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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

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Laura Freeman

This first biography of the Kettle's Yard artists reveals the life of a visionary who helped shape twentieth-century British art and explores a thrilling moment in the history of modernism 
 
'The beautiful, revelatory biography we have been waiting for. I loved it' 
EDMUND DE WAAL 
 
'This book is the legacy Jim Ede might have wished for' 
OBSERVER 
 
The lives of Jim Ede and the Kettle's Yard artists represent a thrilling tipping point in twentieth-century modernism: a new guard, a new way of making and seeing, and a new way of living with art. The artists Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Alfred Wallis and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska were not a set like the Bloomsbury Set or Ravilious and his friends. But Jim Ede recognised in each of the artists he championed something common and kindred, some quality of light and life and line. 
 
Jim Ede is the figure who unites them. His vision continues to influence the way we understand art and modern living. He was a man of extraordinary energies: a collector, dealer, fixer, critic and, above all, friend to artists. For Ede, works of art were friends and art could be found wherever you looked - in a pebble, feather or seedhead. Art lived and a life without art, beauty, friendship and creativity was a life not worth living. Art was not for galleries alone and it certainly wasn't only for the rich. At Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, he opened his home and his collection to all comers. He showed generations of visitors that learning to look could be a whole new way of life.

Ways of Life

Jim Ede and the Kettle's Yard Artists

Laura Cumming

**WINNER OF THE SALTIRE BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2024** 
**WINNER OF THE WRITERS' PRIZE 2024 | NON-FICTION** 
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024** 
 
 
A beautifully illustrated new memoir of a life in art, a father and daughter, and what a shared love of a painting can come to mean. 
 
‘Brilliant’ Edmund de Waal * ‘Captivating’ Nina Stibbe * 'Extraordinary' India Knight 
 
On the morning of 12 October 1654, a gunpowder explosion devastated the Dutch city of Delft. Among the fatalities was the painter Carel Fabritius, dead at thirty-two, leaving behind his haunting masterpiece The Goldfinch. 
 
Thunderclap explores what happened to Fabritius before and after the disaster whilst interweaving the lives of Laura Cumming, her painter father and the great artists of the Dutch Golden Age. It takes the reader from seventeenth-century Delft to twentieth-century Scottish islands, from Rembrandt’s studio to wartime America and contemporary London. This is a book about what a picture may come to mean, how it can enter your life and change your thinking in a thunderclap. 
 
‘Superb…this book taught me to see anew’ Daily Telegraph 
 
‘A book that often borders on the sublime in its sentiment and beauty’ Sunday Times

Thunderclap

A memoir of art and life & sudden death

Celia Paul

A unique combination of memoir and artistic biography, interspersed with original artworks, from the acclaimed artist and author of SELF-PORTRAIT. 
 
We are both painters. We can connect to each other through images, in our own unvoiced language. But I will try and reach you with words. Through talking to you I may come alive and begin to speak. 
 
Celia Paul has felt a lifelong connection to the artist Gwen John. There are extraordinary parallels in their lives and work. Both have always made art on their own terms. Both were involved with older male artists. Both worked hard to keep themselves and the sacred flame of their creativity from being extinguished by others. 
 
Letters to Gwen John is Paul&rsquo;s imagined correspondence with this groundbreaking painter. These intimate, passionate, haunting letters offer a unique form of memoir and conversation, and an unforgettable insight into a life devoted to making art. 
 
'Beautiful, tender, and riveting. I have taken this book into my heart' 
CLAIRE-LOUISE BENNETT 
 
'A beguiling, singular work of art &ndash; a portrait of two lives, entwined through time and space' 
DAILY TELEGRAPH

Letters to Gwen John

Patrick Bringley

** THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND SUNDAY TIMES ART BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 ** 
 
A revelatory portrait of a great museum and the moving story of one guard's quest to find solace and meaning in art 
 
'Who would have thought that the outstanding art book of you would have been written not by a curator or an art historian or even an artist - but by a museum guard?' Sunday Times 
 
When Patrick’s older brother dies at twenty-six, all he wants is to retreat. So, he does. He quits his job and seeks refuge in the most beautiful place he can think of: New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. 
 
