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Showing 741 - 760 of 1469 items
By Daphne Du Maurier. 1977
Both her novels and her non-fiction reveal Daphne du Maurier's overwhelming desire to explore her family's history. In Myself When…
Young, based on diaries that she kept from 1920-1932, the most famous du Maurier probes her own past, beginning with her earliest memories and encompassing the publication of her first book and her subsequent marriage.Here, the writer is open and sometimes painfully honest about the difficult relationship with her father; her education in Paris; early love affairs; her antipathy towards London life and the theatre; her intense love for Cornwall and her desperate ambition to succeed as a writer. The resulting portrait is of a captivating and complex character.A delightful book, full of amusing and charming stories, pinpointing the literary influences and the first stirrings of books to be written in later years, and with a happy and romantic ending - THE TIMESBy Olivia Laing. 2020
“One of the finest writers of the new non-fiction” (Harper’s Bazaar) explores the role of art in the tumultuous twenty-first…
century. In the age of Trump and Brexit, every crisis is instantly overridden by the next. The turbulent political weather of the twenty- first century generates anxiety and makes it difficult to know how to react. Olivia Laing makes a brilliant, inspiring case for why art matters more than ever, as a force of both resistance and repair. Art, she argues, changes how we see the world. It gives us X-ray vision. It reveals inequalities and offers fertile new ways of living. Funny Weather brings together a career’s worth of Laing’s writing about art and culture, and their role in our political and emotional lives. She profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia O’Keeffe, interviews Hilary Mantel and Ali Smith, writes love letters to David Bowie and Wolfgang Tillmans, and explores loneliness and technology, women and alcohol, sex and the body. With characteristic originality and compassion, Funny Weather celebrates art as an antidote to a terrifying political moment.By Brandon Shimoda. 2019
A memoir and book of mourning, a grandson's attempt to reconcile his own uncontested citizenship with his grandfather's lifelong struggle.…
Award-winning poet Brandon Shimoda has crafted a lyrical portrait of his paternal grandfather, Midori Shimoda, whose life--child migrant, talented photographer, suspected enemy alien and spy, desert wanderer, American citizen--mirrors the arc of Japanese America in the twentieth century. In a series of pilgrimages, Shimoda records the search to find his grandfather, and unfolds, in the process, a moving elegy on memory and forgetting.By J. P. Miller. 2020
A celebration of the lives and achievements of inspirational black people through history who made a differenceAmazing Artists explores the…
contribution of black artists to world culture, from painters such as Jean-Michel Basquiat to writers like Malorie Blackman and inspirational musicians such as Stevie Wonder. Along the way, they have smashed down barriers and defeated prejudices with their sheer talent and resilience.Black Stories Matter is a powerful illustrated collection of stories of inspiring black personalities through history. Perfect for readers aged 8 and above.Contents:Main biographiesJean-Michel BasquiatToni MorrisonSteve McQueen Nina SimoneMalorie BlackmanSidney PoitierBeyonce and Jay-ZChris OfiliMisty CopelandStevie WonderMini biographiesStormzyChimamanda Ngozi AdichieIdris ElbaNikki GiovanniLangston HughesLupita Nyong'oEdmonia LewisEmily Kame KngwarreyeBy James Hamilton. 1997
The definitive biography of J.M.W. Turner.'A pleasure to read'.' A.S. BYATT'With splendid clarity and shrewd humour, James Hamilton evokes the…
visceral world of a great artist and a fascinating character.' MIKE LEIGHIn 1799, aged just 24, Turner became an Associate of the Royal Academy. While influential collectors competed to buy his paintings, he travelled widely, observing landscape and people and gathering material for a cycle of images that would come to express the collective identity of Britain. In this lucid blend of vibrant biography and acute art history, James Hamilton introduces Turner to a new generation of readers and paints a picture of a uniquely generous human being, a giant of the nineteenth century and a beacon for the twenty-first.By Lesley Harding, Kendrah Morgan. 2015
Much has been written about the lives and art of Heide, but finally the remaining members of the inner circle…
