4 Biography / Autobiography


69578 NOBLE DREAMS, WICKED PLEASURES: Orientalism in America,


1870-1930 edited by Holly Edwards A rare exhibition catalogue packed with armchair orientalism where we may enjoy the beautiful artworks of Henry Siddons Mowbray, Turkish cigarette advertising for Fatima Cigarettes with a veiled beauty, Omar Cigarettes with a big jolly, turbaned Arab, travelogue posters, orientalism in fashion, harem envy, the artwork of Maxfield Parrish, tableware, vases, furniture, paintings, caricatures and contemporary photographs. The book explores complex American attitudes towards the Near East. It is a gorgeously illustrated volume looking at Orientalist stereotypes by some of the country’s most important high art painters of the 19th century - Frederic Edwin Church, John Singer Sargent,


landscapes and market scenes of Samuel Colman and Louis Comfort Tiffany, Henry O. Tanner and others. 12" x 9" large softback, 224pp.


£39.95 NOW £16


69637 MATISSE by Volkmar Essers Henri Matisse (1869-1954) is known not only as one of the most important French painters of the 20th century but also as co-founder and leading exponent of Fauvism. His work reflects an ongoing quest for the expressive power of pure, brilliant colours and simple forms. As a creative artist, Matisse was not only a painter, but also experimented with other materials: he produced glass windows and theatre designs and created significant sculptures in bronze, ceramic and clay. In old age, confined to a wheelchair, he created collages with coloured paper, glue, and scissors his famed gouache cut- outs. 100 colour illus with explanatory captions and a concise biography. 9" x 11½”, 96 pages. ONLY £7.50


69568 GOLDEN AGE OF SPAIN: Painting


Sculpture Architecture by Joan Sureda


Here are the awe-inspiring masterpieces of Spanish painting, sculpture and architecture from 1492 to 1659, when Spain was the richest and most powerful country in Europe. They encompass such works as the glowing Virgin of the Immaculate Conception by José de Ribera, the renowned, tragic Ecce Homo in carved and polychromed wood, the intricate marble doorway in La Calahorra Palace, the Conquest of Tunis tapestries, woven in gold, silver, silk and wool, in the Palacio Real Madrid, the monumental monastery, El Escorial, that was the seat of the Spanish monarchy, and an amazingly detailed close-up photo of the renowned Las Meninas which has made us appreciate Goya’s portrait even more. This period was marked by the exuberance of baroque and the paintings of Zurbarán, Murillo and El Greco, and culminated in a blaze of glory with the paintings of Diego Velázquez. 304 pages 30 x 25mm in eye-dazzling colour with many double page spreads and minutely detailed close-up photos. £40 NOW £18


69580 TREASURES OF REMBRANDT by Michiel Roscam Abbing


A masterwork of design, no less than 30 items of memorabilia from archives around the world, many previously unpublished such as diary entries, personal sketches, birth, marriage and burial registrations, sales posters and legal deeds are inserted in wallets and pockets throughout the large pages of this glorious volume. Published to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the birth of one of the world’s greatest artists, Rembrandt Harmenzs van Rijn, the book takes a close look at the self portraits, the inspirational biblical masterpieces, his etches and engravings, landscapes, riddles, late commissions, his own collections and objects, inside his house and environs and his travels abroad. We take a good look at the Golden Age of Dutch painting, the story of his childhood in Leiden, his move to Amsterdam, marriage and rise and subsequent fall in fortune during a time when he created such gems as The Night Watch. 12" x 11" hardback, 64pp plus memorabilia and in handsome slipcase. £30 NOW £14