All the Beauty in the World recounts Patrick’s time as a museum guard, keeping quiet vigil over some of our greatest treasures and uncovering the Met’s innermost secrets. As his connection to the art and the life that swirls around it grows, so does Patrick – and gradually he emerges transformed by heartbreak, community and the power of art to illuminate life in all its pain, pleasure and hope. 
 
'As luminous as the old masters paintings' Daily Mail 
'Consoling and beautiful' Guardian 
'Marvellous' Daily Telegraph 
'A beautiful tale about beauty. It is also a tale about grief, balancing solitude and comradeship, and finding joy in both the exalted and the mundane' Washington Post 
 
*New York Times bestseller, Nov 24

All the Beauty in the World

A Museum Guard’s Adventures in Life, Loss and Art

Kate Strasdin

The hidden fabric of a Victorian woman's life told through her unique scrapbook. 
 
In 1838, Anne Sykes was given a diary on her wedding day. Using it to collect snippets of fabric, she created a record of her life and times. Nearly two hundred years later, the diary fell into the hands of fashion historian Kate Strasdin who spent the next six years unravelling the secrets contained within its pages. 
 
Piece by piece, she charts Anne's life and times. Fragments of cloth become windows into Victorian life: pirates in Borneo, the complicated etiquette of mourning, poisonous dyes, the British Empire in full swing, rioting over working conditions and the terrible human cost of Britain's cotton industry. Through the evidence of waistcoats, ball gowns and mourning outfits, Strasdin lays bare the whole of human experience in the most intimate of mediums: the clothes we choose to wear. 
 
&lsquo;Flawless&rsquo; Amber Butchart 
&lsquo;Fascinating&rsquo; Clare Hunter 
&lsquo;Irresistible&rsquo; The Times

The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes

Secrets from a Victorian Woman’s Wardrobe

Karl Ove Knausgaard

A brilliantly wide-ranging essay collection from the author of My Struggle, spanning literature, philosophy, art and how our daily and creative lives intertwine. 
 
In the Land of the Cyclops is Karl Ove Knausgaard's first collection of essays to be published in English, and these brilliant and wide-ranging pieces meditate on themes familiar from his groundbreaking fiction. 
 
Here, Knausgaard discusses Madame Bovary, the Northern Lights, Ingmar Bergman, and the work of an array of writers and visual artists, including Knut Hamsun, Michel Houellebecq, Anselm Kiefer and Cindy Sherman. 
 
These essays beautifully capture Knausgaard's ability to mediate between the deeply personal and the universal, demonstrating his trademark self-scrutiny and his deep longing to authentically see, understand, and experience the world. 
 
'Knausgaard is among the finest writers alive' New York Times

In the Land of the Cyclops

Essays

Ai Weiwei

A FAMILY STORY AND THE TALE OF A NATION. 
 
 
Ai Weiwei - one of the world's most famous artists and activists - weaves a century-long epic tale of China through the story of his own life and that of his father, Ai Qing, the nation's most celebrated poet. 
 
'Engrossing...a remarkable story' Sunday Times 
 
Here, through the sweeping lens of his own and his father's life, Ai Weiwei tells an epic tale of China over the last 100 years, from the Cultural Revolution to the modern-day Chinese Communist Party. 
 
Here is the story of a childhood spent in desolate exile after his father, Ai Qing, once China's most celebrated poet, fell foul of the authorities. Here is his move to America as a young man and his return to China, his rise from unknown to art-world superstar and international rights activist. Here is his extraordinary account of how his work has been shaped by living under a totalitarian regime. 
 
It's the story of a father and a son, of exceptional creativity and passionate belief, and of how two indomitable spirits enabled the world to understand their country. 
 
'A story of inherited resilience and self-determination' Observer 
 
'A majestic and exquisitely serious masterpiece about his China... One of the great voices of our time' Andrew Solomon 
 
'Intimate, unflinching...an instant classic' Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition

1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows

Two lives, one nation and a century of art under tyranny in China

The story of two lives, one nation, and a century of art under tyranny

Fatima Manji

A fresh perspective on British history from award-winning broadcaster Fatima Manji 
 
Why was there a Turkish mosque adorning Britain's most famous botanic garden in the eighteenth century? How did a pair of Persian-inscribed cannon end up in rural Wales? And who is the Moroccan man depicted in a long-forgotten portrait hanging in a west London stately home? 
 