have entrusted the truth to be told through this intimate biography of John and Sunday Reed. Equal parts romance and tragedy, Modern Love explores the lives of these champions of successive generations of Australian artists and writers, whose works and personalities John and Sunday carefully curated to suit their artistic tastes and sexual passions. It is a story of rebellion against their privileged backgrounds and a bohemian existence marked by extraordinary achievements, intense heartbreak and enduring love, a remarkable partnership that changed all those who crossed the threshold into Heide and altered the course of art in Australia.By Ellen Stern. 2021
The definitive biography of Al Hirschfeld, renowned caricaturist and artist. Al Hirschfeld knew everybody and drew everybody. He occupied the…
twentieth century, and illustrated it. Hirschfeld: The Biography is the first portrait of the renowned artist's life—as spirited and unique as his pen-and-ink drawings. Beginning in the 1920s, he caricatured Hollywood actors, Washington politicians, and—his favorite—celebrities of the stage. Broadway belonged to Hirschfeld. His work appeared in the New York Times and other publications, as well as on book jackets, album covers, posters, and postage stamps, for more than seventy-five years. He lived in Paris, Moscow, and Bali, and in a pink New York townhouse on a star-studded block where his closest friends—Carol Channing, S. J. Perelman, Gloria Vanderbilt, Brooks Atkinson, Elia Kazan, Marlene Dietrich, and William Saroyan—flocked in and out. He played the piano, went to jazz joints with Eugene O'Neill, and wrote a musical that bombed. He drove until he was ninety-eight years old and always found a parking space. He worked every day, threw dinner parties twice a week, and hosted New Year's Eve soirees that were legendary. He had three wives, a formidable agent, and a daughter, Nina, the most famous little girl that no one knows. Hirschfeld died in 2003, at the age of ninety-nine. "If you live long enough," he liked to say, "everything happens." For him, it did. And good and bad—it's all here. Through interviews with Hirschfeld himself, his friends and family (including the mysterious Nina), and his famous subjects, as well as through letters, scrapbooks, and home movies, Ellen Stern has crafted a delightful, detailed, and definitive portrait of Al Hirschfeld, one of our most beloved, and most influential, artists.By Julia Santibáñez. 2021
Pasa, lectora, lector, estás en tu fiesta. Más que un libro, este objeto es un carnaval de cincuenta estaciones que…
desfila tras las bambalinas de la cultura mexicana. En él participan Tin Tan y Pita Amor, María Félix y Monsiváis, Piporro y Tongolele, Nahui Olin y Jorge Ibargüengoitia, los beats y Marilyn Monroe, Vitola y José Revueltas. Entre muchos, muchos otros. Mientras pasan, nos van contando de sus vicios, supersticiones, sus pleitos y apodos, los cuadrángulos amorosos que formaron y los cabarés que visitaron. Guiados por la insaciable curiosidad de Julia Santibáñez, nos enteramos de quiénes fueron huéspedes de Lecumberri y quiénes invitados a la casa de Carlos Fuentes; qué escritores la hicieron de actores y qué libros y películas gozaron de la mercadotecnia inversa de la censura y por qué. Encuentra aquí lo que los libros ceremoniosos nunca dirán sobre escritores, artistas e intelectuales.By Leo Hollis. 2008
'A tour de force of biography, history, politics, philosophy and experimental science' ECONOMISTThe remarkable and inspiring story of how London…
was transformed after the Great Fire of 1666 into the most powerful city in the world, and the men who were responsible for that achievement. 'Wonderfully rich and informative ... a rare achievement' Tom Holland'Fascinating' Lucy Moore'An ingenious and fluent overview of extraordinary men at an extraordinary moment, with St Paul's standing as its symbolic heart' SUNDAY TELEGRAPHOpening in the 1640s, as the city was gripped in tumult leading up to the English Civil War, THE PHOENIX charts the lives and works of five extraordinary men, who would grow up in the chaos of a world turned upside down: the architect, Sir Christopher Wren; gardener and virtuosi, John Evelyn; the scientist, Robert Hooke; the radical philosopher, John Locke and the builder, Nicholas Barbon.At the heart of the story is the rebuilding of London's iconic cathedral, St Paul's. Interweaving science, architecture, history and philosophy, THE PHOENIX tells the story of the formation of the first modern city.By Deyan Sudjic. 2010
A biography of Lord Foster, one of the world's foremost architects, written with his full co-operation.Norman Foster is a phenomenon…