70247 ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF


THE 20TH CENTURY by Dorothea Iemert The author has published extensively on Expressionism Futurism and contemporary art and in her brilliant text presents the different artistic movements that


accompanied the political, cultural, ideological and social upheavals of the 20th century. Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica remains to this day the ultimate symbol of pacifistic revolts. The first volume in this monumental two-volume slipcased publication covers Matisse and the wild beasts in Paris, the fauves and the autonomy of colour, futurism, cubism, materiality and collage, the Russian avant-garde, De Stijl, the Bauhaus, Dada, the surreal and magical and new objectivity, sculpture, architecture in the first half of the 20th century. Henri Rousseau’s self portrait from 1890 is the first full page colour reproduction of hundreds in this huge volume of 33cm x 29½cm, 256pp. The second volume covers the second half of the 20th century. Beginning in the 1960s with the nouveaux réalistes, concrete art, Op-Art and Kinetics, Pop Art, Nouvelle figuration and new realism and photo realism, through to minimal art, conceptual art, natural processes and land art, the new expressivity of the 60s to the 80s, new media and video, photography, sculpture and readymades, painting and installations towards the end of the millennium. Then we look at architecture in the second half of the 20th century with cultural buildings from the late 50s to the mid 1970s and a brief look ahead. 256 huge pages with colour examples. New slipcased publication. ONLY £40


69636 CHAGALL


by Rainer Metzger and Ingo F. Walther The Belarusian painter Marc Chagall (1887-1985) is widely regarded as epitomising the “painter as poet”. Chagall’s paintings, steeped in mythology and mysticism, portray colourful dreams and tales that are


= Gift Idea where you see this symbol


deeply rooted in his Russian Jewish origins. They tell of a world full of everyday miracles - in the room of lovers, on the streets of Vitebsk, beneath the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Heaven and earth seem to meet in a topsy-turvy world in which whimsical figures of people and animals float through the air with gravity-defying serenity. 100 colour illus and a concise biography. 9" x 11½”, 96 pages.


ONLY £7.50


69774 ANTOINE’S ALPHABET: Watteau and his World by Jed Perl


A fascinating investigation of the relationship between art and life of Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). Arranged alphabetically by topic or theme, the book seesaws between 18th century Paris and contemporary Manhattan and all times and places in between, always with Watteau as the fulcrum. Helen of Troy to New York’s Irish pubs, Katherine Hepburn to Watteau’s fascination with fans, daydreams to Aubrey Beardsley, Perl lunges off hither and thither, yet in between these leaps contemplates Watteau’s work with an imaginative steadiness. Slightly imperfect. 44 b/w illus, 207pp first edition (2008). $25 NOW £3.50


70014 SPLENDORS OF ANCIENT PERSIA by Henri Stierlin


Now, thanks to recent discoveries, experts can reach back to prehistoric times and examine the art of Persia prior to the Arab conquest and the dominance of Islam, that is, up to the middle of the 7th century AD. In addition to strictly Persian sites, the book also examines monuments built in Mesopotamia, eastern Anatolia and along the Upper Euphrates, making incursions into the eastern kingdoms in the vicinity of the Indus river. This comprehensive selection also includes the local kingdoms of Marlik, Urartu, Luristan and that of the Scythians, as well as the immense Achaemenid Empire of Cyrus and Darius who, interestingly, employed Greek architects and sculptors from Ionia. Both text and illustrations feature breathtaking masterpieces such as the gold treasures and palaces of Persepolis and the ceramics of Northern Iran. The book ends with the architecture and sculpture of Hatra and the rock reliefs of the powerful Sassanian dynasty that was the enemy of Rome and Byzantium. 280 pages 26cm x 36cm, glorious colour photos, map. £30 NOW £18


70242 EDGAR DEGAS by Natalia Brodskaia Degas championed the Impressionist movement and organised their exhibitions. The only sculpture he exhibited in his lifetime was “The Little Ballet Dancer” with her awkward pose and gawky body. Scenes in the theatre were often taken from unexpected angles under the ghostly upward glow of the footlights, for instance the pastel “Two Dancers Entering the Stage” or the dancers in the background of “Orchestra Musicians”, 1872. Degas’ pastel studies of dancers and women performing intimate details of their toilette, bathing or combing their hair, are evocative of a whole private world. The “Woman Drying Herself” from the 1890s, now in the National Gallery of Scotland, is a superb example of his mastery of pastel. This beautiful book has almost 100 full-page reproductions, many of them in double spread with Degas’ letters on the opposite page. With an introduction to his life and works. New publication. 199pp. ONLY £9.50