 Throughout Britain's museums, civic buildings and stately homes, relics can be found that reveal the diversity of pre-twentieth-century Britain and expose the misconceptions around modern immigration narratives. In her journey across Britain exploring cultural landmarks, Fatima Manji searches for a richer and more honest story of a nation struggling with identity and the legacy of empire. 
 
'A timely, brilliant and very brave book' Jerry Brotton, author of This Orient Isle

Hidden Heritage

Rediscovering Britain’s Relationship with the Orient

Rediscovering Britain’s Lost Love of the Orient

Edmund de Waal

From the author of the bestselling phenomenon The Hare with Amber Eyes 
 
As you may have guessed by now, I am not in your house by accident. I know your street rather well. 
 
 The Camondos lived just a few doors away from Edmund de Waal's forebears. Like de Waal's family, they were part of belle époque high society. They were also targets of anti-Semitism. 
 
Count Moïse de Camondo created a spectacular house filled with art for his son to inherit. Over a century later, de Waal explores the lavish rooms and detailed archives and, in a haunting series of letters addressed to Camondo, he tells us what happened next. 
 
'Illuminating... A wonderful tribute to a family and to an idea' Guardian 
 
'Letters to Camondo immerses you in another age... Dazzling' Financial Times

Letters to Camondo

Ross King

'A marvel of storytelling and a masterclass in the history of the book' WALL STREET JOURNAL 
 
The Renaissance in Florence conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings - the dazzling handiwork of the city's artists and architects. But equally important were geniuses of another kind: Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars and booksellers. At a time where all books were made by hand, these people helped imagine a new and enlightened world. 
 
 At the heart of this activity was a remarkable bookseller: Vespasiano da Bisticci. His books were works of art in their own right, copied by talented scribes and illuminated by the finest miniaturists. With a client list that included popes and royalty, Vespasiano became the 'king of the world's booksellers'. But by 1480 a new invention had appeared: the printed book, and Europe's most prolific merchant of knowledge faced a formidable new challenge. 
 
'A spectacular life of the book trade's Renaissance man' JOHN CAREY, SUNDAY TIMES

The Bookseller of Florence

Vespasiano da Bisticci and the Manuscripts that Illuminated the Renaissance

Charlotte Higgins

'Charlotte Higgins's Red Thread is a masterwork' Ali Smith 
 
A thrillingly original, labyrinthine journey through myth, art, literature, history, archaeology and memoir. 
 
 The tale of how the hero Theseus killed the Minotaur, finding his way out of the labyrinth using Ariadne's ball of red thread, is one of the most intriguing, suggestive and persistent of all myths, and the labyrinth - the beautiful, confounding and terrifying building created for the half-man, half-bull monster - is one of the foundational symbols of human ingenuity and artistry. 
 
 Charlotte Higgins, author of the Baillie Gifford-shortlisted Under Another Sky, tracks the origins of the story of the labyrinth in the poems of Homer, Catullus, Virgil and Ovid, and with them builds an ingenious edifice of her own. Along the way, she traces the labyrinthine ideas of writers from Dante and Borges to George Eliot and Conan Doyle, and of artists from Titian and Velázquez to Picasso and Eva Hesse. 
 
 Her intricately constructed narrative asks what it is to be lost, what it is to find one's way, and what it is to travel the confusing and circuitous path of a lived life. Red Thread is, above all, a winding and unpredictable route through the byways of the author's imagination - one that leads the reader on a strange and intriguing journey, full of unexpected connections and surprising pleasures.

Red Thread

On Mazes and Labyrinths

**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** 
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD** 
 
Uncovering the mystery of her mother's disappearance as a child: Laura Cumming, prize-winning author and art critic, takes a closer look at her family story. 
 
'A modern masterpiece' Guardian 
 
Autumn 1929 - a young girl is kidnapped from a beach. Five agonising days go by before she is discovered safe and well in a nearby village. The child remembers nothing of these events and at home, nobody ever speaks of them again. 
 
