A sweeping, beautifully written history of artistic patronage from 1000 to the present day by a Wolfson Prize-winning historian.
‘Marks of Opulence’ is a magisterial survey of European art and artistic patronage from 1000 until the birth of modernism. Tracing the history from the discovery of silver in the Harz mountains, through the catastrophic effects of plague in the 14th-century, to the studied magnificence of papal and royal courts in the 16th- and 17th-centuries, Platt shows how the great and the good have always used art to bolster political power.
Arguing that the acquisitive instinct – felt by all of us in different ways – is central to the history of Western art, Platt traces how art began to move out of the palaces of the aristocracy into the homes of merchants, bankers and industrialists. From the mid 19th-century onwards, and in the pre-war Belle Époque in particular, it was the immensely wealthy 'robber barons' and their widows – in London and Paris, in Berlin and Vienna, in Moscow and Barcelona, in Philadelphia and New York – who collected the work of the most innovative artists and broke the hold of the Academies on Western art.
Professor Platt's ambitious sweep through a thousand years of artistic endeavour in the West argues throughout that a superfluity of money is the chief driver of high achievement in the arts, and for the transforming power of great riches.

Marks of Opulence: The Why, When and Where of Western Art 1000–1914

Arts & Photography

PLATT, Colin

History & Criticism

Harper-perennial

The masterpiece of Britain’s leading Renaissance scholar. Winner of the Time-Life Silver Pen Award and The Royal Society of Literature Award.
‘A superb evocation of the Europe of the “long 16th-century”, wonderfully fresh and rich in its copious illustrative detail, full of innumerable delights. The book is the summation of John Hale’s career as a historian, and as the crowning achievement of a master-designer whose richly fabricated works have given so much pleasure.’ John Elliot, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford.
‘The Civilisation of Europe in the Renaissance’ is the most ambitious achievement of Britain’s leading Renaissance historian. John Hale has painted on a grand canvas an enthralling portrait of Europe and its civilisation at a moment when ‘Europe’ first became an entity in the minds of its inhabitants. John Hale’s Renaissance has no compartments. With astonishing range and subtlety of learning, he paints a gigantic picture of the age, enlivened by a multiplicity of themes, people and ideas. It contains memorable descriptions of painting, sculpture, poetry, architecture and music, but Hale is not simply concerned with the arts. He examines the dramatic changes during the period in religion, politics, economics and global discoveries. And throughout his book approaches the art of war and the art created for princes from the point of view of their impact on the imaginations, sensibilities and lives of ordinary people.

The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance

Hale, John

The Times Art Book of the Year 2021\nFINALIST FOR THE PLUTARCH AWARD 2022\n‘Must surely be the definitive life of Francis Bacon … A biography that no Bacon fan – or indeed foe – can afford to overlook … Mesmerising’ THE TIMES\n‘A magnificent triumph … I was captivated by every line’ OBSERVER 
A decade in the making, based upon hundreds of interviews and extensive new material, Pulitzer Prize winners Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan have written a startlingly original portrait – rich, complex, and subtle – of a commanding modern figure.\nBacon concealed many important aspects of his life. He described himself as an asthmatic child in Ireland with foxhunting parents and a tyrannical father, but he was also rescued by a series of formidable women – women who in this biography emerge in their own right. He was never just a dissolute young man but was also a passionate reader, largely self-taught. Early on, influenced by Eileen Gray, he became a hard-working and ambitious designer, a brief career explored here in detail for the first time. He dreamed of remaking the modern room.\nBacon worked no less hard or ambitiously as a painter, at first with little success. Throughout the 1930s and early ’40s he suffered ongoing failures, growing isolated and often ill. His health issues throughout his life were far more significant than he revealed. Then came his astonishing breakthrough in 1944, with Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. In the following decades, he emerged as one of the great iconoclasts and bon vivants of his time, a Wildean figure whom one friend called ‘a terrific grandee.’ Bacon was typically celebrated as a sexual adventurer who liked rough trade, but he never stopped longing for a serious committed relationship, however painful. He continued to make disturbing images of the strangeness within, but developed into a more varied artist than has been recognised, creating in particular an extraordinary series of self-portraits. He was an artist who believed in chance and paradox: the iconoclast eventually became an icon.\nThis is a story, deeply researched and masterfully told, of a sickly boy who became one of the great figures of his time. The twentieth century does not know itself without Bacon.

