifying, Buying
100.00 ₾The essential practical guide for gemstone buyers and collectors — covering diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and beyond, with clear explanations of quality, value, and authenticity. Keith Wallis’s decades of gemological expertise help buyers identify, evaluate, and collect with confidence.
Extraordinary Pools
150.00 ₾A visually spectacular tour of the world’s most remarkable pools — from infinity edges above the Indian Ocean to ancient Roman baths and contemporary architectural masterpieces. Naina Gupta celebrates the pool as architectural, social, and aspirational phenomenon in a lavishly illustrated volume.
Emotion by Design Creative Leadership Lessons from a Life at Nike
50.00 ₾Nike’s former Chief Marketing Officer distils thirty years of experience into creative leadership lessons — how to build brands that move people through genuine emotion rather than marketing formula. Greg Hoffman’s insights from one of the world’s most culturally powerful companies: essential for marketers and creative leaders.
People from My Neighbourhood
46.00 ₾Hiromi Kawakami’s collection of quietly enchanting vignettes about a neighbourhood’s strange inhabitants — ordinary and inexplicable, domestic and uncanny. Miniatures with the logic of fables and dreams, demonstrating that Kawakami’s genius operates as effectively in the shortest forms as in her novels.
The White Book
46.00 ₾Han Kang’s formally unique meditation on whiteness, grief, and consolation — lyric fragments centred on white objects that become vessels for personal and historical sorrow. Between poetry, essay, and novel: a profoundly moving work unlike anything else in contemporary literature.
Human Acts A Novel
46.00 ₾Han Kang’s devastating novel about the 1980 Gwangju Uprising — told from multiple perspectives including the dead, a formally extraordinary meditation on political violence, trauma, and human solidarity. Essential reading for anyone interested in Korean history or the literature of atrocity.
Rosslyn and the Grail
60.00 ₾The authoritative guide to Rosslyn Chapel — separating historical fact from popular legend about one of Scotland’s most extraordinary fifteenth-century buildings. Oxbrow and Robertson examine the intricate carvings and their real meanings with scholarly rigour and genuine engagement with the myths.
The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Tartan A Complete History And Visual Guide To Over 400 Famous Tartans
35.00 ₾The comprehensive reference on tartan — over 400 clan, family, and district tartans documented with full-colour swatches, historical notes, and cultural context. From ancient disputed origins to Victorian revival and global fashion icon: the essential illustrated guide for anyone with Scottish heritage or a love of pattern.
Wall and Piece
90.00 ₾The definitive collection of Banksy’s stencilled interventions — rats, policemen, anti-war slogans, and subverted artworks in Bristol, London, New York, and beyond. The book that made the world’s most famous street artist a global phenomenon: essential for anyone interested in contemporary art and public space.
London Stories
55.00 ₾The finest short fiction set in London — from Henry James and Arthur Morrison to Zadie Smith and Hanif Kureishi. Jerry White’s Everyman’s Library anthology creates a cumulative portrait of one of literature’s most obsessively written-about cities across more than a century of change.
Love Stories
50.00 ₾The finest short stories about romantic love — from Chekhov, Joyce, Mansfield, Munro, and many others, spanning centuries and continents. Diana Secker Tesdell’s Everyman’s Library selection captures love in all its elation, anguish, and comedy: a beautiful, portable, endlessly rewarding collection.
Decameron
70.00 ₾Giovanni Boccaccio’s fourteenth-century masterpiece — one hundred tales told by ten Florentines sheltering from the Black Death. Bawdy comedies, tragic romances, and satires of extraordinary variety from a work that shaped Chaucer, Shakespeare, and European literature for centuries.
The Handmaid’s Tale
60.00 ₾Margaret Atwood’s prophetic 1985 dystopia — the Republic of Gilead, enforced reproductive servitude, and Offred’s act of witness and resistance. One of the most important novels of its century, never out of print and never less than urgently relevant. Essential literary and feminist fiction.
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money The Economic Consequences of the Peace
30.00 ₾Keynes’s 1936 masterwork — the book that transformed how governments respond to economic crises, arguing that markets don’t self-correct and government spending is necessary. One of the twentieth century’s most consequential intellectual works in an accessible Wordsworth Classics edition.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
30.00 ₾Locke’s 1689 foundational text of British empiricism — the blank slate, knowledge from experience, and the philosophical groundwork for the Enlightenment. A landmark of intellectual history available in an accessible Wordsworth Classics edition: essential for students of philosophy and ideas.
Mix and Match Fashion Photography Meets Contemporary Art
350.00 ₾An exploration of the intersection between fashion photography and contemporary art — images that challenge the separation between commercial and fine art, from photographers whose work has crossed into galleries and museums. A stimulating Phaidon study of contemporary visual culture’s blurred boundaries.
