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The Letters of T S Eliot: Vol 1 1898-1922

£35.00

ByValerie Eliot

Volume One of the Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot in 1988, covered the period from Eliot’s childhood in St Louis, Missouri, to the end of 1922, by which time he had settled in England, married and published The Waste Land.

Since 1988, Valerie Eliot has continued to gather materials from collections, libraries and private sources in Britain and America, towards the preparation of subsequent volumes of the Letters edition. Among new letters to have come to light, a good many date from the years 1898-1922, which has necessitated a revised edition of Volume One, taking account of approximately two hundred newly discovered items of correspondence.

The new letters fill crucial gaps in the record, notably enlarging our understanding of the genesis and publication of The Waste Land. Valuable, too, are letters from the earlier and less documented part of Eliot’s life, which have been supplemented by additional correspondence from family members in America.

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The Letters of T S Eliot: Vol 2 1923-1925

£35.00

ByValerie Eliot

Volume Two covers the early years of his editorship of The Criterion (the periodical that Eliot launched with Lady Rothermere’s backing in 1922), publication of The Hollow Menand the course of Eliot’s thinking about poetry and poetics after The Waste Land. The correspondence charts Eliot’s intellectual journey towards conversion to the Anglican faith in 1927, as well as his transformation from banker to publisher, ending with his appointment as a director of the new publishing house of Faber & Gwyer, in late 1925, and the appearance of Poems 1909-1925, Eliot’s first publication with the house with which he would be associated for the rest of his life.

It was partly because of Eliot’s profoundly influential work as cultural commentator and editor that the correspondence is so prolific and so various, and Volume Two of the Letters fully demonstrates the emerging continuities between poet, essayist, editor and letter-writer.

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The Letters of T S Eliot: Vol 3 1926-1927

£40.00

ByValerie Eliot

The period covered by this richly detailed collection, which brings the poet to the age of forty, T.S. Eliot was to set a new course for his life and work. Forsaking the Unitarianism of his American forebears, he was received into the Church of England and naturalised as a British citizen – a radical and public alteration of the intellectual and spiritual direction of his career.

The demands of Eliot’s professional life as writer and editor became more complex and exacting during these years. The celebrated but financially-pressed periodical he had been editing since 1922 – The Criterion – switched between being a quarterly and a monthly, before being rescued by the fledgling house of Faber & Gwyer. In addition to writing numerous essays and editorials, lectures, reviews, introductions and prefaces, his letters show Eliot involving himself wholeheartedly in the business of his new career as a publisher. His Ariel poems, Journey of the Magi (1927) and A Song for Simeon (1928) established a new manner and vision for the poet of The Waste Land and ‘The Hollow Men’. These are also the years in which Eliot published two sections of an exhilaratingly funny, savage, jazz-influenced play-in-verse – ‘Fragment of a Prologue’ and ‘Fragment of an Agon’ – which were subsequently brought together as Sweeney Agonistes. In addition, he struggled to translate the remarkable work Anabase, by St.-John Perse, which was to be a signal influence upon his own later poetry.

This correspondence with friends and mentors vividly documents all the stages of Eliot’s personal and artistic transformation during these crucial years, the continuing anxieties of his private life, and the forging of his public reputation.

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The Life and the Opinions of Maf the Dog and of his Friend Marilyn Monroe

£5.00

ByAndrew O'Hagan

In November 1960, Frank Sinatra gave Marilyn Monroe a dog. His name was Maf. He had an instinct for the twentieth century. For politics. For psychoanalysis. For literature. For interior decoration. This is his story.

Maf the dog was with Marilyn for the last two years of her life. Not only a picaresque hero himself, he was also a scholar of the adventuring rogue in literature and art, witnessing the rise of America’s new liberalism, civil rights, the space race, the New York critics, and was Marilyn Monroe’s constant companion.

