I'm reliably informed that sport is back this year. I understand that there are some moderately important games this weekend and that the Olympics are just around the corner.
So, for this Focus On... I'm going to highlight our section on Sport and the History of Sport.
It'd be a lie to say that there's everything from Archery to Zebra Racing, but there is a decent variety of things (a surprising amount of Speedway Racing, for example).
Tomorrow is American Independence Day, so I thought I'd highlight a few relevant books from our catalogue.
Some - but not all - of these are in our (somewhat depleted) section on C18th Military History.
As the First of June marks the anniversary of two major naval engagments - The Glorious First of June 1794 (or the Bataille du 13 prairial an 2) and the Battle of Jutland (or the Skagerrakschlacht) - I'm going to take the opportunity to highlight our books on naval history.
They cover all periods from antiquity to the C21st and, as a naval enthusiast myself, I can assure you there are some very good reads there.
You can see our Naval titles here
And here's a song to listen to while you browse...
Those of you who follow us on Facebook - where we post details of new titles as we list them - will have noticed a shift in emphasis in the last week or so. During Lockdown our usual supplies of secondhand books dried up, so for the last few months we focussed on adding remaindered titles (as we featured in a post last February).
Well, I'm glad to say that we've now been able to get back to secondhand books. In a way this is more enjoyable for me - I don't know from week to week what I might find, and there's always the chance of something special coming along. I know that some of some of our regular customers feel the same.
But we're still adding remaindered books of course: - this week I ordered a restock of military history titles that had sold out or were running low (as well as some interesting-looking new ones!).
Royal Mail has confirmed that it never asks for excess payment by text or e-mail.
Everyone should be alert to this and similar scams. I myself got one of these texts this morning, and I'd hate to think that anyone would fall for it because they were expecting a delivery from us.
By a large margin our bestseller this month has been William Battersby's biography of James Fitzjames, a senior member of Franklin's expedition to find the Northwest Passage. You can see it here (if we have any left in stock when you read this!).
I'm pretty sure that the recent upsurge in interest is due to the BBC screening the drama 'The Terror' this month. But it's not a great surprise either: the Franklin Expedition has an on-going fascination, and books on it and the many expeditions that set out in its wake always sell well.
So I thought I would use this post to point to our other books on the Arctic, which can be found in our History of Exploration section (which currently has over 90 titles) alongside books on the rest of the world.
There should be something there for everyone, so happy browsing!
I'm aware that this blog is very rarely updated, so I've decided to make an effort to improve that. First up is an update on what was happening with Diplomatist Books in February.
Due to the pandemic, most of our* usual sources for secondhand books have dried-up, but we've still been able to source new and remaindered books.
In February we added 115 new titles to our stock. We have at least as many waiting to be added in March. Unlike secondhand books, these tend to come in multiples, so that figure represents some 500-600 actual books. They cover all subjects: however, a significant number of them come from a German publisher, Kerber Verlag, and has increased our selection of art books - with many more to come over the next few weeks.
As ever, all new titles have featured on our Facebook page when they were listed.
In addition, we had an order with our wholesaler of military books that allowed us to restock a number of titles that had sold out in the last few months.
And it'll soon be time to get a new batch of postcards. At the moment the bookwhippet is the fore-runner.
* I'm not sure why I use the nosism, Diplomatist Books is actually 'me', but the editorial we always seems more appropriate.
