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Batsford Books

Independent publisher of books on art, textiles, design, architecture and heritage.

Established in 1843, Batsford is a leading publisher in the areas of fashion and design, embroidery and textiles, heritage, chess and architecture. To contact Batsford Books, please visit: https://www.batsfordbooks.com/contact-us/ for more details.

23/05/2025

In the month that celebrates the centenary of , we’re delighted to announce the publication of ‘The Illustrated Letters of Virginia Woolf’ by Frances Spalding, now with a beautiful new cover.

Walk through the life of this famed modernist writer through her letters to those closest to her. ‘A true letter’, she insisted, ‘should be like a film of wax pressed close to the graving of the mind’.

Coming 3 July 2025. Head to our website to pre-order your copy.

20/05/2025

Are you in the Austen-era with Pride and Prejudice now back in cinemas?

One way to lean into your inner Bennet sister is to dress up! Jane Austen's House hosts ‘Dress up days’ each year in July, encouraging visitors to attend in regency dress. Would you go?

Explore ‘Dress up days’ more and uncover a whole year of Austen with ‘A Jane Austen Year’

Get your copy of ‘A Jane Austen Year’ by Jane Austen's House online via out website and from all good booksellers now.

12/05/2025

We were delighted to celebrate the launch of ‘Modern London Maps’ by Vincest Westbrook last Thursday at !

Amazing to see so many people excited about this brilliant book. Thank you to everyone who attended.

‘Modern London Maps’ by is available online now via our website and from all good booksellers. Get your copy!

09/05/2025

We were delighted to celebrate the launch of Extraordinary Pools last night at the AA Bookshop.

Thank you to everyone who came!

‘Extraordinary Pool’s by @ is available online via our website and from all good booksellers.

08/05/2025

We’re delighted to begin announcing this year’s shortlist for The Batsford Prize 2025!

Now moving to our Textiles shortlist!

A European Summer by .textiles
Biomimicry by Cerys Watkins
Botswana Safari by
Crafting: The Cumbria Palette by .textiles
The Art of Utility by

A big thank you to everyone who entered and a big congratulations to our shortlistees! Winners to be announced at the end of May…

Stay tuned a full post on this year’s shortlist over on our blog very soon!

08/05/2025

Happy to ‘100 Poems to Help you Heal’!

This concludes our week long with Liz Ison, we hope you’ve enjoyed it!
There’s still time to get your entry in for the giveaway which closes at midnight tonight! Don’t forget, you could win:
• A copy of 100 Poems to Help you Heal
• A jar of Poetry Pharmacy healing poetry pills
• A delicious bar of chocolate
• A lovely poetry prescription planner pad

Simply head over to the link in our bio and complete the form to be in with a chance!

‘100 Poems to Help you Heal’ is now available to purchase online via our website and from all good booksellers.

07/05/2025

Spring reading? We've got you covered. These beautiful books are publishing tomorrow and are perfect to enjoy as the evenings grow longer.

Traverse 60 fascinating maps of the Big Smoke & its multilayered past in ‘Modern London Maps’ by Vincent Westbrook.

Enjoy a nostalgic exploration of Britain’s distinctive seafront buildings in ‘20th Century Seaside Architecture’ by Twentieth Century Society.

Relax into a sublime anthology of nature poems for the oncoming season with ‘A Nature Poem for Every Summer Evening’ by Jane McMorland Hunter.

Take a moment for yourself and find solace in ‘100 Poems to Help you Heal’ by Liz Ison.

All available online via our website and from all good booksellers.

07/05/2025

A wonderful aspect of reading poetry at Nightingale Care Home is my involvement in their intergenerational programme which brings together the residents with the children from the on-site nursery, as well as an after-school club from a nearby primary school. Selecting poetry and reading together with participants of all ages from 3 years old up is challenging, exciting and extraordinary.

Last month we read a poem “Smile” by Jez Alborough with the line “A single smile, just like mine/Could travel round the earth”. We created an intergenerational “smile chain”, passing our smiles around the circle, from person to person. It was wonderful to see everyone’s faces light up, including those who had not been able to participate verbally in the session. We lived the poem!

We’ve read poems together by old favourites, ones the residents – or ‘grandfriends’ as we call them - nod to and recite in recognition and new ones that we all discover together. Poets such as Edward Lear, Shakespeare, Spike Milligan, Michael Rosen, AA Milne, Walter de la Mare, Charles Causley and Jane Taylor.

Q: ‘If you were to share a poem with someone, which one would you choose and why?’

‘100 Poems to Help you Heal’ is available for pre-order now.

06/05/2025

Recently I brought a poem from new anthology 100 Poems to Help you Heal to read with the residents at a care home in Wandsworth.

I chose a poem by Elizabeth Jennings called I count the memories of my mercies up which we read aloud a few times. We puzzled over it, wondering what mercies were and how you can count them; others picked up on the creative urge of writing poetry as a gift for others (‘May I set ajar/The door of closed minds’).