Butterfly Exploring the World of Lepidoptera
260.00 ₾A visually spectacular exploration of butterflies — their extraordinary diversity, biology, and cultural significance, from Blue Morphos to Monarch migrations. Phaidon’s scientifically rigorous and visually breathtaking survey of lepidopterology is essential for naturalists and anyone captivated by insect beauty.
Mid-Century Modern Designers
350.00 ₾Profiles of the designers who defined the postwar aesthetic — the Eameses, Arne Jacobsen, Verner Panton, and their contemporaries whose furniture and products are among design history’s most collected. Dominic Bradbury’s essential Phaidon reference for students, collectors, and design enthusiasts.
Sybil and David Yurman Artists and Jewelers
300.00 ₾Sybil Yurman’s intimate portrait of the creative partnership behind one of America’s most celebrated jewelry houses — tracing how the cable motif and sculptural forms of Yurman jewelry emerged from serious fine art practice. A Phaidon document of love, craft, and creative partnership.
Stone Houses
200.00 ₾A beautifully produced survey of stone houses from ancient Provençal farmhouses to contemporary architect-designed residences — documenting the world’s oldest building material across millennia and continents. Phaidon’s inspiring volume for architects and anyone drawn to stone’s enduring domestic beauty.
Jonathan Becker Lost Time
330.00 ₾A major retrospective of Jonathan Becker’s portraits of New York’s cultural and intellectual elite — writers, artists, curators in their homes and studios, documented over decades with extraordinary intimacy and access. A Phaidon social document of New York cultural life since the 1970s.
Italian Interiors Rooms with a View
280.00 ₾A beautifully photographed celebration of contemporary Italian interior design — apartments, villas, and residences united by Italian confidence with colour, coexistence of old and new, and a conviction that design and good living are inseparable. Inspiring and illuminating why Italian interiors fascinate the world.
Graphic Classics
350.00 ₾The definitive Phaidon survey of graphic design’s canon — posters, typefaces, identities, and visual systems from the Arts and Crafts movement to contemporary digital practice. International, comprehensive, and critically contextualised: the essential one-volume reference for graphic design students and practitioners.
Before / After Álvaro Siza
350.00 ₾Photographs of Álvaro Siza’s buildings paired before and after — showing how time, weather, and use transform work by one of architecture’s great masters. A Phaidon meditation on how buildings exist in time, revealing whether they improve with age and what they mean when inhabited.
Peter Marino Ten Modern Houses
500.00 ₾Ten extraordinary private residences by Peter Marino — interiors of remarkable luxury and cultural ambition, conceived as settings for significant art collections. A Phaidon landmark in luxury interior design documentation, presenting the work of New York’s most culturally serious residential architect.
The Jewelry Book
300.00 ₾A comprehensive survey of fine jewellery from ancient adornment to contemporary studio work — historical masterpieces, legendary houses, and innovative independent designers. Melanie Grant’s Phaidon volume with spectacular photography is essential for jewellery enthusiasts and collectors.
Unveiled
350.00 ₾Luigi & Iango’s intimate, artistically ambitious photographs of Madonna — presented alongside reflection from all three collaborators. More than a celebrity photo book: a Phaidon documentation of a decade-long creative partnership and one of popular culture’s most enduring icons.
Online Sports Nutrition and Natural Dietetics.
Chances are there wasn't collaboration, communication, and checkpoints, there wasn't a process agreed upon or specified with the granularity required. It's content strategy gone awry right from the start. Forswearing the use of Lorem Ipsum wouldn't have helped, won't help now. It's like saying you're a bad designer, use less bold text, don't use italics in every other paragraph. True enough, but that's not all that it takes to get things back on track.
The villagers are out there with a vengeance to get that Frankenstein
You made all the required mock ups for commissioned layout, got all the approvals, built a tested code base or had them built, you decided on a content management system, got a license for it or adapted:
- The toppings you may chose for that TV dinner pizza slice when you forgot to shop for foods, the paint you may slap on your face to impress the new boss is your business.
- But what about your daily bread? Design comps, layouts, wireframes—will your clients accept that you go about things the facile way?
- Authorities in our business will tell in no uncertain terms that Lorem Ipsum is that huge, huge no no to forswear forever.
- Not so fast, I'd say, there are some redeeming factors in favor of greeking text, as its use is merely the symptom of a worse problem to take into consideration.
- Websites in professional use templating systems.
- Commercial publishing platforms and content management systems ensure that you can show different text, different data using the same template.
- When it's about controlling hundreds of articles, product pages for web shops, or user profiles in social networks, all of them potentially with different sizes, formats, rules for differing elements things can break, designs agreed upon can have unintended consequences and look much different than expected.
This is quite a problem to solve, but just doing without greeking text won't fix it. Using test items of real content and data in designs will help, but there's no guarantee that every oddity will be found and corrected. Do you want to be sure? Then a prototype or beta site with real content published from the real CMS is needed—but you’re not going that far until you go through an initial design cycle.