- as an architect, but also as an individual. He is responsible for a dozen or more of the most recognisable buildings of the last thirty years. Under his driven leadership, what is now called Foster and Partners has grown to an international firm with almost 1,000 employees, building astonishing constructions all over the world. Deyan Sudjic explores the nature of the impact that he has had on architecture, and on the contemporary city. It traces his remarkable journey from the backstreets of Manchester, the determination with which he has built a global architectural practice, and his huge creative impact on what we see around us.Amongst many other buildings, Norman Foster is responsible for the design of Beijing's new airport, one of the world's largest, for the Rossiya tower in Moscow, in contention to be the tallest skyscraper in Europe until the credit crunch killed it, for one of the towers at Ground Zero in Manhattan, and for a crop of new towers in London. He designed the Reichstag, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banks headquarters in London and China, the new Wembley stadium and the British Museum's new court.Deyan Sudjic's insightful and elegantly written biography charts the remarkable life of one of the world's most influential architectural figures.By Frances Thomas. 1992
Why is Christina Rossetti, probably the major woman poet of Victorian Britain, so invisible today? This is the central question…
addressed in this biography. Rossetti, author of Goblin Market , My Heart Is Like a Singing Bird and In the Deep Midwinter has often been overshadowed by her brother Dante Gabriel. Drawing on many sources, this study enables the reader to piece together a more complete picture of this woman whose nature was passionate and contradictory.By Daphne Du Maurier. 2013
FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCAAs a bold and gifted child, Branwell Bronte's promise seemed boundless to the three adoring…
sisters over whom his rule was complete. But as an adult, the precocious flame of genius distorted and burned low.With neither the strength nor the resources to counter rejection, unable to sell his paintings or publish his books, Branwell became a spectre in the Bronte story, in pathetic contrast with the astonishing achievements of his sisters.Daphne du Maurier concentrates all her biographer's skill on the shadowy figure of Branwell Bronte, and no reader could fail to be intensely moved by Branwell's final retreat into laudanum, alcohol - and deathBy Michael Peppiatt. 1999
Published in 1996, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma was the first in-depth study of the artist's life. It has…
not been superseded.In this substantially revised, updated edition - to coincide with the artist's centenary, which will be celebrated from autumn 2008 through summer 2009 - Peppiatt will incorporate confidential material Bacon gave him, which he did not include in the first edition. This valuable, first-hand information comes from the hundreds of conversations Bacon had with Peppiatt, often late into the night, over thirty years, particularly during the periods Bacon spent living and working in Paris. It includes insights into Bacon's intimate relationships, his artistic convictions and his general view of life, as well as his acerbic comments on his contemporaries.Peppiatt will draw on some of the fascinating information that has become available in the fifteen years since the artist died. Once jealously guarded by the artist himself, the contents of Bacon's studio can now be freely consulted; Peppiatt has had privileged access to these archives, and he will show how a number of recent discoveries - including wholly unexpected source material - have radically changed the way we look at Bacon's work. Similarly, his recent research into the artist's background - his tortured affair with the sadistic Peter Lacy in Tangier, for instance, and the baffling circumstances of his death in Madrid - will shed light on unexplored areas of Bacon's life and work. Peppiatt will also unveil new information from several people who knew Bacon intimately and who have never gone on record previously.By Dan Cruickshank, Steven Brindle. 2006
A celebration of the life and engineering achievements of Isambard Kingdom Brunel by two of the world's foremost authorities.In his…
