Title search results
Showing 21 - 40 of 36635 items
What the **** is Normal?!
By Francesca Martinez. 2014
If you grow up in a world where wrinkles are practically illegal, going bald is cause for a mental breakdown,…
and women over size zero are encouraged to shoot themselves (immediately), what the hell do you do if you’re, gasp … DISABLED? Whatever body you’re born into, the pressure to be normal is everywhere. But have you ever met a normal person? What do they look like? Where do they live? What do they eat for breakfast?And what the **** does normal mean anyway?This is the award-winning wobbly comedian Francesca Martinez’s funny, personal, and universal story of how she learned to stick two shaky fingers up to the crazy expectations of a world obsessed with being ‘normal’.What is Black Art?
By Alice Correia. 2022
A landmark anthology on British art history, bringing together overlooked and marginalized perspectives from 'the critical decade'What is Black art?…
This vital anthology gives voice to a generation of artists of African, Asian and Caribbean heritage who worked within and against British art institutions in the 1980s, including Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid, Eddie Chambers and Rasheed Araeen. It brings together artists' statements, interviews, exhibition catalogue essays and reviews, most of which have been unavailable for many years and resonate profoundly today. Together they interrogate the term 'Black art' itself, and revive a forgotten dialogue from a time when men and women who had been marginalized made themselves heard within the art world and beyond.What is Art? (Bloomsbury Revelations Ser.)
By Leo Tolstoy. 1995
During his decades of world fame as a novelist, Tolstoy also wrote prolifically in a series of essays and polemics…
on issues of morality, social justice and religion. These works culminated in What is Art?, published in 1898. Impassioned and iconoclastic, this powerfully influential work both criticizes the elitist nature of art in nineteenth-century Western society, and rejects the idea that its sole purpose should be the creation of beauty. The works of Dante, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Baudelaire and Wagner are all vigorously condemned, as Tolstoy explores what he believes to be the spiritual role of the artist - arguing that true art must work with religion and science as a force for the advancement of mankind.We Need to Talk About . . . Kevin Bridges
By Kevin Bridges. 2014
The comic autobiography of 2014 A comedian's autobiography? I wonder if he's ever used humour to deflect from his insecurities?…
To avoid being bullied? Is there heartache behind the humour? I wonder if he's a manic-depressive? Tears of a clown? Yes, all of that. Discover the hilarious life-story of one of Britain's best-loved comedians in Kevin Bridges' brilliant memoir. 'First of all, I have never written a book before, you probably haven't either, so there we have it; a connection is established between reader and writer . . .' Aged just 17, Kevin Bridges walked on stage for the first time in a Glasgow comedy club and brought the house down. He only had a five-minute set but in that short time he discovered that he really could earn a living from making people laugh. Kevin began life as a shy, nerve-ridden school-boy, whose weekly highlights included a cake-bombing attack by the local youths. Reaching his teens, he followed his true calling as the class clown, and was soon after arrested for kidnapping Hugh Grant from his local cinema on a quiet Saturday night. This was a guy going somewhere - off the rails seeming most likely. Kevin's trademark social commentary, sharp one-liners and laugh-out-loud humour blend with his reflections on his Glaswegian childhood and the journey he's taken to become one of the most-loved comedians of our time.'. . . Hopefully now you'll take this over to the till and I can accompany you for the next wee while. That's the benefit of book shops, reading the little bit and then deciding if the author deserves to be part of your carefully selected 3 for 2 deal, or part of your plane journey, train journey, your next bath, your next shite.' Praise for Kevin Bridges:'The Best Scottish Stand up of his Generation.' The Scotsman 'A wonderfully dry and deadpan Glaswegian comic . . . one the most exciting talents to have emerged from Scotland since Billy Connolly' Guardian 'Kevin Bridges might just become the best stand-up in the land . . . he will go and deliver a one-liner that you want to jot down and frame' The Times 'Wonderfully sharp, assured stand-up from the preternaturally gifted young comic' IndependentThere's a war on against the BBC. It is under threat as never before. And if we lose it, we…