Each time I take a poem to this group I’m nervous, not knowing how the poem will be received but I then remember to trust the poem and to trust the group. Reading the poem aloud is always wonderfully helpful and the best part is asking others to help me re-read it. I love hearing those voices, some of whom may not get much of a chance to talk sometimes. Poetry is magical. It gets everyone thinking and feeling and connecting and it’s a privilege when people share their thoughts and responses. A great poem generates so many diverse responses and points of connection: it keeps on giving each time it is read.

Batsford Books kindly donated copies of my first anthology A Poem to Read Aloud Every Day of the Year to the care home as a resource for volunteers running poetry and book groups. And many of the residents take their photocopied poem up to their room with them after the group, always a sign that they’ve enjoyed it, and perhaps one that they can re-read in their own time.

Q: Have you ever read a poem aloud to someone and if so, who?

‘100 Poems to Help you Heal’ is available for pre-order now.

05/05/2025

Do we love anything more on a sunny bank holiday than a nice long walk?

For many years now I have run poetry groups with people of all ages and backgrounds in many settings: care homes, libraries, church halls and schools. The idea of these groups is to bring great literature to life, enjoying it together and finding meaning and connection.

Recently I have experimented with ‘taking poetry for a walk’, using this way of reading to trial how we could enjoy the experience of poetry, not static or seated, but on the move as we travelled through places and spaces where poets had lived, worked and been inspired.

I have run walks in London, some in association with The Poetry Pharmacy and one in Oxford aiming to create connections for the participants between writers and between places enabling us to engage in a fresh way with the poets and their poetry, and to explore how these writers’ time in these spaces impacted on the development of their character, poetry or life journey. With the sense of movement between spaces of a guided walk we were able to use our senses and our imaginations to understand more deeply how these writers lived.

Q: Where do you like to read your poetry?

‘100 Poems to Help you Heal’ is available for pre-order now.

04/05/2025

Today I’d like to shine a light on my lovely online shared reading group. We’ve been meeting every week since covid to read aloud and talk about various poems and stories. The group comes under the umbrella of The Reader who trained me to be a ‘reader leader’ back in 2015.

Since training as a reader leader I started to source and collect material for my weekly groups, sometimes from collections & books, sometimes recommendations, searching the internet, libraries & charity shops & swaps between reader leaders. My desk, shelves, folders started to overflow with wonderful poetry.

I’d become a proto-anthologist! But what is most special to me is when the poetry gets read, together and aloud. It is a privilege to read poetry (and prose) with my readers and find how it can deepen us and change us, by the combination of the poetry selection and by the practice of shared reading. I’m so glad to have the opportunity to work on anthologies with Batsford that I hope will bring poetry to a wider audience and could be a good resource for people looking for healing poems.

We recently read the poem The Flower by George Herbert, an extract of which is in the anthology 100 Poems to Help You Heal. As ever, we read it aloud and re-read it, slowly, finding parts that resonated with us.

We were particularly struck by the line ‘Who would have thought my shriveled heart/Could have recovered greenness?’. We talked about the seasons, how miraculous nature is, and also how grief affects us differently: there is no timescale for finding one’s way back from it. We also loved the sixth verse, ‘And now in age I bud again…I lived and write’, happy that the poet had found his way back to joy and fulfilment. We thought of all the ways people can be creative: gardening, dancing, going for a walk…even reading poetry together (that one made my heart soar!) It was lovely how we built on each other’s thoughts.

Q: Tell us about a poem that someone has read aloud to you.’

‘100 Poems to Help you Heal’ is available for pre-order now.

The Reader

03/05/2025

My name is Liz Ison. I edit and compile poetry anthologies with Batsford and I’m happy to have been invited to help stage a poetry takeover to coincide with the upcoming publication of '100 Poems to Help you Heal', coming 8 May 2025.

I’d like to start with a couple of lines above from the new book which I hope goes to the heart of what 100 Poems to Help you Heal is trying to achieve..

These lines pack a punch for me. It’s no easy thing to ‘give sorrow words’. There can be such a chasm between our innermost feelings and our ability to express how we are feeling when we are in sorrow, in pain or in grief. It can feel impossible to articulate the feelings of loss even if we want to.

And this is where poetry can come in: poets writing about this subject do find the words. In this anthology I’ve selected a range of poetry, from the contemporary to the classical, on different subjects and looking at grief and the process of healing from many different points of view so that readers might be able to find some poems, some verses, or even a line or phrase that will resonate, that will help give perspective or some sustenance so that some healing and relief may come the way of the ‘o’erfraught heart’.

It is my sincere hope that these poems – these words – will ease the heart and become companions on those individual journeys.

Q: ‘What poem do you turn to in times of need?’

‘100 Poems to Help you Heal’ is available for pre-order now.

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http://www.batsfordbooks.com/

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