Three cultural books you need to know about this Christmas

With profiles of painters to poets, discover these great guides this Christmas

(Dorling Kindersley: Steve Gorton )

Do you and your loved ones have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and an insatiable appetite for culture?

The DK guides to ballet, art and writers deliver both in abundance.

Informative and entertaining reads, these outstanding reference books — bursting with facts and brimming with exquisite photographs and illustrations — make an ideal gift this Christmas. Here’s a taster of what’s inside each.

Ballet: The Definitive Illustrated Story, £25

A comprehensive and beautifully illustrated history, Ballet begins with ballet de cour of the 1550s and guides you through to the modern day, detailing the composers, choreographers, companies and dancers who have defined this most romantic of art forms.

With in-depth studies of more than 70 of the most famous productions — including The Nutcracker and Swan Lake — you’ll discover how the Bolshoi Ballet emerged from a Russian orphanage, and which 18th-century British actor-manager envisioned the Royal Opera House.

Compiled with the help of Viviana Durante, and featuring profiles on Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Peter Wright, Anna Pavlova, Darcey Bussell and many more, this sensational read draws you into the world of poise and pointes — and holds you there captivated.

Art: The Definitive Visual Guide, £30

If you’re in need of an authoritative guide to art, forget rooting around online and look to Art: The Definitive Visual Guide for the facts. Profiling more than 700 artists and their works, Art’s scope is as wide as it is detailed.

Featuring everything from prehistoric cave art to contemporary sculpture, Art – with Andrew Graham Dixon as consultant – profiles movements such as the Italian Renaissance, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Impressionism and famous painters such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Tracey Emin, Van Gogh and Anish Kapoor.

Creative and colourful, and packed with facts, Art is a masterpiece of masterpieces — and a must for your coffee table.

Writers: Their Lives And Works, £20

How would you like to read detailed biographies of more than 100 of the world’s greatest writers? To talk as confidently on Geoffrey Chaucer as on William Shakespeare? To discuss Jane Austen and Lord Byron, or Virginia Woolf and George Orwell. To know as much on Maya Angelou as Arundhati Roy?

And what would it be like to know the key ideas, themes and techniques of these and other great novelists, playwrights and poets throughout history? To discover where they lived, how they studied and what they wrote with?

Filled with these insights and more, and with a foreword by James Naughtie, Writers: Their Lives And Works is one for your wish list this Christmas.

Ballet: The Definitive Illustrated Story, Art: The Definitive Visual Guide and Writers: Their Lives And Works are all available now at Amazon.co.uk

*This content was commissioned and approved by DK