Top Sellers
The following titles consistently top our monthly chart of big sellers. Whether you're a reader, bookseller or library, see our Home Page for prices and how to order.
You can also order via Simon Webb's Amazon author page:
This book combines the complete contents of all three of the Langley Press 'Brief Lives' books into one volume. It includes all the Lives published as 'Aubrey’s Brief Lives: A Selection', 'Aubrey’s Brief Lives: The Elizabethans' and 'Aubrey’s Brief Lives: Thomas Hobbes'. The introductions of all three books are published here in full, as are the explanatory introductions to each Life. This volume also includes William Duggan's translation of Thomas Hobbes' Latin prose autobiography, which Aubrey included among his 'Brief Lives'.
'At this time, Cuthbert was keeping watch over flocks of sheep on some remote mountains. One night he was staying awake, praying through the night, with his companions sleeping beside him. Suddenly he saw a light streaming down from heaven, breaking through the darkness. In the light were choirs of angels coming down to earth, and after taking away a soul that was full of light, they returned to their heavenly country...'
Written only a few years after the death of Cuthbert himself, Bede’s Life is the definitive biography of the North’s favourite saint.
'Among the heaps of dead they found by chance two young knights, both pierced with many grievous wounds. They both wore the same coat of arms, richly embroidered: one was a knight called Palamon, the other Arcite. They were neither dead nor alive, but the heralds knew by their coat-armours that they were of the royal blood of Thebes, born of two sisters.' The first and grandest of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, The Knight's Tale is an epic story of love and war, shot through with a compelling dark thread. Simon Webb's prose translation brings out all the richness of the original, and his informative introduction sets the Tale in its legendary and historical context.
A friend of Laurence Sterne and David Garrick, Charles Ignatius Sancho was born on a slave ship in the Atlantic around 1729. Largely self-taught, he became a butler and then a valet in the household of the distinguished Montagu family, before setting up his own shop in Westminster. His entertaining letters, first published in 1782, astonished readers with their wit and insight.
Sticking closely to the account written by the Venerable Bede, Simon Webb’s biography of Aidan, much-loved Celtic saint and missionary to the Anglo-Saxons, sets this remarkable man in the context of Dark Age England.