Francis Bacon

STEVENS, Mark

William Collins

Collins Wild Flower Guide

Following on from its successful launch in 2009, Collins Wild Flower Guide – the ultimate reference book for wild flower enthusiasts – now enters its second edition.
Featuring all flowering plants, including trees and grasses, and ferns, this fully revised and updated field guide to the wild flowers of Britain and northern Europe is the most complete illustrated, single-volume guide ever published.
Leading botanical artists have been specially commissioned to ensure accurate, detailed illustrations. Species are described and illustrated on the same page, with up-to-date authoritative text aiding identification. Plants are arranged by family, with their key features highlighted for quick and easy reference. The text offers a complete account of over 1,900 wild flowers of Britain and Ireland, along with a summary of their European distribution.
Collins Wild Flower Guide is an indispensable guide for all those with an interest in the countryside, whether amateur or expert.

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Streeter, DAvid

Gardening & Landscape Design

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
‘Sheer joy' Graham Norton, author of Home Stretch 
‘Utterly beautiful … filled with hope’ Joanna Cannon, author of Three Things About Elsie 
‘A bear-hug of a book’ Rachel Joyce, author of Miss Benson’s Beetle 
From the author of When God was a Rabbit and Tin Man, Still Life is a big-hearted story of people brought together by love, war, art and the ghost of E.M. Forster. 
1944, in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa, as bombs fall around them, two strangers meet and share an extraordinary evening. 
Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier, Evelyn Skinner is a sexagenarian art historian and possible spy. She has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the wreckage and relive memories of the time she encountered EM Forster and had her heart stolen by an Italian maid in a particular Florentine room with a view. 
Evelyn’s talk of truth and beauty plants a seed in Ulysses’ mind that will shape the trajectory of his life – and of those who love him – for the next four decades. 
Moving from the Tuscan Hills and piazzas of Florence, to the smog of London’s East End, Still Life is a sweeping, joyful novel about beauty, love, family and fate. 
‘Four course nourishment for all Winman fans’ Patrick Gale, author of Take Nothing With You 
‘Extraordinary . . . my book of the year’ Liz Nugent, author of Our Little Cruelties 
‘The kind of story that bolsters the heart and soul’ Donal Ryan, author of Strange Flowers 
Sunday Times bestseller 09/06/2021

Still Life: The instant Sunday Times bestselling novel

Winman, Sarah

Fourth Estate

‘A riveting tale, brilliantly told' Philippe Sands 
The little-known story of Hitler’s war on modern art and the mentally ill. 
In the first years of the Weimar Republic, the German psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn gathered a remarkable collection of works by schizophrenic patients that would astonish and delight the world. 
The Prinzhorn collection, as it was called, inspired a new generation of artists, including Paul Klee, Max Ernst and Salvador Dali. What the doctor could not have known, however, was that these works would later be used to prepare the ground for mass-murder. 
Soon after his rise to power, Hitler―a failed artist of the old school―declared war on modern art. The Nazis staged giant ‘Degenerate Art’ shows to ridicule the avant-garde, and seized and destroyed the cream of Germany's modern art collections. This action was mere preparation, however, for the even more sinister campaign Hitler would later wage against so-called "degenerate" people, and Prinzhorn's artists were caught up in both. 
Bringing together inspirational art history, genius and madness, and the wanton cruelty of the fanatical "artist-Führer", this astonishing story lays bare the culture war that paved the way for Hitler's first extermination programme, the psychiatric Holocaust.