Decades later, Laura Cumming delves into the mystery surrounding her mother's disappearance. Examining everything from old family photos to letters, tickets and recipes, she uncovers a series of secrets and lies perpetuated not just by her family but by the whole community and in doing so unlocks a mystery almost a century old. 
 
'A moving, many-sided human story of great depth and tenderness, and a revelation of how art enriches life' Sunday Times 
 
Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 
Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 
Longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize

On Chapel Sands

My mother and other missing persons

Stephen Greenblatt

Selected as a book of the year 2017 by The Times and Sunday Times 
 
What is it about Adam and Eve’s story that fascinates us? What does it tell us about how our species lives, dies, works or has sex? 
 
The mythic tale of Adam and Eve has shaped conceptions of human origins and destiny for centuries. Stemming from a few verses in an ancient book, it became not just the foundation of three major world faiths, but has evolved through art, philosophy and science to serve as the mirror in which we seem to glimpse the whole, long history of our fears and desires. 
 
In a quest that begins at the dawn of time, Stephen Greenblatt takes us from ancient Babylonia to the forests of east Africa. We meet evolutionary biologists and fossilised ancestors; we grapple with morality and marriage in Milton’s Paradise Lost; and we decide if the Fall is the unvarnished truth or fictional allegory.

The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve

The Story that Created Us

Julia Blackburn

Winner of the East Anglian Book of the Year 2015 
Winner of the New Angle Book Prize 2017 
 
John Craske, a Norfok fisherman, was born in 1881 and in 1917, when he had just turned thirty-six, he fell seriously ill. For the rest of his life he kept moving in and out of what was described as ‘a stuporous state’. In 1923 he started making paintings of the sea and boats and the coastline seen from the sea, and later, when he was too ill to stand and paint, he turned to embroidery, which he could do lying in bed. His embroideries were also the sea, including his masterpiece, a huge embroidery of The Evacuation of Dunkirk. 
 
Very few facts about Craske are known, and only a few scattered photographs have survived, together with accounts by the writer Sylvia Townsend Warner and her lover Valentine Ackland, who discovered Craske in 1937. So - as with all her books - Julia Blackburn’s account of his life is far from a conventional biography. Instead it is a quest which takes her in many strange directions - to fishermen’s cottages in Sheringham, a grand hotel fallen on hard times in Great Yarmouth and to the isolated Watch House far out in the Blakeney estuary; to Cromer and the bizarre story of Einstein’s stay there, guarded by dashing young women in jodhpurs with shotguns. 
 
Threads is a book about life and death and the strange country between the two where John Craske seemed to live. It is also about life after death, as Julia’s beloved husband Herman, a vivid presence in the early pages of the book, dies before it is finished. 
 
In a gentle meditation on art and fame; on the nature of time and the fact of mortality; and illustrated with Craske’s paintings and embroideries, Threads shows, yet again, that Julia Blackburn can conjure a magic that is spellbinding and utterly her own.

Threads

The Delicate Life of John Craske

Bernadette Murphy

In December 1888, Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear. It is the most famous story about any artist in history. But what really happened on that dark winter night? 
 
In Van Gogh's Ear, Bernadette Murphy reveals the truth. She takes us on an extraordinary journey from major museums to forgotten archives, vividly reconstructing Van Gogh's world. We meet police inspectors and café patrons, prostitutes and madams, his beloved brother Theo and fellow painter Paul Gauguin. 
 
Why did Van Gogh commit such a brutal act? Who was the mysterious 'Rachel' to whom he presented his macabre gift? Did he really remove his entire ear? Murphy answers these important questions with her groundbreaking discoveries, offering a stunning portrait of an artist edging towards madness in his pursuit of excellence. 
 
BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK 
PRIMETIME BBC2 DOCUMENTARY WITH JEREMY PAXMAN

Van Gogh's Ear

The True Story

WINNER OF THE JAMES TAIT BLACK BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 
 
Selected as a Book of the Year in the Herald 
 
In 1845, a Reading bookseller named John Snare came across the dirt-blackened portrait of a prince at a country house auction. Suspecting that it might be a long-lost Velázquez, he bought the picture and set out to discover its strange history - a quest that led from fame to ruin and exile. 
 