won't get it back.The BBC is our most important cultural institution, our best-value entertainment provider, and the global face of Britain. It's our most trusted news source in a world of divisive disinformation. But it is facing relentless attacks by powerful commercial and political enemies, including deep funding cuts - much deeper than most people realise - with imminent further cuts threatened. This book busts the myths about the BBC and shows us how we can save it, before it's too late.Graphic Design (Second Edition, Revised and Expanded): The New Basics
By Ellen Lupton, Jennifer Cole Phillips. 2015
Our bestselling introduction to graphic design is now available in a revised and updated edition. In Graphic Design: The New…
Basics (Second Edition, Revised and Expanded), bestselling author Ellen Lupton (Thinking with Type, Type on Screen) and design educator Jennifer Cole Phillips explain the key concepts of visual language that inform any work of design, from logo or letterhead to a complex website. Through visual demonstrations and concise commentary, students and professionals explore the formal elements of twodimensional design, such as point, line, plane, scale, hierarchy, layers, and transparency.This revised edition replaces sixty-four pages of the original publication with new content, including new chapters on visualizing data, typography, modes of representation, and Gestalt principles, and adds sixteen pages of new student and professional work covering such topics as working with grids and designing with color.Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices
By Dylan Thomas. 2010
'It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black...'Under Milk Wood tells the story of a Welsh…
village during one spring day. It is populated by some of the best-loved characters in British literature. Lyrical, funny, moving, it is rooted in place but with a universality that has spoken to generations of readers. A Welsh epic, a work of poetic genius, a modern classic.'A tour de force of oral poetry which oozes word pictures and onomatopoeic musicality' GuardianUndaunted: The True Story Behind the Popular Shock-Jock
By Jon Gaunt. 2007
Millions know him as a loudmouth radio shock-jock and Sun columnist. Yet, in his life Jon Gaunt has had to…
overcome unimaginable hardship, solitude, bankruptcy and despair. His mother died suddenly when he was just twelve, his hard-drinking, womanising father abandoned him to suffer appalling treatment in a children's home. At twenty-eight, his business had a million pound turnover, but a stroke of fate caused catastrophe. Undaunted, Jon Gaunt has always fought back. Behind the outspoken media personality, this is the very human story of self-preservation, personal growth and forgiveness, told in Jon's inimitable forthright style.Ultimate PopMaster: Over 1,500 brand new questions from the iconic BBC Radio 2 quiz
By Phil Swern, Neil Myners. 2020
Do you stop for PopMaster?Get ready to take on the ultimate PopMaster challenge from the minds behind BBC Radio 2's…
iconic quiz. Every weekday morning over eight million people across the nation stop what they're doing, fix themselves a cuppa and settle in to listen to the PopMaster quiz on The Ken Bruce Show. Now it's your turn to join the throng and pit your musical knowledge against expert question setters Phil Swern and Neil Myners.Ultimate PopMaster is an endlessly entertaining collection of brainteasers, featuring a foreword from the Pop Master himself, Ken Bruce, and 1,500 brand new questions that get progressively harder as you work your way through the book. Discover a surprise twist when you reach the final quiz, in which you'll get the chance to become ultimate PopMaster champion.Covering music from 1958 to 2020, this official quiz companion has something for everyone. So, whether you're a pop anorak or incidental music fan, get stuck in on your own or with friends and family, and watch the hours fly by. Who had a top 10 hit in 1997 with 'The James Bond Theme' as featured in the movie Tomorrow Never Dies? Which legendary soul singer was the subject of the 2015 number one hit by Charlie Puth featuring Meghan Trainor? Which group of comedians had a Top 10 hit in 1975 with Black Pudding Bertha (The Queen Of Northern Soul)?Twilight Together: Portraits of Ireland at Home
By Ruth Medjber. 2020
'A moving and uplifting record of our nation's lockdown' Sunday IndependentThe essential book for 2020, capturing the heart-breaking and uplifting…
stories that made it a year we will never forgetIn March 2020, the arrival of Coronavirus in Ireland saw our world change overnight. We watched in shock as it spread throughout the world with devastating consequences. We stopped travelling, we worked from home, we celebrated birthdays, anniversaries and new arrivals via our screens. Many also had to grieve from a distance, isolated and alone.But the pandemic also became a time of coming together, of community spirit, of small kindnesses and boundless creativity. We saw frontline workers make extraordinary sacrifices, musicians perform from their front rooms, neighbourhood bingo and open-air film screenings.In Twilight Together Ruth Medjber has captured all of this and more. Visually stunning and deeply moving, she has photographed people all over Ireland at their front window at dusk, each with their own story to tell. Twilight Together is an extraordinary portrait of a pandemic by one of Ireland's most talented photographers and it is an important document for our times.Trans-Europe Express: Tours of a Lost Continent
