Albion’s Secret History is an enjoyable skim through an enormous subject… Mankowski must be applauded for his guts… The terrific chapter on Peter Cook and Evelyn Waugh when talking of class privilege is kept on-point.

Excerpts from Explore Folklore can be found at Foamy Custard, a Web site for folklore, mythology, cultural studies and related disciplines. These started out as diaries, but soon became a forum for Doherty to explore his thoughts and poetry. While we do our best to provide good quality books for you to read, there is no escaping the fact that it has been owned and read by someone else before you. All in all it's the work of a serious artist, a complete antidote to most things written about Doherty. We all like the idea of saving a bit of cash, so when we found out how many good quality used books are out there - we just had to let you know!These twenty-odd books - edited and condensed into one volume - are filled with poems, drawings, personal reflections, lyrics and collages and form an intimate insight into the one of the music world's most talented and controversial figures. Snapshots of how English pop culture’s rebels and outsiders, from The Long Blondes and The Libertines, to Tricky and Goldfrapp, altered our sense of a green but sometimes unpleasant land. Those who still love his former band, The Libertines, or current outfit Babyshambles, argue he's a misunderstood dreamer, a genuine talent, a genius, even. There might appear to be little in common between people who touch wood for luck (a 'tradition' invented in the last 200 years) and legends about people who believe they have been abducted and subjected to intimate body examinations by aliens.

Better known to the tabloids as Pete, rather than Peter, he's been lauded and vilified in equal measure, and thanks to his on-off-on (and now apparently permanently off) relationship with supermodel Kate Moss, he's more famous for his seemingly uncontrollable drugtaking and resulting court appearances than he is for his musicianship. Presentation copy from the author, inscribed on the front free endpaper in red ink and with a self-caricatural sketch: 'To Jake love Pete - Amwell Assassins Wolfenshenken [sic and ? Whereas the majority of books on folklore and mythology published for the general public mostly reiterate ideas and approaches that were dropped by academics in the 1970s, the Explore Books series reveals that more sophisticated and exciting ideas now prevail. I could drone on with my usual adolescent self-importance and give you my considered opinions of them. From the Black Shuck of East Anglia to the Moody Dhoo of the Isle of Man there are tales of huge spectral hounds 'darker than the night sky' with eyes 'glowing red as burning coals'.ly/3Crx2kP 1 The Delaney 2:132 Vertigo 2:333 Campaign Of Hate 2:254 Time For Heroes 2:385 Horrorshow 2:296 [Drum interlude] 1:037 Begging 2:558 The Ha Ha Wall 2:469 Music When The Lights Go Out 3:4010 [Any requests?

The truth, one imagines, lies somewhere between the two, but anyone who's heard his collaboration with the much-derided Wolfman, however, the poignant ballad For Lovers, rightly leans more toward the former description than the latter. This is a superbly written book, where Mankowski tells how uncomfortable, awkward and magnificent it is to be English.A cheque arrived from my dad but I couldn't cash it so I thought I'd hitch to see him in Germany but I couldn't get it together so I bought a doughnut in Calais and came home and slashed myself with a mirror and gathered up the blood and wrote this crap with it. This is definitely one for pre-existing fans, because while it's very cool Pete's hand writing takes a lot of effort to decipher. In sharp distinction to his tabloid image, this is the candid self-portrait of a young poet with serious artistic ambitionssoon to rise to international fame with his acclaimed bands The Libertines and Babyshambles. The Books of Albion" is a fascinating joyride through the mind of the band's charismatic frontman Pete Doherty, its 300-plus pages made up of entries from his long-kept diary, his revelations, and there's more than a touch of James Joyce-like inscrutable meanderings in it too. The most illuminating odyssey through lost, hidden or forgotten English pop culture since Michael Bracewell's England Is Mine.

Mankowski really does dig deep and refers to scenes such as the mid-nineties Romo scene previously found in clubs such as Camden’s Club Skinny along with overlooked and underrated artists such as Patrick Wolf and Gazelle Twin. The later books reflect Pete's rise to fame, his changing world and are full of artwork, photographs, notes and thoughts. The journals are reproduced just as he wrote them, in his own handwriting, complete with poems, drawings, photo-collages, and song lyrics.

As well as early versions of song lyrics, the Books of Albion often contain writings or drawings from various other people, whether Doherty's close friends or one-time acquaintances, including Carl Barat, John Hassall, Mick Jones, Wolfman, Kate Moss, Mik Whitnall, Jake Fior, and the Queens of Noize. Albion Books offers literature of different genres in English: ELT (English language teaching) books, business literature, technical literature, scientific literature, art books, illustrated books, courses, grammar book, dictionaries, methodological literature, atlases, maps, guide-books.