Fusing detection and biography, this book shows how and why great works of art can affect us, even to the point of mania. And on the trail of John Snare, Cumming makes a surprising discovery of her own. But most movingly, The Vanishing Man is an eloquent and passionate homage to the Spanish master Velázquez, bringing us closer to the creation and appreciation of his works than ever before.

The Vanishing Man

In Pursuit of Velazquez

The gripping story of the lure of porcelain, or 'white gold', from the Number One bestselling author of The Hare with Amber Eyes. 
 
** A Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller ** 
 
 "Other things in the world are white but for me porcelain comes first" 
 
 A handful of clay from a Chinese hillside carries a promise: that mixed with the right materials, it might survive the fire of the kiln, and fuse into porcelain - translucent, luminous, white. 
 
 Acclaimed writer and potter Edmund de Waal sets out on a quest - a journey that begins in the dusty city of Jingdezhen in China and travels on to Venice, Versailles, Dublin, Dresden, the Appalachian Mountains of South Carolina and the hills of Cornwall to tell the history of porcelain. Along the way, he meets the witnesses to its creation; those who were inspired, made rich or heartsick by it, and the many whose livelihoods, minds and bodies were broken by this obsession. It spans a thousand years and reaches into some of the most tragic moments of recent times. 
 
 In these intimate and compelling encounters with the people and landscapes who made porcelain, Edmund de Waal enriches his understanding of this rare material, the 'white gold' he has worked with for decades. 
 
'This is a haunting book, a book that amasses itself piece by piece, gaining in weight.' Olivia Laing, New Statesman 
 
'A mighty achievement' Guardian

The White Road

A Journey Into Obsession

a pilgrimage of sorts

Jeremy Treglown

History is written by the victors. It’s a cliché, but a reliable one – except in the case of the Spanish Civil War. Many believe – wrongly, as it turns out – that under Franco’s dictatorship, nothing truthful or imaginatively worthwhile could be said or written or created. And this myth reinforces another: that there is a national pact to forget what really happened. In the four decades since Franco’s death foreign narratives – For Whom the Bell Tolls, Casablanca, Homage to Catalonia – still have greater credibility than Spanish ones. Yet La Guerra de España was, as its name asserts, Spain’s own war, and in recent years the country has begun to reclaim this crucial aspect of its history. 
 
In a compelling investigation of collective memory Jeremy Treglown talks to the descendants of men and women killed during the civil war and ensuing dictatorship and stands on a hillside with them as remains are excavated; he attends a Sunday service in the basilica dedicated to Franco’s memory, examines monuments, paintings, novels, films, computer games and finds that despite state censorship, creativity under Franco was burgeoning and events of the time were in fact vividly recorded. 
 
In this groundbreaking and captivating new book Jeremy Treglown examines the very tenet of our cultural identity: how we remember. Franco’s Crypt is a much-needed re-examination of a history we only thought we knew.

Franco's Crypt

Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936

Richard Weight

Welcome to the world of the sharp-suited ‘faces’. The Italianistas. The scooter-riding, all-night-dancing instigators of what became, from its myriad sources, a very British phenomenon. 
 
Mod began life as the quintessential working-class movement of a newly affluent nation – a uniquely British amalgam of American music and European fashions that mixed modern jazz with modernist design in an attempt to escape the drab conformity, snobbery and prudery of life in 1950s Britain. But what started as a popular cult became a mainstream culture, and a style became a revolution. 
 
In Mod, Richard Weight tells the story of Britain’s biggest and most influential youth cult. He charts the origins of Mod in the Soho jazz scene of the 1950s, set to the cool sounds of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. He explores Mod’s heyday in Swinging London in the mid-60s – to a new soundtrack courtesy of the Small Faces, the Who and the Kinks. He takes us to the Mod–Rocker riots at Margate and Brighton, and into the world of fashion and design dominated by Twiggy, Mary Quant and Terence Conran. 
 
But Mod did not end in the 1960s. Richard Weight not only brings us up to the cult’s revival in the late 70s – played out against its own soundtrack of Quadrophenia and the Jam – but reveals Mod to be the DNA of British youth culture, leaving its mark on glam and Northern Soul, punk and Two Tone, Britpop and rave. 
 