The story of Maf the dog is a hilarious and highly original peek into the life of a complex canine hero – he was very much a real historical figure, with his license and photographs sold at auction along with Marilyn’s other person affects. Through the eyes of Maf we’re provided with an insight into the life of Monroe herself, and a fascinating take on one of the most extraordinary periods of the twentieth century.

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The Life of Thomas Hardy

The Life of Thomas Hardy 1840-1928

£30.00

ByFlorence Emily Hardy

This historic edition is an invaluable memoir to those who wish to study this most English of poets and to give him his rightful place in his literary heritage. Much of the work was prepared by Hardy himself and reconstructed from his notes and letters.

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The Making of Me

The Making of Me: A Writer’s Childhood

£5.90

ByRobert Westall

In his own words, the extraordinary childhood of one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.

Robert Westall grew up on Tyneside during the 1930s and 40s, the only child of remarkable parents and grandparents. He was ten when the war broke out and the terror – and excitement – of the air raids influenced his outlook ever after.

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The Music Library

The Music Library

£35.00

Library Music, also known as source or mood music, was made for use in film, TV, advertising and radio. It is music given to TV stations and producers, but never commercially for sale. Similarly the sleeves are designed to represent the music not for commercial sales. These are LPs for purpose and function, not for pop charts, and as a result they look and sound like nothing else.

The first edition of The Music Library came out in 2005. It brought together over 325 sleeves with information about these rare and elusive albums. This highly sought after book influenced both graphic artists and music collectors around the world, quickly becoming known as the music library ‘bible’. The Music Library sparked a resurgence of interest in the subject over the last ten years, with many new libraries and recordings coming to light. As a result this revised and expanded edition contains twice the content, featuring 625 rare sleeves from 230 music library companies of the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. The amazing cover designs of over 100 newly discovered libraries are beautifully reproduced (alongside all the sleeves contained in the first book) accompanied by exhaustive updated captions.

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The Natural History of Selborne

The Natural History of Selborne

£14.00

ByGilbert White

A century before Charles Darwin, decades before the French Revolution, Gilbert White began his lifelong habit of measuring and observing the world around his Hampshire home. Daily rainfall levels and temperature shifts were recorded with home-made instruments. Bird song and seasonal migrations were noted. The feeding habits of frogs, bats and mice were jotted into his diaries and nature journals, as were the simple delights he felt hearing a cricket in the meadow or a blackbird in the hedgerows. The extraordinary detail of the natural history he described has given us, two hundred years later, a glimpse into ecosystems untouched by industry and an account of how changes in global climate can affect local weather patterns. Gilbert White is now considered England’s first ecologist. The Natural History of Selborne is one the most published books in the English language. Yet the most enduring quality of his writing is the spirit of curiosity that bounds across every page, inspiring us to explore the abundance of life at our doorsteps and around our parishes.

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The Odd Couple

The Odd Couple: The Curious Friendship Between Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin

£18.00

“A wonderful, fascinating account of two stars of the post-war literary generation, and their mutual influence.” –Good Book Guide

Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin were close from the moment they met as undergraduates at Oxford. They were, however, very different personalities. Kingsley was charming, sociable, and completely amoral whilst Larkin was awkward and insecure. Their relationship with one another is fascinating in part because it provided the inspiration behind their work. In fact, parts of Lucky Jim were based on Larkin’s life, a fact the poet begrudged for the rest of his life. An extraordinary study of one of the most controversial literary friendships of the twentieth century.

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The Poetic Hooligan

The Poetic Hooligan

£9.95

ByRichard Haldenby

Illustrated with over 100 original photographs

Anyone who experienced the hardships of being brought up in a two-up, two-down house in the fifties and sixties, without any hot water or an indoor toilet, will identify with Richard Haldenby’s ‘warts and all’ account of his childhood in the deprived backstreets of Hull.

But those troubled times provide just the beginning of his remarkable story.

After starting work at 15 during the austere 1970s, he was married at 20 and became a hardworking family man before the decade was over.