By Owen Hatherley. 2018
'A scathing, lively and timely look at the "European city", from one of our most provocative voices on culture and…
architecture today' Owen JonesA searching, timely account of the condition of contemporary Europe, told through the landscapes of its citiesOver the past twenty years European cities have become the envy of the world: a Kraftwerk Utopia of historic centres, supermodernist concert halls, imaginative public spaces and futuristic egalitarian housing estates which, interconnected by high-speed trains traversing open borders, have a combination of order and pleasure which is exceptionally unusual elsewhere.In Trans-Europe Express, Owen Hatherley sets out to explore the European city across the entire continent, to see what exactly makes it so different to the Anglo-Saxon norm - the unplanned, car-centred, developer-oriented spaces common to the US, Ireland, UK and Australia. Attempting to define the European city, Hatherley finds a continent divided both within the EU and outside it. 'The latest heir to Ruskin.' - Boyd Tonkin, Independent 'Hatherley is the most informed, opinionated and acerbic guide you could wish for.' - Hugh Pearman, Sunday Times 'Can one talk yet of vintage Hatherley? Yes, one can. Here are all the properties that have made him one of the most distinctive writers in England - not just 'architectural writers', but writers full stop: acuity, contrariness, observational rigour, frankness and beautifully wrought prose.' - Jonathan MeadesTove Jansson: Work and Love
By Dr Tuula Karjalainen. 2013
The definitive illustrated biography of one of the most unique and beloved children's authors of the 20th century, the creator…
of the Moomins. Tove Jansson (1914-2001) led a long, colourful and productive life, impacting significantly the political, social and cultural history of 20th-century Finland. And while millions of children have grown up with Little My, Snufkin, Moomintroll and the many creatures of Moominvalley, the life of Jansson - daughter, friend and companion - is more touching still. This book weaves together the myriad qualities of a painter, author, illustrator, scriptwriter and lyricist from fraught beginnings through fame, war and heartbreak and ultimately to a peaceful end.Monty Python Speaks: The Complete Oral History
By David Morgan. 2019
With a Foreword by John Oliver, host of Last Week TonightIn celebration of the 50th anniversary of its BBC debut,…
a revised and updated edition of the complete oral history of Monty Python—an insightful, in-depth portrait of the brilliant and hysterically funny show that transformed modern comedy.Broadcast by the BBC between 1969 and 1974, Monty Python’s Flying Circus introduced something completely different: a new brand of surrealistic, stream-of-consciousness comedy that pushed the traditional boundaries of format, style, and content. Blending brilliant satire with slapstick silliness, The Pythons—Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin—spoke to a generation eager to break free of the conventional. Making their way across the Atlantic and the world, the Pythons’ zany approach to comedy would have a monumental influence on modern popular culture, paving the way for farcical entertainment from Saturday Night Live to The Simpsons to Austin Powers.In Monty Python Speaks, David Morgan has collected interviews with Monty Python’s founding members, actors, producers, and other collaborators to produce a no-holds-barred look at the Pythons’ legendary sketches and films, including Monty Python’s Life of Brian, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (the inspiration for the hit Broadway musical Spamalot), and The Meaning of Life. Featuring four new chapters that focus on the group’s oeuvre since the first edition’s publication twenty years ago, as well as a new foreword and updated resources, Monty Python Speaks offers a fascinating peek behind the scenes of the Pythons’ creative process—including the friendships and feuds—that catapulted a comedy revolution.Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused
By Melissa Maerz. 2020
The definitive oral history of the cult classic Dazed and Confused, featuring behind-the-scenes stories from the cast, crew, and Oscar-nominated director…