This is the story of Britain’s biggest and brassiest youth movement – and of its legacy. Music, film, fashion, art, architecture and design – nothing was untouched by the eclectic, frenetic, irresistible energy of Mod.

From Bebop to Britpop, Britain’s Biggest Youth Movement

Alexandra Lapierre

Artemisia Gentileschi is one of the most fascinating artists in history. Apprenticed at an early age to her father, the seventeenth-century painter Orazio Gentileschi, she rapidly became more famous than he was, for her rich, dramatic canvases. But her fame was tarnished by scandal. At the age of seventeen, she was violently raped by Agostino Tassi, an artist friend of Orazio's. On discovering Tassi's betrayal, Orazio took the case to court and there followed, in 1612, eight months of humiliation for Artemisia as the inhabitants of Rome's colourful artist's quarter came to give evidence. Their testimony - frank, partial, often cruel - in this first rape trial ever to be fully documented, made Artemisia and her father notorious.

Artemisia

Carola Hicks

WITH A FOREWORD BY GRAYSON PERRY 
 
Carola Hicks sets out to solve the mystery of one of art history’s greatest paintings, The Arnolfini Portrait 
 
The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck in 1434 hangs in the National Gallery in London and remains a mystery to this day. Is the painting of the girl in the green gown the celebration of marriage or pregnancy, a memorial to a wife who died in childbirth, a fashion statement or a status symbol? Using her acclaimed forensic skills as an art historian, Carola Hicks set out to decode the mystery of one the most enigmatic paintings in the western art. 
 
‘This book will send you back to the National Gallery with much sharper eyes’ Independent on Sunday

Girl in a Green Gown

The History and Mystery of the Arnolfini Portrait

Paul Strathern

Lorenzo de' Medici: 
The embodiment of Florence's most powerful family, a brutal man who ruled the city with an iron fist, whilst protecting it from the shifting mire of Italian politics. 
 
Fra Girolamo Savonarola: 
An unprepossessing provincial monk whose sermons, filled with Old Testament fury, resonated with the disenfranchised population of the city. 
 
The battle between these two men would be a fight to the death, a series of sensational events - including a mighty foreign invasion, trial by fire, the 'Bonfire of the Vanities', terrible executions and mysterious deaths - featuring a cast of the most important and charismatic Renaissance figures.

Death in Florence

The Medici, Savonarola and the Battle for the Soul of Man

Simon Schama

Passionate, provocative, entertaining and informative, Scribble, Scribble, Scribble ranges far and wide: from cookery and family to Barack Obama, from preaching and Shakespeare to Victorian sages, from Charlotte Rampling and Hurricane Katrina to 'The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of The Osbournes'.

Scribble, Scribble, Scribble

Writing on Ice Cream, Obama, Churchill and My Mother

Peter Gay

In his most ambitious endeavour since Freud, acclaimed cultural historian Peter Gay traces and explores the rise of Modernism in the arts, the cultural movement that heralded and shaped the modern world, dominating western high culture for over a century. 
 
He traces the revolutionary path of modernism from its Parisian origins to its emergence as the dominant cultural movement in world capitals such as Berlin and New York, presenting along the way a thrilling pageant of hereitcs that includes Oscar Wilde, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, Walter Gropius and Any Warhol. The result is a work unique in its breadth and brilliance. 
 
Lavishly illustrated, Modernism is a superb achievement by one of our greatest historians.

Modernism

The Lure of Heresy - From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond

Daniel Farson

Widely regarded as the best British painter since Turner, very little is known about Francis Bacon's life. In this, the first-ever book to be written about him, Daniel Farson, friend and confidant to Bacon for over forty years, gives a highly personal, first-hand account of the man as he knew him. From his sexual adventures to his rise from obscurity to international fame, Farson gives us unique insight into Bacon's genius.

The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon

The Authorized Biography

Even in an age of soaring skyscrapers and cavernous sports stadiums, the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence still retains a rare power to astonish. Yet the elegance of the building belies the tremendous labour, technical ingenuity and bitter personal strife involved in its creation. For over a century after work on the cathedral began in 1296, the proposed dome was regarded as all but impossible to build because of its enormous size. The greatest architectural puzzle of its age, when finally completed in 1436 the dome was hailed as one of the great wonders of the world. It has gone down in history as a masterpiece of Renaissance architecture. 
 