lifetime, Isambard Kingdom Brunel towered over his profession. Today, he remains the most famous engineer in history, the epitome of the volcanic creative forces which brought about the Industrial Revolution - and brought modern society into being.Brunel's extraordinary talents were drawn out by some remarkable opportunities - above all his appointment as engineer to the new Great Western Railway at the age of 26 - but it was his nature to take nothing for granted, and to look at every project, whether it was the longest railway yet planned, or the largest ship ever imagined, from first principles. A hard taskmaster to those who served him, he ultimately sacrificed his own life to his work in his tragically early death at the age of 53. His legacy, though, is all around us, in the railways and bridges that he personally designed, and in his wider influence.This fascinating new book draws on Brunel's own diaries, letters and sketchbooks to understand his life, times, and work.By Daphne Du Maurier. 2013
Both her novels and her non-fiction reveal Daphne du Maurier's overwhelming desire to explore her family's history.In Myself When Young,…
based on diaries that she kept from 1920-1932, the most famous du Maurier probes her own past, beginning with her earliest memories and encompassing the publication of her first book and her subsequent marriage.Here, the writer is open and sometimes painfully honest about the difficult relationship with her father; her education in Paris; early love affairs; her antipathy towards London life and the theatre; her intense love for Cornwall and her desperate ambition to succeed as a writer. The resulting portrait is of a captivating and complex character.A delightful book, full of amusing and charming stories, pinpointing the literary influences and the first stirrings of books to be written in later years, and with a happy and romantic ending - THE TIMESBy Christopher Matthew. 2017
Daunted by the prospect of old age? Fearful of becoming a silly old fool? 'No need,' says Christopher Matthew.He has…
just hit eighty. He plays golf; walks the dog; has all his own hair; doesn't need a hearing aid, and no one ever stands up for him on crowded buses and tubes. By his own lights a late middle ager who intends to remain so.No one likes the idea of getting old, but in this wry, thoughtful and very funny guide to life in the last lane, the author of the million-selling Now We Are Sixty will surely persuade all late middle agers that they have a lot more to look forward to than they might imagine.By Brian Clegg. 2003
Back in thirteenth-century Europe, in the early years of the great universities, learning was spiced with the danger of mob…
violence and a terrifyingly repressive religious censorship. Roger Bacon, a humble and devout English friar, seems an unlikely figure to challenge the orthodoxy of his day - yet he risked his life to establish the basis for true knowledge.Born c.1220, Bacon was passionately interested in the natural world and how things worked. Such dangerous topics were vetoed by his Order, and it was only when a new Pope proved sympathetic that he began compiling his encyclopaedia on everything from optics to alchemy - the synopsis took a year and ran to 800,000 words and he was never to complete the work itself. Sadly, the enlightened Pope died, and Bacon was tried as a magician and incarcerated for ten years. Legend transformed Bacon into a sorcerer, 'Doctor Mirabilis', yet he taught that all magic was based on fraud, and his books were the first flowering of the scientific thinking that would transform our world. He advanced the understanding of optics, made geographical breakthroughs later used by Columbus, predicted everything from horseless carriages to the telescope, and stressed the importance of mathematics to science, a significance ignored for 400 years. His biggest contribution was to insist that a study of the natural world by observation and exact measurement was the surest foundation for truth. Clegg uncovers the realities of life in a medieval university and friary, setting out the shadowy facts of Bacon's life alongside his writings. The result is both a fascinating biography and a picture of the age.By Greg Jenner. 1844
'Fizzes with clever vignettes and juicy tidbits... [a] joyous romp of a book.' Guardian'A magical mystery tour through the history…