Behind this facade of normality however lay a much darker side, as he was drawn into the violent world of gang culture, street fights and football hooliganism…

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quentin blake

The Quentin Blake Book

£30.00

A fully illustrated overview of the life and work of the universally loved Quentin Blake, released ahead of the artist’s 90th birthday in December 2022.

Quentin Blake is an artist who has charmed and inspired generations of readers. Tracing Blake’s art and career from his very first drawings – published in Punch when he was 16 – through his collaborations with writers from Roald Dahl and John Yeoman to Russell Hoban and David Walliams, to his large-scale works for hospitals and public spaces and right up to his most recent passions and projects, acclaimed author Jenny Uglow here presents a fully illustrated overview of Quentin Blake’s extraordinary body of work, with accompanying commentary by the artist himself.

With unprecedented access to the artist’s entire archive, The Quentin Blake Book reveals the stories behind some of Blake’s most famous creations, while also providing readers with an intimate insight into the unceasing creativity of this remarkable artist.

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The Rolling Stones- 50 Licks

The Rolling Stones: 50 Licks

£12.50

ByPete Fornatale

On July 12, 1962, London’s Marquee Club debuted a new act, a blues-inflected rock band named after a Muddy Waters song – The Rolling Stones. They were a hard-edged band with a flair for the dramatic, styling themselves as the devil’s answer to the sainted Beatles.

A young, inexperienced producer named Andrew Loog Oldham first heard the band at a session he remembers with four words: ‘I fell in love.’ Though unfamiliar with such basic industry practices as mixing a recording, he made a brilliant decision – he pitched the band to a studio that had passed on the Beatles. Afraid to make the same mistake twice, they signed the Stones, and began a history-making career.

This is just one of the 50 classic stories that make up 50 Licks. Many are never-before told, some are from exclusive interviews – including with elusive bassist Bill Wyman – and all are illustrated and told by the people who lived them.

Half a century on, the Rolling Stones are still the greatest band working. And this is the book to commemorate their unparalleled achievement in rock music.

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The Sea, the 70s and the Passage

The Sea, the 70s and the Passage

£12.00

ByGraham Durrant

Yearning for a life at sea from the age of 13, the author couldn’t wait to leave home and join the British Merchant Navy. But to do that was harder than he’d thought.

Profound dyslexia (undiagnosed in the 1960s) offered him little prospect of getting qualifications and in 1968 he left school at 15, just after his parents’ marriage had broken up. But perseverance in hardship, plus a chance meeting on a train, launched him on a round-the-world odyssey, sailing on many different ships out of the Royal Docks, London.

It was a real education – in more ways than you’d ever imagine.

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The Seeker King

The Seeker King

£11.50

A woman in the audience once handed Elvis a crown saying, “You’re the King.” “No, honey,” Elvis replied. “There is only one king — Jesus Christ. I’m just a singer.” Gary Tillery presents a coherent view of Elvis’s thoughts through such anecdotes and other recorded facts.

We learn, for instance, that Elvis read thousands of books on religion; that his crisis over making bimbo movies like Girl Happy led him to writers such as Gurdjieff, Krishnamurti, and Helena Blavatsky; and that, while driving in Arizona, an epiphany he had inspired him to learn Hindu practice. Elvis came to believe that the Christ shines in everyone and that God wanted him to use his light to uplift people. And so he did. Elvis’s excesses were as legendary as his generosity, yet, despite his lethal reliance on drugs, he remained ever spiritually curious. When he died, he was reading “A Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus.” This intimate, objective portrait inspires new admiration for the flawed but exceptional man who said, “All I want is to know and experience God. I’m a searcher, that’s what I’m all about.”

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The Story of Art

The Story of Art without Men: The instant Sunday Times bestseller

£30.00

‘Katy Hessel is a brilliant chronicler of the overlooked. I am so thrilled this book exists as an empowering, enlightening guide to the unforgettable vision of these brilliant artists. Essential reading.’ ELIZABETH DAY

‘ Will change the history of art… thank God.’ TRACEY EMIN

‘I was not aware how hungry I was for this book until I dropped everything and ate it from cover to cover. I was not aware how angry I was that this book did not exist until it existed. It’s an urgently needed, un-put-downable, joyful, insightful, glorious, perspective-shifting revision of the Story of Art.’ ES DEVLIN
__________________________________

How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? Did women even work as artists before the twentieth century? And what is the Baroque anyway?

