Showing titles in Artists, Architects & Photographers

The life of the world’s greatest modern artist by one of Britain’s greatest artists. 'Positive, original, diverting and highly effective.’ – Sunday Times ‘This biography achieves that rare distinction of never having a dull page.’ – Independent on Sunday Everything about Picasso...

Aristocrat, literary celebrity, ‘Rose Queen’, devoted wife, lesbian, recluse, iconoclast – Vita Sackville-West was many things, but she was never straightforward. Her life is re-told here in a dazzling new biography. In this stunning portrait of Vita Sackville-West, Matthew Dennison traces...

The MacArthur Foundation awards the "Genius Grant" every year to the most compelling scientists, educators and artists in the country. But who are these "geniuses," really? Host Bob Garfield sits down with fellows, including writer and producer David Simon, radio producer Jad Abumrad, and inventor Amy Smith, to learn what events shaped their life, how they became leaders in their fields, and what they imagine our shared future looks like.

Named a BOOK OF THE YEAR by The Times and Sunday Times, New Statesman, Spectator, Prospect, and New Yorker. ‘Undoubtedly Hoare’s masterpiece’ Olivia Laing ‘Queer in all senses of the word’ Neil Tennant ‘A life-changing book’ Robert Douglas Fairhurst, The Times ‘Fabulously...

The inspirational memoir from the star of OUR WELSH CHAPEL DREAM and THE GREAT POTTERY THROWDOWN Readers LOVE Boy In A China Shop: 'What a brilliant book. Keith is so charming and funny and my goodness what a hard worker. I loved it. Get it and read it - enjoy.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'This book was...

Joe Tucker's Uncle Eric was a beloved yet unconventional figure throughout Joe's life. A shambolically dressed man who lived with his mother for almost eighty years, he had an almost compulsive need to charm strangers with working men's club comedy routines, and appeared to exist only for daily trips to the bookie - and yet had also amassed over five hundred of his own remarkable paintings without anyone ever realising his achievements.

Brought to you by Penguin. Simultaneously heart-breaking and darkly hilarious, Leaving Home is a portrait of the artist both as a child and as an adult. Mark Haddon's parents were not really cut out for the job of having children. They were cut out, respectively, for the jobs of designing...

Lee Miller, 1927 - New York: A classically beautiful young woman, she is discovered by Condé Nast. Lee Miller, 1929 - Paris: Protégé and lover of Man Ray, she invents with him the solarization technique of photography, develops into a brilliant Surrealist photographer, and plays the statue in Cocteau's film Blood of a Poet. Lee Miller, 1939-45 - Europe: Living at times with her future husband, the painter Roland Penrose, she becomes a US war correspondent and covers the siege of St Malo and the liberation of Paris. 

In his widely anticipated memoir, Ai Weiwei - one of the world's most famous artists and activists - tells a century-long epic tale of China through the story of his own extraordinary life and the legacy of his father, Ai Qing, the nation's most celebrated poet. Hailed as 'the most important artist working today' by the Financial Times and as 'an eloquent and unsilenceable voice of freedom' by the New York Times, Ai Weiwei has written a sweeping memoir that presents a remarkable history of China over the last 100 years while illuminating his artistic process. 

SOON TO BE A TV SERIES WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ANDREW HAIGH New York Times Book Critics Favorite Book of the Year · Washington Post Notable Book of the Year “It’s all here: the grade school Walt Disney and Dr. Seuss; the adolescent acid trips; the fondness for Post-it notes and flying...

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's imagined correspondence with Gwen John, whose life and work have loomed so large in hers. 

Michelangelo, God's Architect is the first book to tell the full story of Michelangelo's final two decades, when the peerless artist refashioned himself into the master architect of St. Peter’s Basilica and other major buildings. When the Pope handed Michelangelo control of the St. Peter’s project in 1546, it was a study in architectural mismanagement, plagued by flawed design and faulty engineering.

Brought to you by Penguin. **THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** **WINNER OF THE 2010 COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD** 264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them bigger than a matchbox: Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in his great uncle Iggie's Tokyo apartment...

P. T. Barnum's career of showmanship and charlatanry was marked by a surprising undercurrent of honesty and forthrightness. His exuberant autobiography forms a happy combination of all those traits, revealing the whole story of his world-famous hoaxes and publicity stunts. Here is a pageant of 19th-century America's gullibility and thirst for marvels, as told by the master of revels himself.  

'Quite possibly the best living writer in Britain' Daily Telegraph Much attention has been paid to so-called late style - but what about last style? When does last begin? How early is late? When does the end set in? In this endlessly stimulating investigation, Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter...

A witty and beautifully written account of the lives of Gertrude Stein and her wife Alice B. Toklas and a fascinating look into early 20th century Paris and the development of modernist culture.

New York Times Notable Book “A smart, crackling chronicle of fast game, the ’80s art market, [and] the attraction of destruction.”— Village Voice A bold and vivid biography that chronicles the dazzling rise and tragic death of Neo-expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. In less than a...

Kaffe Fassett has led an extraordinary life and is a captivating storyteller with a vivid memory. Born in 1937, he spent much of his youth in Big Sur, California, where his parents bought a cabin from Orson Welles and transformed it into the world-famous Nepenthe restaurant, a gathering place for artists and bohemians. After attending a boarding school run by the disciples of Krishnamurti, an Indian guru, he studied painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, then traveled to England, where he made his home.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know written and read by Colm Tóibín. 'A father...is a necessary evil.' Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know, Colm Tóibín turns his incisive gaze to three of Ireland's greatest writers, Oscar Wilde, W.B...

'A stunning self-portrait of a woman trying to make sense of the misogyny and sexism she has faced throughout her life.' - TIME Magazine In early 2021, popular artist Anna Marie Tendler checked herself into a psychiatric hospital following a year of crippling anxiety, depression and self-harm...