Books published by Unicorn Publishing Group

Lala plays with her diamond ring, mesmerized as always by the distant world it conjures for her and the jewel's extraordinary trajectory from Tsarist Russia to twenty-first-century England. An unexpected invitation has arrived and, at last, she will be able to visit Lentvaris, her paternal grandmother's ancestral home, a splendid East European estate where princely art collections, spectacular jewellery, extravagant balls and performing dwarves, coexisted with philanthropy on a grand scale and a deep sense of noblesse oblige. The First World War irrevocably altered the family's privileged lives, Lala's great-uncle was forced to flee with the last of the Romanov dynasty and her great-grandfather auctioned off his art treasures. The Second World War lost Lentvaris for ever. Lala's grandfather died in a Soviet gulag. Her grandmother, aunt and father survived harsh imprisonment and afterwards crossed continents eventually finding precarious stability living as emigres in South America. This is an epic story of dramatic escapes, concealed treasures, a lost paradise, but especially of the courage, strength and resilience shown by the female side of Lala's family, and of the power of love, humour and hope.

Born in London in 1890, Angela Thirkell was Sir Edward Burne-JonesΓÇÖs granddaughter, J.M. BarrieΓÇÖs goddaughter and a cousin of Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin. John Collier painted her portrait and she was drawn by John Singer Sargent and Thea Proctor. Between 1931 and her death in 1961, Angela published more than thirty books in a variety of genres. She began with the acclaimed family memoir Three Houses and later settled on her amusing Barsetshire series, inspired by Anthony Trollope but set in the present day.Angela Thirkell: A WriterΓÇÖs Life tells the authorΓÇÖs story from her Kensington childhood to her two marriages and the birth of three sons, Graham McInnes, Colin MacInnes and Lance Thirkell, all of whom also entered the literary world. The book traces her decade in Australia where she wrote for magazines and newspapers and made radio broadcasts, followed by her return to London and her fortuitous meeting with a young publisher called Jamie Hamilton, which lead to her bestselling Barsetshire novels.

Countless dollars of art are stolen or looted every year, yet governments often consider art theft a luxury problem. With limited public law enforcement, what prevents thieves, looters and organised criminal gangs from flooding the market with stolen art? How can theft victims get justice - even decades after their loss? What happens if the legal definition of a good title is at odds with what is morally right? Enter the Art Loss Register, a private database dedicated to tracking down stolen artworks. Blocking the sale of disputed artworks creates a space for private resolutions - often amicable and sometimes entertainingly adversarial. This book is based on ten cases from the Art Loss Register's archive, showing how restitutions were negotiated, how priceless objects were retrieved from the economic underworld and how thieves and fences end up in court and behind bars. A fascinating guide to the dark side of the global art market.

Sempre Avanti. Ever Forward. That's the motto on the Gelardi family shield and it's a philosophy that has directed the lives and careers of four generations of hoteliers - Giuseppe, Giulio, Bertie and Geoffrey. Giuseppe managed hotels in his native Italy in the nineteenth century but his son Giulio was more ambitious and came to London, working first at Walsingham House - which was to later to become the Ritz - and managing the Savoy and Claridges in London and the Waldorf Astoria in New York. His son Bertie worked alongside Lord Forte to create the international Trust Houses Forte empire and acquiring, amongst others, the George V and Plaza Athenee in Paris, Sandy Lane in Barbados and the Pierre in New York. Geoffrey, Bertie's son and the fourth generation Gelardi to make his mark in the luxury hotel business, spent years in the USA at the Bel Air in Los Angeles and the Sorrento in Seattle before returning to the UK to open the Lanesborough in 1991 - then, and still, London's leading luxury hotel. Interweaved into this fascinating history we encounter royalty, celebrities, politicians and film stars - Mussolini, King Edward VII, Lilly Langtry, Ronald Reagan, various Atlantic City mafia figures, Frank Sinatra, Arnold Swartzenegger, Sophia Loren, Madonna, Michael Jackson, HRH The Queen, Princess Diana and many, many more.

For much of the nineteenth century, women artists laboured under the same restrictions and taboos they had endured for centuries, and it was assumed that marriage and child-bearing were their goals in life. However, by the 1870s female art students of every nation were flocking to Paris in search of instruction in the city's private art schools. With proper training, they now had the confidence to tackle a wider range of subjects and by the century's end they were at last able to study the nude figure. During these breakthrough years, women won the right to work and exhibit alongside men, both in Europe and America, and the advent of art galleries and art dealers opened up new ways of selling their work. This book is full of surprising adventures: young women, still not allowed to visit a museum unchaperoned, travelled thousands of miles in a quest for first-class tuition; several Americans, while still in their twenties, journeyed to Rome to study sculpture; numerous free and independent women joined the artists' colonies that sprang up all over Europe, where they made lasting friendships, painting from dawn to dusk en plein air and enjoying the bohemian life. These trailblazing women rose to the challenges of the century's dramatic development in art styles - from Realism to the Avant-Garde - and triumphantly succeeded in becoming successful professional artists.

In an art world that has lost itself to gimmickry and the distortions and hallucinations of Capitalism on crack, here is an artist who values depth and integrity, and is patiently and powerfully reminding us of what art is and can be.