70243 VALENTIN SEROV by Dmitri Sarabianov


Valentin Alexandrovich Serov was not only a great reformer and pace- setter but also an artist who linked two important periods in Russian painting - one creating sun-lit, real- life scenes, the other concerned with finding a new symbolism and a new mythology to reflect the modern


world. It could be said that the road travelled by Russian art in the course of 25 years, bridging the turn of the century, was that from Serov’s Girl with Peaches (page 16 of this volume) to his Portrait of Ida Lvovna Rubinstein (pages 116-117 idem). Without violating any of the precepts of his teacher, the famous Ilya Repin, the young artist initiated a new method which was to evolve even further in the work of most of the artists of his generation. His graphic art acquired an unusual stylistic purity, which can be experienced in the last section of this lovingly detailed volume. 199 pages 25cm x 29cm. Colour and b/w. New publication. ONLY £9


70245 1000 PAINTINGS OF GENIUS Joseph Manca


1000 paintings covers a surprising number of artists and canvases, and most of the world-famous pictures are here including the Mona Lisa, Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”, Turner’s “Rail, Steam and Speed” and Picasso’s “Guernica”. There are also many masterpieces which may be less familiar to the non-expert, such as the 15th century artist Schongauer’s “Madonna at the Rose Bush”, the superbly atmospheric “Storm by the Banks of a Lake” by the 18th century French master Valenciennes, or the modern Romanian Corneliu Baba’s striking 1981 canvas “The Mad King”. Each century has a general introduction, starting with the 13th and taking the story up to the present with the works of living painters such as Frank Stella and Georg Baselitz. Every painting has details of its date, size, medium and provenance, and is also labelled as belonging to a particular school: for instance Pietro Perugino, Raphael’s master who painted the life of Christ in the Sistine Chapel, belongs to the High Renaissance. New publication. Fully illustrated in colour, timelines. 16 x 21cm, 543pp. ONLY £16


70323 A POCKETFUL OF APARTMENTS by Janelle McCulloch


A pocket sized version of 50 of the World’s Best Apartments, an irresistible book showcasing some of the most spectacular apartments in the world. Many have spectacular vistas of cities like New York, Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro as backdrops. There are floor plans and ideas for even the most compact interiors, whilst others are absolutely palatial, book-lined, and incorporate materials like Batieg limestone and oak plank floors, Venetian plaster walls, lacquer cabinets, brushed stainless steel, limestone, bluestone countertops, walnut-stained cherry cabinets in the library, marble floors or sumptuous fabrics. Glossy colour photos. 283 pages. £9.99 NOW £4


BIOGRAPHY/ AUTOBIOGRAPHY


Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.


- Oscar Wilde


71344 MIRANDA HART: Such Fun


by Sophie Johnson At the 2011 British Comedy Awards, Miranda Hart was crowned the queen of comedy with no fewer than three gongs. She has become something of a national treasure, thrust into the nation’s living rooms and hearts with her self titled sitcom, but of course success did not happen overnight. At 16 years old


she was already six foot one inches and very thin, gangly and clumsy. She is the star of her own show Miranda, the joke-shop owner mistaken for a transvestite and called Sir by a delivery man and constantly called Queen Kong by her old boarding-school friends. Born in Torquay in 1972, the real Miranda graduated in politics from Bristol Polytechnic but always wanted to be a comedienne, inspired by the likes of Joyce Grenfell and Eric Morecambe. Here her story is followed through TV roles in The Vicar of Dibley, Nighty Night, Hyper Drive and Not Going Out before Miranda Hart’s Joke Shop was first commissioned by BBC Radio Two and first broadcast on TV in November 2009. This is her full, unauthorised story including her four years as a PA temp at Comic Relief. Eight pages of colour photos. 280pp. £17.99 NOW £6


71345 A SPECTACLE OF


DUST: The Autobiography by Pete Postlethwaite Born in Warrington in 1946, at the age of 24 Pete Postlethwaite trained at the Bristol Old Vic, beginning a distinguished career on stage and screen. He was made an OBE in 2004 and died in January 2011 aged just 64. Described by Steven Spielberg as ‘The best actor in the world’, he has been a well known face on stage, cinema and


