Pallas Athene has been publishing attractive, intelligent non-fiction for over 25 years. We mainly focus on art, particularly painting, but also publish books about travel, history, literature, nature and food.
John Ruskin is a particular interest, as are Venice and Rome. We also publish the richly illustrated series Lives of the Artists, bringing together accounts of great artists written by their contemporaries.
Our current book on showcase is Battleship Yamato. The last book that Jan Morris wrote before she died, it is a deeply moving elegy for all lives lost in war. The Yamato was the greatest battleship ever built, and carried with her all the pride and aspirations of Japan; she was also fatally outdated before she was even finished, and her sinking in 1945 was the end of centuries of naval tradition. We've reissued the book to mark the 80th anniversary of that cold April day in the Bungo Strait; and you can trace every moment of Yamato's last journey in a kind of stop motion film made up of extraordinary photographs taken by the American bombers during the frenzied final attack, in poignant contrast to Jan Morris's limpid and timelessly beautiful prose.
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All available titles can be bought through the website; we receive a greater share of the cover price when you buy through Bookshop.org, which also helps support independent bookshops.