11th July 2025 Art & architecture


Art Destinations: 70 Places to See Great Art


Lonely Planet, 12th, £32.99, HB, 9781837585182


From Cape Town and Miami Florida to Tokyo, Oslo and Tasmania, this richly illustrated survey profiles 70 destinations around the world where art and artworks are at the heart of culture in museums, galleries, public art spaces and more.


Verity Babbs ( 1) The History of Art in One Sentence: 500 Years of Art (But Funny)


Bloomsbury, 2nd, £14.99, HB, 9781526686893


What is so special about Dutch paintings of cheese? When does Art Nouveau become Art Deco? Comedian and art historian Babbs explores 50 key art movements, answering 10 such essential questions about each, with a single sentence for every answer.


Robert Campolucci-Bordi Banksy: The Prints


Thames & Hudson, 16th, £40, HB, 9780500028582


Organised by release year with commentaries and reproductions, the first-ever comprehensive catalogue of Banksy’s print editions from 2002 to 2022 contains full details of more than 170 artworks.


Caroline Chapman Painted Mysteries: Interpreting Great Paintings


Unicorn, 7th, £25, HB, 9781917458290


In more than 100 images, this encourages art lovers to look more deeply into paintings, aiming to help them better understand what they see by providing background knowledge about layers of symbolic contemporary meaning that modern viewers may find elusive.


Charlotte Mullins The Art Isles: A 15,000 Year Story of Art in Britain and Ireland


Yale, 23rd, £25, HB, 9780300272130


The author of A Little History of Art returns to propose a fresh history of art for the British Isles, which reinstates women and artists of colour overlooked in previous histories, and also explores artist groups and developments across the whole of the nation, rather than merely in London.


James Payne Great Art Explained: The Stories Behind the World’s Greatest Masterpieces


Thames & Hudson, 2nd, £30, HB, 9780500025956


Payne’s YouTube channel, Great Art Explained has 1.6 million regular subscribers. His book aims to shed new light on 30 different masterpieces from around the world through non-nonsense analysis, demystifying and explaining the appeal of works including Monet’s Water Lillies and Botticelli’s The Birth of Venue.


Biography & memoir


Hu AnYan, Jack Hargreaves (trans) I Deliver Parcels in Beijing: On Making a Living


Allen Lane, 30th, £20, HB, 9780241733820


A bestseller in China no less, with rights now snapped up in 15 other territories, this is Hu’s honest and eye-opening account of his life as a low-wage labourer in dead-end jobs, living to work, not working to live. By harnessing his love of literature, and the new perspectives it offers him, he also reminds us of the liberating possibilities of a great book.


Gosia Buzzanca There She Goes, My Beautiful World


Calon, 23rd, £16.99, HB, 9781837600151


Exploring migration as both a physical and emotional journey, and the meaning of home, Buzzanca tells the story in this striking memoir of how she left Poland at the age of 19 in search of a “bigger life”, and settled in Wales, hoping to leave the traumas of her teenage years behind her.


Natalie Cassidy Happy Days HQ, 9th, £20, HB, 9780008737269


This “heartwarmingly hilarious” autobiography of EastEnders star Cassidy takes her readers on a journey through the highs and lows and the changing seasons of life; from yo-yo diets to raising strong girls, and from coping with grief to getting acting lessons from June Brown.


Betsy Cornwell Ring of Salt: Finding Home and Hope on the Wild Coast of Ireland


Renegade, 9th, £25, HB, 9781408748978


The author left home with her baby on his first birthday, checking into a hotel under an assumed name so her abusive husband could not track them down. This “moving and inspiring” memoir, which blends activism and nature writing, charts how Cornwell then transformed her life on Ireland’s Connemara coast, turning an old knitting factory into a community for other single mothers.


Cameron Crowe The Uncool Fourth Estate, 28th, £22, HB, 9780008697853


Charting his upbringing as well as his formative years in rock and roll, this is said to be a “charming, funny and pacey” memoir by the Rolling Stone journalist and acclaimed film-maker who wrote and directed films including Say Anything and Almost Famous.