TV for over 20 years. His real success began when he appeared in the much-admired 1988 film Distant Voices, Still Life. He acted in a number of critically acclaimed Hollywood blockbusters including The Lost World: Jurassic Park and more recently Inception. Closer to home, he has acted in some of the best dramas on British TV including Brassed Off, In the Name of the Father, Closing the Ring, The Constant Gardner, and the Bibliophile family’s Deric Longden’s Lost for Words which secured him a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor. See colour photographs in centre pages for this film plus others where he is lost in contemplation on the Shropshire hillside and other colour snapshots he has chosen for this splendid autobiography. 280pp in large softback.


£13.99 NOW £5 71055 M.R. PEDERSEN: A


Man of Genius by David Evans Striding about town, great bushy beard blowing in the wind, lost in thought and heeding nobody and bearing the aroma of strong, sweet coffee - it was obvious to all in the Gloucestershire town of Dursley that Mikael Pedersen was different. Born in Denmark in 1855, his genius for finding unique solutions to engineering problems was


legendary, and he played a significant role in WW1. But it was for the Dursley Pedersen bicycle, with its revolutionary cantilever saddle arrangement and available in layouts catering for up to four riders that he became famous. But suddenly, at the end of the war, the Pedersen family vanished from Dursley, then from England altogether. Mikael and his wife felt unwelcome in England after the war, and decided to leave it all and return, penniless, to Denmark, where he died, largely unremarked upon, in 1929. However, the people of Dursley had not forgotten Mikael, and in 1995 permission was granted for his remains to be exhumed and brought to Dursley cemetery. Evans explores the man, his family, his career and his inventions in great detail, and includes many recollections from those who knew him well and regarded him with affection all their lives. Colour and b/w with photos, technical drawings, adverts, letters and documents. 224pp softback. £16.99 NOW £5


71030 KOESTLER: The


Indispensable Intellectual by Michael Scammell Memorably dubbed “one third blackguard, one third lunatic and one third genius” by one MI5 interrogator, Arthur Koestler (1905- 1983) was one of the most controversial intellectuals of the 20th century. After WW1 the family fled to Vienna, where he spent his adolescence. He was then to live in Palestine, France, the USSR and


the US, before settling, somewhat uneasily, in England. As a prolific writer he was to change languages from Hungarian to German and then to English. Never quite Hungarian, Austrian or German, a Jew who turned away from Judaism and who investigated a multitude of political movements, religions and scientific disciplines, his literary and political odyssey spawned over 30 books and innumerable essays and articles - all of this made him impossible to pigeonhole. And, when it appeared he could do nothing else to shock, in 1983 the terminally ill Koestler and his wife Cynthia, 20 years his junior and in perfect health, ended their lives in a double suicide on their sofa with a cocktail of Tuinal and alcohol. In a doorstopping volume for which the term magisterial was invented, Scammell draws on over 100 interviews and a vast range of new sources to provide a nuanced and unsentimental account of Koestler’s public and private life. The drug use, manic depression, frenetic womanising, issues with his mother and accusations of


rape are not baulked at, and the cast of characters in this engrossing and definitive biography is astounding. The final word on this brilliant, unpredictable and provocative writer. 708pp paperback with 41 b/w photos. £14.99 NOW £6.50


71054 THE MAJOR: The Life and Times of Frank Buckley by Patrick Quirke


Sir Alex Ferguson, Bobby Robson, Sir Alf Ramsay and any of the great football managers owe it all to Major Frank Buckley, the forefather of modern football management. A player with (among others) Aston Villa, Manchesters United and City, Birmingham City and Derby County, he won his first England


cap in 1914, when war intervened. Joining the 17th Middlesex Regiment, he reached the rank of Major in 1916, but in late July of that year shrapnel from a German grenade at the Somme ripped into his chest, leaving him more dead than alive. After the fighting ended he moved into management, leading Norwich City, Blackpool, Leeds Utd and most notably Wolves who he transformed from 2nd division strugglers into one of the most powerful sides in the game. Buckley’s was a tough regime, as well as being famously experimental. His radical approach included injecting players with “monkey gland serum” and the use of psychologists to deal with confidence issues. A thoughtful and engaging biography of a great English one-off. Photos and cartoons, 157pp paperback. £12.99 NOW £5