of celebrity - eye opening, provocative, triumphant.' Kate Williams, bestselling author and historian'A fascinating, rollicking book in search of why, where and how fame strikes. Sit back and enjoy the ride.' Peter FrankopanCelebrity, with its neon glow and selfie pout, strikes us as hypermodern. But the famous and infamous have been thrilling, titillating, and outraging us for much longer than we might realise. Whether it was the scandalous Lord Byron, whose poetry sent female fans into an erotic frenzy; or the cheetah-owning, coffin-sleeping, one-legged French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who launched a violent feud with her former best friend; or Edmund Kean, the dazzling Shakespearean actor whose monstrous ego and terrible alcoholism saw him nearly murdered by his own audience - the list of stars whose careers burned bright before the Age of Television is extensive and thrillingly varied. Celebrities could be heroes or villains; warriors or murderers; brilliant talents, or fraudsters with a flair for fibbing; trendsetters, wilful provocateurs, or tragic victims marketed as freaks of nature. Some craved fame while others had it forced upon them. A few found fame as small children, some had to wait decades to get their break. But uniting them all is the shared origin point: since the early 1700s, celebrity has been one of the most emphatic driving forces in popular culture; it is a lurid cousin to Ancient Greek ideas of glorious and notorious reputation, and its emergence helped to shape public attitudes to ethics, national identity, religious faith, wealth, sexuality, and gender roles. In this ambitious history, that spans the Bronze Age to the coming of Hollywood's Golden Age, Greg Jenner assembles a vibrant cast of over 125 actors, singers, dancers, sportspeople, freaks, demigods, ruffians, and more, in search of celebrity's historical roots. He reveals why celebrity burst into life in the early eighteenth century, how it differs to ancient ideas of fame, the techniques through which it was acquired, how it was maintained, the effect it had on public tastes, and the psychological burden stardom could place on those in the glaring limelight. DEAD FAMOUS is a surprising, funny, and fascinating exploration of both a bygone age and how we came to inhabit our modern, fame obsessed society.LONGLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017. In 1975 Patrick Eagar took some photographs which were…
unlike any cricket photographs anyone had seen before. It was the summer of an Ashes and a World Cup (cricket's first), a near last-gasp summer before revolution when cricket was still a sport of helmetless faces and green fields with no advertising paint on them. A clamour of rare glamour descended on England: Thommo and D.K., baby-cheeked Viv Richards, careworn David Steele, lithe supercat Clive Lloyd, the Chappell brothers, Andy Roberts, Tony Greig, Doug Walters, trails of cigarette smoke gusting in his wake. From this raw material, a thirty-one-year-old with an expired Sports Illustrated subscription and a love of long lenses found something almost magical. Eagar's pictures reveal that "feeling is the thing that happens in 1000th of a second". So this is a cricket book about photography and what it can do - tell the future and show human beings in ways not available to our eyes. It is part detective story, (and reconstruction of one of cricket's greatest summers), part biography, part wild-roaming conversation, part essay on the power of the image, myth and reality. It shows Christian Ryan as one of the most elegant and perceptive writers on sport today.With seventy black-and-white and colour photographs by Patrick Eagar and other seminal photographers, it is is essential reading (and looking) for ardent fans and will exhilarate those who know nothing about cricket.By James Hamilton. 2017
'Compulsively readable - the pages seem to turn themselves' John Carey, Sunday TimesThomas Gainsborough (1727-88) lived as if electricity shot…
through his sinews and crackled at his finger ends. He was a gentle and empathetic family man, but had a volatility that could lead him to slash his paintings, and a loose libidinous way of speaking, writing and behaving that shocked many deeply. He would be dynamite in polite society today.In this exhilarating new biography - the first in decades - James Hamilton reveals Gainsborough in his many contexts: the easy-going Suffolk lad, transported to the heights of fashion by a natural talent; the rake-on-the-make in London, learning his art in the shadow of Hogarth; falling on his feet when he married a duke's daughter with a handsome private income; the top society-portrait painter in Bath and London who earned huge sums by bringing the right people into his studio; the charming and amusing friend of George III and Queen Charlotte who nevertheless kept clear of the aristocratic embrace.There has been much art history written about this chameleon of art, but with fresh insights into original sources, Gainsborough: A Portrait transforms our understanding of this fascinating man, and enlightens the century that bore him.