An exploration of the friendship and rivalry of these two poets, who met weekly at the Ritz (for a while) to discuss sex, suicide, mental health and other mutual preoccupations.
Raised in Nazi Germany, at 18, Wulff Scherchen was Britten's muse and lover. When the composer went to the USA during the war, Wulff was interned as an enemy alien and transported to Canada,... read more
It should come as no surprise that Beaton's biographer, and author of many other fine books on society subjects, should himself have personal diaries to share with his readers... (Not to be ... read more
A biography of the man so vividly presented in Robert Edric's 2008 novel 'In Zodiac Light': the poet and composer who, following his experiences as a soldier in WW1, was confined to an asylu... read more
This magnificent book - which takes its title from a remark of the singer Josephine Baker - gives us the cultural landscape of black genius from the mid C20th to the present. We are in extr... read more
Definitive biography of this determinedly figurative painter whose 20th century life, through suffrage to feminism, won her a major retrospective at the Whitney, New York in 1974.
Long anticipated voyage through the overlapping currents of nature, life and art. PH won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Leviathan, or The Whale; here he attempts to answer why Durer's art endu... read more
A biography of the fine watercolourist renowned for his pastoral evocations of rural England between the wars and who served as War Artist in WW2. Illustrated throughout.
In the early 20th century an easily overlooked square in Bloomsbury was the home, at one time or another, of the modernist poet H.D., Dorothy L Sayers, the classicist Jane Harrison, the hist... read more
She was B-J's muse for the last 25 years of his life, but, unlike most of the other Pre-Raphaelite women, she survived into a self-determining life and was friendly with Wilde, Einstein, Asq... read more
Vol 1 was shortlisted last year for the Baillie Gifford Prize. WF knew Freud extremely well; he chronicles the colourful private life and pictures with detachment.
A curator of fashion at the V&A for most of her working life, CW uses her experience and sensitivity to clothes to explore how, in her own family's life, the secrets of clothes measure out t... read more
There are seven exceptionally talented siblings in this family of musicians, and they went to a state comprehensive in Nottingham before all moving to the Royal Academy of Music. This is the... read more