Tim Curry Vagabond Century, 14th, £25, HB, 9781529932478


This “outrageous, riotous” memoir from the cult actor and star of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Clue is published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Rocky Horror and the 40th of Clue.


Evan Dando Rumours of My Decline: A Memoir


1 16


Faber, 23rd, £20, HB, 9780571368600


From the clubs, the drugs, and the ringing ears, to the fun, the fame, and a “heady, candid” trip into the grunge-filled 1990s, this memoir from the Lemonheads frontman Dando also contains “jawdropping” anecdotes about the likes of Keith Richards, Kurt Cobain and Kate Moss.


Ben Elton What Have I Done? My Autobiography


Macmillan, 9th, £25, HB, 9781035059942


“Sixty-five years in the making,” this revealing autobiography takes a deep dive into Elton’s life and times, both private and public, including fascinating inside stories about the making of comedy series including Blackadder. “Ben has lots of stories to tell, and he tells them unvarnished and uncensored because that’s who he is.”


Kate Evans Patchwork: A Graphic Biography of Jane Austen


Verso, 28th, £25, HB, 9781804296226


Published for the 250th anniversary of her birth, this enjoyable graphic biography of Austen centres on the quilt she crafted during the latter years of her life. Evans uses the fabrics of this patchwork to create an imaginative comic book retelling of her life story.


Michael J Fox Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum


Headline, 14th, £22, HB, 9781035434930


Coinciding with the 40th anniversary cinema release of Back to the Future, this new book from its star tells of how he divided his time between filming sitcom Family Ties during the day, and then filming Back to the Future by night, becoming his own space-time continuum.


Lukas Gage I Wrote This for Attention 4th Estate, 14th, £20, HB, 9780008787752


From his struggles with addiction, sex, borderline personality disorder to his commitment to being “the centre of attention at all times”, a “riveting and heart-warming” memoir by the actor best known for White Lotus and Euphoria.


Andrew Graham Dixon Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found


Allen Lane, 23rd, £30, HB, 9781846147104


The leading art historian and authority on the Dutch masters with a “revelatory” new biography of enigmatic artist, Johannes Vermeer, published for the 350th anniversary of his death. Featuring previously untold stories revealing Vermeer’s involvement in politics and the role female patrons and collaborators played in his work, it also looks like it will be an exceedingly handsome book.


Lisa Hogan


My Animals and Other Eejits: Farming the Year at Diddly Squat


Century, 9th, £20, HB, 9781529961751


Another star of Clarkson’s Farm gets in on the book act, charting her daily travails dealing with unco-operative piglets, miles of council red tape, and a partner (Clarkson) whose tractor skills are lacking, all while running the farm’s shop.


Jamie Laing Boys Do Cry: Becoming the Man I’m Proud of, Not Who I Was Taught to Be


Bloomsbury, 23rd, £20, HB, 9781037200182


Addressing toxic and misogynistic brands of masculinity, the BBC Radio 1 host and former Made in Chelsea star offers a conversation-starting memoir that contains his personal testimony that “vulnerability is cool”. It also contains contributions from his wife and NewlyWeds podcast co-presenter, Sophie Habboo.


Julia Ioffe Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, From Revolution to Autocracy


William Collins, 23rd, £16.99, HB, 9780008469696


Ioffe left the Soviet Union with her family in 1990 at the age of seven. Now a US journalist, she returned to Russia 20 years later, to discover how much its society had changed in the meantime, particularly for women.


Thea Lenarduzzi The Tower Fitzcarraldo, 9th, £14.99, PB, 9781804271797


I loved Lenarduzzi’s debut, Dandelions. This new book veers between fiction, memoir, fairy tale and folklore as she tells the story of a young woman named Annie, confined to a tower on a hill which prompts her to meditate on power, abuse and why we do not always tell the story we set out to tell.


Books New Titles: Non-Fiction


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48