Richard Linklater.Dazed and Confused not only heralded the arrival of filmmaker Richard Linklater, it introduced a cast of unknowns who would become the next generation of movie stars. Embraced as a cultural touchstone, the 1993 film would also make Matthew McConaughey’s famous phrase—alright, alright, alright—ubiquitous. But it started with a simple idea: Linklater thought people might like to watch a movie about high school kids just hanging out and listening to music on the last day of school in 1976. To some, that might not even sound like a movie. But to a few studio executives, it sounded enough like the next American Graffiti to justify the risk. Dazed and Confused underperformed at the box office and seemed destined to disappear. Then something weird happened: Linklater turned out to be right. This wasn’t the kind of movie everybody liked, but it was the kind of movie certain people loved, with an intensity that felt personal. No matter what their high school experience was like, they thought Dazed and Confused was about them.Alright, Alright, Alright is the story of how this iconic film came together and why it worked. Combining behind-the-scenes photos and insights from nearly the entire cast, including Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, and many others, and with full access to Linklater’s Dazed archives, it offers an inside look at how a budding filmmaker and a cast of newcomers made a period piece that would feel timeless for decades to come.Windswept & Interesting: My Autobiography
By Billy Connolly. 2021
In his first full-length autobiography, comedy legend and national treasure Billy Connolly reveals the truth behind his windswept and interesting…
life.Born in a tenement flat in Glasgow in 1942, orphaned by the age of 4, and a survivor of appalling abuse at the hands of his own family, Billy's life is a remarkable story of success against all the odds.Billy found his escape first as an apprentice welder in the shipyards of the River Clyde. Later he became a folk musician - a 'rambling man' - with a genuine talent for playing the banjo. But it was his ability to spin stories, tell jokes and hold an audience in the palm of his hand that truly set him apart.As a young comedian Billy broke all the rules. He was fearless and outspoken - willing to call out hypocrisy wherever he saw it. But his stand-up was full of warmth, humility and silliness too. His startling, hairy 'glam-rock' stage appearance - wearing leotards, scissor suits and banana boots - only added to his appeal.It was an appearance on Michael Parkinson's chat show in 1975 - and one outrageous story in particular - that catapulted Billy from cult hero to national star. TV shows, documentaries, international fame and award-winning Hollywood movies followed. Billy's pitch-perfect stand-up comedy kept coming too - for over 50 years, in fact - until a double diagnosis of cancer and Parkinson's Disease brought his remarkable live performances to an end. Since then he has continued making TV shows, creating extraordinary drawings... and writing.Windswept and Interesting is Billy's story in his own words. It is joyfully funny - stuffed full of hard-earned wisdom as well as countless digressions on fishing, farting and the joys of dancing naked. It is an unforgettable, life-affirming story of a true comedy legend.'I didn't know I was Windswept and Interesting until somebody told me. It was a friend who was startlingly exotic himself. He'd just come back from Kashmir and was all billowy shirt and Indian beads. I had long hair and a beard and was swishing around in electric blue flairs.He said: "Look at you - all windswept and interesting!"I just said: "Exactly!"After that, I simply had to maintain my reputation...'Track Record: THE REVOLUTIONARY MEMOIR FROM THE UK'S MOST CREATIVE VOICE
By George The Poet. 2023
**The ground-breaking memoir by acclaimed rapper and podcast host, George the Poet**__________'When Grime became the soundtrack to our lives, it…
gave a voice to the hustle. We were all looking for money, but it was deeper than that; we were looking for a future.'George the Poet knows better than anybody the importance of understanding your surroundings. Born to Ugandan parents on the St Raphael's Estate in Neasden, north-west London, George Mpanga has always been aware of his community. It was both his teacher and his inspiration - giving him the language, the experiences, and the skills to become the person he is today.In Track Record, George unveils the power dynamics that shape our world, shedding light on the forces that restrict Black creativity and put limits on Black excellence. By interrogating the history of colonialism and exploring capitalism's racist legacy, George offers a fresh perspective on the world around us.Delving into the music scene and iconic films from his childhood, as well as crucial political and economic moments in history, this book provides the backstory of where we are today.Honest, thought-provoking, and passionate, Track Record is a ground-breaking memoir by one of the UK's most unique voices.__________(P)2023 Hodder & Stoughton LimitedTrack Record: THE REVOLUTIONARY MEMOIR FROM THE UK'S MOST CREATIVE VOICE
By George The Poet. 2023
The ground-breaking memoir by acclaimed rapper and podcast host, George the PoetBorn to Ugandan parents on the St Raphael's Estate…
