UK style manuals?

Hi all, a friend is preparing a book proposal for Palgrave Macmillan (cultural studies series). They have a great house style document on their website but don't recommend a 'backup' style manual.

What are the big manuals in the UK? I did a google search and came up with New Hart's rules and the Amazon entry said it was endorsed by the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Are there others?

Oxford sells Hart's rules bundled with some dictionaries -- the Writers' Reference Pack. What else is used? The Cambridge dictionary?

The Oxford Style Manual (which encompasses Hart's Rules). That's all I've ever used, but then I've only edited in/for Oxford. :)

Style manuals aren't used as heavily in the UK as in the US, in my experience – house styles are more common and can vary a lot. I haven't got an enormous amount of professional editorial experience but I do have some (in contract publishing, dealing with corporate magazines, and briefly with an academic journal) and I've never really used a style guide other than house ones, except for questions of bibliographic reference.

That said, I know nothing about academic publishing, so really I can't help very much.

Thanks, that helps! Turns out the publisher is Ashgate (not Palgrave). Their house style is pretty comprehensive (and similar to Australian style). They've also got a recommended reading list which I'm going to slowly accumulate:

A Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases in Current English
Copy-editing: The Cambridge Handbook, 3rd edn
The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edn
Fowler's Modern English Usage 3rd edn
MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing, 2nd edn
New Hart's rules
New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors
Usage and Abusage
The Penguin Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (2004)
Indexing from A to Z, 2nd edn

I just did a piece for an Ashgate collection and was shocked that they allow American and British punctuation and spelling. The house manual was a bit confusing, so I stuck with British. Is this becoming the norm with British publishers?

I'm not sure, but I've noticed it in a lot of novels.

The new edition of Butcher's copy editing uses a Z instead of S in words like capitalization.

Z in -ize words is Oxford house style - it's not actually incorrect for British publishing. There's a lovely (and mildly snarky) explanation of the policy in the OED, and AskOxford has this.

I like the Oxford Style Manual which as BoPeep says includes Harts. Also use from time to time the Financial Times Style Guide and The Times guide to English Style and Usage although mine is an old 1992 version by Simon Jenkins and not the version touchstoned. Although not UK I also often refer to the Chicago Manual.