Discover the glittering Sofonisba Anguissola of the Renaissance, the radical work of Harriet Powers in the nineteenth-century USA and the artist who really invented the Readymade. Explore the Dutch Golden Age, the astonishing work of post-War artists in Latin America and the women artists defining art in the 2020s. Have your sense of art history overturned, and your eyes opened to many art forms often overlooked or dismissed. From the Cornish coast to Manhattan, Nigeria to Japan, this is the story of art for our times – one with women at its heart, brought together for the first time by the creator of @thegreatwomenartists.

__________________________________

‘A long overdue, revisionist history of art by the brilliant Katy Hessel … Never stuffy or supercilious, Hessel’s book is a revelation and an important first step towards redressing the balance of an art world in which women have been sidelined, stepped over and trampled upon for far too long’ REFINERY29

‘ An extraordinary achievement that will have a disruptive cultural legacy and help deter mine the landscape for years to come. ‘ HARPER’S BAZAAR

‘ A spirited, inspiring, brilliantly illustrated history of female artistic endeavour … The Story of Art Without Men should be on the reading list of every A-level and university art history course and on the front table of every museum and gallery shop. ‘ LAURA FREEMAN, THE TIMES

‘ Passionate, enthusiastic and witty… I wish I had had this book as a teenager ‘ THE I

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scottish art

The Story of Scottish Art

£25.00

ByLachlan Goudie

The compelling story of over 5,000 years of Scottish art, told by Lachlan Goudie, renowned contemporary Scottish artist, broadcaster and presenter of BBC Four ‘s ‘The Story of Scottish Art’.

This is the story of how Scotland has defined itself through its art over the past 5000 years, from the earliest enigmatic Neolithic symbols etched onto the landscape of Kilmartin Glen to Glasgow’s fame as a centre of artistic innovation today. Lachlan Goudie brings his perspective and passion as a practising artist and broadcaster to narrate the joys and struggles of artists across the millennia striving to fulfil their vision and the dramatic transformations of Scottish society reflected in their art.

The Story of Scottish Art is beautifully illustrated with the diverse artworks that form Scotland’s long tradition of bold creativity: Pictish carved stones and Celtic metalwork; Renaissance palaces and chapels; paintings of Scottish life and landscapes by Horatio McCulloch, David Wilkie and Joan Eardley; designs by master architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh; and collage and sculpture by Pop Art pioneer Eduardo Paolozzi. Lachlan tells the compelling story of how and why these and many other Scottish masterpieces were created, and the impact they have had on the world.

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Transgender Issue

The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice

£10.99

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

‘Few books are as urgent as Shon Faye’s debut … Faye has hope for the future – and maybe so should we’ Independent

‘Unsparing, important and weighty … a vitally needed antidote’ Observer

‘A moving and impressively comprehensive overview of trans life’ Vogue

Trans people in Britain today have become a culture war ‘issue’. Despite making up less than one per cent of the country’s population, they are the subjects of a toxic and increasingly polarized ‘debate’ which generates reliable controversy for newspapers and talk shows. This media frenzy conceals a simple fact: that we are having the wrong conversation, a conversation in which trans people themselves are reduced to a talking point and denied a meaningful voice.

In this powerful new book, Shon Faye reclaims the idea of the ‘transgender issue’ to uncover the reality of what it means to be trans in a transphobic society. In doing so, she provides a compelling, wide-ranging analysis of trans lives from youth to old age, exploring work, family, housing, healthcare, the prison system and trans participation in the LGBTQ+ and feminist communities, in contemporary Britain and beyond.