in Neasden, north-west London, George has always been an ambitious storyteller. Influenced by his hometown, George started MCing , and eventually found his voice in poetry and with it an avenue for change.Track Record: Me, Music, and the War on Blackness sheds light on George's upbringing and artistic career. He looks back at his education, his time at university, and his beginnings as a musician. We are given an insight into the forces that have shaped him and the stories he chooses to tell. As with George's other work, Track Record goes beyond the traditional memoir and takes the reader on a journey throughout history. George dives deep into the complexities of the economy and interrogates the legacy of colonialism. He reflects on music and its power as a political force - how it can be a catalyst for social power and economic change. By weaving a story that is both personal and political, George delivers an incredibly powerful and unique perspective on the world around us. Honest, thought-provoking and lyrical, Track Record is a fascinating insight by an inimitable storyteller.The book explores how theatre, with its performative capacity, has the power to engage with and affect the politics of…
its day. It sets the stage for the reader to discover the revolutionary traditions of Egyptian and Irish theatre, very distinct in their histories and cultures, and understand their enduring relevance in today’s world. The volume takes Ireland as a case study of the interplay between cultural nationalism and politically engaged theatre and compares it to the role of the theatre in Egypt during its Golden era in the 1960s.Through a selection of Egyptian plays by Tawfiq al-Hakim, Mikhail Roman, Yusuf Idris, and Salah Abdul-Saboor, alongside Irish plays by Brian Friel, Frank McGuinness, Christina Reid, and Samuel Beckett, it maps the political aesthetics of unsteady times and seemingly disparate places to reflect on the dynamics of revolt as a staged act in and of itself. Further, the book examines how playwrights from both nations have engaged with theatre as a medium, focusing on how their contemplations, hesitations, frustrations, and protest have been translated onto the stage in their various plays, and comprehends the transformative role the theatre has always played in politics in shaping history across time and space.Bridging together discussions on transnational modernisms with nuanced cultural histories of protest, this critical work will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of literary studies, identity politics, cultural studies, theatre and performance studies, and political studies.Interior Design on Edge: History, Theory, Praxis
By Erica Morawski, Deborah Schneiderman, Keena Suh, Karin Tehve, Karyn Zieve. 2024
Interior Design on Edge explores ways that interiors both constitute and upset our edges, whether physical, conceptual or psychological, imagined,…
implied, necessary or discriminatory.The essays in this volume explore these questions in history, theory, and praxis through a focus on different periods, cultures, and places. Interior Design on Edge showcases new scholarship that expands and contests traditional relationships between architecture, interiors, and the people that use and design them, provoking readers to consider the interior differently, moving beyond its traditional, architectural definition. Focusing on the concept of interiority considered in a wider sense, it draws on interdisciplinary modes of investigation and analysis and reflects the latest theoretical developments in the fields of interior design history and practice.With new research from both established and emerging authors, this volume will make a valuable contribution to the fields of Interior Design, Architecture, Art and Design History, Cultural History, Visual Culture Studies, and Urban Studies.This book examines performance practices that involve people in recovery from addiction, theorising such practices as recovery-engaged.Focusing on examples of…
practice from a growing movement of UK-based recovery arts practitioners and performers, it highlights a unique approach to performance that infuses an understanding of lived experiences of addiction and recovery with creative practice. It offers a philosophy of being in recovery that understands lived experience, and performance practice, as a dynamic system of interrelations with the human and nonhuman elements that make up the societal settings in which recovery communities struggle to exist. It thereby frames the process of recovery, and recovery-engaged performance, as an affective ecology – a system of messy connections. Building upon ideas from posthumanist research on addiction, cultural theory on identity and new materialist interpretations of performance practice, it considers how such contemporary theory might offer additional ways of thinking and doing arts practice with people affected by addiction. The discussion highlights the distinct aesthetics, ethics and politics of this area of performance practice.This study will be of great interest to students and scholars in Applied Theatre and Critical Arts and Mental Health studies.