The book depicts the abandoned and crumbling Prime MinisterΓÇÖs mansion in Beirut and the lives connected to it and interwoven into its fabric for over a century. The photographs of the rich and famous at the house in its heyday at its opulent best, contrast with those showing it as it is now. Accompanying essays unravel the intriguing stories knitted into its bricks and mortar, including political intrigue, births, deaths, marriages, tragedies, wars, murders and determination.The mansion was once occupied by Takieddine el-Solh, the former Prime Minister of Lebanon (1973 to 1974 and briefly in 1980) and his wife Fadwa al-Barazi. It is situated in the Kantari district of Beirut, very close to the downtown area where the street battles fully igniting the civil war, which began in April 1975 and ended in 1990. Many of the residents fled their homes at the beginning of the war, never to inhabit them again. It is also close to the port where more recent tragic events have taken place: in August 2020 one of the largest ever non-nuclear explosions ripped through the heart of Beirut resulting in hundreds of lost lives, thousands of injuries and the mass destruction of homes and businesses.

In this first book to explore the entire history of triumphal arches, from their Roman origins to the present day, the Classicist and architectural historian Peter Howell describes arches through time, in terms of their cultural and historical significance. He also discusses the form of the arch in Renaissance painting and the rather surprising use of arches as war memorials. The erection of arches is far from dead, and Howell shows us examples, taken from over thirty years of research, from around the world.

The Ypres Times was the journal of the remembrance movement, the Ypres League. Founded in 1921, the League was the creation of Henry Beckles Willson and Beatrix Brice. Both Brice and Beckles Willson understood the crucial significance of Ypres to the British Empire, and believed it their sacred duty to maintain the memory of those who had fought and fell in its defence. As the LeagueΓÇÖs journal, the Ypres Times published a huge range of material. It carried reminiscences of veterans, discussions about the rebuilding of Ypres, the developing work of the Imperial War Graves Commission in the salient, and the erection and unveiling of unit memorials. The Ypres Times reproduced for the first time, in facsimile format and bound in three volumes provides a fascinating insight into the way the British EmpireΓÇÖs central commemorative site was understood and imagined in the twenties and thirties.

The Ypres Times was the journal of the remembrance movement, the Ypres League. Founded in 1921, the League was the creation of Henry Beckles Willson and Beatrix Brice. Both Brice and Beckles Willson understood the crucial significance of Ypres to the British Empire, and believed it their sacred duty to maintain the memory of those who had fought and fell in its defence. As the LeagueΓÇÖs journal, the Ypres Times published a huge range of material. It carried reminiscences of veterans, discussions about the rebuilding of Ypres, the developing work of the Imperial War Graves Commission in the salient, and the erection and unveiling of unit memorials. The Ypres Times reproduced for the first time, in facsimile format and bound in three volumes provides a fascinating insight into the way the British EmpireΓÇÖs central commemorative site was understood and imagined in the twenties and thirties.

A unique book showing the beauty of illuminated addresses and the stories behind why they were given.

Born out of the Sankey Commission's identification of the appalling living and working conditions of coal miners, the Miners' Welfare Fund was established by the Mining Industry Act 1920 to improve the social conditions of colliery workers. Administered by the Miners' Welfare Committee, it was totally depended on a levy on the ton of the national output of coal and, from 1926, the levy on mineral rights for its income. Despite industrial unrest, world economics, Parliamentary legislation, Parliamentary enquiries and world conflict, the Committee and, from 1939, the Commission, in collaboration with the twenty-five District Committees, doggedly pursed their statutory remits of recreation, pit and social welfare, mining education and research into safety in mines. With such a geographically dispersed organisation and a Fund without precedent, there were mistakes and 'misunderstandings' but, despite these, there were great achievements including the Architects' Branch winning international recognition for their designs of pithead baths and the Rehabilitation Service for injured miners gaining national recognition for their quality of care.With the passing of the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act and the National Health Service Act in 1946, the rationale for the Miners' Welfare Commission became less clear and a decision was taken in June 1951 to terminate the Miners' Welfare Commission. The Miners' Welfare Act 1952 brought the Fund to an end. During the thirty-one years of the Fund, nearly 00,000 had been allocated.

Smoke and Mirrors is about a world which is no more. There is already no such country on the map - the Soviet Union. On the site where the famous throughout the "e;Soviet empire"e; tobacco factory "e;Java"e;, which was founded before the 1917 Revolution, stood in Moscow, there is a luxury residential complex. Tobacco companies all over the world are experiencing a crisis unprecedented in the history of the tobacco industry and are struggling to stay on the market despite the strongest anti-tobacco campaigns. Leonid Yakovlevich Sinelnikov is the last director of the Java factory, the first and last CEO of the Russian company BAT-Java, as part of the British-American Tobacco international tobacco company. In Smoke and Mirrors he talks about himself and about the time that has gone forever, when the tobacco industry was one of the most important state sectors, and the people, in the face of hard life and unprecedented labour enthusiasm, could find consolation only in the famous "e;smoke breaks"e;.

A fresh, wide-ranging collection that charts English Christianity's historical path from the sixth century to the present For many today, the Christian church stands picturesquely in the background of modern life, yet its time-honored place remains firmly in the foreground, woven into the fabric of English society and culture over thousands of years. Though the church itself may have faded from view, its legacy is everywhere. This edited collection brings its past to life, exploring what it has stood for, what it has achieved, and the upheavals it has caused. Tracing English Christianity from its pioneering origins through the flowerings of the Enlightenment and up to the uncertain age of the present, this collection tells the still-unfolding story of a religion as told by its saints and sinners, dignitaries and dissidents, shrewd observers, and ordinary parishioners.