The Transgender Issue is a landmark work that signals the beginning of a new, healthier conversation about trans life. It is a manifesto for change, and a call for justice and solidarity between all marginalized people and minorities. Trans liberation, as Faye sees it, goes to the root of what our society is and what it could be; it offers the possibility of a more just, free and joyful world for all of us.

‘Fundamentally not a culture-war book. It operates outside the narrow coverage of trans people in the mainstream, and lays bare the inarguable facts’ New Statesman

‘Monumental and utterly convincing – crystal clear in its understanding of how the world should be’ Judith Butler

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The Ultimate Guide to Billie Eilish

The Ultimate Guide to Billie Eilish

£5.00

ByDaizy Whitehead, Dan Whitehead

At the age of just 17, Billie Eilish’s debut album topped the Billboard 200 and UK charts. It also became the best-performing album of 2019 in the US. In the UK, she became the youngest female artist to hit No. 1. From musical methods and career highlights to fashion fireworks, read all about Billie in this ultimate guide, filled with facts, trivia, quotes, and plenty of cool photography.

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The Ultimate Woody Alan Film Companion

The Ultimate Woody Allen Film Companion

£10.00

A complete look at the extensive, ageless, unparalleled filmography of Woody Allen.

Writer, actor, director, comedian, author, and musician, Woody Allen is one of the most culturally and cinematically influential filmmakers of all time. His films – he has over 45 writing and directing credits to his name – range from slapstick to tragedy, farce to fantasy. As one of history’s most prolific moviemakers, his style and comic sensibility have been imitated, but never replicated, by countless other filmmakers over the years. In The Ultimate Woody Allen Film Companion, film writer Jason Bailey profiles every one of Allen’s films: from his debut feature, What’s Up, Tiger Lily, through slapstick classics such as Take the Money and Run and Sleeper; Academy Award-winning films such as Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters; and recent gems such as Midnight in Paris and Blue Jasmine.

Bailey also includes essays on the fascinating themes that color Allen’s works, from death and Freud to music and New York City. Getting up close and personal with the actors and actresses that have brought the iconic films to life, this book’s behind-the-scenes stories span the entire career of a man whose catalog has grown into a timeless cornerstone of American pop culture. Complete with full cast lists, production details, and full-color images and artwork, The Ultimate Woody Allen Film Companion is the ultimate, indispensable reference to one of cinema’s most beloved and important figures.

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Saul Leiter

The Unseen Saul Leiter

£35.00

ByMargit Erb, Michael Parillo

The first sightings of newly discovered work from Saul Leiter’s abundant archive of colour slides.

Now widely acclaimed as one of the world’s greatest photographers, Saul Leiter (1923-2013) remained relatively unsung until he was rediscovered by curators and critics in his early 80s, and his work has been drastically re-evaluated over the last two decades. Leiter’s images evoked the flow and rhythm of life on the mid-century streets of New York in luminous colour at a time when his contemporaries were shooting in black and white. His complex and impressionistic photographs are as much about evoking an atmosphere as nailing the decisive moment.

Saul Leiter was born in Pittsburgh and moved to New York City in 1946. He pioneered a painterly approach to colour photography starting in the late 1940s and produced covers for fashion magazines such as Esquire and Harper’s Bazaar before largely withdrawing from public attention in the 1980s. The publication in 2006 of his first monograph, Early Color , inspired an avid ‘rediscovery’ of Leiter’s work by contemporary audiences.

His studio in New York’s East Village, where he lived from 1952 until his death in 2013, is now the home of the Saul Leiter Foundation. The Foundation has begun a full-scale survey and organization of his more than 80,000 works, with the aim of compiling the ‘complete’ archive. This volume contains works discovered through this process, specifically colour slides, never before published or seen by the public. Meticulously curated by Margit Erb and Michael Parillo of the Saul Leiter Foundation and supported by texts that explain how Leiter built the slide archive and how it is now being explored, catalogued and restored, this new monograph will be a must-have for photography fans worldwide.

