Literary reference works

Royalty's Strangest Tales

A rollicking collection of stories featuring the craziest, daftest and most outrageous monarchs the world has ever known.

A Smattering of Latin

This fun, absorbing book, packed with quirky bite-sized lists, quizzes and trivia, is an exploration of the Latin language, aiming to prove that it is as vibrant and relevant today as it was 2,500 years ago.

Someday I'll Find Me

Carla Lane’s enchanting autobiography fizzes with the wry humour, sharp insights and fabulous characterization one would expect from the author

Teachers' Strangest Tales

A hilarious assortment of the weirdest and wackiest tales ever to come out of the classroom – and they’re all

A Smidgen of Shakespeare

If the mere mention of Shakespeare fills you with dread, evoking memories of arduous afternoons spent in stuffy classrooms with

Wrotten English

Following on from the hilarious collection of typos, gaffes and howlers in Portico’s A Steroid Hit the Earth, comes Wrotten

Grapes & Wines

“An exhilarating wine book… No serious wine lover’s library is complete without it” Wine Spectator

Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book

‘Bird-watchers are tense, competitive, selfish, shifty, dishonest, distrusting, boorish, pedantic, unsentimental, arrogant and – above all – envious’. So says Bill Oddie, and he should know!

The Elementary Sherlock Holmes

To a great mind, nothing is little’ Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes has become such an iconic figure that he’s almost

A Steroid Hit The Earth

‘A Steroid Hit The Earth’ is a catalogue of errors, omissions, mistakes and other disasters, ranging from the straight typo or the ambiguous statement to the downright bizarre.

The Angry Years

What were the achievements of the ’angry’ writers who emerged in the fifties?

Historically, they gave birth to the satire movement of the 1960s-Beyond the

Fringe, That Was the Week that Was and Private Eye. Their satire and

irreverence aroused enthusiasm in man, and a new ‘anti-Establishment’ mood

Let Me Tell You About Whisky

Whisky is the world’s favourite spirit and is enjoying booming sales, especially in the USA and Asia, yet too often

Tolkien's Ring

J.R.R. Tolkien had a great knowledge of, and love for, world mythology when he wrote his beloved trilogy of Middle

Oz Clarke My Top Wines for 2013

Oz Clarke, Britain’s favourite wine writer and broadcaster, is absolutely in tune with what wine drinkers want today – flavour,

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