Rewarding as a study on Bacon - it gets closer to understanding his enigma than anything has since - this memoir is also a tribute to Sylvester's clarity and verve. A re-issue, this was firs... read more
A detailed portrait of the Jewish families whose collecting dominated the art world, and of their pillaging by the Nazis and the subsequent attempts at restitution.
A foray into the rich but slender vein of European art history devoted to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. During the 50 years in question, the region experienced successive Tsarist rule, Germ... read more
A riotous memoir of attempting to mount a Bacon exhibition in the last days of the USSR; apparatchiks, honey-traps, the KGB - has the author's liver ever recovered?
Born in 1799, Atkins was the first person to illustrate a book with photographs. Her cyanotypes - of ferns, algae, parrot feathers, seaweed - are exquisite.
A study of that curious phenomenon: the deification of explorers, politicians, rulers and mavericks, from Columbus to Prince Philip, the late volcano god. A smart take on empire too; provoca... read more
Kristeva's most recent book, translated from the French, is a (not surprisingly) complex engagement with the work of Dostoyevsky. Enhanced by a thoughtful foreword by Rowan Williams.
Secular wisdom in an age of unbelief, from Montaigne, Akhmatova, Hume, Camus, Cicero, Job and many others who sought, lost or found consolation. Perceptive, intelligent, a giving of necessar... read more
Five piercingly brilliant essays on stories from the margins, art, Black history, and the crossroads of Africa and Asia as well as with the West. First work of non-fiction by an author much ... read more
Having escaped the massacre at Katyn, Czapski was interned and lived to write these essays on some of those who were murdered, as well as pieces on Blok, Soutine, and others. He was the mode... read more
A feminist polemic that looks at women's resistance to male domination, both historically and now, and the consequences of independence, education, knowledge and power.