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The Who

The Who: Their Generation

£9.50

ByMichael O'Neill

The Who defined a generation and rocked the world. My Generation, Pinball Wizard, and Baba O’Riley are some of the most well known tracks in rock history. The rock opera Tommy, the genre-defining Live at Leeds, and the classic Quadrophenia are just some of The Who’s albums. The band’s original lineup had an amazing 15-year span, as they toured their way around the globe, performing live and recording until the death of drummer Keith Moon in 1978. Then John Entwhistle died in 2002, but the remaining founding members Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend continue to tour. Their Generation takes you on the journey with the band as they conquered the world: from small London clubs to Madison Square Garden, from seven-inch vinyl releases to multi-million-selling albums, all the way to recognition as global rock gods.

The stories behind the music with an album by album analysis and accompanied by images from many of the most well known contemporary rock photographers gives a unique insight into one of the most influential groups in the history of rock music.

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pls

The Writer’s War

£7.00

ByFelicity Trotman, Various

‘When I come home and leave behind Dark things I would not call to mind …’ wrote Leslie Coulson, one of the many soldiers who tried to express his wartime experiences in writing: dreaming of an idyllic England in the face of the horror of the Western Front. Coulson was one of the hundreds of thousands who did not come home – but because of his poetry we glimpse something of his thoughts and experiences.

Today we can be grateful that so many of those who endured the First World War did write about it: giving us an unmatched view of an event which would otherwise be completely beyond our ability to imagine. The Writers’ War is a collection of excerpts from outstanding accounts of the First World War. It provides an essential insight to anyone interested in modern history or early twentieth-century literature. Extraordinary extracts bring the human experience of war brilliantly to life – from the terror of bombardment, or the camaraderie of military service, to the home front.

The writing reflects an enormous range of nationalities and personalities. It includes memorable poetry, fiction, and journalism. Some great names of modern English literature appear, such as Arthur Conan Doyle, D. H. Lawrence and Rudyard Kipling. In addition, there are superb accounts by foreign authors such as novelists Edith Wharton and Henri Barbusse, and flying ace Manfred von Richthofen. The Writers’ War gives an unparalleled insight into a world-changing event, and what it meant in human terms both to the writers and millions of others caught up in it.

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pls

Things I’ve Been Silent About

£17.99

Azar Nafisi, author of the international bestseller “Reading Lolita in Tehran”, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, memories of her life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country’s political revolution. A girl’s pain over family secrets; a young woman’s discovery of the power of sensuality in literature; the price a family pays for freedom in a country beset by political upheaval – these and other threads are woven together in this beautiful memoir.

Nafisi’s intelligent and complicated mother, disappointed in her dreams of leading an important and romantic life, created mesmerising fictions about herself, her family, and her past. But her daughter soon learned that these narratives of triumph hid as much as they revealed. Nafisi’s father escaped into narratives of another kind, enchanting his children with classic tales like the “Shahnameh”, the “Persian Book of Kings”. When her father began to see other women, young Azar began to keep his secrets from her mother. Nafisi’s complicity in these childhood dramas ultimately led her to resist remaining silent about other personal – as well as political, cultural, and social – injustices.

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This is tomorrow

This is Tomorrow: Twentieth-century Britain and its Artists

£30.00

A compelling and lively history that examines the lives of British artists from the late-19th century to today.

In This is Tomorrow Michael Bird takes a fresh look at the ‘long twentieth century’, from the closing years of Queen Victoria’s reign to the turn of the millennium, through the lens of the artists who lived and worked in this ever-changing Britain. Bird examines how the rhythms of change and adaptation in art became embedded in the collective consciousness of the nation and vividly evokes the personalities who populate and drive this story, looking beyond individual careers and historical moments to weave together interconnecting currents of change that flowed through London, Glasgow, Leeds, Cornwall, the Caribbean, New York, Moscow and Berlin. From the American James McNeill Whistler’s defence of his new kind of modern art against the British art establishment in the latter half of the 19th century to the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson’s melting icebergs in London, he traverses the lives of the artists that have recorded, questioned and defined our times.