71343 HANDLING EDNA


by Barry Humphries Housewife, icon, gigastar, advisor to royalty and world leaders, from Moonee Ponds to the glittering glamour of New York, Tokyo and London, Barry Humphries tells the truth behind the legend - Dame Edna Everage. This is a behind- the-scene authoritative account of her life and career from her days as a humble housewife to the


stratospheric life she so recently retired from told by the man who was there from the very beginning. Edna herself will not like this book because it is for her fans and those who feel that behind the fairy tale career lies a darker and more disturbing story. Here are memories such as Madge, the patient bridesmaid, Edna with the late Mary Whitehouse and a late Koala, at Royal Ascot, singing with Jerry Hall, transported by Sir Richard Branson, Sir Les Patterson - diplomat at large - and others among this collection of stunning colour large photographs. 340pp. £18.99 NOW £5


70807 JOANNA LUMLEY by Tim Ewbank and Stafford Hildred


Born in Kashmir, the daughter of a Major in the Ghurkhas, Joanna Lumley had a typically peripatetic Army childhood. Since leaving her convent school in Sussex, she has graduated from being a Bond girl to newspaper columnist and documentary presenter, and from trendsetting star of The New


Avengers to making us fall about laughing as Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous and becoming a tenacious campaigner for animal rights and other causes. Joanna is a beautiful 60s survivor and along the way there has been bitter disappointments, heartaches, hardships, family friction and moments of deep despair. A whirlwind marriage to actor and comedy actor Jeremy Lloyd ended in disaster within months, leaving her struggling to pay the bills. Today she is married to conductor Stephen Barlow. 258pp, colour photos. Paperback.


£7.99 NOW £4 68720 MORE ABOUT BOY: Roald Dahl’s


Tales from Childhood by Roald Dahl Here are some funny, some painful and some unpleasant episodes from the last 50 or 60 years of the author’s life which have remained seared on his memory. Following Kindergarten 1922-3 is Llandass Cathedral School (ages seven to nine), the Bicycle in the Sweet Shop, the Great Mouse Plot, Going to Norway and A Visit to the Doctor, St. Peter’s ages nine to 13 with Writing Home, The Matron, Home Sickness and the Meccano Chariot among other escapades, Repton and Shell ages 13 to 20 with Painful Punishments, Chocolates, Ten Horrid Little Boys and Girls, Faggin’ and That Awful Cold Bath, in the PS there is a Dahl-tastic quiz. Includes school reports and never-before-seen materials. Line art by Quentin Blake. 228pp in large softback. Suit ages 8-12. £10 NOW £2.50


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70568 THE IRON LADY: Margaret Thatcher, from Grocer’s Daughter to Prime


Minister by John Campbell It is undeniable that Margaret Thatcher was one of the boldest and most influential women in post- war politics and that she had a lasting impact on 20th century history. Here is her role as a dutiful daughter, as a young Conservative and as Education Secretary, and


here the effects of the Falklands War and the Poll Tax on her popularity. No punches are pulled as her downfall is charted but, as the author points out, despite radically changed global circumstances, for two decades after her fall, this unique woman continued to exercise a powerful grip on the imagination of the country and of her successors, and her time leading the country will always be known as the Thatcher years. Revised edition, 564 paperback pages. £10 NOW £5


69432 BEATON IN THE SIXTIES: The Cecil Beaton Diaries As They Were Written by Hugo Vickers


The enthusiastic reception accorded to the Unexpurgated Beaton - the first volume of the diaries of Cecil Beaton - prompted Hugo Vickers to return to the 145 original manuscript volumes and to choose a second un- retouched selection. Here is Cecil in the ‘swinging sixties’, the era of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Mary Quant. As photographer, he is still contributing to Vogue. He sails with Greta Garbo on the Rothschild’s


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