Book Knowledge

CHARITY shops are well-known as a good source of cheap books, although I find them more useful for travel books than for history.
My favourite travel books tend to have a historical bias, however, so my recent purchase of Heinrich Harrer's Seven Years In Tibet from a charity shop - Oxfam, I think - in Tunbridge Wells should scratch both itches (assuming events in the 1940s count as history rather than current affairs).
There is a book-selling establishment in Hampstead which, while not a charity shop, has something of the feel of one as it only opens on Saturdays, I believe, and consists of mostly remaindered books laid out on temporarily erected trestle tables in a sort of passageway off the High Street.
Last month I bought there A Brief History Of Khubilai Khan - Lord Of Xanadu, Emperor Of China for £3.99, marked down from £8.99.

A Khan-do type of guy

The author, Jonathan Clements, is credited as "a leading expert on Asian history" and the writer of biographies of Marco Polo and the Chinese empress Wu Zetian.
The book includes an index - never a bad sign.