Showing 1–12 of 246 resultsSorted by latest
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£18.99
Behind this great and famous artist is a volatile, voracious, nervous yet reckless man, largely unknown. Jackie Wullschläger’s enthralling biography, based on thousands of never-before translated letters and unpublished sources, is the first account of Monet’s turbulent private life and how it determined his expressive, sensuous, sensational painting. He was as obsessional in his love affairs as in his love of nature, and changed his art decisively three times when the woman at the centre of his life changed. Enduring devastating bereavements, he pushed the frontier of painting inward, to evoke memory and the passing of time. His work also responded intensely to outside cataclysms – the Dreyfus Affair, the First World War. This rich and moving biography immerses us in that passionate experience, transforming our understanding of the man, his paintings and the fullness of his achievement.
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£25.00
An illuminating biography of the Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe, written by award-winning biographer Andrew Wilson.Â
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£10.99
Eve Babitz died on December 17th, 2021. Found in the wrack, ruin and filth of her apartment, a stack of boxes packed by her mother decades before. Inside, a lost world, centred on a two-story rental in a down-at-heel section of Hollywood in the sixties and seventies. Didion and Babitz formed a complicated alliance, a friendship that went bad, amity turning to enmity. With deftness and skill, journalist Lili Anolik uses Babitz, Babitz’s brilliance of observation, Babitz’s incisive intelligence and, most of all, Babitz’s diary-like letters – letters found in those sealed boxes, letters so intimate you don’t read them so much as breathe them – as the key to unlocking Didion.
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£20.00
In 2018, the fashion world was shocked when Virgil Abloh was appointed as head of menswear for Louis Vuitton. In the brand’s 164 year history, he would be the first Black designer to serve as Artistic Director. In this brilliant, landmark book about Virgil Abloh, Robin Givhan charts his surprising path to the top of the fashion world – a story that encompasses so much more than his own journey. This is at once a remarkable biography of the singular, creative force of an icon and a powerful meditation on fashion and race, taste and exclusivity, genius and luxury. With access to Abloh’s family, friends, collaborators, contemporaries, and many of the key figures of fashion’s present and recent past, Givhan weaves a spellbinding tale of a young man’s rise amidst a cultural moment that would upend a century’s worth of ideas about luxury and taste.
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£30.00
A gorgeously readable, insightful dual biography of British brother and sister artists Gwen and Augustus John, perfect for readers of The Unfinished Palazzo, Square Haunting and The Story of Art Without Men.
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£10.99
Hello to you, I am with news. Basically, I have had an unexpectedly difficult decade – there have been surprising joys but also deep revelations and challenging lows. I shall be honest about those, because what I discovered in the difficult times were my, what I call, treasures. Treasures – practical tools, values, ways, answers researched from some great scientists, neuroscientists, therapists, sociologists (all the ‘ists’) out there – that have genuinely led to a sense of freedom, joy, peace and physical recovery I never would have thought possible.
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£18.99
Honest, moving and of course very funny: award-winning comedian Suzi Ruffell tells the story of a life afflicted with anxiety, and asks the experts to answer some of life’s big questions along the way. Perfect reading for fans of Strong Female Character by Fern Brady, How to Fail by Elizabeth Day and No Shame by Tom Allen.
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£20.00
The most engaging, surprising and revealing look at the Beatles story you’ll read.
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£20.00
From the author of ‘Square Haunting’ comes a biography as unconventional and surprising as the life it tells. ‘Think of the Bible and Homer, think of Shakespeare and think of me,’ wrote Gertrude Stein in 1936. Admirers called her a genius, sceptics a charlatan: she remains one of the most confounding – and contested – writers of the twentieth century. In this literary detective story, Francesca Wade delves into the creation of the Stein myth. We see her posing for Picasso’s portrait; at the centre of Bohemian Parisian life hosting the likes of Matisse and Hemingway; racing through the French countryside with her enigmatic companion Alice B. Toklas; dazzling American crowds on her sell-out tour for her sensational autobiography – a veritable celebrity.
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£22.00
The House of Drogo Montagu is the family name of the Dukes and Earls of Manchester. In 1926, the eldest son of the 9th Duke married a young Australian woman, Nell Stead, later dubbed the ‘dissolute duchess’ for habits like eating stark naked at dinner parties. Subsequent generations of the family have included the ‘dubious duke’ and the ‘dodgy duke’, so named for behaviour including swindling and fraud. This compulsive account of excess and eccentricity shows how young men, born into a life of privilege, were left with fortunes whittled away by bad luck, war and indulgence and left without life skills. This is how one house crumbled through four generations.
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£22.00
A gripping, explosive murder mystery by acclaimed true crime writer Susannah Stapleton
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£25.00
Before the Second World War, Josephine Baker (1906-1975) was one of the most famous performers in the world. She made her name dancing on the Parisian stage, but when war broke out she decided not to return to America. Instead, Baker turned spy for the French Secret Services. In this engaging, deeply researched study, Hanna Diamond tells the full story of Baker’s actions for the French and Allied powers in World War Two. Drawing on previously unseen material, Diamond reveals the vital role Baker played throughout the war, from counterintelligence work for the Allied landings in North Africa to serving in the French Air Force in 1944-45.
