Who was Saint Valentine, and how did he become the patron saint of lovers? Is it true that Valentine's Day originated in a bawdy pagan festival? If it started in the Middle Ages, then how was the unfortunate Queen Anne of Bohemia involved? These and other questions are examined by author (and incurable romantic) Simon Webb in this entertaining book, which concludes with a convincing theory about how February 14th became a festival of romance.

The Voyage of St Brendan, first written down over a thousand years ago, recounts the strange adventures of a sixth-century abbot and his crew of monks, as they wander the oceans for seven years in their sturdy leather boat. This edition also contains translated extracts from biographies of Brendan written in Latin and Irish, an introduction and suggestions for further reading.

An English Quaker from County Durham, in 1763 Jeremiah Dixon became the joint architect of one of the most important boundaries in history: the Mason-Dixon line between Pennsylvania and Maryland, which still marks the division between the North and the South in the United States. The author is a Quaker who lives near Dixon's home at Cockfield in County Durham, and his book offers unique insights into the life and achievements of 'Jerry the Astronomer'. Illustrated.

'Shortly after his wife's release from prison in 1671, George Fox was drawn to travel to the New World. He was then 47 years old. Barbados was his first port of call, before going on to Jamaica, and then the American mainland.' First published for the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the UK, this is an account of Quaker founder George Fox's trip to Barbados in 1671, together with the complete text of his famous Letter to the Governor of Barbados.

'On the 27th of the sixth month, called August, 1725, my husband and all our men-servants being abroad, eleven Indians, armed with tomahawks and guns, who had some time before been skulking about the fields, and watching an opportunity of our men's absence, came furiously into the house...' Thus begins the story of the captivity of Elizabeth Hanson, 'taken in substance from her own mouth' by the English Quaker Samuel Bownas. This book contains the complete text of Bownas's 1760 edition, with an introduction and notes designed to explain the background to this extraordinary true story.

'I here lay down to you the truth, and nothing but the truth: the naked and plain truth, which is here exposed so bare that the very pudenda are not covered, and affords many passages that would raise a blush in a young virgin's cheek.' The Langley Press selection from Aubrey's Brief Lives includes the lives of Aubrey's most famous subjects, including Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton and Sir Walter Raleigh. The selection includes a number of blush-making passages that were missed out of Andrew Clark's 1889 edition, including the speedy wooing of one of Thomas More's daughters, and the notorious...