At the heart of this original book are the successive waves of displacement caused by global wars and persecution that conversely brought fresh ideas and new points of view to the British Isles; educational reforms opened new routes for young people from working-class backgrounds; movements of social change enabled the emergence of female artists and artists of colour; and the emergence of the mass media shaped modern modes of communication and culture. These are the ebbs and flows that Michael Bird teases out in this panoramic account of Britain and its artists in across the twentieth century.

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Time for Action

Time for Action: The Mod Revival 1978 – 1981

£6.50

ByGarry Bushell

The Mod Revival of 1978-1981 put life and laughs into an increasingly grim post-punk UK scene. The roots of ‘New Mod’ were in The Jam and their ‘All Mod Cons’ album which inspired a generation of teenagers to embrace the joys of Fred Perrys, Harrington jackets, Vespas and powerful songs with great tunes. Garry Bushell was the first rock writer to cover the scene, reviewing the Purple Hearts, the Jolt, the Chords and Secret Affair in rapid succession. This is his funny, informative and affectionate history of the rise and fall, rebirth and lasting influence of the Mod Revival as it happened. With rare photographs, this brilliant book is a must for enthusiasts.

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Translation as Transhumance

Translation as Transhumance

£10.00

ByMireille Gansel

Translation as Transhumance is half-memoir, half-philosophical treatise musing on translation’s potential for humanist engagement. One of the great contemporary French translators, the author has lived her life as a risk-taker.

Going back to her childhood in post-war France, she reflects on her origins as a translator. Gansel’s travels took her to important places at seminal points of the 20th century, such as her encounters with banned German writers in 1960s East Berlin. During the Vietnam war, she went to Hanoi to work on an anthology of Vietnamese poetry.

The book offers a fascinating account of wartime danger, hospitality and human kinship as the city under bombardment. Gansel is brilliant at conveying the sense of exile and alienation that is the price paid for the privilege of not dwelling exclusively in the comforting home of the mother tongue, as she explores her relationship with French, which she has come to know very differently because of her activities as a translator. Her lyrical, delicate text offers a profound engagement with humanist values and a meditation on communication.

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Triksta

Triksta

£5.00

Signed copies

What lunacy would cause a 55-year-old white male, neither lean nor hungry, to embroil himself in the world of New Orleans rap, not merely as an observer, but as an active participant – ideas man, talent-spotter, lyricist, and would-be producer? And why did his experience, after many tribulations, end up so profoundly joyous and fulfilling?

Nik Cohn has loved (and hated) hip-hop since its birth, thirty years ago, and loved (and hated) New Orleans for even longer. The city has haunted him from childhood, an addiction he’s never wanted to kick. But nothing prepared him for the experience of being pitched, more or less by accident, into the role of Triksta, rap impressario.

A white alien in a black world, with no funding or qualifications, and not a clue what he was doing, he had to rethink himself from scratch.Surrounded by a cast-list that included such names as Choppa and Soulja Slim, Big Ramp and Lil T, Bass Heavy, Fifth Ward Weebie, and Shorty Brown Hustle, he entered a world of tiny backstreet studios, broken-down slums and gun turfs, almost unimaginable to those who know New Orleans only as the touristic Big Easy.

Triksta is the story of a three-year odyssey that became all-consuming – a journey to the heart of rap, and New Orleans, and self-knowledge. Hilarious, tragic, startling, and exhilirating, sometimes all at once, it is Nik Cohn’s greatest book.

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velazquez

Velazquez

£16.99

ByRichard Verdi

A comprehensive introduction to Velazquez’s life and art which includes a discussion of all his major works.

Diego Velazquez (1599-1660) was one of the towering figures of western painting and Baroque art, a technical master renowned for his focus on realism and startling veracity. Everything he painted was ‘treated’ as a portrait, from Spanish royalty and Pope Innocent X, to a mortar and pestle. This comprehensive introduction to Velazquez’s life and art includes a discussion of all his major works, and illustrates most of Velazquez’s surviving output of approximately 110 paintings. The artist’s greatest innovation – his unorthodox and revolutionary technique is explored in relation to the styles of certain of his most celebrated contemporaries both in Spain and beyond, including Titian and Rubens. The book concludes with a final chapter on the influence and importance of Velazquez’s art on later painters from the time of his own death to the art of recent times including Francisco Goya, Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon and the Impressionists.