The Gallery of Miracles and Madness: Insanity, Art and Hitler’s first Mass-Murder Programme

English, Charlie

Design as Art

Munari, Bruno

Teen & Young Adult

Penguin Classics

In 2017 the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction for $450m. But is it a real da Vinci? In a thrilling narrative built on formidable research, Ben Lewis tracks the extraordinary journey of a masterpiece lost and found, lied and fought over across the centuries. 
In 2017, Leonardo da Vinci’s small oil painting, the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction for $450m. In the words of its discoverer, the image of Christ as saviour of the world is ‘the rarest thing on the planet by the greatest human being who ever lived’. Its dazzling price also makes it the world’s most expensive painting.\nFor two centuries art dealers had searched in vain for the Holy Grail of art history: a portrait of Christ as the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci. Many similar paintings of greatly varying quality had been executed by Leonardo’s assistants in the first half of the sixteenth century. But where was the original by the master himself?\nIn November 2017, Christie’s auction house announced they had it. But did they? The Last Leonardo tells a thrilling tale of a spellbinding icon invested with the power to make or break the reputations of scholars, billionaires, kings and sheikhs. Lewis takes us to Leonardo’s studio in Renaissance Italy; to the court of Charles I and the English Civil War; to Holland, Moscow and Louisiana; to the galleries, salerooms and restorer’s workshop as the painting slowly, painstakingly, emerged from obscurity. The vicissitudes of the highly secretive art market are charted across five centuries. It is a twisting tale of geniuses and oligarchs, double-crossings and disappearances, where we’re never quite certain what to believe. Above all, it is an adventure story about the search for lost treasure, and a quest for the truth.

The Last Leonardo (English and Italian Edition)

Lewis, Ben

Humor & Entertainment

An illuminating exploration of the intersection between life, art and the sea from the award-winning author of Leviathan. 
‘This is a wonderful book. A lyrical journey into the natural and unnatural world … Leading us from the hands of an engraver to the monstrous beauty dwelling in the churning seas’ Patti Smith 
Albrecht Dürer changed the way we saw nature through art. From his prints in 1498 of the plague ridden Apocalypse – the first works mass produced by any artist – to his hyper-real images of animals and plants, his art was a revelation: it showed us who we are but it also foresaw our future. It is a vision that remains startlingly powerful and seductive, even now. 
In Albert & the Whale, Philip Hoare sets out to discover why Dürer's art endures. He encounters medieval alchemists and modernist poets, eccentric emperors and queer soul rebels, ambassadorial whales and enigmatic pop artists. He witnesses the miraculous birth of Dürer's fantastical rhinoceros and his hermaphroditic hare, and he traces the fate of the star-crossed leviathan that the artist pursued. And as the author swims from Europe to America and beyond, these prophetic artists and downed angels provoke awkward questions. What is natural or unnatural? Is art a fatal contract? Or does it in fact have the power to save us?\nWith its wild and watery adventures, its witty accounts of amazing cultural lives and its delight in the fragile beauty of the natural world, Albert & the Whale offers glorious, inspiring insights into a great artist, and his unerring, sometimes disturbing gaze.

Albert and the Whale

HOARE, PHILIP

This beautifully illustrated overview of the wildlife of the British Isles showcases the diversity of our plant and animal life. Wild Isles is a celebration of the wildlife found on a relatively modest collection of islands positioned at a latitude so northerly to be unattractive to many animals and plants. Despite these unpromising foundations, the islands of Britain and Ireland, together with more than 6,000 lesser islets that make up our archipelago, contain some of the most diverse, beautiful and wildlife-rich landscapes and seas on our planet. This book will explore the fascinating relationships within and between species who make their home on our beautiful isles. Each chapter focuses on a particular kind of wild space. Britain and Ireland are dominated by a wide variety of grasslands from lowland water meadows to upland moors, and we will see how these human-shaped, semi-natural landscapes thrum with insect, bird and mammal life. Life requires water to flourish, and streams and rivers carry freshwater through our landscape, creating unique ecosystems and interrelations within and beside these waters, which are revealed in a third section. While Britain and Ireland's woodlands are comparatively thin on the ground compared with most of continental Europe, we will see some of the forests and trees that remain are unusually ancient and, great repositories of life. Finally, of course, we are surrounded by sea, and our position on the continental shelf before it plunges into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean gives rise to an often overlooked plenty of marine life. A glorious richness divided into five breathtaking sections.

Wild Isles: The book of the BBC TV series presented by David Attenborough

Fothergill, Alastair

Barkham, Patrick

Photography & Video

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