This book tells the extraordinary story of how the cupola was raised and of the dome's architect, the brilliant and volatile Filippo Brunelleschi. Denounced as a madman at the start of his labours, he was celebrated at their end as a great genius. His life was one of ambition, ingenuity, rivalry and intrigue - a human drama set against the plagues, wars, political feuds and intellectual ferments of Renaissance Florence, the glorious era for which the dome remains the most compelling symbol. 
 
Brunelleschi's Dome was voted Non-Fiction Book of the Year by American Independent Booksellers.

Brunelleschi's Dome

The Story of the Great Cathedral in Florence

A dazzling piece of Italian history of the infamous family that become one of the most powerful in Europe, weaving its history with Renaissance greats from Leonardo da Vinci to Galileo 
 
Against the background of an age which saw the rebirth of ancient and classical learning, The Medici is a remarkably modern story of power, money and ambition. Strathern paints a vivid narrative of the dramatic rise and fall of the Medici family in Florence, as well as the Italian Renaissance which they did so much to sponsor and encourage. 
 
Strathern also follows the lives of many of the great Renaissance artists with whom the Medici had dealings, including Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello; as well as scientists like Galileo and Pico della Mirandola; and the fortunes of those members of the Medici family who achieved success away from Florence, including the two Medici popes and Catherine de' Médicis, who became Queen of France and played a major role in that country through three turbulent reigns. 
 
‘A great overview of one family's centuries-long role in changing the face of Europe’ Irish Independent

The Medici

Godfathers of the Renaissance

Sue Roe

Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Renoir, Degas, Sisley, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt. 
 
Though they were often ridiculed or ignored by their contemporaries, astonishing sums are paid today for the works of these artists. Their dazzling pictures are familiar - but how well does the world know the Impressionists as people? In a vivid and moving narrative, biographer Sue Roe shows the Impressionists in the studios of Paris, rural lanes of Montmartre and rowdy riverside bars as Paris underwent Baron Haussman's spectacular transformation. 
 
For over twenty years they lived and worked together as a group, struggling to rebuild their lives after the Franco-Prussian war and supporting one another through shocked public reactions to unfamiliar canvasses depicting laundresses, dancers, spring blossom and boating scenes. 
 
This intimate, colourful, superbly researched account takes us into their homes as well as their studios and describes their unconventional, volatile and precarious lives, as well as the stories behind their paintings.

The Private Lives Of The Impressionists

The vivid scenes on the Bayeux Tapestry depict the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. It is one of Europe's greatest treasures and its own story is full of drama and surprise. 
 
Who commissioned the tapestry? Was it Bishop Odo, William's ruthless half-brother? Or Harold's dynamic sister Edith, juggling for a place in the new court? Hicks shows us this world and the miracle of the tapestry's making: the stitches, dyes and strange details in the margins. For centuries it lay ignored in Bayeux cathedral until its 'discovery' in the eighteenth century. It became a symbol of power as well as art: townsfolk saved it during the French Revolution; Napoleon displayed it to promote his own conquest; the Nazis strove to make it their own; and its influence endures today. 
 
This marvellous book, packed with thrilling stories, shows how we remake history in every age and how a great work of art has a life of its own.

The Bayeux Tapestry

The Life Story of a Masterpiece

Patricia Bosworth

Diane Arbus's startling photographic images of dwarfs, twins, transvestites, and freaks seemed from the first to redefine both the normal and the abnormal in our lives; they were already becoming part of the iconography of the age when Arbus committed suicide in 1971. Arbus herself remained an enigma until the publication of this first full biography. Patricia Bosworth examines the life behind the eerie, mesmerizing photographs: Diane's pampered childhood; her passionate marriage to Allan Arbus and their work together as fashion photographers during the fifties; the emotional upheaval surrounding the end of that marriage; and the radically dark, liberating, and ultimately tragic turn Diane's art took during the sixties. Bosworth's engrossing book is a compassionate portrait of the woman behind some of the most powerful photographs of our time.

Diane Arbus

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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