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Van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh: A Life in Letters

£11.99

ByHans Luijten, Leo Jansen, Nienke Bakker

An illustrated selection of Van Gogh’s letters, forming an extraordinary window into the life and creative thinking of one of the world’s most iconic artists.

Vincent van Gogh’s letters have long been prized as some of the most valuable documents in the world of art. Not only do they throw light on Van Gogh’s own complex and intriguing character, they enlighten the whole creative process as seen through his eyes.

Here we can observe Van Gogh’s thoughts and opinions at first hand, as well as his close ties with his brother Theo, his sometimes troubled relationships with friends and fellow artists, his personal doubts and fears, and above all his overriding passion for his art. This is not only an immense treasure trove of biographical and art-historical information, it provides a lasting pleasure as a personal written testimony to a life consecrated to art.

Vincent van Gogh: A Life in Letters belongs on the shelves of every reader in search of self-revelatory documents of one of the greatest creative minds.

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Visions of Motorhead

Visions of Motorhead

£12.00

ByAlan Perry, Tony Mottram

This predominantly photographic book of largely unpublished, never before seen images brings together a mixture of concert photos and off stage shots from the late 70s through to the early 90s, covering the classic line-up with Phil Taylor and Eddie Clarke through to the four-man line-up with Phil Campbell, Wurzel and Pete Gill and the return of Phil Taylor. The never before seen images include shots from recording sessions and video shoots plus back stage at the tenth anniversary gig at Hammersmith, June 1985. There are even some hilarious photos of Lemmy during a beer tasting session and many more of the band’s legendary frontman as you have never seen him before!

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vivian maier

Vivian Maier

£45.00

ByAnn Marks, Anne Morin, Christa Blumlinger

A full-career retrospective on the work of Vivian Maier, bringing together a selection of key works from throughout her life and career. When Vivian Maier’s archive was discovered in Chicago in 2007, the photography community gained an immense and singular talent. Maier lived in relative obscurity until her death in 2009, but is now the subject of films and books, and recognized as one of the great American photographers of the 20th century. Born in New York in 1926, she worked as a nanny in New York and Chicago for much of her adult life. It was during her years as a nanny that she took many of the photographs that have made her posthumously famous. Maier’s incredible body of work consists of more than 150,000 photographic images, Super 8 and 16 mm films, various recordings and a multitude of undeveloped films. Working primarily as a street photographer, Maier’s work has been compared with such luminaries as Helen Levitt, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus and Joel Meyerowitz. Drawing on previously unpublished archives and recent scientific analyses, this retrospective sheds new light on Maier’s work. With texts by Anne Morin and Christa Blumlinger, this thorough look at Maier’s entire archive is organized thematically in sections that cover self-portraits, the street, portraits, gestures, cinematography, children, colour work and forms. A valuable addition to the continuing assessment of Maier’s work, this book is a one-volume compendium of her most enduring images.

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Ways of Life

Ways of Life: On Places, Painters and Poets

£10.00

ByAndrew Motion

Andrew Motion was appointed Poet Laureate in 1999, but alongside his work as a poet he also had a significant career as a prize-winning biographer and an illuminating critic. Ways of Life celebrates this talent with a selection of his articles about painters and poets, as well as a number of striking personal pieces. The literary essays in Ways of Life look at a wide assortment of writers, from John Clare and Ivor Gurney, to marginal figures such as Leigh Hunt and Joseph Severn, and reassess the less well-known work of celebrated writers including John Donne, Christina Rossetti and Thomas Hardy. Ways of Life is an original, acute and emotionally-charged collection of writings, from a truly important and insightful writer.

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